Virginia Hamilton by The Gathering: The Justice Cycle (Book Three)

lightly or darkly.” His vibrating, sweet tune swept over them as he synchronized the symbols of his chest.
    A shiny glass tube glided to a stop before them. It hovered a few inches above the Oneway.
    “It is called mobi,” said Celester.
    The mobi hovered in place. One of its glass partitions slid back. Celester ushered them inside, where it was refreshingly cool. He explained that the transparent “glass” resisted solar penetration. “It is silitrex,” he told them, “known for its strength, opacity and light weight.”
    The mobi had cushioned seats in curved rows. The rear was covered by a curtain hung across it.
    “You will find suitable pull-ons—er, clothing—behind the screen,” Celester told them. “Clothing and screen are made of same fiber as domusi. Fibers absorb uncleanliness and shed it as dust-waste, which we utilize as fuel. Little need for bathing here in Sona. Please help yourselves to clothing.”
    They felt obliged to step behind the curtain. The boys went in together; then Justice. Celester was perplexed, then amused by the apparent separation of the four by sex, when they were all the same kind.

8
    T HE MOBI RUSHED, CAUSING whistling wind-sounds on either side. Celester copied the sounds with perfect vocalizing to amuse them. They watched silently as the mobi passed through two gates on rising levels leading to the Midway. At Midway they left Sona’s dwelling area and headed toward open expanses. They sat in summer robes, seeing a broad scenic view. Shortly after, the mobi glided still. The side opened. They were on another platform, similar to the one outside the tunnel chamber. They stepped out and saw a different Sona.
    It was an area of land divided into vast plots of growing things.
    “It’s … it’s … home!” Justice whispered.
    “Soil,” said Thomas, “black as it can be!”
    It might have been some rural county in the Midwest. Justice hoped it might be the future of her own Greene County. A familiar, sweet landscape, dark and calm under the glowing dome.
    “I’m glad it grows so well,” she said.
    “Just so,” toned Celester. “Our kind of people do favor soil. It is the reason we make the effort to reclaim the outside. Other domities do not bother. Instead, they invent environments and the conditions to make them habitable for the kinds they engineer. But our kinds here are made from the untethered humankind, most content with landscape and natural elements.”
    “You say made?” said Levi.
    “Yes, duplicated,” said Celester, “And altered, manipulated for the necessary result.”
    “Celester, you talk about ‘our kind’ needing this and ‘we’ do that. But you’re not speaking about yourself, are you?” Justice asked.
    “ ‘Our kind’ are the humans entrusted to us,” he toned. “By ‘we’ I mean those who are computerized functions. I myself am a product of negative eugenics combined with advanced electronics. My prototype brain cared for science and technology. I am no harvester, no farman—er, farmer. Pastoral not I.”
    “But you must value this farming,” Justice said, “or there wouldn’t be all this.” She gestured out over the enormous, fertile plain that lay below them.
    “We learn that environchange enhances the human’s emotional life,” toned Celester. “Humans need emotions for survival. Ones such as the most Hellal IX lie in terragrass and fall asleep from contentment images suggested by the damp green smell. Freshly cut terragrass causes hearts to leap; causes laughter, happiness. I recall happiness. But I lack the content in my brain cells for great emotion. All to the good. Memory is enough.”
    They gazed out over the plain and felt their own hearts skip at the sight of land so similar to home. Yet there were differences. Plants were suspended above silitrex troughs hundreds of feet long. The troughs were shallow. A liquid flowed through them, and the roots of the plants were immersed in the liquid.
    Celester spoke,