Cradle. Part 9

Nick quickly withdrew his arm and grumbled something inaudible as a reply. He turned away from the conversation and saw that Angie was approaching the table. He stood up automatically and both Carol and Troy joined him. "You were fantastic," said Carol, a little too loud, just as soon as Angie was within earshot.

"Thanks . . . Hi," replied Angie, as she walked up to the table and took the chair that Troy had pulled out for her. She spent a few moments graciously acknowledging the praise from people at the nearby tables. Then she sat down and smiled. "You must be Carol Dawson," she said easily, leaning across the table toward the reporter.

Angie was even more beautiful in person than she had been in the picture on the disc jacket. Her coloring was a dark brown, not quite black. Her makeup, including the light pink lipstick, was muted to permit her natural a.s.sets, including virtually perfect white teeth on prominent display when she smiled, to draw the attention. But beyond the beauty was the woman herself. No still photograph could do justice to the natural warmth that radiated from Angie. You liked her immediately.

"And you must be Nick Williams," Angie said, extending her hand to Nick. He was still standing, looking uncomfortable and uncertain, although Troy had already seated himself. "Troy has told me so many things about you in the past few days, I feel as if we're already friends. He claims that you've read every novel ever written that's worth reading."

"That's an exaggeration, of course," Nick replied, obviously pleased to be recognized. He seemed to loosen up a little and finally sat down. He started to add another comment but Carol jumped into the conversation and cut him off.

"Did you write that beautiful song about the blind man yourself?" she asked, before Angie had really had time to sit down and collect herself. "It seemed to be a very personal statement."

"Yes," Angie answered Carol pleasantly, without a trace of irritation at Carol's aggressive behavior. "Most of my material comes from other sources, but occasionally I write a song myself. When it is a very special subject for me." She smiled briefly at Troy before continuing. "My father is a remarkable, loving man, blind from birth but with an uncanny comprehension of the world at all levels. Without his patience and guidance, I probably would never have had the courage to sing as a little girl. I was too shy and self-conscious. But my father convinced all of us when we were small that we were somehow special. He told us that G.o.d had given each of us something unusual, something uniquely ours, and that one of the great joys of life was discovering and then developing that special talent."

"And that song, 'Let Me Take Care of You, Baby,' did you really write that for Troy?" Nick blurted out his question before Angie had finished her sentence. He thereby destroyed the soft mood created by Angie's loving description of her father. Nick was on the edge of his chair and for some reason seemed agitated and unsettled. Troy wondered again what he had missed in the interaction between Carol and Nick that had caused his friend to become so tense.

Angie looked at Troy. "I guess so," she said with a wistful smile, "although it was originally meant to be a playful tune, a light commentary on the game of love." She stopped for a moment. "But it does talk about a real problem. It's very hard sometimes being a successful women. It interferes - "

"Amen. Amen," Carol interrupted while Angie was still developing her thought. This was one of Carol's favorite subjects and she was ready to pounce on the opportunity. "Most men cannot deal with a woman who is the least bit successful, much less in the spotlight." She looked directly at Nick and then continued, "Even now, in 1994, there are still unwritten rules that must be followed. If you want to have a permanent relations.h.i.+p with a man, there are three don'ts: Don't let him think you're smarter than he is, don't suggest s.e.x first, and, above all, don't make more money than he does. These are the three key areas where their egos are extremely fragile And if you undermine the ego of any man, even when you're just kidding with him, then it s a lost cause."

"Sounds like you're an expert," Nick replied sarcastically. His hostility was obvious. "I wonder if it ever occurred to any of you liberated females that men are not put off by your success, but rather by the way you handle it. What you accomplish in life does not mean s.h.i.+t at the personal level. Most ambitious, aggressive women I have met (and now he was looking directly at Carol) go out of their way to make male-female relations.h.i.+ps into some kind of compet.i.tion. They will not let the man, even for a moment, have the illusion that he lives in a patriarchal society. I think some of them purposely emasculate - "

"There it is," Carol jumped in triumphantly. She nudged Angie, who was smiling but still a little embarra.s.sed at the rancor in this exchange. "That's the magic word. Whenever a woman wants to argue and not accept as gospel some profound male truth, she is trying to 'castrate' or 'emasculate' - "

"Okay, you guys," Troy interjected firmly, shaking his head. "That's enough. Let's change the subject. I had thought that maybe you two could enjoy an evening together, but not if we're going to start this way."

"The problem," Carol continued, now looking at Angie and ignoring Troy's request, "is that men are frightened. Their hegemony in the Western world is threatened by the emergence of women who aren't willing to be just barefoot and pregnant. Why, when I was at Stanford - "

She stopped and turned when she heard the legs of a chair sc.r.a.ping across the Roor. "With all due respect, Miss Leatherwood," Nick was standing up again, holding the chair in his hand, "I believe I will excuse myself. I thoroughly enjoyed your music, but I do not wish to subject you to any more bad manners. I wish you continued good fortune in your career and I hope that someday you can spend some time on the boat with Troy and me." Nick turned to Troy. "I'll see you at the marina at eight o'clock in the morning." Finally he looked at Carol. "You, too, if you still want to go. You can tell us about the wimps at Stanford while we're out in the middle of the Gulf."

Nick did not wait for a reply He picked up the envelope and walked back through the crowd toward the exit. As he was approaching the door he heard a voice calling him, "Nick. Oh, Nick. Over here." It was Julianne, waving to him from a nearby table full of gla.s.ses and ashtrays. She and Corinne and Linda were surrounded by half a dozen men but Julianne was moving them all around and pulling up an empty chair. Nick walked over to her table.

Thirty minutes later Nick was very drunk. The combination of Julianne's occasionally brus.h.i.+ng his leg, Corinne's gigantic b.r.e.a.s.t.s (they were covered now but he could remember them from Troy's game in the afternoon), and intermittent glimpses of Carol through the cigarette smoke had made him very h.o.r.n.y as well. G.o.d d.a.m.n it, Williams, he had thought to himself when he first sat down with Julianne's group. You blew it again. Here you had this perfect chance to charm her. Maybe even score. But half an hour later, after the drinks, his thoughts were more reminiscent of Aesop's fox. She's too aggressive for me anyway. Famous. Pushy. Probably too hard underneath And cold in bed. Another ballbuster. Yet still he watched her from across the room.

The extra chairs that had been brought in for Angie's performance were cleared away to make room for dancing. A disc jockey orchestrated the rest of the evening from a booth next to the stage; one could dance to a variety of modern musical selections, watch the outrageously overproduced music videos on the big screens. or just talk, for the music was not overwhelmingly loud. Most of the people around Nick were from the marina. During a break in the music, just after Nick had downed another fast tequila, Linda Quinlan leaned across the table. "Come on, Nick," she said, "let us in on your secret. What did you and Troy find yesterday?"

"Nothing special," said Nick, remembering his agreement but surprised to discover that he did indeed want to talk about it.

"Rumor says different," jumped in one of the men at the table. "Everybody knows that you took something to Amanda Winchester this morning. Come on, tell us what it was. Have you found a new treasure s.h.i.+p?"

"Maybe," said Nick, a drunken grin on his face, "just maybe." Another strong impulse pushed him to tell the story and show the pictures, but he stopped himself. "I can't talk about it," was all he would say.

At this moment two burly young men, short-haired Navy types wearing officer's uniforms, were making a beeline for Nick's table from the other side of the floor. One of them was dark, Hispanic. Their approach was confident, even arrogant, and their arrival at the table stopped all the conversation. The white lieutenant put his hand on Julianne's shoulder. "All right, gorgeous," he said boldly, "the Navy is here. Why don't you and your friend there (he nodded at Corinne - Ramirez was standing behind her), come and dance with us?"

Julianne said, "No, thank you," very politely and smiled. Todd looked down at her. He was weaving just a little and it was clear from his eyes that he had been drinking heavily.

"You mean to tell me," he said, "that you would prefer to sit here with these local geeks rather than dance with future admirals?" Julianne felt his hand tighten on her shoulder. She looked around the table and tried to ignore him.

Todd did not like rejection. He took his hand off Julianne's shoulder and pointed at Corinne's b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Christ, Ramirez, you were right. They are monsters. Wouldn't you like to snarf one of those?" The two lieutenants laughed crudely. Corinne squirmed self-consciously.

Linda Quinlan's steady boyfriend rose from his chair. Other than Nick, he was the only one of the men at the table who was approximately the same size as Todd and Ramirez. "Look, guys," he said reasonably, "the lady said no very nicely. There is no need to insult her or her friends - "

"Listen to him, Ramirez," Todd interrupted, "this character said we insulted someone. Since when is admiring the size of someone's cachunga's an insult?" He chuckled to himself at his cleverness. Ramirez made a sign to leave but Todd waved him off.

The drunken Nick had been ready to explode all night. "Get out of here, a.s.shole," he said, quietly but firmly. He was still sitting down next to Julianne.

"Who are you calling a.s.shole, c.o.c.ksucker?" the truculent Lieutenant Todd replied. He turned to Ramirez. "I do believe that I am going to be forced to strum the head of this impertinent b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

But Nick was ahead of him. Rising swiftly, he uncoiled a vicious punch that struck Todd full in the face and sent him tumbling backwards, into another table covered with drinks. Todd and the table crashed to the floor and Nick went after him. Ramirez pulled Nick off his fellow officer and, when Nick turned and swung at him as well, Ramirez gave Nick a push that caused his unsteady legs to give way. Nick fell back over Julianne and another full table collapsed upon the floor From across the room Carol and Angie and Troy could see the fracas and recognize Nick in the middle of it. "Uh oh," Troy said, jumping up to go to his friend's aid. Carol was right behind him. When they reached the opposite side of the room, both club bouncers were already on top of the action. Meanwhile, Nick and Julianne were still trying to get unscrambled on the floor and Todd was slowly rising to his feet.

In the fight, the envelope of photos had been knocked free and a couple of them had fallen partially out. Ramirez had picked the envelope up off the floor and, because of the bright colors, was looking at the pictures. The close-up of the brown missile in the fissure was clearly visible in the top photo. "Hey," he said to the shaken Todd, "look at this. What do you think this is all about?"

Carol acted instantly. She walked past Ramirez, grabbed the envelope and pictures, and before he could say anything, she screamed, "Not again, Nick, no, I don't believe it. How could you be drunk again?" She knelt down beside Nick on the floor and cradled his head in her free hand. "Oh, darling," she said, as he stared at her in complete disbelief, "you promised that you'd stop."

The astonished crowd watched as Carol kissed Nick full on the mouth to prevent his saying anything. Troy was amazed. "Troy," she shouted a moment later, while Nick was trying to gather his wits. "Troy, where are you? Here, give me a hand." Troy rushed up and helped Nick to his feet. "We're taking him home now," she announced to the onlookers. She and Troy each took one arm and the three of them stumbled toward the door of the nightclub. They pa.s.sed the manager in the doorway. Carol told him that she would come by the next day to settle accounts. She and Troy half carried Nick into the street.

As they walked away from Sloppy Joe's, Carol turned around and saw that part of the crowd had followed them to the door. Ramirez and Todd, the latter still rubbing his cheek, were standing in front of the group with puzzled expressions on their faces. "Where are we taking him, angel?" Troy asked when they were out of earshot. "We don't even know where he parked his car.

"It doesn't matter," Carol replied, "just as long as we are out of sight of the club."

The awkward threesome turned right, down the same alley that ran behind the theater where The Night of the Iguana had finished an hour before. Just past the theater there was a small vacant lot on the left Carol stopped the trio at the edge of the lot, opposite a grove of trees, and looked back to make certain they were not being followed. She heaved a sigh and loosened her grip on Nick. She unconsciously fanned her sweating face with the envelope she had recovered from Ramirez.

Nick was now almost coherent. "I had no idea," he mumbled to Carol, pulling his arm free from Troy and trying to embrace her, "that you felt that way about me."

"I don't," Carol said emphatically. She pushed his arms away and backpedaled toward the vacant lot. Nick didn't understand and continued his approach. "Stop," she shouted angrily at him. "Stop, you drunken b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

She tried to fend off his advance with her hands. But he kept coming. Just before Troy moved up to restrain him, Carol slapped Nick hard in the face with the hand that was not holding the envelope. Momentarily startled Nick lost his footing and fell into the gra.s.s on his stomach.

Still fuming, Carol bent down beside him and forcefully rolled him over on his back. "Don't you ever, ever, use physical force with me," she shouted at Nick. "Not under any circ.u.mstances." She dropped the envelope on Nick's stomach and stood up quickly. She looked at Troy, shook her head in disgust, and stalked off down the alley.

a.s.sEMBLY AND TEST.

UNDER the scanning electron microscope they look like tightly coiled springs with a small tail. When they are placed in water or some other liquid, the springs seem to stretch out and cilialike appendages extend a few angstroms out from the tail to provide motility.

There are millions of them concentrated in a mixture the size of a tiny drop of water and they are being carefully checked by a laser device that is also counting and sorting them as it illuminates microscopic portions of the mixture. When the count is completed, the smaller division of the separated mixture is sluiced out of the metal receptacle and down a channel into another liquid, this one emerald green in color, that is contained in a bottle-shaped beaker. The springs spread out and follow random paths in wandering around the beaker.

External mechanisms regularly churn the emerald green liquid. Around the inside of the beaker, tiny sensors register the temperature, pressure, and exact chemical and electrical characteristics of the fluid. Some parameter is not absolutely perfect. A small valve opens a port in the base of the beaker and a new chemical is injected into the green solution. Continuous measurements monitor the diffusion of this additional material. At length the fluid is properly altered and a new equilibrium is reached.

Everything is now ready. From above several thousand small pellets are dropped into the container. Some of these pellets float on the surface but most sink to variable depths in the liquid. Embedded in each of the pellets is a complicated engineering construction on an amazingly miniaturized scale. The external surface of the pellets contains sensors that scan the nearby region of the liquid for the springlike objects. A high-frequency transmitter housed next to the sensors directs a call to the springs and attracts them to the neighborhood. Cl.u.s.ters of springs develop around each pellet.

Now, one at a time, these springs are harvested by small instruments inside the spongy outer section of the pellet and then loaded in carriers that are electrically fired toward the central cavity of the pellet. Within that cavity sits a single black, amorphous spot, its exterior constantly changing shape as its opaque material s.h.i.+fts around to follow unknown stimuli. This spot is surrounded by a yellow goo that fills the remainder of the cavity.

The first spring slips out of its carrier, then locates and penetrates the spot. The spring can be seen for an instant moving toward the center. However, it is broken up and destroyed within milliseconds. Other springs are fired into the cavity at regular intervals and all try, after penetration, to reach some special region in the spot. Finally one of the procession succeeds and the spot changes color to bright red. In rapid succession, some enzyme in the spongy outer section of the pellet is dumped into the yellow goo, turning its color a little toward green, and all the rest of the springs disappear, apparently absorbed by the pellet structure. The entire pellet itself next elongates and extends a miniature propulsion system into the emerald liquid. After carefully steering around the many hazards, it then joins the queue of fertilized pellets moving, one by one, through a round diaphanous membrane in the bottom of the beaker.

The fluid dense with pellets speeds along a narrow tube until it reaches a partially closed container approximately the size of the beaker. Inside this translucent jar, a mechanical, spoonlike object digs into the stream of liquid flowing through and plucks out the pellets. They are lifted up and then suspended momentarily around the pa.s.sing fluid in a heavy gas enclosed by the jar. Within moments each of the pellets splits and their carapaces apparently dissolve, leaving visible inside the jar an array of the little red spots surrounded by the off-yellow goo and suspended in an invisible gas.

The goo extends itself slowly throughout the jar above the flowing fluid until all the open areas between the red spots are filled. When the emerald stream below drops to a trickle and then disappears altogether, the goo hardens into a gelatin and fills the ports where the fluid once entered and departed. Within the jar are several thousand red spots embedded in the yellow-green gelatin. The spots undergo no visible change throughout this process.

Time pa.s.ses. Activity in the jar ceases. Occasionally mechanical probes to test the stability of the gelatin are inserted into the jar at the old fluid ports. At last the translucent jar is removed from its storage location by what looks like a robotic forklift. It is placed on a moving belt that now carries it, along with several dozen other jars containing different kinds of objects (blue pencils, purple stars, and red boxes can all be seen) also suspended in yellow-green gelatin, to a vast circular oven almost an inch in diameter. Here all the jars are carefully baked together. Inside the oven, the molecules of the jar material immediately evaporate. Next a pair of disembodied manipulator hands wrap an incredibly thin blanket of connective filaments around all the gelatinous structures. After some time this ensemble unit is then pulled automatically out of the oven and packaged inside a gold metallic envelope whose several layers are designed to provide all the remaining environmental protection.

The hypergolic propellants mix and burst instantly into flame, pouring fire out the rocket nozzle. The slender vehicle rises, slowly at first, but later with astonis.h.i.+ng speed. Before reaching the zenith of its flight, the rocket stage underneath the strange paraboloid payload falls away and tiny motors ignite on the underside of the flying boomerang. At the apex of the trajectory, the entire package suddenly explodes and apparently disintegrates. Hundreds of pieces of the original payload fall toward the surface of the planet in seemingly random directions.

Closer inspection reveals that each individual piece resulting from the explosion is made of a gold metallic material encased in plastic. A small sensor/propulsion package is attached to the plastic; it supplies needed vernier corrections during the descent after the controlled explosion. The plastic debris falls upon a strange, hybrid planet, obviously artificial judging by the wide variety of incongruous surfaces and cloud groupings that can be recognized from an alt.i.tude of tens of miles. There are scattered liquid lakes of different hues plus discontinuous surface topography with regions of desert and gra.s.slands as well as barren mountains and canyons. A connected quarter of the planet is covered with clouds . The clouds are here white and fleecy, there brown and thick. Some of the clouds are active, building and changing with hints of turbulence. Other parts of the cloudy region are static, small wisps of white stretching without change across the sky.

One of the plastic vehicles plunges through a misty blue cloudbank into an emerald sea. The plastic is left on the surface, but the encased gold metallic object sinks thirty feet to the floor of the ocean. For a day or two there is no discernible change in its appearance. Then a protrusion begins to form in its north polar region, on the top of the golden sphere as it sits on the ocean floor. The growth expands slowly, until the spherical shape appears to have a large carbuncle on its top. A metamorphosis now takes place. On the outside of the protrusion, the hard metal surface softens and begins to resemble an organic membrane. Although the membrane is thick and dense, it occasionally bulges, suggesting some motion on the other side of its golden barrier.

Eventually a thin black rod, a probe of some kind, thrusts through the surface into the emerald ocean. A second probe becomes visible, then a third, both long black rods like the first one, but each equipped with strikingly different apparatus scattered along the length of the rod. Something larger pushes against the membrane, once, twice, then finally breaking through. What a strange contraption! It's an aerodynamic shape about three inches long, in two separate segments with a joint between them. The forebody is a nosecone; the afterbody is long and slender and tapers to a point. In addition to the three probes on the front of its forebody, it has four other furlable appendages or arms, two connected to the side of each segment.

It swims over to a nearby underwater plant with its arms stored next to its smooth body. There it unfurls the multi-faceted appendages and begins to examine the plant. An astonis.h.i.+ng array of tiny instruments studies the plant for a few moments and then the ent.i.ty moves away. The same procedure is repeated with each plant encountered. Eventually the thing finds a plant that it "likes" and its pincers remove a -major leaf. The leaf is neatly folded into a smaller volume and is then carried back to the object with the golden membrane.

The strange forager is joined by a partner, a carbon copy of itself, and by two fat fish with multiple arms and legs. The latter pair scuttle off to the side and begin modifying the ocean floor. Days pa.s.s. The things with the probes work ceaselessly, bringing more and more varieties of plant and animal life back to the home base. The legged fish meanwhile have constructed, out of available sand, rocks, sh.e.l.ls, and living creatures, almost a thousand tiny, sealed rectangular homes on the ocean floor. These fish ent.i.ties too work without break. Their next task is to transport each of the red spots, one at a time, from the golden cradle to their new houses.

If a microscope were available, it would show that some structure was already developing inside the red spots, giving them definition and distinction, by the time of their initial transport. But they are still very, very small. Once the red spots and their gelatin protection are carefully implanted inside their tiny houses, the foragers make routine stops on each trip to deposit a portion of their harvest. At the same time, the fish with legs, the architects and builders of the rectangular houses, begin working on transparent, igloolike homes for the embryos of another species.

A year later moonlight falls on the emerald lake. Several hundred eager, excited, wriggling necks, some royal blue and some pale blue, struggle upward to find the moon. Their heads pivot to face all directions and maybe two dozen separate indentations and orifices can be seen in each face. The necks crane this way, then that way. The silent serpents are searching for something.

From the direction of the moon a bizarre s.h.i.+p approaches on the water. It is large compared to the young serpents, its twin towers standing about eight feet out of the water and about six feet above, on the average, a squarish platform fifteen feet on a side that forms the bottom of the boat. The top surface of this platform is irregular, undulating, and cratered. The platform floats smoothly upon the water.

The s.h.i.+p comes into the middle of the serpents and stops. The serpents divide into two groups according to the color of their necks and then line up on either side of the s.h.i.+p in very orderly rows and columns. A single musical note, a B-flat with a Hautish timbre, comes from the s.h.i.+p. Quickly the note is repeated up and down the rows and columns by each of the serpents on the two sides of the boat. Then a second note issues forth from the s.h.i.+p, also sounding like a flute, and the process repeats itself. For hours the music lesson continues, covering a range of both notes and chords, until some of the serpents on each side lose their voices The exercise concludes with an attempted ensemble performance by the royal bluenecked serpents, but the result is a painful cacophony.

Inside the s.h.i.+p, every note, every movement, every response by the juvenile serpents to the music lesson is carefully monitored and recorded. The ingenious engineering design of the boat is based upon the key controlling elements of the original cradle. However, although segments of gold metallic material (as well as the long black rods and even portions of the fat fish with legs) appear in the computer that runs the s.h.i.+p, the primary const.i.tuents of its ma.s.s are derived from great quant.i.ties of local rock and organic matter taken from the floor of the emerald lake. The s.h.i.+p is the quintessential music teacher, a virtually perfect synthesizer equipped with microprocessors that not only store all the responses of the pupils, but also contain software that will allow experimentation with a range of individualized methods of teaching.

But this sophisticated robot, engineered by the artificial .intelligence packed around the serpent zygotes and made almost entirely of chemical compounds extracted from material found in the neighborhood of the landing point, is itself being watched and studied from afar by test engineers. The current test is in its earliest stages and is progressing splendidly. This is the third different configuration tried for the music teacher, the hardest part of the design of the cradle that will carry the serpent zygotes back to Canthor. The first was an abysmal failure; the embryos developed into adolescents all right, but the teacher was never able to instruct them well enough that they could sing the mating song and reproduce. The second design was better; it was able to teach the serpents to perform the courts.h.i.+p symphony and a new generation of the species was produced. However, this next group of adult serpents was not able subsequently to teach their progeny to sing.

The best of the bioengineering personnel in the Colony were brought in to study this problem. After pouring over quadrillions of bits of acc.u.mulated data a.s.sociated with the development of the serpents and other related species, they found a curious correlation between the degree of nurturing provided by the parent and the resulting ability of that infant, upon reaching maturity, to teach its own offspring. The artificial intelligence package responsible for the first six months of serpent life was then redesigned to include a surrogate mother whose only purpose was to hold and cuddle the fledgling serpents at regular intervals. Subsystem tests proved successful; this slight alteration of the early nurturing protocol produced adult serpents that were able to teach their children to sing This demonstration test lasts for more than four millcycles. At the end of the period, the test is declared an unqualified success. A strong, creative serpent population nearing twenty-five thousand fills the artificial lake. Limitations to future growth are only test related. Eventually the test survivors are transported to another locale in the Zoo Complex and the Canth.o.r.ean serpents are added to the list of species ready for zygote repatriation.

SAt.u.r.dAY.

1.

THE full moon rises over the placid ocean. Troy stares at the moonbeams, watching them s.h.i.+mmer on the quiet water. Angie appears and stands in the water in front of him. She is wearing a skintight white bathing suit, one piece, and is submerged from the waist down.

She beckons to him and he walks across the damp sand toward the water. He is barefoot and is also wearing a white bathing suit. The water is surprisingly warm. Angie begins to sing. Her magnificent voice enfolds him as Troy draws nearer to her in the light surf.

They touch and kiss. She pulls away and gives him a smile of encouragement. Troy feels himself becoming aroused. Suddenly a siren pierces the air, destroying the calm of the night. Instantly the sea becomes choppy, agitated, full of whitecaps. Troy turns around, alarmed, and glances at the sh.o.r.e. He sees nothing special. He looks back at the ocean. Angie has disappeared. Out in the distance, near the horizon, Troy thinks he sees the beginning of a tidal wave. The siren shrieks again and Troy sees a large shapeless ma.s.s riding a nearby wave in the moonlight.

He goes toward the object. The tidal wave is now defined in the distance, filling half his dream screen. The bulky object nearby is a black body dressed in a red muscle s.h.i.+rt and bluejeans. The siren grows louder. Troy rolls the body over and looks at the face. It is his brother, Jamie.

Troy Jefferson bolted upright in bed. his heart pounding furiously, his mind making the transition from the dream world to reality. Outside his duplex apartment a siren raged. He could tell from the frequency change that the police car or ambulance had just sped past his front door. He shook himself and crawled out of bed. The digital clock on the end table read 3:03.

Troy walked to the kitchen. He went to the refrigerator and poured himself a gla.s.s of grapefruit juice. He listened to the siren in the distance until it faded away altogether. Then he started back to the small second bedroom where he slept. In the hallway he was stopped by the sound of another siren, this one even louder, that seemed to be coming toward him. For a few seconds he thought the siren was just outside his front door and he recalled, vividly, another siren in the middle of another night. His heart began to pound anew. "Jamie," Troy said to himself almost involuntarily, "Jamie. Why did you have to die?"

Troy could still see the events of that evening with perfect clarity. Nothing in the first tableau had faded even a little. The beginning memory was the three of them, Jamie, Troy, and their mother, sitting silently at the dinner table, eating fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Jamie had just arrived home from Gainesville for spring break that afternoon and had spent almost an hour, before they had sat down to eat, regaling his fifteen-year-old brother with stories of football and university life. Jamie had been Troy's idol throughout his childhood. Handsome, intelligent, and articulate, Jamie had also been blessed with incredible physical gifts. As a result, he had been the starting halfback for the Florida Gators in his soph.o.m.ore year and was being touted as a potential All-American for the following season. Troy had bitterly missed Jamie when he had first gone away to the university, but in the intervening eighteen months he had learned to accept his absence and to look forward to his brother's holiday visits.

"So, bro," Jamie had said with a smile, when he finished his dinner and pushed his plate away, "what about you? You've finished another quarter already. Did you make the grades of a future astronaut?"

"I did okay," Troy had replied, hiding his pride. "I made a B plus in Social Studies because my teacher thought I had taken an anti-American position in my paper on the Panama Ca.n.a.l."

"I guess an occasional B plus is acceptable," Jamie had laughed, his affection for his younger brother clearly showing. "But I bet Burford didn't make many B's when he was in the ninth grade."

Whenever Troy recalled the fateful evening that his brother was killed, he always remembered the mention of Guion Burford, the first American black astronaut. Most of the time his memory, because it was so painful to proceed immediately to the terrible recollection of his dying brother in his arms, would choose to digress to a happier time, to a remembrance of his brother Jamie that was almost as vivid as the death scene, but was happy and reinforcing instead of being gut wrenching and depressing.

During the summer before his death, on a hot, humid day in late August, Jamie Jefferson had arranged a third personal meeting with his football coach at Florida to request permission to skip practice for two days. He wanted to take his little brother, Troy, to see the launch of the s.p.a.ce shuttle. In the first two meetings, the coach had vigorously opposed Jamie's taking the time away from the important workouts, but he had stopped short of denying the request.

"You still don't understand, coach," Jamie had said firmly at the start of their third and final meeting on the subject. "My little brother has no father. And he's a genius at math and science. He blows the top off those standardized apt.i.tude tests. He needs a role model. He needs to know that blacks can do something significant other than sports." The coach had eventually relented and given Jamie permission, but only because he had figured out that Jamie was going to go under any circ.u.mstances.

Jamie had driven his battered Chevrolet nonstop across Florida, picked up his brother in Miami, and continued northward without sleeping for another four hours to Cocoa Beach. They had arrived in the middle of the night. Jamie, by now exhausted, parked the car in a beach access zone next to a seven-story condominium along the nicest part of the beach. "All right, little brother." he had said, "now get some sleep."

But Troy had not been able to sleep. He had been too excited thinking about the launch scheduled the next evening, the eighth shuttle launch in all, the first one that had ever occurred at night. He had been reading everything he could find about astronaut Burford and the plans for the mission. He kept imagining that it was the future and that he, Troy Jefferson, was an astronaut about to be launched into s.p.a.ce. After all, Burford was living proof that it could indeed be done, that a black American could attain the upper echelons of society and become a popular hero on the basis of his intelligence, personality, and hard work.

At sunrise Troy had crawled out of the car and walked the few yards to the beach. It was very quiet. Troy's company was limited to a few walkers and joggers plus a couple of those bizarre sand crabs, whose eyes wavered back and forth at the end of peculiar stalks as they raced sideways into their holes in the sand. To the north Troy could see some of the launch pads for the unmanned rockets at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base, but in his mind's eye he saw them as the launching apparatus for the shuttle. He wondered what astronaut Burford was doing at that very moment. What was he eating for breakfast? Was he with his family or with the astronaut crew?

Jamie had awakened around noon and the brothers had spent the early afternoon on the beach together, laughing and playing in the surf. Then they picked up some hamburgers and drove the final half hour to the Kennedy s.p.a.ce Center. Jamie had strongarmed an avid Gator booster, an aeros.p.a.ce executive who lived in Melbourne, for tickets to the VIP viewing area. They arrived there just before nightfall. Four miles away, the impressive shuttle launch configuration. consisting of the orbiter mounted on top of an orange external tank with two solid rocket boosters on the side, stood erect against its launching tower as the final countdown began.

No observing experience in Troy's life would ever come close to rivaling his watching the s.p.a.ce shuttle blast off that night. As he listened to the countdown being announced over the loudspeakers in the VIP area, he was eager and antic.i.p.ant, but not yet in awe. The moment the engines ignited, however, filling the Florida night with reddish-orange flame and thick white clouds of billowing smoke, Troy's eyes nearly popped out of his head. But it was the combination of his seeing the giant s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, slowly and majestically lifting itself into the heavens riding a long slender flame, and his hearing the astonis.h.i.+ng sound, a constant roar punctuated with unexplained pops (which at only four miles away still arrived twenty or so seconds behind the sight of the engine ignition), that really caused the goose b.u.mps to break out on his skin, the tears to come to his eyes, and the tingle to spread through his body. Troy's intense emotional excitement lasted well over a minute. He stood beside his brother Jamie, tightly holding his hand, his back arched as he strained to follow the flame rising higher and higher and then finally disappearing in the night sky above him.

After the launch they slept again in the car. Jamie then dropped Troy at the bus station in Orlando and headed back to Gainesville for football practice. Young Troy felt that he was a new person, that he had been transformed by his experience. In the week that followed he obsessively followed the flight. Burford became his hero, his new idol. During the first two quarters of the following year, he applied himself avidly to his schoolwork. He had a goal. He was going to be an astronaut.

Little did Troy know that on a March night only seven months later he would have another experience, this one devastating and deeply disturbing, that would completely overshadow the thrill he had felt at the shuttle launch. On that later March evening, his brother Jamie would stop by his room before leaving the house around eight o'clock. "I'm going over to Maria's, bro," Jamie would say. "We'll probably take in a movie."

Maria Alvarez was eighteen and still a senior in high school. She had been Jamie's steady girl for a couple of years. She lived in Little Havana together with her Cuban family and eight siblings.

Troy had given his brother a hug. "I'm glad you're here, Jamie. There are so many things that I want to show you. I made you a set of headphones in school - "

"I want to see everything." his brother had interrupted him. "But tomorrow, first thing in the morning. Now don't stay up too late. Astronauts need plenty of sleep so they can be alert." Jamie had smiled and walked out of Troy's room. It was the last thing Troy would ever hear him say.

Troy never could remember what he had heard first when he had awakened in the middle of that night. His mother's wild wail had mixed with the screech of the nearby sirens to create an imbroglio of sound that was unforgettable and terrifying. Troy had raced to the door and into the front yard wearing only his pajama bottoms. The sound of the ambulance siren was drawing closer. His mother was at the end of the short walkway in front of the house, bending down over a dark body spread partly in the street in front of Jamie's Chevrolet and partly in their yard. Three policemen and half a dozen curious bystanders were huddled around his distraught mother.

"Somehow," he heard one of the policemen say as Troy, in a panic, tried to figure out what was happening, "he managed to drive home. It's incredible after all the blood he lost. He must have been hit four times in the stomach . . ."

His mother's cry intensified again and, at that moment, Troy put all the pieces together and recognized the body lying on its back. A chill went through him, he gasped, and then Troy fell on his knees beside his brother's head. Jamie was struggling for breath. His eyes were open but they did not seem to be focusing on anything.

Troy cradled Jamie's head in his hands. He looked down at his brother's stomach. His red s.h.i.+rt was awash in blood that seemed to be flowing in a continuous stream from an area just above the genitals. Blood was on Jamie's jeans, on the ground, everywhere. Troy felt himself gag, then retch involuntarily. Nothing came up. Hot tears filled his eyes.

"We think it was a gang shooting, Mrs. Jefferson," the policeman droned on. "Probably some kind of a mistake. Everybody knows that Jamie wasn't mixed up with that kind of crowd." Reporters had arrived. Lights were flas.h.i.+ng from cameras. More sirens approached.

Jamie's eyes went blank. There was no sign of breathing. Troy pulled his brother's head to his chest. He instinctively knew that Jamie was dead. He began to sob uncontrollably. "No," he mumbled. "No. Not my brother. Not Jamie. He never hurt anybody."

Someone tried to comfort him, to pat him on the shoulder Troy shrugged them off violently "Leave me alone," he shouted between sobs. "He was my brother. He was my only brother." After a couple of moments, Troy tenderly placed Jamie's head back down on the ground. He then collapsed in total despair beside him.

At almost three-thirty in the morning some ten years later, in March of 1994, Troy Jefferson would be at home, alone in his duplex, awake with the memory of that terrible moment when Jamie had died. He would feel a new the heartbreak of that loss. And he would realize again, very clearly, that most of his adolescent dreams had died with his brother, that he had forsaken his dreams of college and being an astronaut because they were inextricably coupled with his memory of Jamie.

Somehow he had stumbled through high school in the three years that had followed Jamie's death. But it had taken the combined efforts of his mother and the school and the city authorities to keep Troy from abandoning school altogether. Then, as soon as he had graduated, he had left Miami. Or rather, ran away. Away from what had happened and what might have been. For over two years he then wandered in a desultory manner throughout North America, a young, solitary black man, bereft of love and friends.h.i.+p, looking for something to overcome the feeling of emptiness that was his constant companion.

So I finally came to Key West, Troy would think, years later, as he settled back in his bed in the middle of the morning for a couple more hours of sleep. And for some reason made myself a home. Maybe it was just time. Or maybe I had learned enough to know that life goes on. But somehow, although the wound has never healed, I got past Jamie. And found the lost Troy. Or so I hope.

The dream that had been interrupted by the siren suddenly came back into his mind. Angie was beautiful in the moonlight in her white bathing suit. And now for some unfinished business, Troy laughed to himself, concentrating on the image of Angie as he returned to sleep.

2.