Lem, Stanislaw (14 page)

according to the readings of the dragonometer he kept on a chain

around his neck. As for the counter, its pointer had come to rest on

exactly eight-tenths of a dragon.

"What in the devil is it, an

indeterminant dragon?" he thought as he marched, stopping to

rest every now and then, for the sun beat fiercely and the air was so

hot that everything shimmered. There was no vegetation anywhere,

not a scrap, only baked mud, rocks and boulders as far as the eye

could see.

An hour passed, the sun hung lower in

the heavens, and Klapaucius still walked through fields of gravel and

scree, through craggy passes, till he found himself in a place of

narrow canyons and ravines full of chill and darkness. The red

pointer crept to nine-tenths, gave a shudder, and froze.

Klapaucius put his knapsack on a rock

and had just taken off his antidragon belt when the indicator began

to go wild, so he grabbed his probability extinguisher and looked all

around. Situated on a high bluff, he was able to see into the gorge

below, where something moved.

"That must be her!" he

thought, since Echidnosaurs are invariably female.

Could that be why it didn't demand

young virgins? But no, the native said it had before. Odd, most odd.

But the main thing now, Klapaucius told himself, was to shoot

straight and everything would be all right. Just in case, however,

he reached for his knapsack again and pulled out a can of dragon

repellent and an atomizer. Then he peered over the edge of the rock.

At the bottom of the gorge, along the bed of a dried-up stream walked

a grayish brown dragoness of enormous proportions, though with sunken

sides as if it had been starved. All sorts of thoughts ran through

Klapaucius' head. Annihilate the thing by reversing the sign of its

pentapendragonal coefficient from positive to negative, thereby

raising the statistical probability of its nonexistence over that of

its existence? Ah, but how very risky that was, when the least

deviation could prove disastrous: more than one poor soul, seeking to

produce the lack of a dragon, had ended up instead with the back of

the dragon—resulting in a beast with two backs—and nearly

died of embarrassment! Besides, total deprobabilization would rule

out the possibility of studying the Echidnosaur's behavior.

Klapaucius wavered; he could see a splendid dragonskin tacked on

the wall of his den, right above the fireplace. But this wasn't the

time to indulge in daydreams—though a dracozoologist would

certainly be delighted to receive an animal with such unusual tastes.

Finally, as Klapaucius got into position, it occurred to him

what a nice little article might be written up on the strength of a

well-preserved specimen, so he put down the extinguisher, lifted the

gun that fired negative heads, took careful aim and pulled the

trigger.

The roar was deafening. A cloud of

white smoke engulfed Klapaucius and he lost sight of the beast for a

moment. Then the smoke cleared.

There are a great many old wives'

tales about dragons. It is said, for example, that dragons can

sometimes have seven heads. This is sheer nonsense. A dragon can have

only one head, for the simple reason that having two leads to

disagreements and violent quarrels; the polyhydroids, as the

scholars call them, died out as a result of internal feuds. Stubborn

and headstrong by nature, dragons cannot tolerate opposition,

therefore two heads in one body will always bring about a swift

death: each head, purely to spite the other, refuses to eat, then

maliciously holds its breath—with the usual consequences. It

was this phenomenon which Euphorius Cloy exploited when he invented

the anticapita cannon. A small auxiliary electron head is

discharged into the dragon's body. This immediately gives rise to

unreconcilable differences of opinion and the dragon is immobilized

by the ensuing deadlock. Often it will stand there, stiff as a board,

for a day, a week, even a month; sometimes a year goes by before the

beast will collapse, exhausted. Then you can do with it what you

will.

But the dragon Klapaucius shot reacted

strangely, to say the least. True, it did rear up on its hind paws

with a howl that started a landslide or two, and it did thrash the

rocks with its tail until the sparks flew all over the canyon. But

then it scratched its ear, cleared its throat and coolly continued

on its way, though trotting at a slightly quicker pace. Unable to

believe his eyes, Klapaucius ran along the ridge to head the creature

off at the mouth of the dried-up stream —it was no longer an

article, or even two articles in the
Dracological Journal
he

could see his name on now, but a whole monograph elegantly bound,

with a likeness of the dragon and the author on the cover!

At the first bend he crouched behind a

boulder, pulled out his improbability automatic, took aim and

actuated the possibiliballistic destabilizers. The gunstock trembled

in his hands, the red-hot barrel steamed; the dragon was surrounded

with a halo like a moon predicting bad weather— but didn't

disappear! Once again Klapaucius unleashed the utmost improbability

at the beast; the intensity of nonverisimilarity was so great, that a

moth that happened to be flying by began to tap out the Second

Jungle Book
in Morse code with its little wings, and here

and there among the crags and cliffs danced the shadows of witches,

hags and harpies, while the sound of hoofbeats announced that

somewhere in the vicinity there were centaurs gamboling,

summoned into being by the awesome force of the improbability

projector. But the dragon just sat there and yawned, leisurely

scratching its shaggy neck with a hind paw, like a dog. Klapaucius

clutched his sizzling weapon and desperately kept squeezing the

trigger—he had never felt so helpless— and the nearest

stones slowly lifted into the air, while the dust that the dragon had

kicked up, instead of settling, hung in midair and assumed the shape

of a sign that clearly read AT YOUR SERVICE GOV. It grew dim—day

was night and night was day, it grew cold-—hell was freezing

over; a couple of stones went out for a stroll and softly chatted of

this and that; in short, miracles were happening right and left, yet

that horrid monster sitting not more than thirty paces from

Klapaucius apparently had no intention of disappearing.

Klapaucius threw down his gun, pulled an antidragon grenade from his

vest pocket and, committing his soul to the Universal Matrix of

Transfinite Transformations, hurled it with all his might. There was

a loud ker-boom, and into the air with a spray of rock flew the

dragon's tail, and the dragon shouted "Yipe!"—just

like a person—and galloped straight for Klapaucius.

Klapaucius, seeing the end was near, leaped out from behind his

boulder, swinging his antimatter saber blindly, but then he heard

another shout:

"Stop! Stop! Don't kill me!"

"What's that, the dragon

talking?" thought Klapaucius. "I must be going mad …"

But he asked:

"Who said that? The dragon?"

"What dragon? It's me!!"

And as the cloud of dust blew away,

Trurl stepped out of the beast, pushing a button that made it sink to

its knees and go dead with a long, drawn-out wheeze.

"Trurl, what on earth is going

on? Why this masquerade? Where did you find such a costume? And what

about the real dragon?" Klapaucius bombarded his friend with

questions. Trurl finished brushing himself off and held up his

hands.

"Just a minute, give me a chance!

The dragon I destroyed, but the King wouldn't pay …"

"Why not?"

"Stingy, most likely. He blamed

it on the bureaucracy, of course, said there had to be a notarized

death certificate, an official autopsy, all sorts of forms in

triplicate, the approval of the Royal Appropriations Commission, and

so on. The Head Treasurer claimed he didn't know the procedure to

hand over the money, for it wasn't wages, nor did it come under

maintenance. I went from the King to the Cashier to the Commission,

back and forth, and no one would do anything; finally, when they

asked me to submit a vita sheet with photographs and references, I

walked out—but by then the dragon was beyond recall. So I

pulled the skin off it, cut up a few sticks and branches, found an

old telephone pole, and that was really all I needed; a frame for the

skin, some pulleys—you know—and I was ready …"

"You, Trurl? Resorting to such

shameful tactics? Impossible! What could you hope to gain by it?

I mean, if they didn't pay you in the first place…"

"Don't you understand?" said

Trurl, shaking his head. "This way I get the tribute! Already

there's more than I know what to do with."

"Ah! Of course!!" Klapaucius

saw it all now. But he added, "Still, it wasn't right to force

them …"

"Who was forcing them? I only

walked around in the mountains, and in the evenings I howled a

little. But really, I'm absolutely bushed." And he sat down next

to Klapaucius.

"What, from howling?"

"Howling? What are you talking

about? Every night I have to drag sacks of gold from the designated

cave—all the way up there!" He pointed to a distant ridge.

"I made myself a blast-off pad—it's right over there.

Just carry several hundred pounds of bullion from sundown to sunup

and you'll see what I mean! And that dragon was no ordinary

dragon—the skin itself weighs a couple of tons, and I have to

cart that around with me all day, roaring and stamping —and

then it's all night hauling and heaving. I'm glad you showed up, I

can't take much more of this…"

"But… why didn't the

dragon—the fake one, that is— why didn't it disappear

when I lowered the probability to the point of miracles?"

Klapaucius asked. Trurl smiled.

"I didn't want to take any

chances," he explained. "Some fool of a hunter might've

happened by, maybe even Basiliscus himself, so I put

probability-proof shields under the dragonskin. But come, I've got a

few sacks of platinum left —saved them for last since they're

the heaviest. Which is just perfect, now that you can give me a

hand…"

The

Fourth Sally

Or
How Trurl

Built a Femfatalatron

to Save Prince

Pantaloon from the

Pangs of Love,

and How Later He

Resorted to a

Cannonade of Babies

One day, in the middle of the night,

as Trurl lay deep in slumber, there came a violent knocking at the

door of his domicile, as if someone was trying to knock it off its

hinges. Still in a stupor, Trurl pulled back the bolts and saw

standing there against the paling stars an enormous ship. It

looked like a giant sugar loaf or flying pyramid, and out of this

colossus, which had landed right on his front lawn, long rows of

andromedaries laden with packs walked down a wide ramp, while robots,

garbed in turbans and togas and painted black, unloaded the bags at

his doorstep, and so quickly, that before Trurl knew it, he was

hemmed in by a growing embankment of bulging sacks—though a

narrow passageway was left therein, and through this approached an

electroknight of remarkable countenance, for his jeweled eyes blazed

like comets, and he had radar antennas jauntily thrown back, and an

elegant diamond-studded stole. This imposing personage doffed his

armored cap and in a mighty yet silken voice inquired:

"Have I the honor to speak with

his lordship Trurl, Trurl the highborn, Trurl the illustrious

constructor?"

"Why yes, of course… won't

you come in … I wasn't expecting… that is, I was

asleep," said Trurl, terribly flustered, pulling on a bathrobe,

for a nightshirt was all he was wearing, and that wasn't the

cleanest.

The magnificent electroknight,

however, appeared not to notice any shortcoming in Trurl's attire.

Doffng his cap again, which purred and hummed above his castellated

brow, he gracefully entered the room. Trurl excused himself for a

moment, perfunctorily performed his morning ablutions, then

hurried back downstairs. By now it was growing light outside, and the

first rays of the sun gleamed on the turbans of the robots, who sang

the old sad and soulful song of bondage, "Tote Dat Jack,"

as they formed in triple rows around both house and pyramidal ship.

Trurl took a seat opposite his guest, who blinked his shining eyes

and finally spoke as follows:

"The planet from which I come to

you, Sir Constructor, is at present deep in the Dark Ages. Ah, but

Your Excellency must forgive our untimely arrival, which did so