The doors snapped closed again, and Constance turned toward Abner, looking up into his eyes. "If you saw fit to commune with the grove, you'd see what the rest of us do. It's not about knowledge. It's about faith."
"Do you mean," asked Constance, "that everything I said just now when I was in a trance, is recorded in those bubbles somehow?"
"I think it's more than that," Abner answered soberly. "The same thing happens when I bring a tablet up here by myself. I've got four other tablets that look just like this now."
"So what's it recording?"
"The words you were talking were probably part of it," Abner speculated. "Like, one wavelength out of hundreds or thousands. This is all of it. Or everything the tablet can hold, anyhow."
"All of what?" Constance asked. She was starting to feel uneasy, anxious to return to the familiarity of the garden.
"We can't see it," Abner said, taking a few steps out from the center of the level and toward the apparent emptiness beyond, "because the dome up there ain't actually transparent. But I saw it when we flew in. At the tip of this tower is something like a radio antenna, and it's sending a signal out into space. A signal that's packed full of information. When you came up here, something about you acted just like that antenna, just like this tablet. You caught the information. The only difference is, it seems like you were able to translate it into English."
Constance folded her arms uncomfortably across her chest. "Maybe that's what happens to folks in the grove too. They're catching a radio signal and translating it."
Abner nodded. "Probably filtering it through their own experiences too."
"It makes a body wonder where the signal is going. Who it's for."
"If we knew that," Abner said, looking at her meaningfully, "we'd know a lot."
Abruptly, Constance pivoted and returned to the central elevator column, which was a featureless white pillar in the center of the room that terminated in a dome about twelve feet from the floor. When she was a pace away from it, the elevator doors snapped open, breaking the otherwise smooth surface. "Well, I've heard the same things everyone else has heard. The purpose of the signal is to 'wake the sleeper,' whoever that is. I guess the Sleeper must be somewhere out there, or at least the tower thinks she is." She gestured in the direction of the ceiling before stepping into the warm white light of the padded elevator shuttle.
Abner followed her inside, disappointment visible on his blunt features. "The way you've been talking lately, I reckoned that maybe the tower's told you more about…her…than what the rest of us have heard."
The doors snapped closed again, and Constance turned toward Abner, looking up into his eyes. "If you saw fit to commune with the grove, you'd see what the rest of us do. It's not about knowledge. It's about faith."
Constance looked away again, placing her back against the padded wall until she felt the familiar pull of gravity, as if she had reclined on the floor. Abner followed suit, and when they were both in place, the navigation sphere descended predictably from its nest.
"Faith in what?" Abner asked, absently poking the glittering representation of the garden level with a thick finger.
"Peace," Constance whispered. "Purpose. Total acceptance. The certainty that ultimately, everything will be set right."
The young man nodded thoughtfully. "That's what I've gleaned from y'all. Sounds like a dangerous notion if you ask me."
Almost as soon as it had started its descent, the shuttle stopped again, its doors snapping open to reveal the garden level. Constance made to storm pointedly out of the elevator, but she was stopped short by the site of the tall, lanky figure standing just beyond the threshold.
"Miss Beckett, I presume?" Asked Captain Carter. "I was informed that it was no good talking to anyone else until you'd returned."