Cradle (31 page)

The extra chairs that had been brought in for Angie’s performance were cleared away
to make room for dancing. A disc jockey orchestrated the rest of the evening from
a booth next to the stage; one could dance to a variety of modern musical selections,
watch the outrageously overproduced music videos on the big screens, or just talk,
for the music was not overwhelmingly loud. Most of the people around Nick were from
the marina. During a break in the music, just after Nick had downed another fast tequila,
Linda Quinlan leaned across the table. ‘Come on, Nick,’ she said, ‘let us in on your
secret. What did you and Troy find yesterday?’

‘Nothing special,’ Nick said, remembering his agreement but surprised to discover
that he did indeed want to talk about it.

‘Rumour says different,’ jumped in one of the men at the table. ‘Everybody knows that
you took something to Amanda Winchester this morning. Come on, tell us what it was.
Have you found a new treasure ship?’

‘Maybe,’ said Nick, a drunken grin on his face, ‘just maybe.’ Another strong impulse
pushed him to tell the story and show the pictures, but he stopped himself. ‘I can’t
talk about it,’ was all he would say.

At this moment two burly young men, short-haired Navy types wearing officers’ uniforms,
were making a beeline for Nick’s table from the other side of the floor. One of them
was dark, Hispanic. Their approach was confident, even arrogant, and their arrival
at the table stopped all the conversation. The white lieutenant put his hand on Julianne’s
shoulder. ‘All right, gorgeous,’ he said boldly, ‘the Navy is here. Why don’t you
and your friend there’—he nodded at Corinne; Ramirez was standing behind her—‘come
and dance with us?’

Julianne said, ‘No, thank you,’ very politely and smiled. Todd looked down at her.
He was weaving just a little and it was clear from his eyes that he had been drinking
heavily.

‘You mean to tell me,’ he said, ‘that you would prefer to sit here with these local
geeks rather than dance with future admirals?’ Julianne felt his hand tighten on her
shoulder. She looked around the table and tried to ignore him.

Todd did not like rejection. He took his hand off Julianne’s shoulder and pointed
at Corinne’s breasts. ‘Christ, Ramirez, you were right. They
are
monsters. Wouldn’t you like to snarf one of those?’ The two lieutenants laughed crudely.
Corinne squirmed self-consciously.

Linda Quinlan’s steady boyfriend rose from his chair. Apart from Nick, he was the
only one of the men at the table who was approximately the same size as Todd and Ramirez.
‘Look, guys,’ he said reasonably, ‘the lady said no very nicely. There is no need
to insult her or her friends—’

‘Listen to him, Ramirez,’ Todd interrupted. ‘This character said we insulted someone.
Since when is admiring the size of someone’s cachungas an insult?’ He chuckled to
himself at his cleverness. Ramirez made a sign to leave but Todd waved him off.

The drunken Nick had been ready to explode all night. ‘Get out of here, asshole,’
he said, quietly but firmly. He was still sitting down next to Julianne.

‘Who are you calling asshole, cocksucker?’ the truculent Lieutenant Todd replied.
He turned to Ramirez. ‘I do believe that I am going to be forced to strum the head
of this impertinent bastard.’

But Nick was ahead of him. Rising swiftly, he uncoiled a vicious punch that struck
Todd full in the face and sent him tumbling backwards, into another table covered
with drinks. Todd and the table crashed to the floor and Nick went after him. Ramirez
pulled Nick off his fellow officer and, when Nick turned and swung at him as well,
Ramirez gave Nick a push that caused his unsteady legs to give way. Nick fell back
over Julianne and another full table collapsed upon the floor.

From across the room Carol and Angie and Troy could see the fracas and recognize Nick
in the middle of it. ‘Uh oh,’ Troy said, jumping up to go to his friend’s aid. Carol
was right behind him. When they reached the opposite side of the room, both club bouncers
were already on top of the action. Meanwhile, Nick and Julianne were still trying
to get unscrambled on the floor and Todd was slowly rising to his feet.

In the fight, the envelope of photos had been knocked free and a couple of them had
fallen partially out. Ramirez had picked the envelope up off the floor and, his interest
attracted by the bright colours, was looking at the pictures. The close-up of the
brown missile in the fissure was clearly visible in the top photo. ‘Hey,’ he said
to the shaken Todd, ‘look at this. What do you think this is all about?’

Carol acted instantly. She walked past Ramirez, grabbed the envelope and pictures,
and before he could say anything, she screamed, ‘Not again, Nick, no, I don’t believe
it. How could you be drunk again?’ She knelt down beside Nick on the floor and cradled
his head in her free hand. ‘Oh, darling,’ she said, as he stared at her in complete
disbelief, ‘you promised that you’d stop.’

The astonished crowd watched as Carol kissed Nick full on the mouth to prevent him
saying anything. Troy was amazed. ‘Troy,’ she shouted a moment later, while Nick was
trying to gather his wits. ‘Troy, where are you? Here, give me a hand.’ Troy rushed
up and helped Nick to his feet. ‘We’re taking him home now,’ she announced to the
onlookers. She and Troy each took one arm and the three of them stumbled toward the
door of the nightclub. They passed the manager in the doorway. Carol told him that
she would come by the next day to settle accounts. She and Troy half carried Nick
into the street.

As they walked away from Sloppy Joe’s, Carol turned around and saw that part of the
crowd had followed them to the door. Ramirez and Todd, the latter still rubbing his
cheek, were standing in front of the group with puzzled expressions on their faces.
‘Where are we taking him, angel?’ Troy asked when they were out of earshot. ‘We don’t
know where he parked his car.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Carol replied, ‘just as long as we’re out of sight of the club.’

The awkward threesome turned right, down the same alley that ran behind the theatre
where
The Night of the Iguana
had finished an hour before. Just past the theatre there was a small vacant lot on
the left. Carol stopped the trio at the edge of the lot, opposite a grove of trees,
and looked back to make certain they were not being followed. She heaved a sigh and
loosened her grip on Nick. She unconsciously fanned her sweating face with the envelope
she had recovered from Ramirez.

Nick was now almost coherent. ‘I had no idea,’ he mumbled to Carol, pulling his arm
free from Troy and trying to embrace her, ‘that you felt that way about me.’

‘I don’t,’ Carol said emphatically. She pushed his arms away and backpedalled toward
the vacant lot. Nick didn’t understand and continued his approach. ‘Stop,’ she shouted
angrily at him. ‘Stop, you drunken bastard.’

She tried to fend off his advance with her hands. But he kept coming. Just before
Troy moved up to restrain him, Carol slapped Nick hard in the face with the hand that
was not holding the envelope. Momentarily startled, Nick lost his footing and fell
into the grass on his stomach.

Still fuming, Carol bent down beside him and forcefully rolled him over on his back.
‘Don’t you ever,
ever
, try physical force with me,’ she shouted at Nick. ‘Not under
any
circumstances.’ She dropped the envelope on Nick’s stomach and stood up quickly.
She looked at Troy, shook her head in disgust, and stalked off down the alley.

Under the scanning electron microscope they look like tightly coiled springs with
small tails. When they are placed in water or some other liquid, the springs seem
to stretch out and cilia-like appendages extend a few angstroms out from the tail
to provide motility.

There are millions of them concentrated in a mixture the size of a tiny drop of water
and they are being carefully checked by a laser device which is also counting and
sorting them as it illuminates microscopic portions of the mixture. When the count
is completed, the smaller division of the separated mixture is sluiced out of the
metal receptacle and down a channel into another liquid, this one emerald green in
colour, that is contained in a bottle-shaped beaker. The springs spread out and follow
random paths in wandering around the beaker.

External mechanisms regularly churn the emerald green liquid. Around the inside of
the beaker, tiny sensors register the temperature, pressure, and exact chemical and
electrical characteristics of the fluid. Some parameter is not absolutely perfect.
A small valve opens a port in the base of the beaker and a new chemical is injected
into the green solution. Continuous measurements monitor the diffusion of this additional
material. At length the fluid is properly altered and a new equilibrium is reached.

Everything is now ready. From above several thousand small pellets are dropped into
the container. Some of these pellets float on the surface but most sink to variable
depths in the liquid. Embedded in each of the pellets is a complicated engineering
construction of an amazingly miniaturized scale. The external surface of the pellets
contains sensors that scan the nearby region of the liquid for the springlike objects.
A high frequency transmitter housed next to the sensors directs a ‘call’ to the springs
and attracts them to the neighbourhood. Clusters of springs develop around each pellet.

Now, one at a time, these springs are harvested by small instruments inside the spongy
outer section of the pellet and then loaded in carriers which are electrically fired
toward the central cavity of the pellet. Within that cavity sits a single black, amorphous
spot, its exterior constantly changing shape as its opaque material shifts around
to follow unknown stimuli. This spot is surrounded by a yellow goo that fills the
remainder of the cavity.

The first spring slips out of its carrier, then locates and penetrates the spot. The
spring can be seen for an instant moving toward the centre. However, it is broken
up and destroyed within milliseconds. Other springs are fired into the cavity at regular
intervals and all try, after penetration, to reach some special region in the spot.
Finally one of the procession succeeds and the spot changes colour to bright red.
In rapid succession, some enzyme in the spongy outer section of the pellet is dumped
into the yellow goo, turning its colour a little toward green, and all the rest of
the springs disappear, apparently absorbed by the pellet structure. The entire pellet
itself next elongates and extends a miniature propulsion system into the emerald liquid.
After carefully steering around the many hazards, it joins the queue of fertilized
pellets moving, one by one, through a round diaphanous membrane in the bottom of the
beaker.

The fluid, dense with pellets, speeds along a narrow tube until it reaches a partially
closed container approximately the size of the beaker. Inside this translucent jar,
a mechanical, spoonlike object digs into the stream of liquid flowing through and
plucks out the pellets. They are lifted up and then suspended momentarily around the
passing fluid in a heavy gas enclosed by the jar. Within moments all the pellets split
and their carapaces apparently dissolve, leaving visible inside the jar an array of
the little red spots surrounded by the off-yellow goo, all suspended in an invisible
gas.

The goo extends itself slowly throughout the jar above the flowing fluid until all
the open areas between the red spots are filled. When the emerald stream below drops
to a trickle and then disappears altogether, the goo hardens into a gelatin and fills
the ports where the fluid once entered and departed. Within the jar are several thousand
red spots embedded in the yellow-green gelatin. The spots undergo no visible change
throughout this process.

Time passes. Activity in the jar ceases. Occasionally mechanical probes to test the
stability of the gelatin are inserted into the jar at the old fluid ports. At last
the translucent jar is removed from its storage location by what looks like a robotic
forklift. It is placed on a moving belt, which now carries it, along with several
dozen other jars containing different kinds of objects (blue pencils, purple stars,
and red boxes can all be seen) also suspended in yellow-green gelatin, to a vast circular
oven almost an inch in diameter. Here all the jars are carefully baked together. Inside
the oven, the molecules of the jar material immediately evaporate. Next a pair of
disembodied manipulator hands wrap an incredibly thin blanket of connective filaments
around all the gelatinous structures. After some time this ensemble unit is pulled
automatically out of the oven and packaged inside a gold metallic envelope whose several
layers are designed to provide all the remaining environmental protection.

The hypergolic propellents mix and burst instantly into flame, pouring fire out of
the rocket nozzle. The slender vehicle rises, slowly at first, but later with astonishing
speed. Before reaching the zenith of its flight, the rocket stage underneath the strange
paraboloid payload falls away and tiny motors ignite on the underside of the flying
boomerang. At the apex of the trajectory, the entire package suddenly explodes and
apparently disintegrates. Hundreds of pieces of the original payload fall toward the
surface of the planet in seemingly random directions.

Closer inspection reveals that each individual piece resulting from the explosion
is made of a gold metallic material encased in plastic. A small sensor/propulsion
package is attached to the plastic; it supplies needed vernier corrections during
the descent after the controlled explosion. The plastic debris falls upon a strange,
hybrid planet, obviously artificial judging by the wide variety of incongruous surfaces
and cloud groupings that can be recognized from an altitude of tens of miles. There
are scattered liquid lakes of different hues plus discontinuous surface topography
with regions of desert and grasslands as well as barren mountains and canyons. A connected
quarter of the planet is covered with clouds. The clouds are here white and fleecy,
there brown and thick. Some of the clouds are active, building and changing with hints
of turbulence. Other parts of the cloudy region are static, small wisps of white stretching
without change across the sky.