Rain-jeweled flowers often held McKie's attention to the exclusion of all else.  There was a single planting of Lilium Grossa, its red blossoms twice his height casting long shadows over a wriggling carpet of blue Syringa, each miniature bloom opening and closing at random like tiny mouths gasping for air.

Sometimes, floral perfumes stopped his progress and held him in a momentary olfactory thralldom while his eyes searched out the source.  As often as not, the plant would be a dangerous one - a flesh eater or poison-sweat variety.  Warning signs in flashing Galach guarded such plantings.  Sonabarriers, moats, and force fields edged the winding paths in many areas.

McKie had a favorite spot in the park, a bench with its back to a fountain where he could sit and watch the shadows collect across fat yellow bushes from the floating islands of Tandaloor.  The yellow bushes thrived because their roots were washed in running water hidden beneath the soil and renewed by the fountain. Beneath the yellow bushes there were faint gleams of phosphorescent silver enclosed by a force field and identified by a low sign:

"Sangeet Mobilus, a blood-sucking perennial from Bisaj.  Extreme danger to all sentient species.  Do not intrude any portion of your body beyond the force field."

As he sat on the bench, McKie thought about that sign.  The universe often mixed the beautiful and the dangerous.  This was a deliberate mixture in the park.  The yellow bushes, the fragrant and benign Golden Iridens, had been mingled with Sangeet Mobilus.  The two supported each other and both thrived.  The ConSentient government which McKie served often made such mixtures . . . sometimes by accident.