“And why do you run around in pants? The old man suddenly asked in a normal voice, but angrily. “Can’t your mother find a skirt for you? I suppose your nurse drinks…. She drinks and carries on… Girls in trousers and short pants….”
“My mother is an architect.” Alice said.
“If you say so.” The old man agreed. “Your times are not mine. But even here when you run out of the house so very early in the morning, you put on shoes….. Sit down here, girl, on the bench. I’ll tell you a tale. Hold your horses, little missy… And we rushed from our trenches following General Gurko, who’s now serving in the heavenly kingdom, you know, girl from hither and yon, you understand there were twelve seventy-five pounders up there and the Turkish positions had started to roar… And for the Tsar…”
The old man repeated the words ‘for the Tsar’ several times, and suddenly began to sing.
“…and for the Tsar, for God, and Country
“We shout a loud Hurra! Hurra!”
Alice slowly started to walk a little down the path so as to get out of the old man’s sight without him noticing. She was thinking that it might be better to just run away to get some help.
And suddenly an older girl with a large folder of drawings under her arm, an ordinary girl, probably a college student, appeared around the corner. She was in shorts and a halter. Blond hair fell as far as her cheeks from a sunburned head. The girl heard the old man’s song and stopped.
“Oh good!” Alice was delighted. She ran up to the older girl and whispered loudly:
“The old man has gone out of his mind. He’s talking about the strangest things and is quite cut off from reality.”
“Let’s take a look.”
The old man noticed her and became very angry.
“Hour after hour I am beset by demons.” He said. “Yet another shameless hussy flitting from hither to yon and yon to hither. And what are you dressed up for?”
“How do you do?” The girl said. “Are you feeling all right?”
“And what is that to you? Why do you take such liberties with words? Never in my life have I suffered so much, other than by gall stones. Verily.”
“He’s very strangely dressed.” The girl commented to Alice in a low voice, and Alice also noticed that the old man’s clothing was very strange. Where had she seen clothing like that before?
The old man was wearing short grey trousers with a dirty fringe at the bottom of each leg; from beneath the trousers stuck out woolen socks, which were wound around by a cord. The cord descended to his ankles and was attached to very odd slippers, which were terribly familiar, but Alice had never encountered their like before. They appeared to be woven of straw, like a basket. Of course! Those were called lapti, and she’d only seen pictures of them in children’s fairy tale books when she was younger. The upper body of the old man was covered with a grey jacket with cotton padding sewn into the shoulders to make the shoulders appear wider. And then there was the straw hat, but Alice had noticed that earlier herself.
“He’s not from our time.” Alice said, whispering, and frightened of her discovery. “He’s from the past.”
Of course the old man was an Out-Timer; of course he spoke oddly and was dressed very, very unusually.
“Wait a moment.” The older girl said. “Where do you live, Mister?” She asked the old man.
“You will know a lot….” The old man began. Then he thought a moment, and added: “It’s gone clean out of my mind.”
“Maybe we can take you home?”
“My home is beyond the highest of mountains and the deepest of valleys.” The old man said with assurance, as though he were simply giving them his address. “But rather, tell me, do you till the soil?”
“Yes, we do.” The other girl answered.
“And do you have plough boards to till the soil?”
“Not any more. Now it’s all done by robots and other automated systems.”
“I thought as much. And what year is it now?”
“Two thousand seventy-nine.”
“And that is from the Birth of Christ?”
“AD. Anno Domini. Yes.”
“But what year are you from?” Alice asked. “Are you really a time traveler?”
“You’re the one who’s running everywhere from hither to yon!” The old man said. “A traveler, you say? Rather, tell me, who among you eats meat? Is it dear?”
“Meat?” Alice didn’t know what to say. But the older girl came to her aid.
“Yes, we have meat, grandfather. And it costs only a trifle.” She said. “And any other foods you might want to eat.”
“Fiddlesticks, hither and yon! People like you could never get down to slaughtering the calves!”
“Are you really from before the Revolution?” Alice insisted. “How did you get here? Did the Time Institute bring you here in their time machine?”
“That you will have to tell me.” The old man became agitated. “Who is your commanding general?”
“We don’t have any generals.”
“What utter nonsense! There’s no way you can live without generals… My Lord in Heaven, who is coming!”
Down the path, leaning on the same stick of knotted wood, came a second old man, exactly the same as the first except that his hat was cloth instead of straw.
Alice was so surprised that she hid herself behind the first old man as three more old men, exactly the same as the first and second except that only two had walking sticks, one was without any hat at all, and one of them had a beard a little bit longer than the others.
All the old men were sauntering toward the bench.
“My good Lord in Heaven!” The first old man said. “Otherwise, hither and yon, you won’t find a single living soul!”
“Quite correct!” One of the new old men answered. “It’s true there isn’t a single living soul; it’s all tricks and pranks with beer.”
And he raised his walking stick to the college student and Alice. It was obvious they were the ones who had filched the beer.
“There must be a worm hole into the past.” Alice whispered. “And they’re just walking through. We have to stop it or we’ll have a hundred thousand of them…”
“These are the ones who should be taught not to interfere! The stick. Use a stick!” The old man shouted.
“It’s that way, hither and yon!” Another old man shouted.
“We’ll do it now!” The third one shouted. “I served in the Police myself!”
Three more old men came up the other path. There was nowhere to run. In fact the old men did not touch them, but they made an awful racket. Alice held tight to the other girl’s hand. And at that moment they heard a gong, and a loud voice said:
“That will be enough, Gleb. Cut the crowd scene. It’s not working out at all.
There was a rustling from behind the bushes and the old men froze where they were when the voice shouted.
Several young men and women emerged from the bushes; among them Alice recognized her father’s friend Herman Shatrov, the movie camera man. Shatrov wore a long green baseball cap to protect his head from the sun; a microphone hung from his neck.
Not noticing the girl and Alice, Shatrov laid into his assistants.
“How could we get a mess like this?” His voice rose and his face grew red. “How do we get seven robots coming out in a crowd scene from the sound stage? Who has an answer for that? Do you plan to have one fly by in an air car too? Are you trying to frighten the children to death. No, I won’t leave it in! I’m going to have to have a serious talk with the construction team right now.”
“It’s hardly their fault, Herman.” One of his assistants said. “Look at the schedule we gave them. They just managed to ship the robots to us without even a chance to test them. And we put them right out on the street.”
“Do you really expect us to think these are real Russian peasants from the 18th century? Just what did you use to program them?