Lem, Stanislaw (9 page)

"Have no fear of that, noble

constructors!" he said with a grim smile. "You are not the

first, and you will not be the last, I expect. Know that I am a just

but most exacting ruler. Too often have assorted knaves, flatterers

and fakes attempted to deceive me, too often, I say, have they posed

as distinguished hunting engineers, solely to empty my coffers and

fill their sacks with gems and precious stones, leaving me, in

return, with a few paltry scarecrows that fall apart at the first

touch. Too often has this happened for me not to take appropriate

measures. For twelve years now any constructor who fails to meet my

demands, who promises more than he is able to deliver, indeed

receives his reward, but is hurled, reward and all, into yon deep

well—-unless he be game enough (excuse the pun) to serve as the

quarry himself. In which case, gentlemen, I use no weapon but these

two bare hands …"

"And… and have there been,

ah, many such impostors?" asked Trurl in a weak voice.

"Many? That's difficult to say. I

only know that no one yet has satisfied me, and the scream of terror

they invariably give as they plummet to the bottom doesn't last quite

so long as it used to—the remains, no doubt, have begun to

mount. But rest assured, gentlemen, there is room enough still for

you!"

A deathly silence followed these dire

words, and the two friends couldn't help but look in the direction of

that dark and ominous hole. The King resumed his relentless pacing,

his boots striking the floor like sledge hammers in an echo chamber.

"But, with Your Highness'

permission… that is, we— we haven't yet drawn up the

contract," stammered Trurl. "Couldn't we have an hour or

two to think it over, weigh carefully what Your Highness has been so

gracious as to tell us, and then of course we can decide whether to

accept your generous offer or, on the other hand—"

"Ha!!" laughed the King like

a thunderclap. "Or, on the other hand, to go home? I'm afraid

not, gentlemen! The moment you set foot on board the Infernanda, you

accepted my offer! If every constructor who came here could leave

whenever he pleased, why, I'd have to wait forever for my fondest

hopes to be realized! No, you must stay and build me a beast to hunt.

I give you twelve days, and now you may go. Whatever pleasure you

desire, in the meantime, is yours. You have but to ask the servants I

have given you; nothing will be denied you. In twelve days, then!"

"With Your Highness' permission,

you can keep the pleasures, but—well, would it be at all

possible for us to have a look at the, uh, hunting trophies Your

Highness must have collected as a result, so to speak, of the efforts

of our predecessors?"

"But of course!" said the

King indulgently and clapped his hands with such force that sparks

flew and danced across the silver walls. The gust of air from those

powerful palms cooled even more our constructors' ardor for

adventure. Six guards in white and gold appeared and conducted them

down a corridor that twisted and wound like the gullet of a giant

serpent. Finally, to their great relief, it led out into a large,

open garden. There, on remarkably well-trimmed lawns, stood the

hunting trophies of King Krool.

Nearest at hand was a saber-toothed

colossus, practically cut in two in spite of the heavy mail and plate

armor that was to have protected its trunk; the hind legs,

disproportionately large (evidently designed for great leaps),

lay upon the grass alongside the tail, which ended in a firearm with

its magazine half-empty—a clear sign that the creature had not

fallen to the King without a fight. A yellow strip of cloth hanging

from its open jaws also testified to this, for Trurl recognized in it

the breeches worn by the King's huntsmen. Next was another prone

monstrosity, a dragon with a multitude of tiny wings all singed and

blackened by enemy fire; its circuits had spilled out molten and had

then congealed in a copper-porcelain puddle. Farther on stood another

creature, the pillarlike legs spread wide. A gentle breeze soughed

softly through its fangs. And there were wrecks on wheels and wrecks

on treads, some with claws and some with cannon, all sundered to the

magnetic core, and tank-turtles with squashed turrets, and mutilated

military millipedes, and other oddities, broken and battle-scarred,

some equipped with auxiliary brains (burnt out), some perched on

telescoping stilts (dislocated), and there were little vicious biting

things strewn about. These had been made to attack in great swarms,

then regroup in a sphere bristling with gun muzzles and bayonets—a

clever idea, but it saved neither them nor their creators. Down this

aisle of devastation walked Trurl and Klapaucius, pale, silent,

looking as if they were on their way to a funeral instead of to

another brilliant session of vigorous invention. They came at last to

the end of that dreadful gallery of Krool's triumphs and stepped into

the carriage that was waiting for them at the gate. That dragon team

which sped them back to their lodgings seemed less terrible now. Just

as soon as they were alone in their sumptuously appointed green and

crimson drawing room, before a table heaped high with effervescent

drinks and rare delicacies, Trurl broke into a volley of

imprecations; he reviled Klapaucius for heedlessly accepting the

offer made by the Master of the Royal Hunt, thereby bringing down

misfortune on their heads, when they easily could have stayed at home

and rested on their laurels. Klapaucius said nothing, waiting

patiently for Trurl's desperate rage to expend itself, and when it

finally did and Trurl had collapsed into a lavish mother-of-pearl

chaise longue and buried his face in his hands, he said:

"Well, we'd better get to work."

These words did much to revive Trurl,

and the two constructors immediately began to consider the

various possibilities, drawing on their knowledge of the deepest

and darkest secrets of the arcane art of cybernetic generation.

First of all, they agreed that victory lay neither in the armor nor

in the strength of the monster to be built, but entirely in its

program, in other words, in an algorithm of demoniacal derivation.

"It must be a truly diabolical creature, a thing of absolute

evil!" they said, and though they had as yet no clear idea of

what or how, this observation lifted their spirits considerably. Such

was their enthusiasm by the time they sat down to draft the beast,

that they worked all night, all day, and through a second night and

day before taking a break for dinner. And as the Leyden jars were

passed about, so sure were they of success, that they winked and

smirked —but only when the servants weren't looking, since they

suspected them (and rightly, too) of being the King's spies. So the

constructors said nothing of their work, but praised the mulled

electrolyte which the waiters brought in, tail coats flapping, in

beakers of the finest cut crystal. Only after the repast, when they

had wandered out on the veranda overlooking the village with its

white steeples and domes catching the last golden rays of the setting

sun, only then did Trurl turn to Klapaucius and say:

"We're not out of the woods yet,

you know."

"How do you mean?" asked

Klapaucius in a cautious whisper.

"There's one difficulty. You see,

if the King defeats our mechanical beast, he'll undoubtedly have us

thrown into that pit, for we won't have done his bidding. If, on the

other hand, the beast… You see what I mean?"

"If the beast isn't defeated?"

"No, if the beast defeats him,

dear colleague. If that happens, the King's successor may not

let us off so easily."

"You don't think we'd have to

answer for that, do you? As a rule, heirs to the throne are only too

happy to see it vacated."

"True, but this will be his son,

and whether the son punishes us out of filial devotion or

because he thinks the royal court expects it of him, it'll make

little difference as far as we're concerned."

"That never occurred to me,"

muttered Klapaucius. "You're quite right, the prospects aren't

encouraging… Have you thought of a way out of this dilemma?"

"Well, we might make the beast

multimortal. Picture this: the King slays it, it falls, then it gets

up again, resurrected, and the King chases it again, slays it

again, and so on, until he gets sick and tired of the whole thing."

"That he won't like," said

Klapaucius after some thought. "And anyway, how would you design

such a beast?"

"Oh, I don't know… We

could make it without any vital organs. The King chops the beast into

little pieces, but the pieces grow back together."

"How?"

"Use a field."

"Magnetic?"

"If you like."

"How do we operate it?"

"Remote control, perhaps?"

asked Trurl.

"Too risky," said

Klapaucius. "How do you know the King won't have us locked up in

some dungeon while the hunt's in progress? Our poor predecessors were

no fools, and look how they ended up. More than one of them, I'm

sure, thought of remote control—yet it failed. No, we can't

expect to maintain communication with the beast during the

battle."

"Then why not use a satellite?"

suggested Trurl. "We could install automatic controls-—"

"Satellite indeed!" snorted

Klapaucius. "And how are you going to build it, let alone put it

in orbit? There are no miracles in our profession, Trurl! We'll have

to hide the controls some other way."

"But where can we hide the

controls when they watch our every step? You've seen how the servants

skulk about, sticking their noses into everything. We'd never be

able to leave the premises ourselves, and certainly not smuggle out

such a large piece of equipment. It's impossible!"

"Calm down," said prudent

Klapaucius, looking over his shoulder. "Perhaps we don't need

such equipment in the first place."

"Something has to operate the

beast, and if that something is an electronic brain anywhere

inside, the King will smash it to a pulp before you can say goodbye."

They were silent. Night had fallen and

the village lights below were flickering on, one by one. Suddenly

Trurl said:

"Listen, here's an idea. We only

pretend to build a beast but in reality build a ship to escape on. We

give it ears, a tail, paws, so no one will suspect, and they can be

easily jettisoned on takeoff. What do you think of that? We get off

scot-free and thumb our noses at the King!"

"And if the King has planted a

real constructor among our servants, which is not unlikely, then it's

all over and into the pit with us. Besides, running away—no, it

just doesn't suit me. It's him or us, Trurl, you can't get around

it."

"Yes, I suppose a spy could be a

constructor too," said Trurl with a sigh. "What then can we

do, in the name of the Great Comet?! How about—a photoelectric

phantom?"

"You mean, a mirage? Have the

King hunt a mirage? No thanks! After an hour or two of that, he'd

come straight here and make phantoms of us!"

Again they were silent. Finally Trurl

said:

"The only way out of our

difficulty, as far as I can see, is to have the beast
abduct
the King, and then—"

"You don't have to say another

word. Yes, that's not at all a bad idea… Then for the ransom

we—and haven't you noticed, old boy, that the orioles here are

a deeper orange than on Maryland IV?" concluded Klapaucius, for

just then some servants were bringing silver lamps out on the

veranda. "There's still a problem though," he continued

when they were alone again. "Assuming the beast can do what you

say, how will we be able to negotiate with the prisoner if we're

sitting in a dungeon ourselves?"

"You have a point there,"

said Trurl. "We'll have to figure some way around that…

The main thing, however, is the algorithm!"

"Any child knows that! What's a

beast without an algorithm?"

So they rolled up their sleeves and

sat down to experiment—by simulation, that is

mathematically and all on paper. And the mathematical models of King

Krool and the beast did such fierce battle across the

equation-covered table, that the constructors' pencils kept snapping.

Furious, the beast writhed and wriggled its iterated integrals

beneath the King's polynomial blows, collapsed into an infinite

series of indeterminate terms, then got back up by raising itself to

the
n
th power, but the King so belabored it with

differentials and partial derivatives that its Fourier

coefficients all canceled out (see Riemann's Lemma), and in the

ensuing confusion the constructors completely lost sight of both King

and beast. So they took a break, stretched their legs, had a swig