Читать интересную книгу Автоматическая Алиса - Нун Джефф

Ну и ну! Козодой без промедленья выпорхнул из клетки; его яркие перья создали веер цветов, а его скрипучий голос, казалось, заполнил собой всю комнату. «Что же мне теперь делать?» — вскричала Алиса. «Моя пратётушка непременно пожелает перекинуться со мной несколькими парами словечек!» Попугай носился по всей комнате, и Алиса делала всё, что могла, чтобы ухватить его за хвост, но всё без толку. Наконец он влетел прямо в корпус часов; она захлопнула дверку, заперев несчастного попугая внутри. В дверке было окошко, и сквозь него Алисе виден был Козодой, в страшной суматохе пытающийся выбраться. «Пусть это станет тебе уроком, Козодой» — сказала Алиса. Она взглянула на циферблат и увидела, что было почти без десяти два часа дня. Ровно в два каждый день её пратётушка приходила звать Алису на урок писания; Алисе никак нельзя было опаздывать. (Она совершенно не побеспокоилась выполнить вчерашнее задание на правильное использование эллипсиса в фразообразовании: по правде сказать, Алиса даже не знала, что такое эллипсис, кроме разве того, что он состоит из трёх маленьких точек, прямо как вот этот…) Несмотря на её затруднительное положение, стрелки часов, казалось, изобразили подобие улыбки на их луноподобном лице: тогда-то Алиса и нашла ответ на последнюю загадку Козодоя, но когда она заглянула сквозь застеклённое оконце внутрь корпуса часов, смогда увидеть лишь неясные очертания перьев Козодоя, улетающего в часовой механизм.

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?"