Alice: The Girl From Earth

10

The temporalists did not pay any attention to Alice. They had no time. They, in essence, had to deconstruct and reconstruct the Time Cabinet so that it would send the traveler a week further into the past than it had the first time. Or, more precisely one week and twenty hours earlier. Petrov had explained to Alice that they were going to make the train that went from the city which the archaeologists had been digging to the capitol. They had gotten the train schedules from the newspapers, and they had gotten the money needed for the tickets from the newspaper kiosk and excavations. All that remained was to sit on the train and get to the space port at the same moment the Coleidan space ship landed, and get a close look at the returning astronauts, to determine if indeed it was Space Plague.

Alice had forgotten about everything, but suddenly Gromozeka’s voice could be heard:

“Aaa-lisss!”

Gromozeka’s voice penetrated the time station’s thin walls, and the lights on the control panels trembled.

“You’d better run.” Petrov said. “Otherwise, his voice will pull the walls down.”

Alice suddenly remembered what the head archaeologist had told her. It was time to go to the doctor to learn the local language.

The doctor, who resembled a giant garden watering can on legs, bobbed his head up and down on his long, unbelievably thin neck, as though he were about to begin a long speech for what seemed to be forever. But all he said was:

“Sit here, young being.” And motioned to a chair that had numerous leads and instruments attached to it.

Alice sat down obediently. The chair changed its form to enclose Alice on all sides and the doctor began to apply various leads to Alice’s forehead. They were held in place by tiny suckers.

“Do not be afraid.” The doctor said, when Alice squirmed a little.

“I’m not afraid.” Alice answered. “It’s just ticklish.”

In fact, she really was a little bit frightened.

“Close this…” The doctor said.

“What?”

The doctor sighed loudly and picked a large dictionary up from the table. He seemed to take about three minutes to find the word he needed, then said:

“A-ha!…eye.”

A humming sound came out of the black bag which extruded the leads. Then the humming was in Alice’s heard, and a voice began to whirl in hyer brain.

“Wait a moment.” The doctor said.

“I am waiting.” Alice said. “Will it be long?”

The doctor was silent. Alice carefully opened one eye and saw that the doctor was again paging through the dictionary.

“An hour.” He said finally. “Close your eye.”

Alice closed her eye, but for some reason she could not stand it and had to ask:

“Tell me. Why don’t you learn Russian or English or French this way?”

“I?” The doctor was shocked. “Oh, I could never do that.”

He thought a moment, walked over to the corner of the laboratory and rummaged around in some sort of box, and added in a mutter:

“I’m really horrible at languages. I’m so bad not even hypnopedia helps…I forget.”

“It just doesn’t work on you?”

“Yes.”

Alice was very comfortable. The whispering went on inside her head; she wanted to sleep, but Alice realized that she could never fall asleep like this, when she suddenly heard the doctor’s voice:

“Wake up. It’s over.”

The doctor was taking the leads with the suckers from her head and putting them away.

“Is that all? You really mean a whole hour has passed?”

“Yes.”

Gromozeka stuck his head into the medical lab. He looked at Alice with interest and asked:

“Bunto todo barakata a va?”

Alice could only think: What sort of nonsense is that? And suddenly she understood that it was not nonsense. Gromozeka had simply asked her in Coleidan if she had studied that language. And, understanding, Alice quietly answered Gromozeka:

“Kra barakata to bunta.”

Which meant: “I have studied the language.”

Gromozeka burst out laughing and told her to come to supper, but the doctor was so annoyed he refused to set foot in the cook

“Never!” He said as they were leaving. “I’ve never been able to learn even a single language!” Bitter tears flowed down from what would have been the water spout had he been a real watering can, and not a doctor.

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.”