Kir Bulychev - Alice - The Girl From Earth

Having danced himself to contentment the robot shouted:

“Tha…ag!” And froze.

We hadn’t changed the lubricating oil on his head.

This time engineer Zeleny didn’t hit the robot with his fist on his chin’ he just dipped the head into an open oil can.

The robot started to gurgle, something clicked inside him, the mouth started to open and closed again, and the robot sang in a fine, resonant voice:

“Too, too, the lilly-white boys, clothe them all in green, Ho! Ho! one for one and all for all and ever more shall be, so!” which had evidently been programmed into his ancestor long, long ago.

“So then, the problem is located in the lubricating oil.” The robot said more than a little disturbed. “But it was almost fresh. We had just changed it.”

Zeleny, without saying a word, placed some of the old machine oil taken from the robot onto a glass slide and went over to the microscope.

“It’s all clear now.” Zeleny said after a minute. “I should have guessed it right from the beginning. There’s bacteria in the oil which turns it into useless gunk. Interesting any idea how this bacteria could have gotten into your oil supply?”

The robot started to think. We all went into the Crew’s Lounge to continue the conversation.. The robot continued to think. We poured ourselves tea, and poured our robot guest a tube of sunflower oil, an enormous delicacy for robots. The robot automatically drank down the tube’s contents and continued to think.

Suddenly over our heads the Blabberyap bird awoke. It caught one sight of our guest and, spreading its beak wide, began to sing:

“‘Who’s afraid of the big, bad, wolf..’.”

The bird was singing in the robot’s voice.

We were very surprised. Only the robot was not surprised; he raised his head and said to the Blabberyap bird:

“Hello, bird. How are you?”

But the Blabberyap bird continued to sing; it fluttered its wings. No one had expected an answer; a Blabberyap is not a very wise bird.

“You know the Blabberyap bird?” Alice asked.

“Yes, of course.” The robot answered absently. “I was the one who repaired him.”

“And how could you repair a living bird?” Alice was curious.

“A few years ago,” the robot answered, “this bird came to our planet out of space. At the time we didn’t have any air worth breathing and there were no local animals left, but Blabberyaps, as you must know, do not need air. They are able to fly between planets and not breath for several weeks and even for months. But this bird hardly made it to our planet. Someone had attacked it en route and severely wounded the bird.

“We rescued the bird, fattened him up again on lubricating oil, but one wing had to be cut off and replaced with a prosthetic.”

“That’s not possible.” I exclaimed. “We would have noticed it already.”

“Take a look.” The robot answered with pride. “We do superb repair work.”

I got to my feet and walked over to the Blabberyap bird. The bird, as though guessing what was needed, spread its right wing. I felt it. Beneath the feathers was metal. The robot had told the truth.

“As you see, not even you noticed it.” The robot said triumphantly.

“But what happened to the bird then?” Alice asked.

“It had flown here from the Medusa system.” The robot said. “Someone was chasing after it and wanted to kill it. While we were fixing the bird it told us a great deal, and we leaned that someone had suffered some sort of accident and fallen into danger on one of the Medusa system’s planets and the bird was hurrying to inform someone else, a friend. We would have gone to his aid ourselves, but we don’t have any space ships.”

“And you let the bird go?”

“We let it go.” The robot said. “But we tried to explain to it that it would never be able to reach the sector of the Galaxy where it was headed. Although the artificial wing looks just like the real one, it’s not possible to fly very far on it. Alas, the bird did not understand us. It is not a very wise bird. But we also knew that the planet Blooke isn’t very far from us; it’s the Blabberyap bird’s home planet, and we concluded the blabberyap bird would be able to make it home. We haven’t seen it since then.”

“There, see!” Alice said. “How can you doubt that the Second Captain survived and sent the bird for help now?”

“But four years have passed since then.” I answered. “Most likely, he’s dead.”

“But I should relate to you one very strange event.” The robot said. “It took place not all that long ago. About a month or so. Just three days before the epidemic began. I would not have even remembered about it had I not seen the Blabberyap bird. A small black ship landed here on our world. One individual emerged. He wore a hat. We thought at first that he wanted to deal in our spare robots, but it turned out his ship was damaged and he needed our aid… We were delighted to have a chance to render assistance to this person…”

“That was Doctor Verkhovtseff.” Alice whispered.

“But when his ship was ready for flight we asked him if he might give us some machine oil or recent newspapers in exchange for the labor. However, the person in the hat cursed us and said that we would get nothing. And that we should be thankful to him for even leaving us alive. I then said to him: ‘Alien, you should be ashamed of yourself. I remember when we aided a non sapient bird, a Blabberyap, and repaired her wing, although she had nothing to give us in return, and we thought nothing about it. But you are a sapient being, an Earthman by your exterior appearance. You should be ashamed of yourself!’ At that he asked: ‘What Blabberyap’s wing did you fix?’ I said that had happened all of four years before and was irrelevant to the present matter. But he insisted that I tell him all about the injured bird. You should have seen how angry he became. He cursed us for helping the bird, and when he learned she had flown on to the planet Blooke, he set off for there. ‘I have wasted far too much time on that darned bird!” And he muttered a few more things. And later that night he was seen near the main cistern…”

“What cistern?”

“Now all is clear!” The robot said. “He went to the main cistern that contained the machine oil! He is an evil individual, and he may very well have contaminated it with harmful bacteria…”

We told the robot the bacteria may very well have gotten to the planet by some other means, but the robot just shook its head and would not listen to a word I said.

As a parting gift we gave the robot a can with machine oil, enough so he could fix several dozen robots, and promised to immediately send hyperspatial telegrams to the nearest planet as soon as we were in space again so they could send a ship with machine oil.

When the robot departed my friends grew furious.

“The faster we go the better.” They rushed to me. “We may still be able to save the Captain! Now there isn’t the slightest doubt that he’s fallen into some misfortune and that Doctor Verkhovtseff fears that someone will learn the truth.”

“I feel ashamed of being an Earthman.” Zeleny said gloomily. “And until we solve this mystery I won’t be able to look any aliens in the eyes. If Earth has produced such a despicable monster it is our duty to find him and pull his fangs. Maybe the Second Captain will be able to help us in this, once we find him. The animals can wait.”

I sighed and agreed, and anyway Alice and Poloskov were in complete agreement with Zeleny.

“All right.” I said, joining the majority. “Although I suspect that your hopes are founded only on rumors and we won’t find the Second Captain in the Medusa system. As soon as we’re convinced that it is all an error we can head back to the center of the Galaxy do some quick animal collecting.”