Alice: The Girl From Earth - Булычев Кир. Страница 68

“That really is too dangerous.”

“No. Not too dangerous.”

“Far too dangerous. That’s why I’ll be going with you.”

“You’re going with me?”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t look anything at all like the Coleidans. They’ll spot you for what you are.”

“But I do look like their cats. So you’re going to go traveling with your kitten. Face it; I know the language better than you do. I’ve studied all we could find and I can support you when you need it. I will be very useful.”

“But I really didn’t want anyone running around after me.” Alice said.

But in fact she was very glad that little Purr would be going along. The idea of traveling in a strange country a hundred years in the past was really very frightening.

“I can hold you in my arms and carry you like a kitten.”

“Better to put me in your bag.”

“Okay, I’ll take the bag. And anyway I have to carry the cannister with the vaccine. That’s the whole reason for going.”

“Then get ready; I have to go back to my tent?”

“For what?”

“For money; I have local money in my lab. We’re going to have to buy train tickets. Then I want to make myself a tail and drop off my clothing. The Coleidans don’t have cats with clothing. I really don’t want to go traipsing all over a strange planet in my birthday suit, but what else can I do?”

“It doesn’t matter, and really, you’re not naked.” Alice said. “You have a really marvelous coat of fur.”

“Thank you.” Purr pipped up. “But we have very different views on the same subject.”

He raised small puffs of sand as he ran to his tent.

Alice pulled on the jump suit, then slipped back into the tent and took the cannister with the vaccine from the nail. Gromozeka still slept; he was breathing loudly, and his tentacles spilled from the wide bed onto the floor.

Then Alice searched for her bag, putting the sweater and the spray can inside. Then she thought a moment and decided that there was really no way she could go into the past in a one piece coverall with the Galactic Federation’s insignia and “Coleida Expedition” written in cosmolingue on it. She searched around for her own suitcase and found the dress her grandmother had insisted she bring but which she still hadn’t worn, and put it on. Gromozeka was still sleeping.

But when she was ready to depart and looked around it seemed to her that one of Gromozeka’s eyes were still open.

“Aren’t you sleeping?” She whispered.

“I’m sleeping.” Gromozeka whispered in return. “You haven’t forgotten your sweater?”

“No.” Alice blinked in surprise.

She stood there a moment or a few seconds, but Gromozeka continued to sleep soundly. Perhaps it only appeared that she had just been speaking with him?

She pushed the tent flap aside and went out.

“All in order?” The whisper came from below.

Alice bent down and saw a little, furry cat with a short tail standing by her legs in the light of the moon.

“How did you make your tail?”

“One of my neighbors in the tent has a brush with real furn on it. He kept joking that the brush was made from one of my brothers not the most successful of jokes. As you can see, it does go well with my furn. Like it?”

“You are a perfect cat.” Alice said. “It’s just, well, you only have the one eye.”

“There’s nothing we can do about that.” Purr sighed. “I’ll have to mostly keep to the bag. Is Gromozeka still sleeping?”

“Of course.” Alice said. “And a very strange sleep indeed. In the middle of it he told me to take my sweater with me.”

“A-ha!” Purr said, as though he did not really believe that Gromozeka was sleeping at all.

The two of them headed for the darkened building housing the Time Machine. /P>

12

Alice began by pressing the green button. The door to the time cabinet closed. She arranged her bag more comfortably on her shoulder and held the little archaeologist Purr tightly to her chest. Purr’s single eye widened in terror.

“Don’t be alarmed.” Alice told him. “This is the way it works.”

She pressed the white button.

And then the red.

Immediately a mist covered her, her head spun, the laboratory vanished, and it became impossible to tell if she was flying or standing no walls, no floor, no floor, only some sort of incomprehensible movement which whirled her about and carried her forward.

Suddenly there was a crack of lightning and again she was surrounded by mist.

The mist dissipated.

Morning had already begun. Alice was standing in exactly the same spot where the time station had stood would stand but there was no time station, nor was there a city of dome tents near-by.

Around her was a lush green meadow, further on a woods, and on the other side of the woods she could make out roofs. The roofs were exactly where the archaeologists had excavated the small town. And all this was utterly remarkable, because this very town had been empty, with roofs collapsed and windows like the gaping sockets of an eyeless skull. Nor had there been any trees, or any grass. But the sky was the same as it had been, and the hills around town were the same.

“You’re almost crushing me.” A weak voice came from the bag, and Alice gave a start from surprise. Then she realized she was clutching the small archeologist too tightly to her chest.

“I can’t breath.” Purr shouted. “Set me down and let me out of the bag. Carrying me all the time is going to be very hard.”

Alice opened her arms, completely forgetting that the small archaeologist was not a cat; Purr fell on the ground and groaned.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Alice said. “I quite forgot.”

Purr wiped his bruised feet and answered severely.

“There’s no time to waste. We have to go into town, or the train might leve without us. Then coming here, all we have done, will have been in vain.”

“And what if the machine was wrong? What if the ship isn’t going to land today.”

“It isn’t machines that make mistakes.” The archaeologist answered, and hurried head across the grass toward the town.

Alice walked behind. She grabbed a camomile like flower as she passed and smelled it. The flower did not have any scent at all. A bee buzzed over Alice’s head.

“Go away.” Alice told the bee, and then remembered: if she failed here, in a weak there would be nothing left alive. Not bees, not people, not even the trees.

The archaeologist ran out onto the narrow pathway first.

“Don’t hold back!” He called again and flicked his tail.

“Do you know what?” Alice told him. “You might want to wave your tail a little less. It really doesn’t look all that natural on you.”

“It’s attached tightly.” Purr said, but he stopped waving it back and forth.

They approached the trees. The trees were evenly spaced apart and ran in a narrow band as though they had been specially planted.

“Wait here a moment.” Purr whispered. “I’ll go take a look and see if anyone’s up ahead.”

Alice stopped and from nothing else to do began to pull the flower apart in order to make herself a garland. Alice had a weakness for weaving garlands from camomiles or other flowers, for example, clover. But clover did not grow on Coleida.

“Hey!” Alice heard a high pitched shriek, then growling. She threw away the flowers and ran toward the trees. Something had frightened the archaeologist.

She was just in time. The little archaeologist was running toward her down the path at full gallop, and after him, Purr’s brush tail in his teeth, ran an enormous dog.

“Back! Get away from him.” Alice shouted at the dog.

The dog showed his teeth and growled, but stopped.

Alice picked up the little archaeologist and held him cat-wise; Purr whispered:

“Thank you!”

“Give back the tail.” Alice told the dog, who stood not far off and refused to let go of the furry tail in its mouth. “That’s someone else’s tail. It’s not yours. Give it back now.”