Kir Bulychev - Alice - The Girl From Earth

The robots, throughly worn and rusted after days of wandering over the waves, important components of their electronic brains damaged by a century of storage, stepped from the half sunken barge onto the land and, having dried out, began to act. One of the ten had, originally, been programmed as robot Chief, capable of making decisions in the presence of the enemy and commanding the others. The Chief-Robot put his command on a military footing and, in his rusted brain arose the thought that, if they now found themselves on the island, that meant the war they had been awaiting a hundred years had at last begun and it was time to engage in the subjugation of the enemy. He gave himself a promotion to General.

In their very first days on the island the robots discovered an enormous steel tub amid the stones. The Robot General sent off two of his soldiers in it to reconnoiter the coast. They returned after several hours, not alone, but with loot two prisoners Alice and the old man-film robot.

Alice knew none of this; she could not even imagine that some time in the past people, here on earth, had been scientists competent enough to make speaking robots, which they then prepared for war with other people, in particular Alice’s own grandfather and great-grandfather.

Nor did Herman Shatrov suspect any of it either; he and the entire group of film makers, as well as Svetlana Odinokaya, spent a sleepless night searching the coastal rocks with flash lights in search of Alice and the old man. Nor did the rescue teams of the Crimean Emergency Services whose flyers, poorly equipped for night flights, cruised over the shores; nor did the tourists from the near-by camp, all twenty three tents of which lay just on the other side of the hills from the film makers, get much sleep. The tourists were also out searching for the little girl and the old man.

Alice’s father, the Director of the Moscow Space Zoo, suspected nothing of this. In fact, he got an excellent night’s sleep, knowing that Alice was in complete safety in the Crimea with his good friend Herman Shatrov. No one had yet told him anything.

….In the middle of the first night Sosnin, Director of Rescue Operations, flying in a wandering course over one of the insignificant small bays that lined the coast, and lighting it up as he went along, saw a number of footprints in the sand, footprints far larger than human size. The tracks led upwards, long the edge of the hill. Following the chain of tracks he saw in one spot a collection of scattered shells and small stones which flashed iridescently in the beam of his search light.

Alice was terrified. Alice was sorry for the old man, but even more, Alice wanted to eat and drink. She huddled in the corner of the pit and closed her eyes. And then she saw an enormous glass of lemonade, a glass much larger than she was. The lemonade was overflowing the edge, and splashes of lemonade foamed on the stones…

Alice opened her eyes to push the deluge away. Her pit was quite dark, and all she saw was an unevenly cut sky where the stars burned. Alice considered that she might have put something edible in her bag, which she had quite forgotten about. It was, of course nonsense, and Alice understood that it was total nonsense, but she unfastened the bag and, hesitating for a moment from the possibility of success, quietly reached in. But there was nothing there. All the bag contained was the mielophone, a handkerchief, and the Seleznev household’s house robot’s large stamp album. And a few shells and stones she had found on the shore. With regret, Alice placed one of the stones in her mouth and began to suck on it. But what she really wanted to do was drink.

“Robot!” Alice called. “Robot. I want to drink!” Nothing called back.

Perhaps she could scream loudly, so loudly that all these robots would be frightened and run away? Alice decided, no. She had seen the old man die, and realized the robots could kill her as well, if they got into their heads that she was giving away their refuge with her cries.

And perhaps, there was no water on the island at all. Robots did not need it. She wanted to drink so much that her throat was burning, and her head felt large and hollow.

Alice got to her feet and walked around her prison, feeling the walls with her hands. On one side the wall bent away, and Alice attempted to scramble upwards, but the stony ground did not support her and Alice slid back down. Alice was frightened that the robots might be listening to her flounder about in the pit. She listened and listened, but everything was quiet. Robots did not need to sleep. One of them might be hiding right now at the top of the pit, and when Alice reached the top he would hit her. Wait, there’s the mielophone!

Alice pulled the apparatus out of her bag and put the earphones on. With the device she could hear something very quietly crackling, but she could hear neither voices nor thoughts. Alice twisted the mielophone’s control knob, sending its waves in various directions, but she never heard a single thing. That meant there were no robots near-by.

Alice spat the small stone out of her mouth and made yet another attempt to scramble out of the pit.

With her shoes she kicked at the sloping side again and again until she had a set of steps that would hold her. Pressing her belly to the side of the pit she crawled upwards. It was dark, small stones and sand tumbled downward and her feet slid, and she was forced to stop moving, pressing herself flat against the side of the pit just to keep her balance.

Alice’s journey to the surface of the Earth seemed to take forever, and she had already begun to think that she would never get out of the pit when suddenly her hands touched empty air instead of the dirt walls.

Alice crawled out onto the surface of the little island and just lay there for several minutes, breathing and listening for anything that might be walking by. It was quiet. Now she had to figure out where there might be water, despite the fact that she was on an island. Alice decided if there was water here, then she should, finally, slowly but surely make her way from the island to the sea and best of all circle around the island in the water. She crawled on all fours toward the sea and sat down on the stones.

The moon had risen, and had cut the sea in half with its light. The moon made a road that danced to the distant shore and ran like an arrow to the black band of mountains. Along the heights the many colored lights of houses and tourist campgrounds rivaled the stars in their twinkling.

A camp fire burned at one spot on the shore, and the white column of smoke from it was clearly visible on the body of the hills.

“Rather late not to go to bed.” Alice thought, not guessing that the camp fire was burning in the camp of tourists who had hung a kettle over it to make black coffee; the group had just returned from a fruitless search for Alice and were drinking the coffee to stay awake.

In shore the water was lit by a searchlight carried by a flyer unseen in the darkness. The light was crawling along the coves, creeks, and inlets. It was also searching for Alice. But the handful of fires right across from the island did not at all indicate a lighted house or a carnival atmosphere; the film crew and the rescue team had spread out along the coast where not half an hour before the footprints of the robots had been observed.

Alice wanted to dive into the water and swim toward the distant fires, but she realized she would drown. She was very tired and weakened without water and food, and very worried about what would happen to her if she were caught by the robots, and even more worried what would happen to the people on the coast if she did not warn them, and her hands hardly moved, not listening to her. Even her knees trembled.