The Cyberiad Part 3

The product of our scalars is defined!

Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind Cuts capers like a happy haversine.

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye, I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.

Bernoulli would have been content to die, Had he but known such a2 cos 2 !

This concluded the poetic compet.i.tion, since Klapaucius suddenly had to leave, saying he would return shortly with more topics for the machine; but he never did, afraid that in so doing, he might give Trurl more cause to boast. Trurl of course let it be known that Klapaucius had fled in order to hide his envy and chagrin. Klapaucius meanwhile spread the word that Trurl had more than one screw loose on the subject of that so-called mechanical versifier.

Not much time went by before news of Trurl's computer laureate reached the genuine--that is, the ordinary-poets. Deeply offended, they resolved to ignore the machine's existence. A few, however, were curious enough to visit Trurl's electronic bard in secret. It received them courte-ously, in a hall piled high with closely written paper (for it worked day and night without pause). Now these poets were all avant-garde, and Trurl's machine wrote only in the traditional manner; Trurl, no connoisseur of poetry, had relied heavily on the cla.s.sics in setting up its program. The machine's guests jeered and left in triumph. The machine was self-programming, however, and in addition had a special ambition-amplifying mechanism with glory-seeking circuits, and very soon a great change took place. Its poems became difficult, ambiguous, so intricate and charged with meaning that they were totally incomprehensible. When the next group of poets came to mock and laugh, the machine replied with an improvisation that was so modern, it took their breath away, and the second poem seriously weakened a certain sonneteer who had two State awards to his name, not to mention a statue in the city park. After that, no poet could resist the fatal urge to cross lyrical swords with Trurl's electronic bard. They came from far and wide, carrying trunks and suitcases full of ma.n.u.scripts. The machine would let each challenger recite, instantly grasp the algo-rithm of his verse, and use it to compose an answer in exactly the same style, only two hundred and twenty to three hundred and forty-seven times better.

The machine quickly grew so adept at this, that it could cut down a first-cla.s.s rhapsodist with no more than one or two quatrains. But the worst of it was, all the third-rate poets emerged unscathed; being third-rate, they didn't know good poetry frombad and consequently had no inkling of their crus.h.i.+ng defeat. One of them, true, broke his leg when, on the way out, he tripped over an epic poem the machine had just completed, a prodigious work beginning with the words: Arms, and machines I sing, that, forc'd by fate, And haughty h.o.m.o's unrelenting hate, Expell'd and exil'd, left the Terran sh.o.r.e ...

The true poets, on the other hand, were decimated by Trurl's electronic bard, though it never laid a finger on them. First an aged elegiast, then two modernists committed sui-cide, leaping off a cliff that unfortunately happened to lie hard by the road leading from Trurl's place to the nearest train station.

There were many poet protests staged, demonstrations, demands that the machine be served an injunction to cease and desist. But no one else appeared to care. In fact, maga-zine editors generally approved: Trurl's electronic bard, writing under several thousand different pseudonyms at once, had a poem for every occasion, to fit whatever length might be required, and of such high quality that the magazine would be torn from hand to hand by eager readers. On the street one could see enraptured faces, bemused smiles, some-times even hear a quiet sob. Everyone knew the poems of Trurl's electronic bard, the air rang with its delightful rhymes. Not infrequently, those citizens of a greater sensi-tivity, struck by a particularly marvelous metaphor or as-sonance, would actually fall into a faint. But this colossus of inspiration was prepared even for that eventuality; it would immediately supply the necessary number of restorative rondelets.

Trurl himself had no little trouble in connection with his invention. The cla.s.sicists, generally elderly, were fairly harm-less; they confined themselves to throwing stones through his windows and smearing the sides of his house with an unmentionable substance. But it was much worse with the younger poets. One, for example, as powerful in body as his verse was in imagery, beat Trurl to a pulp. And while the constructor lay in the hospital, events marched on. Not a day pa.s.sed without a suicide or a funeral; picket lines formed around the hospital; one could hear gunfire in the distance -instead of ma.n.u.scripts in their suitcases, more and more poets were bringing rifles to defeat Trurl's electronic bard. But the bullets merely bounced off its calm exterior. After his return from the hospital, Trurl, weak and desperate, finally decided one night to dismantle the homeostatic Homer he had created.

But when he approached the machine, limping slightly, it noticed the pliers in his hand and the grim glitter in his eye, and delivered such an eloquent, impa.s.sioned plea for mercy, that the constructor burst into tears, threw down his tools and hurried back to his room, wading through new works of genius, an ocean of paper that filled the hall chest-high from end to end and rustled incessantly.

The following month Trurl received a bill for the elec-tricity consumed by the machine and almost fell off his chair. If only he could have consulted his old friend Klapaucius! But Klapaucius was nowhere to be found. So Trurl had to come up with something by himself. One dark night he unplugged the machine, took it apart, loaded it onto a s.h.i.+p, flew to a certain small asteroid, and there a.s.sembled it again, giving it anatomic pile for its source of creative energy.

Then he sneaked home. But that wasn't the end of it. The electronic bard, deprived now of the possibility of hav-ing its masterpieces published, began to broadcast them on all wave lengths, which soon sent the pa.s.sengers and crews of pa.s.sing rockets into states of stanzaic stupefaction, and those more delicate souls were seized with severe attacks of esthetic ecstasy besides. Having determined the cause of this disturbance, the Cosmic Fleet Command issued Trurl an official request for the immediate termination of his device, which was seriously impairing the health and well-being of all travelers.

At that point Trurl went into hiding, so they dropped a team of technicians on the asteroid to gag the machine's output unit. It overwhelmed them with a few ballads, how-ever, and the mission had to be abandoned. Deaf techni-cians were sent next, but the machine employed panto-mime. After that, there began to be talk of an eventual puni-tive expedition, of bombing the electropoet into submission. But just then some ruler from a neighboring star system came, bought the machine and hauled it off, asteroid and all, to his kingdom.

Now Trurl could appear in public again and breathe easy. True, lately there had been supernovae exploding on the southern horizon, the like of which no one had ever seen before, and there were rumors that this had something to do with poetry. According to one report, that same ruler, moved by some strange whim, had ordered his astroengineers to connect the electronic bard to a constellation of white supergiants, thereby transforming each line of verse into a stupendous solar prominence; thus the Greatest Poet in the Universe was able to transmit its thermonuclear crea-tions to all the illimitable reaches of s.p.a.ce at once. But even if there were any truth to this, it was all too far away to bother Trurl, who vowed by everything that was ever held sacred never, never again to make a cybernetic model of the Muse.

The Second Sally

OR The Offer of King Krool

The tremendous success of their application of the Gargantius Effect gave both constructors such an appet.i.te for ad-venture, that they resolved to sally forth once again to parts unknown. Unfortunately, they were quite unable to decide on a destination.

Trurl, given to tropical climes, had his heart set on Scaldonia, the land of the Flaming Flamingos, while Klapaucius, of a somewhat cooler disposition, was equally determined to visit the Intergalactic Cold Pole, a bleak continent adrift among frozen stars. The friends were about to part company for good when Trurl suddenly had an idea. "Wait," he said, "we can advertise our services, then take the best offer!"

"Ridiculous!" snorted Klapaucius. "How are you going to advertise? In a newspaper?Do you have any idea how long it takes a newspaper to reach the nearest planet? You'll be dead and buried before the first offer comes in!"

But Trurl gave a knowing smile and revealed his plan, which Klapaucius-begrudgingly-had to admit was ingen-ious, and so they set to work. All the necessary equipment quickly thrown together, they gathered up the local stars and arranged them in a great sign, a sign that would be visible at truly incalculable distances.

Only blue giants were used for the first word-to get the cosmic reader's attention-and lesser stellar material made up the others. The advertis.e.m.e.nt read: TWO Distinguished Constructors Seek Em-ployment Commensurate with Their Skill and Above All Lucrative, Hence Preferably at the Court of a Well-heeled King (Should Have His Own Kingdom), Terms to Be Ar-ranged. It was not long before, one bright morning, a most marvelous craft alighted on their front lawn. It gleamed in the sun, all inlaid with mother-of-pearl, had three legs in-tricately carved and six additional supports of solid gold (quite useless, since they didn't even reach the ground-but then, the builders obviously had more wealth than they knew what to do with). Down a magnificent staircase with billowing fountains on either side there came a figure of stately bearing with a retinue of six-legged machines: some of these ma.s.saged him, some supported him and fanned him, and the smallest flew above his august brow and sprayed it with eau de cologne from an atomizer. This im-pressive emissary greeted the constructors on behalf of his lord and sovereign, King Krool, who wished to engage them.

"What sort of work is it?" asked Trurl, interested.

"The details, gentle sirs, you shall learn at the proper time," was his reply. He was dressed in galligaskins of gold, mink-tufted buskins, sequined earm.u.f.fs, and a robe of most unusual cut-instead of pockets it had little shelves full of mints and marzipan. Tiny mechanical flies also buzzed about his person, and these he brushed away whenever they grew too bold.

"For now," he went on, "I can only say that His Bound-less Kroolty is a great enthusiast of the hunt, a fearless and peerless conqueror of every sort of galactic fauna, and verily, his prowess has reached such heights that now the fiercest predators known are no longer worthy game for him. And herein lies our misfortune, for he craves excitement, danger, thrills... which is why-"

"Of course!" said Trurl. "He wants us to construct a new model of beast, something wild and rapacious enough to present a challenge."

"You are, worthy constructor, indeed quick!" said the King's emissary. "Then it is agreed?"

Klapaucius began to question the emissary more closely on certain practical matters.

But after the King's generosity was glowingly described and sufficiently elaborated upon, they hurriedly packed their things and a few books, ran up the magnificent staircase, hopped on board and were imme-diately lifted, with a great roar and burst of flame that blackened the s.h.i.+p's gold legs, into the interstellar night.

As they traveled, the emissary briefed the constructors on the laws and customs prevailing in the Kingdom of Krool, told them of the monarch's nature, as broad and open as a leveled city, and of his manly pursuits, and much more, so that by the time the s.h.i.+p landed, they could speak the lan-guage like natives.

First they were taken to a splendid villa situated on a mountainside above the village-this was where they were to stay. Then, after a brief rest, the King sent acarriage for them, a carriage drawn by six fire-breathing monsters. These were muzzled with fire screens and smoke filters, had their wings clipped to keep them on the ground, and long spiked tails and six paws apiece with iron claws that cut deep pits in the road wherever they went. As soon as the monsters saw the constructors, the entire team set up a howl, belching fire and brimstone, and strained to get at them. The coach-men in asbestos armor and the King's huntsmen with hoses and pumps had to fall upon the crazed creatures and beat them into submission with laser and maser clubs before Trurl and Klapaucius could safely step into the plush car-riage, which they did without a word.

The carriage tore off at breakneck speed or-to use an appropriate metaphor- like a bat out of h.e.l.l.

"You know," Trurl whispered in Klapaucius' ear as they rushed along, knocking down everything in their path and leaving a long trail of sulfurous smoke behind them, "I have a feeling that this king won't settle for just anything. I mean, if he has coursers like these..."

But level-headed Klapaucius said nothing. Houses now flashed by, walls of diamonds and sapphires and silver, while the dragons thundered and hissed and the drivers cursed and shouted. At last a colossal portcullis loomed up ahead, opened, and their carriage whirled into the courtyard, ca-reening so sharply that the flower beds all shriveled up, then ground to a stop before a castle black as blackest night. Wel-comed by an unusually dismal fanfare and quite over-whelmed by the ma.s.sive stairs, bal.u.s.trades and especially the stone giants that guarded the main gate, Trurl and Kla-paucius, flanked by a formidable escort, entered the mighty castle.

King Krool awaited them in an enormous hall the shape of a skull, a vast and vaulted cave of beaten silver. There was a gaping pit in the floor, the skull's foramen magnum, and beyond it stood the throne, over which two streams of light crossed like swords-they came from high windows fixed in the skull's eye sockets and with panes specially tinted to give everything a harsh and infernal aspect. The constructors now saw Krool himself: too impatient to sit still on his throne, this monarch paced from wall to wall across the silver floor, his steps booming in that cadaverous cavern, and as he spoke he emphasized his words with such sudden stabs of the hand, that the air whistled.

"Welcome, constructors!" he said, skewering them both with his eyes. "As you've no doubt learned from Lord Protozor, Master of the Royal Hunt, I want you to build me new and better kinds of game. Now I'm not interested, you understand, in any mountain of steel on a hundred-odd treads-that's a job for heavy artillery, not for me. My quarry must be strong and ferocious, but swift and nimble too, and above all cunning and full of wiles, so that I will have to call upon all my hunter's art to drive it to the ground. It must be a highly intelligent beast, and know all there is to know of covering tracks, doubling back, hiding in shadows and lying in wait, for such is my will!"

"Forgive me, Your Highness," said Klapaucius with a careful bow, "but if we do Your Highness' bidding too well, might not this put the royal life and limb in some peril?"

The King roared with such laughter that a couple of crystal pendants fell off a chandelier and shattered at the feet of the trembling constructors.

"Have no fear of that, n.o.ble 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 a.s.sorted 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 totake 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 a.s.sured, 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, dispropor-tionately large (evidently designed for great leaps), lay upon the gra.s.s 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 p.r.o.ne monstrosity, a dragon with a mult.i.tude 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 withauxiliary 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, look-ing 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 im-precations; 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. Kla-paucius 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 con-structors immediately began to consider the various possi-bilities, drawing on their knowledge of the deepest and dark-est 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 pa.s.sed 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 hap-pens, 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 pun-ishes 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, resur-rected, 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 ex-pect 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, stick-ing 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 some-thing 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 s.h.i.+p 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. "a.s.suming 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 al-gorithm?"

So they rolled up their sleeves and sat down to experi-ment-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 nth power, but the King so belabored it with differen-tials 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 from the Leyden jug to bolster their strength, then went back to work and tried it again from the begin-ning, this time unleas.h.i.+ng their entire a.r.s.enal of tensor matrices and grand canonical ensembles, attacking the prob-lem with such fervor that the very paper began to smoke. The King rushed forward with all his cruel coordinates and mean values, stumbled into a dark forest of roots and log-arithms, had to backtrack, then encountered the beast on a field of irrational numbers (F1) and smote it so grievously that it fell two decimal places and lost an epsilon, but the beast slid around an asymptote and hid in an n -dimensional orthogonal phase s.p.a.ce, underwent expansion and came out, fuming factorially, and fell upon the King and hurt him pa.s.sing sore. But the King, nothing daunted, put on his Markov chain mail and all his impervious parameters, took his increment ak to infinity and dealt the beast a truly Boolean blow, sent it reeling through an x-axis and several brackets-but the beast, prepared for this, lowered its horns and-wham!!-the pencils flew like mad through tran-scendental functions and double eigentransformations, and when at last the beast closed in and the King was down and out for the count, the constructors jumped up, danced a jig, laughed and sang as they tore all their papers to shreds, much to the amazement of the spies perched in the chan-delier--perched in vain, for they were uninitiated into the niceties of higher mathematics and consequently had no idea why Trurl and Klapaucius were now shouting,over and over, "Hurrah! Victory!!"

Well after midnight, the Leyden jug from which the con-structors had on occasion refreshed themselves in the course of their labors was quietly taken to the headquarters of the King's secret police, where its false bottom was opened and a tiny tape recorder removed. This the experts switched on and listened to eagerly, but the rising sun found them to-tally unenlightened and looking haggard. One voice, for example, would say: "Well? Is the King ready?"

"Right!"

"Where'd you put him? Over there? Good! Now-hold on, you have to keep the feet together. Not yours, idiot, the King's! All right now, ready? One, two, find the deriva-tive!

Quick! What do you get?"

"Pi."

"And the beast?"

"Under the radical sign. But look, the King's still standing!"

"Still standing, eh? Factor both sides, divide by two, throw in a few imaginary numbers-good! Now change var-iables and subtract-Trurl, what on earth are you doing?! The beast, not the King, the beast! That's right! Good! Per-fect!! Now transform, approximate and solve for x. Do you have it?"

"I have it! Klapaucius! Look at the King now!!"

There was a pause, then a burst of wild laughter.

That same morning, as all the experts and high officials of the secret police shook their heads, bleary-eyed after a sleep-less night, the constructors asked for quartz, vanadium, steel, copper, platinum, rhinestones, dysprosium, yttrium and thulium, also cerium and germanium, and most of the other elements that make up the Universe, plus a variety of machines and qualified technicians, not to mention a wide as-sortment of spies-for so insolent had the constructors become, that on the triplicate requisition form they boldly wrote: "Also, kindly send agents of various cuts and stripes at the discretion and with the approval of the Proper Au-thorities." The next day they asked for sawdust and a large red velvet curtain on a stand, a cl.u.s.ter of little gla.s.s bells in the center and a large ta.s.sel at each of its four corners; everything, even down to the littlest gla.s.s bell, was specified with the utmost precision. The King scowled when he heard these requests, but ordered them to be carried out to the letter, for he had given his royal word. The constructors were thus granted all that they wished.

All that they wished grew more and more outlandish. For instance, in the files of the secret police under code number 48999/11K/T was a copy of a requisition for three tailor's mannequins as well as six full police uniforms, complete with sash, side arm, shako, plume and handcuffs, also all available back issues of the magazine The Patriotic Police-man, yearbooks and supplements included-under "Com-ments" the constructors had guaranteed the return of all items listed above within twenty-four hours of delivery and in perfect condition. In another, cla.s.sified section of the police archives was a copy of a letter from Klapaucius in which he demanded the immediate s.h.i.+pment of (1) a life-size doll representing the Postmaster General in full regalia, and (2) a light gig painted green with a kerosene lamp on the left and a sky-blue sign on the back that said THINK. Thedoll and gig proved too much for the Chief of Police: he had to be taken away for a much-needed rest. During the next three days the constructors asked only for barrels of red castor oil, and after that-nothing. From then on, they worked in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the palace, hammering away and singing s.p.a.ce chanties, and at night blue lights came flas.h.i.+ng from the bas.e.m.e.nt windows and gave weird shapes to the trees in the garden outside.

Trurl and Klapaucius with their many helpers bustled about amid arcs and sparks, now and then looking up to see faces pressed against the gla.s.s: the servants, as if out of idle curiosity, were photographing their every move. One evening, when the weary constructors had finally dragged themselves off to bed, the components of the apparatus they had been working on were quickly transported by unmarked balloon to police headquarters and a.s.sembled by eighteen of the finest cyberneticians in the land, who had been deputized and duly sworn in for that very purpose, whereupon a gray tin mouse ran out from under their hands, blowing soap bubbles and dropping a thin trail of chalk dust from under its tail, which spelled, as it danced this way and that across the table, WHAT, DON'T YOU LOVE US ANYMORE? Never before in the kingdom's history did Chiefs of Police have to be re-placed with such speed and regularity. The uniforms, the doll, the green gig, even the sawdust, everything which the constructors returned exactly as promised, was thoroughly examined under electron microscope. But except for a min-uscule card in the sawdust which read JUST SAWDUST, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Then individual atoms of the uniforms and gig were thoroughly searched- with equal lack of success. At last the day came when the work was completed. A huge vehicle on three hundred wheels, looking something like a refrigerator, was drawn up to the main entrance and opened in the presence of wit-nesses and officials; Trurl and Klapaucius brought out a curtain, the one with the ta.s.sels and bells, and placed it carefully inside, in the middle of the floor. Then they got in themselves, closed the door, did something, then went and got various containers from the bas.e.m.e.nt, cans of chem-icals, all sorts of finely ground powders-gray, silver, white, yellow, green-and sprinkled them under and around the curtain, then stepped out, had the vehicle closed and locked, consulted their watches and together counted out fourteen and a half seconds-at which time, much to everyone's sur-prise, since the vehicle was stationary and there could be no question of a breeze inside (for the seal was hermetic), the gla.s.s bells tinkled. The constructors exchanged a wink and said: "You can take it now!"

The rest of the day they spent blowing soap bubbles from the veranda. That evening Lord Protozor, Master of the Royal Hunt, came with an escort and politely but firmly informed them that they were to go with him at once to an a.s.signed place. They were required to leave all their posses-sions behind, even their clothes; in exchange they were given rags, then put in irons. The guards and police digni-taries present were astounded by their perfect sang-froid: instead of demanding justice or trembling with fear, Trurl giggled as the shackles were being hammered on, saying he was ticklish. And when the constructors were thrown into a dark and dismal dungeon, they promptly struck up a rous-ing chorus of "Sing Sweet Software."

Meanwhile mighty Krool rode forth from the village on his mighty hunting chariot, surrounded by all his retinue and followed by a long and winding train of riders and ma-chines, machines that included not only the traditional cata-pult and cannon, but enormous laser guns and beta ray ba-zookas, and a tar-thrower guaranteed to immobilizeanything that walked, swam, flew or rolled along.

And so this grand procession wended its way to the royal game preserve, and many jokes were made, and boasts, and haughty toasts, and no one gave a thought to the two con-structors, except perhaps to remark that those fools were in a pretty pickle now.

But when the silver trumpets announced His Majesty's approach, one could see a huge vehicle-refrigerator coming up in the opposite direction. Its door flung open, and for one brief moment there gaped the black maw of what ap-peared to be some sort of field gun. Next there was a boom, a puff of yellow smoke, and something came rocketing out, a form as blurry as a tornado and with the general consis-tency of a sandstorm; it arced through the air so fast that no one really got a good look at it anyway. Whatever it was flew a hundred paces or more and landed without a sound; the curtain that had been wrapped around it floated to the earth, gla.s.s bells tinkling oddly in that perfect silence, and lay there like a crushed strawberry. Now everyone could see the beast clearly-though it wasn't clear at all, but looked a little like a hill, rather large, fairly long, its color much like its surroundings, a clump of dried-up weeds. The King's huntsmen unleashed the whole pack of automated hounds (mainly Saint Cybernards and Cyberman pinschers, with an occasional high-frequency terrier); these hurled themselves, howling and slavering, at the crouching beast. The beast didn't rear back, didn't roar, didn't even breathe fire, but only opened its two eyes wide and reduced half the pack to ashes in a trice.