The Cyberiad Part 7

"We'll give you nothing!" he cried, while Klapaucius ran off to find some cotton. "And get your face out of here!"

"You don't like my face, maybe you'll like my hand," re-plied the pirate. "It's one hugehumdinger of a hand and heavy as the devil! And here it comes!"

And indeed: the cotton Klapaucius brought was no longer needed, for the face had disappeared, and in its place was a paw, a paw to end all paws, with knots and k.n.o.bs and shovel claws, and it rummaged and clutched, breaking tables and hutches and cupboards, till all the pots and pans came crash-ing down, and the paw chased Trurl and Klapaucius into the engine room, where they climbed up on top of the atomic pile and rapped its knuckles-pow! pow!-with a poker. This made the diplomaed pirate mad, and he put his face back in the hatch and said: "Look, I strongly advise you to come to terms with me at once, otherwise I'll put you aside for later, at the very bot-tom of my storage bin, and cover you with garbage, and wedge you in with rocks, so you can't move, and you'll just sit there and slowly rust. So then, which is it to be?"

Trurl wouldn't hear of negotiating, but Klapaucius po-litely asked what exactly it was that His Doctoral Diploma-hood wanted?

"Now you're talking," he said. "I gather rich mines of information, for such is my lifelong love and avocation, the result of a higher education and, I might add, a practical grasp of the situation, when you consider that, with the usual treasures untutored pirates like to h.o.a.rd, there is not a blessed thing here one can buy. Information, on the other hand, satisfies one's thirst for knowledge, and it is well known besides, that everything that is, is information; and thus for centuries now I gather it, and will continue to do so, though it's true I'm not against a little gold or diamonds now and then, for they're pretty and decorative-but that's strictly on the side, as occasion warrants. Observe, however, that for false information, no less than for false coin, I give a good sh.e.l.lacking, since I am refined and insist on authen-ticity!"

"But what kind of authentic and valuable information do you require?" asked Klapaucius.

"All kinds, as long as it's true," replied the pirate. "You never can tell what facts may come in handy. I already have a few hundred wells and cellars full of them, but there's room for twice again as much. So out with it; tell me every-thing you know, and I'll jot it down. But make it snappy!"

"A fine state of affairs," Klapaucius whispered in Trurl's ear. "He could keep us here for an eon or two before we tell him everything we know. Our knowledge is colossal!!"

"Wait," whispered Trurl, "I have an idea." And he said aloud: "Listen here, you thief with a degree, we possess a piece of information worth more than any other, a formula to fashion gold from ordinary atoms-for instance, hydrogen, of which the Universe has an inexhaustible supply. We'll let you have it if you let us go."

"I have a whole trunk full of such recipes," answered the face, batting its eyes ferociously. "And they're all worthless. I don't intend to be tricked again-you demonstrate it first."

"Sure, why not? Do you have a jug?""No."

"That's all right, we can do without one/' said Trurl. "The method is simplicity itself: take as many atoms of hydrogen as the weight of an atom of gold, namely one hundred and ninety-six; first you sh.e.l.l the electrons, then knead the protons, working the nuclear batter till the me-sons appear, and now sprinkle your electrons all around, and voila, there's the gold. Watch!"

And Trurl began to catch atoms, peeling their electrons and mixing their protons with such nimble speed, that his fingers were a blur, and he stirred the subatomic dough, stuck all the electrons back in, then on to the next mole-cule. In less than five minutes he was holding a nugget of the purest gold, which he presented to the face; it took a sniff and said with a nod: "Yes, that's gold, but I'm too big to go running around like that after atoms."

"No problem, we'll give you a suitable machine!" coaxed Trurl. "Just think, this way you can turn anything into gold, not only hydrogen-we'll give you the formula for other atoms, too. Why, one could make the entire Universe gold, if only he applied himself!"

"If the Universe was gold, gold would be worthless," observed Pugg. "No, I have no use for your formula-I've written it down, yes, but that's not enough! It's the wealth of knowledge that I crave."

"But what do you want to know, for heaven's sake?!"

"Everything!"

Trurl looked at Klapaucius, Klapaucius looked at Trurl, and the latter finally said: "If first you will solemnly swear, up and down and cross your heart, that you will let us go, we will give you informa-tion, information about infinite information, that is, we will make you your very own Demon of the Second Kind, which is magical and thermodynamical, noncla.s.sical and stochasti-cal, and from any old barrel or even a sneeze it will extract information for you about everything that was, is, may be or ever will be.

And there is no demon beyond this Demon, for it is of the Second Kind, and if you want it, say so now!"

The pirate with the Ph.D. was suspicious, and didn't agree all at once to these conditions, but finally swore the required oath, with the stipulation that the Demon first give clear proof of its informational prowess. Which was fine with Trurl.

"Now pay attention, big-face!" he said. "Do you have any air knocking about? Without air the Demon won't work."

"I have a little," said Pugg, "but it's not too clean..."

"Stale, stagnant, polluted, it doesn't matter, not in the least," replied the constructors.

"Lead us to it, and we'll show you something!"

So he withdrew his face and let them leave the ship, and they followed him to his house, noticing that he had legs like towers, shoulders like a precipice, and hadn't been washed for centuries, nor oiled, hence creaked something awful. They went down cellar corridors, with sacks moldering on every hand-in these the pirate kept his stolen facts -bunches and bundles of sacks, all tied with string, and the most important, valuable items marked in red pencil. On the wall hung an immense catalog, fastened to the rock bya rust-eaten chain and full of entries and headings, be-ginning, of course, with A. On they went, raising m.u.f.fled echoes, and Trurl looked and grimaced, as did Klapaucius, for though there was plenty of authentic and top-quality in-formation lying about, wherever the eye fell was nothing but must, dust and clutter. Plenty of air, too, but thoroughly stale.

They stopped and Trurl said: "Now pay attention! Air is made up of atoms, and these atoms jump this way and that, and collide billions of times a second in each and every cubic micromillimeter, and it is precisely this eternal jumping and b.u.mping together that const.i.tutes a gas. Now, even though their jumping is blind and wholly random, there are billions upon billions of atoms in every interstice, and as a consequence of this great number, their little skips and scamperings give rise to, among other things-and purely by accident-to significant configurations... Do you know what a configuration is, blockhead?"

"No insults, please!" said Pugg. "For I am not your usual uncouth pirate, but refined and with a Ph.D., and therefore extremely high-strung."

"Fine. So then, from all this atomic hopping around, we obtain significant, that is meaningful configurations, as if, for instance, you were to fire at a wall blindfold and the bullet holes formed some letter. That, which on a large scale is rare and quite unlikely, happens in atomic gases all the time, on account of those trillion collisions every one hundred-thousandth of a second. But here's the problem: in every smidgen of air, the joggling and jostling of atoms does indeed produce deep truths and edifying dicta, yet it also produces statements that make not the least bit of sense, and there are thousands of times more of the latter than there are of the former. So even if it were known that, right here and now under your sawlike nose, in a milligram of air and in a fraction of a second, there would come into being all the cantos of all the epic poems to be written in the next million years, as well as an abundance of wonderful truths-including the solutions to every enigma of Exist-ence and mystery of Being-you would still have no way of isolating all that information, particularly since, just as soon as the atoms had knocked their heads together and formed something, they would fly apart and it would vanish, probably forever. And therefore the whole trick lies in building a selector, which will, in the atomic rush and jumble, choose only what has meaning. And that is the whole idea behind the Demon of the Second Kind. Have you understood any of this, O huge and hideous one? We want the Demon, you see, to extract from the dance of atoms only informa-tion that is genuine, like mathematical theorems, fashion magazines, blueprints, historical chronicles, or a recipe for ion crumpets, or how to clean and iron a suit of asbestos, and poetry too, and scientific advice, and almanacs, and cal-endars, and secret doc.u.ments, and everything that ever ap-peared in any newspaper in the Universe, and telephone books of the future..."

"Enough, enough!!" cried Pugg. "I get the idea! But what good is it for atoms to combine like that, if immediately they fly apart? And anyway, I can't believe it's possible to select invaluable truths from a lot of careening and colliding of particles in the air, which is completely senseless and not worth a jot to anyone!"

"Then you're not so stupid as I thought," said Trurl. "For truly, the whole difficulty consists in implementing such a selection. I have no intention of presenting you with the theoretical arguments for this, but, as I promised, I will here and now-while you wait-construct a Demon of the Sec-ond Kind, and you'll see for yourself the wondrous perfec-tion of that Metainformationator! All you have to do is find me a box-any size will do, but it must be airtight. We'll put a little pinhole in it and sit the Demon over the open-ing; perched there, it will let out only significant informa-tion, keeping in all the nonsense. For whenever a group of atoms accidentally arranges itself in a meaningfulway, the Demon will pounce on that meaning and instantly record it with a special diamond pen on paper tape, which you must keep in endless supply, for the thing will labor day and night-until the Universe itself runs down and no sooner-at a rate, moreover, of a hundred billion bits a second... But you will see the Demon of the Second Kind with your very own eyes."

And Trurl went back to the ship to make the Demon. The pirate meanwhile asked Klapaucius: "And what is the Demon of the First Kind like?"

"Oh, it's not as interesting, it's an ordinary thermodynamic demon, and all it does is let fast atoms out of the hole and keep in the slow. That way you get a thermodynamic perpetuum mobile, which hasn't a thing to do with infor-mation. But you had better fetch the box now, for Trurl will return any minute!"

The pirate with a Ph.D. went to another cellar, poked around through various cans and tins, cursed, kicked things and tripped, but finally pulled out an iron barrel, old and empty, put a tiny hole in it and hurried back, just as Trurl arrived, the Demon in his hand.

The air in the barrel was so foul, that one's nose wanted to hide when brought near the little opening, but the De-mon didn't seem to mind; Trurl placed this mote of a mite astride the hole in the barrel, affixed a large roll of paper tape on the top and threaded it underneath the tiny dia-mond-tipped pen, which quivered eagerly, then began to scratch and scribble, clattering rat-tat, pit-pat, just like a telegraph, only a million times faster.

From under this fran-tic apparatus the information tape slowly began to slide out, covered with words, onto the filthy cellar floor.

Pugg sat down next to the barrel, lifted the paper tape to his hundred eyes and read what the Demon had, with its informational net, managed to dredge up out of the eternal prancing and dancing of the atoms; those significant bits of knowledge so absorbed him, that he didn't even notice how the two constructors left the cellar in great haste, how they grabbed hold of the helm of their ship, pulled once, twice, and on the third time freed it from the mire in which the pirate had stuck them, then climbed aboard and blasted off as fast as they possibly could, for they knew that, though their Demon would work, it would work too well, producing a far greater wealth of information than Pugg antic.i.p.ated. Pugg meanwhile sat propped up against the barrel and read, as that diamond pen which the Demon employed to record everything it learned from the oscillating atoms squeaked on and on, and he read about how exactly Harlebardonian wrig-glers wriggle, and that the daughter of King Petrolius of Labondia is named Humpinella, and what Frederick the Second, one of the paleface kings, had for lunch before he declared war against the Gwendoliths, and how many elec-tron sh.e.l.ls an atom of thermionolium would have, if such an element existed, and what is the cloacal diameter of a small bird called the tufted twit, which is painted by the Wabian Marchpanes on their sacrificial urns, and also of the tripart.i.te taste of the oceanic ooze on Polypelagid Diaphana, and of the flower Dybbulyk, that beats the Lower Malfundican hunters black and blue whenever they waken it at dawn, and how to obtain the angle of the base of an irreg-ular icosahedron, and who was the jeweler of Gufus, the left-handed butcher of the Bovants, and the number of vol-umes on philately to be published in the year seventy thou-sand on Marinautica, and where to find the tomb of Cybrinda the Red-toed, who was nailed to her bed by a certain Clamonder in a drunken fit, and how to tell the difference between a bindlesnurk and an ordinary trundlespiff, and also who has the smallest lateral wumpet in the Universe, and why fan-tailed fleas won't eat moss, and how to play the game of Fratcher-My-Pliss and win, and how many snap-dragon seeds there were in the t.u.r.d into which AbroquianPhylminides stepped, when he stumbled on the Great Albongean Road eight miles outside the Valley of Symphic Sighs-and little by little his hundred eyes began to swim, and it dawned on him that all this information, entirely true and meaningful in every particular, was absolutely use-less, producing such an unG.o.dly confusion that his head ached terribly and his legs trembled. But the Demon of the Second Kind continued to operate at a speed of three hun-dred million facts per second, and mile after mile of tape coiled out and gradually buried the Ph.D. pirate beneath its windings, wrapping him, as it were, in a paper web, while the tiny diamond-tipped pen shivered and twitched like one insane, and it seemed to Pugg that any minute now he would learn the most fabulous, unheard-of things, things that would open up to him the Ultimate Mystery of Being, so he greedily read everything that flew out from under the diamond nib, the drinking songs of the Quaidacabondish and the sizes of bedroom slippers available on the continent of Cob, with pompons and without, and the number of hairs growing on each bra.s.s knuckle of the skew-beezered flummox, and the average width of the fontanel in indige-nous stepinfants, and the litanies of the M'hot-t'ma-hon'h conjurers to rouse the reverend Blotto Ben-Blear, and the inaugural catcalls of the Duke of Zilch, and six ways to cook cream of wheat, and a good poison for uncles with goatees, and twelve types of forensic tickling, and the names of all the citizens of Foofaraw Junction beginning with the letter M, and the results of a poll of opinions on the taste of beer mixed with mushroom syrup...

And it grew dark before his hundred eyes, and he cried out in a mighty voice that he'd had enough, but Informa-tion had so swathed and swaddled him in its three hundred thousand tangled paper miles, that he couldn't move and had to read on about how Kipling would have written the beginning to his Second Jungle Book if he had had indigestion just then, and what thoughts come to unmarried whales getting on in years, and all about the courtship of the carrion fly, and how to mend an old gunny sack, and what a sprothouse is, and why we don't capitalize paris in plaster of paris or turkish in turkish bath, and how many bruises one can have at a single time. And then a long list of the differences between fiddle and faddle, not to be con-fused with twiddle and twaddle or t.i.ttle and tattle, then all the words that rhyme with "spinach," and what were the insults which Pope Urn of Pendora heaped upon Antipope Mlum of Porking, and who plays the eight-tone autocomb. In desperation he struggled to free himself from the paper coils and toils, but suddenly grew faint, for though he kicked and tore at the tape, he had too many eyes not to receive, with at least a few of them, more and more new bits and pieces of information, and so was forced to learn what authority the home guard exercises in Indochina, and why the Coelenterids of Fluxis constantly say they've had too much to drink, until he shut his eyes and sat there, rigid, overcome by that great flood of information, and the De-mon continued to bind him with its paper strips. Thus was the pirate Pugg severely punished for his inordinate thirst for knowledge.

He sits there to this day, at the very bottom of his rubbage heap and bins of trash, covered with a mountain of paper, and in the dimness of that cellar the diamond pen still jumps and flickers like the purest flame, recording what-ever the Demon of the Second Kind culls from dancing atoms in the rancid air that flows through the hole of the old barrel; and so poor Pugg, crushed beneath that ava-lanche of fact, learns no end of things about rickshaws, rents and roaches, and about his own fate, which has been related here, for that too is included in some section of the tape-as are the histories, accounts and prophecies of all things in creation, up until the day the stars burn out; and there is no hope for him, since this is the harsh sentence the constructors pa.s.sed upon him for his pirately a.s.sault- unless of course the tape runs out, for lack of paper.

The Seventh Sally

OR How Trurl's Own Perfection Led to No Good

The Universe is infinite but bounded, and therefore a beam of light, in whatever direction it may travel, will after bil-lions of centuries return-if powerful enough-to the point of its departure; and it is no different with rumor, that flies about from star to star and makes the rounds of every planet. One day Trurl heard distant reports of two mighty constructor-benefactors, so wise and so accomplished that they had no equal; with this news he ran to Klapaucius, who explained to him that these were not mysterious rivals, but only themselves, for their fame had circ.u.mnavigated s.p.a.ce. Fame, however, has this fault, that it says nothing of one's failures, even when those very failures are the product of a great perfection. And he who would doubt this, let him re-call the last of the seven sallies of Trurl, which was under-taken without klapaucius, whom certain urgent duties kept at home at the time.

In those days Trurl was exceedingly vain, receiving all marks of veneration and honor paid to him as his due and a perfectly normal thing. He was heading north in his ship, as he was the least familiar with that region, and had flown through the void for quite some time, pa.s.sing spheres full of the clamor of war as well as spheres that had finally ob-tained the perfect peace of desolation, when suddenly a little planet came into view, really more of a stray fragment of matter than a planet.

On the surface of this chunk of rock someone was run-ning back and forth, jumping and waving his arms in the strangest way. Astonished by a scene of such total loneliness and concerned by those wild gestures of despair, and per-haps of anger as well, Trurl quickly landed.

He was approached by a personage of tremendous hau-teur, iridium and vanadium all over and with a great deal of clanging and clanking, who introduced himself as Excelsius the Tartarian, ruler of Pancreon and Cyspenderora; the inhabitants of both these kingdoms had, in a fit of regicidal madness, driven His Highness from the throne and exiled him to this barren asteroid, eternally adrift among the dark swells and currents of gravitation.

Learning in turn the ident.i.ty of his visitor, the deposed monarch began to insist that Trurl-who after all was some-thing of a professional when it came to good deeds-imme-diately restore him to his former position. The thought of such a turn of events brought the flame of vengeance to the monarch's eyes, and his iron fingers clutched the air, as if already closing around the throats of his beloved subjects.

Now Trurl had no intention of complying with this re-quest of Excelsius, as doing so would bring about untold evil and suffering, yet at the same time he wished somehow to comfort and console the humiliated king. Thinking a mo-ment or two, he came to the conclusion that, even in this case, not all was lost, for it would be possible to satisfy the king completely-without putting his former subjects in jeopardy. And so, rolling up his sleeves and summoning up all his mastery, Trurl built the king an entirely new king-dom.

There were plenty of towns, rivers, mountains, forests and brooks, a sky with clouds,armies full of derring-do, citadels, castles and ladies' chambers; and there were mar-ketplaces, gaudy and gleaming in the sun, days of back-breaking labor, nights full of dancing and song until dawn, and the gay clatter of swordplay. Trurl also carefully set into this kingdom a fabulous capital, all in marble and alabaster, and a.s.sembled a council of h.o.a.ry sages, and winter palaces and summer villas, plots, conspirators, false witnesses, nurses, informers, teams of magnificent steeds, and plumes waving crimson in the wind; and then he crisscrossed that atmosphere with silver fanfares and twenty-one gun salutes, also threw in the necessary handful of traitors, another of heroes, added a pinch of prophets and seers, and one mes-siah and one great poet each, after which he bent over and set the works in motion, deftly making last-minute adjust-ments with his microscopic tools as it ran, and he gave the women of that kingdom beauty, the men-sullen silence and surliness when drunk, the officials-arrogance and servil-ity, the astronomers-an enthusiasm for stars, and the chil-dren-a great capacity for noise. And all of this, connected, mounted and ground to precision, fit into a box, and not a very large box, but just the size that could be carried about with ease. This Trurl presented to Excelsius, to rule and have dominion over forever; but first he showed him where the input and output of his brand-new kingdom were, and how to program wars, quell rebellions, exact tribute, collect taxes, and also instructed him in the critical points and transition states of that microminiaturized society-in other words the maxima and minima of palace coups and revolu-tions-and explained everything so well, that the king, an old hand in the running of tyrannies, instantly grasped the directions and, without hesitation, while the constructor watched, issued a few trial proclamations, correctly manipu-lating the control k.n.o.bs, which were carved with imperial eagles and regal lions.

These proclamations declared a state of emergency, martial law, a curfew and a special levy. After a year had pa.s.sed in the kingdom, which amounted to hardly a minute for Trurl and the king, by an act of the greatest magnanimity-that is, by a flick of the finger at the controls-the king abolished one death penalty, light-ened the levy and deigned to annul the state of emergency, whereupon a tumultuous cry of grat.i.tude, like the squeak-ing of tiny mice lifted by their tails, rose up from the box, and through its curved gla.s.s cover one could see, on the dusty highways and along the banks of lazy rivers that re-flected the fluffy clouds, the people rejoicing and praising the great and unsurpa.s.sed benevolence of their sovereign lord.

And so, though at first he had felt insulted by Trurl's gift, in that the kingdom was too small and very like a child's toy, the monarch saw that the thick gla.s.s lid made every-thing inside seem large; perhaps too he dully understood that size was not what mattered here, for government is not measured in meters and kilograms, and emotions are some-how the same, whether experienced by giants or dwarfs- and so he thanked the constructor, if somewhat stiffly. Who knows, he might even have liked to order him thrown in chains and tortured to death, just to be safe-that would have been a sure way of nipping in the bud any gossip about how some common vagabond tinkerer presented a mighty monarch with a kingdom.

Excelsius was sensible enough, however, to see that this was out of the question, owing to a very fundamental disproportion, for fleas could sooner take their host into captivity than the king's army seize Trurl. So with another cold nod, he stuck his...o...b..and scepter under his arm, lifted the box kingdom with a grunt, and took it to his humble hut of exile. And as blazing day alternated with murky night outside, according to the rhythm of the asteroid's rotation, the king, who was acknowledged by his subjects as the great-est in the world, diligently reigned, bidding this, forbidding that, beheading, rewarding-in all these ways incessantly spurring his little ones on to perfect fealty and worship of the throne.As for Trurl, he returned home and related to his friend Klapaucius, not without pride, how he had employed his constructor's genius to indulge the autocratic aspirations of Excelsius and, at the same time, safeguard the democratic aspirations of his former subjects. But Klapaucius, surpris-ingly enough, had no words of praise for Trurl; in fact, there seemed to be rebuke in his expression.

"Have I understood you correctly?" he said at last. "You gave that brutal despot, that born slave master, that slaver-ing s.a.d.i.s.t of a painmonger, you gave him a whole civilization to rule and have dominion over forever? And you tell me, moreover, of the cries of joy brought on by the repeal of a fraction of his cruel decrees! Trurl, how could you have done such a thing?!"

"You must be joking!" Trurl exclaimed. "Really, the whole kingdom fits into a box three feet by two by two and a half... it's only a model..."

"A model of what?"

"What do you mean, of what? Of a civilization, obvi-ously, except that it's a hundred million times smaller."

"And how do you know there aren't civilizations a hun-dred million times larger than our own? And if there were, would ours then be a model? And what importance do dimensions have anyway? In that box kingdom, doesn't a journey from the capital to one of the corners take months -for those inhabitants? And don't they suffer, don't they know the burden of labor, don't they die?"

"Now just a minute, you know yourself that all these processes take place only because I programmed them, and so they aren't genuine..."

"Aren't genuine? You mean to say the box is empty, and the parades, tortures and beheadings are merely an illu-sion?"

"Not an illusion, no, since they have reality, though purely as certain microscopic phenomena, which I produced by manipulating atoms," said Trurl. "The point is, these births, loves, acts of heroism and denunciations are nothing but the minuscule capering of electrons in s.p.a.ce, precisely arranged by the skill of my nonlinear craft, which-"

"Enough of your boasting, not another word!" Klapaucius snapped. "Are these processes self-organizing or not?"

"Of course they are!"

"And they occur among infinitesimal clouds of electrical charge?"

"You know they do."

"And the phenomenological events of dawns, sunsets and b.l.o.o.d.y battles are generated by the concatenation of real variables?"

"Certainly."

"And are not we as well, if you examine us physically, mechanistically, statistically andmeticulously, nothing but the minuscule capering of electron clouds? Positive and negative charges arranged in s.p.a.ce? And is our existence not the result of subatomic collisions and the interplay of par-ticles, though we ourselves perceive those molecular cart-wheels as fear, longing, or meditation? And when you day-dream, what transpires within your brain but the binary al-gebra of connecting and disconnecting circuits, the contin-ual meandering of electrons?"

"What, Klapaucius, would you equate our existence with that of an imitation kingdom locked up in some gla.s.s box?!" cried Trurl. "No, really, that's going too far! My purpose was simply to fashion a simulator of statehood, a model cybernetically perfect, nothing more!"

"Trurl! Our perfection is our curse, for it draws down upon our every endeavor no end of unforeseeable conse-quences!" Klapaucius said in a stentorian voice. "If an im-perfect imitator, wishing to inflict pain, were to build himself a crude idol of wood or wax, and further give it some makeshift semblance of a sentient being, his torture of the thing would be a paltry mockery indeed! But consider a succession of improvements on this practice! Consider the next sculptor, who builds a doll with a recording in its belly, that it may groan beneath his blows; consider a doll which, when beaten, begs for mercy, no longer a crude idol, but a homeostat; consider a doll that sheds tears, a doll that bleeds, a doll that fears death, though it also longs for the peace that only death can bring! Don't you see, when the imitator is perfect, so must be the imitation, and the sem-blance becomes the truth, the pretense a reality! Trurl, you took an untold number of creatures capable of suffering and abandoned them forever to the rule of a wicked tyrant... Trurl, you have committed a terrible crime!"

"Sheer sophistry!" shouted Trurl, all the louder because he felt the force of his friend's argument. "Electrons mean-der not only in our brains, but in phonograph records as well, which proves nothing, and certainly gives no grounds for such hypostatical a.n.a.logies! The subjects of that mon-ster Excelsius do in fact die when decapitated, sob, fight, and fall in love, since that is how I set up the parameters, but it's impossible to say, Klapaucius, that they feel anything in the process-the electrons jumping around in their heads will tell you nothing of that!"

"And if I were to look inside your head, I would also see nothing but electrons,"

replied Klapaucius. "Come now, don't pretend not to understand what I'm saying, I know you're not that stupid! A phonograph record won't run errands for you, won't beg for mercy or fall on its knees! You say there's no way of knowing whether Excelsius' sub-jects groan, when beaten, purely because of the electrons hopping about inside-like wheels grinding out the mimicry of a voice-or whether they really groan, that is, because they honestly experience the pain? A pretty distinction, this! No, Trurl, a sufferer is not one who hands you his suffering, that you may touch it, weigh it, bite it like a coin; a sufferer is one who behaves like a sufferer! Prove to me here and now, once and for all, that they do not feel, that they do not think, that they do not in any way exist as beings conscious of their enclosure between the two abysses of oblivion-the abyss before birth and the abyss that follows death-prove this to me, Trurl, and I'll leave you be! Prove that you only imitated suffering, and did not create it!"

"You know perfectly well that's impossible," answered Trurl quietly. "Even before I took my instruments in hand, when the box was still empty, I had to antic.i.p.ate the pos-sibility of precisely such a proof-in order to rule it out. For otherwise the monarch of that kingdom sooner or later would have gotten the impression that his subjects were not real subjects at all, but puppets, marionettes. Try to under-stand, there was no other way to do it! Anything that would have destroyed in the littlest way the illusion of completereality, would have also destroyed the importance, the dig-nity of governing, and turned it into nothing but a mechan-ical game. ..."

"I understand, I understand all too well!" cried Klapau-cius. "Your intentions were the n.o.blest-you only sought to construct a kingdom as lifelike as possible, so similar to a real kingdom, that no one, absolutely no one, could ever tell the difference, and in this, I am afraid, you were successful! Only hours have pa.s.sed since your return, but for them, the ones imprisoned in that box, whole centuries have gone by -how many beings, how many lives wasted, and all to gratify and feed the vanity of King Excelsius!"

Without another word Trurl rushed back to his ship, but saw that his friend was coming with him. When he had blasted off into s.p.a.ce, pointed the bow between two great cl.u.s.ters of eternal flame and opened the throttle all the way, Klapauciussaid: "Trurl, you're hopeless. You always act first, think later. And now what do you intend to do when we get there?"

"I'll take the kingdom away from him!"

"And what will you do with it?"

"Destroy it!" Trurl was about to shout, but choked on the first syllable when he realized what he was saying. Finally he mumbled: "I'll hold an election. Let them choose just rulers from among themselves."

"You programmed them all to be feudal lords or shiftless va.s.sals. What good would an election do? First you'd have to undo the entire structure of the kingdom, then a.s.semble from scratch..."

"And where," exclaimed Trurl, "does the changing of structures end and the tampering with minds begin?!" Klapaucius had no answer for this, and they flew on in gloomy silence, till the planet of Excelsius came into view. As they circled it, preparing to land, they beheld a most amazing sight.

The entire planet was covered with countless signs of in-telligent life. Microscopic bridges, like tiny lines, spanned every rill and rivulet, while the puddles, reflecting the stars, were full of microscopic boats like floating chips... The night side of the sphere was dotted with glimmering cities, and on the day side one could make out flourishing metrop-olises, though the inhabitants themselves were much too little to observe, even through the strongest lens. Of the king there was not a trace, as if the earth had swallowed him up.

"He isn't here," said Trurl in an awed whisper. "What have they done with him?

Somehow they managed to break through the walls of their box and occupy the asteroid..."

"Look!" said Klapaucius, pointing to a little cloud no larger than a thimble and shaped like a mushroom; it slowly rose into the atmosphere. "They've discovered atomic en-ergy... And over there-you see that bit of gla.s.s? It's the remains of the box, they've made it into some sort of tern-pie..."

"I don't understand. It was only a model, after all. A process with a large number of parameters, a simulation, a mock-up for a monarch to practice on, with the necessary feedback, variables, multistats..." muttered Trurl, dumb-founded."Yes. But you made the unforgivable mistake of over-perfecting your replica. Not wanting to build a mere clock-like mechanism, you inadvertently-in your punctilious way -created that which was possible, logical and inevitable, that which became the very ant.i.thesis of a mechanism..."

"Please, no more!" cried Trurl. And they looked out upon the asteroid in silence, when suddenly something b.u.mped their ship, or rather grazed it slightly. They saw this ob-ject, for it was illumined by the thin ribbon of flame that issued from its tail. A ship, probably, or perhaps an artificial satellite, though remarkably similar to one of those steel boots the tyrant Excelsius used to wear. And when the con-structors raised their eyes, they beheld a heavenly body shining high above the tiny planet-it hadn't been there previously-and they recognized, in that cold, pale orb, the stern features of Excelsius himself, who had in this way be-come the Moon of the Microminians.

Tale of the Three Storytelling Machines of King Genius

One day to Trurl's abode there came a stranger, and it was plain just as soon as he alighted from his photon phaeton that here was no ordinary personage but one who hailed from distant parts, for where all of us have arms he had only a gentle breeze, and where there are usually legs he had nothing but a shimmering rainbow, and in lieu of a head he sported a plumed fedora; his voice issued forth from his center, and indeed, he was a perfect sphere, a sphere of the most engaging appearance and girdled with an elegant semipermeable c.u.mmerbund. Bowing low to Trurl, he re-vealed that there were really two of him, the top half and the bottom; the top was called Synchronicus, the bottom Symphonicus. To Trurl this seemed an excellent solution to the problem of constructing intelligent beings, and he had to confess he had never met an individual so well turned, so precise, and with such a fine shine. The stranger returned the compliment by praising Trurl's corpus, then broached the purpose of his visit: a close friend and loyal servant of the famous King Genius, he had come to place an order for three storytelling machines.

"Our mighty lord and sovereign," he said, "has long re-frained from all reigning and ruling, to which total abdica-tion he was brought by a wisdom achieved through careful study of the ways of this and other worlds. Leaving his king-dom, he retired to a dry and airy cave, there to give himself up to meditation. Yet oft times sorrow comes upon him, and self-abhorrence, and then nothing can console him but stories, stories that are new and unusual. But alas, the few of us who have remained faithfully at his side ran out of new stories long ago. And so we turn to you, O constructor, to help us divert our King by means of machines, which you do build so well."

"Yes, that's possible," said Trurl. "But why do you need as many as three?"

"We should like," replied Symchrophonicus, spinning slowly, "the first to tell stories that are involved but un-troubled, the second, stories that are cunning and full of fun, and the third, stories profound and compelling.""In other words, to (1) exercise, (2) entertain and (3) edify the mind," said Trurl. "I understand. Shall we speak of payment now, or later?"

"When you have completed the machines, rub this ring," was the reply, "and the phaeton shall appear before you. Climb into it with your machines, and it shall carry you at once to the cave of King Genius. There voice your wishes; he shall do what he can to grant them."

And he bowed again, handed Trurl a ring, gave a radiant wink and floated back to the phaeton, which was instantly wrapped in a cloud of blinding light, and the next moment Trurl was standing alone in front of his house, holding the ring, not overly happy about what had just transpired.

"Do what he can," he muttered, returning to his work-shop. "Oh, how I hate it when they say that! It means only one thing: you bring up the matter of the fee, and that's the end of the curtsies and courtesies; all you get for your pains is a lot of trouble, and bruises, more often than not..."

At which the ring stirred in the palm of his hand and said: "The expression 'do what he can' indicates merely that King Genius, lacking a kingdom, is a king of limited means. He appeals to you, O constructor, as one philosopher to another-and apparently is not mistaken in so doing, for these words, I see, uttered though they be by a ring, do not surprise you. Be then not surprised at His Highness'

some-what straitened circ.u.mstances. Have no fear, you shall re-ceive your payment as is meet, albeit not in gold. Yet there are things more to be desired than gold."

"Indeed, Sir Ring," observed Trurl wryly. "Philosophy is all very well and good, but the ergs and amps, the ions and the atoms, not to mention other odds and ends needed in the building of machines-they cost, they cost like the devil! So I like my contracts to be clear, everything spelled out in articles and clauses, and with plenty of signatures and seals. And, though I am hardly the greedy, grasping sort, I do love gold, particularly in large quant.i.ties, and am not ashamed to admit it! Its sparkle, its yellow hue, the sweet weight of it in the hand-these things, when I pour a sack or two of tinkling ducats on the floor and wallow in them, warm my heart and brighten my soul, as if someone had kindled a little sun within. Aye, d.a.m.n it, I love my gold!" he cried, carried away by his own words.