Alice: The Girl From Earth - Булычев Кир. Страница 26

“All right, let’s go in search of a Blabberyap.” I agreed. “Only first I want you to look at the Sewing Spider. And if they’ll part with him, we are definitely going to buy. Our Zoo has dreamed of having one of those for a long, long time.”

Chapter Ten

We Buy A Blabberyap

Alice and I traipsed our way around the whole bazar, buying at least seventeen different animals and birds for the Zoo, the vast majority of them totally unknown on Earth and never before seen by human beings. Alice asked each and every trader or collector:

“But where can we get a Blabberyap bird?”

Their answers were all the same:

“The Blabberyaps stopped laying eggs.” One said.

“The Blabberyaps have all died out from some mysterious illness.”

“It’s impossible to capture a Blabberyap bird.”

“Someone bought up all the Blabberyap birds on the planet.”

“There never were any such birds as the Blabberyap anyway.”

And many, many other answers. Nor, for that matter, did we understand how the disappearance had taken place. Everyone recognized this as fact: earlier, the Blabberyap had been one of the most common of birds and everyone loved to keep them at home and in zoos. But over the last year nearly all the Blabberyaps had simply vanished. Gone. Dissapeared.

It was said that people went from house to house and bought Blabberyaps. It was said that someone stole the Blabberyaps from the zoos. It was said that all the Blabberyaps in the Blabberyaperies had contracted some sickness or other and died.

The more hopeless finding a Blabberyap became, the more Alice wanted to get a look at the bird.

“But just what is a Blabberyap, I mean?” I asked Krabakas of Barakas, whose acquaintance I had just made.

“Nothing really special.” Krabakas answered politely, swaying at the end of his blue tail. “They talk.”

“Parrots talk too.” I said.

“I don’t know anything about parrots. Perhaps parrots are what you call our Blabberyaps.”

“Maybe.” I agreed, although parrots could hardly have evolved on this planet. “Where would they have come from?”

“What I don’t know, I don’t know.” Krabakas of Barakasa said. “Maybe they originated on this very planet. I have heard that Blabberyaps are capable of traveling between the stars and always return to their home nest.”

“If you can’t find us a Blabberyap, we’d better return to the ship.” I told Alice. “All the more because your Empathicator is starving.”

The Empathicator heard my words and as a sign of agreement became a bright green.

We turned toward the entranceway and immediately Krabakas’s cry from behind stopped me. He hung over the cages like a blue whirlwind.

“Hey!” He shouted. “Earth humans! Come back here right away!”

We returned. Krabakas had wound himself into a little ball from excitement and said:

“You want to see a Blabberyap? Well, consider yourselves fabulously lucky. I have a fellow here hiding behind these cages who brought a real, fully grown Blabberyap bird to the Bazar.”

Alice, not waiting for him to finish, rushed back to where we had been, the Empathicator crawling after her, the colors of impatience being replaced by all the colors of joy

On the other side of the wall of bird cages we found a short Audity with his ears pressed tightly to his head, hiding. He was holding a large white bird by its tail. The bird had two beaks and a golden crown.

“Oh!” Alice said. “You recognize it, don’t you, dad?”

“Looks familiar some how.” I said.

“Familiar!” Alice burst out. “That’s the bird sitting on the shoulder of the statue of the First Captain!”

Alice was right. I remembered. Naturally, exactly as the sculptor had cut the stone.

“You’re selling your bird?” I asked the Audity.

“Quiet!” The Audity whispered. “If you don’t want to get me killed, don’t make any noise.”

“You can buy it without a long conversation.” Krabakas of Barakasa spoke into my year. “I would have bought it myself, but I think you need it more. Perhaps, this is the last Blabberyap on the planet.”

“But why such secrecy?”

“I don’t really know myself.” The Blabberyap’s owner answered. “I live well away from town and only get in here very, very rarely. Some time ago, several years ago in fact, this Blabberyap landed in my yard. He was exhausted and injured. I looked after him, and since then he’s lived in my house, although I must say that this Blabberyap has evidently spent its whole life on other worlds. He speaks many different languages. Some days ago I was forced to come into the city on business and met an old friend in a caf‚. We were talking, and my friend mentioned there wasn’t a single Blabberyap bird left in the city. Someone had been buying them up or killing them. But then I told my friend that I had a Blabberyap. ‘Watch him.’ My friend told me. Right away some Earth human came up to me told me he wanted to buy the Blabberyap bird.”

“Did he wear a hat.” Alice asked suddenly.

“Yes, he did.” The Audity answered. “How did you know?”

“And he was middle aged and skinny?”

“Yes.”

“It has to be him.” Alice said.

“Who is it?” Krabakas of Barakasa asked.

“The same fellow who was trading in grubs.”

“Of course it would be him the miscreant!” Krabakas muttered angrily.

“Wait, don’t interrupt.” The Audity stopped us. “I then refused to sell him my beloved bird and went back home. And, imagine, on that very same night someone tried to break into my house. And on the next night someone tried to burn me down, but the Blabberyap was not sleeping and awakened me. And yesterday I found a still unfinished tunnel beneath my house. And last night someone threw an enormous stone into my bed room. Even I can understand: if the bird remains in my house I will not remain alive. If you do not fear death, take the bird, but I cannot answer for the consequences.”

“Take it.” Krabakas said, “The bird is rare, in excellent condition, and you are leaving here anyway. You have nothing to fear.”

“Shall we take him, Papa?” Alice asked and reached out her hand to the Blabberyap bird.

Before I had a chance to answer the Blabberyap fluttered its wings and landed on Alice’s shoulder.

“Fare thee well, my friend.” The Audity sighed.

I settled accounts with the Audity, who almost immediately departed quickly, not even bothering to count the money.

“You can feed the Blabberyap white bread.” The good Krabakas said in parting, “as well as milk. Extract of dogrose would also be useful.”

Having said that compacted himself into a blue cube and lay down in the cage with the canaries.

Alice and I headed toward the Bazar entrance. Alice walked in front, the Blabberyap bird sitting on her shoulder. In truth, he had yet to say a single word, but that did not disturb me. After Alice came the Empathicator, pensively changing its color. I followed, holding a bridle attached to an extremely rare, working, almost sentient Sewing Spider, that I had bought for pocket change. The Sewing Spider was spinning a silk scarf in its cage, its long end trailing along the ground. Behind me came the robot trundler filled with cages and aquariums; it was packed as so high there was no place for anything else. As our little procession passed the Bazar’s collectors turned to us from all sides and repeated again and again in dozens of voices and languages:

“Look! They’ve got a Blabberyap!”

“A Blabberyap!”

“A live Blabberyap!”

Suddenly the Blabberyap inclined its head to the side and started to speak.

“Attention!” It said in Russian. “A landing on this planet is impossible. I am returning to synchronous orbit, and you, my friend, don’t forget to turn on the inertial dampers.”

Having said that, the Blabberyap began to chatter in a totally unknown language without a pause and kept it up for at least two minutes.