Alice: The Girl From Earth

7

On the following day Alice was awakened by a humming sound, as though an enormous bee was hovering over the camp. The morning was cold, the wind rustled the curtains, and Gromozeka tossed and turned on his bed, slapping his tentacles about in his sleep, like a puppy dog waving its paws.

“Alice.” A low voice whispered from behind the curtain. The lower edge of the curtain was pulled aside and in the gap she could see Purr’s lilac eye. “Want to see them test the time machine?”

“Of course I do!” Alice whispered in answer. “Be right with you. I just have to get dressed.”

“And warmly.” Gromozeka said suddenly, not opening his eyes. His hearing was astonishing. Even in his sleep.

“Did you wake him up.” Purr asked.

“No, he’s asleep. It’s just that he never stops looking after me. He gave his word to my father.”

Alice rushed out of the dome tent. Blue frost lay in spots on the ground. The domes were all still closed for the night, except for the one at the end of the line which was the kitchen where smoke came from a fire. The camp was asleep.

The sun had just barely managed to edge mountains like the broken teeth of a fine toothed comb with fire, the shadows were long, and the city the archaeologists were excavating was cast in shades of blue and purple, like Purr’s single eye.

Alice ran all the way to the time machine’s building; it was the source of the constant low hum.

“I was thinking,” Purr, who ran beside Alice like a kitten, chattered incessantly. “The temporalists have decided to test the machine without witnesses, if only to have to deal with less of a bother. They are very careful, and, I would say, odd and modest people. But I considered it my duty to awaken you, Alice, because you are my friend, and without a friend at my side I would not have the moral right to observe the first person to be sent a hundred years into the past to learn what happened on this unfortunate planet… Careful! If they catch sight of us, they might just send us away….”

But it was too late. Petrov, dressed in a long cape and a very high hat, such as that worn by hairdressers on Coleida in the past, glanced out the door to the time machine building and saw Alice and Purr.

“And I thought we had avoided awakening anyone.” He said cheerfully. “Well, if you were so suspicious, come right in; the street is horribly cold. Is Gromozeka still asleep?”

“Yes.” Alice said.

“Good! Otherwise he’d see me off with a brass band playing and I’d have to listen to speeches… And all we are doing is testing the machine. Come on in.”

Richard was standing beside the controls in the very center of the structure, by the open door to the time cabinet; he was pressing buttons in order one after the other and looking at the responses in the display.

“Everything ready?” Petrov asked.

“Yes. You can go. But really, for the last time I have to ask…”

“D-don’t.” Petrov answered and lowered a hood over his forehead. “I can hardly pass for a real hair dresser, but I am not going all that far from the machine either.”

Richard straightened up and caught sight of Alice and the little Archaeologist Purr.

“Good morning.” He said. “You’re up already?” He was so occupied with the final check of the machine that he had no time to be surprised.

“Au revoir, my friends.” Petrov said. “I’ll be back for breakfast. Something to surprise Gromozeka!”

Petrov entered the cabin, closing the transparent door behind him.

Richard walked away from the control panel. At this point there was nothing for him to touch he was simply there to watch the displays and read-outs. The buttons that mattered were in the time cabinet. Petrov pressed them.

The humming suddenly increased in pitch, and then vanished. Petrov had disappeared from the cabin. A thick cloud of mist formed in the spot where he had been standing. Then that too vanished.

“And that’s all.” Richard said. “Everything went as expected.”

Alice saw Richard cross his fingers and was shocked that a scientist might be just as superstitious as an ordinary school kid before an exam.

“When will he be back?” Alice asked. She was proud she was one of the first to see the temporalist go back into the past. Even Gromozeka has slept through that moment.

“Just about an hour.” Richard answered,

Silence descended on the time machine’s central chamber. Alice reached into a pocket of her overalls and pulled out a comb; she used it to straighten her hair, and then offered it to Richard. Rather clearly he had forgotten to comb his hair this morning.

“Tell me.” Purr asked. “There isn’t another time cabinet in the past to receive Petrov, I take it. He will make it there without another cabinet?”

“Yes, he will.” Richard confirmed, surprised by the question, considering the utterly naive questions he had been forced to listen to.

“When we work out of the Time Institute we have reception cabinets at the other end as anchors; travel back and forth to the destination times are simple and convenient. Our tests have shown that we can use this system to send one person back into the past and retrieve them in order before we send out a second time traveler. It was for this invention that Academician Petrov won the Nobel Prize.”

“And that means, he just appeared in an empty field out of nowhere?” Alice was surprised.

She imagined Petrov standing in full view of the entire city, totally defenseless and alone; it was terrifying.

“That’s exactly how it happens.” Richard answered. “Thank’s for the comb.”

“You’re welcome.”

“But he’ll mark the point of arrival into the past, and when he returns he will stand in exactly the same spot. The sensors, operating through the transtemporal field, will immediately pick up a signal that says: ‘Time Traveler ready to return,” and it will all work automatically. My participation is not at all needed. I’m here just in case…”

“But what if it isn’t him standing on that spot? What if it’s a cow?” Alice asked.

“A reasonable question.” Richard answered. “If someone else or an animal stands in that spot, the signal comes back: ‘Transition point occupied by non-Time traveler’. And the equipment just doesn’t work.”

“And what if he’s injured, what if he can’t stand up and just has to crawl there?” Alice refused to surrender.

“Don’t spout nonsense!” Richard suddenly became very angry. “Anything at all might happen. That’s why I wanted to be the one to go in Doctor Petrov’s place. And all you do is ask stupid questions.”

Alice grew quiet. The questions were not at all stupid. She walked up to the transparent wall of the time chamber and began to study the control buttons. There was no way she could go inside: Petrov could appear back in the present at any moment, and the two of them could not occupy the same space.

Richard came up to her. He was feeling awkward for shouting at the girl and he started to explain:

“See the green button over there, on the right? When Petrov pressed it, the time cabinet’s door closed. Then he pressed the second, white button. That turned on the temporal field. At that moment you could still see him. Finally he pressed the red button. He found himself into the past, to the moment we calculated earlier and which we programed into the machine.”

“You mean he can’t choose to when he is going himself?”

“No. It becomes too complicated. You have to partially dismantle the machine to set it for the time you want. It took us all of last night to ready the machine.”

“And where exactly is he ‘now?’“

“‘Now,’ Petrov is standing one hundred one years ago, just at the time the epidemic had really started, but the people of Coleida were still alive.”

Unexpectedly the humming suddenly became very loud.

“Watch what happens!” Richard said.

For about three more seconds a cloud of mist appeared in the time chamber, and suddenly turned into Petrov.

Petrov had not changed at all. He pushed back the hood, opened the Time Cabinet door, and left the chamber.

“Well, that… is that.” He said like a dentist who had just extracted a tooth. “We’ve arrived.”

“Well, what was it? What?” Purr became agitated, ran up to the temporalists feet and looked at the human from below.

“I still don’t know.” Petrov answered. “I was very hurried. But don’t get excited here are your newspapers.”

He pulled out a large packet of newspapers and other documents from beneath his shirt and handed them to the archaeologist. Purr grabbed them with his long, furry hands and opened one of the newspapers. The newspaper was larger than he was and covered him completely.

“Let’s get going.” Petrov said. “Richard, turn off the power. We have to tell everyone else it worked. And it will be breakfast time soon. They’ve probably started already.”

“Gromozeka is going to be really angry you didn’t call him.” Alice said.

“No, he won’t.” Petrov said, and took off the long cape.

They headed for the entrance to the Time Building. Richard walked ahead, followed by Petrov, who held Alice by the hand, and last of all, completely covered with a newspaper, came Purr.

“Well, Gromozeka…” Alice started to say again, which could in no way compare with the pride she felt in having seen what Gromozeka had slept through.

But she was never able to finish the sentence.

On the sand in front of the time station sat Gromozeka, and beside him stood all the other archaeologists.

“Hello there.” Richard said. “And we thought that you were all asleep.”

“No one got any sleep at all.” Gromozeka said embarrassed. Thick yellow smoke came from his nostrils; the scent of Ex-Lax was thick in the air.

“No one got any sleep either.” The remaining archaeologists said. “We did not want to bother you. We still have our pride, and you didn’t invite us…”

“Sorry.” Petrov said.

“Doesn’t matter.” Gromozeka laughed. “No one’s very angry. Let’s get to the kitchen and you can tell us everything. Do you think it’s all that easy to wait here in the cold?”

“And excited.” Someone said.

They all headed for the cook tent.