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

sharp. She flicked her power, setting up barriers. Off! Off! she commanded and flung the thing away beyond her barrier.
    She set up sense-posts at the perimeter of the four’s conscious thinking, in case other strangers attempted to mind-read them.
    That was creepy, Thomas traced. Warily they kept watch as people passed them.
    How do you think they got here? Dorian traced.
    Who cares? Thomas traced. Maybe they were always here. I’m interested in getting out of here. A moment ago he had remembered the Mal and the thought had put him on edge.
    Justice didn’t take up his veiled suggestion to leave. She closed herself off from his worrying. She had no wish to go home just yet.
    The Oneway passed near dwellings shaded in earth colors of yellow-brown, ocher, red-brown and the deep brown of bottomland. The domusi were curved geodesics, all the same size and made of unrecognizable material.
    Celester explained that the domusi were constructed of blocks made of fibers that they grew themselves.
    “Environment control is made a life system,” he said. “Small geodesics are maintained from saved energy supplied by the larger environment.”
    More people passed them. Scanning them, Justice found her telepathy blocked. She watched them pass up a ramp to Midway.
    “Who are they?” she asked. “They’re not duplicates, but they look alike somehow.”
    “They are like you,” Celester said.
    “Well, I can tell they’re human,” she said.
    “Not only human, but time-travelers,” he said. “They come here as you came here, through the pause between times.”
    She gazed up at him. “You mean they mind-jump?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “But how do they … how do we have our bodies?”
    “No difficulty,” Celester said. “We detect your passage of mind into our evention—our phase. Our phase is the Origin of Reclaimen.”
    “Wait a minute,” she said, “one thing at a time. Right now I can feel my skin, and my heart beats; I can touch my clothes and they protected me from the dust.”
    “Just so,” Celester said. “I see!” he sang this time. “Yes to your next question. While you are with us, we build your body. We build your apparel from knowledge in your minds.”
    “I didn’t feel a thing,” Dorian said.
    “Me neither,” said Thomas.
    “And on one of the earlier mind-jumps to Dustland,” Justice said, “Miacis attacked me. She went right through my clothes and my body, and right then I wasn’t real at all.”
    “It is the conditioning of matter,” said Celester. “Integrate, disintegrate. We know how to encode matter, to integrate it or disintegrate it.”
    The Watcher of Justice was there suddenly, rising in a glowing of her eyes. Celester’s enormous eyes concentrated on the aura, blue in hue and serene in nature, that was the gifted power of Justice’s mutation.
    “I am the Watcher,” her voice vibrated. A deep tremor of light and dark was her thinking, hugely magnified. Observing.
    Celester toned a five-note chord that expressed profound respect and awe. “Watcher, source, and true!” he exclaimed.
    “You create life,” Justice said.
    “We build life,” Celester toned this time. “The life cycle is the perpetuation of energy. Universal energy can not be decreased. Information constantly increases. We advance technology and increase productivity of community.”
    “You manipulate matter, the instant teleportation of matter,” said Justice.
    “There is no instant of time involved,” toned Celester. “It is like mind-reading. It takes no time at all. You are there.”
    “You duplicate humans,” Justice said.
    “Just so,” Celester spoke. He was quite calm, reassuring.
    The Watcher faded. The aura of depth thinking disappeared.
    “Why not just let humans develop on their own?” Justice said.
    “We control for the efficiency of the result,” said Celester. “We do not have time for ordinary evolution.”
    “But you separate one kind from another,” Levi said