Lem, Stanislaw (10 page)

from the Leyden jug to bolster their strength, then went back to work

and tried it again from the beginning, this time unleashing

their entire arsenal of tensor matrices and grand canonical

ensembles, attacking the problem with such fervor that the very

paper began to smoke. The King rushed forward with all his cruel

coordinates and mean values, stumbled into a dark forest of roots and

logarithms, had to backtrack, then encountered the beast on a

field of irrational numbers (F
₁
) and smote it so

grievously that it fell two decimal places and lost an epsilon, but

the beast slid around an asymptote and hid in an
n
-dimensional

orthogonal phase space, underwent expansion and came out, fuming

factorially, and fell upon the King and hurt him passing sore. But

the King, nothing daunted, put on his Markov chain mail and all his

impervious parameters, took his increment Δ
k
to

infinity and dealt the beast a truly Boolean blow, sent it reeling

through an x-axis and several brackets—but the beast, prepared

for this, lowered its horns and—wham!!—the pencils flew

like mad through transcendental functions and double

eigentransformations, and when at last the beast closed in and the

King was down and out for the count, the constructors jumped up,

danced a jig, laughed and sang as they tore all their papers to

shreds, much to the amazement of the spies perched in the

chandelier-—perched in vain, for they were uninitiated

into the niceties of higher mathematics and consequently had no idea

why Trurl and Klapaucius were now shouting, over and over, "Hurrah!

Victory!!"

Well after midnight, the Leyden jug

from which the constructors had on occasion refreshed themselves

in the course of their labors was quietly taken to the headquarters

of the King's secret police, where its false bottom was opened and a

tiny tape recorder removed. This the experts switched on and listened

to eagerly, but the rising sun found them totally unenlightened

and looking haggard. One voice, for example, would say:

"Well? Is the King ready?"

"Right!"

"Where'd you put him? Over there?

Good! Now—hold on, you have to keep the feet together. Not

yours, idiot, the King's! All right now, ready? One, two, find the

derivative! Quick! What do you get?"

"Pi."

"And the beast?"

"Under the radical sign. But

look, the King's still standing!"

"Still standing, eh? Factor both

sides, divide by two, throw in a few imaginary numbers—good!

Now change variables and subtract—Trurl, what on earth are

you doing?! The
beast
, not the King, the
beast
!

That's right! Good! Perfect!! Now transform, approximate and

solve for
x
. Do you have it?"

"I have it! Klapaucius! Look at

the King now!!"

There was a pause, then a burst of

wild laughter.

That same morning, as all the experts

and high officials of the secret police shook their heads,

bleary-eyed after a sleepless night, the constructors asked for

quartz, vanadium, steel, copper, platinum, rhinestones, dysprosium,

yttrium and thulium, also cerium and germanium, and most of the other

elements that make up the Universe, plus a variety of machines and

qualified technicians, not to mention a wide assortment of

spies—for so insolent had the constructors become, that on the

triplicate requisition form they boldly wrote: "Also, kindly

send agents of various cuts and stripes at the discretion and with

the approval of the Proper Authorities." The next day they

asked for sawdust and a large red velvet curtain on a stand, a

cluster of little glass bells in the center and a large tassel at

each of its four corners; everything, even down to the littlest glass

bell, was specified with the utmost precision. The King scowled when

he heard these requests, but ordered them to be carried out to the

letter, for he had given his royal word. The constructors were thus

granted all that they wished.

All that they wished grew more and

more outlandish. For instance, in the files of the secret police

under code number 48999/11K/T was a copy of a requisition for three

tailor's mannequins as well as six full police uniforms, complete

with sash, side arm, shako, plume and handcuffs, also all available

back issues of the magazine
The
Patriotic
Policeman
,

yearbooks and supplements included—under "Comments"

the constructors had guaranteed the return of all items listed above

within twenty-four hours of delivery and in perfect condition. In

another, classified section of the police archives was a copy of a

letter from Klapaucius in which he demanded the immediate shipment of

(1) a life-size doll representing the Postmaster General in full

regalia, and (2) a light gig painted green with a kerosene lamp on

the left and a sky-blue sign on the back that said THINK. The doll

and gig proved too much for the Chief of Police: he had to be taken

away for a much-needed rest. During the next three days the

constructors asked only for barrels of red castor oil, and after

that—nothing. From then on, they worked in the basement of the

palace, hammering away and singing space chanties, and at night blue

lights came flashing from the basement windows and gave weird shapes

to the trees in the garden outside. Trurl and Klapaucius with their

many helpers bustled about amid arcs and sparks, now and then looking

up to see faces pressed against the glass: the servants, as if out of

idle curiosity, were photographing their every move. One evening,

when the weary constructors had finally dragged themselves off to

bed, the components of the apparatus they had been working on were

quickly transported by unmarked balloon to police headquarters and

assembled by eighteen of the finest cyberneticians in the land, who

had been deputized and duly sworn in for that very purpose, whereupon

a gray tin mouse ran out from under their hands, blowing soap bubbles

and dropping a thin trail of chalk dust from under its tail, which

spelled, as it danced this way and that across the table, WHAT, DON'T

YOU LOVE US ANYMORE? Never before in the kingdom's history did Chiefs

of Police have to be replaced with such speed and regularity.

The uniforms, the doll, the green gig, even the sawdust, everything

which the constructors returned exactly as promised, was thoroughly

examined under electron microscope. But except for a minuscule

card in the sawdust which read JUST SAWDUST, there was nothing out of

the ordinary. Then individual atoms of the uniforms and gig were

thoroughly searched— with equal lack of success. At last the

day came when the work was completed. A huge vehicle on three hundred

wheels, looking something like a refrigerator, was drawn up to the

main entrance and opened in the presence of witnesses and

officials; Trurl and Klapaucius brought out a curtain, the one with

the tassels and bells, and placed it carefully inside, in the middle

of the floor. Then they got in themselves, closed the door, did

something, then went and got various containers from the basement,

cans of chemicals, all sorts of finely ground powders—gray,

silver, white, yellow, green—and sprinkled them under and

around the curtain, then stepped out, had the vehicle closed and

locked, consulted their watches and together counted out fourteen and

a half seconds—at which time, much to everyone's surprise,

since the vehicle was stationary and there could be no question of a

breeze inside (for the seal was hermetic), the glass bells tinkled.

The constructors exchanged a wink and said:

"You can take it now!"

The rest of the day they spent blowing

soap bubbles from the veranda. That evening Lord Protozor, Master of

the Royal Hunt, came with an escort and politely but firmly informed

them that they were to go with him at once to an assigned place. They

were required to leave all their possessions behind, even their

clothes; in exchange they were given rags, then put in irons. The

guards and police dignitaries present were astounded by their

perfect sang-froid: instead of demanding justice or trembling with

fear, Trurl giggled as the shackles were being hammered on, saying he

was ticklish. And when the constructors were thrown into a dark and

dismal dungeon, they promptly struck up a rousing chorus of

"Sing Sweet Software."

Meanwhile mighty Krool rode forth from

the village on his mighty hunting chariot, surrounded by all his

retinue and followed by a long and winding train of riders and

machines, machines that included not only the traditional

catapult and cannon, but enormous laser guns and beta ray

bazookas, and a tar-thrower guaranteed to immobilize anything

that walked, swam, flew or rolled along.

And so this grand procession wended

its way to the royal game preserve, and many jokes were made, and

boasts, and haughty toasts, and no one gave a thought to the two

constructors, except perhaps to remark that those fools were in

a pretty pickle now.

But when the silver trumpets announced

His Majesty's approach, one could see a huge vehicle-refrigerator

coming up in the opposite direction. Its door flung open, and for one

brief moment there gaped the black maw of what appeared to be

some sort of field gun. Next there was a boom, a puff of yellow

smoke, and something came rocketing out, a form as blurry as a

tornado and with the general consistency of a sandstorm; it

arced through the air so fast that no one really got a good look at

it anyway. Whatever it was flew a hundred paces or more and landed

without a sound; the curtain that had been wrapped around it floated

to the earth, glass bells tinkling oddly in that perfect silence, and

lay there like a crushed strawberry. Now everyone could see the beast

clearly—though it wasn't clear at all, but looked a little like

a hill, rather large, fairly long, its color much like its

surroundings, a clump of dried-up weeds. The King's huntsmen

unleashed the whole pack of automated hounds (mainly Saint Cybernards

and Cyberman pinschers, with an occasional high-frequency terrier);

these hurled themselves, howling and slavering, at the crouching

beast. The beast didn't rear back, didn't roar, didn't even breathe

fire, but only opened its two eyes wide and reduced half the pack to

ashes in a trice.

"Oho! Laser-eyed, is it?"

cried the King. "Hand me my trusty duralumin doublet, my

bulletproof buckler, my halberd and arquebus!" Thus

accoutered and gleaming like a supernova, he rode out upon his

fearless high-fidelity cybersteed, came nigh the beast and smote it

such a mighty blow that the air crackled and its head tumbled neatly

to the ground. Though the retinue dutifully hallooed his triumph, the

King took no delight in it; greatly angered, he swore in his heart to

devise some special torment for those wretches who dared to call

themselves constructors. The beast, however, shook another head

out of its severed neck, opened its new eyes wide and played a

withering beam across the King's armor (which, however, was proof

against all manner of electromagnetic radiation). "Well,

those two weren't a total loss," said the King to himself,

"though this still won't help them." And he recharged his

charger and spurred it into the fray.

This time he swung full and cleaved

the beast in twain. The beast didn't seem to mind—in fact, it

positioned itself helpfully beneath the whistling blade and gave a

grateful twitch as it fell. And small wonder! The King took another

look: the thing was twinned instead of twained! There were two

spitting images, each a little smaller than the original, plus a

third, a baby beast gamboling between them—that was the head he

had cut off earlier: it now had a tail and feet and was doing

cartwheels through the weeds.

"What next?" thought the

King. "Chop it into mice or little worms? A fine way to hunt!"