The Girl Nothing Happens To

BRONTY

A brontosaurus egg was brought to us at the Moscow zoo. The egg was found by Chilean tourists in a landslide on the shores of the Enisei river. It was almost round in shape and wonderfully preserved in the permafrost. When specialists began examining it, they discovered the egg was absolutely fresh. And so they decided to put it in the zoo’s incubator.

Naturally, there were not many who believed it would hatch successfully, but after a week’s time X-ray plates showed that the brontosaurus embryo was developing. As soon as the news went out over intervision, scientists and reporters began flying in to Moscow from all directions. We had to engage all the rooms in the eighty-storey Venus hotel on Gorky Street . And even then, there was not enough room for everybody. Eight Turkish palaeontologists slept in my dining-room, I moved into the kitchen with a journalist from Ecuador , while two women reporters from the magazine Women of the Antarctic were settled in Alice’s bedroom.

When my wife videophoned that night from Nukus where she was building a stadium, she thought she had the wrong number.

All the Earth teletransmission satellites beamed photographs of the egg. Side view, front view, the brontosaurus skeleton, and the egg…

A congress of cosmophilologists arrived in full strength to visit the zoo. But by that time, we had already stopped all entry into the incubator room, and they had to be satisfied with viewing the polar bears and the Martian praying mantis.

On the forty-sixth day of this lunatic way of life, the egg quivered. At that moment my friend, Professor Yakata, and I were sitting beside the armoured glass shelter, where we kept the egg, drinking tea. By then we had stopped believing that anything would hatch from the egg. We didn’t X-ray it any more, d’you see, for fear of harming our “baby”. And we could not make any predictions, because nobody but ourselves had ever tried hatching out a brontosaurus.

And so, the egg quivered, gave another crack and split — through its thick, leathery shell, a black snake-like head began pushing its way out. A whirring sound came from the automatic cinecameras. I realized the red lamp over the incubator doors had flashed on. Something very much like a panic broke out all through the grounds of the zoo.

In five minutes, we were surrounded by everybody whose job it was to be here and many who had no business to be but wanted to see. And in such a crowd, it grew very hot.

Finally the little brontosaurus crawled out of the egg.

“What’s his name, Daddy?” I suddenly heard a familiar voice.

“ Alice !” I cried in surprise. “How did you get in here?”

“I’m with the reporters.”

“But children aren’t allowed in here.” “But I am! I told everybody I was your daughter. And they let me in.”

“You realize it’s not nice to use people you know for personal aims?”

“But Daddy, little Bronty might be bored without children. That’s why I came.”

I threw up my hands in despair. I didn’t have a minute to spare to take Alice out of the incubator. And there was nobody around who would agree to do it for me.

“You stand right here, and don’t go away,” I told her. Then I ran to the glass shelter that held the new-born brontosaurus.

That whole evening Alice and I weren’t on speaking terms. We had quarrelled. I forbade her to go into the incubator, but she said that she couldn’t obey me because she was sorry for Bronty. And the next day she stole into the incubator again. She came with the astronauts from the spaceship Jupiter-8. They were heroes, and nobody could refuse them anything.

“Good morning, Bronty,” she said, going over to the shelter.

The brontosaurus looked sidewise at her.

“Whose child is this?” asked Prof. Yakata, strictly.

I almost wished the earth would swallow me up.

But Alice was never at a loss for words.

“Don’t you like me?” she asked.

“What a question, on the contrary… I simply thought you were lost, perhaps…” The professor had no gift at all in talking with little girls.

“All right,” said Alice . “Bronty, I’ll come and see you tomorrow. Don’t you feel lonely now.”

And Alice really did come the next day. And kept coming almost every day. Everyone got used to her and let her in without question. I washed my hands of it. After all, our house stood next to the zoo, there was no road to cross, and besides she always found someone to bring her in.

The brontosaurus grew very fast. In a month’s time he was over two and a half yards long, and we moved him into a pavilion specially built for him. The brontosaurus wandered along the railed-in enclosure and chewed young shoots of bamboo and bananas. The bamboo was brought in by freight jet planes from India , and the bananas came from the “Irrigation-Field” state farm. A warm salt-water pool shone in the centre of the enclosure. Everything to please a brontosaurus.

But suddenly he lost his appetite. For three days, the bamboo and bananas lay untouched. On the fourth day, the brontosaurus lay on the bottom of the pool, his small black head resting on the plastic rim. Everything indicated he intended to die. We could not permit it. You see, he was the only brontosaurus we had. The best doctors in the world tried to help us, but all in vain. Bronty refused grass, vitamins, oranges, milk — everything.

Alice did not know of the tragedy. I had sent her to her grandmother’s in Vnukovo. But on the fourth day, she turned on the television at the very moment they were giving the news about the failing health of the brontosaurus. I still don’t know how she persuaded her grandmother, but that same morning Alice ran into the pavilion.

“Daddy!” she cried. “How could you keep it from me? How could you?…”

“Later, Alice , later,” I answered. “We are having a meeting.”

And so we were having a meeting. It had been going on for the last three days.

Alice said nothing, and went away. But the next moment I heard somebody beside me gasp. I turned and saw that Alice had already climbed over the guard-rail, slipped into the enclosure and started running toward the brontosaurus’s head. She had a bun in her hand.

“Eat it, Bronty,” she said, “or else they’ll leave you here to die of hunger. In your place, I’d be fed up with bananas, too.”

And before I managed to reach the guardrail, something unbelievable happened. Something which made Alice famous, but had an awful effect on our reputation, as biologists.

The brontosaurus raised his head, looked at Alice , and carefully took the bun from her hand.

“Quiet, Daddy.” Alice threatened me with her finger, on seeing that I wanted to leap over the railing. “Bronty’s afraid of you.”

“He’s not going to harm her,” said Prof. Yakata.

I could see that for myself. But what if her grandmother was watching the scene?

Afterwards, scientists argued over it for a long time. They are still arguing to this day.

Some say that Bronty needed a change of food, others that he trusted Alice more than he did us. But, one way or another, the crisis was over.

Now Bronty has become completely tame.

Though he is about thirty yards long, nothing gives him greater delight than to let Alice ride on his back. One of my assistants made a special step ladder and, when Alice enters the pavilion, Bronty reaches his long neck into the corner and picks up the step ladder standing there with his triangular teeth, setting it deftly against his shining black side.

Then he gives Alice a ride round the pavilion or swims in the pool with her on his back.