Alice: The Girl From Earth

by Kir Bulychev

  “Nor do we.” The robot agreed.

  We went on into the city. We stopped at one of the apartment buildings enormously long structures with long rows of single plank beds. The individual robots lay on their plants, covered with dust. Indicator lights burned on their foreheads; this meant the robots were alive. The robots could move their eyes, but nothing else. Finally, understanding nothing at all of what was going on, we returned to the space port terminal and put the robot dispatcher into the ATV. He was still at least able to talk. So we brought him to the Pegasus to analyze him there and try to determine the cause of the strange epidemic that had overwhelmed the planet.

  The robot himself was able to help us with his own disassembly; he gave advice, which screw to turn, which button to press. The robot was neglected and dirty, but we were unable to find any particular damage to him. Although, in general, the service robots of this type had long ago been taken out of production in the Galaxy, they were designed to work for centuries and were capable of working in deep space, in volcanoes, underwater, or underground. They just had to be oiled from time to time, but they were perfectly capable of doing that themselves.

  Finally, we laid out the parts of the robot on a large work table in the laboratory; we set his head up in one corner and tied it to the ship’s power net.

  “Anything at all?” The head of the robot asked when Zeleny finished the mechanical dissection of his body.

  Zeleny could only shrug his shoulders.

  “Is there nothing that can be done?” The head asked quietly. “Our entire civilization will die.”

  “We’ll have to send a message to Earth or to some other major planet.” I said. “They can send an expedition with specialists on robot sicknesses.”

  “But how can we be sick?” The robot asked so firmly its jaw remained open. I had to go over and hit it under the chin.

  “Thank you.” The robot said. “But should we remain like this our condition will be perilous. Think of yourself in our position. Not a single moving being on the entire planet. The very first rainstorm of flood will damage us irretrievably; we wouldn’t even be able to dry ourselves off.

  “But listen,” I said, “There is no way we could stay with out until other help arrives!”

  “Then your work must be extremely important, I take it?” The robot head asked.

  Before I had a chance to answer Zeleny said:

  “One last possibility. The first one. I’m going to try to change the oil. May I?”

  “If it’s good quality oil, of course.” The robot head answered.

  Zeleny began to clean all the moving parts of the robot and replace its lubricant with our own.

  At the same time the robot asked again:

  “And just what is it that you are doing?”

  “We’re gathering animals for the Moscow Zoo.” I said. “Rare animals. We should even now be finishing the expedition and returning home. It is extremely difficult to carry a whole zoo with you.”

  “If you can help us,” The robot said, “We would be delighted to give you our animals. There are none like them anywhere else in the universe.”

  “What sort of animals?”

  And then the robot told us:

  Once, many years ago, an automated space ship crashed onto this planet; on board were a number of universal robots. They survived and built themselves huts from pieces of the ship. Then they found deposits of iron and other metals, they found uranium and many other useful resources, And then the robots began to build themselves children, and gradually, over the years, the robots, became very numerous.

  But as intelligent as the robots were they were unable to look into the future. At that time there was water and air on the planet, grass and trees. The robots, however, had no interest whatsoever in the planet’s environment and ecosystems. They made use of their complete freedom and soon built many factories, and all the factories constructed robots, and the new robots built new factories and the new factories prepared new robots. And this continued until the day came when all the oxygen on the planet was consumed in the furnaces, all the trees were turned into warehouses for spare parts, all the native animals had died out, all the mountains were leveled to their foundations and all the seas were expended in coolant for engines. Finally the useful fossil fuels were used up. All that remained on the planet were robots, many billions of ordinary robots who suddenly had nothing at all to do.

  The robots were the forced into a lottery; those who lost were taken apart for spare parts or sold to passing space ships or stellar wanderers for machine oil. That was how the robots lived. Gradually, they became all the fewer, but all the same there remained many millions of robots unemployed. The robots decided to build a space ship and fly it to some as yet unsettled planet in order to start all over again, but they were unable to build a ship because they had no plans, and they were unable to design one themselves. And so it continued, right up to the present time. And then this strange epidemic struck the robots and all of them were paralyzed.

  “But about what animals are you talking?” I asked the robot’s head.

  “About robot animals. We wanted to have everything that people have. And when we realized that the local animals had all died out because they could not live on a dead planet, we made artificial animals But then the shortages became to great and we decided to turn the animals into spare parts of ourselves. We don’t do it any longer, but the animals could feel the danger and they fled over the planet Eyeron’s flat valleys. If you can help us we can catch some totally unusual metal animals for you.

  “Thank you,” I told the robot head, but at the same time thinking that such animals would hardly fit into our Zoo when every school child on Earth can now build a mechanical turtle or electric hedgehog from a kit bought from a store.

  While we spoke with the robot’s head Zeleny cleaned all the parts of the robot’s body throughly and applied new lubricating oil. Then he tightened the robots screws from top to bottom and pressed his thumb down on a red button. All of us waited with concern for what might happen next. The robot uncertainly raised an arm and then made a step forward. The leg obeyed him He made another step, raised both arms above his head, bent forward, then back, and began to dance. I had never before in my life seen a dancing robot. He almost knocked over the table and nearly kicked me; the robot seemed to be laughing from joy.

  Having danced himself to contentment the robot shouted:

  “Tha…ag!” And froze.

  We hadn’t changed the lubricating oil on his head.

  This time engineer Zeleny didn’t hit the robot with his fist on his chin’ he just dipped the head into an open oil can.

  The robot started to gurgle, something clicked inside him, the mouth started to open and closed again, and the robot sang in a fine, resonant voice:

  “Too, too, the lilly-white boys, clothe them all in green, Ho! Ho! one for one and all for all and ever more shall be, so!” which had evidently been programmed into his ancestor long, long ago.

  “So then, the problem is located in the lubricating oil.” The robot said more than a little disturbed. “But it was almost fresh. We had just changed it.”

  Zeleny, without saying a word, placed some of the old machine oil taken from the robot onto a glass slide and went over to the microscope.

  “It’s all clear now.” Zeleny said after a minute. “I should have guessed it right from the beginning. There’s bacteria in the oil which turns it into useless gunk. Interesting any idea how this bacteria could have gotten into your oil supply?”

  The robot started to think. We all went into the Crew’s Lounge to continue the conversation.. The robot continued to think. We poured ourselves tea, and poured our robot guest a tube of sunflower oil, an enormous delicacy for robots. The robot automatically drank down the tube’s contents and continued to think.

  Suddenly over our heads the Blabberyap bird awoke. It caught one sight of our guest and, spreading its beak wide, began to sing:

&nb
sp; “‘Who’s afraid of the big, bad, wolf..’.”

  The bird was singing in the robot’s voice.

  We were very surprised. Only the robot was not surprised; he raised his head and said to the Blabberyap bird:

  “Hello, bird. How are you?”

  But the Blabberyap bird continued to sing; it fluttered its wings. No one had expected an answer; a Blabberyap is not a very wise bird.

  “You know the Blabberyap bird?” Alice asked.

  “Yes, of course.” The robot answered absently. “I was the one who repaired him.”

  “And how could you repair a living bird?” Alice was curious.

  “A few years ago,” the robot answered, “this bird came to our planet out of space. At the time we didn’t have any air worth breathing and there were no local animals left, but Blabberyaps, as you must know, do not need air. They are able to fly between planets and not breath for several weeks and even for months. But this bird hardly made it to our planet. Someone had attacked it en route and severely wounded the bird.

  “We rescued the bird, fattened him up again on lubricating oil, but one wing had to be cut off and replaced with a prosthetic.”

  “That’s not possible.” I exclaimed. “We would have noticed it already.”

  “Take a look.” The robot answered with pride. “We do superb repair work.”

  I got to my feet and walked over to the Blabberyap bird. The bird, as though guessing what was needed, spread its right wing. I felt it. Beneath the feathers was metal. The robot had told the truth.

  “As you see, not even you noticed it.” The robot said triumphantly.

  “But what happened to the bird then?” Alice asked.

  “It had flown here from the Medusa system.” The robot said. “Someone was chasing after it and wanted to kill it. While we were fixing the bird it told us a great deal, and we leaned that someone had suffered some sort of accident and fallen into danger on one of the Medusa system’s planets and the bird was hurrying to inform someone else, a friend. We would have gone to his aid ourselves, but we don’t have any space ships.”

  “And you let the bird go?”

  “We let it go.” The robot said. “But we tried to explain to it that it would never be able to reach the sector of the Galaxy where it was headed. Although the artificial wing looks just like the real one, it’s not possible to fly very far on it. Alas, the bird did not understand us. It is not a very wise bird. But we also knew that the planet Blooke isn’t very far from us; it’s the Blabberyap bird’s home planet, and we concluded the blabberyap bird would be able to make it home. We haven’t seen it since then.”

  “There, see!” Alice said. “How can you doubt that the Second Captain survived and sent the bird for help now?”

  “But four years have passed since then.” I answered. “Most likely, he’s dead.”

  “But I should relate to you one very strange event.” The robot said. “It took place not all that long ago. About a month or so. Just three days before the epidemic began. I would not have even remembered about it had I not seen the Blabberyap bird. A small black ship landed here on our world. One individual emerged. He wore a hat. We thought at first that he wanted to deal in our spare robots, but it turned out his ship was damaged and he needed our aid… We were delighted to have a chance to render assistance to this person…”

  “That was Doctor Verkhovtseff.” Alice whispered.

  “But when his ship was ready for flight we asked him if he might give us some machine oil or recent newspapers in exchange for the labor. However, the person in the hat cursed us and said that we would get nothing. And that we should be thankful to him for even leaving us alive. I then said to him: ‘Alien, you should be ashamed of yourself. I remember when we aided a non sapient bird, a Blabberyap, and repaired her wing, although she had nothing to give us in return, and we thought nothing about it. But you are a sapient being, an Earthman by your exterior appearance. You should be ashamed of yourself!’ At that he asked: ‘What Blabberyap’s wing did you fix?’ I said that had happened all of four years before and was irrelevant to the present matter. But he insisted that I tell him all about the injured bird. You should have seen how angry he became. He cursed us for helping the bird, and when he learned she had flown on to the planet Blooke, he set off for there. ‘I have wasted far too much time on that darned bird!” And he muttered a few more things. And later that night he was seen near the main cistern…”

  “What cistern?”

  “Now all is clear!” The robot said. “He went to the main cistern that contained the machine oil! He is an evil individual, and he may very well have contaminated it with harmful bacteria…”

  We told the robot the bacteria may very well have gotten to the planet by some other means, but the robot just shook its head and would not listen to a word I said.

  As a parting gift we gave the robot a can with machine oil, enough so he could fix several dozen robots, and promised to immediately send hyperspatial telegrams to the nearest planet as soon as we were in space again so they could send a ship with machine oil.

  When the robot departed my friends grew furious.

  “The faster we go the better.” They rushed to me. “We may still be able to save the Captain! Now there isn’t the slightest doubt that he’s fallen into some misfortune and that Doctor Verkhovtseff fears that someone will learn the truth.”

  “I feel ashamed of being an Earthman.” Zeleny said gloomily. “And until we solve this mystery I won’t be able to look any aliens in the eyes. If Earth has produced such a despicable monster it is our duty to find him and pull his fangs. Maybe the Second Captain will be able to help us in this, once we find him. The animals can wait.”

  I sighed and agreed, and anyway Alice and Poloskov were in complete agreement with Zeleny.

  “All right.” I said, joining the majority. “Although I suspect that your hopes are founded only on rumors and we won’t find the Second Captain in the Medusa system. As soon as we’re convinced that it is all an error we can head back to the center of the Galaxy do some quick animal collecting.”

  “Prepare the ship for departure!” Poloskov gave the order. “Zeleny, to the engine room. Get ready with the antigravs.”

  I sent over to the port to take a last look at a planet rendered lifeless and empty by a race of industrious robots who never thought about what they were doing; then I noticed the robot dispatcher was running toward the Pegasus across the dusty field. He was carrying something in his hands.

  I went down the gang plank to meet him.

  “Take these animals.” He said. “All you need do is change their machine oil; at the moment they’re all paralyzed.”

  He pushed a pile of metallic objects into my arms.

  “Farewell.” He said as I pulled up the gangplank. “If you should ever find that fiend in a hat and not know what to do with him, bring him to us. We have tons of ruined lubricants to smear him with!” The robot started to laugh and headed off into the dust.

  While the ship accelerated for our hyperspace jump I changed the lubricating oil on the metallic animals. I really did want to get a look at the type of animals robots might come up with for their world. And when Zeleny looked into the lab two hours later he almost collapsed from shock. On the floor of the lab he saw little robot animals on wheels chasing after each other. As animals they were terrible, but they more or less resembled mice and cats. Evidently, when the robots built them, they still had memories of real cats and mice.

  I placed the robot animals in a steel cage, but sometimes they slip out and go chasing after the diamond backed turtle.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Chase for Milady deWinter

  The Medusa system is located at the very furthest reaches of our Galaxy. It consists of three planets orbiting a large sun from which protuberances like long hairs flow out into the darkness of space. The first world, the world closest in to the star, is so baked by the heat that it was instantly clear that we would
find nothing there.

  We flew on to the second world.

  The planet was empty, a gloomy desert. The rays of the sun beat back from shining grey rocks, from a lake of asphalt, from a few naked trees. An eternal wind howled over this world.

  “Well, is it?” I asked the Blabberyap bird. “Is this the planet or not?”

  The Blabberyap leaned its head to one side and gave me no answer.

  “Pa,” Alice said, walking to the port hole in the crew’s lounge, “that’s no way to talk to him. He’s afraid of you?”

  “But he’s not afraid of you?”

  “None of the animals are afraid of me.” Alice said. She was holding one of the robot cats in her arms; it kept licking Alice on the nose with its cold, rubbery tongue. “Blabberyap dear, tell us, did you have to leave your master on this planet?”

  The Blabberyap listened to Alice’s words and answered in the voice of the Second Captain:

  “‘Beware of the mirages. Do not trust them. Do not get lost in them.’“

  “Alas, I think the bird is rather stupid.” I said sincerely. “Is she talking about the planet or about mirages?”

  “We’ll see.” Alice answered.

  Rain was trickling down the ports; the rain itself was light but the wind blew it in streams that ran over and flowed down the Pegasus’ hull. Even looking out onto this planet was uncomfortable. A long, very boring, night had fallen.

  “Oh well,” Poloskov said, “It’s too late to do anything outside today. I suggest we have supper and get some sleep.”

  After supper Alice locked the metal cat in its cage, picked up a book and sat down on the small couch in the Crew’s Lounge. I set about searching for the runaway Diamond Backed Turtle, to make certain it did not get into trouble. Poloskov and Zeleny also had things of their own to do.

  Two or three hours passed. I returned to the Crew’s Lounge. Alice was still reading. The lounge was comfortable and warm and especially pleasant now that, although the wind still howled beyond the port, the rain at least had stopped.