Alice: The Girl From Earth

17

The long, adventurous day on the planet Coleida was at last coming to a close. The sun had descended to the level of the high trees of the park that surrounded the space port.

“Oh, I’m so tired!” Alice said when she had made it to the first of the trees and wrapped her arms about its bole to support herself. “I could just collapse.”

The furry little archaeologist had peered out from behind the door to see if they were still being chased.

“Don’t give up now, Alice.” He said. “Get a grip on yourself. Your work is only half over.”

“Why half. We did it! We saved the whole planet.”

“I don’t know that.” Purr said. “I don’t know, my child.”

He was speaking like a very old, wise, grandfather.

“You spread the vaccine, you did. But only if we make it back will we learn if it produced the result that we want.”

“You’re telling me that when we get back everything may be the same as before?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then it’s better if we don’t go back. It’s better if we stay here.”

“You’re tired, Alice.” Purr said. “And exhausted.”

The hollow beating of drums from the playing of a distant orchestra reached the forest. The thick, warm air resounded with the drumbeat. Garlands of enormous multicolored balloons flew over the roofs of the space port buildings.

“I just can’t imagine that they’re all going to get sick…” Alice said.

“Perhaps they will not get sick; but if you had never delivered the vaccine you not for certainty that they would all have been destroyed. And that would have been much worse.

Alice nodded. The little archaeologist was right.

“Can you catch your breath.” he asked. “We have to hurry. By sundown we have to get a lot further from the city.”

“But where are we going now?” Alice asked; she wanted to go no where at all. She just wanted to lay down on the grass and fall asleep. But she would have to wait and sleep at home. “The railway station?”

“On the contrary.” Purr answered. “They would recognize us instantly. After the astronauts you must be the most recognizable face in the city. Several million Coleidans saw you on TV. We’ll go on foot.”

They set off through the forest. Purr ran ahead. Choosing his direction by the sun he walked in a direction that would take them toward the railroad tracks that led to the smaller city where the archaeologists had set up camp.

Alisa had scraped her foot but Purr would not permit her to stop and deal with it. “An interesting turn of events.” Alice thought. “While we were on our way here I was in charge, but suddenly he’s remembered that he’s the older and he’s leading me.” But Alice had no desire to argue with the little archaeologist. And she had no desire to try and convince him that no matter what happened Petrov and Richard would find and rescue them. All Purr would say would be that they would never be found.

Suddenly the forest came to an end. The band of trees had been very narrow. On the other side of the forest started a vast, empty field, and beyond that were more buildings. There was no way they could leave the shelter of the trees; a small yellow helicopter was circling over the empty ground, and from the buildings a chain of policemen was slowly heading for the trees. For Alice.

“A police cordon.” Purr said. “They suspect we’re hiding in the forest.”

“What are we to do.” Alice asked. “Hide ourselves in the woods?”

“They would find us. Head this way.”

As he had scouted ahead Purr had noticed some structures in the trees. He led Alice there.

In a large well trodden and muddy field surrounded by a low barrier stood a number of attractions: swings, Ferris wheels, and other amusement machinery similar to those that once stood in the parks of Earth, yet at the same time very different.

The fugitives crawled beneath a creaking carousel of fantastic winged and tentacled creatures and law flat on the ground. The floor boards hung so low they almost touched them, and in the cracks and crevices between the boards Alice could see a thin bad of very bright sky.

They had made it just in time. No more than three minutes later the policemen reached the amusement park. Alice could hear them calling to one another. Then one of them stepped onto the carousel and the floor boards bent underneath his boots.

Alice wanted to sneeze it was dusty and stuff beneath the carousel. The policeman stopped and stood directly over her, blocking off the light from the sky with his boots, and asked another one loudly.

“You checked underneath yet?”

“No.” The answer came from some distance away. “Take a look.”

“I don’t have a flash light.”

“You don’t need one. There’s no room for anyone underneath there anyway.”

The policeman stepped off the carousel onto the ground. Alice quickly crawled to the furthest wall and hugged the ground.

The wooden hatch was thrown open and the policeman’s black silhouette appeared in it. He seemed to look in her direction forever, then asked:

“Anyone in here?”

“You coming?” The second policeman shouted from further away.”

“Yep.” The policeman answered, and slammed the hatch shut. “No one here. She probably made her getaway in an airplane.”

“Probably.” The second voice agreed with him. “No one is certainly going to try an attack like that on their own.”

“We will remain here until darkness.” Purr said when the policemen’s tramping had vanished. “Otherwise they would catch us immediat4ely.”

They were able to get out from under the carousel only in the late evening. Just about an hour after the policemen had left the amusement park was suddenly filled with people. The carousel’s owner wiped the fantastic animals down with a rag and wax, swept it clean, and then over Alice’s head the boards began to move around and around, and for the next three hours cheerful, exhaustingly repetitious carousel music played over Alice’s head, and it appeared that someone would suddenly fall through the creaking boards and crush the fugitives.

Finally, when Alice could stand laying on her side no longer and frustrated that no matter how terribly she wanted to sleep such was impossible beneath the creaking of the carousel and the thunder of the music, the evening’s cheer came to an end. The carousel’s motor was started with less frequency and the voices around them became the fewer, and by midnight there was only silence.

They crawled out from beneath the carousel and Purr rubbed Alice’s legs with his strong hands. Her legs had fallen asleep and felt numb, and it was impossible to walk. But then it became far worse; the blood circulation was returned to her legs, they woke up, and it felt like thousands of needles were sticking in them.

“Well, can you walk.” Purr asked.

“I can walk.” Alice answered.

No, when so much had been endured, she understood that any price would be worth paying to get home.

They set off.

They crossed the darkened forest again, came out into the wasteland and walked around a pit and large mountains of trash, and entered a new district of the city. Until the last houses were left well behind they walked slowly Purr ran forward, checking to see if there was anyone, and only then did Alice follow after.

It was already two in the morning when they came out onto the line of the railroad. The rails glistened in the light of the planet’s moon.

They walked out onto the path that ran along the line of the tracks, and headed right in the direction of the capitol. Alice tried to imagine how the astronaut Tolo’s mother must be cursing her, telling her son how Alice had wormed her way into her trust. She even thought she could hear the old woman’s voice: “I even fed her an apple! If I had known I would never have fed her anything! And that cat of her now that was something suspicious….”

It was almost dawn before they were able to clamber onto the open car of a freight train that had slowed to a near standstill by a siding.

And with the first light of the sun, tattered and torn, worn out, scarcely alive but terribly happy, they descended to the ground in the outskirts of the provincial town. They had only one more step to make, and the time machine would snatch them back and return them to the archaeologists’ camp.

And Alice suddenly understood that it would be very difficult for her to make this final step.

“I’m afraid.” She told the little archaeologist.

“I am too.” He said. “I understand.”

“What if we go back and everything’s the same as it was before. If we failed.”

“I know.” Purr said. “Don’t even mention it.”

He had lost his tail again somewhere on the road, too far back for them to go and find it. The two of them were silent for a while.

Then Alice bent down and picked up the little archaeologist, holding him against her chest in her hands like a pet cat.

Something clicked. A vague mist enveloped her and she seemed to be carried away, falling, falling…

And then she was standing in the Time Machine’s cabin.