by Kir Bulychev
During supper Gromozeka placed Alice some distance away from him, so she could not ask questions. Some seven tall glasses filled with sliced peaches and apples, orange slices and grapefruit had appeared in front of Alice as if by magic; by now the whole expedition knew Alice loved fruit salad, and had Gromozeka not been watching after her she would have been swimming in it.
But on that evening Alice didn’t even look at the fruit salad. She was trying to catch Gromozeka’s eye, and to listen to what he was saying with Petrov. And when super ended, she heard Gromozeka say:
“Such a marvelous sunset! Would you object if we took a short walk and admired the works of nature?”
“N-nature?” Petrov was surprised. “I haven’t noticed much love of sunsets from you. Actually, I would rather return to the time machine.”
“Nonsense! Time waits.” Gromozeka growled amicably and dragged Petrov off into a corner.
Alice understood that now Gromozeka’s would make his most important move; he would speak about tomorrow’s time flight and his real, hidden agenda. That was when Alice did something very improper and unladylike: she began to overhear the conversation between the archeologist and the temporalist. She waited until they had stopped by a large stone and silently ran close enough to them to overhear, and froze in silence.
“If the Space Plague epidemic had been, say, interdicted with modern medicines right at the very beginning,” Gromozeka asked Petrov, “do you suppose it could have been stopped?”
“Of course it could have.” Petrov said. “Only it’s a meaningless question. Coleida died a hundred years ago.”
“A-ha.” Gromozeka said, clearly having heard only the beginning of Petrov’s answer. “That means it’s possible.”
So he proceeded to tell Petrov everything of his desires to change the planet Coleida’s entire history and return it to life.
At first Petrov just laughed, but Gromozeka was entirely serious / did not bat a tentacle [FIND SOME PHRASING]. The archaeologist just puffed yellow smoke and repeated what would have to be done: get to the space port at the moment the Coleidan ship landed and destroy the virus.
“But… how?”
“I’ve thought everything out.” Gromozeka said. “Before our departure from Earth I went to the Medical Institute and asked for their vaccine against the Plague. I told them that our archaeological expedtion was working on a world where there was a danger of infection. They literally thrust the serum on me. Every medical center on Earth has a supply of the vaccine. If the virus every attempts to fall on Earth again, so much the worse for it.”
“You mean you were planning to change Coleida’s history from the very first?”
“Absolutely true, Petrov!” Gromozeka clicked his sharks’ teeth together. “Right from the beginning. Even before your Time Institute agreed to send you here in the machine.”
“And you did not speak a word of this when you were on Earth?”
“Not a word. You would not even have bothered to listen to me.”
Alice was of the opinion that Gromozeka was far too secretive and distrusting. Certainly the temporalists would have heard him out, no matter what he had to say.
“It’s obvious you or Richard would find it impossible to get the Vaccine to the space ship itself; that’s why I invited Alice along.” Gromozeka continued. “She’s the same height as the Coleidans, and she’s agreed to douse the ship with the vaccine under the noses of the locals…”
“You mean you brought Alice here to endanger her?”
“Now really, Academic! What a thing to say!” Gromozeka was actually angry. “I have not endangered her, nor anyone else. Alice is an experienced, competent person. She’s already ten years old! She’s had several expeditions in space under her belt already. She’s just perfect for dealing with his minor….”
“Not under any circumstances!” In speaking, Petrov used the very same tones Alice expected her father would. “It’s one thing for me or Richard to take risks, but Alice no way!”
“But Academic…”
“I don’t even want to hear you! In general, your ideas are.. are… are courageous! Yes, And interesting. But what the effects of our actions will be in the long run are completely unknown. At the very least I have to talk it over with Richard. And then we’ll ask Earth to make a decision.”
From her hiding place Alice could see Gromozeka literally wilt. Even his head sag and his shoulders sagged so much they were little more than a small hill above his tentacles.
“Everything is lost then.” He said. “Everything his dead. You will begin a correspondence with Earth, seven hundred experts will come here on expense accounts, and in the final analysis what they will say is that nothing should be done. The risk is just to great for the whole Galaxy.”
“Ah, well. Then you understand it.” Petrov said.
“Of course I understand…”
“So. Tomorrow Richard will go into the p-past, and try to get on the train that runs to the capitol. There he will observe the return of the Coleidan space ship, return, and provide is with information concerning its condition and the conditions of the crew. And, let me repeat myself, we take nothing for granted. If, it turns out, that you are correct and that Space Plague descended onto the planet’s surface in that ship, we will advise the Earth and take council with the scientific community. That is all. Good night, and, please, don’t be angry with me.”
With these words Petrov departed for the time machine building, to finish readying it for tomorrow’s work.
Gromozeka was unable to lift himself off the ground. He sat on the stones and looked like nothing so much as an enormous, enormously sad, octopus.
Alice became very sad. She abandoned her hiding place behind the stones and walked closer to the archaeologist.
“Gromozeka.” She whispered softly and stroked one of his shaggy tentacles.
“What?” He asked and opened one of his eyes. “Oh, it’s you, isn’t it, Alice? You heard.”
“I heard.”
“And so, my plans have come crashing down in flames.”
“Don’t be sorry, Gromozeka. I’m for you, no matter what. Isn’t there some way we can think of something…”
“We shall certainly think of something.” A thin voice cut through the darkness.
Purr, the small archaeologist, jumped out from behind another of the rocks. Like a cat. His single eye caught the last red of sunset.
“I have also heard everything.” He said. “I could no longer endure the unsatisfied curiosity. I also am in complete agreement with you. We cannot just stand by while thousands of experts carry out thousands of simulations. We, the archaeologists, have discovered the past. But until now we have never changed it, and now, I say, we shall! If the temporalists hesitate or refuse, then we should bind them head and foot and I will go back into the past with Alice in thier place!”
“Now that really would be too much.” Gromozeka laughed sadly. “We’d all be booted out of the professional societies and never dig again. And with cause.”
“Let them expel us. We can remain and live on this planet. The grateful Coleidans will build us a monument.”
“You know what,” Gromozeka lifted himself to his full, Elephantine, height. “Let’s stop telling each other fairy tales. It’s time we all went to bed.”
Gromozeka waleked in front, scarcely moving his tentacles he was so rasstroen. Alice and Purr walked a few paces behind and tried to calm him down.
But Gromozeka was bezuteshen.
They stopped at the tents to say good-night to Purr.
“Nothing terrible is about to happen from our standpoint. “ Purr said. “Tomorrow Richard is going to get a look at the ship’s return a hundred years ago, and we are all going to write letters to Earth. And anyway, they all really did die a hundred years ago. And even if your idea is carried out in ten years or more, or a hundred years down the line, it hardly matters.”
“ Some comfort you are!” Gromozeka said, and collapsed
into his bed.
Alice held back at the entrance. A thought had occurred to her.
“Which tent are you in?” She asked Purr.
“The third from the end.”
“Then don’t go to sleep.” Alice said. “I have to have a word with you. But only after everyone else is asleep.”
Gromozeka readied himself for bed noisly, snorting and howling.
“Listen.”Alice asked him. “Just how were you going to give the astronauts their shots?” She asked. “They would hardly have agreed to received unknown shots from unknown visitors?”
“Now that would be a stupid idea!” Gromozeka answered in a drowsy voice. “I was not at all planing to give them shots.
“At the Institute of Medicine they gave me this spray,” Gromozeka showed her the small spray can, similar in size to a thermous, which hung around his neck on a chain. Alice had seen it a thousand times and had paid it not the sightest bit of attention. “It acts like a fire extinguisher.” Gromozeka said. “You just have to press the button aand the vaccine comes out as a fine mist under high pressure. The mist will hang in the air and surround everyone and everything. If you direct the spray at the ship’s open air lock, it will fill the ship and kill the virus. The astronauts will breath the mist into their lungs and it will cure them, if they are already sick. In three minutes there will not be a virus of the Space Plague on the planet. Oh well, get some sleep; it’s never going to be used now. Turn down the light; tomorrow we have to get up early.”
11
Alice obediently lowered the light and listened to Gromozeka’s breathing. It was difficult to decide if he was sleeping or not. First because he slept so fitfully. And far more importantly, Gromozeka had three hearts and his breathing was very uneven.
Alice decided to count to a thousand. She managed to reach five hundred and fifty and realized that she was falling asleep, and there was nothing she could do about it. She pinched herself on the hand, but the pinch felt far off and weak, and immediately it seemed that she was riding on the Coleidan train in a small wagon, and the wheels were droning on and on and on…
“Alice.” The train conductor whispered to her.
Obviously, he wanted her ticket. But Alice had no ticket; she had forgotten her money at home. She wanted to tell the conductor that but her mouth froze and would not obey her.
The conductor took her by the hand to escort her from the wagon, and Alice attempted to break free.
And suddenly she realized it was pitch black all around her. That she was in the tent, and not in the train, that she had fallen asleep anyway.
She got to her feet. The bed creaked. Gromozeka rolled over in his dreams and asked:
“Who’s not sleeping?”
Alice froze. Close by she could hear his occasional breathing.
“Who’s there?” Alice whispered.
The tent’s entrance flap was slightly ajar.
“It’s me.” Purr answered.
Alice grabbed her overalls and sneaked outside.
The only light came from a bright moon; not a single lamp could be seen in the camp. It was chilly. Purr was little more than a black shadow amid other shadows.
“I was waiting for you.” The little archaeologist whispered. “But you never came. I am always true to my word. I said I would not sleep, and I did not.”
“Sorry, Purr.” Alice said. “I was counting to a thousand tp give Gromozeka a chance to fall asleep, and fell asleep myself.”
“Why did you ask me not to sleep?”
“Haven’t you guessed?”
“Of course I have.” Purr said. “I just want to hear the words from you.”
“Tomorrow morning Richard will be going into the past. His job is just to case the landing site and get a look at the ship. Petrov won’t permit him to do anything else. But the machine is ready to do its job. So what if I get into it and journey into the past instead of Richard? Gromozeka explained everything that would have to be done to me.”
“You’ll be able to turn on the time machine?”
“I know everything that has to be done.”
“And what will you be doing in the past?”
“I have to get to the launch site, meet the ship when it arrives, and kill the virus.”
“How?”
“Gromozeka has it all ready I know that part too.”
The little archaeologist thought for a few moments.
“It is going to be our only chance, most definitely.” He said. “If it isn’t done now, no one is ever going to do it. But it really is going against all the rules!”
“Quiet! Or you’ll wake everyone up. Think a moment, which is worse, we go against the rules a little, or the whole planet dies. I’m willing to take the risk.”
“You talk like Joan of Arc.” The little Purr said. “You remember her?”
“Of course I remember. She saved France.”
“Correct. I’ve also read about it. Only Joan was seventeen, and you’re only ten.”
“But Joan lived, oh, a thousand years ago, and I live in the twenty-first century.”
“You know,” The little black mass laying at Alice’s feet said, “You’re right. Sometimes you have to throw the rules aside.”
“Great.” Alice said. “In the morning when they wake up tell them what happened. I’ll return only when everything’s done. So they won’t go searching for me.”
“They will very certainly follow after.”
“No, you don’t understand, Purr. They can’t do that at all; the machine can only send one person at the time. It keeps the person in its memory until it has to retrieve him. If you sent a second person before the first got back the first would have to stay in the past for good. Petrov knows this better than anyone else. No matter what happens, they’re going to have to wait for me to get back.”
“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 Fed
eration’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.”