The Cyberiad, Page 2

  “It won’t get us in here, even if it brings the whole building down on our heads!” panted Klapaucius. “But really, the devil himself had me pay you a visit today.… I was curious to see how your work was going—well, I certainly found out…”

  “Quiet,” interrupted Trurl. “Someone’s coming…”

  And indeed, the cellar door opened up and the mayor entered, accompanied by several aldermen. Trurl was too embarrassed to explain how this strange and calamitous situation had come about; Klapaucius had to do it. The mayor listened in silence. Suddenly the walls trembled, the ground heaved, and the sound of cracking stone reached them in the cellar.

  “It’s here?!” cried Trurl.

  “Yes,” said the mayor. “And it demands that we give you up, otherwise it says it will level the entire town…”

  Just then they heard, far overhead, words that honked as if from a muffled horn:

  “Trul’s here… I smell Trurl…”

  “But surely you won’t give us up?” asked in a quavering voice the object of the machine’s obstinate fury.

  “The one of you who calls himself Trurl must leave. The other may remain, since surrendering him does not constitute part of the conditions…”

  “Have mercy!”

  “We are helpless,” said the mayor. “And were you to stay here, Trurl, you would have to answer for all the damage done to this town and its inhabitants, since it was because of you that the machine destroyed sixteen homes and buried beneath their ruins many of our finest citizens. Only the fact that you yourself stand in imminent peril permits me to let you leave unpunished. Go then, and nevermore return.”

  Trurl looked at the aldermen and, seeing his sentence written on their stern faces, slowly turned and made for the door.

  “Wait! I’ll go with you!” cried Klapaucius impulsively.

  “You?” said Trurl, a faint hope in his voice. “But no…” he added after a moment. “Why should you have to perish too?…”

  “Nonsense!” rejoined Klapaucius with great energy. “What, us perish at the hands of that iron imbecile? Never! It takes more than that, my friend, to wipe two of the most famous constructors off the face of the globe! Come, Trurl! Chin up!”

  Encouraged by these words, Trurl ran up the stairs after Klapaucius. There was not a soul outside in the square. Amid clouds of dust and the gaunt skeletons of demolished homes, stood the machine, higher than the town hall tower itself, puffing steam, covered with the blood of powdered brick and smeared with chalk.

  “Careful!” whispered Klapaucius. “It doesn’t see us. Let’s take that first street on the left, then turn right, then straight for those mountains. There we can take refuge and think of how to make the thing give up once and for all its insane… Now!” he yelled, for the machine had just spotted them and was charging, making the pavement buckle.

  Breathless, they ran from the town and galloped along for a mile or so, hearing behind them the thunderous stride of the colossus that followed relentlessly.

  “I know that ravine!” Klapaucius suddenly cried. “That’s the bed of a dried-out stream and it leads to cliffs and caves —faster, faster, the thing’ll have to stop soon!…”

  So they raced uphill, stumbling and waving their arms to keep their balance, but the machine still gained on them. Scrambling up over the gravel of the dried-out riverbed, they reached a crevice in the perpendicular rock and, seeing high above them the murky mouth of a cave, began to climb frantically toward it, no longer caring about the loose stones that flew from under their feet. The opening in the rock breathed chill and darkness. As quickly as they could, they leaped inside, ran a few extra steps, then stopped.

  “Well, here at least we’re safe,” said Trurl, calm once again. “I’ll just take a look, to see where it got stuck…”

  “Be careful,” cautioned Klapaucius. Trurl inched his way to the edge of the cave, leaned out, and immediately jumped back in fright.

  “It’s coming up the mountain!!” he cried.

  “Don’t worry, it’ll never be able to get in here,” said Klapaucius, not altogether convinced. “But what’s that? Is it getting dark? Oh no!”

  At that moment a great shadow blotted out the bit of sky visible through the mouth of the cave, and in its place appeared a smooth steel wall with rows of rivets. It was the machine slowly closing with the rock, thereby sealing up the cave as if with a mighty metal lid.

  “We’re trapped…” whispered Trurl, his voice breaking off when the darkness became absolute.

  “That was idiotic on our part!” Klapaucius exclaimed, furious. “To jump into a cave that it could barricade! How could we have done such a thing?”

  “What do you think it’s waiting for now?” asked Trurl after a long pause.

  “For us to give up—that doesn’t take any great brains.”

  Again there was silence. Trurl tiptoed in the darkness, hands outstretched, in the direction of the opening, running his fingers along the stone until he touched the smooth steel, which was warm, as if heated from within…

  “I feel Trurl…” boomed the iron voice. Trurl hastily retreated, took a seat alongside his friend, and for some time they sat there, motionless. At last Klapaucius whispered:

  “There’s no sense our just sitting here. I’ll try to reason with it…”

  “That’s hopeless,” said Trurl. “But go ahead. Perhaps it will at least let you go free…”

  “Now, now, none of that!” said Klapaucius, patting him on the back. And he groped his way toward the mouth of the cave and called: “Hello out there, can you hear us?”

  “Yes,” said the machine.

  “Listen, we’d like to apologize. You see… well, there was a little misunderstanding, true, but it was nothing, really. Trurl had no intention of…”

  “I’ll pulverize Trurl!” said the machine. “But first, he’ll tell me how much two and two makes.”

  “Of course he will, of course he will, and you’ll be happy with his answer, and make it up with him for sure, isn’t that right, Trurl?” said the mediator soothingly.

  “Yes, of course…” mumbled Trurl.

  “Really?” said the machine. “Then how much is two and two?”

  “Fo… that is, seven…” said Trurl in an even lower voice.

  “Ha! Not four, but seven, eh?” crowed the machine. “There, I told you so!”

  “Seven, yes, seven, we always knew it was seven!” Klapaucius eagerly agreed. “Now will you, uh, let us go?” he added cautiously.

  “No. Let Trurl say how sorry he is and tell me how much is two times two…”

  “And you’ll let us go, if I do?” asked Trurl.

  “I don’t know. I’ll think about it. I’m not making any deals. What’s two times two?”

  “But you probably will let us go, won’t you?” said Trurl, while Klapaucius pulled on his arm and hissed in his ear: “The thing’s an imbecile, don’t argue with it, for heaven’s sake!”

  “I won’t let you go, if I don’t want to,” said the machine. “You just tell me how much two times two is…”

  Suddenly Trurl fell into a rage.

  “I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you all right!” he screamed. “Two and two is four and two times two is four, even if you stand on your head, pound these mountains all to dust, drink the ocean dry and swallow the sky—do you hear? Two and two is four!!”

  “Trurl! What are you saying? Have you taken leave of your senses? Two and two is seven, nice machine! Seven, seven!!” howled Klapaucius, trying to drown out his friend.

  “No! It’s four! Four and only four, four from the beginning to the end of time—FOUR!!” bellowed Trurl, growing hoarse.

  The rock beneath their feet was seized with a feverish tremor.

  The machine moved away from the cave, letting in a little pale light, and gave a piercing scream:

  “That’s not true! It’s seven! Say it’s seven or I’ll hit you!”

  “Never!” roared Trurl, as if he no longer c
ared what happened, and pebbles and dirt rained down on their heads, for the machine had begun to ram its eight-story hulk again and again into the wall of stone, hurling itself against the mountainside until huge boulders broke away and went tumbling down into the valley.

  Thunder and sulfurous fumes filled the cave, and sparks flew from the blows of steel on rock, yet through all this pandemonium one could still make out, now and then, the ragged voice of Trurl bawling:

  “Two and two is four! Two and two is four!!” Klapaucius attempted to shut his friend’s mouth by force, but, violently thrown off, he gave up, sat and covered his head with his arms. Not for a moment did the machine’s mad efforts flag, and it seemed that any minute now the ceiling would collapse, crush the prisoners and bury them forever. But when they had lost all hope, and the air was thick with acrid smoke and choking dust, there was suddenly a horrible scraping, and a sound like a slow explosion, louder than all the maniacal banging and battering, and the air whooshed, and the black wall that blocked the cave was whisked away, as if by a hurricane, and monstrous chunks of rock came crashing down after it. The echoes of that avalanche still rumbled and reverberated in the valley below when the two friends peered out of their cave. They saw the machine. It lay smashed and flattened, nearly broken in half by an enormous boulder that had landed in the middle of its eight floors. With the greatest care they picked their way down through the smoking rubble. In order to reach the riverbed, it was necessary to pass the remains of the machine, which resembled the wreck of some mighty vessel thrown up upon a beach. Without a word, the two stopped together in the shadow of its twisted hull. The machine still quivered slightly, and one could hear something turning, creaking feebly, within.

  “Yes, this is the bad end you’ve come to, and two and two is—as it always was—” began Trurl, but just then the machine made a faint, barely audible croaking noise and said, for the last time, “SEVEN.”

  Then something snapped inside, a few stones dribbled down from overhead, and now before them lay nothing but a lifeless mass of scrap. The two constructors exchanged a look and silently, without any further comment or conversation, walked back the way they came.

  A GOOD SHELLACKING

  Someone was knocking at the door of Klapaucius the constructor. He looked out and saw a potbellied machine on four short legs.

  “Who are you and what do you want?” he asked.

  “I’m a Machine to Grant Your Every Wish and have been sent here by your good friend and colleague, Trurl the Magnificent, as a gift.”

  “A gift, eh?” replied Klapaucius, whose feelings for Trurl were mixed, to say the least. He was particularly irked by the phrase “Trurl the Magnificent.” But after a little thought he said, “All right, you can come in.”

  He had it stand in the corner by the grandfather clock while he returned to his work, a squat machine on three short legs, which was almost completed—he was just putting on the finishing touches. After a while the Machine to Grant Your Every Wish cleared its throat and said:

  “I’m still here.”

  “I haven’t forgotten you,” said Klapaucius, not looking up. After another while the machine cleared its throat again and asked:

  “May I ask what you’re making there?”

  “Are you a Machine to Grant Wishes or a Machine to Ask Questions?” said Klapaucius, but added: “I need some blue paint.”

  “I hope it’s the right shade,” said the machine, opening a door in its belly and pulling out a bucket of blue. Klapaucius dipped his brush in it without a word and began to paint. In the next few hours he needed sandpaper, some Carborundum, a brace and bit, white paint and one No. 5 screw, all of which the machine handed over on the spot.

  That evening he covered his work with a sheet of canvas, had dinner, then pulled up a chair opposite the machine and said:

  “Now we’ll see what you can do. So you say you can grant every wish…”

  “Most every wish,” replied the machine modestly. “The paint, sandpaper and No. 5 screw were satisfactory, I hope?”

  “Quite, quite,” said Klapaucius. “But now I have in mind something a bit more difficult. If you can’t do it, I’ll return you to your master with my kind thanks and a professional opinion.”

  “All right, what is it?” asked the machine, fidgeting.

  “A Trurl,” said Klapaucius. “I want a Trurl, the spit and image of Trurl himself, so alike that no one could ever tell them apart.”

  The machine muttered and hummed and finally said:

  “Very well, I’ll make you a Trurl. But please handle him with care—he is, after all, a truly magnificent constructor.”

  “Oh but of course, you needn’t worry about that,” said Klapaucius. “Well, where is it?”

  “What, right away?” said the machine. “A Trurl isn’t a No. 5 screw, you know. It’ll take time.”

  But it wasn’t long at all before the door in the machine’s belly opened and a Trurl climbed out. Klapaucius looked it up and down and around, touched it, tapped it, but there wasn’t any doubt: here was a Trurl as much like the original Trurl as two peas in a pod. This Trurl squinted a little, unaccustomed to the light, but otherwise behaved in a perfectly normal fashion.

  “Hello, Trurl!” said Klapaucius.

  “Hello, Klapaucius! But wait, how did I get here?” Trurl answered, clearly bewildered.

  “Oh, you just dropped in.… You know, I haven’t seen you in ages. How do you like my place?”

  “Fine, fine… What do you have there under that canvas?”

  “Nothing much. Won’t you take a seat?”

  “Well, I really ought to be going. It’s getting dark…”

  “Don’t rush off, you just got here!” protested Klapaucius. “And you haven’t seen my cellar yet.”

  “Your cellar?”

  “Yes, you should find it most interesting. This way…”

  And Klapaucius put an arm around Trurl and led him to the cellar, where he tripped him, pinned him down and quickly tied him up, then took out a big crowbar and began to wallop the daylights out of him. Trurl howled, called for help, cursed, begged for mercy, but Klapaucius didn’t stop and the blows rang out and echoed in the dark and empty night.

  “Ouch! Ouch!! Why are you beating me?!” yelled Trurl, cowering.

  “It gives me pleasure,” explained Klapaucius, swinging back. “You should try it sometime, Trurl!”

  And he landed him one on the head, which boomed like a drum.

  “If you don’t let me go at once, I’ll tell the King and he’ll have you thrown in his deepest dungeon!!” screamed Trurl.

  “Oh no he won’t. And do you know why?” asked Klapaucius, sitting down for a moment to catch 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 N
o. 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!”