4.4: What does the Pod's warning mean?

To begin with, Alcock seems a little irritated that Lottie took off her own bandage. (Why? she thinks. It’s her foot. Grown-ups!) But then he listens to her story. Since he has regular, if always indirect, interaction with the Pod - Alcock has never been invited to visit it, the Pod always sends Tiffany-Anne - he accepts Lottie’s experience as true. The Pod has issued a warning through one of her peas. But what can it mean and how can they act on it? 

He tells Lottie that he has himself recently found a very strange dangerous-feeling atmosphere in the nearby town and has asked the Potting Shed members to stay away from it for the moment. But then again, they rarely do go into town. The Potting Shed runs very much like an agrarian community from 300 years ago. Perhaps that is why they have not noticed any profound modification to nature. They are too close to it to see it.

Alcock suggests that, for the moment, despite the warning, they should do nothing. Lottie is half relieved - there always seems to be something reliable and trustworthy about Alcock, despite his shady soldier past - and half disappointed. That little pea seemed quite agitated. And, after all, stones are not usually awake!