Alice: The Girl From Earth - Булычев Кир. Страница 22

“Yes.”

“Then you have aboard here no sorts of animals?”

“We do have animals.” I said. “But they’re not for sale.”

“Show them to me.” The guard said.

“Why?” Poloskov was surprised. “We’re here as your guests. Isn’t our word good enough for you?”

“We would rather believe you,” the Audity said, “but you know little of the collectors. They drag various critters all about the Galaxy and we then must deal with the resulting infelicities. Once upon a time we were polite and never bothered to check starships, but now we do. We have learned through bitter experience.

And the security guard, raising a constant wind with his ears, told us the sad story:

Not that long ago a trader had been observed in the market. He had come to the bar with a small carpet bag and a can. In the can were white grubs. Collectors with birds to feed quickly came to value these grubs. The grubs were high in calories and the animals loved them. One of the collectors purchased the can of grubs. A second followed, then a third. So the merchant undid his bag and drew out a new batch. The collectors stood in line for the grubs. The two hundredth and twenty third in line was the famous collector of exotic fish Krabakas of Barakasa; he stood in line and watched the merchant pull cans out of his bag, and he calculated that there could be at most space for three and a half such cans of grubs in the bag. Then Krabakas of Barakasa reached the conclusion that something untoward was going on. He went up to the merchant and asked: “Could it be that you have a bottomless bag?”

“No, your excellency,” one of the chief security guard’s assistants interrupted him at this point of the story, “He asked: ‘Where do all the grubs come from?’“

“Quiet.” A third guard said. “Nothing at all like that. What Krabakas of Barakasa said to him was: ‘Give me your bag so I can look inside.’“

“Silence!’ The Chief Guard shouted at his aids. “I will bite your ears off if you interrupt me again! The merchant did not pay any attention to Krabakas’s words, possibly because Krabakas’s diameter is just about a half a millimeter and even if he is seven meters long he real does resemble a very thin blue worm himself. Then Krabakas turned to the collectors who stood in line and shouted: ‘I don’t like this suspicious merchant!’“

“I beg your forgiveness most humbly our excellency,” One of the aids could not stand it and had to speak, “but if I may be so bold as to say that Krabakas of Barakasa then said to the other collectors: ‘Grab that thief!’“

“You’ve gone mad!” The third guard whispered. “Krabakas said: ‘I am no less a rational being than you are, merchant, and I ask you to pay attention to me. And give me your bag, by the way.’“

“That’s all!” The Chief of Customs Inspection started to flap his ears in frustration. “I’m going to retire!”

The Customs Officers began to argue among themselves, switching over to their own, utterly incomprehensible language, which quite cunningly involved the flapping of their ears. A storm was rising in the crew’s lounge, and how it would have ended no one can tell, but a gust of wind blew the coffee maker from the table. The coffee machine shattered, and the Customs agents became very embarrassed for their behavior.

“Oh, I do beg your pardon.” The chief Audity said. “I fear we’ve gotten rather heated.”

“It’s nothing, nothing.” I said, trying not to break out in laughter gathering the remains of the coffee machine from the floor while Alice ran for a rag to wipe up the brown puddle.

“Krabakas of Barakasa,” the Chief Audity continued, “explained his suspicions to the collectors, and they took the small bag from the merchant. In the small bag they found two hands full of grubs. But when they extracted a part of the grubs, they immediately, with their own eyes, saw the remaining grubs divide in half and grow. Suddenly, from the far end of the bazar, they could hear a frightened cry. One of the song bird collectors had sprinkled some of the grubs in a cage and seen them reproduce in front of his eyes.”

“No.” The second Customs Agent said as he flapped his ears. “Let me be so bold as to express, your nobility….”

But the chief Customs Agent had no time to listen to expressions. He grabbed his aids by their ears and dragged them out of the crew’s lounge, slammed the door shut, and said with some satisfaction:

“Now I can tell you in peace.”

But the door suddenly slide slightly aside and the ear of a recalcitrant Customs Agent edged inside:

“May I be so bold as to…”

“No, this is impossible!” The Chief Customs Agent pressed his thick back to the door and started to finish the story:

“It turns out that these grubs reproduced with unbelievable rapidity. So quickly in fact, that in ten minutes they had doubled in mass, and in an hour were six hundred times as many as when they began.”

“But what did they eat?” Alice couldn’t understand it.

“Air.” The Custom’s Agent answered. “As unbelievable as it sounds, they consumed air.”

“Oxygen!” The second Custom’s Agent shouted from behind his back.

“Nitrogen!” The third responded.

The Chief Custom’s Agent covered his face with his ears from shame at the behavior of his own subordinates. It was another five minutes before he had calmed himself down enough that he could finish the story.

“In general, I would say, but three hours after it began the entire market in Palaputra was filled with grubs to the depth of one meter; the collectors and hawkers had fled to wherever.”

“And what happened to the trader?” Alice asked.

“In the commotion the trader vanished.”

“He ran away.” came from the other side of the door.

“The mountains of grubs were spread out everywhere. Toward evening they reached the center of the city. All the Fire Engines, which poured water and foam, and fire from flame throwers, onto the grubs, could do nothing to contain their advance. We tried to burn the grubs, we tried to poison them, we used DDT and other insecticides, we trampled them under foot, but all was in vain. The air on the planet began to get thinner and thinner. They had to pass out oxygen masks. The planet Blooke sent out emergency signals to all the ends of the Galaxy. However, it was the bird fancier Krabakas of Barakasa who saved the planet. He set gluttonwings on the worms, little birds but so voracious is their appetite that not a single self-respecting collector would keep one. They destroy everything! In the final analysis we were rescued from the grubs, but the gluttonwings on their own also consumed all ants, beetles, bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, spiders, bumble bees and dung beetles. Now we have to rebuild the whole ecology!”

“But why did that merchant sell such dangerous bugs?” Alice asked.

“And why not? He wanted to make money. After all, his supply was endless.”

“No.” Alice said. “It can’t be that. He couldn’t be such a fool. All the collectors would soon guess what was going on.”

“Of course he wasn’t a fool!” Another Custom’s Agent shouted from the other side oft he door. “He wanted to destroy our planet.”

“But why?”

“We don’t know ourselves,” The Chief Custom’s Agent admitted. He left the door and admitted his assistants. “We don’t know why, but since that time we have examined all in-coming ships, especially those from the Sol System.”

“But why especially from the Sol System?”

“That’s a secret.” Said the first Custom’s Agent.

“It’s no secret at all.” The Second Custom’s Agent interjected. “It’s just because the trader was from the Sol System. He was a human being.”

“That’s very odd.” I said. “Do you have a description of him? What did he look like.”

“No. All your people look alike to us anyway.”

“Despite that, shouldn’t he have any distinguishing characteristics.”

“Yes, he did.” One of the junior Custom’s Agents said.