Cradle

  The logical processes in the extraterrestrial computers are strained to the limit to figure out a way to contact human beings for help without creating undue risk for both the Earth cradle and the rest of the mission. The computers are about to decide on a rapid strike at mines for the lead and gold when they realize, based on their partial understanding of the human language, that the three humans who found the cradle may be coming back into the vicinity. All of the spaceship processors are strapped together to design a scenario that will induce these humans to help them. The inside of the spaceship is even reconfigured from scratch for the arrival of the humans. For if the scenario is successful, there is a high probability that the spaceship can continue on its mission, having successfully deposited the millions of repatriated zygotes, but without having disrupted the main flow of life on Earth. This was the original goal of the mission.

  SUNDAY

  1

  IT was after two o’clock in the morning by the time the Florida Queen left the marina and headed out into the Gulf of Mexico. Carol and Troy stood together against the railing while Nick steered the boat through the harbor. “Well, angel,” Troy said, “it has already been an unbelievable experience, hasn’t it? And I must admit that I myself am a little nervous about what we’re going to find out at the dive site this time.”

  “I thought you knew what was going to happen, Troy,” Carol replied, pointing at his bracelet. “Don’t they tell you everything?”

  “They tell me a lot. And I’m getting better at understanding their messages. But how do I know if they’re telling the truth?”

  “We have had the same problem with you at times,” Nick interjected from under the canopy. The boat was almost out in the open ocean. The lights from Key West were receding behind them. “In the final analysis, particularly when nothing makes sense anyway, it comes down to a question of trust. If I were to ask myself logically why I am going out into the Gulf of Mexico in the middle of the night to take lead and gold and information to some extraterrestrials who stopped here on the Earth to make repairs — ”

  Carol laughed and interrupted. “But there’s no logical way to discuss this entire series of events. Troy already pointed that out. We’re not operating on logic. And I don’t even think it’s a question of trust so much.” She paused and looked up at the stars. “It’s more like faith.”

  Troy put his arm around Carol and smiled. “I agree with you, angel. After all, we don’t know shit. Only they know.”

  Carol yawned. There was silence on the boat. Everyone was very tired. After the security men had surrounded Homer and Greta at the Miyako Gardens, the police had of course been called. They had arrived within ten minutes but it had seemed as if their questions were going to last forever. Carol, Nick, and Troy had each been required to file a separate written statement. Homer and Greta admitted nothing, despite the fact that the security men had taken two handguns from them and matching bullet fragments were found inside Troy’s car. Homer had phoned his lawyer and was expecting to be out on bail within four to six hours.

  When the trio did finally reach the marina (they had to walk from the hotel because the police impounded Troy’s car as evidence) carrying the backpacks, Troy remembered that he had not yet connected the new navigation equipment. Maybe it was because Troy was tired or perhaps having his two friends watch him part of the time over his shoulder made him nervous; whatever the reason, Troy was very slow in installing and verifying the new navigation processor.

  Meanwhile, Carol and Nick had been checking to ensure that there were three complete sets of diving apparatus onboard the boat. The diving gear the men had used earlier in the evening was still out at the base in the possession of the United States Navy. Nick thought he recalled putting enough extra equipment on the boat to handle the large party from Tampa that had originally chartered the Florida Queen for the weekend. He was correct, but one of the regulator systems did not function properly during the checkout and had to be exchanged for a spare.

  During the walk from the hotel to the marina, Nick and Carol and Troy had come to the unanimous conclusion that they would all three keep the underwater rendezvous with the superalien spaceship. There was no other reasonable solution. The boat could certainly be safely anchored. And none of the three of them could bear to think of missing the climax to their adventure.

  Nick entered the ocean coordinates of the dive site into the navigation processor and put the boat on autopilot. He saw Carol yawn again. It was infectious. As he opened his mouth for a long, relaxing yawn, Nick realized how exhausted he was. He walked around behind the canopy and found two light air mattresses in a jumbled pile of supplies. He started inflating one of them by blowing into a valve at the end.

  Carol came around to the back of the boat when the first mattress was almost inflated. The light on top of the canopy gave her face a glow. She’s even beautiful when she’s tired, Nick thought. He motioned to the other mattress. Carol bent down to pick it up and started inflating it. And very capable. I’ve never met a woman who was so good at so many things.

  Nick finished with his air mattress and laid it down on the bottom of the boat. Carol was tiring, so he helped her inflate the rest of her mattress. He grabbed some towels and wadded them up like pillows. “We all have to sleep some,” he said to her as an explanation. “Otherwise we’ll be punchy when we try to dive.”

  Carol nodded and walked back to the edge of the canopy. “Is it all right with you if Nick and I take a short nap?” she said to Troy. He smiled his assent. “Wake one or both of us in an hour,” she continued, “if you want to use one of the air mattresses.” She turned around and started to leave. “Uh, Troy,” she asked, before she left the side of the canopy.

  “Yes, angel?” he answered.

  “Do you know where they came from?” She pointed at the sky. Not too many stars were visible because of the brightness of the gibbous moon. It was well past its zenith and already into its western descent.

  Troy looked up at the heavens and thought for almost a minute. “No, angel,” he responded at length. “I think they’ve tried to tell me, maybe even twice, but I can’t understand what they’re saying. But I do know that they come from another star.”

  Troy now walked over beside Carol and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite,” he said. “And maybe you can ask them yourself after you wake up.”

  Where do you come from? Carol was thinking. And why did you land here, in this place, at this time? She shaded her eyes from the glare of the moon and concentrated her attention on Sirius, the brightest true star in the sky. Do you have a home there, around another star? With mothers and fathers and brothers? Do you have love and oceans and mountains and music? And longing and loneliness and fear of death? For reasons she could not understand, tears found their way into Carol’s eyes. She dropped her gaze and walked back to the air mattresses. Nick was already stretched out on one of them. He was on his back and his eyes were closed. Carol lay down on the mattress beside him. She reached out and put her hand in his. He pulled her hand to his lips, kissed it softly, and dropped it on his chest.

  Nick’s dream was confusing. He was in the main lobby of a huge open library with twenty floors of books. He could see the spiral staircases ascending to the stacks above him. “But you don’t understand,” he said to the clerk standing behind the long counter. “I must read all these books this weekend. Otherwise I won’t be ready for the test on Monday.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the diffident clerk replied quietly after scanning Nick’s list a second time. “But all copies of these books are currently checked out.”

  Nick started to panic. He looked up at the enormously high ceiling and the floors of shelved books above him. He saw Carol Dawson up on the third floor, leaning against the railing and reading a book. His panic subsided. She’ll know the material, he thought to himself in the dream. He raced over to the staircase and bounded up the two flights of curving stairs.

/>   He was out of breath when he reached Carol. She was reading one of the books that had been on his list. “Oh, good,” he said between gasps, “I knew as soon as I saw you that there was no worry.”

  She looked at him quizzically. Without warning she thrust her hand down into the top of his jeans and grabbed his penis. He responded immediately and leaned forward to kiss her. She shook her head and backed up. He pursued her, pushing her against the railing. She fought him. He pressed hard against her body and succeeded in kissing her. The railing gave way and they were falling, falling. He woke up before they hit the floor in the lobby of the library.

  Nick shuddered himself awake. Carol was watching him intently. Her head was resting on her hands, propped up by her elbow. “Are you all right?” she asked as soon as he opened his eyes.

  It took Nick a few seconds to acclimate after the vivid dream. His heart was still racing out of control. “I think so,” he said. Carol continued to stare at him. “Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.

  “Well,” she began, “I woke up because you were talking. I even thought I heard my name a couple of times. Maybe I imagined it. If you don’t mind my asking, do you often talk in your sleep?”

  “I don’t know,” Nick answered. He laughed a little. “Nobody has ever mentioned it to me before.”

  “Not even Monique?” Carol said. Her eyes did not leave Nick’s. She could tell that he was trying to decide what kind of answer to give to her question. You’re pushing again, a voice inside her said. Let the man do things at his own pace.

  Nick looked away. “We did not sleep together that much,” he said softly. There was a long pause. “Besides,” he said, now turning back to Carol, “that was ten years ago. I was very young. And she was married to someone else.”

  While they had been sleeping Troy had switched off the light on the top of the canopy. The only light on their faces now was the reflection from the moon. They continued to look at each other in silence. Nick had not said very much to Carol about Monique, but it had been more than he had ever told anyone else, including his parents. Carol knew how much of an effort it had been for him to answer her question honestly. She rolled over on her back again and extended her hand to Nick.

  “So here we are, Mr. Williams. Two solitary voyagers on the sea of life. Both of us are now past thirty. Many of our friends and classmates have already settled down into that house in the suburbs with the two kids and a dog. Why not us? What’s different about us?”

  The moon was accelerating its downward arc through the sky above them. As it descended, more stars could be seen on the opposite horizon. Nick thought he saw a shooting star. There would be no way to hide from feelings. Nick was jumping ahead of the conversation, imagining for the moment that he was going to be involved with Carol. She would not permit it. At least I would not have any doubts about where we stood.

  “When I was over at her house on Friday morning,” Nick finally replied to her question, “Amanda Winchester told me that I’m looking for a fantasy woman, someone absolutely perfect. And that mere mortals always come up short in my estimation.” He propped his head up and looked at Carol. “But I think it’s something else. I think maybe I’m not willing to make a commitment because of fear of rejection.”

  Did I really say that? wondered Nick, shocked at himself. Instantly he felt as if he never should have shared the thought. His defenses began to build and he braced himself for a flippant or insensitive reply.

  But it did not come. Instead Carol was quiet and thoughtful. At length she spoke. “My protection is different from yours,” she said. “I always play it safe. I pick men I admire and respect, intellectual pals if you will, but for whom I do not have any passion. When I meet a man who sets off the banjos and bells, I run the other way.”

  Because I’m afraid, she thought. Afraid that I might love him as much as I did my father. And I could not survive if I were abandoned like that again.

  She felt Nick’s hand on her cheek. He was caressing her gently. She reached up, took his hand, and squeezed it. He pulled himself up on his side where he could see her better. She could tell that he wanted to kiss her. She squeezed his hand again. Slowly, tentatively, he dropped his mouth on hers. It was a tender, adoring kiss, without pressure or overt passion, a subtle, artful question that could have been either the beginning of a love affair or the sole kiss exchanged between two people whose paths just happened to cross in life. Carol heard banjos and bells.

  2

  WINTERS stood on the deck by himself, smoking quietly. It was not a large boat, this converted trawler, but it was very fast. They had not left the dock until after four o’clock and they had almost caught up with their prey already. The commander rubbed his eyes and yawned. He was tired. He blew smoke out over the ocean. On the eastern horizon there was just a faint suggestion of dawn. To the west, in the direction of the moon, Winters thought he saw the dim light of another boat.

  These young people must all be crazy, he thought to himself as he reflected back on the events of the evening. Why the hell did they leave? Did they push Todd down those stairs without his knowing it? It would have been so much easier if they had just stayed there until we returned.

  He remembered the look on Lieutenant Ramirez’ face when he had interrupted the telephone conversation that Winters had been having with his wife, Betty. “Excuse me. Commander,” Ramirez had said. He had been out of breath. “You must come quickly Lieutenant Todd is injured and our prisoners have escaped.”

  He had told his wife that he had no idea when he would be home and then joined Ramirez for the short walk back to the administration annex. On the way Winters had been thinking about Tiffani, about the difficulty he had had in explaining to the seventeen-year-old why he could not just drop everything and meet her at the party. “But you can work any day or night, Vernon,” she had said. “This is our only time to be together.” She had already drunk too much champagne. Later in the conversation, when Winters had made it clear to her that he almost certainly would not make it to the party at all, and that he would probably ask Melvin and Marc to take her home, Tiffani had become petulant and angry. She had stopped calling him Vernon. “All right, Commander,” she had said, “I guess I’ll see you at the theater on Tuesday night.”

  The phone had clicked off and Winters had felt an ache tearing through his heart. Oh fuck, he had thought for a moment, I’ve blown it. He had imagined himself jumping in the car, forgetting Todd and Ramirez and the Panther missile, and driving over to the party to sweep Tiffani into his arms. But he had not done it. Despite his incredible longing, he was not able to pull himself away from his duty. If it was meant to be, he told himself consolingly, then those flames of passion will burn again. But even with his limited romantic experience Winters knew better. Timing is everything in a love affair. If momentum is lost at a critical moment, especially when the rhythm of the passion is heading for a climax, it will never be regained.

  Ramirez had already called the doctor on the base and he had arrived at the annex just after the two officers. While they were standing there together, Ramirez had insisted to Winters that it must have been foul play, that Todd could not have fallen so hard unless he had either been pushed or thrown down the concrete steps. The lieutenant had begun to stir during the doctor’s examination. “He has a bad concussion,” the doctor had said after he first checked Todd’s eyes. “He’ll probably be all right but he’ll have a ferocious headache in the morning. Meanwhile, we’ll take him over to the infirmary and sew up that gash in his head.”

  To Winters it didn’t make sense. While he was waiting patiently in an adjoining room for the doctors and nurses to finish the stitches in the lieutenant’s head, Winters tried to figure out what possible motive Nick and Carol and Troy could have had for attacking Todd and then escaping. The Dawson woman is smart and successful. Why would she do it? He wondered if perhaps the trio might have been involved in some kind of big drug transaction. That would at least explain
all the gold. But Todd and Ramirez did not find any indication of drugs. So what the hell is happening?

  Lieutenant Todd had been kept awake during the procedure in the emergency room. He had been given only a local anesthetic to reduce his pain. But he had not been very lucid in response to the doctor’s simple questions. “That sometimes happens with a concussion,” the medical officer had told Winters afterward. “He may not be very coherent for the next day or two.”

  Nevertheless, around two o’clock, immediately after Todd’s head had been shaven, stitched, and bandaged, Commander Winters and Lieutenant Ramirez had decided to ask him about what had occurred at the annex. The commander could not accept Todd’s answer, even though the lieutenant repeated it twice verbatim. Todd had insisted that a six-foot carrot with vertical slits in its face had hidden in the bathroom and had jumped him while he was trying to take a piss. He had escaped that first assault, but the giant carrot had then followed him into the main room at the annex.

  “And just how did this thing — ”

  “Carrot,” interrupted Todd.

  “And how did this carrot attack you?” continued Winters. Jesus, he had thought, this man has cracked. One bump on he head and he has finally flipped.

  “It’s hard to describe exactly,” Lieutenant Todd had answered slowly. “You see, it had four doodads hanging out of these vertical slits in its head. They were all mean looking — ”

  The doctor had come up and interrupted. “Gentlemen,” he had said with a perfect bedside smile, “my patient desperately needs rest. Surely some of these questions can wait until tomorrow.”

  Commander Winters remembered an overpowering sense of bewilderment as he watched the gurney take Lieutenant Todd from the emergency operating room to the infirmary. As soon as Todd was out of earshot, the commander had turned to Lieutenant Ramirez. “And what do you make of all this, Lieutenant?”