Cradle (37 page)

‘Uh, Carol,’ Troy said slowly. ‘Would you mind coming over here a moment?’

‘Certainly,’ she replied without looking. ‘Jesus, Troy, these drawers are full of
all kinds….’ She had turned around and now noticed the Earth sphere hovering in the
air near the centre of the room. Her brow knitted. ‘That’s cute,’ she said tentatively,
‘real cute. I didn’t know you were a magician as well.’ Her voice trailed off. She
could see the perplexed expression on Troy’s face. She walked over next to him to
have a closer look.

The two of them stood silently for at least ten seconds as they watched the blue softball
slowly spin in the air. Next Troy took the Mars sphere from Carol and tossed it, underhanded,
up toward the high ceiling. It arched up and fell down normally, until it was just
above the floor. Then, like the blue sphere before it, the Mars ball developed its
own sense of direction and momentum. It floated up about five feet off the floor,
began to spin slowly, and hovered in the air next to the blue sphere representing
the Earth.

Carol grabbed Troy’s hand. She shivered and then regained her composure. ‘There’s
something about this that gives me the willies,’ she said. ‘All in all, I would deal
better with a caterpillar asking me, “Who are you?” At least in that case I would
have some idea what I’m up against.’

Troy turned around and led Carol back over to the partially opened drawers. ‘I ran
into this old bearded dude once when I was hitchhiking,’ he began, as he pulled out
a basketball that was covered with latitudinal belts and bands in shades of red and
orange. He aimlessly tossed the big Jupiter ball over his shoulder, using both hands.
Carol watched it, still fascinated as it joined the other two spheres orbiting around
an empty focus in the middle of the room.

‘He was driving an old run-down pickup truck and smoking a joint. At first we talked
a little. He would ask me questions and I would start to give an answer. But after
a sentence or two, he would interrupt me and say, “You don’t know shit, man.” That
was his response to everything.’

Troy methodically emptied all six of the drawers while he was telling his story. He
threw all the objects he found into the centre of the room. A few of them he watched,
casually, as if he were witnessing an everyday occurrence. Each of the new spheres
repeated the earlier pattern. A nearly complete working model of the solar system
was forming about five feet above the floor.

‘Finally I grew tired of his game and was quiet. We drove along for miles in silence.
It was a clear and beautiful night and he kept hanging his head out the window to
look at the stars. Once, when he pulled his head back in, he lit another joint, handed
it to me, and pointed back out the window at the stars. “
They
know, man,
they
know”, he said. Miles later, when he let me out of the truck, he leaned over and
I could see the wildness in his eyes. “Remember, man,” he whispered, “you don’t know
shit. But
they
know.”’

As Troy finished the tale, Carol came over beside him and pulled out two handfuls
of tiny fragments from the final drawer. They were a little sticky to the touch. She
shook them off her hands and they miraculously flew around the room and coalesced
into the ring systems of Saturn and Uranus. She looked at Troy in awe.

‘Does that bizarre story have a point?’ Carol asked. ‘I must admit that I am amazed
at how nonchalant you are about this whole damn thing. For myself, I’m just about
ready to freak out. Completely.’

Troy pointed at the miniature planets floating in the air. ‘What we are seeing has
no explanation in terms of our experience. We’ve either died together or transferred
to a new dimension or someone is playing mind games with us.’ He smiled at Carol.
‘If you must know, angel, I’m scared absolutely shitless. But like that old stoned
hippie, I keep telling myself “
They
know”. Somehow it gives me comfort.’

They heard a soft sliding sound and a shaft of bright light burst into the room from
an opening that was forming between two panels, one brown and one white, just to the
right of the exit. Carol recoiled automatically and covered her eyes for an instant.
Troy also jumped back at first, but then shaded his eyes with his hands and watched.
The panels continued to slide until an opening about two feet wide had developed.
The room was beginning to fill with light. Troy saw a great illuminated ball coming
slowly through the opening. ‘Here comes the Sun… Doot-un-Doo-Doo, Doo… Here comes
the Sun,’ he sang anxiously. ‘And I say… it’s all right….’ He hummed a few more bars
of the song as Carol opened her eyes.

‘Jesus,’ she said. The bright orb, the size of a giant beach ball, lifted itself into
its proper place in the orrery and flooded the entire room with its radiance. The
spinning, orbiting planets shone with reflected light from their sides facing the
Sun. Carol stood transfixed, silent tears running down her face. She could not speak
or move. She was completely overwhelmed.

Troy was also frightened, but not yet so much that his ability to function was impaired.
However, a moment later he saw something in the exit that sent a bolt of terror through
his system. His heart surged into overdrive as he blinked and then squinted, making
certain his mind was not playing tricks on him as he looked just around the bright
light of the model Sun. Instinctively, he turned to protect Carol and shielded her
from what he had just seen.

‘Don’t look now,’ he whispered, ‘but we have a visitor.’

‘What?’ said Carol, confused and still stunned.

Troy held her by the arms and they moved together several steps to the right. He looked
over his own shoulder and saw the thing again.

‘Over by the exit,’ he said, turning around, unable any longer to hide his panic.

Carol’s eyes indicated that she had found the source of Troy’s terror. She had no
idea what it was, but she could see that it was large, clearly threatening, and absolutely
different from anything that she had ever seen or imagined. It had also moved into
the room. She heard Troy’s frantic, incoherent shouts, but their meaning didn’t register.
She looked at the thing again and her mind balked. She opened her mouth to scream.
Nothing came out at first. She dropped to her knees on the floor. She heard the sound
of screams in her ear, but they seemed far, far away. Her brain was sending a message
that said, ‘You’re screaming’, but for some reason it didn’t seem possible. It had
to be someone else.

The thing was coming toward her. Its main body was about eight feet tall at that moment,
but it was continually changing its shape and size as it undulated across the room.
Whatever it was, Troy and Carol could see into it and even through parts of its structure.
A transparent external boundary membrane was wrapped around a permanently seething
set of mostly clear fluid matter that ebbed and flowed with each movement. The thing
moved like an amoeba, matter simply heading in the right direction, but with astonishing
speed. Tiny black dots were scattered just behind all its external surfaces, darting
in all directions, apparently supervising the continuous reconfigurations that gave
it motion. A half dozen chunks of greyish, opaque matter, objects a foot or so square,
were also embedded near the centre of the primary body.

But it was not the main body of the thing that was so terrifying. Protruding from
its upper portions was a frightening array of a dozen appendages, mostly long and
slender in shape, that appeared to be stuck into the main body like sharp objects
in a pin cushion. It looked as if the large, clear, amoebalike structure was a versatile
transportation system that could carry virtually anything and that the payload, at
least for this usage, was this family of constantly active rods, all of which were
threatening because their end effectors resembled needles, hands, brushes, teeth,
and even swords and guns. In Carol’s mind, she was being attacked by a heavily armoured
tank that could change size in an instant and move on invisible treads in any direction.

Troy moved to the side, trying to calm his fear and catch his breath, as he watched
the thing zero in on Carol. Its longest attachment, a reddish plastic implement which
split into two short tines about a foot away from the primary body, suddenly extended
itself outward an additional three feet and stopped just six inches in front of Carol’s
eyes. She screamed and pushed it away, forcefully, but it popped straight back into
position. Troy plucked the Jupiter ball out of the air and, with all his might, hurled
the sphere at the centre of the thing. The shapeless mass fell back on impact and
immediately retracted its extended appendages. But in an instant the thing reconfigured
itself somehow and adjusted its matter to let the ball pass completely through. Before
it hit the floor on the other side, Jupiter rose into the air and came back to take
its proper position in the solar system model.

The thing had now stopped advancing toward Carol. It was sitting in the middle of
the room, its spindly appendages flailing around in all directions. It seemed to be
making a decision. Troy bravely grabbed a rod with an end effector like a brush and
tried to pull it away from the main structure. Instantly, core clear material flowed
into the joint where that particular rod was attached, strengthening the connection.
But Troy’s action definitely caused a change in its pattern. The thing started after
him. Ever so carefully, making sure it would follow him while watching out for another
quick extension of the red implement with the two tines, Troy edged toward the exit.
As the thing continued to move toward him, Troy motioned for Carol to get back. Then
he broke for the door, tripping slightly over an extended rod on his way out.

It hardly hesitated. With surprising celerity the thing made itself short and squat.
A maximum amount of exposed surface was now on the floor and it could move more quickly
and efficiently. The deployed group of attachments were placed into some kind of compact
travelling configuration and the thing hustled out of the door.

Carol was left alone on her knees on the floor. The solar system model was above her
and to the right. For over a minute she didn’t move. She just watched the spinning
planets abstractedly and listened for the occasional sound of Troy’s footfalls in
the distance. Eventually there was a long period of silence and Carol rose to her
feet. She took several small, slow steps, reassuring herself that she was all right,
and then walked over to the exit opening between the panels. The exit opened on to
a corridor that ran in both directions.

Troy had gone to the right when he had left the room. After remembering her camera
and going back to take a few quick photographs of the suspended planets, Carol followed
Troy’s path, also taking the corridor to the right. She walked slowly down the black
hall, turning around frequently to locate the light coming from the room that she
had just left. There was now a close ceiling over her head. The hall next split into
two forks; both directions were dark. Carol listened for sounds. Again she thought
she heard music, but she couldn’t begin to identify where it was coming from.

This time she chose the left fork in the hallway. Soon it narrowed and seemed to be
circling back in the direction from which she had just come. She was just about to
turn around and retrace her steps when she distinctly heard two noises, something
like a thud followed by a scraping sound, off to the right in front of her. Drawing
her breath slowly and struggling to conquer her fear, Carol moved forward in the dark.
After about twenty more feet she came upon a low door that opened to the right. She
bent down slightly and peered in. In the dusky light she saw unusual shapes and structures
in another small room with walls made of the now familiar curved and coloured panels.
She walked through the doorway and stood up.

Soft local lights located in a few of the wall panels came on as soon as Carol’s feet
contacted the floor in the room. Her arrival also triggered two or three notes from
some kind of musical instrument. It sounded like an organ and was apparently way off
in the distance in another part of the cathedral area enclosed by the vast arched
ceilings that were again above her. She stopped, surprised. She stood still for several
seconds. Then, without moving, Carol carefully surveyed her new surroundings.

In this room the wall panels were very bright, alternating between purple and gold,
and they were extremely curved. Along with Carol in the room there were three objects
of unknown purpose. One looked like a writing table, a second like a long, low bench
that was wide at one end and tapered to a point at the other, and the third resembled
a very tall telephone pole whose top and bottom were connected by sixteen thin strings
stretching out and around a broad ring about one third of the way down the pole.

Carol could walk between the thin strings. The ring, made out of a gold metallic material,
was a couple of feet above her head, almost at the level of the top of the wall panels.
She grabbed one of the strings and felt it vibrate. It made a muffled, flat sound.
She backed away from the string and tried to pluck it. A note sounded, very lyrical,
like a heavy harp. Carol realized she was standing inside a musical instrument. But
how to play it? She spent a few minutes wandering around the room, trying without
success to find the equivalent of a bow. She knew it would be impossible to play the
harp if she had to run around and pluck each individual string herself.

She walked over to the writing table. She quickly figured out that it was also a musical
instrument. It looked much more promising. There were indentations in the table, sixty-four
altogether, set up in eight rows and eight columns. Pressing each key produced a different
sound. Although Carol had taken five years of piano lessons as a small child, it was
a difficult chore, at first, for her even to play ‘Silent Night’ on the strange writing
table. She had to correlate the sounds made by pressing the individual keys with the
notes and chords that she remembered from her childhood. While she was teaching herself
to play the instrument, she stopped often to listen to the delicate, crystal sound
that it made. It reminded her mostly of a xylophone.