Alice: The Girl From Earth

Chapter Three: A Girl of Hithers and Yons

On the first day of their vacation a person typically does nothing. More precisely, there is something to be done and even a great many things to be done, but it is difficult to think which of them is most important, and so one becomes lost among the numerous possibilities and temptations.

Alice said her good-byes to Bertha Maximovna, went out onto the street and looked up at one of the aerial clocks that hung in the sky over the city. The clocks said it was noon. Alice had the entire day in front of her and after that stretched numerous completely free summer days with the underwater trip her father had promised her, the excursion to India, the expedition of the Young Naturalists Society to the desert and even, if her mother had managed to get the tickets, a trip to Paris for the three hundredth anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, which the Parisians had already reconstructed of Styrofoam for the occasion. Life promised to be interesting, but all the interesting things were going to start Tomorrow.

So, for the moment, Alice set off down Gogolevsky Boulevard, the mielophone in her bag. From time to time Alice patted the case with her palm, just to make certain the apparatus really was there. She was telling herself that she was going drop in at her home and put the instrument back in its place, but that was really going to waste a lot of time. Once she went in the door the Robot would make her sit down to eat and, it would tell her that she was really getting thin and I’ll have to tell your mother when she returns, and all sorts of other silly words. The Martian Mantis would want to be taken for its walk, and taking the Martian Mantis for a walk was a real pain; it stopped at every tree and sniffed at every crack and crevice of the pavement.

So it was perfectly reasonable that Alice did not head home as she had told herself she would, but set off down the boulevard.

Gogolevsky Boulevard was wide and shady they said that whole kindergarten classes and their teachers had gotten lost there and had never been found it wound from the Moscow River to Arbat Square and, like a like a long and wide river there were islands in it where green streets and side streets flowed into the main boulevard.

Alice headed toward the old statue of Gogol following a path that twisted and turned back on itself past beautifully flowering orange trees until she found herself facing the statue itself. It was a very sad statue. Gogol just sat there, with his big overcoat wrapped about him. Even though Gogol wrote really funny books he himself was a very morose and gloomy person. On the other side of the monument, on one of the side streets, they were planning to grow early ripening cherries. They had transplanted them only about a month ago. Could the berries have already appeared?

Sitting on the park bench on the other side of the statue facing the cherry plantings was an old man with a long white beard in a very odd straw hat that was pushed down until it rested on his thick eyebrows. The old man seemed to be dreaming, but, when Alice approached him or rather when she ran past he lifted his head and said:

“Whither are you rushing to, pumpkin? You’re raising the dust going from hither to yon!”

Alice stopped.

“I’m not raising dust. The gravel here is too big to be blown in the wind.”

“I say you have!” The old man seemed astonished; he raised his head to look at her and stuck his salt and pepper beard in Alice’s direction. “I say you have! You deny it, do you?”

The old man did not appear to be entirely sane. But, in any case, Alice said:

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t deliberate.” And she wanted to run further away. But the old man wouldn’t let her.

“Come hither.” He said. “People are talking to you!”

“What does ‘hither’ mean?” Alice said. “What a strange way you have of talking.”

“And you talk back to your elders, or I shall take a switch and tan your bottom!”

The old man was totally unexpected. And he spoke very oddly. Alice was not really frightened by him, but he did leave her uneasy. There wasn’t anyone else in the street, and if the old man really did decide to spank her with a switch…

No, I can run away. Alice thought, and walked a little closer to the old man.

“Just what is going on here?” The old man said. “They left me in this god-forsaken spot, and then vanished without a trace! And just what is this place, I ask you?”

“It is terrible, yes.” Agreed Alice.

“And you wouldn’t have any crackers or muffins inside your bag, would you?” The old man asked. “Neither food nor drink has passed my mouth this morning.”

“No,” Alice said. “But I can take you to a caf‚.”

“I would never frequent such a place.” The old man said. “I would go to my execution first. And anyway, I am on duty now.”

Alice started laughing. The old man was not nearly so terrible and even joked. She said:

“There’s a robot run sandwich shop….”

“To be avoided.” The old man said. “I will avoid it without your advice. No, but tell me, pumpkin, what has happened to the world?”

What an odd old man! Alice thought. Wouldn’t he be something to show to the kids in class.

“How old are you, grandfather?” She asked.

“In years, let me see; I still remember the Father Emperor Nikolai Aleksandrovich, he of heavenly memory. And the like. And General Gurko on his white horse. And maybe there was Skobelev there too…”

“You’re very old!” Alice remembered the names from History classes. “You must be the oldest person in the world! Are you from Abkhazia?”

“What are you talking about Abkhazia? What sort of person are you? I’ll show you!” The old man tried to get to his feet from the bench and chase after Alice, but at the last moment seemed to think better of it and stayed sitting down. Alice ran a few paces back and then stopped. She was not yet ready to leave the marvelous old man.

“It’s like I said.” The old man continued, as though he ha entirely forgotten his explosion of rage. “Just what has happened to the world? It’s quite gone off its rocker, hither and yon!”

If the old man remembered a Russian Emperor and the ancient generals he had to be at the very least two hundred years old. But how had he stayed alive for so long, without even a word about him on the NewsNet. Not even Papa knew about him. If Alice’s father had known about any such person he would certainly have told her.

“This place has no order or manners! People are walking hither and yon naked, waving their shameless arms and legs left and right! Oh, lament for them! Close your eyes to the sight!” The old man shuddered and suddenly started to howl in fury in his thin voice:

“It’s the end of the world! Doomsday! The Anti-Christ is drawing near and we shall all pay for our sins…”

Oh no! Alice started to become very worried. Should I call someone? He must be sick.

“And why do you run around in pants? The old man suddenly asked in a normal voice, but angrily. “Can’t your mother find a skirt for you? I suppose your nurse drinks…. She drinks and carries on… Girls in trousers and short pants….”

“My mother is an architect.” Alice said.

“If you say so.” The old man agreed. “Your times are not mine. But even here when you run out of the house so very early in the morning, you put on shoes….. Sit down here, girl, on the bench. I’ll tell you a tale. Hold your horses, little missy… And we rushed from our trenches following General Gurko, who’s now serving in the heavenly kingdom, you know, girl from hither and yon, you understand there were twelve seventy-five pounders up there and the Turkish positions had started to roar… And for the Tsar…”

The old man repeated the words ‘for the Tsar’ several times, and suddenly began to sing.

“…and for the Tsar, for God, and Country

“We shout a loud Hurra! Hurra!”

Alice slowly started to walk a little down the path so as to get out of the old man’s sight without him noticing. She was thinking that it might be better to just run away to get some help.

And suddenly an older girl with a large folder of drawings under her arm, an ordinary girl, probably a college student, appeared around the corner. She was in shorts and a halter. Blond hair fell as far as her cheeks from a sunburned head. The girl heard the old man’s song and stopped.

“Oh good!” Alice was delighted. She ran up to the older girl and whispered loudly:

“The old man has gone out of his mind. He’s talking about the strangest things and is quite cut off from reality.”

“Let’s take a look.”

The old man noticed her and became very angry.

“Hour after hour I am beset by demons.” He said. “Yet another shameless hussy flitting from hither to yon and yon to hither. And what are you dressed up for?”

“How do you do?” The girl said. “Are you feeling all right?”

“And what is that to you? Why do you take such liberties with words? Never in my life have I suffered so much, other than by gall stones. Verily.”

“He’s very strangely dressed.” The girl commented to Alice in a low voice, and Alice also noticed that the old man’s clothing was very strange. Where had she seen clothing like that before?

The old man was wearing short grey trousers with a dirty fringe at the bottom of each leg; from beneath the trousers stuck out woolen socks, which were wound around by a cord. The cord descended to his ankles and was attached to very odd slippers, which were terribly familiar, but Alice had never encountered their like before. They appeared to be woven of straw, like a basket. Of course! Those were called lapti, and she’d only seen pictures of them in children’s fairy tale books when she was younger. The upper body of the old man was covered with a grey jacket with cotton padding sewn into the shoulders to make the shoulders appear wider. And then there was the straw hat, but Alice had noticed that earlier herself.

“He’s not from our time.” Alice said, whispering, and frightened of her discovery. “He’s from the past.”

Of course the old man was an Out-Timer; of course he spoke oddly and was dressed very, very unusually.

“Wait a moment.” The older girl said. “Where do you live, Mister?” She asked the old man.

“You will know a lot….” The old man began. Then he thought a moment, and added: “It’s gone clean out of my mind.”

“Maybe we can take you home?”

“My home is beyond the highest of mountains and the deepest of valleys.” The old man said with assurance, as though he were simply giving them his address. “But rather, tell me, do you till the soil?”

“Yes, we do.” The other girl answered.

“And do you have plough boards to till the soil?”

“Not any more. Now it’s all done by robots and other automated systems.”

“I thought as much. And what year is it now?”

“Two thousand seventy-nine.”

“And that is from the Birth of Christ?”

“AD. Anno Domini. Yes.”

“But what year are you from?” Alice asked. “Are you really a time traveler?”

“You’re the one who’s running everywhere from hither to yon!” The old man said. “A traveler, you say? Rather, tell me, who among you eats meat? Is it dear?”

“Meat?” Alice didn’t know what to say. But the older girl came to her aid.

“Yes, we have meat, grandfather. And it costs only a trifle.” She said. “And any other foods you might want to eat.”

“Fiddlesticks, hither and yon! People like you could never get down to slaughtering the calves!”

“Are you really from before the Revolution?” Alice insisted. “How did you get here? Did the Time Institute bring you here in their time machine?”

“That you will have to tell me.” The old man became agitated. “Who is your commanding general?”

“We don’t have any generals.”

“What utter nonsense! There’s no way you can live without generals… My Lord in Heaven, who is coming!”

Down the path, leaning on the same stick of knotted wood, came a second old man, exactly the same as the first except that his hat was cloth instead of straw.

Alice was so surprised that she hid herself behind the first old man as three more old men, exactly the same as the first and second except that only two had walking sticks, one was without any hat at all, and one of them had a beard a little bit longer than the others.

All the old men were sauntering toward the bench.

“My good Lord in Heaven!” The first old man said. “Otherwise, hither and yon, you won’t find a single living soul!”

“Quite correct!” One of the new old men answered. “It’s true there isn’t a single living soul; it’s all tricks and pranks with beer.”

And he raised his walking stick to the college student and Alice. It was obvious they were the ones who had filched the beer.

“There must be a worm hole into the past.” Alice whispered. “And they’re just walking through. We have to stop it or we’ll have a hundred thousand of them…”

“These are the ones who should be taught not to interfere! The stick. Use a stick!” The old man shouted.

“It’s that way, hither and yon!” Another old man shouted.

“We’ll do it now!” The third one shouted. “I served in the Police myself!”

Three more old men came up the other path. There was nowhere to run. In fact the old men did not touch them, but they made an awful racket. Alice held tight to the other girl’s hand. And at that moment they heard a gong, and a loud voice said:

“That will be enough, Gleb. Cut the crowd scene. It’s not working out at all.

There was a rustling from behind the bushes and the old men froze where they were when the voice shouted.

Several young men and women emerged from the bushes; among them Alice recognized her father’s friend Herman Shatrov, the movie camera man. Shatrov wore a long green baseball cap to protect his head from the sun; a microphone hung from his neck.

Not noticing the girl and Alice, Shatrov laid into his assistants.

“How could we get a mess like this?” His voice rose and his face grew red. “How do we get seven robots coming out in a crowd scene from the sound stage? Who has an answer for that? Do you plan to have one fly by in an air car too? Are you trying to frighten the children to death. No, I won’t leave it in! I’m going to have to have a serious talk with the construction team right now.”

“It’s hardly their fault, Herman.” One of his assistants said. “Look at the schedule we gave them. They just managed to ship the robots to us without even a chance to test them. And we put them right out on the street.”

“Do you really expect us to think these are real Russian peasants from the 18th century? Just what did you use to program them?

Another man emerged from the bushes. He was thickset, and sweating, and very morose.

“Look, Herman darling.” He said. “It isn’t something we came up with ourselves. We took the old men from eighteenth and nineteenth century novels, hither and yon, you know, like.”

“What?”

“Hither and yon, I say. I spent a lot of time on it, looking up all sorts of old fashioned phrases. It was a normal way of speaking, back about a hundred and fifty years ago, they liked to talk that way.”

“Then take back your old men. We’ll think of something else.”

“And what am I supposed to do with them. They’re no use to me.”

“Put in a standard memory cube and you get perfectly useful robots, babysitters. Even interesting ones. The beards add a sort of cachet, and they know all the fairy tales, from hither and yon.”