Alice: The Girl From Earth

3

On the next day Gromozeka left for the Time Institute early in the morning. He was there almost to supper, and Alice, who now knew everything about his plans, came home after school and remained in the house to await the archaeologist’s return. She was very curious to discover how it all turned out.

We saw Gromozeka through the window. The glass started to shake, and the house itself was rattling. Gromozeka was walking down the middle of the street, howling some sort of song and carrying such an enormous bouquet of flowers that he was leaving petals behind on the house fronts on either side of the street. Pedestrians who caught sight of my dear monster had backed up against the walls and were rather frightened, if for no other reason than they had never seen a bouquet of flowers five yards in diameter underneath which stuck out long, thick tentacles with claws on their ends. As Gromozeka passed each one he handed him or her a flower.

“Hey!” My friend shouted; he had stopped directly beneath our window.

“Hello, Gromozeka!” Alice shouted, opening the window wide. “Do you have good news?”

“I shall tell you everything, my dear ones!” Gromozeka answered, and gave a flower to an old man who had stopped and sat down on the sidewalk from amazement. “But first take this tiny bouquet from me. I’ll pass it up to you one part at a time, since I can’t go through your building doorway with it.”

Gromozeka extended a tentacle with the first portion of flowers.

After five minutes the entire apartment was filled with flowers, so much that I had even lost sight of Alice. Finally, the last armful of flowers had beenc ramed intot he rooms. I asked:

“Alice, where are you?”

Alice called back from the kitchen:

“I’m getting all the bowls, vases, cups and glasses down so we can fill them with water and put flowers in them.”

“Don’t forget about the bathtub.” I said. “Fill it with water too. We can put one of the larger bouquets in there.”

After saying this I swam, or clawed my way, through the sea of flowers to the door so I could open it and let Gromozeka into the house.

Gromozeka got a good look at what he had done to our living quarters, and he was very pleased.

“I was thinking….” He spoke as he helped us fill all the pots and pans, the vases, jars, glasses, carafes, and cups with flowers, load them into the bath tub and the kitchen sink. “I was thinking, that before now no one has brought you such a splendiferous bouquet.”

“Absolutely no one at all.” I agreed.

“This means I am your very best friend,” Gromozeka said, “and yet there isn’t a single drop of Ex-Lax in the house again.”

Having said that, Gromozeka lay down on the floor, on a rug of flowers, and told us everything he had been able to do that day.

“At first I went to the Time Institute. They were delighted to see me at the Institute. Firstly because it was Gromozeka the famous archaeologist himself who came to visit….”

Here Alice interrupted our guest and asked:

“And just how did they learn about you, Gromozeka?”

“Everyone knows about me.” Gromozeka answered. “And do not interrupt your elders. Why, when they saw me in their doorway some of them even fainted from joy.”

“That was from terror.” Alice corrected Gromozeka. “Someone who has never seen you before night get frightened.”

“Foolishness!” Gromozeka said. “Why, on our planet, I am sublimely beautiful.”

Then he broke into laughter, and the flower petals whirled in the air.

“Do not think that I am so naive, Alice.” He said, when the fit of laughter had ended and he had control over his breath again. “I know when someone is frightened of me, and when someone is delighted. Therefore I always nock on the door and ask if I frighten them. If they answer “No,” then I enter and tell them that I am the famous archaeologist Gromozeka from the planet Chumaroz. Satisfied, now?”

“Satisfied.” Alice answered. She was sitting, her feet crossed, on a tangle of Gromozeka’s tentacles. “Continue. This means, first of all, they are delighted Gromozeka has come to visit them. But doesn’t this imply a ‘secondarily?’“

“Secondarily,” Gromozeka said, because they had just finished experiments with a new machine at the Time Institute. You will recall that all the earlier machines were only capable of operating on the Institute’s premises, but the new time machine can be transported to other localities. They power it with atomic batteries. They were just about ready to transport the machine to Miracle Lake…”

“Where?” I was surprised.

“Gromozeka said, to ‘Lake Chudskoe.’ Right?” Alice said. “Gromozeka has the right not to know all the details of Earth history.”

“And I was about to say,” Gromozeka said, “Chudskoe Lake. And anyone who heard otherwise has deficient ears… They wanted to look at how Alexander the Great defeated the Tattletale Knights.”

“That’s right,” Alice said, “They would want to watch Alexander Nevsky defeat the Teutonic Knights.”

“Oh, them.” Gromozeka sighted. “I always get those two confused! But when I discovered at they had a machine ready for travel already, I told them: ‘What’s just one lake, when I can put an entire planet at your disposal? And you will always be able to go back to the lake if you want and confirm what every school child knows, that Alexander Nevsky defeated the Teutonic Order in the famous Battle on the Ice on April Fifth, 1242 AD, and saved Russia from conquest, but as to what happened on the planet Coleida, not even I, the great and glorious archaeologist Gromozeka, know, although I do suspect they were wiped out by Space Plague.’“

“And they agreed?” Alice asked.

“Not right away.” Gromozeka admitted. At first they said that the time machine was still not fully tested under such extreme conditions, such as space, and it might not work properly, or else an accident might happen. Then, when I said that conditions on Coleida were not at all more difficult than at the Chudsky lake, they said that the atomic batteries and other apparatus were so heavy that it would need ten space ships to convey everything to Coleida. But by then I already knew that they had all but agreed. And anyway, they themselves were tempted to test their time machine on another planet. And I told them how we could start up the main power station on Coleida, and even more we of the expedition have a very powerful mass conversion reactor, and even gravity engines. And if they wanted to send a whole group of investigators along with their machine, we could feed and house them all and even provide them with excursions to the main tourist traps. So of course they agreed. Pretty smart of me, if I don’t say so myself, eh?”

“You’re a genius, Gromozeka.” I said.

“And now I shall have to get some sleep, for tomorrow we begin loading. Even without the atomic batteries we shall require at least three ships for the loading of the machine. And I still have to find the ships.”

And Gromozeka promptly leaned his large, soft, rather balloon-like head against the wall and fell asleep..