Arthur Clarke - Cradle

The brown and white panels forming the walls for the particular room they had entered were only ten feet high, but they were high enough to prevent Carol and Troy from seeing out. They had a strange sense of both freedom and confinement. On the one hand, first the tunnel and now this small room, the size of a child’s bedroom in a small house, had made them feel claustrophobic; however, the sense of space conveyed by the cathedral ceilings was liberating.

“Well?” asked Carol, somewhat impatiently, after waiting a few moments while Troy walked around and surveyed the room. He was observing that the brown and white wall panels were only slightly curved and were thus much closer to normal walls than those in the initial room had been.

“I’m sorry, angel,” he replied, “I forgot the question.”

She shook her head. “There is only one question, Mr. Jefferson. I believe that you asked it of me on our last tour stop.” She looked at her watch. “In about fifteen minutes, we will have exceeded the maximum time for our air supply. Unless I miss my guess, our friend Nick is probably starting to worry right now. But we still have no idea… What are you doing?”

She interrupted herself when Troy bent down to pull a small knob on one of the brown panels in the corner of the room. “These are drawers, angel,” he said, as the bottom part of the panel came out several inches from the wall. “Like a dresser.” He opened a second drawer above the first. “And they have something in them.”

Carol came over to see. She reached into the second drawer that Troy had opened and pulled out a rust-colored sphere about the size of a tennis ball. The surface of the ball was very curious. Instead of being smooth and regular, it had grooves cut into it, mostly on one side, and tiny bumps, like those on the surface of a pickle, around and next to the grooves. In other places there were poorly defined indentations as well. Carol examined the sphere in the weak light. “I’ve seen something like this before,” she said. “But where?” She thought for a few seconds. “I’ve got it,” she announced, pleased that her memory had come through, “this looks exactly like the model of Mars in the National Air and Space Museum.”

“Then I must have the Earth,” Troy replied, showing her a mostly blue sphere the size of a softball that he had removed from the top drawer. The two of them stood together in the dim light, looking back and forth at the spheres they were holding in their hands. “Shit,” Troy shouted eventually, spinning around and looking at the ceiling. “And double shit. Whoever you are, we’ve had enough. Come out now and identify yourself.”

A partial echo of his voice came back to them. Otherwise they heard nothing. Anxious to be doing something, Carol continued her search of the room. She found another group of three drawers in a nearby brown panel. While she was opening the first of these, Troy playfully hurled his blue ball at what appeared to be an exit, a dark opening between panels on the other side of the room. The sphere hit a white panel near the exit with a thunk and started to fall to the floor. However, just before it touched the ground, the sphere lifted up, as if pulled somehow from above, and stopped in the center of the room about five feet above the floor. It began to spin.

Troy’s eyes opened wide. He walked over to the sphere and placed his hand between the ball and high ceiling, trying to find the strings. Nothing happened. The Earth sphere continued to spin slowly and inscribe a circle in the air in the middle of the room. Troy pushed the ball lightly. It moved in response to his push, but after his applied force was removed and the effect had dissipated, the sphere returned to its previous location and continued its earlier movement. Troy turned around. Carol had her back to him and was searching unsuccessfully for another set of drawers. The Mars ball was still in her left hand.

“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 center 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, under-handed, 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 center 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 f1oor.

“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.”