Lem, Stanislaw (19 page)

can hear inside are its programs whirring, one more frightening than

the next. It approaches—how it hisses, how it spits! It even

scares itself a little—but
that
just sits there.

The scarechrome tries once more, this time on a different frequency,

but by now it just doesn't have its heart in it.

The Steelypips see that something else

is needed. They say: "Let's take a higher caliber, hydraulic,

differential-exponential, plastic, stochastic, and with plenty of

muscle. It won't cower if it has nuclear power."

So they sent it off,

universal, reversible, double-barreled, feedback on every track, all

systems go heigh-ho, and inside one mechanic and one mechanist, and

that's not all because just to be on the safe side they stuck a

scarechrome on top. It arrived, so well-oiled you could hear a pin

drop—it winds up for the swing and counts down: four quarters,

three quarters, two quarters, one quarter, no quarter! Ka-boom!

what a blow! See the mushroom grow! The mushroom with the radioactive

glow! And the oil bubbles, the gears chatter, the mechanic and the

mechanist peer out the hatch: can you imagine, not even a scratch.

The Steelypips held a council of war

and then built a mechanism which in turn built a metamechanism which

in turn built such a megalomechanism that the closest stars had to

step back. And in the middle of it was a machine with cogs and wheels

and in the middle of that a servospook, because they really meant

business now.

The megalomechanism gathered up all

its strength and let go! Thunder, rumbling, clatter, a mushroom so

huge you'd need an ocean to make soup out of it, the clenching of

teeth, darkness, so much darkness you can't even tell what's what.

The Steelypips look—nothing, not a thing, just all their

mechanisms lying around like so much scrap metal and without a sign

of life.

Now they rolled up their sleeves.

"After all," they say, "we are mechanics and

mechanists, all mechanically minded, and we have a machine, a dream

of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect, so

how can this nasty thing just sit there and not budge?"

This time they make nothing less than

an enormous cyberivy-bushwhacker: it'll creep up casually, as if

minding its own business, glance over its shoulder, grow a little

bolder, send out a root or two, grow up from behind, taking its time,

and then when it closes in, that'll be the end of that. And truly,

everything happened exactly as predicted, except, when it was over,

that wasn't exactly the end of that, not at all.

They fell into despair, and they

didn't even know what to think because this had never happened to

them before, so they mobilized and analyzed, made nets and glues,

lariats and screws, traps and contraptions to make it drown, break it

down, make it fall, or maybe wall it up—they try this way and

that and the other, but one is as poor as another. They turn

everything upside-down, but nothing helps. They're about ready to

give up hope when suddenly they see—someone's coming: he's

on horseback, but no, horses don't have wheels—it must be a

bicycle, but wait, bicycles don't have prows, so maybe it's a rocket,

but rockets don't have saddles. What he's riding no one can tell, but

who's in the saddle we all know well: it's Trurl himself, the

constructor, out on a spree, or maybe on one of his famous sallies,

serene and smiling, coming closer, flying by—but even from a

distance you'd know that this wasn't just anybody.

He lowers, he hovers, so they tell him

the whole story: "We are the Steelypips, we have a machine, a

dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every

respect, we saved up all our atoms, put them all together ourselves,

we hadn't a care, no spats in our vats, no rules, no schools,until

something flew up, landed, sat down and won't budge."

"Did you try scaring it off?"

Trurl asks with a kindly smile.

"We tried a scarechrome and a

servospook and a megalomechanism, all hydraulic and high caliber,

spouting mesons like caissons, pi-and mu-and neutrinos too, protons

and photons, but nothing worked."

"No machine, you say?"

"No sir, no machine." .

"H'm, interesting. And what

exactly is it?"

"That we don't know. It appeared,

flew here, what it is nobody knows, except that it's hideous and no

matter from which angle you look at it, it's even more hideous. It

flew up, landed, so heavy you can't imagine, and just sits there. But

it's an awful nuisance, all the same."

"Well, I really don't have much

time," says Trurl. "The most I can do is stay here for a

while, in an advisory capacity. Is that agreeable with you?"

It certainly is and the Steelypips

immediately ask what he wants them to bring—photons, screws,

hammers, artillery, or how about some dynamite, or TNT? And

would our guest like coffee or tea? From a vending machine, of

course.

"Coffee's fine," agrees

Trurl, "not for me, but for the business at hand. As for the

rest of it, I don't think so. You see, if neither scarechrome, nor

servospook, nor cyberivy-bushwhacker will do the job, then other

methods are indicated: archaic and archival, legalistic hence

sadistic. I've yet to see the remittance due and payable in full

fail."

"Come again?" ask the

Steelypips, but Trurl, rather than explain, continues:

"It's quite simple, really. All

you need is paper, ink, stamps and seals, sealing wax and thumbtacks,

sand to sprinkle, blotters, a teller window, a zinc teaspoon, a

saucer—the coffee we already have—and a mailman. And

something to write with—do you have that?"

"We'll get it!" And they

take off.

Trurl pulls up a chair and dictates:

"Notice is hereby given, that in re hindrance of Tenant, as

stated under Rev. Stat. c.117(e) dash 2 dash KKP4 of the CTSP Comm.

Code, in clear violation of paragraph 199, thereby constituting

a most reprehendable offense, we do declare the termination,

desummation and full cessation of all services accruing

thereunto, by authority of Ordinance 67 DPO No. 14(j) 1101
et

seq
., on this the 19th day of the 17th month of the current

year, aff'g 77 F. Supp. 301. The Tenant may appeal said action by

extraordinary procedure to the Chairman of the Board within

twenty-four hours."

Trurl attaches the seal, affixes the

stamp, has it entered in the Central Ledger, consults the Official

Register, and says:

"Now let the mailman deliver it."

The mailman takes it, they wait, they

wait, the mailman returns.

"Did you deliver it?" asks

Trurl.

"I did."

"And the return receipt?"

"Here it is, signed on this line.

And here's the appeal."

Trurl takes the appeal and, without

reading it at all, orders it returned to sender and writes diagonally

across it: "Unacceptable—Proper Forms Not Attached."

And he signs his name illegibly.

"And now," he says, "to

work!"

He sits and writes, while those who

are curious look on and, understanding nothing, ask what this is and

what it's supposed to do.

"Official business," answers

Trurl. "And things will go well, now that it's under way."

The mailman runs back and forth all

day like one possessed; Trurl notarizes, issues directives, the

typewriter chatters, and little by little an entire office takes

shape, rubber stamps and rubber bands, paper clips and paper wads,

portfolios and pigeonholes, foolscap and scrip, teaspoons, signs

that say "No Admittance," inkwells, forms on file, writing

all the while, the typewriter chattering, and everywhere you look you

see coffee stains, wastepaper, and bits of gum eraser. The Steelypips

are worried, they don't understand a thing, meanwhile Trurl uses

special delivery registered C.O.D., certified with return receipt,

or, best of all, remittance due and payable in full—he

sends out no end of dunning letters, bills of lading, notices,

injunctions, and there are already special accounts set up, no

entries at the moment but he says that's only temporary. After a

while, you can see that that is not quite so hideous, especially in

profile—it's actually gotten smaller!—yes, yes, it

is
smaller! The Steelypips ask Trurl, what now?

"No idle talk permitted on the

premises," is his answer. And he staples, stamps, inspects

vouchers, revokes licenses, dots an i, loosens his tie, asks who's

next, I'm sorry, the office is closed, come back in an hour, the

coffee is cold, the cream sour, cobwebs from ceiling to floor, an old

pair of nylons in the secretary's drawer, install four new file

cabinets over here, and there's an attempt to bribe an official,

a pile of problems and a problem with piles, a writ of execution,

incarceration for miscegenation, and appeals with seven seals.

And the typewriter chatters: "Whereas,

pursuant to the Tenant's failure to quit and surrender the demised

premises in compliance with the warrant served, habere facias

posses-sionem, by Div. of Rep. Cyb. Gt. KRS thereof, the Court of

Third Instance, in vacuo and ex nihilo, herewith orders the immediate

vacuation and vacation thereunder. The Tenant may not appeal this

ruling."

Trurl dispatches the messenger and

pockets the receipts. After which, he gets up and methodically hurls

the desks, chairs, rubber stamps, seals, pigeonholes, etc., out into

deep space. Only the vending machine remains.

"What on earth are you doing?"

cry the Steelypips in dismay, having grown accustomed to it all.

"How can you?"

"Tut-tut, my dears,” he

replies. "Better you take a look instead!"

And indeed, they look and gasp—why,

there's nothing there, it's gone, as if it had never been! And where

did it go, vanished into thin air? It beat a cowardly retreat, and

grew so small, so very small, you'd need a magnifying glass to see

it. They root around, but all they can find is one little spot,

slightly damp, something must have dripped there, but what or why

they cannot say, and that's all.

"Just as I thought," Trurl

tells them. "Basically, my dears, the whole thing was quite

simple: the moment it accepted the first dispatch and signed for it,

it was done for. I employed a special machine, the machine with a big

B;
for, as the Cosmos is the Cosmos, no one's licked it

yet!"

"All right, but why throw out the

documents and pour out the coffee?" they ask.

"So that it wouldn't devour you

in turn!" Trurl replies. And he flies off, nodding to them

kindly—and his smile is like the stars.

The

Sixth Sally

OR

How Trurl

and Klapaucius

Created a Demon

of the Second Kind to

Defeat the

Pirate Pugg

"There are but two caravan trails

that lead south from the Lands of the Upper Suns. The first, which is

older, goes from the Stellar Quadriferum past the Great

Glossaurontus, a most treacherous star, for its magnitude varies, and

at its dimmest it resembles the Dwarf of the Abyssyrs, and thereby

causes travelers to blunder into the Great Shroud Wastes, from whence

only one caravan in nine ever returns. The second, newer trail was

opened up by the Imperium Myrapoclean, whose turboservoslaves carved

a tunnel six billion miles in length through the heart of the Great

Glossaurontus itself.

"The northern entrance to the

tunnel may be found in the following manner: from the last of the

Upper Suns proceed directly toward the Pole for the time it

takes to recite seven Now-I-lay me-down-to-sleep's. Then go left,

till you reach the wall of fire, which is a side of Glossaurontus,