Cradle (57 page)

‘I don’t need a bracelet to interpret that gesture,’ Troy remarked. ‘The carpet is
plainly telling you to take the trident back to your boat.’

Nick nodded his head and was quiet for a moment. ‘Is this the only one?’ he asked
Troy. Troy didn’t understand the question. ‘Is this the only seed package for Earth?’

‘I think so,’ Troy answered after a moment’s hesitation. He looked at Nick with a
puzzled expression.

Meanwhile the activity level in the room had increased substantially. As Commander
Winters ambled toward the trio in the middle of the hubbub, the wardens and platforms
were actively building in the corners, moving equipment could be heard behind the
walls, and the organ music was growing louder and slightly ominous. In addition, a
giant cover of some kind, lined with a soft, pliant material, had unfurled above them
in the ceiling and was descending slowly over the cylinder. Commander Winters stared
around the room with undisguised astonishment. Still serenely content in his heart
from the beauty and intensity of his epiphany, he was not paying much attention to
the conversation beside him.

‘They must take this thing with them,’ Nick was saying earnestly to Carol and Troy.
‘Don’t you see? It’s even more important now that I know there are human seedlings
inside. Our children won’t have a chance.’

‘But
they
were so beautiful, so smart,’ Carol said. ‘You didn’t see them like we did. I can’t
believe those children would ever hurt anybody or anything.’

‘They wouldn’t mean to destroy us,’ Nick argued. ‘It would just happen.’

The carpets were starting to jump up and down. ‘I know, I know,’ Nick said as he again
extended the cradle toward them. ‘You want us to go. But first,
please
listen to me. We’ve helped you, now I’m asking that you help us. I’m afraid of what
might be in this package, afraid that it might upset the delicate stability of our
planet. Our progress as a species has been slow, in fits and starts, with almost as
many backward steps as forward. Whatever is here could threaten our future development.
Or maybe even halt it altogether.’

The activity in the room continued unabated. There was no noticeable reaction to Nick’s
speech from the impatient carpets, who were now taking turns walking over to the exit
in case the dumb humans still did not understand their message. Nick looked entreatingly
at Carol. She returned his gaze and smiled. After a few seconds she came over and
took his hand. Their eyes met for a brief moment as she started talking and Nick saw
a new expression, something approaching admiration, in her glance.

‘He’s right, you know,’ Carol said in the direction of the pair of carpets. ‘You haven’t
thought carefully enough about the outcome of this mission of yours. Sooner or later
your special embryos and the humans already on this planet will interact and there
will be a catastrophe. If the seed package is found early in the development of your
superhumans, I am certain the Earthlings will feel compelled to destroy it. What possible
other reaction could they have? The magnitude of the threat may not be fully known,
but it is easy to recognize that creatures genetically engineered by superaliens could
pose a gigantic problem for the native species of this planet.’

Troy was standing just behind Nick and Carol, listening attentively to what she was
saying. Around him the preparations for launch continued. The wardens and platforms
had finished constructing and installing the two pairs of stanchions that would be
connected to the cylinder during launch to minimize vibrations. The golden cradles
in the cylinder could no longer be seen; the cover had descended almost to the floor.

‘…So unless you take this golden package back with you, perhaps to place it on another
world which does not yet have intelligence, there will be unnecessary death. Either
your seedlings will perish before maturity or the native humans like us will eventually
be swallowed up, if not killed outright, by the more capable beings you have engineered.
That hardly seems to be a fair reward for our effort on your behalf.’

Carol stopped to watch four strange cords extend themselves from the top and near
the bottom of the cylinder, wriggle through the air, and end up attached to the stanchions
in the corners of the room. The carpets were becoming increasingly agitated. The two
wardens finished supervising their prelaunch procedures. They turned abruptly toward
the four human beings and moved in their direction.

Carol tightened her hold on Nick’s hand. ‘Perhaps it’s true that our natural development
is a slow and not altogether satisfactory process,’ she continued, fear creeping into
her voice as the wardens quickly approached them, ‘and it’s certainly true that we
humans here make mistakes, both as individuals and as groups. However, you can’t overlook
the fact that this imperfect process produced us, and we had enough foresight or compassion
or whatever you want to call it—’

‘
Hold it
,’ shouted Troy. He seized the cradle from Nick’s hand and jumped directly into the
path of one of the menacing wardens. He was only inches away from two whirling, threatening
rods with cutting implements on the end. ‘Hold it,’ he shouted again. Miraculously,
all activity ceased. The carpets and wardens stood still, the noises in the wall stopped,
even the organ music was silenced. ‘Of all of us,’ Troy said in a loud voice, his
head tilted back and aimed at the ceiling, ‘I have the most knowledge of what your
mission is all about. And the most to lose by recommending that you abandon this part
of it. But I agree with my friends.’

Troy removed his bracelet and then dramatically jammed both the bracelet and the cradle
inside
the warden. He felt as if he were plunging his hand into a bowl of hot bread dough.
He released both objects and withdrew his hand. The warden didn’t move. The bracelet
and the cradle remained where Troy left them inside the warden’s body.

‘From the very beginning I realized that the bracelet you gave me enabled me to have
special powers, talents that were not naturally mine. I understood, without knowing
the specifics, that there would be a substantial and continuing reward for my helping
you. And I thought that finally,
finally
, Troy Jefferson would be somebody special in this world.’

Troy walked past the amazed Commander Winters, who was following the proceedings with
a peaceful detachment, and came up beside Nick and Carol. It was absolutely quiet
in the room. ‘When my brother, Jamie, was killed,’ he began again softly, ‘I swore
that I would do whatever was necessary to leave my imprint on society. During those
two years that I wandered all over the country, I spent most of my time daydreaming.
My dreams all had the same conclusion. I would discover something new and earthshaking
and become both rich and famous overnight.’

Troy gave Carol a quick kiss and winked. ‘I love you, angel,’ he said. ‘And you too,
Professor.’ Troy then turned around and faced the covered cylinder. ‘When I left here
on Thursday afternoon, I was so excited I couldn’t contain myself. I kept saying,
“Shit, Jefferson, here it is. You are going to be the most important man in the history
of the fucking world.”’

Troy paused. ‘But I have learned something very important these last three days,’
he said, ‘something that most of us probably never consider. It is that the process
is more important than the end result. It is what you learn while you’re dreaming
or scheming or working toward a goal that is essential and valuable, not the achievement
of the goal itself. And that’s why you guys must now do what my friends have asked.

‘I know that you ETs have tried to explain to me in these last several minutes, through
the bracelet that you offered me for life, that the new humans you are depositing
here will lead us primitive beings into a bold and wonderful era. That may be true.
And I agree that we could use some help, that our species is full of prejudice and
selfishness and all kinds of other problems. But you cannot simply give us the answers.
Without the benefit of the struggle to improve ourselves, without the process of overcoming
our own weaknesses, there will be no fundamental change in us old humans. We will
not become better. We will become second-class citizens, acolytes in a future of your
vision and design. So take your perfect humans away and let us make it on our own.
We deserve the chance.’

There was no movement in the room for several seconds after Troy finished. Then the
warden in front of him jerked sideways and began to move. Troy braced for an attack.
But the warden moved in the direction of the exit next to the cylinder. The bracelet
and cradle could still be seen inside its body.

‘All right, team,’ Troy shouted happily. Nick and Carol hugged. Troy took Commander
Winters by the hand. As they were leaving, the four of them turned around one last
time to look at the large chamber. In this final view, each one of them saw the room
in terms of his own amazing experiences. The noises had begun again behind the walls.
And the carpets, platforms, and wardens were filing out of the room through the door
beside the covered cylinder.

They had only been on board the boat for three or four minutes when the water underneath
them suddenly became very turbulent. They were strangely quiet, all four of them.
A frustrated Lieutenant Ramirez paced about the deck, trying to get someone to tell
him what had happened under the water. Even Commander Winters virtually ignored the
lieutenant and just shook his head or gave simple answers to all his questions.

They were certain that the spaceship was about to launch. They didn’t realize that
it would glide gently away from their area first, so that it would not submerge them
with a giant wave, before breaking the water and heading into the sky. The water stayed
agitated for several minutes. All of them scanned the ocean for a sign of the vehicle.

‘Look,’ yelled Commander Winters excitedly, pointing at a giant silver bird lifting
into the sky about forty-five degrees away from the early morning sun. Its ascent
was initially slow, but as it rose it accelerated rapidly. Nick and Carol and Troy
clasped hands tightly as they watched the awesome spectacle. Winters came over and
stood beside the trio. After thirty seconds the craft had disappeared above the clouds.
There was never any sound.

‘Fantastic,’ said Commander Winters.