“Thanks, Alice. You’re a true friend.”
Together the two of us finished cleaning the cages and feeding all the animals so that when we landed on Earth everything would be ship shape.
Alice’s Birthday
1
Alice was born on November 17th. It’s a successful day for such an event. It could have been far worse. I, for example, know someone who was born on January First, with the result that no one ever gave im a special birthday celebration because everyone was busy with New Years. It has to be bad for anyone born in the summer. All your friends are either away on vacation or trips; Alice has never had that trouble.
Just a week before Alice’s birthday I, coming home from the Zoo, started to think: What shall I get her? It is always a problem. I have packed away at home seven identical neckties, six holographic dancing ballerinas and ballerinas carved from wood carved out of roots and knots, three inflatable submarines, fourteen atomic powered lighters, a set of tin Eifel towers all of six inches high, and a multitude of other unnecessary things which you receive on your birthday and which you quite carefully hide away: five blue porcelain cups marked Mars Exposition 2070, an ash tray in the form of a ship of the star wraiths — as well as more such ash trays than one could possibly use.
I was sitting and remembering what Alice asked me back in September. She had asked for something. Something she needed. Back then I wanted to think about it more. And I forgot.
Then the videophone rang.
I pressed the ACCEPT button. On the screen appeared a set of seven eyes arranged in a fan shape above a rounded snout, below the nose the shark-tooth filled muzzle of my oldest and dearest friend, the off-world archaeologist Gromozeka, from the planet Chumaroz. Gromozeka was twice as large as an average human being, he had ten tentacles, seven eyes, a plate of bone armor on his chest and three wonderful, rather confused hearts.
“Professor,” He said. “It is quite unnecessary to burst into tears on seeing my visage. In but ten minutes I shall be at your home and will clutch you to my very own chest.”
“Gromozeka!” I just managed to say the one word when the screen at the other end turned off and my friend vanished. “Alice!” I shouted. “Gromozeka’s coming!”
Alice was doing her homework in the next room; she was delighted to tear herself away from it and come running into my office. A wanderbush came rolling in after her. We had brought it back from our last expedition. The bush was spoilt and demanded it be watered only with fruit juice, with the result that the floors of our house remained slippery puddles and our house robot spent his days grumbling, wiping up after the capricious plant.
“I remember him.” Alice said. “We saw Gromozeka on the Moon last year. What’s he digging up now?”
“Some dead planet or other.” I said. “They found ruins of cities. I saw it on NewsNet.”
Gromozeka leads an adventurous and peripatetic existence. In general, the inhabitants of the planet Chumaroz love nothing better than to sit at home. But you can’t have a rule without exceptions to it. Over the course of his life Gromozeka had gone to more planets than thousands of his conspecifics.
“Alice,” I said. “What should I get you for your birthday?”
Alice patted the bush on its leaves and answered thoughtfully.
“That’s a really serious question, Dad. I have to think on it. Just don’t go off and chose something without asking me. You might get me something I don’t need.”
And at that moment the house’s entry door flew open and the floor shuddered beneath the weight of my guest. Gromozeka rolled into the office, gawked with his enormous maw that was filled from end to end with shark’s teeth, and shouted from the threshold:
“I am here at last, my priceless friends! Straight from the space port to you. I am exhausted and about to go to sleep. Find me a wide enough space on your floor for a bed and cover me with a rug, and wake me in twelve hours.”
Then he caught sight of Alice and started to howl even louder:
“Female child! Daughter of my friend! How you have grown! Just how old are you now?”
“I’ll be ten next week.” Alice said. “I shall be embarking upon the second decade of my life.”
“Just right now we were trying to decide on her birth day present.” I said.
“And what have you chosen?
“Nothing, yet.”
“Shameful!” Gromozeka said. He lowered himself down on the floor on his bottom tentacles like an upside down flower, to take his load off them. “If I was the one who had such a fine female progeny I would celebrate her birthday for a full week and give her a whole planet.”
“All well and good.” I said. “Especially when one takes into consideration that a year on Chumaroz is longer than seventeen Earth years, and a week stretches for four terrestrial months.”
“As always, Professor, you succeed in quashing the mood.” Gromozeka was annoyed. “And have you found any Ex-Lax? Only the undiluted stuff. My thirst is terrible.”
Ex-Lax was something missing from our medicine cabinet and the house robot was dispatched to the nearest drugstore for it.
“Now tell us.” I said. “What have you been doing, where have you been digging, and what have you found?”
“I cannot say.” Gromozeka answered. “I swear by the Galaxy itself that it is a terrible secret. A terrible secret, but a sensational one too.”
“You want to tell us, but you can’t.” I said. “I never knew before now that archaeologists kept secrets.”
“Ho,” Gromozeka expelled a puff of yellow smoke from his nostrils. “I have embarrassed my best of friends! You are angry with me! That is everything. I must depart and, perhaps, do away with myself. I am sworn to secrecy.”
Seven heavy, smoking tears rolled out from my sensitive friend’s seven eyes.
“Don’t take it so hard.” Alice said then. “Papa didn’t want to embarrass. I know him.”
“I have embarrassed myself.” Gromozeka said. “Where is the Ex-Lax? Why do these robots always take so long to run their errands? All they do is stand about and gossip with other house robots. About the weather or about the football scores. And it’s completely forgotten that I am dying of thirst.”
“Perhaps I can bring you some tea?” Alice asked.
“No.” Gromozeka waved his tentacles in fright. “That stuff’s pure poison for me!”
At that moment, fortunately, the robot appeared with a large bottle of Ex-Lax. Gromozeka poured the liquid into a glass, sniffed it to appreciate the bouquet, and drank it down in one gulp; white smoke issued like steam from his nostrils.
“Now that’s better. Now I can transmit to you, Professor an enormously important secret. Let the consequences be on my head.”
“You really don’t have to.” I said. “I wouldn’t want you to get into trouble.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Gromozeka said. “No one other than me knows it’s a secret anyway.”
“You are a very strange archaeologist.” Alice said. “Doesn’t that mean there is no secret.”
“But there is a secret.” Gromozeka said. “One of the most important of all, but not in way you understood the word.”
“Gromozeka.” I said. “We don’t understand anything.”
“Nothing at all.” Alice added.
Gromozeka, in order not to waste time uselessly, finished drinking the Ex-Lax directly from the bottle, gave a sigh that made the windows shudder, and told us all about it.
The archaeological expedition with which Gromozeka was working had landed on the dead planet Coleida. Human beings had lived on Coleida once, but they had died out for some reason about a hundred years ago. Along with them had died all the planet’s animals. And the insects. And the birds. And the fish. There was not a single living thing on the planet. Nothing. Not a single cell. Just ruins. The wind howled, the rain beat down. In some places there were cars on the streets, and monuments to great people.