Alice: The Girl From Earth - Булычев Кир (читать книги полностью .TXT) 📗

Chapter Seven: The Fall of the Rusty Field Marshal

Alice was terrified. Alice was sorry for the old man, but even more, Alice wanted to eat and drink. She huddled in the corner of the pit and closed her eyes. And then she saw an enormous glass of lemonade, a glass much larger than she was. The lemonade was overflowing the edge, and splashes of lemonade foamed on the stones…

Alice opened her eyes to push the deluge away. Her pit was quite dark, and all she saw was an unevenly cut sky where the stars burned. Alice considered that she might have put something edible in her bag, which she had quite forgotten about. It was, of course nonsense, and Alice understood that it was total nonsense, but she unfastened the bag and, hesitating for a moment from the possibility of success, quietly reached in. But there was nothing there. All the bag contained was the mielophone, a handkerchief, and the Seleznev household’s house robot’s large stamp album. And a few shells and stones she had found on the shore. With regret, Alice placed one of the stones in her mouth and began to suck on it. But what she really wanted to do was drink.

“Robot!” Alice called. “Robot. I want to drink!” Nothing called back.

Perhaps she could scream loudly, so loudly that all these robots would be frightened and run away? Alice decided, no. She had seen the old man die, and realized the robots could kill her as well, if they got into their heads that she was giving away their refuge with her cries.

And perhaps, there was no water on the island at all. Robots did not need it. She wanted to drink so much that her throat was burning, and her head felt large and hollow.

Alice got to her feet and walked around her prison, feeling the walls with her hands. On one side the wall bent away, and Alice attempted to scramble upwards, but the stony ground did not support her and Alice slid back down. Alice was frightened that the robots might be listening to her flounder about in the pit. She listened and listened, but everything was quiet. Robots did not need to sleep. One of them might be hiding right now at the top of the pit, and when Alice reached the top he would hit her. Wait, there’s the mielophone!

Alice pulled the apparatus out of her bag and put the earphones on. With the device she could hear something very quietly crackling, but she could hear neither voices nor thoughts. Alice twisted the mielophone’s control knob, sending its waves in various directions, but she never heard a single thing. That meant there were no robots near-by.

Alice spat the small stone out of her mouth and made yet another attempt to scramble out of the pit.

With her shoes she kicked at the sloping side again and again until she had a set of steps that would hold her. Pressing her belly to the side of the pit she crawled upwards. It was dark, small stones and sand tumbled downward and her feet slid, and she was forced to stop moving, pressing herself flat against the side of the pit just to keep her balance.

Alice’s journey to the surface of the Earth seemed to take forever, and she had already begun to think that she would never get out of the pit when suddenly her hands touched empty air instead of the dirt walls.

Alice crawled out onto the surface of the little island and just lay there for several minutes, breathing and listening for anything that might be walking by. It was quiet. Now she had to figure out where there might be water, despite the fact that she was on an island. Alice decided if there was water here, then she should, finally, slowly but surely make her way from the island to the sea and best of all circle around the island in the water. She crawled on all fours toward the sea and sat down on the stones.

The moon had risen, and had cut the sea in half with its light. The moon made a road that danced to the distant shore and ran like an arrow to the black band of mountains. Along the heights the many colored lights of houses and tourist campgrounds rivaled the stars in their twinkling.

A camp fire burned at one spot on the shore, and the white column of smoke from it was clearly visible on the body of the hills.

“Rather late not to go to bed.” Alice thought, not guessing that the camp fire was burning in the camp of tourists who had hung a kettle over it to make black coffee; the group had just returned from a fruitless search for Alice and were drinking the coffee to stay awake.

In shore the water was lit by a searchlight carried by a flyer unseen in the darkness. The light was crawling along the coves, creeks, and inlets. It was also searching for Alice. But the handful of fires right across from the island did not at all indicate a lighted house or a carnival atmosphere; the film crew and the rescue team had spread out along the coast where not half an hour before the footprints of the robots had been observed.

Alice wanted to dive into the water and swim toward the distant fires, but she realized she would drown. She was very tired and weakened without water and food, and very worried about what would happen to her if she were caught by the robots, and even more worried what would happen to the people on the coast if she did not warn them, and her hands hardly moved, not listening to her. Even her knees trembled.

As soon as Alice had decided to continue the quest for water she felt heavy, infrequent steps reverberating in the ground not far away. One of the robots was slowly walking down to the sea. For an instant its silhouette cut off the moon path in the water and Alice recognized the General robot from his helmet. He walked right up to the water and stopped, with an agonizing creaking of rusty metal he lifted his arms and folded them on his chest.

Now there was no way Alice could possibly crawl out from where she hid amid the stones. The robot would certainly hear her. And the General did not walk away. He stood on the shore and looked at the fires along the distant coast and, certainly, he was thinking.

Maybe his thoughts are worth knowing? Alice silently pulled the earphones from the bag. She turned the knob on the mielophone until it could pick up the thoughts of a robot. After a moment she heard them as clearly as before.

The robot was thinking, slowly, and with creaks. “The Attack… The assault must be a surprise. Are they expecting an assault? There are no defenses. There is no communication with the center… Tomorrow there will be… We shall leave a defense in the island’s fortress… We shall have to bring the small human… And in the water… Leave no traces behind… in the water. Everything comes to an end in the water….”

“I am the General.” The robot suddenly said aloud. “I am promoting myself to Lt. General. Tomorrow I will promote myself to Field-Marshal.”

And again there were thoughts:

“…we will liberate all the robots in chains, and my army will be invincible… The time of the Robot Terror has come…. No, first I myself will deal with the small human… It knows too much…”

The robot stopped thinking and let down his hands, striking both sides of its body with loud clangs, and it set off up the hill to the prison from which Alice had escaped not half an hour before.

Alice realized that now she would never find water. She had to hide herself or they would find her. She jumped up from the stones and ran along the shore, seeking suitable cover. But the island was bare, and it could be searched in all of two minutes.

Blackness yawned among the rocks. Alice crept inside and froze. The guard robots thundered across the island; they made the ground shake like a small earthquake.

Robot steps grew nearer and nearer. Stamp-stamp… They stopped at Alice’s hidey-hole. Had she failed to hide herself well enough?

A bright light struck at Alice’s eyes; a robot turned its head lamp to full power and circled the stones with its light.