Lem, Stanislaw (4 page)

his breath.

"Tell me," said Trurl, glad

of the reprieve.

"Because you're not the real

Trurl. Trurl, you see, built a Machine to Grant Your Every Wish and

sent it here as a gift; to test it out, I had it make you! And now

I'm going to knock off your head, put it at the foot of my bed and

use it for a bootjack."

"You monster! Why are you doing

this to me?"

"I already told you: it gives me

pleasure. But enough of this idle chatter!" And Klapaucius got

up and this time picked up a huge bludgeon in both hands—but

Trurl cried out:

"Wait! Stop! I have something to

tell you!!"

"I wonder what you could possibly

tell me to keep me from using your head as a bootjack," replied

Klapaucius.

Trurl quickly yelled:

"I'm not any Trurl from a

machine! I'm the real Trurl —I only wanted to find out what

you've been doing lately behind closed doors and drawn curtains, so I

built a machine, hid in its belly and had it take me here,

pretending to be a gift!"

"Come now, that's an obvious

fabrication and not even clever!" said Klapaucius, hefting his

bludgeon. "Don't waste your breath, I can see right through you.

You came out of a machine that grants wishes, and if it manufactures

paint and sandpaper, a brace and bit, and a No. 5 screw, it can

surely manufacture you!"

"I had all that prepared

beforehand in its belly!" cried Trurl. "It wasn't hard to

anticipate what you'd need in your work! I swear I'm telling the

truth!"

"Are you trying to tell me that

my good friend and colleague, Trurl the Magnificent, is nothing

but a common sneak? No, that I will never believe!" replied

Klapaucius. "Take that!"

And he let him have it.

"That's for slandering my good

friend Trurl! And take
that
! And that!"

And he let him have it again, and

again, clubbing and clobbering until his arm was too tired to club or

clobber anymore.

"Now I'll have a little nap and

rest up," said Klapaucius, throwing aside the bludgeon. "But

don't you worry, I'll be back…" And he left, and soon was

snoring so loud you could hear it even in the cellar. Trurl writhed

and twisted until he loosened his bonds enough to slip off the knots,

got up, crept back to the machine, climbed inside and took off for

home at a gallop. Klapaucius meanwhile was watching the escape from

his bedroom window, pressing a hand over his mouth to keep from

laughing out loud. The next day he went to pay Trurl a visit. It was

a gloomy and silent Trurl that let him in. The room was dark, but

even so, Klapaucius could see that Trurl's person bore the marks of a

good shellacking—though it was apparent that Trurl had gone to

some trouble to touch up the scratches and hammer out the dents.

"Why so gloomy?" asked a

cheerful Klapaucius. "I came to thank you for the nice gift—what

a shame, though, it ran off while I slept, and in such a hurry that

it left the door open!"

"It seems to me," snapped

Trurl, "that you somewhat misused, or should I say abused, my

gift. Oh, you needn't bother to explain, the machine told me

everything. You had it make me, me, then lured me, I mean the copy of

me, to the cellar, where you beat it unmercifully! And after this

great insult to my person, after this act of the blackest

ingratitude, you dare show your face here as if nothing

happened! What do you have to say for yourself?"

"I really don't understand why

you're so angry," said Klapaucius. "It's true I had the

machine make a copy of you, and I must say it was absolutely perfect,

an amazing likeness. As far as the beating goes, well, your machine

must have exaggerated a little—I did give the artificial Trurl

a poke or two, but only to see if it was well made, and perhaps

also to test its reflexes, which were quite good, by the way. It

turned out to be very much on its toes, and even tried to argue that

it was really you, can you imagine—? Of course I didn't believe

it, but then it swore the gift wasn't a gift at all, but some sort of

low and underhanded trick. Well, I had to defend the honor of my good

friend, you understand, so I thrashed it some for slandering you so

shamelessly. On the other hand I found it to be extremely

intelligent; so you see, Trurl, it resembled you mentally as well as

physically. You are indeed a great and magnificent constructor, which

is precisely what I came to tell you so early in the morning!"

"Well, yes, in that case,"

said Trurl, considerably appeased. "Though your use of the

Machine to Grant Your Every Wish was not, I would say, the most

fortunate …"

"Oh yes, one other thing I wanted

to ask," said Klapaucius, all innocence. "What did you do

with the artificial Trurl? Could I see it?"

"It was beside itself with rage,"

explained Trurl. "It said it would ambush you by that mountain

pass near your house and tear you limb from limb. I tried to reason

with it, but it called me names, ran out into the night and started

putting together all sorts of booby traps for you—and so,

dear Klapaucius, though you had insulted me, I remembered our old

friendship and decided to remove this threat to your life and limb.

Hence I had to disassemble it…"

And he touched a few nuts and bolts on

the floor with his shoe, and sighed.

Whereupon they exchanged kind words,

shook hands and parted the best of friends.

From that time on, Trurl did nothing

but tell everyone how he had given Klapaucius a Machine to Grant Your

Every Wish, how then Klapaucius had insulted him by having it

make an artificial Trurl, which he proceeded to beat black-and-blue;

how then this excellently constructed copy of the great constructor

made clever lies to save itself, and finally managed to escape while

Klapaucius slept, and how Trurl himself, the real Trurl, eventually

had to disassemble the artificial Trurl to protect his good friend

and colleague from its vengeance. Trurl told this story so often and

at such length, elaborating on his glorious achievement (and never

failing to call on Klapaucius as a witness), that it reached the ears

of the Royal Court at last, and now no one spoke of Trurl other than

with the utmost respect, though not long ago he had been commonly

called the Constructor of the World's Stupidest Computer. When

Klapaucius heard, one day, that the King himself had rewarded Trurl

handsomely and decorated him with the Order of the Great

Parallax, he threw up his hands and cried:

"What? Here I was able to see

through his little game and gave him so good a shellacking for it

that he had to sneak home in the middle of the night and patch

himself up, and even then he looked a sight! And for that they

decorate him, praise him, shower him with riches? O tempora, O

mores!…"

Furious, he went home, locked himself

in and drew the blinds. He too had been working on a Machine to Grant

Your Every Wish, only Trurl had beat him to it.

The Seven

Sallies

of Trurl and

Klapaucius

The

First Sally

Or
The Trap

of Gargantius

When the Universe was not so out of

whack as it is today, and all the stars were lined up in their proper

places, so you could easily count them from left to right, or top to

bottom, and the larger and bluer ones were set apart, and the

smaller, yellowing types pushed off to the corners as bodies of a

lower grade, when there was not a speck of dust to be found in outer

space, nor any nebular debris—in those good old days it was the

custom for constructors, once they had received their Diploma of

Perpetual Omnipotence with distinction, to sally forth ofttimes

and bring to distant lands the benefit of their expertise. And so it

happened that, in keeping with this ancient custom, Trurl and

Klapaucius, who could kindle or extinguish suns as easily as shelling

peas, did venture out on such a voyage. When the vastness of the

traveled void had erased in them all recollection of their native

skies, they saw a planet up ahead—not too little, not too big,

just about right—with one continent only, down the middle of

which ran a bright red line: everything on one side was yellow,

everything on the other, pink. Realizing at once that here were two

neighboring kingdoms, the constructors held a brief council of

war before landing.

"With two kingdoms," said

Trurl, "it's best you take one, and I the other. That way

nobody's feelings get hurt."

"Fine," said Klapaucius.

"But what if they ask for military aid? Such things

happen."

"True, they could demand weapons,

even superweapons," Trurl agreed. "We'll simply refuse."

"And if they insist, and threaten

us?" returned Klapaucius. "This too can happen."

"Let's see," said Trurl,

switching on the radio. It blared martial music, a rousing march.

"I have an idea," said

Klapaucius, turning it off. "We can use the Gargantius Effect.

What do you think?"

"Ah, the Gargantius Effect!"

cried Trurl. "I never heard of anyone actually using it. But

there's always a first time. Yes, why not?"

"We'll both be prepared to use

it," Klapaucius explained. "But it's imperative that we use

it together, otherwise we're in serious trouble."

"No problem," said Trurl. He

took a small golden box out of his pocket and opened it. Inside, on

velvet, lay two white beads. "You keep one, I'll keep the other.

Look at yours every evening; if it turns pink, that'll mean I've

started and you must too."

"So be it," said Klapaucius

and put his bead away. Then they landed, shook hands and set off in

opposite directions.

The kingdom to which Trurl repaired

was ruled by King Atrocitus. He was a militarist to the core, and an

incredible miser besides. To relieve the royal treasury, he did away

with all punishments except for the death sentence. His favorite

occupation was to abolish unnecessary offices; since that included

the office of executioner, every condemned citizen was obliged to do

his own beheading, or else—on rare occasions of royal

clemency—have it done by his next of kin. Of the arts Atrocitus

supported only those that entailed little expense, such as choral

recitation, chess and military calisthenics. The art of war he held

in particularly high esteem, for a victorious campaign brought in

excellent returns; on the other hand, one could properly prepare for

war only during an interval of peace, so the King advocated peace,

though in moderation. His greatest reform was the nationalization of

high treason. As the neighboring kingdom was continually sending

spies, he created the office of Royal Informer, who, through a staff

of subordinate traitors, would hand over State secrets to enemy

agents for certain sums of money. Though as a rule the agents

purchased only outdated secrets—those were less expensive and

besides, they were held accountable to their own treasury for every

penny spent.

The subjects of Atrocitus rose early,

were well-behaved, and worked long hours. They wove fascines and

gabions for fortifications, made guns and denunciations. In order

that the kingdom not be flooded with the latter (which in fact had

happened during the reign of Bartholocaust the Walleyed several

hundred years before), whoever wrote too many denunciations was

required to pay a special luxury tax. In this way they were kept at a

reasonable level. Arriving at the Court of Atrocitus, Trurl offered

his services. The King— not surprisingly—wanted powerful

instruments of war. Trurl asked for a few days to think it over, and

as soon as he was alone in the little cubicle they had assigned to