Cradle

This book is dedicated to the four youngest
children in our families,
Cherene, Tamara, Robert, and Patrick.
May their lives
be filled with joy and wonder.

Endangered Species

Thursday

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Cycle 447

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Friday

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Assembly and Test

Saturday

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Repatriation

Sunday

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Credits

The emerald water smashes against the dark volcanic cliffs. Fine white spray hovers
over the harsh rock, creating a misty veil that glimmers in the fading light. In the
distance, two yellow suns set simultaneously, separated by about forty degrees as
they disappear together below the horizon. Across the blue-black sky, on the opposite
side of the isthmus that slopes gently downward from the volcanic cliffs to another
ocean, a pair of full moons rises as the two suns vanish. Their twin moonlight, although
much weaker than the shine of the disappearing suns, is still strong enough to create
dancing moonshadows on the ocean beneath the rocky overhang.

As the dual moons rise on the eastern side of the isthmus, light begins to glow on
the horizon beside them, about twenty degrees to the south. At first the glow looks
like the light of a distant city, but with each passing moment it brightens until
it spreads across the sky. At length an awesome third moon, its first chord coming
over the horizon when the twin moons are perhaps ten degrees into their arc, begins
to rise. Calm descends on both oceans for a few seconds, as if the world beneath the
giant orb has paused to give homage to the spectacular sight. This great yellow moon,
its face clearly scarred by craters, appears to be surveying its dominion as it slowly
rises in the sky and bathes the emerald oceans in a mysterious reflected light. It
is a hundred times the size of the smaller twin moons and its wide swath through the
sky is greater in size than that cut minutes before by the pair of setting suns.

Below the cliffs, in the shadow of the newest moon, a long sinuous object arcs its
way out of the water, rising nearly twenty feet above the surface. The slender apparition
twists itself toward the cliffs and thrusts itself forward as the piercing sound of
a trumpet, a solo blast, reverberates against the rocks and carries across the isthmus.
A moment later another sound is heard, a muted echo or possibly a reply from the other
sea. The creature swims gracefully into the moonlight, its long, lithe neck a cobalt
blue above a grey body mostly submerged in the ocean. Now the bluenecked serpent extends
itself upward again and leans toward the land, its face revealed in the expanding
moonlight. The facial features are convoluted and complex, with rows of orifices of
unknown purpose. At the peak of its extension, the creature contorts its face and
a medley of sound is heard; the trumpet blast is now accompanied by an oboe and an
organ. After a short pause a muted response, quieter but with the same rich complexity
of sound, comes back across the isthmus.

The serpent swims north along the shore. Behind it in the moonlight half a dozen other
swirling necks rise from the ocean. These creatures are a little smaller, the hues
of their cobalt necks not quite so vivid. This ensemble turns as one, on cue, and
blasts six trumpet calls to the east. Again a pause precedes the expected response,
the sound of several smaller trumpets from across the land. Immediately the six new
creatures and their distant friends begin a complex, interleaved musical pattern,
slowly building in intensity until the overture reaches an inevitable crescendo and
then abruptly abates.

After a few moments more the oceans on both sides of the isthmus become alive with
teeming serpents of all sizes. Hundreds, even thousands, of serpents, covering the
water for as far as the eye can see, begin languorously extending their necks, twisting
as if looking around, and joining in the singing. The serpents of the eastern sea
are slightly smaller than their western cousins. The necks of the eastern serpents
are pale blue instead of cobalt. These pale blue serpents are also joined by a nursery
of tiny creatures, the palest of blue markings on their necks, whose singing is high-pitched
and a trifle erratic and sounds like piccolos interspersed with crystal bells.

The waters of the emerald oceans begin to surge forward in tidal frenzy, now rapidly
moving up the rocky cliffs on the western side and quickly submerging great chunks
of land on the sloping side that runs to the eastern ocean. The concerted pull of
all the moons produces a tide that will eventually cover the isthmus completely, uniting
the two oceans. As the waters draw ever closer together, the music from the thousand
singing serpents swells to magnificence, flooding the entire area with a sound of
mesmerizing beauty. It is also a plaintive sound of longing and anticipation, the
universal cry of long suppressed desire on the verge of being satisfied.

The great longnecked serpents of Canthor conclude their annual mating symphony as
the two oceans become one and the inhabitants of each ocean seek out their lifelong
mates in the united waters. There are five nights out of each Canthorean year when
the tidal forces act together to submerge the isthmus and permit the sexual mixing
of the serpents. Five nights of love play and frolicking, of renewal and promise,
before the requisite return to the separate oceans and a year of waiting for the great
tide to come again.

For the little ones, the new serpents placed into gestation by the last annual gathering
and hatched by their mothers in the eastern ocean, the great tide is a time of excitement
and sadness. They must now separate from their playmates, leave their infancy behind.
Half must depart from their mothers as well and go to swim among the cobalt blue adults
that they have never met. This half, having lived their lives among their mothers’
friends exclusively, will swim above and across the isthmus on the fifth night alongside
their fathers. Once into the western ocean, their pale blue necks will begin to deepen
in colour as they begin the transition through puberty into adulthood. And next year,
their tiny voices will have matured just enough that each of them may detect some
arousing and positive response to his call during the mating symphony.

Thousands of years pass on the planet Canthor. The forces of change conspire against
the beautiful bluenecked serpents. First a major ice age comes to the world, locking
up more of the planet’s water in perennial polar caps and lowering the seas. The number
of days when the great tide submerges the isthmus is reduced to four, then three,
and finally only two. The elaborate mating ritual of the serpents, worked out over
hundreds of generations, works best for a five-night courtship. For the several hundred
years when only two nights are available for mating, the number of serpent offspring
produced each year drops precipitously. The total number of Canthorean serpents becomes
dangerously small.

At length the radiative output of the dual suns increases slightly again and Canthor
emerges from its ice age. The sea level rises and the number of days for mating returns
eventually to five. The serpent symphony, which had added a saddened counterpoint
during the trying years of reduced mating nights, again becomes charged with joy.
For several generations the number of serpents increases. But then the lovely creatures
encounter another foe.

Evolving elsewhere on Canthor for almost a million years has been another intelligent
species, a fierce, squat creature with an insatiable appetite for control. The ice
age stimulated the rapid evolution of these trolls by enforcing a strict survival
of the fittest which naturally selected those individuals with the most resources
(intelligence and power primarily) and, in a sense, purified the troll gene pool.

The troll species that emerges from the thousands of years of ice domination on Canthor
is sharper and more capable of dealing with the rest of its environment. It has become
a tool maker and has learned how to use the riches of the planet for its benefit.
No other living creatures on Canthor can match the cleverness of the trolls or threaten
their existence. So the trolls proliferate around the planet, dominating it completely
with their rapaciousness.

The bluenecked serpents have had no natural enemies on Canthor for hundreds of millennia.
Therefore they have not retained the aggression and territoriality necessary to survive
when threatened. Their diet has always consisted primarily of plants and animals that
fill the Canthorean oceans. The seas provide a virtual cornucopia of food, so it does
not make much of an impression upon the serpents when the trolls begin to farm the
oceans for their own food. To the trolls, however, whose greed for territory knows
no bounds, the serpents represent at least a rival for the plenty of the oceans and
possibly, because of their size and intelligence, even a survival threat.

It is again the time of the great tide and the male longnecked serpents have completed
their ocean migration on time, swarming as usual just opposite the great volcanic
cliffs. There are only a few hundred male serpents now, reduced markedly from the
halcyon years when they were so numerous they stretched as far as the eye could see.
The giant full moon rises as it has for thousands of years, following the twin smaller
moons into the sky, and the overture announces the coming mating symphony. But as
the tide rolls in to submerge the isthmus, the serpents sense that something is wrong.
A growing cacophony creeps into the mystical mating song. Anxiety spreads by sound
across both sides of the land separating the serpents. When the tide finally surges
over the top of the volcanic rocks, the point in the original mating symphony for
the magnificent final crescendo, the sound of the serpents’ pleading wail fills the
Canthorean night.

The trolls have erected a huge barrier down the spine of the isthmus. Carefully calculated
to be just tall enough to preclude passage to the largest of the serpents, this oppressive
barrier allows the lovely bluenecked creatures, if they strain, to sense one another
at close range but not to touch. The nights of the great tide are extremely painful
to watch. From both sides the serpents hurl themselves repeatedly and ineffectually
at the wall, trying desperately to make contact with their mates. But it is all in
vain. The barrier holds. The serpents are unable to mate. Both sexes return eventually
to their respective oceans, deeply saddened and profoundly aware of the implications
of the barrier for their future.

Some of the serpents batter themselves nearly senseless as they try to break down
the wall. These wounded ones on both sides of the isthmus remain behind to recover
while the rest of the species, resuming the annual migration as if the normal mating
had indeed taken place, slowly and sadly swim away, each sex heading for a separate
reach of Canthor.

It is two nights after the great tide has stopped submerging the land between the
oceans. Two older male serpents, their necks still bruised from the repeated fruitless
hammerings against the hated barrier, are swimming slowly together in the moonlight.
A strange light in the sky comes swiftly upon them from above. It hovers over the
serpents, seeming to spotlight them as they crane their necks to see what is happening.

In a moment the graceful necks keel forward and slap down upon the moonlit ocean.
From out of the light above them comes an object, a basket of some kind, that descends
to the water. The two serpents are scooped up, lifted silently out of the sea into
the air, reeled in by some unknown fisherman in the sky above them. The same scene
is repeated a dozen times, first in the western ocean with the wounded serpents whose
necks are cobalt blue, then in the eastern ocean with their pale blue counterparts.
It is as if a great roundup is taking place, removing all the exhausted serpents who
had been unable to take their place with the rest of the species in the annual migration.