Alice: The Girl From Earth - Булычев Кир - Страница 41

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“Go ahead.” Alice said. She realized what was going to happen immediately.

Zeleny placed one of the flowers on the table in the laboratory, held it in place with clamps, and began a delicate operation.

“I’ll take off a little over a centimeter.” He said.

“Wait up.” I interrupted the engineer. “Start with the thinnest layer you can. Perhaps nothing will come of it.”

Zeleny nodded to me and turned on the vibroblade. The empathicator, white from curiosity, came out of its corner and silently padded nearer on its stick like legs. The bushes rustled their branches in their cage, thinking we were going to give them fruit juice. The Sewing Spider stopped knitting its scarf.

A thin, transparent layer similar to cellophane tape separated from the mirror. Zeleny carefully pulled it away and placed it on the table.

For several seconds the mirror remained dark, but at the very moment that I had already concluded we would be seeing nothing else the mirror suddenly lit up again, this time reflecting a windy, overcast day.

“That’s right!” Alice said. “We’ll be going deeper and deeper into the past!”

“But how are we going to calculate the days.” I spoke aloud. “We don’t know how think the layer of a single day is.”

Zeleny was not listening to me. He placed the blade to the mirror’s edge immediately removed half a centimeter of the mirror’s thickness. The layer straightened out. The Empathicator, changing colors like a traffic lamp at a busy intersection from impatience, was unable to contian itself and pressed its long, thin nose beneath Zeleny’s hand.

“That does it!” Zeleny grew angry. “I cannot work if you keep getting in my way.

“It wasn’t on purpose.” Alice spoke up for the Empathicator. “He just finds it interesting.”

“He finds everything interesting.” Zeleny said. “But I would not vouch for him.”

“Continue.” I asked.

Zeleny carefully removed another layer.

“Like the glass in an window, only it’s started to decay.” He said. We all bent down over the slightly thinner darkened mirror.

Then it lightened slightly, and then there was the very same field, but, but only the grass had become stormy, the bushes were bare, the leaves remaining on the trees had turned yellow. Neither butterfly nor bee was to be seen, it was oppressive and gloomy. Occasional gusts of snow fell from the overcast sky, but failed to accumulate on the ground as the flakes slowly melted in the grass.

“Late fall.” Alice said.

“Late fall, all right.” Zeleny agreed. He raised a magnifying glass to the mirror and said: “It isn’t visible ordinarily, but it’s very interesting to see how the the snow flakes appear on the bushes and then fly off into the sky.”

Each of us took our turn watching the backwards snowfall. Even the Empathicator took a look and turned a satisfied hue from surprise.

“How long has it been since fall?” Zeleny asked me.

“It’s summer now.” I answered. “The planet takes a little over fourteen terrestrial months to orbit its star for one local year. That means, just about one Earth-year ago.”

“A-ha!” Zeleny said, and pulled a micrometer from his workbelt. “No,” he said, “we may precisely determine how much one year is to a mirror flower…

“….and just how much I need to take from it in order to see the field as it was four years ago.” Alice finished the sentence for him.

“For starters,” Zeleny said, “we’ll cut away a little less than four years from the mirror.”

“Are you certain you won’t overshoot?” I asked. “If you cut off too much then we’ll miss the moment when the Second Captain was here.”

“Going too far won’t be a problem.” Zeleny said, marking off a thick layer. “We do have a whole bouquet.”

While he was speaking I saw the Diamond Backed Turtle hurriedly crawling to the lab exit. The little critter had managed to get out of the safe again. I should have run after him, but then I thought it over and realized I would have to pass up the moment when Zeleny removed four years from the mirror flower.

“How are things going back there.” Poloskov, who was still playing wizard with the metal detection sattelite, spoke over the communicator.

“Everything’s in order.” I said.

“Then I’m going on survey myself. I don’t want to let that thing out of my sight. For some reason it’s working unreliably.”

“When you go in search of the Blue Gull,” I warned him, “don’t forget there could be more than one ship on this planet.”

“I won’t.”

“Leave the line open. If anything happens get in touch with his immediately.”

“I’ll remember.”

“Maybe we’ll have a surprise for your return.”

“Great. Just remember I like good surprises. Don’t surprise me otherwise.”

Poloskov departed. We could hear the humming of the surveyor’s drives as it lifted into the air.

“All ready, Professor!” Zeleny said. “Shall we take the risk?”

For the third time Zeleny removed a layer from the mirror. This time it was so thick that he could barely hold it in his hands. The flower’s feathery petals were torn away, and all that lay on the table was the almost round, convex, center of the flower, much like a plate.

It was a long time before the mirror lit up again. It was a very long time since any light had fallen on that surface at all.

And when, finally, we saw an image, we realized the meadow did not look quite the same as it did now. The circle in the middle, now overgrown with grass, was empty, grey, like the concrete circle of a giant hatch. You could even make out the curving depression in the ground differentiating the circle from the surrounding earth.

“See!” Alice as overjoyed. “That is the right field!”

“Be very careful now.” I said. “You don’t want to cut of anything important.”

“I understand.” Zeleny said. “I’m not a child.”

But he was unable to make his precise incision. Dappled and very bright, almost transparent from impatience and intense curiosity, the empathicator managed, at the least opportune moment possible, to strike Zeleny’s elbow. The vibroblade slide through the thickest part and cut deep into the mirror. The mirror flower split in two and fell on the floor.

Out of total shame and embarrassment the empathicator shrank to half its size and started to grow dark. It wanted them to kill it. It rushed around the laboratory, striking the infuriated Zeleny, who tried to catch it, with its stick legs; finally, it threw itself on the floor and turned totally black.

“Don’t worry.” Alice tried to calm down the misfortunate empathicator. “That could have happened to anyone. We know that you didn’t do anything.”

She turned to Zeleny, who was still cursing the empathicator out at the top of his lungs, and said:

“Zeleny, please don’t! The empathicator is so sensitive he could die from embarrassment. And anyway, we have a whole bouquet more.” Alice pointed out. “You said so yourself.”

“All right.” Zeleny agreed. He was a retiring person and, in general, even tempered. Too bad. We’ve wasted so much time. But in a minute we’ll discover the secret of the Second Captain for certain.”

The empathicator, on hearing this, shrank down even further.

Zeleny led the way as we returned to the crew’s lounge. The empathicator danced in following us, still showing almost entirely black, and the vile looking bushes stretched out their branches to trip him so he fell.

We never even made it to the crew’s lounge. Zeleny stopped in the doorway and just said,

“Oh!”

I looked across Zeleny’s shoulder; both vases were overturned on the floor and the flowers were broken, smashed, destroyed by some ill-wishing force. Not a single complete mirror flower remained. Their leaves were scattered about the compartment.

And unknown to all the blabberyap bird had vanished again.

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