Alice: The Girl From Earth - Булычев Кир - Страница 63

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“And what if he’s injured, what if he can’t stand up and just has to crawl there?” Alice refused to surrender.

“Don’t spout nonsense!” Richard suddenly became very angry. “Anything at all might happen. That’s why I wanted to be the one to go in Doctor Petrov’s place. And all you do is ask stupid questions.”

Alice grew quiet. The questions were not at all stupid. She walked up to the transparent wall of the time chamber and began to study the control buttons. There was no way she could go inside: Petrov could appear back in the present at any moment, and the two of them could not occupy the same space.

Richard came up to her. He was feeling awkward for shouting at the girl and he started to explain:

“See the green button over there, on the right? When Petrov pressed it, the time cabinet’s door closed. Then he pressed the second, white button. That turned on the temporal field. At that moment you could still see him. Finally he pressed the red button. He found himself into the past, to the moment we calculated earlier and which we programed into the machine.”

“You mean he can’t choose to when he is going himself?”

“No. It becomes too complicated. You have to partially dismantle the machine to set it for the time you want. It took us all of last night to ready the machine.”

“And where exactly is he ‘now?’“

“‘Now,’ Petrov is standing one hundred one years ago, just at the time the epidemic had really started, but the people of Coleida were still alive.”

Unexpectedly the humming suddenly became very loud.

“Watch what happens!” Richard said.

For about three more seconds a cloud of mist appeared in the time chamber, and suddenly turned into Petrov.

Petrov had not changed at all. He pushed back the hood, opened the Time Cabinet door, and left the chamber.

“Well, that… is that.” He said like a dentist who had just extracted a tooth. “We’ve arrived.”

“Well, what was it? What?” Purr became agitated, ran up to the temporalists feet and looked at the human from below.

“I still don’t know.” Petrov answered. “I was very hurried. But don’t get excited here are your newspapers.”

He pulled out a large packet of newspapers and other documents from beneath his shirt and handed them to the archaeologist. Purr grabbed them with his long, furry hands and opened one of the newspapers. The newspaper was larger than he was and covered him completely.

“Let’s get going.” Petrov said. “Richard, turn off the power. We have to tell everyone else it worked. And it will be breakfast time soon. They’ve probably started already.”

“Gromozeka is going to be really angry you didn’t call him.” Alice said.

“No, he won’t.” Petrov said, and took off the long cape.

They headed for the entrance to the Time Building. Richard walked ahead, followed by Petrov, who held Alice by the hand, and last of all, completely covered with a newspaper, came Purr.

“Well, Gromozeka…” Alice started to say again, which could in no way compare with the pride she felt in having seen what Gromozeka had slept through.

But she was never able to finish the sentence.

On the sand in front of the time station sat Gromozeka, and beside him stood all the other archaeologists.

“Hello there.” Richard said. “And we thought that you were all asleep.”

“No one got any sleep at all.” Gromozeka said embarrassed. Thick yellow smoke came from his nostrils; the scent of Ex-Lax was thick in the air.

“No one got any sleep either.” The remaining archaeologists said. “We did not want to bother you. We still have our pride, and you didn’t invite us…”

“Sorry.” Petrov said.

“Doesn’t matter.” Gromozeka laughed. “No one’s very angry. Let’s get to the kitchen and you can tell us everything. Do you think it’s all that easy to wait here in the cold?”

“And excited.” Someone said.

They all headed for the cook tent.

“Well…” Petrov said, looking over the seated archaeologists. “Since no one seems all that interested in eating, let me give you a brief rundown of what exactly I saw in the past. And then we can get some food down.”

The archaeologists approving gestures; some nodded their heads, some shook them back and forth.

“I exited the field of the time cabinet without incident.” Petrov began. “All our calculations were correct. The point of egress was located in a field right next to the city, about three hundred or so meters from the last of buildings. I marked the egress point in my memory and hurried toward the town. The ‘local’ time was early morning, and everyone was still asleep. Or rather, not everyone, but the majority. I hadn’t managed to go a hundred paces before I saw a number of vehicles marked with blue circles hurrying along the roads leading into town.

“Those were ‘Emergency Services’ vehicles. Ambulances.” Gromozeka said. “We already know about them.”

“Correct. Ambulances. I also knew what they were, and so I knew that our calculations had been right. The epidemic was in the city. I hurried toward town.”

“Hold on!” Purr suddenly shouted. “You did have your shots, didn’t you?”

“Of course.” Petrov said. “I’ve had the full spectrum of shots for all known extraterrestrial diseases that affect human beings. And, most definitely, Space Plague.”

Gromozeka, as though he were remembering something, pulled a note book from the pocket on his round belly and wrote down a few words.

“The vehicles stopped in front of the hospital.” Petrov continued.

“We know.” The archaeologist who looked like a spider on long legs said. “We excavated it.”

Petrov sighed.

“If someone else would like to interrupt the good Doctor,” Gromozeka roared, “we can take them away from here and lock them in a tent.”

“Right.” The archaeologists said.

“I saw them carrying sick people on stretchers. But I did not stay in the area because Richard was waiting for me and would have gotten worried. I headed for the newspaper kiosk. The kiosk was open, but I couldn’t see anyone around. Only when I looked inside did I see the proprietor laying on the floor.

“‘Are you feeling badly?’“ I asked him.

“‘I’m sick. Like everyone else.’“ The newspaper seller said.

“‘Any way I can get newspapers?’“ I asked.

“‘Take whatever you want.’ The kiosk attendant said. ‘Just call the EMTs. There’s no way I can get to the hospital myself.’

“I gathered up all the newspapers I could carry and hurried to the hospital. I told one of the attendants on duty that there was a sick person laying in the newspaper kiosk, but he just waved me off. I could see they were all exhausted. I looked through the hospitals windows and I could see people laying in the corridors side by side. There weren’t enough beds for the dying.

“So I returned to the kiosk and dragged out the sales clerk. He was really very small… just about Alice’s height… and carrying him wasn’t at all difficult. I left him at the hospital entrance, but I didn’t go inside because they had all started to stare at me; I am, after all, half again taller than the average Coleidan.

“But I did manage to photograph everything I saw, because I suspect our specialists will be able to learn a lot from the photos. Other than that, I took money of various denominations from the kiosk; the proprietor is never going to need it, but if we send anyone else into the past again they will find it useful. That’s all. Let’s have breakfast.”

“One moment.” Gromozeka said. “Before we sit down to eat, I’d like everyone, without exception, excavators and guests, to head for the medical tent.”

“Why?”

“Everyone should have their inoculations against Space Plague up to date. All of us.”

Alice hated shots, but Gromozeka noticed she was veering away from the medical tent and ran after her.

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