I pulled the netting back and ran my hands through the water of the empty aquarium when the dwarf started to shout anew:
“He has released all of my fish! He has let them all escape! How could I have suspected he would remove the net from my aquarium? I am pennyless! Now I am ruined!”
The surrounding crowd murmured and grumbled and growled in twenty languages and looked at me with severe condemnation.
Even Alice said,
“How could you, papa?”
“Don’t you people understand?” I addressed the crowd that had surrounded us, “There never was anything inside the aquarium, ever!”
“And how would you know that?” A tiger striped, white moustached inhabitant of the planet Ikes asked me. “What if he’s right? What if there are invisible fish that cannot be caught? How can we prove that he is not telling the truth?”
“That’s right.” An Audity supported him. “Why would someone fly here from another planet with an empty aquarium?”
“So he can sell its non-existent contents every day.” I said.
No one at all was listening to me.
And so I was forced to pay the sad dwarf for ten rare fish. The dwarf hadn’t even waited for my rapid surrender and was deeply moved, overcome with gratitude, and promised me that were he ever to catch another invisible fish he would certainly bring it to me. And when we were getting ready to leave, he said:
“Little girl, permit me, I have a small gift for you.”
“Of course.” Alice said. “I would be delighted.
“Take this.”
The dwarf reached inside his pocket and withdrew his empty hand, his palm cupped as though it contained something, and showed it to Alice:
“This,” He said, “is an invisible hat. Take it, but don’t be afraid. I love giving good people priceless gifts. But you must be careful. The hat is woven of such a fine thread that it weighs nothing and cannot even be felt.”
Alice thanked the scoundrel and pretended to place the gift in her bag, and we went on.
Suddenly I found that an incomprehensible creature had gotten itself underfoot. It looked like a furry ball on sticks and was about knee high. The being’s remarkable coloring ranged from bright red to whitish speckles, like a toadstool.
“Hold him, Dad!” Alice shouted. “He’s running away.”
“I’m not so sure.” I said, finally putting my wallet into my pocket. “Maybe that’s not one of the animals but the collector chasing after an animal that’s got away. If I grab hold of him he’ll call the police complaining that I insulted him because I didn’t guess he was sapient.”
But at the same time I caught sight of a fat, two headed snake in a shining, flowing space suit who was chasing after the red sphereoid in pursuit.
“Help me!” He shouted. “The Empathicator’s fled!”
The red ball tried to hide itself behind my legs, but the snake extended one of a hundred thin extensors attached to its side and grabbed the fugitive. The later immediately changed color from red to yellow and braced itself on its straight little legs.
“Pardon me,” I said to the fat snake. “Just what is this animal.”
“Nothing interesting.” The snake said. “We have lots of them on my planet. We call them empathciators. They can’t talk, so instead tey change their color in accordance with their moods. They have a lot of very interesting shades. Do you have any sugar cubes with you?”
“No.” I said.
“Too bad.” The snake answered, but found a cube of sugar somewhere else.
On seeing the sugar the sphere showed purple highlights.
“He’s happy.” The snake said. “He is a pretty boy, isn’t he?”
“Very pretty.” I agreed.
“We constantly expose them to new sensations on purpose, in order to get unusual colors. If you’d like I can hit him? He’ll become a superb shade of black.
“No, don’t.” I said. “Would you be able to sell him to us for the Moscow Zoo?”
“No.” One of the snake’s heads answered, at the time the other was silently hanging down. “Perhaps we can do an exchange?”
“But I don’t have anything to trade?”
“We’ll take one of these, this little creature here.” The snake said and pointed a dozen or so extensors at Alice.
“Can’t be done.” I said, trying not to get angry, in as much as I had myself only recently taken a sapient being for a non-sapient bird. “This is my daughter.”
“Foo! What a horror!” The snake shouted angrily. “I shall call a Trade Supervisor immediately. This is absolutely forbidden!”
“What is forbidden?” I asked.
“It is forbidden to deal in one’s own progeny. Giving them in exchange for animals is also forbidden. Didn’t you bother to read the Rules posted at the entrance to the Bazar. You are a monster and a barbarian!”
“Nothing of the sort.” I broke out laughing. “I would have as much success selling Alice as she would me.”
“That would be worse.” The snake shouted, clutching the colorful ball of the Empathicator to its side; the Empathicator, evidently, had become terrified and turned white with red chevrons along its back. “A daughter selling her own father? What is the universe coming to?”
“Honestly,” I implored, “we are not selling each other. On Earth, in general, it is not accepted for parents to sell their own children, or for children to sell their parents. We just came here together to buy some rare animals for our Zoo.”
The snake thought about it a while and said:
“I really don’t know enough about your species to know if I should believe you or not. It’s better to ask the empathicator. He is that sensitive.” He bent both heads to the Indicator and asked him:
“Can this strange being be believed?”
The empathicator turned emerald green.
“As strange as it may sound, he affirms that you can be believed.”
Then the snake grew quiet and said in quite a different tone:
“But you do want me to give you to them?”
The empathicator turned gold like the rays of the sun.
“He wants it very much.” The snake said, his voice drenched with emotion. “Take him before I change my mind. And yes, this booklet “Feeding your Empathicator, and keeping him in the best color.”
“But I don’t know what I can give you in return.”
“Nothing.” The snake said. “I did, after all, insult you with my suspicions. If, in return for the Empathicator, you will agree to forgive me, I will be delighted, at least until evening.”
“Not really,” I said. “I wasn’t at all insulted.”
“Not in the least.” Alice said.
Then the snake rippled the mass of its extensors and the Empathicator’s globular body flew into the air and landed in Alice’s hands. The Indicator remained gold, except along the spine where blue ripples ran up and down as though they were alive.
“He is satisfied.” The snake said and quickly crawled away, not listening to our protestations.
The Empathicator jumped down from Alice’s hands and walked beside us, rocking back and forth on thin straight legs.
Coming toward us was an entire family of Audities. A large male with ears larger than an elephants, his wife, and six small children. They carried a canary in a cage.
“Look.” Exclaimed Alice. “Isn’t that a canary from Earth?”
“Yes.”
“This is not a canary.” The father Audity said severely. “It is a bird of paradise. But it is not at all what we had really wanted to buy. We were searching for a real Blabberyap.”
“And not found one.” The little Audites said in chorus, raising a storm with their ears.
“There isn’t a single Blabberyap.”
“That is astonishing!” The Audity woman said. “Why in the past year the Bazar was half filled with Blabberyap birds, and now they have quite vanished. Do you know why?”
“No.” I said.
“We don’t know why either.” The Audity said. “So we had to settle for a Bird of Paradise.”
“Papa,” Alice said when they had gone, “We need a Blabberyap bird.”
“Why? I was amazed.
“Because everyone needs a Blabberyap.”
“All right, let’s go in search of a Blabberyap.” I agreed. “Only first I want you to look at the Sewing Spider. And if they’ll part with him, we are definitely going to buy. Our Zoo has dreamed of having one of those for a long, long time.”
Chapter Ten
We Buy A Blabberyap
Alice and I traipsed our way around the whole bazar, buying at least seventeen different animals and birds for the Zoo, the vast majority of them totally unknown on Earth and never before seen by human beings. Alice asked each and every trader or collector:
“But where can we get a Blabberyap bird?”
Their answers were all the same:
“The Blabberyaps stopped laying eggs.” One said.
“The Blabberyaps have all died out from some mysterious illness.”
“It’s impossible to capture a Blabberyap bird.”
“Someone bought up all the Blabberyap birds on the planet.”
“There never were any such birds as the Blabberyap anyway.”
And many, many other answers. Nor, for that matter, did we understand how the disappearance had taken place. Everyone recognized this as fact: earlier, the Blabberyap had been one of the most common of birds and everyone loved to keep them at home and in zoos. But over the last year nearly all the Blabberyaps had simply vanished. Gone. Dissapeared.
It was said that people went from house to house and bought Blabberyaps. It was said that someone stole the Blabberyaps from the zoos. It was said that all the Blabberyaps in the Blabberyaperies had contracted some sickness or other and died.
The more hopeless finding a Blabberyap became, the more Alice wanted to get a look at the bird.
“But just what is a Blabberyap, I mean?” I asked Krabakas of Barakas, whose acquaintance I had just made.
“Nothing really special.” Krabakas answered politely, swaying at the end of his blue tail. “They talk.”
“Parrots talk too.” I said.
“I don’t know anything about parrots. Perhaps parrots are what you call our Blabberyaps.”
“Maybe.” I agreed, although parrots could hardly have evolved on this planet. “Where would they have come from?”
“What I don’t know, I don’t know.” Krabakas of Barakasa said. “Maybe they originated on this very planet. I have heard that Blabberyaps are capable of traveling between the stars and always return to their home nest.”
“If you can’t find us a Blabberyap, we’d better return to the ship.” I told Alice. “All the more because your Empathicator is starving.”
The Empathicator heard my words and as a sign of agreement became a bright green.
We turned toward the entranceway and immediately Krabakas’s cry from behind stopped me. He hung over the cages like a blue whirlwind.
“Hey!” He shouted. “Earth humans! Come back here right away!”
We returned. Krabakas had wound himself into a little ball from excitement and said:
“You want to see a Blabberyap? Well, consider yourselves fabulously lucky. I have a fellow here hiding behind these cages who brought a real, fully grown Blabberyap bird to the Bazar.”
Alice, not waiting for him to finish, rushed back to where we had been, the Empathicator crawling after her, the colors of impatience being replaced by all the colors of joy
On the other side of the wall of bird cages we found a short Audity with his ears pressed tightly to his head, hiding. He was holding a large white bird by its tail. The bird had two beaks and a golden crown.
“Oh!” Alice said. “You recognize it, don’t you, dad?”
“Looks familiar some how.” I said.
“Familiar!” Alice burst out. “That’s the bird sitting on the shoulder of the statue of the First Captain!”
Alice was right. I remembered. Naturally, exactly as the sculptor had cut the stone.
“You’re selling your bird?” I asked the Audity.
“Quiet!” The Audity whispered. “If you don’t want to get me killed, don’t make any noise.”
“You can buy it without a long conversation.” Krabakas of Barakasa spoke into my year. “I would have bought it myself, but I think you need it more. Perhaps, this is the last Blabberyap on the planet.”
“But why such secrecy?”
“I don’t really know myself.” The Blabberyap’s owner answered. “I live well away from town and only get in here very, very rarely. Some time ago, several years ago in fact, this Blabberyap landed in my yard. He was exhausted and injured. I looked after him, and since then he’s lived in my house, although I must say that this Blabberyap has evidently spent its whole life on other worlds. He speaks many different languages. Some days ago I was forced to come into the city on business and met an old friend in a caf‚. We were talking, and my friend mentioned there wasn’t a single Blabberyap bird left in the city. Someone had been buying them up or killing them. But then I told my friend that I had a Blabberyap. ‘Watch him.’ My friend told me. Right away some Earth human came up to me told me he wanted to buy the Blabberyap bird.”
“Did he wear a hat.” Alice asked suddenly.
“Yes, he did.” The Audity answered. “How did you know?”
“And he was middle aged and skinny?”
“Yes.”
“It has to be him.” Alice said.
“Who is it?” Krabakas of Barakasa asked.
“The same fellow who was trading in grubs.”
“Of course it would be him the miscreant!” Krabakas muttered angrily.
“Wait, don’t interrupt.” The Audity stopped us. “I then refused to sell him my beloved bird and went back home. And, imagine, on that very same night someone tried to break into my house. And on the next night someone tried to burn me down, but the Blabberyap was not sleeping and awakened me. And yesterday I found a still unfinished tunnel beneath my house. And last night someone threw an enormous stone into my bed room. Even I can understand: if the bird remains in my house I will not remain alive. If you do not fear death, take the bird, but I cannot answer for the consequences.”
“Take it.” Krabakas said, “The bird is rare, in excellent condition, and you are leaving here anyway. You have nothing to fear.”
“Shall we take him, Papa?” Alice asked and reached out her hand to the Blabberyap bird.
Before I had a chance to answer the Blabberyap fluttered its wings and landed on Alice’s shoulder.
“Fare thee well, my friend.” The Audity sighed.
I settled accounts with the Audity, who almost immediately departed quickly, not even bothering to count the money.
“You can feed the Blabberyap white bread.” The good Krabakas said in parting, “as well as milk. Extract of dogrose would also be useful.”
Having said that compacted himself into a blue cube and lay down in the cage with the canaries.
Alice and I headed toward the Bazar entrance. Alice walked in front, the Blabberyap bird sitting on her shoulder. In truth, he had yet to say a single word, but that did not disturb me. After Alice came the Empathicator, pensively changing its color. I followed, holding a bridle attached to an extremely rare, working, almost sentient Sewing Spider, that I had bought for pocket change. The Sewing Spider was spinning a silk scarf in its cage, its long end trailing along the ground. Behind me came the robot trundler filled with cages and aquariums; it was packed as so high there was no place for anything else. As our little procession passed the Bazar’s collectors turned to us from all sides and repeated again and again in dozens of voices and languages:
“Look! They’ve got a Blabberyap!”
“A Blabberyap!”
“A live Blabberyap!”
Suddenly the Blabberyap inclined its head to the side and started to speak.
“Attention!” It said in Russian. “A landing on this planet is impossible. I am returning to synchronous orbit, and you, my friend, don’t forget to turn on the inertial dampers.”
Having said that, the Blabberyap began to chatter in a totally unknown language without a pause and kept it up for at least two minutes.