Козодой исчез!
Алиса искала попугая тут и там, но обнаружив лишь одно-единственное парящее в воздухе жёлто-зелёное перо она решила, что и сама должна забраться внутрь часов. Поэтому она открыла дверку и вкарабкалась внутрь. Внутри часов было действительно очень тесно, особенно когда маятник летел в её сторону. «Этот маятник хочет отрубить мне голову» — подумала Алиса, и подняв глаза кверху заглянула в механизм, чтоб узнать, куда мог подеваться попугай. «Козодой?» — крикнула она, — «ну где же ты?» Но от попугая не осталось и следа! Алиса протиснулась мимо качающегося маятника и начала карабкаться по нему, хотя это довольно непросто, когда в руках Вы держите фарфоровую куклу по имени Селия. Но очень скоро она достигла вершины маятника и теперь её голова упиралась в самый механизм часов, и тик-таканье, тик-таканье казалось очень громким. А этого гадкого Козодоя по-прежнему нигде не было видно.
И тут Алиса услышала перекрывавший тиканье часов зычный голос пратётушки: «Алиса! Иди скорей, девочка!» — прогремел голос. «Время урока! Я надеюсь, ты справилась с заданием!»
«Боже, Боже, Боже!» — запричитала Алиса. — «Что же мне делать? Пратётушка торопится с моим уроком! Мне обязательно нужно найти Козодоя. Он должен быть где-то здесь!» И Алиса вскарабкалась по маятнику ещё выше, пока, с неожиданным эллипсисом…
Alice vanished.
Now I don't know if you have ever vanished, but if you have, you will know it can be quite a fearsome experience. The strangest thing was this: Alice knew that she had vanished, but, even so, she could still see herself! Imagine that, you know that you've vanished, but you can still see yourself! So then, how is it that you know that you've vanished?
But Alice was far too busy to pay much attention to these thoughts; she was presently rushing down — at an ever-increasing pace! — a long tunnel of numbers. The numbers flashed by her eyes like shooting stars in the night, and each number seemed to be larger than the last one. They started out from one-thousand-eight-hundred-and-sixty (which was the number of the present year) and rapidly increased until Alice could no longer see where the count was taking her. Why, to count this far, one would need a million fingers! Ahead of her she could see Whippoorwill flying through the cascade of numbers, until what looked like a very large, and a very angry one-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-eight clamped his numbersome jaws around the ever-so-naughty bird. Alice plummeted forwards (if you can plummet forwards, that is) until she felt herself being eaten up by that very same number.
Down, down, down. Through an endless tubing Alice fell. "Whatever shall we do, Celia?" she said to the doll she still clutched in her fingers, and she wasn't all that surprised when the doll answered, "We must keep on falling, Alice, until we reach the number's stomach."
"I didn't even know that numbers had stomachs," thought Alice, "Great Uncle Mortimer will be most astounded when I tell him this news." When suddenly, thump! thump! thump! down Alice came upon a heap of earth, and the fall was over.
Alice was not a bit hurt: the earth was quite soft, and she jumped up in a moment. She looked around only to find herself standing in a long corridor under the ground. The walls and the floor and the ceiling of the tunnel were made of dirt, and it curved away in both directions until Alice felt quite funny trying to decide which way to go. "Oh Whippoorwill," she cried, "wherever have you flown to?" And then she heard three men approaching around the corridor's bend. She knew it was three men because she could hear six footsteps making a dreadful noise. But what should come around the corner but a rather large white ant! He was quite the same size as Alice and he had on a tartan waistcoat and a pair of velvet trousers. (Although I suppose you can't really have a pair of six-legged trousers: you can have a sextet of trousers — but that sounds too much like a very strange musical composition.) Dangling between the ant's antennae was an open newspaper which completely obscured his face, and from behind which he could be heard muttering to himself:
"Tut, tut, tut! How dare they? Why, that's disgusting! Tut, tut, tut!" The newspaper was called News of the Mound and if Alice had managed a look at the newspaper's date she would have received a nasty shock, but all her attention was focused on the headline, which read: TERMITES FOUND ON THE MOON! Alice was so puzzled by this news, and the ant was so engrossed in his reading, that they both banged into each other!
"Who in the earth are you?" the ant grumbled, folding up his paper and looking rather surprised to find Alice standing there.
"I'm Alice," replied Alice, politely.
"You're a lis?" the ant said. "What in the earth is a lis?"
"I'm not a lis. My name is Alice." Alice spelt her name: "A-L-I-C-E."
"You're a lice!" the ant cried. "We don't want no lice in this mound!"
"I'm not a lice, I'm Alice! I'm a girl."
"Are you now? Then I suppose this might very well be yours?" Upon which utterance the ant produced a tiny piece of crooked wood from his waistcoat pocket. "I found it lying in the tunnel, just a few moments ago."
"Why, yes it does belong to me," cried Alice. "It's a missing piece from my jigsaw!"
"Well take it then, and in future may I ask you to refrain from cluttering up the tunnels with your litter."
"I'm very sorry," replied Alice, taking the jigsaw piece from the ant's grasp. It showed the picture of a single white ant crawling up the stem of a flower. "I shall place this in London Zoo, just as soon as I get back home." And she slipped the jigsaw piece into her pinafore pocket.
"But it's only a picture," sniffed the ant, "not a living creature."
"That's quite all right," Alice replied, "because he's going to live inside a picture of London Zoo. Is that today's newspaper?"
"I sincerely hope it's today's paper! I've just paid three grubs for it."
"But it says that termites have been found on the Moon?"
"So?"
"But nobody's been to the Moon!"
"What are you going on about?" the ant demanded. "The humans have been travelling to the Moon for years now! For years, I tell you! What, exactly, are you doing in this mound?"
"I'm looking for my parrot."
"A parrot, you say? This wouldn't be a green-and-yellow parrot, with a big orange beak, who just can't stop asking riddles?"
"Yes, that's Whippoorwill! Where did he go?"
"The parrot, he went that-a-way," said the ant, pointing back down the corridor with one of his antennae.
"Oh thank you, Mister Ant. You've been ever so helpful."
"How dare you, young miss!" exclaimed the ant, raising himself onto his back legs and blocking her path. "You have made not one, but two factual errors: firstly, I am not an ant. I am a termite."
"Oh I am sorry," said Alice. "But surely there's not that much difference between ants and termites?"
"Stupid child! Just because we've both got six legs and two sections, and just because we both live in highly organized societies comprising winged males, wingless females and winged queens, you presume ants and termites to be all but identical. You couldn't be more wrong, dear girl. Why, there's a thousand differences between us!"
"Please tell me one," asked Alice.
"Tell you one what?"
"A difference between a termite and an ant."
"Well, now... let me think... I'm sure there was something... it's in here somewhere..." The termite was tapping his head with one of his antennae as he pondered. "Of course! We termites are vegetarians, while the horrible ants are carnivores. In fact..." and here the termite looked around rather nervously as he whispered to Alice, "ants like to eat termites for breakfast. On toast! I suspect that the ants are jealous because they haven't been found on the Moon. Quite a mound of difference, I think you'll agree?"
Alice did agree, but she wasn't sure why. "What is your name, Mister Termite?" she asked.
But this latest (very polite) question only made the termite even angrier: his antennae fairly bristled with indignation. "And that", he trumpeted, "brings me to your second mistake, for, if you had been paying attention to my previous statement, you would have recognized that I am completely wingless and therefore, logically, I am a female termite."
"Very well," said Alice, getting just a little exasperated herself now, "what is your name, Mrs Termite?"
"Mrs? Mrs? Do I look like a Mrs? Only the Queen is a Mrs! I told you already that the Queen has wings. What is the matter with you?"
"Oh!" cried Alice, "Miss Termite, you're just too... too... too logical for me!"
"Logical? Of course I'm logical. I'm a computermite."
"Whatever's a computermite?"
"Exactly what it sounds like, silly. I'm a termite that computes. I work out the answers to questions. Now, what is your question?"
"Very well," began Alice, trying her best to keep her anger in check, "what is your name, Miss Computermite?"
"Name?" squeaked the termite. "Names, names, names! What would I know about names? I'm a termite, for digging's sake! Termites don't have names! Whatever next? You'll be asking if we've got bicycles in a minute!"
Just then, Alice heard a trundling noise coming from behind her, and when she turned to look, what should appear around the corner but a male termite, on a bicycle!
It was quite an ordinary bicycle except that it had two sets of pedals (rather like a tandem) which the male termite pedalled at furiously with his middle and his hind legs, whilst clinging to the handlebars with his forelegs. (This is one of the few cases when two plus two plus fore equals six.) Alice knew it was a male termite because of the wings on his back, and she felt rather proud to have worked out this piece of logic, although why he wasn't flying through the tunnel rather than bicycling through it was quite another question. However, the male termite never gave her a chance to ask this question because he was obviously in a terrible hurry; he simply pedalled past Alice and the female termite at a terrific speed, shouting at them as he did so, "Come on, you two, hop to it! The Queen of the Mound has received a question from Captain Ramshackle and we must answer it immediately. Chop chop!" And with that he disappeared around the curve in the tunnel.