Alice: The Girl From Earth

by Kir Bulychev

  “And where am I?”

  “Yes, where are you?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea! For all I know I could be in the Hawaiian Islands, or maybe even Tasmania! Perhaps I am on some uninhabited island like Tristan da Cuhna and it will be another year before I see a ship!”

  “Don’t panic!” The com-link voice said. “We’ll think of something!”

  Suddenly Alice could hold back her laughter no longer. The being in the hat heard the laugh and quickly jumped up.

  “Wait?” She shouted. “There’s someone here. Maybe a wild animal, perhaps even a hyena….”

  “I am not a hyena!” Alice called. She stepped out of the underbrush.

  “An aborigine!” The being in the hat shouted. “Nikitin, hold the line. I’ll try to find a common language with him.”

  The person ran toward Alice, shouting in English and then in French. “Stop, fine person. I mean you no ill will! I am lost! Tell me please, what is the name of your country?”

  “You’re in the Crimea.” Alice answered.

  “You speak Russian!” The stranger was dumbfounded.

  “Of course I do!”

  “Then why did you keep silent?”

  “I wasn’t silent. I wanted to tell you that you’re on Karadag, on the South Shore of the Crimean Peninsular.”

  “No wonder, I should have known.” Off came the fur hat to show long, dark flowing hair; off came the eye glasses to show a beautiful young face with enormous blue eyes; off came the fur coat to reveal a tall young woman.

  The woman stretched out her hand and introduced herself:

  “Svetlana. Svetlana Odinokaya.”

  “Alice Selezneva.”

  “Thank you. You have saved me. Without you I would have perished.”

  “It’s rather hard to perish here. There are people everywhere.”

  “But you found me.”

  “You have a pretty name.” Alice said. “You must write poetry.” For some reason this conclusion met with Svetlana Odinokaya’s strong disapproval.

  “How could you even suspect such a thing!” She growled. “If men want to get drunk in verse over dawns and sunsets or odd named flowers, let them! I’m a real scientist. I did not come here to enjoy myself; we were about to carry out the final tests of the Minimizer Mark Two, the only one of its kind in existence. “

  “And what are you going to test?” Alice asked. The fur hat and coat lay on the suitcase; the only thing Svetlana had in her hands was the pocket com she had turned off.

  “Its response to the extreme conditions of the Northern Ice Sea!” Svetlana said.

  “You seem to have missed your stop.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Just lead me to the nearest flyer station and I’ll continue my journey.” Alice liked Svetlana, and really didn’t want her to fly off to the North Pole.

  “But tell me, can’t you carry our your tests here?” Alice asked.

  “Here? In the Crimea? What sort of extreme conditions can I find around here. And, oh….”

  Svetlana turned the pocket-com back on; Nikitin’s face appeared in the small screen.

  “Listen, Nikitin.” Svetlana said severely. “I’ve just gotten an offer from the natives to carry out our series of experiments here.” She pointed the pick-up toward Alice.

  “So you’ve ascertained where the ‘here’ is, I take it?”

  “Isn’t that already understood. We’re in the Crimea, where else, in Karadag. Instead of hitting the selector button for KARsk sea you made me press the button for KARadag and sent me here.”

  “Lana, just how could I make you do anything if you were the one sitting in the flyer and I was in the Institute?”

  “Nikitin, you miserable coward!” Svetlana shouted and threw the pocket-com away from her in anger, and informed Alice:

  “We’ll carry out the tests here! I’m going to need a testing ground. An open space larger than this one.”

  “There’s one not far from here.” Alice said. “I can take you.”

  Svetlana picked up the suitcase, tossing the coat over her shoulder. Alice picked up the hat, the goggles, and the pocket-com. The com’s screen was broken; Alice supposed Svetlana had thrown it down far too hard.

  Alice walked in front; Svetlana followed about two paces behind.

  “And just what are you doing here?” Svetlana asked. “Are you really a native?”

  “No.” Alice answered. “I study at a school in Moscow. I only came here for one day with some film makers that I know; they’re here to film the sunset for the film ‘Fairy Tale Symphony.’“

  “Men, I take it.”

  “Yes.” Alice answered. “All of them, even one man sold old he fought against Napoleon and there’s real moss growing on him.”

  “On them all.” The words ground through Svetlana’s teeth. “On them all.”

  For some reason the woman was very displeased with men, although Nikitin had seemed polite and well-mannered enough to Alice.

  “So why are you so angry at men?” Alice asked.

  “I’ve simply had far too much of Nikitin.” Svetlana said. “He’s my collaborator. Terribly muddle-headed. Not to mention absent minded. You can’t imagine just how absent minded he is! Yesterday for some reason he bought a whole bouquet of roses. He brought them to the lab. And do you know what he did then? He put them on my chair, forgot them right there! Right on my computer! How utterly repulsive! They stink!”

  “Well what if he put the bouquet of flowers on your desk deliberately? Alice asked.

  “All the worse! It means he’s taunting me, mocking me!”

  “But what if he’s not?” Alice asked.

  “How so?”

  “And what if he likes you?” Alice said. “What if he wanted to please you?”

  “Never! He knows that if he wanted to do something I’d like he could dust my computer!”

  They came out onto a small flyer landing spot right above the sea itself. Below it the land fell away in a small cliff several times a man’s height tall, and below that the waves whispered and hissed as they washed back and forth on the narrow line of tiny stones.

  “We’re here now.” Alice said.

  “One minor problem.” Svetlana said. “If there are more extreme conditions, we’ll wait for them here. I gather there are storms, high winds, and earth quakes in the area?”

  “Maybe.” Alice agreed.

  She went over to the precipice and peered out to sea. Directly ahead of her was the small island with the barge. The awkward figures were all walking up and down the coast.

  “Make yourself some tea?” Svetlana asked.

  Alice turned.

  Alice nearly fell down from astonishment. Svetlana was sitting in a light folding chair at a small table. There was a tea service on the table. An enormous stripped umbrella had been unfurled over the table.

  “How did you do that?” Alice was amazed.

  “Very simple.” Svetlana was pleased with the effect. She motioned to the closed suitcase. “Everything came from the Minimizer. Want to see?”

  Alice walked over to the suitcase and looked inside. In the suitcase lay a number of toys. Svetlana squatted beside the suitcase and rapidly extended her hand inside it, and Alice saw how the hand grew smaller and smaller. Svetlana grabbed a small piece of orange plastic from the suitcase, pulled it out and threw it to one side. Her hand immediately became just as large as it had been, and the piece of plastic turned itself into an inflatable boat large enough for several people. Svetlana’s next move was to pull a pump from the suitcase and attach it to the boat, and after several minutes the boat was completely inflated.

  “Did you invent this?” Alice asked, captivated.

  “Any object which falls within the minimization field is shrunk to one forty-sixth its original size,” Svetlana said, “not only in size but in weight as well.

  “That’s marvelous!”

  “Our invention will be invaluable help to any expedition.” Svetlana
said, not without pride in her voice. “You can take with the minimizer more than you could possibly fit into a whole truck.”

  “To other planets!” Alice said.

  “And for tourists.” Svetlana said. “Not to mention travelers, or people who have to move house.”

  “But the testing phase isn’t ended.” Svetlana said. “So far the minimizer is extremely expensive and there is only this one copy, which, like me, should be at the North Pole, except Nikitin sent me here!”

  “I’m very pleased that you came here instead.” Alice said. “I’m very happy to meet you!”

  “The same.” Svetlana said.

  Alice was about to boast to Svetlana that she also had in her possession a one of a kind instrument, the mielophone, which enabled you to read someone else’s thoughts, but then she remembered, she had taken the mielophone without her father’s permission and grew ashamed.

  Meanwhile, Svetlana reached into her suitcase for a thermos and poured the two of them cups of lemon tea, and asked:

  “And why did you conclude that he didn’t want to get me angry?”

  “Who?”

  “Nikitin, of course! I was so furious with him…. But if he didn’t want to anger me, that means I was furious at him for no good reason?”

  “Doesn’t he like you a lot?” Alice asked.

  “Alice!” Svetlana was shocked. “You’re not yet old enough to be talking about such things!

  “Why? I’m already twelve years old, and I can talk absolutely about everything.”

  Svetlana shrugged her shoulders, looked out to where the sea met the sky, and said:

  “Speaking truthfully, as men go, he’s all right. And not a bad experimenter. He does have positive qualities.”

  “Then you were angry at him for no reason. Now he’s sitting in Moscow, disturbed because you were so put out, and waiting for when you’re going to shout at him

  “You’re exactly right!” Svetlana said. “I should be informing him that I’ve set up. That the experiment has begun. And quite successfully too. Hand me my pocket com.”

  “I’m afraid it’s broken.” Alice said, handing the pocket-com to the woman. “You threw it too hard.”

  “Oh what he’s putting me through,” Svetlana said, and pressed various buttons one after the other, shook the device, and even hit it a few times. But the unfortunate instrument stayed dead.

  “Oh well,” Svetlana said. “They shouldn’t make things so shoddy; a light blow and it’s trash. Now what do I do? How can I notify Nikitin that our experiment has begun? Tell me, how?”

  “Well, you can go down to the film company’s camp. They have their own com equipment. You can call Moscow from there.”

  “You’re right. That’s brilliant.”

  “I can show you where it is, it isn’t far, only about two hundred meters down that trail.”

  “I think not? What am I if I’m not able to find it? What’s your movie director’s name?”

  “Herman. And what will I be doing?”

  “You’ll be sun bathing or swimming; that’s what you came here to do. And you can keep one eye on my equipment at the same time.”

  Alice agreed, and Svetlana quickly headed off down the path.

  Alice sat for a while in the arm chair beneath the umbrella. Then she want back out into the setting sun. She stretched out on the grass at the edge of the landing spot. The sun was still warm, but it was the softer sun of evening. Svetlana still had not returned. The silence was complete; from the sea came thin, almost mosquito voices…. And Alice herself did not notice when she dropped off to sleep.

  She was awakened by someone approaching hre. The steps were so heavy they made the ground shake.

  Alice opened her eyes, but at that moment an enormous, heavy metallic fist smelling of machine oil and rust, clamped itself on her face. Alice tried to beat it away, trying to get out of its grasp, but something had clamped her legs to the ground and her hands crawled over metal.

  “Do you have the wire?” She heard a low, scratchy voice.

  “Aye, aye, sir.” A second voice, scratchy like the first but higher pitched, said.

  “Tie it around the prisoner’s legs.”

  It hurt a great deal. Alice’s legs were tied with wire, which cut into her ankles. Then her hands were tied behind her back as well. And although the metal hand that forced Alice’s head on the ground covered nearly all her face, Alice was able to make out that what had fallen upon her were two metal beings, certainly robots, but never before in her life had she seen such rusty, coarsely made and terrible robots anywhere.

  And iron finger forced a gag into her mouth, a dirty rag. Now Alice could twist and turn and fight back as much as she wanted, but she was bound hand and foot and totally powerless to do anything.

  Alice was only able to turn her head and watch how the two robots roamed the camp, examining Svetlana’s remaining things. Naturally, Alice was hoping that Svetlana would return and free her. But suddenly Alice grew frightened; Svetlana suspected nothing. She might find herself a prisoner too. The robots were clearly insane! Alice had never heard of insane robots, but she couldn’t think of another explanation.

  “A tool for the seating of human beings.” She head the voice of the first robot.

  “Worthless. Leave it.”

  “Human clothing, constructed from the hides of a animals.”

  “Unnecessary.” That was the voice of the second robot.

  “A boat! An inflatable boat. A mechanism of transportation!”

  “Take it. We need transport mechanisms. The steel container is a poor means of attack.”

  “A small portation mechanism.” The first robot. It picked up the suitcase.”

  “Bring it. It is useful.” The second robot said. The first robot clapped the suitcase shut; he threw it into the inflatable boat.

  “The raid is finished.” He said. “We can return to our detachment’s bivouac.”

  He dragged the boat to the cliff, but the second turned to Alice. And, suddenly from the edge of the clearing, they heard a penetrating voice:

  “Whatever is going on here? Who let you loose here, you steel tramps?”

  As if this weren’t bad enough, Alice thought. Now they’re going to grab the old man film robot.

  “Stand!” The robot standing beside Alice ordered the old man. “Do not move! We will shoot.”

  “Just try it!” The old man, instead of trying to save himself, picked up a stick and rushed at the enormous robot.

  “Release the child!” He shouted. “I will make scrap metal of you. You heathens, we beat the Turks for General Gurko. How could you have forgotten? I’ll show you how we did it now! Soldiers, brothers, forward to battle!”

  The robot stepped backwards in surprise, but, evidently, determined the old man was no match for it. It stopped moving and the old man of a film robot rushed toward it, even though the shock of white plastic hair only reached as high as the metal robot’s belt. The second robot left the boat and intercepted the film robot from the side. The film robot did not see the other enemy and continued, waving his stick, advancing, thinking he was going into battle against the Turkish redoubts.

  One of the second robot’s heavy metal hands rose and grabbed the stick out of the old man’s hand. The other hand grabbed the old man around the neck. The old man waved his arms up and down, but there was no way he could get free.

  Seeing that the small enemy had been overcome, The first robot tossed the boat over the small cliff and dragged Alice after it. Alice started to struggle, trying to get free or loosen this cursed wire that was now cutting into her ankles.

  “You cannot resist!” The robot said. “If you do I will force your head into the water and you will no longer obtain oxygen for metabolic functions.”

  Alice stopped shaking her head right away. If the robot had been able to take into its iron head the idea of attacking a human being, it could just as easily get the idea of drowning one. And Alice was very cross wi
th her mother, who had refused to allow her to have the operation to give her artificial gills. Lots of kids had artificial gills put in, especially those who lived near the sea, or under it, or in the pelagic cities on floats as big as whole islands. If she had the synthagills she could have stayed underwater for as long as she wanted.

  When I get home, Alice decided, I’ll certainly be able to convince mom to let me have the operation. There must be five million people with gills, I’m not one of them, and then this hapens!

  The second robot arrived. He was walking slowly and self-importantly, and the last rays of the sun played over his metal body. He carried a stick in his hand and was using it to push the old man from behind, driving the old man, a typical old man, the grandfather from countless children’s TV series, in front of him. The old man’s hands were tied behind his back, the beard hung down on his chest, but his mouth was free. The old man was muttering something angrily.

  “A robot leading a robot.” Alice wanted to say it, but stopped. The old man robot was the most ordinary and well made robot, even if fate had decreed he was to be a movie star. Yes, he had threatened Alice with the stick on the boulevard back in Moscow, but, as Herman had explained, he would never have hit her. It was just his role in the movie, that of an cranky old man.

  “Oh, our sins weigh heavilly.” The old man muttered, finding a place for himself in the boat. What have we done to have this befall us, to be captured by metal Anti-Christs!” Then he saw Alice and became very angered.

  “What is the child doing here? What is it you are going to do? The child is small…”

  “Silence!” The robot said. “The disobedient will be thrown overboard.”

  “Oh….” The old man said and grew silent.

  The metal robot turned on the engine and the boat soundlessly cut the water toward the entrance to the bay. The robots steered the boat closer to the cliffs evidently they feared being sighted by the film crew. Only after they had gone some distance along the coast did the boat turn toward the open sea. The robots ordered their prisoners to lay in the bottom of the boat and pulled enormous Mexican sombreros from beneath the benches, put them on their heads, and pretended to be vacationers to anyone who saw them from afar.