Lem, Stanislaw (16 page)

sound, and technicians and assistants ran frantically back and

forth with piles of diapers.

The bombardment began a week later, at

midnight. The cannons, primed by veteran cannoneers, were aimed,

muzzles raised, straight at the white star of the Emperor's

empire, and they fired—not death-dealing, but life-giving

missiles. For Trurl had loaded the cannons with newborn babies, which

rained down upon the enemy in gooing, cooing myriads and,

growing quickly, crawled and drooled over everything; there were so

many of them, that the air shook with their ear-splitting ma-ma's,

da-da's, kee-kee's and waa's. This infant inundation lasted until the

economy began to collapse under the strain and the kingdom was faced

with the dread specter of a depression, and still out of the sky came

tots, tads, moppets and toddlers, all chubby and chuckling, their

diapers fluttering. The Emperor was forced to capitulate to King

Protuberon, who promised to call a halt to the hostilities on the

condition that his son be granted Amarandina's hand in marriage—to

which the Emperor hastily agreed. Whereupon the baby cannons

were all carefully spiked and put away, and, to be safe, Trurl

himself took apart the femfatalatron. Later, as best man, in a suit

of emeralds and holding the ceremonial baton, he played toastmaster

at the riotous wedding feast. Afterwards, he loaded his rocket with

the titles, diplomas and citations which both the King and the

Emperor had bestowed upon him, and then, sated with glory, he headed

for home.

The

Fifth Sally

Or
The Mischief

of King Balerion

Not by being cruel did Balerion, King

of Cymberia, oppress his people, but by having a good time. And

again, it wasn't feasts or all-night orgies that were dear to His

Majesty's heart, but only the most innocent games—tiddlywinks,

mumbledypeg, old maid and go fish into the wee hours of the morning,

then hopscotch, leapfrog, but more than anything he loved to

play hide-and-seek. Whenever there was an important decision to be

made, a State document to be signed, interstellar emissaries to be

received or some Commodore requesting an audience, the King

would hide, and they would have to find him, else suffer the most

dreadful punishments. So the whole court would chase up and down the

palace, check the dungeons, look under the drawbridge, comb the

towers and turrets, tap the walls, turn the throne inside out, and

quite often these searches lasted a long time, for the King was

always thinking up new places to hide. Once, a terribly important war

never got declared, and all because the King, decked in spangles and

crystal pendants, hung three days from the ceiling of the main hall

and passed for a chandelier, holding his mouth to keep from laughing

out loud at the ministers rushing about frantically below. Whoever

found the King was instantly given the title of Royal

Discoverer—there were already seven hundred and thirty-six of

those at court. But he who would gain the King's special favor had to

beguile him with some new game, one the King had never heard of.

Which was by no means easy, considering that Balerion was unusually

well-versed in the subject; he knew all the ancient games, like

jackstones or knucklebones, and all the latest games, like spin the

electron, and he often said that everything was a game, his Crown

included, and for that matter the whole wide world.

These thoughtless and frivolous words

outraged the venerable members of the King's privy council; the

prime minister in particular, My Lord Papagaster of the great

house of Pentaperihelion, was much provoked, saying the King held

nothing sacred and even dared expose his own Exalted Person to

ridicule.

Then, when the King unexpectedly

announced it was time for riddles, terror filled the hearts of

everyone. He had always had a passion for riddles; once, right in the

middle of the coronation, he confounded the Lord High Chancellor with

the question, why was antimatter like an antimacassar?

It wasn't very long before the King

realized that his courtiers weren't putting forth the proper

effort in solving the conundrums he posed. They replied in any which

way, said whatever came into their heads, and this infuriated the

King. However, as soon as he began to base all royal appointments and

promotions upon the answers to his riddles, things improved

considerably. Decorations and dismissals came thick and fast, and the

whole court, like it or not, had to play the game in earnest.

Unfortunately, many dignitaries attempted to deceive the King, who,

though basically good-natured, could simply not tolerate a cheater.

The Keeper of the Great Seal was sent into exile because he had used

a crib (concealed beneath his cuirass) in the Royal Presence; he

never would have been discovered, had not one of his old enemies, a

certain general, brought this to the King's attention. Papagaster

himself had to part with his high post, for he didn't know what was

the darkest place in outer space. In time, the King's Cabinet was

composed of the most accomplished solvers of crosswords,

acrostics and rebuses in the land, and his ministers never went

anywhere without their encyclopedias. The courtiers soon became so

proficient, that they could supply the correct answer before the King

had finished asking the question, though this was hardly surprising

when you considered that they were all avid subscribers to the

"Official Register," which, instead of a tedious list

of acts and administrative decisions, contained nothing but puzzles,

puns and parlor games.

As the years went by, however, the

King liked less and less to have to think, and gradually returned to

his first and greatest love, hide-and-seek. One day, in a

particularly playful mood, he offered a most handsome prize to

the one who could find for him the best hiding place in all the

world. The prize was to be nothing less than the Royal Diadem of the

Cymberanide Dynasty, a cluster of truly priceless jewels. No one had

laid eyes on this wonder for many centuries, for it lay locked and

coffered in the Royal Vault.

Now it so happened that Trurl and

Klapaucius chanced upon Cymberia in the course of one of their

travels. News of the King's proclamation, having quickly spread

throughout the realm, reached our constructors too; they learned

of it from the local villagers at the inn where they were spending

the night.

The next day they repaired to the

palace to announce that they knew a hiding place unequaled by any

other. Unfortunately, so many others had come to claim the prize,

that it was next to impossible to get by the crowd at the gate. Trurl

and Klapaucius therefore returned to their lodgings and resolved to

try their luck the following day. Though they didn't leave it to luck

alone; this time the prudent constructors came prepared. To every

guard who barred the way and then to every court official who

challenged them, Trurl quietly slipped a few coins and, whenever that

didn't work, a few more, and in less than five minutes they were

standing before the throne of His Royal Highness. His Royal Highness

was of course delighted to hear that such famous wise men had come so

far for the sole purpose of imparting to him the secret of the

perfect hiding place. It took them a little time to explain the how

and the why of it to Balerion, but his mind, schooled from childhood

in the ways of tricks and puzzles, finally grasped the idea. Burning

with enthusiasm, the King jumped down from his throne, assured the

two friends of his undying gratitude, promised they would receive the

prize without fail—provided only they let him try out

their secret method at once. Klapaucius was reluctant on this point,

muttering to himself that they ought to write up a proper

contract first, with parchment, seals and tassels; but the King was

so insistent, and pleaded with such vehemence, swearing great oaths

the prize was as good as theirs, that the constructors had to give

in. Trurl opened a small box he had brought with him, took out the

necessary device and showed it to the King. This invention actually

had nothing to do with hide-and-seek, but could be applied to that

game wonderfully well. It was a portable bilateral personality

transformer, with retroreversible feedback, of course. Using it, any

two individuals could quickly and easily exchange minds. The device,

fitted onto one's head, resembled a pair of horns; when these came

into contact with the forehead of the one with whom one wished to

effect the exchange, and were lightly pressed, the device was

activated and instantaneously set up two opposing series of

antipodal impulses. Through one horn, one's own psyche flowed into

the other, and through the other, the other into one's own. Hence the

total deenergizing of the one memory and the simultaneous energizing

of the other in its place, and contrariwise. Trurl had set the

apparatus on his head for purposes of demonstration and was

explaining the procedure to the King, bringing the royal forehead

into proximity with the horns, when the King impulsively butted

against them, which triggered the mechanism and immediately

brought about a personality transfer. It all happened so quickly that

Trurl, who had never really tested the device on himself, didn't

notice. Nor did Klapaucius, standing to one side; it did strike him

rather odd that Trurl suddenly stopped in the middle of a sentence

and Balerion instantly took up where Trurl had left off
_,
,

using such words as "the potentials involved with nonlinear

conversion of submnemonic quanta" and "the adiabatic flux

differential of the id." The King went on in his squeaky voice

for almost a minute before Klapaucius realized there was something

wrong. Balerion, finding himself inside the body of Trurl, was no

longer listening to the lecture, but wiggled his fingers and toes, as

if making himself more comfortable in this novel shape, which he

inspected with the greatest curiosity. Meanwhile Trurl, in a long

purple robe, was waving his arms and explaining the reversed entropy

of mutually transposed systems, until he grew aware that

something was in the way, looked down at his hand and was dumbfounded

to find himself holding a scepter. He was about to speak, but the

King burst out laughing and took to his heels. Trurl started after

him, but tripped over the royal robe and fell flat on his face. This

commotion quickly brought the royal bodyguards, who straightway threw

themselves upon Klapaucius, thinking he had attacked the Royal

Person. By the time Trurl managed to get his royal personage off the

floor and convince the guards it stood in no danger, Balerion was far

away, rollicking somewhere in Trurl's body. Trurl attempted to

give chase, but the courtiers wouldn't permit it, and when he

protested he wasn't the King at all but there had been a personality

transfer, they concluded that excessive puzzle-solving had finally

unhinged the Royal Reason and politely but firmly locked him in the

royal bedchamber, then sent for the royal physicians while he roared

and pounded on the door. Klapaucius meanwhile, thrown out of the

palace on his ear, headed back to the inn, thinking—not without

alarm—of the complications that might arise from what had just

taken place. "Undoubtedly," he thought, "had I been in

Trurl's shoes, my great presence of mind would have saved the day.

Instead of making a scene and ranting on about telepsychic transfers,

which couldn't help but create suspicions as to his sanity, I would

have taken advantage of the King's body and ordered them to seize

Trurl, namely Balerion, at once-—whereas now he's running

around free somewhere in the city—and also, I would have had

the other constructor remain at my side, in the capacity of special

adviser. But that complete idiot"—by which he meant

Trurl—"completely lost his head, and now I'll have to

bring all my tactical talents into play, else this business may end

badly…"

He tried to recall everything he knew

about the personality transformer, which was considerable. By

far the greatest danger, as he saw it, was that Balerion, heedlessly

rushing about in Trurl's body, might stumble and hit some inanimate

object with his horns. In which case Balerion's consciousness would

immediately enter that object and, since inanimate things had no

consciousness and consequently the object could offer the

transformer nothing in return, Trurl's body would fall lifeless to

the ground; as for the King, he would be trapped for all eternity

inside some stone, or lamppost, or discarded shoe. Uneasy, Klapaucius

quickened his pace, and not far from the inn he overheard some