“Are they in the field or in the forest?”
“In the forest.”
“How do you know that?”
“They told us themselves. By radio.”
“That’s good.”
“What’s good?”
“That they’re not in the field.”
“Why?”
“I was afraid that I saw them.”
“How so?”
“It’s nothing, I was just joking…”
I got up from my chair. In general, Alice can be a great fabulator…
“I didn’t go walking in the forest, Papa. Word of honor, I didn’t. I was in the meadow. That means I didn’t see them.”
“Alice, I want you to tell me everything, in detail, all that you know. I’m not going to add anything myself. You saw strange…people, in the fore st?”
“Word of honor, cross my heart, I wasn’t in the forest.”
“All right, all right. In the meadow.”
“I didn’t do anything bad. And really, they’re not all that strange.”
“I want a decent answer from you, an adult answer: who did you see and where were they? Don’t torment me and the rest of the human race….”
“Is the rest of the human race here, Papa?”
“Listen to me, Alice…”
“Oh, all right. They’re here. They came with me.”
I looked around involuntarily. The terrace was empty. If you didn’t count the buzzing bee, there was no one here but Alice and myself.
“No, not there. You’re not looking in the right place.” Alice sighed, walked up closer to me, and said. “I wanted to keep them. I really didn’t know the human race was looking for them.”
She stretched out the basket with the strawberries. She raised the basket right in front of my eyes, and I made out, not really believing what I saw myself, two figures in space suits. They were covered with strawberry juice and sitting together on a single berry.
“I didn’t do them any harm.” Alice said guiltily. “I thought they might be gnomes, from the fairy tales.”
But I wasn’t listening to anything else she said. Carefully clutching the little basket to my heart I was running for the videophone. All I could think was, for our visitors, our uncut lawn must have seemed like an immense forest.
And that how we made our First Contact with the Labucillians.
Our Man In The Past
The ordeal with the time machine took place in the Little Hall of Science House. I had picked Alice up from the kindergarten and realized that if I took her home I would miss the demonstration. So I made Alice swear that she would behave herself and we went to Science House together.
The Head of the Temporal Institute, a very large and very bald person, stood in front of the time machine and explained the scientific principles of its construction and operation. The scientific community listened eagerly.
“Our first experiment, as you all know, was rather unsuccessful.” He said. “The cat we sent back to the beginning of the twentieth century exploded in the region of the Tungus river, giving rise to the legend of the Tungus meteorite. Since then we have not experienced serious failure. True, in accordance with certain natural laws with which anyone may become acquainted by perusing our Institute’s brochures, for the moment we can send people and objects back only to the seventh decade of the twentieth century. One has to say that some of our co-workers have spent time there, obviously in the utmost secrecy, and returned home successfully. The temporal transmission procedure is comparatively uncomplicated, in as much as it is the results of the labors of some hundreds of our people over many years. One need only put on the Time Belt… If I could be so fortunate as to have a volunteer from the hall, and I will demonstrate the procedure for preparing to move through time on him…”
There was an awkward silence. No one wanted to be the first to go onto the stage. So obviously, who else should be the first to step forward but Alice, who only five minutes before had sworn up and down that she would behave herself.
“Alice!” I shouted. “Get back down here!”
“Oh don’t be alarmed.” The Institute Head said. “Nothing at all will happen to the child.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me, Papa!” Alice said happily.
The people in the hall began to laugh, heads turned in my direction, in search of the strict father.
I tried to appear nothing of the sort.
The Institute’s Head put a belt around Alice’s waist and attached something like earmuffs to her head.
“And this is all there is.” He said. “Now the person is ready to travel through time. All he has to do is enter the time cabinet here and he will appear in the year One Thousand Nine Hundred and Seventy-Five…”
What has he said!? The panicky thought exploded through my head. If Alice was listening….
But it was too late. Of course she was going to take advantage of the opportunity.
“Little girl, what are you doing? Stop!” The Institute’s director shouted.
But Alice had already climbed into the Time Cabinet and, in the eyes of everyone, vanished. The hall gasped in chorus.
The Temporal Institute’s director, white as a sheet, waved his arms back and forth, trying to lower the din. And, seeing that I had started to run toward him down the aisle, started to speak, bent over the microphone so he could be heard over the other noise:
“Nothing at all will happen to the child. After three minutes she will re-appear in this very hall. I give you my word that the apparatus is completely reliable and tested! Don’t worry a bit!
His arguments were excellent, but all I could think of as I stood there was the fate of the cat who had been transformed into the Tungus meteorite. I both believed and disbelieved the speaker. Think of it a minute; what would you do if your child found herself a century in the past. And what if she should run away from the machine there, and get lost?
“Isn’t there any way you can send me after her?” I asked.
“No. In three minutes…. Don’t be alarmed; our man in the past will meet here.”
“You have one of your researchers there?”
“Yes and no. He’s not a researcher. We just found someone who understood all our problems perfectly and the second time cabinet is in his apartment. He lives there, in the twentieth century, but because of his specialty is sometimes comes into his future, our present…”
At that moment Alice appeared in the cabinet. She stepped onto the scene with the look of someone who had completed a mission successfully. Under one arm she held a large, antique book.
“So you see….” The Institute’s Director said.
The hall burst into friendly applause.
“Little girl, tell me, what did you see?” The speaker said, not even giving me the chance to approach Alice.
“It was very interesting there.” She said. “Pop! And I was in another room. There was a man sitting at a desk. He was writing something. He asked me: ‘Little girl, are you from the twenty-first century?’ I said of course I was, only I didn’t know the number of the century because I can’t count too well, I go to kindergarten in the middle group. The man said he was very pleased to meet me and that I had to go right back.
“‘Do you want to look at Moscow the way it was before your grandfather was born?’ I said I wanted to, and he showed it to me. It was very strange. All the buildings were small. Then I asked what he was called, and he said he was Arkady. He was a writer and wrote science fiction books about the future. Only it turns out that he doesn’t think everything up by himself because sometimes people from our time come to him and they tell him everything. Only he can’t tell anyone of this because it’s a strict secret. He gave me his new book… And then I came back.”
The hall greeted Alice’s story with wild applause.
Then a venerable scholar rose from his seat and said: