Alice: The Girl From Earth - Булычев Кир - Страница 23

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“Silence.” His chief ordered.

“I won’t.” The aid said. “The creature walked around in head attire with a horizontal field and a transverse trench in the peak.”

“I don’t understand.” I said. “What do you mean by a transverse trench.”

“Oh divinely earspired, show him the photo. Perhaps they can help us.” The aid said.

“No. The photo is too secret”

“And you don’t want it said of you that you gave away state secrets”

“Definitely.”

Then his most Earnestness pulled a photograph from his pocket. The photo was creased, it was amateurish, stained, but without a doubt anyone could tell it depicted Doctor Verkhovtseff with a can in one had and a medium sized carpetbag in the other.

“That can’t be!” I was so surprised I spoke aloud.

“What do you mean Do you know this human?”

“Yes. He lives on the Three Captain’s World.”

“Alas, for such a lovely planet to have such a nefarious inhabitant. When did you see him?”

“Three days go.”

“Our encounter with him took place last month. Now we shall have to subject your ship to a thorough investigation. Do you have any bugs aboard”

“No, we don’t have any bugs aboard,”

“They’re holding out.” The second Custom’s Agent whispered to is chief. “They don’t want to talk.”

“Then we cannot permit them to go out into the city.” The Chief Custom’s Agent said. “Where is your telephone. I shall have to assume that all of you are sick with a galactic plague. Then you can leave voluntarily. Otherwise, we must begin the disinfection, which is certainly far less comfortable than just leaving.”

“Let me assure you we are not contemplating anything criminal.” I tried to calm the Custom’s Agent down. “We’ve only seen that individual one time. And perhaps that was not even him. There are certainly a lot of people who look like him. And what reason would a scholar, the director of a museum, have for trading in grubs.”

“I don’t know.” The chief Audity said sadly. “We’ve had so many woes! We’ve already started to distrust our guests.”

“And what else happened?”

“You shouldn’t ask. Someone exterminated nearly all the Blabberyaps.”

“Blabberyaps?”

“Yes, Blabberyaps. They’re our favorite birds.” /P>

Alice and I set off for the bazar on foot, but told the ATV to stop by there in two hours.

The morning was fine, the sky was bright and clear and orange tinted, the clouds were few and green, the sand beneath our feet was soft and blue.

We strode down the city’s main street. On both sides of the avenue rose hotels. No two hotels were at all alike in terms of architectural details or materials; each had been constructed specially for the inhabitants of this or that stellar system.

The hotel Krak, which resembled a children’s balloon although it was more than a hundred meters in diameter, floated in the air above an antigrav field. The hotel catered to stellar wanderers used to zero gravity or who lived in space permanently and had no planet of their own, the comet dwellers and the meteorite miners.

Then we passed the Heaven Point Hotel; it also resembled a sphere, but heavy, massive, inserted halfway into the planet. The sign read ‘Methane Breathers Only.’ From an improperly secured door came the hiss of gas.

The next hotel in line was the ‘Skillet,’ its walls showed signs of burning and were untouchable, despite the nearly hundred layers of insolation. The Skillet’s customers were the inhabitants of stars, for whom bathing in molten lava was comparable to us swimming in a lake on a summer’s day.

All the hotels, those hanging in the air and those plunged into the ground, had their entrances on the roofs and, generally, were without windows or doors to the surface. And then we saw a smaller building fronted by columns, with utterly ordinary windows, and a throughly typical door. The sign over it read “Mother Volga Inn.’

“Look da, that has to be for Earth people!” Alice said.

We stopped in front of the hotel to get a good look at it, and because of the chance we might meet people we already knew.

A tall man in the uniform of the merchant space fleet came out of the building. He nodded in our direction, and I said:

“Hello. What brings you to Blooke?”

“We carted a load of atmospheric regenerators out from Earth.” He said. “You might have heard about the late unpleasantness here? They very nearly lost their atmosphere.”

While I was talking with the space man Alice was standing beside us and looking the hotel over. Suddenly she grabbed me by the hand.

“Papa! Look at who’s there!”

I looked, and saw Doctor Verkhovtseff looking down at us from a window on the third floor. Our eyes met, and he vanished from the window.

“That can’t be!” I shouted. “There’s no way he could expect to come here!”

“Let’s go and ask him how he got here.” Alice said.

The door to the hotel was carved, heavy, with a curved, gilded latch. The reception area inside was lined with mirrors and gilt filigree, with enormous hanging chandeliers made of cut crystal. The surfaces of wall not covered with reflecting glass were decorated with pictures of unicorns and beautiful maidens or knights in armor. Wide benches ran the length and breadth of the room along the walls. It was rather obvious that the Audity architects had seen the famous twenty episode TV miniseries ‘The Sun King.’ In the middle of the nobleman’s chamber I stopped.

“Wait here, Alice.” I said. “I don’t like this at all.”

“Why?”

“Judge for yourself: we just said our good-byes to Doctor Verkhovtseff, we flew here, and the Customs people tell us that he nearly killed this planet with the white grubs he was selling, and right away the first person we see through the hotel window is the Doctor.”

“Then it’s even more important we go and ask him what’s going on.” Alice said.

“Maybe.” I agreed and walked up to a long counter where a Audity porter in a white kaftan stood between a stuffed silk swan and a plastic bucket.

“Tell me,” I asked him, “in which room would Doctor Verkhovtseff be staying?”

“One moment, young man.” The porter answered, brushed his enormous ears to his back, and opened an enormous book with a leather cover with enormous hasps. “Verkhovtseff…” he mumbled. “Ve-ri-ho-vi-tseff… Ah yes, Verkhovtseff!”

“And where would he be staying.”

“In the eighth chamber would he be staying. On the third floor.” The porter said. “And you would be his friends?”

“His acquaintances.” I answered carefully.

“It is deplorable,” the porter said, “that such a foul and coarse guest should have such fine looking acquaintances.”

“Are you saying that he has done something…”

“Go.” The porter answered. “Suite number Eight. And tell him, that infidel that, henceforth, if he insists on cooking sausages on his bed and breaking the attendant robots when they try to stop him then we shall have to ask him to quit our establishment.”

“I got the impression that Verkhovtseff was a rather quiet individual.” I said to Alice once we were walking up the stairway.

The people who came downwards to met us were humans, Lineans, Fyxxians, and other beings who live on planets where the conditions resemble those of Earth. Some of them carried cages in their hands, others small aquariums, stamp albums, or just bags. They were hurrying to the bazar.

Room Number Eight was located at the end of a long corridor covered by vast numbers of Persian carpets. We stopped in front of a painted plastic door set in a sold oak wall and I pressed the call button.

There was no answer.

Then I knocked on the door. From a light impact of my knuckles the door opened wide. The small room beyond had been furnished and decorated according to the illustrations of historical romances from many parts of the Earth. Overhead hung a crystal chandelier, on the table a kerosine lamp without a wick, a tungsten samovar and a decorated Japanese silk screen. Of Verkhovtseff there was no sign.

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