Arthur Clarke: Cradle

The children were four or five years old. All were wearing only a thin white loincloth that covered their genitals. There were four girls and four boys. Two of them were black, two were Caucasian with blue eyes and blonde hair, two were Oriental, and the final boy and girl, definitely twins, looked like a mixture of all humanity What Carol immediately noticed was their eyes. All eight children had large, piercing eyes of brilliant intensity that were focused on the glowing Earth in front of them.

“The continents of this planet,” the little black boy was saying, “were once tied together in a single gigantic land mass that stretched from pole to pole. This was relatively recently, only about two hundred million years ago. Since that time the motion of the plates on which the individual land masses rest has completely changed the configuration of the surface. Here, for example, you can see the Indian sub continent tearing away from Antarctica a hundred million years ago and moving across the ocean toward an eventual collision with Asia. It was this collision and the subsequent plate interaction that lifted the Himalayas, the highest mountains on the planet, to their current height.”

As the little boy was talking, the electronic model Earth in front of him demonstrated the continental changes that he was describing. “But what is the mechanism that causes these plates and land masses to move with respect to each other?” the tiny blonde-haired girl asked.

“Psst,” Carol whispered in Troy’s ear. “How come they are speaking English and know all this Earth geography?” Troy looked at her as if he were disappointed and made a circular motion with his hands. Of course, Carol said to herself, they’ve already processed the discs.

“…then this activity results in material being thrust upward from the mantle below the Earth’s crust. Eventually the continents are pushed apart. Any other questions?” The black boy was smiling. He pointed at the model in front of him. “Here’s what will happen to the land masses in the next fifty million years or so. The Americas will continue to move to the West, away from Africa and Europe, making the South Atlantic a much larger ocean. The Persian Gulf will close altogether, Australia will drive north toward the equator and press against Asia, and both Baja California and the area around Los Angeles will split off from North America to drift northward in the Pacific Ocean. By fifty million years from now Los Angeles will start sliding into the Aleutian Islands.”

All of the children watched the changing globe with complete attention. When the continents on the surface of the model stopped moving, the Oriental boy stepped slightly out from the group. “We have seen this continental drift phenomenon that Brian has been describing on half a dozen other planets, all of them bodies mostly covered by a liquid. Tomorrow Sherry will lead a more detailed discussion about the forces inside a planet that cause the sea floor to spread in the first place.”

A projected image of a warden entered the scene from the left and removed both the Earth globe and several other unidentified props. The small boy waited patiently for the warden to complete his task and then continued, “Darla and David now want to share with us a project they have been working on for several days. They will play the music while Miranda and Justin perform the dance they choreographed.”

The mixed twins turned eagerly to their classmates. The girl spoke out. “When we first learned about adult love and the changes that we all can expect after we pass puberty, David and I tried to envision what it would be like to find a new desire even stronger than those we already know. Our joint vision became a short musical composition and a dance. We call it ‘The Dance of Love.’ ”

The two children sat down away from the group, almost at the side of the image, and began moving their fingers rapidly as if they were typing on the floor. A light synthesized melody, pleasant and spirited, filled the room. The blond boy and the Oriental girl began to dance in the center of the group. At first in the dance, the two were totally separate, unaware of each other, each child completely absorbed in his own activities. The boy knelt down to pick a beautiful flower, its red and white coloring shimmering in the holographic projection. The girl bounced a large bright blue ball as she danced. After a while the little girl noticed the boy and approached him, somewhat tentatively, offering to share the ball. The boy played ball with her but ignored everything except the game.

This is magic, thought Carol as she watched the children’s images moving with grace and deft precision in front of her. These children are wonderful. But they can’t be real. They are too orderly, too self-contained. Where is the tension, the strife? But despite her questions she was profoundly moved by the scene she was witnessing. The children were acting in concert, as a group, flowing in harmony from activity to activity. Their body language was open and unafraid. No neuroses were blocking their learning process.

The dance continued. The music deepened as the boy began to pay attention to his partner and she began arranging her hair with his favorite flowers for their brief encounters. The body movements changed as well, the sprightly, exuberant bounces of the initial stages giving way to subtly suggestive motions designed to awaken and then tease the budding libido. The tiny dancers touched, moved away, and came back together in an embrace.

Carol was entranced. How would my life have been different, she wondered, if I had known all this at the age of five? She remembered her rich friend at soccer camp, Jessica from Laguna Beach, whom she had seen occasionally in subsequent years. Jessica was always ahead, always had to be first. She had had sex with boys before I even started my period. And look what happened to her. Three marriages, three divorces, just thirty years old.

Carol tried to stop her mind from drifting so that she could pay complete attention to the dance. Suddenly she remembered her camera. She had just taken her first pictures of the children when she heard a noise behind her. Nick was coming toward them through the corridor. And he was carrying the trident in his hand.

Nick started to say something but Troy hushed him by putting his finger against his own lips and pointing at the dance in progress. The tempo had now changed. The two mixed children had somehow put the music on automatic (it seemed to be repeating some of the early verses, but with additional instruments in a more complex pattern) and joined the blond boy and the Oriental girl in the dance. Carol’s first impression before Nick spoke out loud was that the dance was now exploring friendships between the paired couple and other people.

“What’s this all about?” Nick said. The moment he spoke the entire projected tableau vanished. All of the children, the dance, and the music disappeared in an instant. Carol was surprised to find that she was disappointed and even a little angry. “Now you’ve blown it,” she said.

Nick looked at his companions’ stern faces. “Jesus,” he said, holding up the cradle, “such a greeting. I bust my butt to go retrieve this damn thing and you guys are pissed when I come back because I interrupt a movie of some kind.”

“For your information, Mr. Williams,” Carol replied, “what we were watching was no ordinary movie. In fact, those kids in that dance are the same species as the ones in your trident.” Nick looked at her skeptically. “Tell him, Troy.”

“She’s right, Professor,” Troy said. “We just figured it out while you were gone. That thing you’re carrying is the seed package for Earth. Some of the zygotes in there are what Carol calls superhumans. Genetically engineered humans with more capability than you or me. Like the kids we just saw.”