Authors: The Cyberiad [v1.0] [htm]
Perchance these three machines may serve in my stead—which
would have the added merit of providing Your Majesty with the
opportunity to test them."
"Let it be as you say,"
agreed the King.
Everyone assumed an attitude of the
utmost interest and expectation. Trurl brought out the first
machine—the one painted white—from the phaeton, pushed a
button, then took a seat at the side of King Genius. The machine
said:
"Here is the story of the
Multitudians, their king Mandrillion, his Perfect Adviser, and Trurl
the constructor, who built the Adviser, and later destroyed it!"
+ +
The land of the Multitudians is famous
for its inhabitants, who are distinguished by the fact that they are
multitudinous. One day the constructor Trurl, passing through
the saffron regions of the constellation Deliria, strayed a little
from the main path and caught sight of a planet that appeared to
writhe. Drawing nearer, he saw that this was due to the multitudes
that covered its surface; he landed, having found—not without
difficulty—a few square feet of relatively unoccupied
ground. The natives immediately ran up and thronged about him,
exclaiming how multitudinous they were, although, as they all talked
at once, Trurl couldn't make out a single word. When finally he
understood, he asked:
"Multitudinous, are you?"
"We are!!" they shouted,
bursting with pride. "We are innumerable."
And others cried:
"We are like fish in the sea!"
"Like pebbles on the beach!"
"Like stars in the sky! Like
atoms!!"
"Supposing you are,"
returned Trurl. "What of it? Do you spend all day counting
yourselves, and does that give you pleasure?"
"Know, O unenlightened alien,"
was their reply, "that when we stamp our feet, the very
mountains tremble, and when we huff and puff, it is a hurricane that
sends trees flying, and when we all sit down together, there is
hardly room enough to breathe!!"
"But why should mountains tremble
and hurricanes send trees flying, and why should there be hardly room
enough to breathe?" asked Trurl. "Is it not better when
mountains stay at rest, and there are no hurricanes, and everyone has
room enough to breathe?"
The Multitudians were highly offended
by this lack of respect shown to their mighty numbers and their
numerical might, so they stamped, huffed and puffed, and sat down to
demonstrate their multitudinality and show just what it meant.
Earthquakes toppled half the trees, crushing seven hundred thousand
persons, and hurricanes leveled the rest, causing the demise of seven
hundred thousand more, while those who remained alive had hardly room
enough to breathe.
"Good heavens!" cried Trurl,
packed in among the sitting natives like a brick in a brick wall.
"What a catastrophe!"
Which insulted them even more.
"O barbarous and benighted
alien!" they said. "What are a few hundred thousand to the
Multitudians, whose myriads are countless?! A loss that goes
unnoticed is no loss at all. You have seen how powerful we are in our
stamping, in our huffing and puffing, and in our sitting down.
Imagine then what would happen if we turned to bigger things!"
"You mustn't think," said
Trurl, "that your way of thinking is altogether new to me.
Indeed, it's well known that whatever comes in sufficiently large
quantities commands the general admiration. For example, a little
stale gas circulating sluggishly at the bottom of an old barrel
excites wonder in no one; but if you have enough of it to make a
Galactic Nebula, everyone is instantly struck with awe. Though
really, it's the same stale and absolutely average gas —only
there's an awful lot of it."
"We do not like what you say!"
they shouted. "We do not like to hear about this stale gas!"
Trurl looked around for the police,
but the crowd was too great for the police to push through.
"My dear Multitudians," he
said. "Permit me to leave your planet, for I do not share your
faith in the glory of great numbers when there is nothing more to
them than what may be counted."
But instead, exchanging a look and
nodding, they snapped their fingers, which set up a shock wave of
such prodigious force, that Trurl was hurled into the air and flew,
turning head over heels, for quite some time before landing on his
feet in a garden of the royal palace. Mandrillion the Greatest,
ruler of the Multitudians, approached; he had been watching the
constructor's flight and descent, and now said:
"They tell me, O alien, that you
have not paid proper tribute to the numerosity of my people. I
ascribe this to your general infirmity of mind. Yet, though you show
no understanding of higher matters, you apparently possess some skill
in the lower, which is fortunate, as I require a Perfect Adviser and
you shall build me one!"
"What exactly is this Adviser
supposed to do, and what will I receive for building it?"
inquired Trurl, brushing himself off.
"It should answer every question,
solve every problem, give absolutely the best advice and, in a word,
put the greatest wisdom entirely at my disposal. For this, you
shall receive two or three hundred thousand of my subjects, or more
if you like—we won't quibble over a few thousand."
Trurl thought:
"It would seem that an
overabundance of thinking beings is a dangerous thing, if it reduces
them to the status of sand. This king would sooner part with a legion
of his subjects than I with a pair of old slippers!"
But he said aloud:
"Sire, my house is small and
would not
hold
so many slaves."
"Fear not, O backward alien, I
have experts who will explain to you the endless benefits one may
derive from owning a horde of slaves. You can, for example, dress
them in robes of different colors and have them stand in a great
square to form a living mosaic, or signs providing sentiments for
every occasion. You can tie them in bundles and roll them down hills,
you can make a huge hammer—five thousand for the head, three
thousand for the handle—to break up boulders or clear forests.
You can braid them into rope and make decorative hangings, where
those at the very bottom, by the droll gyrations of their bodies, the
kicking and the squeaking as they dangle over the abyss, create a
sight that gladdens the heart and rejoices the eye. Or take ten
thousand young female slaves, stand them all on one leg and have them
make figure eights with their right hands and circles with their
left—a spectacle, believe me, which you won't wish to part
with, and I speak from experience!"
"Sire!" answered Trurl.
"Forests and boulders I can manage with machines, and as
for signs and mosaics, it is not my custom to fashion them out of
beings that might prefer to be otherwise employed."
"What then, O insolent alien,"
said the King, "do you want in return for the Perfect Adviser?"
"A hundred bags of gold!"
Mandrillion was loath to part with the
gold, but an idea came to him, a most ingenious plan, which however
he kept to himself, and he said:
"So be it!"
"Your Royal Highness shall have
his Perfect Adviser," promised Trurl, and proceeded to the
castle tower which Mandrillion had set aside for him as a workshop.
It wasn't long before they could hear the blowing of bellows there,
the ringing of hammers, the rasping of saws. The King sent spies to
have a look; these returned much amazed, for Trurl had not
constructed an Adviser at all, but a variety of forging,
welding, cutting and wiring machines, after which he sat down and
with a nail made little holes in a long strip of paper, programming
out the Adviser in every particular, then went for a walk while the
machines toiled in the tower all night, and by early morning the work
was done. Around noon, Trurl entered the main hall with an enormous
doll that had two legs and one small hand; he brought it before the
King, declaring that this was the Perfect Adviser.
"Indeed," muttered
Mandrillion and ordered the marble floor sprinkled with saffron and
cinnamon, so strong was the smell of hot iron given off by the
Adviser—the thing, just out of the oven, even glowed in places.
"You may go," the King said to Trurl. "Return this
evening, and then we shall see who owes how much and to whom."
Trurl took his leave, feeling that
these parting words of Mandrillion did not promise any great
generosity and perhaps even concealed some evil intention. Which
made him glad he had qualified the Adviser's universality with one
small yet far from trivial condition, that is, he had included in its
program an instruction to the effect that whatever it did, it was
never to permit the destruction of its creator.
Remaining alone with the Adviser, the
King said:
"What are you and what can you
do?"
"I am the King's Perfect
Adviser," replied the machine in a hollow voice, as if it spoke
from an empty barrel, "and I can provide him with the best
advice possible."
"Good," said the King. "And
to whom do you owe allegiance and perfect obedience, me or the one
who constructed you?"
"Allegiance and obedience I owe
only to His Royal Highness," boomed the Adviser.
"Good, good…" said
the King. "Now to begin with, I … that is, well …
I mean, I shouldn't like my first request to give the impression
that I was, shall we say, stingy … however, ah, to some
extent, you understand, if only to uphold certain principles—don't
you think?"
"His Royal Highness has not yet
deigned to say what it is that he wishes," said the Adviser,
propping itself on a third leg it put out from its side, for it
suffered a momentary loss of balance.
"A Perfect Adviser ought to be
able to read its master's thoughts!" snapped Mandrillion.
"Of course, but only on request,
to avoid embarrassments," said the Adviser and, opening a
little door in its belly, turned a knob that read "Telepathitron."
Then it nodded and said:
"His Royal Highness doesn't wish
to give Trurl a plug nickel? I understand!"
"Speak one word of this to anyone
and I'll have you thrown in the great mill, whose stones can grind up
thirty thousand of my subjects at a time!" threatened the King.
"I won't tell a soul!" the
Adviser assured him. "His Royal Highness doesn't wish to pay for
me—that's easily done. When Trurl comes back, simply tell him
there won't be any gold and he should kindly go away."
"You're an idiot, not an
adviser!" snorted the King. "I don't want to pay, but I
want it to look like it's all Trurl's fault! Like I don't owe him a
thing, understand?"
The Adviser turned on the device to
read the royal thoughts, reeled a little, then said in a hollow
voice:
"His Royal Highness wishes in
addition that it should appear that he is acting justly and in
accordance with the law and his own sacred word, while Trurl turns
out to be nothing but a despicable charlatan and scoundrel…
Very well. With His Royal Highness' permission, I will now seize His
Royal Highness by the throat and choke him, and if he would be so
good as to struggle and scream for help…"
"Have you gone mad?" said
Mandrillion. "Why should you choke me and why should I scream?"
"That you may accuse Trurl of
attempting to commit, with my aid, the crime of regicide,"
explained the Adviser brightly. "Thus, when His Royal Highness
has him whipped and thrown into the moat, everyone will say that this
was an act of the greatest mercy, since for such an offense one is
usually drawn and quartered, if not tortured first. To me His Royal
Highness will grant a full pardon, as I was but an unwitting tool in
the hands of Trurl, and everyone will praise the King's magnanimity
and compassion, and everything will be exactly as His Royal
Highness wishes it."
"All right, choke me—but
carefully, you dog!" said the King.
Everything happened just as the
Perfect Adviser said it would. True, the King wanted to have Trurl's
legs pulled off before they threw him into the moat, but somehow this
wasn't done—no doubt a mix-up in the orders, the King thought
later, but actually it was owing to the machine's discreet
intervention with one of the executioner's helpers. Afterward, the
King pardoned his Adviser and reinstated it at court; Trurl
meanwhile, battered and bruised, painfully hobbled home. Immediately
after his return, he went to see Klapaucius and told him the whole
story. Then he said:
"That Mandrillion was more of a
villain than I thought. Not only did he shamefully deceive me, but he
even used the very Adviser I gave him, used it to further his scurvy
scheme against me! Ah, but he is sadly mistaken if he thinks that