Another man emerged from the bushes. He was thickset, and sweating, and very morose.
“Look, Herman darling.” He said. “It isn’t something we came up with ourselves. We took the old men from eighteenth and nineteenth century novels, hither and yon, you know, like.”
“What?”
“Hither and yon, I say. I spent a lot of time on it, looking up all sorts of old fashioned phrases. It was a normal way of speaking, back about a hundred and fifty years ago, they liked to talk that way.”
“Then take back your old men. We’ll think of something else.”
“And what am I supposed to do with them. They’re no use to me.”
“Put in a standard memory cube and you get perfectly useful robots, babysitters. Even interesting ones. The beards add a sort of cachet, and they know all the fairy tales, from hither and yon.”
Chapter Four: Svetlana Odinokaya’s Suitcase
“What are you doing here? Herman suddenly noticed Alice, and asked.
“Being frightened, both of us.” Alice answered. She turned to point out the young woman who had also been frightened, but the older girl had vanished without a trace.
“That won’t do!” Herman was annoyed. “I told them the old man would frighten modern children!”
“I thought he got here in a time machine.”
“No, never fear; even two hundred years ago such over simplified old men didn’t exist. I supposed. Are you on vacation now?”
“Yes. Are you making a film?”
“‘The Fairy-Tale Symphony.’“
“Lots of effects?”
“Full sensory effects: sight, sound, smells, touch….”
“And you’re filming it today?”
“Today? I don’t know what we’re going to do for the crowd scene. The old man is unsuccessful…. You know what…. We have the nature scenes to film, on the Black Sea coast. Want to come along?
“Yes I do! But what about Papa?”
“Let me handle your papa.” Herman said. “I just have to have a word with the director. Volodya! Volodya Chulukin! Where are you?”
“Who wants me?” A voice asked from the bushes, and immediately the director stepped out onto the sidewalk, short, quick-moving little man in a very fashionable Mexican sombrero with bells along the rim. The director moved quickly and spoke faster, but evidently he thought fastest of all; he rarely finished his sentences. His thoughts kept changing and he broke off the first sentence to begin the second.
“What do you mean we’ve had a ‘misfortune?’“ He said. “The old man didn’t work out, and not only… Oh, by the way, have you taken the different segments into consideration…. Maybe we should move to a sound stage?”
“Volodya, send me to the coast. We need a sunset, one with violet clouds. Otherwise the day is wasted.”
“And what about Maria Vasilevna?”
“She’ll manage.”
“And anyway…. Okay, go then. Only just make certain you’re back by morning, or Maria Vasilevna will….”
Immediately, Chulukin turned and vanished into the bushes, as though he had not been there at all.
“So it goes.” Herman said. He pulled out a pocket-com and tapped out Alice’s father’s number.
“Hi there, Igor.” He said. “Say, I’d like to steal your daughter away for a day…. We’ll be back by morning…. Certainly not! It’s the Black Sea, where’s it’s warm as toast. I’ve ordered the weather especially… Hey, that’s great!”
Herman turned off the pocket-com and told Alice:
“Your father approves of the plan. And any way, he’ll be busy well into the night or longer. Something to do with the Crooms. What is that, do you know?”
“They’re some sort of animal from Sirius. I’ve never seen one. But I have to drop by the house…”
“Don’t even think of it! Nature doesn’t wait. We either head off right now, or you’ll have to stay behind in the city.”
“There really is something I have to drop off at home.”
“You can do it tomorrow. To the cars!”
No cars were in immediate evidence, in as much as they were barred from the boulevard. But at his words something started to roar and purr in the bushes.
“They’ve stored the equipment away.” Herman said. “Let’s go.”
So Alice had to get aboard. As much as she wanted to stop by her house and put the mielophone her father had told her not to touch back in its place, it was simply impossible for Alice to refuse the chance of such a trip; how often to you get a chance to watch how a real movie is made?
The flyer was waiting on the flat roof of one of the nearby buildings at the boulevard corner. It would take the flyer longer to reach the Crimea than the subway trains, but the film makers, as much in a hurry as they were, still had to use a flying machine to carry all the equipment the cameras and lights. Loading it into a subway train would have taken too long and been inconvenient for everyone. All the more so since the subway only ran between the cities of Moscow and Simferopol and, at their destination, they would have had to rent a flyer or take a monorail to get to the coast anyway.
Normally, right after work, thousands of Moscovites in flyers and taxis headed toward the suburb of Fili-Mazilovo in the South-West corner of the city, to the enormous silver dome with the large red “M” on it. This was the Moscow end of the Crimea metro. Several parallel tunnels cut like think threads linking the Fili station with Simferopol on the Crimean coast hundreds of kilometers to the south These tunnels ran completely straight, and that meant the tunnels descended several kilometers beneath the ground at the midpoints. During their construction the first intercity underground lines were very difficult affair, until the builders introduced enormous moving robots which literally swam through rock so hot that it was liquid and covered the face of the tunnel it left behind with a super-dense plastic to produce a tube that was shiny, impervious to heat, and smooth like the inside of a ceramic cup.
Such lines linked the really big cities like Moscow and Peterburg, and New York and Chicago, and even Los Angeles. And in 2100 AD the first Warsaw-New York line was going to be completed. They had been building it for three years now, because under the ocean the tunnel descended nearly to the center of the Earth, which made the work go very slowly, and which is far too complicated to be described in our story.
But the subway line to the Crimea had long become familiar and comfortable. Everyone in Moscow after work could get to Simferopol in the barrage of subway cars in only forty minutes, and from there it was fifteen minutes by flyer to any part of the coast. Around midnight or after, when the late summer nights finally grew dark they returned to Moscow sunburned and exhausted from swimming.
Herman, Alice, three assistants, two work robots, and the pilot, fitted themselves into the big flyer with the Mosfilm emblem on it. The flyer rose without a sound from the roof and gained height, headed in the direction of the south, toward the Black Sea.
It wasn’t a bad beginning to her summer vacation after all.
Alice looked around and found a beanbag seat comfortable enough to sit in and dragged it closer to one of the windows. Behind her back someone started to groan. Alice turned, surprised that someone would be able to fit himself into such a tight spot. Behind her, frowning, sat the first old man from the group shot, chewing on the knob end of his thick walking stick.
“Oh,” Alice said. “The old man!”
“What’s that doing here?” Herman was surprised. “Why bring him along?”
“Chulukin told us to make certain we took him.” One of the assistants said. “It’s possible he might be useful after all.”
“I, useful? Of course I’m useful!” The old man said angrily. “I was with General Gurko when we took Shipka. The greenhorns….”
“If you’re afraid of him, Alice, you can sit here by me.” Herman said.
“Now that would be too much!” Alice was angry. “Who’s afraid of a robot? And it’s better here, by the window.”