Kir Bulychev - Alice - The Girl From Earth

The island was not marked on the maps. It was too small and insignificant, and offered no great threat to shipping. Very few people looked in on this empty corner of the Crimean coast.

Alice, of course, knew none of this. For her the island was a large cliff rising from the water, a rocky desert without a single tree.

The sun had set already, and the island was overcome with purple twilight and gloom. That barge that had run aground on the rocks looked black.

When the boat reached the rocks another robot, just as big and rusty as the first two that had made Alice prisoner, came out of the ruins of a hut and went down to the water.

“You have the loot?” It asked.

“One large human and one small.” A robot said.

“Not a bad beginning.” The new robot said. “I will report to the Chief.” It turned, its joints creaked and scraped, and it vanished into the ruins, the former smugglers’ den.

One of the robots pulled Alice and the old man to the shore, turning off the engine’s controls. The other untied the prisoners hands and pulled the gag out of Alice’s mouth.

“What sort of thugs are you?” Alice said, gasping for air. “You may be able to treat me this way, but what will happen to you when people find out what you’re doing?”

It was as if the robots did not hear her. They stood ‘at ease,’ and they waited at ease, ignoring Alice and the old man robot, until until the robot that had come out of the ruins and gone back returned.

“The General thanks you for your service.” It said.

The two robots stamped their feet in place and froze.

“The General cannot look at your loot now. He is busy.” The robots stamped their feet again and froze again.

“You may rest.” The local robot said. “But only know what measures to take. Is that clear?”

“Aye, aye, sir!” The robots said in chorus, their round eyes flashed and they left, forgetting completely about the captives.

The old man sat down on the sparse yellow grass and said:

“True barbarians.”

“Grandfather,” Alice spoke to him; she had quite forgotten that he was a robot himself. “Grandfather, have you ever seen metal robots before?”

“‘Robots?’ Is that, then, what has made us captive?”

“Yes. Of course, you wouldn’t know.”

Alice had occasion to see many robots, many different types of robots, before, but she had never seen robots constructed of real, heavy metal rather than light plasteel, at least not on Earth. Manufacturing a robot out of metal was inefficient. The robot came out extremely heavy, expensive, and overly complicated.

“Grandfather, we have to signal the coast.” Alice said. “So they can come and rescue us.”

“That’s the spirit, granddaughter.” The old man said. “Our side never sleeps. I remember it like yesterday, how we went up the hill in Manchuria, with General Gurko in the lead on his white horse….”

And the old man was lost in useless remembrances of events about which in truth he could have remembered nothing at all, since he had only come out of the factory the week before.

“Grandfather, do you have a light?”

“A what?”

“Fire. A lighter. A lamp…”

“There’s iron and flint on me somewhere…” The old man rooted around in the pockets of his grey jacket, but he found nothing.

“I must have dropped it.”

Two robots appeared on the stony path. Each of them was carrying an enormous rock.

“These fortifications they are erecting. Who are they defending against?” The old man asked. “Is it that the Turks are on the move again?”

“No. It’s the people who live along the coast they fear.”

“And that might be…”

“What?”

“I’ve forgotten, girl from hither and yon. My mind wanders, it’s old age or the stroke.” The old man said sadly. “We have to be on our guard, despite the lack of time. Aha! I remember: we can do it, we can light a fire to make a smoke signal.”

“But you don’t have any way to make a fire.”

“What we cannot do, we cannot do.” The old man agreed.,

Alice and the old man walked slowly along the shore. From where they stood it was evident the robots had done an enormous amount of work on the island. Shallow trenches provided with breastworks ran right down to the water line. In one spot a log, coarsely cut to imitate an old fashioned artillery piece, stuck out a little bit higher. The log brought the old man to a condition of tumultuous rapture.

“Look at it, look!” He muttered. “Flintlocks, long range mortars! We’d dash aside from one of these, and not a single heathen for miles around! Weapons to the front! Case shot to the right! Case shot to the left!”

“They’re just made out of wood, Grandfather.” Alice laughed. “It’s to deceive their enemies. “Those can’t shoot at anyone.”

“That is true.” The grandfather-film robot agreed. “So they want to deceive? Who?”

“You, grandfather. And perhaps other people as well.”

“So it’s me they want to deceive, is it? Me? Why, I would have seen through it in a minute! They could never have hidden anything from me, girl from hither and yon!”

They sat down on an enormous, flat rock.

“Such beauty….” The old man suddenly sighed.

Alice was somewhat surprised that the old man could think about the natural beauty of the spot a this moment, but he was right.

From the shore beyond the silver water the Crimean mountains lifted like a toothy wall. They sky overhead went from green to lilac the sun dropped behind the hills, but not all that far and it reached the few, tattered rags of clouds with its rays.

The first lights had appeared as golden points beneath the toothy summits and at the edge of the water, but there was no way to tell which of those lights was the film company’s camp. A moment later Alice saw a pod of dolphins moving through the water not far from the island.

“Hey, dolphins!” Alice shouted. “Tell my friends they kidnaped us!”

“Stop shouting, or you will go into the water!” A voice came from behind her. Alice turned and saw the rusty robot standing behind them.

“Now I will show them!” It said.

The robot went away and came back in a few minutes with a strange instrument in its hand. The instrument resembled an old fashioned bow. The robot placed a thick, home made arrow on the wire bow-string and fired. The bow was roughly made and improperly balanced and therefore the arrow flew to one side, well away from the dolphins.

Then the robot corrected for his weapon’s imprecision and shot not at the dolphins, but to the other side. On this occasion the crossbow bolt splashed heavily into the water not ten meters from the dolphin pod. The dolphins, evidently, understood that their enemies were on the island, and immediately vanished into the sea as though they had never been. The robot proudly patted his bow with his metal hand and said:

“Even with this primitive weapon we can vanquish any enemy. What matters is not the weapon, but the Leader!”

“And who is your leader?” Alice asked.

“A miserable slave such as you hasn’t even the right to pronounce his name.”

“I’m no one’s slave. There aren’t any slaves any more.” Alice said. She had already taken ancient history and knew about slaves.

“There will be.” The robot said; he placed another arrow on the bow string and shot it into the sea in the direction of the half sunken boat that had run aground on the rocky shore.

“How did you shoot at that boat?” Alice asked. “How did you get to be so strange?

“We sailed here on it.” The robot said. “On that boat, at which I have now shot my straight arrow, in order to demonstrate for you the irresistability of my rage.”