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

“We calculate that in your time hydraponics such as you see below were an expensive method of planting without soil. You found it troublesome aerating the liquid and supporting plants in an upright position.”
    “Well, your plants don’t seem to have any supports at all,” Levi said.
    Thomas laughed nervously. He had caught on. “Mind control, man,” he said to Levi. “The plants are spellbound!”
    “It is machine control,” Celester toned. “A truly intelligent machine knows how a living system, whether man, plant or universe, makes use of information. Environ machines are at work on the hydrafields. They invent environments and compute with other kinds of machines problems and the solutions their inventions bring. Our premise is always that no situation is entirely new.”
    They watched him, awed and fascinated, as their minds rose to the level of his meaning.
    “Environ machines think for themselves,” he toned. “Once they decide on a system, such as hydraponics, they do what is necessary to make it work, which might mean tapping into a mentex, a mind-over-matter machine, for the necessary formulas.”
    Celester pulled himself in. Suddenly he was still, as if his life-spirit had completely left him. Justice divined that he was giving information and taking it in. Scanning him, she discovered that his mind calculated at lightning speed in unknown symbols.
    Is somebody telling him what to do? Thomas traced to her.
    Not that I can tell. I don’t think so, she traced back. But he’s in contact with someone … something … somewhere else.
    Just when they were growing uneasy standing with this cyborg gone dead as a pole, he abruptly came to and was back with them.
    “Ah so!” he toned. “All truly intelligent machines were created and built by Starters.”
    And before any one of them could ask what Starters were, he exclaimed, “Just so! Follow me. At terrace we will have hellelu; and then the feast.” He leaped to the lead, gliding ahead of them.
    In spite of all his misgivings, Thomas was intensely curious. He hurried to catch up with Celester to walk at his side.
    “What’s a hellelu?” they heard Thomas ask.
    “You will be surprised,” was Celester’s reply.
    Justice and Levi and Dorian plunged into a waist-high fernbrake. Feathery rust-colored plantings grew on either side of a well-worn path of fibers made into a walkway.
    “Nice,” said Dorian. “The walk relaxes your feet. See? You sink down.” He took off his shoes. “Sure! Feel how it massages you.”
    “Don’t talk to me about feet!” Levi said irritably. It was not like him to sound so upset. “If they can give us bodies,” he said, “why can’t they make their own food and dispense with having it grow on plants?”
    “It’s not the same thing,” Justice said.
    “You believe they gave us our bodies? Here?” he asked.
    “Yes,” she said. “Maybe they keep unformed globs of life somewhere. When we entered the future out there, somehow they knew it, maybe. They figured out our individual formulas and placed them in the four globs. Maybe they grew them, transported them and fitted them to our minds in seconds. I say they did. I say that, for the first time in the known world, there is real magic!”
    “But if they knew we entered the future,” Dorian said, “how come they didn’t know Duster and the rest were out there?”
    “Because they probably monitor the Crossover to see what’s coming. Well, I don’t know it all. But I bet it’s something like that.”
    “So why do they need plants or food?” Levi wanted to know. “If they’re so great, why don’t they duplicate themselves with their bellies forever full? Why even bother with life? Why not start at the end—Oh, brother, I don’t know what I’m saying!”
    Pointing at the plain below, Justice said, “I bet machines went outside and found enough particles in the ground to start plant-life again. Then they developed the best plants. Because humans