Cradle (53 page)

‘And how did this carrot attack you?’ continued Winters.
Jesus
, he had thought,
this man has cracked. One bump on the 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
trolley 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?’

‘Commander, sir, I’m no medical expert….’

‘I know that, Lieutenant. I don’t want your medical opinion. I want to know what you
think about the, uh, carrot business.’
Damn him
, Winters had thought.
Does he have so little imagination that he can’t even react to Todd’s story?

‘Sir,’ Ramirez had replied, ‘the carrot business is outside my experience.’

To say the least
. Winters smiled to himself and flipped his cigarette into the water. He walked over
to the little wheel-house and checked the navigator. They were only seven miles from
the target boat and converging rapidly. He pulled back on the throttle and put the
boat into neutral gear. Winters did not want to draw any closer to the
Florida Queen
until Ramirez and the other two seamen were awake and in position.

He estimated that it was still about forty minutes until sunrise. Winters laughed
again about Ramirez’s unwillingness to venture a comment on Todd’s carrot story.
But the young Latino is a good officer. His only mistake was following Todd
. Winters remembered how quickly Ramirez had organized all the details of their current
sortie, picking the high-tech converted trawler for speed and stealth, rousting the
two bachelor seamen who worked for him in Intelligence, and establishing a special
link between the base and the trawler so that the whereabouts of the
Florida Queen
would be known at all times.

‘We must follow them. We really have no choice,’ Lieutenant Ramirez had said firmly
to Winters after they had verified that Nick’s boat had indeed left the Hemingway
Marina just after two o’clock. ‘Otherwise there’s no way we could ever justify our
having taken them into custody in the first place.’

Winters had reluctantly agreed and Ramirez had organized the chase. The commander
had told the younger men to get some sleep while he formulated the plan.
Which is simple. Okay, you guys, come with us and answer the questions or we’ll charge
you under the Sedition Act of 1991
. Now, after putting the boat in idle, Winters was ready to wake Ramirez and the other
two men. He intended to apprehend Nick, Carol, and Troy as soon as it was daylight.

The wind around the boat changed direction and Winters stopped for a minute to check
the weather. He turned his face toward the moon. The air suddenly felt warmer, almost
hot, and he was reminded of a night off the coast of Libya eight years earlier.
The worst night of my life
, he thought. For a few moments his resolve to carry out his plan wavered and he asked
himself if he was about to make another mistake.

Then he heard a trumpet blast, followed maybe four seconds later by a similar but
quieter sound. Winters looked around him in the placid ocean. He saw nothing. Now
he heard a group of trumpets and their echo, both sounds distinctly coming from the
west. The commander strained his eyes in the direction of the moon. Silhouetted against
its face he saw what appeared to be a group of snakes dancing out of the water. He
went inside the wheelhouse to fetch a pair of binoculars.

By the time the commander returned to the railing a magnificent symphony surrounded
him.
Where is this incredible music coming from?
he asked at first, before he succumbed completely to its mesmerizing beauty. He stood
powerless against the railing, listening intently. The music was rich, emotional,
full of evocative longing. Winters was swept away, not only into his own past where
his deepest memories were stored, but also on to another planet in another era where
proud and dignified serpents with blue necks called to their loved ones during their
short annual mating rite.

He was spellbound. Tears were already flooding into his eyes when he at last mechanically
lifted the binoculars and focused on the strange, sinuous shapes underneath the moon.
The ghostlike images were completely transparent; the moonlight went right through
them. As Winters watched a thousand necks dancing above the water, cavorting back
and forth in perfect rhythm, and as he heard the music build toward the concluding
crescendo of the Canthorean mating symphony, his tired eyes blurred and he swore that
what he saw across the water in front of him, calling to him with a song of longing
and desire, was an image of Tiffani Thomas. His heart was devastated by the combination
of the music and the sight of her. Winters was aware of an intense sense of loss unparalleled
in his life.

Yes
, he said to himself as Tiffani continued to beckon in the distance,
I’m coming. I’m sorry, Tiffani darling. Tomorrow I will come to see you. We will
… He stopped his interior monologue to wipe his eyes. The music had now entered the
final crescendo, signalling the actual mating dance of the pairs of Canthorean serpents.
Winters looked through his binoculars again. The image of Tiffani was gone. He adjusted
his glasses. Joanna Carr came into focus, smiled briefly, and disappeared. A moment
later the little Arab girl from the Virginia beach seemed to dance just under the
moon. She was happy and gay. She too was gone in an instant.

The music was all around him. Bursts of sound, powerful, full, expressing pleasure
no longer anticipated but now being experienced. He looked through his binoculars
one more time. The moon was setting. As it fell into the ocean the image created against
its illuminated disc by the dancing serpents was unmistakable. Winters clearly saw
the faces of his wife, Betty, and his son, Hap. They were smiling at him together
with a deep and abiding affection. They remained there in his vision until the moon
sank completely into the ocean.

Carol struggled to adjust her diving equipment. ‘Do you need some help, angel?’ Troy
asked. He came over and stood beside her in the predawn dark. He was already fully
prepared for the dive.

‘I haven’t worn anything like this since my first set of scuba lessons,’ she said,
fidgeting uncomfortably with the old-fashioned gear.

Troy tightened the weight belt around her waist. ‘You’re scared, aren’t you, angel?’
Carol didn’t answer right away. ‘Me too. My pulse rate must be twice normal.’

Carol’s equipment seemed to please her finally. ‘You know, Troy, even after the last
three days my brain is having a hard time convincing the rest of me that all this
is really happening. Imagine writing it down for someone to read. “As we were preparing
to return to the alien spaceship….”’

‘Hey, you guys, come here,’ Nick called from the other side of the canopy. Carol and
Troy walked around to the front of the boat. Nick was staring out across the ocean
to the east. He handed a small pair of binoculars to Carol. ‘Do you see a light out
there in the distance, just to the left of that island?’

Carol could barely make out the light. ‘Uh huh,’ she said to Nick. ‘But so what? Isn’t
it reasonable that somewhere out in the ocean there would be another boat?’

‘Of course,’ Nick answered. ‘But that light hasn’t moved for fifteen minutes. It’s
just sitting there. Why would a fishing boat, or any other kind of boat, be—’

‘Sh,’ interrupted Troy. He put his fingers to his lips. ‘Listen,’ he whispered, ‘I
hear music.’

His companions stood quietly on the deck. Behind them the moon disappeared into the
ocean. Above the gentle lapping of the waves all three of them could hear what sounded
like the climax of a symphony, played by a full orchestra. They listened for thirty
seconds. The music reached a peak, faded slightly, and then ceased abruptly.

‘That was beautiful,’ Carol remarked.

‘And weird,’ Nick said, walking over beside her. ‘Where the hell was it coming from?
Is someone out there testing a new stereo system? My God, if the sound travels five
or ten miles, it must be deafening up close.’

Troy was standing off to the side by himself. He was concentrating on something. Suddenly
he turned to his companions. ‘I know this sounds crazy,’ he said to Nick and Carol,
‘but I think the music was a signal for us to dive. Or perhaps a warning.’

‘Great,’ said Carol. ‘That’s what we need to reassure us. A warning of some kind.
As if we’re not nervous enough.’

Nick put his arm around her. ‘Hey, lady,’ he said, ‘don’t wimp out on us now. After
all those brave comments about a once in a lifetime experience….’

‘Really, let’s go,’ Troy said impatiently. He looked anxious and very serious. ‘I’m
definitely getting the message that we should dive now.’

Troy’s solemnity changed the mood of the trio. The three of them worked together in
silence to secure the two buoyancy bags containing the lead, the gold, and the information
discs. The eastern sky continued to brighten. It was only about fifteen minutes until
sunrise.

While they were working, Carol noticed that Nick seemed a little distracted. Immediately
before they left the boat she walked up beside him. ‘Are you all right?’ she said
quietly.

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘I’m just trying to figure out if I’ve completely lost my mind.
For eight years I have been thinking about what I would do if I ever had my full share
of the treasure. Now I’m about to give it all away to some extraterrestrials from
God knows where.’ He looked at her. ‘There’s enough gold here to last three people
a long time.’

‘I know,’ she said, giving him a little hug. ‘I must admit that I’ve thought about
it too. But in reality, part belongs to Amanda Winchester, part to Jake Lewis, most
of it to the IRS….’ She grinned. ‘And it’s only money. That’s nothing when you compare
it to being the only humans to interact with visitors from another planet.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ he said. ‘I hope I don’t wake up tomorrow and feel as if I’ve
made a terrible mistake. This entire episode has been so bizarre that I suspect my
normal faculties aren’t working properly. We don’t even know for sure if these aliens
are friendly….’

Carol pulled her diving mask over her face. ‘We’ll never have all the answers,’ she
said. She took his hand. ‘Let’s go, Nick.’

Troy was first into the water. Nick and Carol followed. It had been agreed before
the dive that Carol would take the searchlight and lead the group. She was the most
mobile of the threesome because each of the men was dragging a buoyancy bag. The trio
had been concerned that they might have difficulty finding the ship and had discussed
an elaborate set of contingency plans for locating it. They needn’t have worried.
Thirty feet under the
Florida Queen
, in virtually the exact place where the fissure had been on Thursday, there was a
light in the water. Carol pointed at it and the two men swam up behind her. As they
drew closer, they saw that the light was coming from a rectangular area about ten
feet high and twenty feet wide. They could not see anything except what looked like
some kind of material or fabric with a soft light behind it.

Carol hesitated. Troy swam right on by her, into the lighted area, his buoyancy bag
trailing behind him. Everything disappeared. Nick and Carol waited. Carol felt herself
tightening up.
Come on now, Dawson
, she thought,
it’s your turn. You’ve been here before
. She took a deep breath and swam into the material. She felt something like plastic
touch her face and then she was in a covered tunnel. A swift current was pulling her
to the right. She went down a small water slide and was deposited in a shallow pool
at the bottom. She clambered out of the pool and began removing her diving equipment.

Troy was standing on the floor about ten feet beyond the end of the pool. Next to
him a warden had already taken the buoyancy bag, opened it, and adroitly separated
the gold bars and the lead weights from the information discs. As Carol’s eyes adjusted
to the dim light around her, she saw that the warden was now loading the gold on a
small platform sitting on top of tank treads about a foot above the floor. Immediately
thereafter, the warden placed the information discs and the lead weights on two other
platforms. A carpet that had been lying inconspicuously over against the wall on the
left then rose up, apparently activated the treads under the platform, and directed
them toward a nearby hallway leading out of the room.

Carol pulled off her mask and finished removing her diving gear. She was in a medium-sized
room somewhat like the ones she and Troy had encountered at the beginning of her last
dive. The curved wall partitions were coloured black and white. There was a small
window to the ocean next to the splash pool on her left. The ceilings were low and
tight, only a couple of feet above her head, giving her a feeling of claustrophobia.
So here I am again
, she thought,
back in Wonderland. This time I will take plenty of pictures
. She photographed the procession of the carpet and three platforms just as it disappeared
from the room. She then changed lenses and took a dozen quick close-up pictures of
the warden standing next to Troy. It had the same amoebalike central body as the one
she had confronted the day before, but there were only five implements sticking out
of its upper half. The warden had probably been customized for the particular job
of taking the objects from the trio.