Authors: The Cyberiad [v1.0] [htm]
cast-iron hoot owls, were already beginning to strike the hour. He
sped over the drawbridge, took a quick look into the gaping
moat, shuddered, lowered his head and slipped under the spiked
grating of the portcullis—then across the courtyard to the
barbwire bushes and the fountain that bubbled mercury, and there in
the pale moonlight he saw the divine figure of Princess Octopauline,
beautiful beyond his wildest dreams and so bewitching, that he
shook with desire.
Observing these shakings and
shudderings of the sleeping monarch in the palace vestibule,
Subtillion chortled and rubbed his hands with glee, this time certain
of the King's demise, for he knew that when Octopauline enfolded the
unfortunate lover in those powerful eightfold arms of hers and drew
him deep into the fathomless dream with her tender tentacles of love,
he would never, never make it back to the surface of reality! And in
fact, Zipperupus, burning to be wrapped in the Princess'
embrace, was running along the wall in the shadow of the cloisters,
running towards that radiant image of silvery pulchritude, when
suddenly the old gatekeeper appeared and blocked the way with
his halberd. The King lifted the bag of ducats but, feeling their
pleasant weight in his hand, was loath to part with them—what a
shame, really, to throw away a whole fortune on one embrace!
"Here's a ducat," he said,
opening the bag. "Now let me by!"
"It'll cost you ten," said
the gatekeeper.
"What, ten ducats for a single
hug?" jeered the King. "You're out of your mind!"
"Ten ducats," said the
gatekeeper. "That's the price."
"Can't you lower it a little?"
"Ten ducats, not a ducat less."
"So that's how it is!"
yelled the King, flying off the handle in his usual way. "Very
well then, dog, you don't get a thing!" Whereupon the gatekeeper
whopped him good with the halberd and everything went spinning
around, the cloisters, the fountain, the drawbridge, and Zipperupus
fell —not asleep, but awake, opening his eyes to see Subtillion
at his side and in front of him, the Dream Cabinet. The Cybernerian
was greatly confounded, for now he had failed twice: the first time,
because of the King's craven character, the second, because of his
greed. But Subtillion, putting a good face on a bad business, invited
the King to help himself to another dream.
This time Zipperupus selected the
"Wockle Weed" dream.
He was Dodderont Debilitus, ruler of
Epilepton and
Maladyne, a rickety old codger and
incurable lecher besides, with a soul that longed for evil deeds. But
what evil could he do with these creaking joints, these palsied arms
and gouty legs? "I need a pick-me-up,” he thought and
ordered his degenerals, Tartaron and Torturus, to go out and put
whatever they could to fire and sword, sacking, pillaging and
carrying off. This they did and, returning, said:
"Sire and Sovereign! We put what
we could to fire and sword, we sacked, we pillaged, and here is what
we carried off: the beauteous Adoradora, Virgin Queen of the
Mynamoacans, with all her treasure!"
"Eh? What's that you say? With
her treasure?" wheezed the quimsy King. "But where is she?
And what's all that sniveling and shivering over there?"
"Here, upon yon royal couch, Your
Highness!" barked the degenerals in chorus. "The sniveling
comes from the prison-eress, the above-mentioned Queen Adoradora,
recumbent on her antimacassar of pearls! And she shivers first,
because she is clad in naught but this exquisite, gold-embroidered
shift, and secondly, in anticipation of great indignities and
degradation!"
"What? Indignities, you say?
Degradation? Good, good!" rasped the King. "Hand her over,
I'll ravish and outrage the poor thing at once!"
"Impossible, Your Highness,"
interposed the Royal Surgeon and Chirurgeon, "for reasons
of national security."
"What? I can't ravish? I can't
violate? I, the King? Have you gone mad? What else did I ever do
throughout my reign?"
"That's just it, Your Highness!"
urged the Surgeon. "Your Highness' health has been seriously
impaired by those excesses!"
"Oh? Well, in that case…
give me an ax, I'll just lop off her, ah, head …"
"With Your Highness' permission,
that too would be extremely unwise. The least exertion…"
"Odsbodkins and thunderation!
What blessed use is this kingship to me then?!" sputtered the
King, growing desperate. "Cure me, blast it! Restore me!
Make me young again, so I can-—you know—like it used to
be… Otherwise, so help me, I'll… I'll…"
In terror all the courtiers,
degenerals and medical assistants rushed out to find some way to
rejuvenate the royal person; at last they summoned the great Calculon
himself, a sage of infinite wisdom. He came before the King and
asked:
"What is it that Your Royal
Highness wishes?"
"Eh? Wishes, is it? Hah!"
croaked the King. "I'll tell you what he wishes! He wishes to
continue with his debaucheries, saturnalian carousals,
incontinent wallowings and wild oats, and in particular to defile and
properly deflower Queen Adoradora, who for the time being sits in the
dungeon!"
"There are two courses of action
open to us," said Calculon. "Either Your Highness
deigns to choose a suitably competent individual, who will perform
per procuram everything Your Highness, wired to that individual,
commands, and in this way Your Highness can experience whatever that
individual experiences, exactly as if he had experienced the
experience himself. Or else you must summon the old cyberhag who
lives in the forest outside the village, in a hut on three legs, for
she is a geriatric witch and deals exclusively with the
infirmities of advanced age!"
"Oh? Well, let's try the wires
first!" said the King. And it was done in a trice; the royal
electricians connected the Captain of the Guard to the King, and the
King immediately commanded him to saw the sage in half, for this
was precisely the kind of foul deed in which he took such delight.
Calculon's pleas and screams were to no avail. However, the
insulation on one of the wires was torn during the sawing, and
consequently the King received only the first half of the execution.
"A paltry method. The charlatan
deserved to be sawed in half," wheezed His Highness. "Now
let's have that old cyberhag, the one with the hut on three legs!"
His courtiers headed full speed for
the forest, and before long the King heard a mournful singsong, which
went something like this:
"Ancient persons repaired here! I
renovate, regenerate, I fix as good as new; corroded or scleroded,
why, everyone pulls through! So if you quake, or creak, or shake, or
have the rust, or feel the ache, yes I'm the one for you!"
The old cyberhag listened patiently to
the King's complaints, bowed low and said:
"Sire and Sovereign! Beyond the
blue horizon, at the foot of Bald Mountain, there flows a spring, and
from this spring there flows a stream, a stream of oil, of castor
oil, and o'er it grows the wockle weed, a high-octane antisenescent
re-juvenator—one tablespoon, and kiss forty-seven years
goodbye! Though you have to be careful not to take too much: an
overdose of wockle juice can youthen to the point of euthanasia and
poof, you disappear! And now, Sire, I shall prepare this remedy tried
and true!"
"Wonderful!" cried the King.
"And I'll have them prepare the Queen Adoradora—let
the poor thing know what awaits her, heh-heh!"
And with trembling hands he tried to
straighten his loose screws, muttering and clucking all the while,
and even twitching in places, for he had grown most senile, though
his passion for evil never abated.
Meanwhile knights rode out beyond the
blue horizon to the castor-oil stream, and later, over the old
cyberhag's cauldron vapors swirled, whirled and curled as concoctions
were being concocted, till finally she hastened to the throne, fell
on her knees and handed the King a goblet, full to the brim with a
liquid that shone and shimmered like quicksilver, and she said
in a great voice:
"King Dodderont Debilitus! Lo,
here is the rejuvenescent essence of the wockle weed! Invigorating,
exhilarating, just the thing for dalliance and derring-do! Drain this
cup, and for you the entire Galaxy will not hold cities enough to
despoil, nor maidens enough to dishonor! Drink, and to your
health!"
The King raised the goblet, but
spilled a few drops on his footstool, which instantly reared up,
snorted and hurled itself at Degeneral Tartaron, with frenzied intent
to humiliate and profane. In a twinkling of an eye, it had
ripped off six fistfuls of medals.
"Drink, Your Highness, drink!"
prompted the cyberhag. "You see yourself what miracles it
works!"
"You first," said the King
in a barely audible whisper, as he was aging fast. The cyberhag
turned pale, backed away, refused, but at a nod from the King three
soldiers seized her and, using a funnel, forced several drops of the
glittering brew down her throat. A flash, a thunderclap, smoke
everywhere! The courtiers looked, the King looked—nothing,
not a trace of the cyberhag, only a black hole gaping in the floor,
and through it one could see another hole, a hole in the dream
itself, clearly revealing somebody's foot—elegantly shod,
though the sock was singed and the silver buckle turning dark, as if
eaten with acid. The foot of course, along with its sock and shoe,
belonged to Subtillion, Lord High Thaumaturge and Apothecary to King
Zipperupus. For so potent was that poison the cyberhag had called the
wockle weed, that not only did it dissolve both her and the floor,
but went clear through to reality, there spattering the shin of
Subtillion, which gave him a nasty burn. The King, terrified, tried
to wake, but (fortunately for Subtillion) Degeneral Torturus managed
to bash him good over the head with his mace; thanks to this,
Zipperupus, when he came to, was unable to recall a thing of what had
happened when he was Dodderont Debilitus. Still, once again he had
foiled the Cybernerian, slipping out of the third deadly dream, saved
this time by his overly suspicious nature.
"There was something… but
I forget just what," said the King, back in front of the Cabinet
That Dreamed. "But why are you, Subtillion, hopping about on one
leg like that and holding the other?"
"It's—it's nothing, Your
Highness … a touch of rhom-botism… must be a change in
the weather," stammered the crafty Thaumaturge, and then
continued to tempt the King to sample yet another dream. Zipperupus
thought awhile, read through the Table of Contents and chose, "The
Wedding Night of Princess Ineffabelle." And he dreamt he was
sitting by the fire and reading an ancient volume, quaint and
curious, in which it told, with well-turned words and crimson ink on
gilded parchment, of the Princess Ineffabelle, who reigned five
centuries ago in the land of Dandelia, and it told of her Icicle
Forest, and her Helical Tower, and the Aviary That Neighed, and the
Treasury with a Hundred Eyes, but especially of her beauty and
abounding virtues. And Zipperupus longed for this vision of
loveliness with a great longing, and a mighty desire was kindled
within him and set his soul afire, that his eyeballs blazed like
beacons, and he rushed out and searched every corner of the dream for
Ineffabelle, but she was nowhere to be found; indeed, only the very
oldest robots had ever heard of that princess. Weary from his long
peregrinations, Zipperupus came at last to the center of the royal
desert, where the dunes were gold-plated, and there espied a humble
hut; when he approached it, he saw an individual of patriarchal
appearance, in a robe as white as snow. The latter rose and spake
thusly: