Alice: The Girl From Earth

Chapter Six The Wander Bushes

The Doctor stood for what seemed to be forever at the feet on the enormous stone Captains and twisted and turned his hat in his hands. The golden rays of the setting sun illuminated him, and it seemed he was also a statue, merely much smaller than the rest.

“Waaait!” The long cry suddenly reached us.

We turned

The Doctor was running in our direction, his feet sinking into the sand.

The Doctor reached us, and spent the next two minutes trying to get his breath back, continuingly starting with one or another sentence, but the air in his lungs was insufficient to allow him to finish.

“Boo…” He said. “Bu..”

“Butterflies?” She asked.

“Nah… No. Bushes. I…for-got to tell you about the bushes.”

“What bushes?”

“I was standing right by the bushes and forgot to even mention them.”

The Doctor pointed at the monument. Even from where we stood some distance away it was clear the sculptor had illustrated an enormous, splendid bush at the feet of the Third Captain, carefully carving its leaves and branches out of the stone.

“I thought that was just to make it pretty.” Alice said.

“No, its one of the wander bushes! You mean to tell you’ve never even heard of the wander bushes?”

“No, never.”

“Then listen, please. It will only take two minutes. When the Third Captain was on Aldebaran’s seventh planet he got lost in a desert. There was no water, no food, no nothing. But the Captain knew that if he did not make it to the base his whole ship’s crew would die, because they were all sick with a fever contracted in space and the vaccine was only at this one abandoned, empty base in the foothills of the Sierra Barracuda mountains.

“And then, when the Captain’s strength was exhausted and he had lost his way in the sand, he heard a distant singing. At first the Captain was certain it was a hallucination, but despite that he gathered the last of his strength and headed in the direction of the sounds.

“After three minutes he had crawled in among the bushes. The bushes in those places grow around small springs, and before sand storms their leaves stricking against each other producing melodic sounds. It appears the bushes are singing. So, in this way, the bushes in the Sierra Barracuda mountains lead the Captain to the water by their singing, gave him the chance to survive a terrible sand storm, and save the lives of eight other astronauts who were dying from a cosmic disease. To commemorate this event the sculptor chose to add a bush to the statue of the Third Captain.

“Therefore, I think it may be worth your while to look in on Aldebaran Seven in the area of the Sierra Barracuda, to find the bushes. Also, the Third Captain said that the bushes are covered with enormous, softly iridescent flowers in the evenings.”

“Thank you, Doctor?” I said. “We will certainly try to find these bushes and bring them to Earth.”

“Do you think they can grow in pots?” Alice asked.

“Certainly.” The doctor answered. “But in truth I have never seen the bushes myself and they are very rare. They’re only found at springs in the very center of the desert that surrounds the Sierra Barracuda mountains…”

…The Aldebaran system lay not far off, and we decided to search out the bushes, if possible, to find out what their singing sounded like.

For eighteen times our landing boat cris-crossed the entire desert, and only on the nineteenth pass did we see a flash of green in a deep hollow. The boat spiraled down over the sandy valleys, and we made out bushes surrounding a spring.

The bushes were low, just up to my belt, and possessed long, leaves that were silver on the inside and thick roots which came out of the sand easily. We carefully dug out five of the bushes, choosing those which already had buds, transferred them to a large box filled with sand, and brought our trophy back to the Pegasus.

That very same day the Pegasus took off from the desert satellite and headed on its way.

As soon as acceleration had ended I began to ready for the survey camera, because I hoped that glowing flowers would soon blossom on the bushes, and Alice went and got paper and crayons in order to draw them.

It was then that we heard the low, harmonious singing.

“What’s that?” The engineer Zeleny was surprised. “I didn’t turn on music. Who turned it on? Why won’t they let me get any sleep?”

“That’s our bushes singing!” Alice shouted. “Does that mean we have a sand storm heading our way?”

“What?” Zeleny dismissed the idea. “Where would we get a sand storm in space?”

“Let’s go take a look at the bushes, Papa.” Alice insisted. “We’d see what’s up.”

Alice ran off toward the hold, but I held back a few seconds to grab and load the camera.

“I’ll take a look too.” Zeleny said. “I’ve never seen singing bushes before.”

I suspected that in fact he wanted to take a look out the nearest window because he was afraid we were in fact due for a sand storm.

I had just finished loading the camera when I heard a shout. I recognized Alice’s voice.

I threw down the camera in the crew’s lounge and hurried down the ladder way toward the holds.

“Papa!” Alice shouted. “Just take a look at that!”

“Save yourselves!” Zeleny roared. “They’re walking!”

A few more steps and I had run up to the double lock doors to the cargo hold. In the open doors I collided with Alice and Zeleny. More precisely, I collided with Zeleny who was holding Alice. Zeleny looked frightened and his beard blew wild, like from a wind.

On the other side of the airlock door leading to the hold stood the bushes. The sight was utterly terrifying. The bushes had extracted themselves from the sand and were moving heavily and slowly on their short, deformed roots, advancing on us. They were walking in a half circle, shaking their branches, the buds had opened and reddish flowers now glared at us like hostile eyes from amid their leaves.

“To Arms!” Zeleny shouted at the top of his lungs and handed Alice to me.

“Close the door!” I said.

But it was too late. While we had been talking, trying to get past each other, the first of the bushes had passed through the hold lock and we were forced to step back into the corridor.

One after another the bushes followed after their leader.

Zeleny, pressing all the emergency buttons on the nearest com panel, ran off to the bridge for weapons, and I grabbed a mop that was standing against he wall and tried to protect Alice. She was looking at the advance of the bushes enchanted, like a rabbit at a boa constrictor.

“Get out of here! Run!” I shouted at Alice. “I won’t be able to hold them off for long!”

The bushes were resolute, with strong branches they clutched at the mop and tried to tear it out of my hands. I backed off.

“Hold on, pop!” Alice said, and ran off.

At least Alice is safe, I thought. My own situation continued to remain perilous. The bushes were trying to force me into a corner, and I couldn’t even move the mop.

“Why does Zeleny want the flamethrower?” I heard Captain Poloskov’s voice over the loudspeaker. “What’s going on.”

“The bushes are attacking.” I answered. “But don’t give Zeleny the flamethrower. I’m trying to contain them in their section. As soon as I can get them back through the lock I’ll let you know and we can seal the cargo section.”

“You’re not in any danger, are you?” Poloskov asked.

“Not at the moment.” I answered.

And at that very moment the nearest bush had yanked on the mop and pulled it out of my hands. The mop flew to the furthest end of the corridor, and the bushes, as though buoyed by my now by my now unarmed state, moved toward me in close order.

At that moment I heard rapid steps approaching from behind.

“Get away, Alice!” I shouted. “Get back this instant! They’re as strong as lions!”

But Alice crawled beneath my legs and threw herself at the bushes.

She had something large and shining in her hands. I tried to grab her as she passed but lost my balance and fell. The last thing I saw was Alice surrounded by the threatening branches of the moving bushes.

“Poloskov!” I shouted. “I need help now!’

And at that very instant the bushes singing stopped! It turned into low humming and a sigh.

I got to my feet and surveyed a picture of absolute tranquility.

Alice was standing in a thicket of bushes and was watering them from a garden can.

The bushes had their leaves turned into little cups, trying not to loose a single drop of moisture, and sighed blissfully.

When we moved the bushes back into the hold we found the broken mop and wiped the floor, and I asked Alice:

“But how did you guess it?”

“It wasn’t all that special, Pop. The bushes are plants, aren’t they? That means they have to be watered. Like carrots. And we did dig them out of the ground, we moved them into plastic pots filled with sand, and we forgot to water them. When Zeleny grabbed me to try and save me, it gave me a chance to think: at home they live right at the edge of a spring. The Third Captain only found them and the water because of their singing, and they only sing when there’s a sand storm coming, that is when the wind is moving and drying out the air and pulls water from the sand. That’s when they’re agitated because they don’t have enough water. “

“Why didn’t you say so immediately?”

“Would you have believed me. You were fighting them like they were tigers. You completely forgot they were just ordinary bushes who have to be watered.”

“Not at all ordinary!” The Engineer Zeleny cut in. “Ordinary bushes do not go hunting for water down the corridors of a space ship!”

Then it was my turn, as the biologist, to have the last word.

“That’s just how these bushes engage in the struggle for existence.” I said. “There’s little water in the desert, the springs dry up periodically, and to stay alive the bushes are forced to move to where the water is.”

Since then the bushes have lived peacefully in their pots of sand. Only one of them, the smallest and least settled in, often pulls its roots out of the pot and lies in wait for us in the corridors of the ship, rustling its branches, singing and asking for water. I asked Alice not to reward the young scamp the roots drip onto the floor but Alice took pity on him and kept bringing him glasses of water. That was really nothing we couldn’t live with, but once she watered him with fruit juice instead of water and now the little bush has become such a pest you can’t walk down the ship without him getting in your way; he traipses around the ship leaving wet root marks behind, stupidly jabbing at people’s legs with his leaves.

There wasn’t a penny’s worth of intelligence in him, but he loves fruit juice more than a million dollars.