The Cyberiad Part 11

It was in vain that Klapaucius sought to calm the raging sage throughout this long harangue. Upon uttering these final words, the ancient one leaped up and, shaking his fist at the generations to come, let loose a volley of shockingly pungent imprecations (for where could he have learnt them, having led such an exemplary life?); then, foaming and fuming, he stamped and bellowed, and in a shower of sparks crashed to the floor, dead from an overload of bile. Klapaucius, much discomfited by this unpleasant turn of events, sat at the table of stone nearby, picked up the Testament and began to peruse it, though his eyes were soon swimming from the abundance of epithets therein addressed to the future, and by the second page he broke into a sweat, for the now-departed Chlorian Theoreticus gave evidence of a power of invective that was truly cosmic. For three days Klapaucius read, his eyes riveted to that ma.n.u.script, and was sorely per-plexed: should he reveal it to the world, or destroy it? And he sits there to this day, unable to decide..."

"Methinks," said King Genius, when the machine had finished and retired, "I see in this some allusion to the ques-tion of monetary compensation, which is now indeed at hand, for, after a night bravely whiled away with tales, the dawn of a new day appears outside our cave. Well then, my good constructor, how shall I reward you?"

"Your Majesty," said Trurl, "places me in some difficulty. Whatever I request, should I receive it, I must later regret, in that I did not ask for more. On the other hand, I would not wish to cause offense by naming an exorbitant figure. And so, the amount of the honorarium I leave to the gen-erosity of Your Majesty..."

"So be it," replied the King affably. "The stories were excellent, the machines unquestionably perfect, and therefore I see no alternative but to reward you with the greatest treasure of all, one which, I am certain, you will not want to exchange for any other. I grant you health and life-this is, in my estimation, the only fitting gift. Anything else would be an insult, for no amount of gold can purchase Truth or Wisdom. Go then in peace, my friend, and continue to hide your truths, too bitter for this world, in the guise of fairy tale and fable."

"Your Majesty," said Trurl, aghast, "did you intend, be-fore, to deprive me of my life?

Was this then to have been my payment?"

"Put whatever interpretation you wish upon my words," replied the King. "But here is how I understand the matter: had you merely amused me, my munificence would have known no bounds. But you did much more, and no wealth in the Universe can equal that in value. Thus, in offering you the opportunity to continue your ill.u.s.trious career, I can give you no higher reward or payment..."

Altruizine

OR A True Account of How Bonhomius the Hermetic Hermit Tried to Bring About Universal Happiness, and What Came of It

One bright summer day, as Trurl the constructor was pruning the cyberberry bush in his back yard, he spied a robot mendicant coming down the road, all tattered and torn, a most woeful and piteous sight to behold. Its limbs were held together by sections of old stovepipe fastened with string, its head was a pot so full of holes you could hear its thoughts whir and sputter inside, throwing off sparks, and its make-shift neck was a rusty rail, and in its open belly were vacuum tubes that smoked and rattled so badly, it had to hold them in place with its free hand-the other was needed to tighten the screws that kept coming loose. Just as it hobbled past the gate to Trurl's residence, it blew four fuses at once and straightway began, spewing a foul cloud of burning insula-tors, to fall apart, right before the constructor's eyes. Trurl, full of compa.s.sion, took a screwdriver and a roll of electric tape and hastened to offer what aid he could to the poor wayfarer, who swooned repeatedly with a great grinding of gears, due to a total asynchronization. At last Trurl managed to restore it to its senses, such as they were, then helped it inside, sat it down in a comfortable chair and gave it a battery to recharge itself, and while the poor thing did so with trembling urgency, he asked it, unable to contain his curios-ity any longer, what had brought it to this sorry pa.s.s.

"O kind and n.o.ble sir," replied the strange robot, its armatures still aquiver, "my name is Bonhomius and I am, or rather was, a hermetic hermit, for I lived sixty years and seven in a cave, where I pa.s.sed the time solely in pious meditation, until one morning it dawned on me that to spend a life in solitude was wrong, for truly, did all my ex-ceedingly profound thoughts and strivings of the spirit ever keep one rivet from falling, and is it not written that thy first duty is to help thy neighbor and not to tend to thine own salvation, for yea and verily-"

"Fine, fine," interrupted Trurl. "I think I more or less understand your state of mind that morning. What hap-pened then?"

"So I hied myself to Photura, where I chanced to meet a certain distinguished constructor, one Klapaucius."

"Klapaucius?!" cried Trurl.

"Is something amiss, kind sir?"

"No, nothing-go on, please!""I did not recognize him at first: he was indeed a great lord and had an automatic carriage that he not only rode upon but was able to converse with, much as I converse with you now. This same carriage did affront me with a most unseemly epithet as I walked in the middle of the street, unaccustomed to city traffic, and in my surprise I inadvertently put out its headlight with my staff, which drove the carriage into such a frenzy, that its occupant was hard put to subdue it, but finally did, and then invited me to join him. I told him who I was and why I had abandoned my cave and that, forsooth, I knew not what to do next, whereupon he praised my decision and introduced himself in turn, speaking at great length of his work and many achievements. He told me at last the whole moving history of that famous sage, pundit and philosophist, Chlorian Theoreticus the Proph, at whose lamentable end he had had the privilege to be present. From all that he said of the Col-lected Works of that Greatest of Robots, the part about the H. P. L. D.'s did intrigue me the most. Perchance, kind sir, you have heard of them?"

"Certainly. They are the only beings in the universe who have reached the Highest Possible Level of Development."

"Indeed you are well-informed, most kind and n.o.ble sir! Now while I sat at the side of this worthy Klapaucius in his carriage (which continued to hurl the foulest insults at whatever was imprudent enough to cross its path), the thought suddenly came to me that these beings, developed as much as possible, would surely know what one should do, when one, such as myself, felt the call to help his fellow robot. So I questioned Klapaucius closely concerning this, and asked him if he knew where the H. P. L. D.'s lived, and how to find them. His only reply was a wry smile and a shake of the head. I dared not press the matter further, but later, when we had halted at an inn (the carriage had by this time grown so hoa.r.s.e that it lost its voice entirely, thus Klapaucius was obliged to wait until the following day) and were sitting over a jug of mulled electrolyte, which quickly put my gracious host in a better humor, and as we watched the thermocouples dance to the spirited tunes of a high-frequency band, he took me into his confidence and pro-ceeded to tell me... but perhaps you grow weary of my tale."

"Not at all, not at all!" protested Trurl. "I'm all ears, I a.s.sure you."

"My good Bonhomius," Klapaucius addressed me in that inn as the dancers worked themselves into a positive heat, "know that I took very much to heart the history of the unfortunate Chlorian and resolved to set out immediately and find those perfectly developed beings whose existence he had so conclusively proven on purely logical and theo-retical grounds. The main difficulty of the undertaking, as I saw it, lay in the circ.u.mstance that nearly every cosmic race considered itself to be perfectly developed-obviously I would get nowhere by merely asking around. Nor did a trial-and-error method of search promise much, for the Universe contained, as I calculated, close to fourteen centigigaheptatrillion civilizations capable of reason; with such odds one could hardly expect to simply happen on the correct address. So I deliberated, read up on the problem, went methodically through several libraries, pored over all sorts of ancient tomes, until one day I found the answer in the work of a certain Cadaverius Malignus, a scholar who had apparently arrived at exactly the same conclusion as the Proph, only three hundred thousand years earlier, and who was com-pletely forgotten afterwards. Which shows, once more, that there's nothing new under this or any other sun-Cadaverius even met an end similar to that of our own Chlorian... But I digress. It was precisely from these yellowed and crumbling pages that Ilearned how to seek the H. P. L. D.'s. Malignus maintained that one must examine star cl.u.s.ters for some impossible astrophysical phenomenon, and that would surely be the place. A rather obscure clue, to be sure, but then aren't they all? Without further ado I stocked my ship with the necessary provisions, took off and, after nu-merous adventures we need not go into here, finally spotted in a great swarm of stars one that differed from all the rest, since it was a perfect cube. Now that was quite a shock- every schoolboy knows stars have to be spherical and any sort of stellar angularities, let alone rectangularities, are not only highly irregular but entirely out of the question! I drew near the star and immediately saw that its planet was also cubiform and equipped, moreover, with castellated corner cleats and crenelated quoins. Farther out revolved another planet, which appeared to be quite normal; a look through the telescope, however, revealed hordes of robots locked in mortal combat, a sight which hardly invited closer scrutiny. So I got the square planet back in my finder and increased the resolution to full power.

Imagine my surprise and joy when I looked in the eyepiece and beheld a monogram engraved on one of the planet's mile-long quoins, a mono-gram consisting of four letters embellished with swirls and curlicues: H. P. L. D.!

-Great Gauss!-I cried. -This must be the place!

But though I circled around again and again, until I was quite dizzy, there was not a living soul to be seen anywhere on the planet's sandy surface. Only when I dropped to an alt.i.tude of six miles was I able to make out a group of dots, which proved to be, upon higher magnification, the inhab-itants of this most unusual heavenly body. There were a hundred or so of them lying about in the sand, and so mo-tionless, I thought for a moment they might all be dead. But then I saw one or two scratch themselves, and this clear sign of life encouraged me to land. In my excitement I didn't wait for the rocket to cool after its descent through the planet's atmosphere, but jumped out at once and shouted: --Excuse me, is this by any chance the Highest Possible Level of Development?!

No answer. In fact, they paid no attention to me at all. Somewhat taken aback by this show of utter indifference, I looked around. The plain shimmered beneath the square sun.

Here and there, things stuck out of the sand, things like broken wheels, sticks, bits of paper and other rubbish, and the inhabitants lay any which way among them, one on his back, another on his stomach, and farther on was one with his legs up in the air. I walked around the nearest and examined him. He wasn't a robot, but on the other hand neither was he a man, nor any sapient proteinoid of the glutinous-alb.u.minous variety. The head was round and plump, with red cheeks, but for eyes it had two penny whistles, and for ears it had thuribles, which gave off a thick cloud of incense. He was dressed in orchid pantaloons, a dark blue stripe down either side and appliqued with dirty sc.r.a.ps of closely written paper, and he wore high heels. In one hand he held a mandolin made entirely of frosted gin-gerbread, a few bites already missing from the neck. He was snoring peacefully. I leaned over to read the appliques on his trousers, but could make out only a few since my eyes wa-tered copiously from the incense. The inscriptions were most curious-for example, NO. 7 DIAMOND NET WEIGHT SEVEN HUNDRED CWT, NO. 8 THESPIAN CONFECTIONERY, SOBS WHEN CHEWED, RECITES HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY IN THE STOM-ACH, 'OUT BRIEF.

CANDLE' FARTHER DOWN, NO. 1O GOLLOCHON-DRILL FOR EMERGENCY SLURGING, FULL-GROWN, and many more, which I simply don't remember now. As I touched one of these paper sc.r.a.ps in trying to read it, a depression quickly formed in the sand beneath this native's knee and a tiny voice piped: -Shall I come out now?

-Who's that?-I cried.-It's me, the Gollochondrill... Are you ready? Is it time?

-No, not yet!-I was quick to reply, and backed off. The next native had a head in the shape of a bell, three horns, several arms of varying length (two ma.s.saging its belly), ears that were long and feathery, a cap with a pretty purple balcony on which someone was having an argument with someone else-quite heated too, judging from the little plates that came flying this way and that, shattering on the brim-and he also had a kind of throw pillow, all jewel-spangled, tucked under his shoulders. While I stood before this individual, he pulled one of the horns off his head, sniffed it and tossed it away with a look of disgust, then poured a handful of dirty sand in the opening. Nearby lay something I first took for a pair of twins, and then for a couple of lovers locked in an embrace. I was about to turn away discreetly, when I realized that it wasn't two people at all, or one, but exactly one and a half. The head was quite ordinary, except for the ears: every now and then they would detach themselves and flit about like b.u.t.terflies. The lids were closed, but numerous moles on the chin and cheeks were equipped with tiny eyes; these regarded me with un-disguised hostility. This remarkable being had a bioad and muscular chest, which however was riddled with holes, as if someone had been careless with a drill, and the holes were haphazardly plugged with raspberry jam. There was only one leg, but it was unusually thick and shod in a handsome morocco leather slipper, its curled toe tipped with a little felt bell. Near the elbow was a sizable pile of apple cores, or perhaps they were pear. My astonishment grew as I walked along and came upon a robot with a human head, a miniature self-winding samovar whistling cheerfully in its left nostril, and then someone reclining on a bed of candied yams, and someone else with a trapdoor in his abdomen, open so I could look in and see the crystal works. Some me-chanical elves were putting on a play in there, but it turned out to be so terribly obscene, that I left in a hurry, blushing like mad. In my confusion I tripped and fell, and when I got up I saw yet another inhabitant of this strange planet: stark naked, he was scratching his behind with a solid gold backscratcher, apparently enjoying himself thoroughly, even though he was quite headless. The head lay farther on, neck stuck in the sand; it was touching its teeth with the tip of its tongue. The chin was checkered chintz, the right ear a boiled cauliflower, while the left was an ear all right, but stopped up with a carrot that carried a tag saying PULL. Without thinking I pulled, and out with the carrot came a length of string and then another tag that read YOU'RE GETTING WARM! I kept pulling and pulling, until the string finally ended in a medicine bottle that bore the label NOSY, AREN'T WE?

All these impressions left me feeling so dizzy I hardly knew where I was. But at last I pulled myself together and began to look around for the kind of person who might be communicative enough to answer a question or two. A pos-sible candidate, it seemed, was one fairly pudgy type squat-ting with his back to me and occupied with something he held on his knees-at least he had only one head, two ears, two arms, and so on. I went up to him and began: -Pardon me, but if I'm not mistaken, you gentlemen have been fortunate enough to achieve the Highest Pos-sible- The words died on my lips. He didn't seem to hear me at all, for he was wholly taken up with what lay on his knees, which happened to be his very own face, removed somehow from the rest of the head and sighing softly as he picked its nose. For a moment I was stupefied, but only for a moment -my curiosity returned in full force, and I simply had to find out, once and for all, just what was going on. I ran from one native to the next, spoke to them, questioned them, raised my voice, insisted, pleaded, reasoned, even threat-ened, all to no avail. In my exasperation I grabbed the nose picker's arm, and was horrified to find that it came off in my hand, though that didn't bother him in the least, he only poked about in the sand and pulled out another exactly like the first-except for theorange plaid fingernails-blew on it a little, then affixed it to the shoulder stump. Curious, I bent over to examine the first arm, but dropped it hastily when it snapped its fingers in my face. By now the sun was setting, already two corners below the horizon, the air grew cool, and the inhabitants of H. P. L. D. began to settle down for the night, scratching, yawning, gargling, one shaking out an emerald quilt, another methodically taking off his nose, ears and legs and carefully putting them in a row at his side. I stumbled around in the dark for a while, then gave it up with a sigh and lay down to sleep too. Making myself as comfortable as possible in the sand, I looked up at the starry sky and tried to think what to do next.

-Indeed--I said to myself-by all indications this is the very planet both Cadaverius Malignus and Chlorian Theoreticus the Proph spoke of, home of the Most Advanced Civilization in the Entire Universe, a civilization of a few hundred individuals who, being neither people nor robots, lie around on jeweled cushions all day in a dirty, littered desert and do nothing but scratch themselves and pick their noses. No, there has to be some terrible secret behind all of this, and I shall not rest till I've uncovered it!!

Then I thought: -A terrible secret it must be indeed, to account for not only a square sun and planet, but lecherous elves inside bodies and insulting messages in ears! I always thought that if I, a simple robot, could spend my time in study and the pursuit of knowledge, think of the kind of intellectual fer-ment that went on among those more highly developed- no, the most highly developed! Yet these, whatever they do, they certainly don't spend their time in edifying conversa-tion; they don't even care to answer a few questions. I'll have to force them-but how? Perhaps, if I pester them enough, get under their skin, so to speak, make such a nui-sance of myself that they'll agree to anything, just to get rid of me! Of course, there is some risk involved: they might get angry, and, without a doubt, they could destroy me as easily as swatting a fly. ... But no, I cannot believe they'd resort to such brutal measures-and anyway, I simply must find out! Well, here goes!!

And I jumped up in the darkness and started to scream at the top of my lungs, did somersaults and cartwheels, hopped around and kicked sand in their eyes, danced and sang until I was hoa.r.s.e, did a few sit-ups and deep knee bends, then hurled myself among them like a mad dog. They turned their backs to me and held up their cushions and quilts for protection, and then, in the middle of my hundredth cart-wheel, a voice said inside my head: -And what would your good friend Trurl think if he could see you now, see how you pa.s.s your time on the planet that has achieved the Highest Possible Level of Develop-ment, home of the Most Advanced Civilization in the En-tire Universe?!-But I ignored the hint and continued to stomp and howl, encouraged by what they were whispering to one another: -Psst!

-What do you want?

-You hear that?

-How can I help but hear it?

-He practically kicked my head in.

-You can get another.-But I can't sleep.

-What?

-I said, I can't sleep.

-He's curious-whispered a third.

-He's awfully curious!

-This is really too much. We'll have to do something.

-Like what?

-I don't know... Change his personality?

-No, that's unethical...

-Just listen to him howl!

-Wait, I have an idea...

They whispered something while I kept jumping around, raising an unholy racket, concentrating my efforts especially in the area where I heard them talking. Then, just as I was doing a headstand on someone's abdomen, everything went black, and the next thing I knew, I was back on my ship and out in s.p.a.ce. My limbs ached from all that exercise, but I could hardly move them anyway, for I was sitting in a pile of trombones, jars of green marmalade, teddy bears, plati-num glockenspiels, ducats and doubloons, golden earm.u.f.fs, bracelets and brooches glittering so bright they hurt my eyes. When finally I crawled out from under all these valuables and dragged myself to a window, I saw that the constella-tions were entirely different-not a trace of anything re-motely resembling a square sun! A few quick calculations revealed that I would have to travel six thousand years at top velocity to get back to the H. P. L. D.'s. They had dis-posed of me, indeed.

And going back would achieve noth-ing, that was clear: they would merely send me packing again with that instantaneous hyperspatial telekinesis of theirs, or whatever it was. And so, my good Bonhomius, I decided to tackle the problem in an altogether different way. ..." And with these words, most kind and n.o.ble sir, did the distinguished constructor Klapaucius finish his tale...

"Surely that's not all he said?!" cried Trurl.

"Nay, he said a great deal more, O benefactor of mine! And therein lies my misfortune!" replied the robot with considerable perturbation. "When I asked him what he had then decided to do, he leaned over and said...

"The problem did seem insoluble at first, but I've found a way. You say you lived as a hermetic hermit and are but a simple, unschooled robot, so I'll not trouble you with explanations that touch the arcane art of cybernetic genera-tion. To put it simply, then, all we have to do is construct a digital device, a computer capable of producing an infor-mational model of absolutely anything in existence. Prop-erly programmed, it willprovide us with an exact simulation of the Highest Possible Level of Development, which we can then question and thereby obtain the Ultimate An-swers!"

"But how does one build such a device?" I asked. "And how can you be sure, O ill.u.s.trious Klapaucius, that it won't respond by sending us packing in much the same instamatic hyperst.i.tial and so forth manner the original H. P. L. D.'s employed, as you say, on your worthy person?"

"Leave that to me," he said. "Rest a.s.sured, I shall learn the Great Mystery of the H.

P. L. D.'s, good Bonhomius, and you shall find the optimal way in which to put your natural abhorrence of evil into action!"

You can imagine, kind sir, the great joy that filled me upon hearing these words, and the eagerness with which I a.s.sisted Klapaucius in the execution of his plan. As it turned out, this digital device was none other than the famed Gnostotron conceived by Chlorian Theoreticus the Proph just before his lamentable demise, a machine able literally to contain the Universe Itself within its innumerable mem-ory banks. (Klapaucius, however, was not satisfied with the name, and now and then tried to think up others to christen it: the Omniac, the Pansophoscope, APOC for All Purpose Ontologue Computer, or the Mahatmatic 500, to mention a few.) In exactly one year and six days, this mighty ma-chine was completed, and so enormous was it, we had to house it in Phlaphundria, the hollowed-out moon of the Phlists--and truly, an ant had been no more lost aboard an ocean liner than we in the bowels of this binary behemoth, among its endless coils and cables, eschatological toggles and transformers, those hagiopneumatic rectifiers and tempta-tional resistors. I confess my wire hair stood on end and my laminated alternator skipped a beat when my distinguished mentor sat me down before the Central Control Console and left me face-to-face with this awesome, towering thing. The flashing lights that played across its panels were like the very stars in the firmament; everywhere were signs that read danger: highly ineffable!; and potentiometers, their dials spinning wildly, showed logic and semantic fields building up to unheard-of levels of intensity. Beneath my feet heaved a sea of preternatural and pretermechanical wisdom, wisdom that swirled like a spell through pa.r.s.ecs of circuitry and megahectares of magnets, swirled and surrounded me on every side, that I felt, in my shameful ignorance, of no more consequence than a mere mote of dust. I overcame this weakness only by recalling my lifelong love of Good, the pa.s.sion I had conceived for Truth and Beauty when little more than a gleam in my constructor's oscilloscope. Thus fortified, I managed to stammer out the first question: "Speak, what manner of machine art thou?"

A hot wind then arose from its glowing tubes, and there came a voice from that wind, a whispering thunder that seared me to the core, and the voice said: Ego sum Ens Omnipotens, Omnisapiens, in Spiritu Intellectronico Navigans, luce cybernetica in saecula saeculorum litterus opera omnia cognoscens, et caetera, et caetera.

Such was my fright upon hearing this reply, that I was quite unable to continue the interrogation until Klapaucius returned and reduced the EMF (epistemotive force) to one billionth of its voltage by adjusting the theostats. Then I asked the Gnostotron if it wouldbe so kind as to answer questions touching the Highest Possible Level of Develop-ment and its Terrible Secret. But Klapaucius said that that was not the way: one should instead request the Ontologue Computer to model within its silver and crystal depths a single inhabitant of that square planet, and at the same time provide the model with an adequate degree of loquacity. This promptly done, we were ready to begin in earnest.

Still I quaked and quailed and could hardly speak, so Klapaucius took my place before the Central Control Con-sole and said: "What are you?"

"I already answered that," snapped the machine, clearly annoyed.

"I mean, are you man or robot?" explained Klapaucius.

"And what, according to you, is the difference?" said the machine.

"Look, if you're going to answer questions with questions, we'll get absolutely nowhere," said Klapaucius sternly. "You know what I'm after, all right. Start talking!"

Though I was appalled at the tone he took with the ma-chine, it did seem to work, for the machine said: "Sometimes men build robots, sometimes robots build men. What does it matter, really, whether one thinks with metal or with protoplasm? As for myself, I can a.s.sume whatever substance and shape I choose-or rather, used to a.s.sume, for we no longer indulge in such trifles."

"Indeed," said Klapaucius. "Then why do you lie around all day and do nothing?"

"And what exactly are we supposed to do?" the machine replied. At this, Klapaucius grew angry and said: "How should I know? We in the lower levels of development do all sorts of things."

"We did too, in our day."

"But not now?"

"Not now."

"Why not?"

Here the computerized H. P. L. D. representative balked, saying he had already endured six million such interroga-tions and neither he nor his questioners ever profited from them in the least. But after Klapaucius had raised the lo-quacity a little and opened a valve here and there, the voice answered: "A trillion years ago we were a civilization like any other. We believed in the transmittance of souls, the Virgin Ma-trix, the infallibility of Pi Squared, looked upon prayer as regenerative feedback to the Great Programmer, and so on and so forth. But then skeptics appeared, empiricists and accidentalists, and in nine centuries they came to the con-clusion that There's No One Up There At All and conse-quently things happen not out of any higher plan or pur-pose, but-well, they just happen."

"Just happen?" I could not help but exclaim. "What do you mean?""There are, on occasion, deformed robots," said the voice. "If you should be afflicted with a hump, for example, but firmly believe the Almighty somehow needs your hump to realize His Cosmic Design and that it was therefore or-dained along with the rest of Creation, why, then you may be easily reconciled to your deformity. If, however, they tell you that it's merely the result of a misplaced molecule, an atom or two that happened to go the wrong way, then noth-ing remains for you but to bay at the moon."

"But a hump may be straightened," I protested, "and really any deformity corrected, given a high enough level of science!"

"Yes, I know," sighed the machine. "That's how it ap-pears to the ignorant and simple-minded..."

"You mean, that isn't true?" Klapaucius and I cried, astounded.

"When a civilization starts straightening humps," said the machine, "believe me, there's no end to it! You straighten humps, then you repair and amplify the mind, make suns rectilinear, give planets legs, fabricate fates and fortunes of all kinds... Oh, it begins innocently enough, like discovering fire by rubbing two sticks together, but eventually it leads to the construction of Omniacs, Deifacts, Hyperboreons and Ultimathuloriums! The desert on our planet is in reality no desert, but a Gigagnostotron, in other words a good 10 9 times more powerful than this prim-itive device of yours. Our ancestors created it for the simple reason that anything else would have been too easy for them; in their megalomania they thought to make the very sand beneath their feet intelligent. Quite pointless, for there is absolutely no way to improve upon perfection. Can you understand that, O ye of little development?!"

"Yes, of course," said Klapaucius, while I quaked and quailed. "Yet why, instead of at least engaging in some stimulating activity, do you sprawl in that ingenious sand and only scratch yourselves from time to time?"

"Omnipotence is most omnipotent when one does noth-ing!" answered the machine.

"You climb to reach the sum-mit, but once there, discover that all roads lead down! We are, after all, sensible folk, why should we want to do any-thing? Our ancestors, true, turned our sun into a cube and made a box of our planet, arranging its mountains in a monogram, but that was only to test their Gnostotron. They could have just as easily a.s.sembled the stars in a checkerboard, extinguished half the heavens and lit up the other half, constructed beings peopled with lesser beings, giants whose thoughts would be the intricate dance of a million pygmies, and they could have redesigned the gal-axies, revised the laws of time and s.p.a.ce--but tell me, what sense would there have been to any of this? Would the universe be a better place if stars were triangular, or comets went around on wheels?"

"That's ridiculous!!" Klapaucius shouted, highly indig-nant, while I quaked and quailed all the more. "If you are truly G.o.ds, your duty is clear: immediately banish all the misery and misfortune that oppresses other sentient beings! You could at least begin with your poor neighbors-I've seen with my own eyes how they batter one another! But no, you'd rather lie around all day and pick your noses, and insult honest travelers in search of knowledge with your in-decent elves in abdomens and messages in ears!"

"Really, you have no sense of humor," said the machine. "But enough of that. If I understand you correctly, you wish us to bestow happiness upon everyone. Well, we devoted over fifteen millennia to that project alone-that is, eudae-monic tectonics, of which there are basically two schools, the sudden and revolutionary, and the slow andevolution-ary. Evolutionary eudaemonic tectonics consists essentially in not lifting a finger to help, confident that every civiliza-tion will eventually muddle through on its own.

Revolution-ary solutions, on the other hand, boil down to either the Carrot or the Stick.

The Stick, or bestowing happiness by force, is found to produce from one to eight hundred times more grief than no interference whatever. As for the Carrot, the results-believe it or not-are exactly the same, and that, whether you use an Ultradeifact, Hypergnostotron, or even an Infernal Machine and Gehennerator. You've heard, perhaps, of the Crab Nebula?"

"Certainly," said Klapaucius. "It's the remnants of a su-pernova that exploded long ago..."

"Supernova, he says," muttered the voice. "No, my well-wishing friend, there was a planet there, a fairly civilized planet as planets go, flowing with the usual quant.i.ty of blood, sweat and tears. Well, one morning we dropped eight hundred million transistorized Universal Wish Granters on that planet, but were no more than a light-week out on our way home, when suddenly it blew up-and the bits and pieces are flying apart to this day! The very same thing happened with the planet of the Hominates... care to hear of that?"

"No, don't bother," replied a morose Klapaucius.-But I refuse to believe it's impossible, with a little ingenuity, to make others happy!"

"Believe what you like! We tried it sixty-four thousand five hundred and thirteen times. The hair on every one of my heads stands on end when I think of the results. Oh, we spared no pains for the good of our fellow-creature! We devised a special telescanner for observing dreams, though you realize of course that if, say, a religious war were raging on some planet and each side dreamt only of ma.s.sacring the other, it would hardly be to our purpose to make such dreams come true! We had to bestow happiness, then, with-out violating any Higher Laws. The problem was further complicated by the fact that most cosmic civilizations long for things, in the depths of their souls, they would never openly admit to. Now what do you do: help them achieve the ends to which the little decency they have prompts them, or instead fulfill their innermost desires? Take, for example, the Dementians and Amentians. The Dementians, in their medieval piety, burnt at the stake all those consort-ing with the Devil, females especially, and they did this because, first, they envied them their unholy delights, and secondly, they found that administering torture in the form of justice could be a positive pleasure. The Amentians, on the other hand, worshiped nothing but their bodies, which they stimulated by means of machines, though in modera-tion, and this activity const.i.tuted their chief amus.e.m.e.nt. They had boxes of gla.s.s, and into these they placed various outrages, rapes and mutilations, the sight of which served to whet their sensual appet.i.tes. On this planet we dropped a mult.i.tude of devices designed to satisfy all desires in such a way that no one needed to be harmed, that is, each device created a separate artificial reality for each individual. Within six weeks both Dementians and Amentians had perished, to a man, from a surfeit of joy, groaning in ecstasy as they pa.s.sed away! Is that the sort of ingenuity you had in mind, O undeveloped one?"

"Either you're a complete idiot or a monster!" cried Klapaucius, while I gulped and blinked. "How dare you boast of such foul deeds?"

"I do not boast of them, but confess them," the voice calmly said. "The point is, we tried every conceivable method. On various planets we unleashed a veritable rain of riches, a flood of satisfaction and well-being, and the result was total paralysis; we dispensed good advice, the most expert counsel, and in return the natives opened fire onour vessels. Truly, it would appear that one must alter the minds of those one intends to make happy..."

"I suppose you can do that too," grumbled Klapaucius.

"But of course we can! Take our neighbors, for instance, the ones who inhabit a quasiterran (or, if you prefer, geomorphic) planet. I speak of the Anthropods. Now, they devote themselves exclusively to obbling and perplossication, for they stand in mortal terror of the Gugh, which ac-cording to them occupies the Hereafter and waits for all sinners with open jaws and fangs of h.e.l.lfire. By emulating the blessed Dimbligensians and walking in the way of Wamba the Holy, and by shunning Odia, where abound the Abominominites, a young Anthropod may in time become more industrious, more virtuous and more honorable than ever were his eight-armed forebears. True, the Anthropods are at constant war with the Arthropoids over the burning question of whether Moles Have Holes, or, contrariwise, Holes Moles, but observe that as a rule less than half of each generation perishes in that controversy. Now you would have me drive from their heads all belief in obbling, Dimbligensians and so forth, in order to prepare them for rational happiness. Yet this is tantamount to psychic mur-der, for the resultant minds would be no longer Anthropodous or Arthropoidal-surely you can see that."

"Superst.i.tion must yield to knowledge," said Klapaucius firmly.

"Unquestionably! But kindly observe that on that planet there are now close to seven million penitents who have spent a lifetime struggling against their own nature, solely that their fellow citizens might be delivered from the Gugh. And in less than a minute I am to tell them, convince them beyond a shadow of a doubt that all this effort was in vain, that they had wasted their entire lives in pointless, useless sacrifice? How cruel that would be!