The Cyberiad Page 11

  He tried to recall everything he knew about the personality transformer, which was considerable. By far the greatest danger, as he saw it, was that Balerion, heedlessly rushing about in Trurl’s body, might stumble and hit some inanimate object with his horns. In which case Balerion’s consciousness would immediately enter that object and, since inanimate things had no consciousness and consequently the object could offer the transformer nothing in return, Trurl’s body would fall lifeless to the ground; as for the King, he would be trapped for all eternity inside some stone, or lamppost, or discarded shoe. Uneasy, Klapaucius quickened his pace, and not far from the inn he overheard some villagers talking excitedly of how his colleague, Trurl, had flown out of the royal palace like one possessed, and how, racing down the long, steep steps that led to the harbor, he’d taken a spill and broken his leg. How this drove him into a most amazing frenzy; how, lying there, he bellowed that he was King Balerion Himself, called for the royal physicians, a stretcher with feather pillows, sweet essences and balm; and how, when the people laughed at this madness, he crawled along the pavement, cursing terribly and rending his garments, until one passerby took pity on him and bent over to help. How then the fallen constructor tore the hat off his head, revealing—and there were witnesses to swear to this—devil’s horns. How with those horns he rammed the good Samaritan in the head, then fell senseless, strangely stiff and groaning feebly, while the good Samaritan suddenly changed, “as if an evil spirit had taken hold of him,” and dancing, skipping, shoving aside everyone who stood in his way, galloped down the steps to the harbor.

  Klapaucius grew faint when he heard all of this, for he understood that Balerion, having damaged Trurl’s body (and after using it for so short a time), had cunningly switched to the body of some stranger. “Now it’s started,” he thought with horror. “And how will I ever find Balerion, hidden in a body I don’t even know? Where do I begin to look?!” He tried to learn from the villagers who this passerby was, who had so nobly approached the injured pseudo-Trurl, and also, what had become of the horns. Of the good Samaritan they knew only that his dress was foreign, though unmistakably naval, which suggested he’d stepped off a vessel from distant skies; concerning the horns, nothing. But then a certain mendicant whose legs had rusted through (a widower, he had no one to keep them taped and tarred) and who was therefore obliged to go around on wheels attached to his hips, which indeed gave him a better vantage point on what transpired at ground level, told Klapaucius that the worthy mariner had snatched the horns from the prone constructor’s head with such speed, that no one but himself had seen it. So, apparently Balerion was again in possession of the transformer and could continue this hair-raising business of jumping from body to body. The news that he now occupied the person of a sailor was especially disturbing. “Of all things, a sailor!” thought Klapaucius. “When shore leave is up and he doesn’t appear on board (and how can he, not knowing which ship is his?), the captain is bound to notify the authorities, they’ll arrest the deserter of course, and Our Highness will find himself in a dungeon! And if at any time he beats his head against the dungeon wall in despair—with the horns on—then may heaven help us all!!” There was little chance, if any, of locating the sailor who was Balerion, but Klapaucius hastened to the harbor. Luck was with him, for he saw a sizable crowd gathered up ahead. Certain he was on the right track, he mingled with the crowd and soon learned, from what was said here and there, that his worst fears were being realized. Only minutes earlier, a certain respectable skipper, the owner of an entire fleet of merchant ships, had recognized a crewman of his, a person of sterling character; yet now this worthy individual was hurling insults at all who went by, and to those who cautioned him to be on his way lest the police come, he shouted he could become whoever he wanted, and that included the whole police force. Scandalized by such behavior, the skipper remonstrated with his crewman, who replied by striking him with a large stick. Then a police squad, patrolling the harbor as a place of frequent altercations and disorders, arrived on the scene, and it so happened the Commissioner himself was in charge. The Commissioner, seeing that the unruly sailor refused to listen to reason, ordered him thrown in jail. But while they were making the arrest, the sailor suddenly hurled himself at the Commissioner like one possessed and butted him with what seemed to resemble horns. Directly after that, he began to howl that he was a policeman, and not just any policeman, but chief commander of the harbor patrol, while the Commissioner, instead of being angered by this insolent raving, laughed as if it were a tremendous joke, but then ordered his subordinates to escort the troublemaker to prison without further delay, nor to be sparing with their clubs and fists in the process.

  Thus, in less than an hour, Balerion had managed to change his corporeal quarters three times, presently occupying the body of a police commissioner, who, though Lord knew he was innocent, had to sit and stew in some dark, dank cell. Klapaucius sighed and went directly to the police station. It was situated on the coast, a heavy stone edifice. No one barred the way, so he went inside and walked through a few empty rooms, until he found himself standing in front of a veritable giant several sizes too large for his uniform and armed to the teeth. This hulk of an individual glowered at Klapaucius and stepped forward, as if to throw him out bodily—but suddenly gave a wink (though Klapaucius certainly had never met him before) and burst out laughing. The voice was gruff, a policeman’s voice beyond a shadow of a doubt, yet the laugh—and particularly that wink—brought to mind Balerion, and indeed, it was Baler-ion on the other side of that desk, though obviously not in his own person!

  “I knew you right off,” said Balerion the policeman. “You were at the palace, you’re the friend of the one who had the apparatus. Well, what do you think? Isn’t this a fabulous hiding place? They’ll never find me, you know, not in a million years! And it’s so much fun being a big, strong policeman! Watch!”

  And he brought his huge policeman’s fist down on the desk with such force that it split in half—though there was a cracking in the hand as well. Balerion winced and said:

  “Ow, I snapped something. But that’s okay. If need be, I can always change—into you, for example!”

  Klapaucius backed off in the direction of the door, but the policeman blocked the way with his colossal frame and went on:

  “Not that I have anything against you personally, you understand. But you know too much, old boy. So I really think it’s best we put you in the clink. Yes, into the clink with you!” And he gave a nasty laugh. “That way, when I leave the force, no one—not even you—will have the foggiest notion where, or rather who, I am! Ha-ha!”

  “But Your Majesty!” Klapaucius protested. “You don’t know all the dangers of the device. Suppose you entered the body of someone with a fatal illness, or a hunted criminal…”

  “No problem,” said the King. “All I have to do is remember one thing: after every switch, grab the horns!”

  And he pointed to the broken desk, where the device lay in an open drawer.

  “As long as, each time,” he said, “I pull it off the head of the person I just was and hold on to it, nothing can harm me!”

  Klapaucius did his best to persuade the King to abandon the idea of future personality transfers, but it was quite hopeless; the King only laughed and made jokes, then finally said, clearly enjoying himself:

  “I won’t go back to the palace—you can forget about that! Anyway, I’ll tell you: I see before me a great voyage, traveling among my loyal subjects from body to body, which, after all, is very much in keeping with my democratic principles. And then for dessert, so to speak, the body of some fair maiden—that ought to be a most edifying experience, don’t you think? Ha-ha!”

  And he threw open the door with a great, hairy paw and bawled for his subordinates. Klapaucius, seeing they would lock him up for sure unless he acted at once, grabbed an inkwell and tossed its contents into the King’s face, then in the general confusion leaped out a window into the street. By a grea
t stroke of luck, there were no witnesses about, and he was able to make it to a populous square and lose himself in the crowd before the police began pouring from the station, straightening their shakos and waving their weapons in the air.

  Plunged in thoughts that were far from pleasant, Klapaucius walked away from the harbor. “It would be best, really,” he said to himself, “to leave that incorrigible Balerion to his fate, go to the hospital where Trurl’s body is staying, occupied by the honest sailor, and bring it to the palace, so my friend can be himself again, body and soul. Though it’s true that that would make the sailor King instead of Balerion—and serve that rascal right!” Not a bad plan perhaps, but inoperable for the lack of a small but indispensable item, namely the transformer with the horns, which at present lay in the drawer of a policeman’s desk. For a moment Klapaucius considered the possibility of constructing another such device—no, there was neither the time nor the means. “But here’s an idea,” he thought. “I’ll go to Trurl, who’s the King and by now has surely come to his senses, and I’ll tell him to have the army surround the harbor police station. That way, we’ll recover the device and Trurl can get back to his old self!”

  However, Klapaucius wasn’t admitted to the palace. The King, so the sentries told him, had been put under heavy electrostatic sedation by his physicians and should sleep like a top for the next twenty-eight hours at least.

  “That’s all we need!” groaned Klapaucius, and hastened to the hospital where Trurl’s body was staying, for he feared that it might have already been discharged and irretrievably lost in the labyrinth of the big city. At the hospital he presented himself as a relative of the one with the broken leg; the name he managed to read off the in-patient register. He learned that the injury wasn’t serious, a bad sprain and not a fracture, though the patient would have to remain in traction for several days. Klapaucius, of course, had no intention of visiting the patient—it would only come out that they weren’t even acquainted. Reassured at least that Trurl’s body wouldn’t run off on him unexpectedly, he left the hospital and took to wandering the streets, deep in thought. Somehow he found himself back in the vicinity of the harbor and noticed the place was swarming with police; they were stopping everyone, carefully comparing face after face with a description each officer carried with him in a notebook. Klapaucius immediately guessed that this was the doing of Balerion, who at all costs wanted him under lock and key. Just then a patrol approached—and two guards rounded the corner in the opposite direction, cutting off his retreat. Klapaucius quietly gave himself up, demanding only that they take him before the Commissioner, saying that it was most urgent, that he was in possession of extremely important evidence concerning a certain horrible crime. They took him into custody and handcuffed him to a burly policeman; at the station, the Commissioner—Balerion— greeted him with a grunt of satisfaction and an evil twinkle in his beady eyes. But Klapaucius was already exclaiming, in a voice not his own:

  “Great One! High-high Police Sir! They take me, they say me Klapaucius, me not Klapaucius, not-not, me not even know who-what Klapaucius! Maybe that Klapaucius he bad one, one who bam-bam horns in head, make big magic, bad magic, make that me not me, put head in other head, take old head, horns, run zip-zip, O Much Police Sir! Help!”

  And with these words did the wily Klapaucius fall to his knees, shaking his head and muttering in a strange tongue. Balerion, standing behind the desk in a uniform with wide epaulets, blinked as he listened, somewhat taken aback; he gave the kneeling Klapaucius a closer look and began to nod, apparently convinced—-unaware that the constructor, on the way to the station, had pressed his own forehead with his free hand, to produce two marks not unlike those left by the horns of a personality transformer. Balerion had his men release Klapaucius and leave the room; when the two of them were alone, he asked him to relate exactly what had happened, omitting nothing. Klapaucius replied with a long story of how he, a wealthy foreigner, had arrived only that day at the harbor, his ship laden with two hundred cases of the prettiest puzzles in creation as well as thirty self-winding fair maidens, for he had hoped to present these to the great King Balerion; how they were a gift from the great Emperor Proboscideon, who in this way sought to express his boundless admiration for the great House of Cymberia; but how, having arrived and disembarked, he had thought to stretch his legs a little after the long journey and was strolling peacefully along the quay, when this person, who looked just like this (here Klapaucius pointed to himself) and who had already aroused his suspicions by gazing upon the splendor of his foreign dress with such evident rapacity—when this person, in short, suddenly ran towards him like a maniac, ran as if to run him down, but doffed his cap instead and butted him viciously with a pair of horns, whereupon an extraordinary exchange of minds took place.

  Klapaucius put everything he had into the tale, trying to make it as believable as possible. He spoke at great length of his lost body, while heaping insults upon the one it was now his misfortune to possess, and he even began to slap his own face and spit on his own legs and chest; he spoke of the treasures he’d brought with him, describing them in every detail, particularly the self-winding maidens; he reminisced about the family he’d left behind, his ion-scions, his hi-fi fido, his wife, one of three hundred, who made a mulled electrolyte as fine as any that ever graced the table of the Emperor Himself; he even let the Commissioner in on his biggest secret, to wit, that he had arranged with the captain of his ship to hand the treasures over to whomsoever came on board and gave the password.

  Balerion listened greedily, for it seemed quite logical to him that Klapaucius, seeking to hide from the police, should do so by entering the body of a foreigner, a foreigner moreover attired in splendid robes, hence obviously wealthy, which would provide him with considerable means once the transfer were effected. It was plain that a similar scheme had hatched in the brain of Balerion. Slyly, he tried to coax the secret password from the false foreigner, who didn’t require much coaxing, soon whispering the word into his ear: “Niterc.” By now the constructor was sure Balerion had taken the bait: the King, loving puzzles as he did, couldn’t bear to see them go to the King, since the King, after all, was no longer he; and, believing everything, he believed that Klapaucius had a second transformer—indeed, he had no reason to think otherwise.

  They sat awhile in silence; one could see the wheels turning in Balerion’s head. Assuming an air of indifference, he began to question the foreigner as to the location of his ship, the name of the captain, and so forth. Klapaucius answered, banking on the King’s cupidity, nor was he mistaken, for suddenly the King stood up, announced that he would have to verify what the foreigner had told him, and hurriedly left the room, locking the door securely behind him. Klapaucius then heard Balerion—evidently the wiser from past experience—station a guard beneath the window as he was leaving. Of course he would find nothing, there being no ship, no treasure, no self-winding maidens whatever. But that was the whole point of Klapaucius’ plan. As soon as the King was gone, he rushed over to the desk, pulled the device from the drawer and quickly placed it on his head. Then he quietly waited for the King to return. It wasn’t long before there were heavy footsteps outside, muffled curses, the grinding of teeth, a key scraping in the lock—and the Commissioner burst in, bellowing:

  “Scoundrel! Where’s the ship, the treasure, the pretty puzzles?!”

  But that was all he said, for Klapaucius leaped out from behind the door and charged like a mad ram, butting him square in the head. Then, before Balerion had time to get his bearings inside Klapaucius, Klapaucius, now the Commissioner, roared for the guards to throw him in jail at once and keep a close eye on him! Stunned by this sudden reversal, Balerion didn’t realize at first how shamefully he had been deceived; but when it finally dawned on him that he had been dealing with the crafty constructor all along, and there had never been any wealthy foreigner, Balerion filled his dark dungeon with terrible oaths and threats—harmless, however, without the devi
ce. Klapaucius, on the other hand, though he had temporarily lost the body to which he was accustomed, had succeeded in gaining possession of the personality transformer. He put on his best uniform and marched straight to the royal palace.