The Cyberiad Read online

  “If you cannot help me, O great sage, then no one can, and my days are surely numbered, for no longer do I rejoice in the play of infrared emissions, nor in the ultraviolet symphonies, and must perish if I cannot couple with the incomparable Crystal!”

  “Prince!” returned Polyphase, “I shall not deny your request, but you must utter it thrice before I can be certain that this is your inalterable will.”

  Ferrix repeated his words three times, and Polyphase said:

  “The only way to stand before the princess is in the guise of a paleface!”

  “Then see to it that I resemble one!” cried Ferrix.

  Polyphase, observing that love had quite dimmed the youth’s intellect, bowed low and repaired to his laboratory, where he began to concoct concoctions and brew up brews, gluey and dripping. Finally he sent a messenger to the palace, saying:

  “Let the prince come, if he has not changed his mind.”

  Ferrix came at once. The wise Polyphase smeared his tempered frame with mud, then asked:

  “Shall I continue, Prince?”

  “Do what you must,” said Ferrix.

  Whereupon the sage took a blob of oily filth, dust, crud and rancid grease obtained from the innards of the most decrepit mechanisms, and with this he befouled the prince’s vaulted chest, vilely caked his gleaming face and iridescent brow, and worked till all the limbs no longer moved with a musical sound, but gurgled like a stagnant bog. And then the sage took chalk and ground it, mixed in powdered rubies and yellow oil, and made a paste; with this he coated Ferrix from head to toe, giving an abominable dampness to the eyes, making the torso cushiony, the cheeks blastular, adding various fringes and flaps of the chalk patty here and there, and finally he fastened to the top of the knightly head a clump of poisonous rust. Then he brought him before a silver mirror and said:

  “Behold!”

  Ferrix peered into the mirror and shuddered, for he saw there not himself, but a hideous monster, the very spit and image of a paleface, with an aspect as moist as an old spider-web soaked in the rain, flaccid, drooping, doughy—altogether nauseating. He turned, and his body shook like coagulated agar, whereupon he exclaimed, trembling with disgust:

  “What, Polyphase, have you taken leave of your senses? Get this abomination off me at once, both the dark layer underneath and the pallid layer on top, and remove the loathsome growth with which you have marred the bell-like beauty of my head, for the princess will abhor me forever, seeing me in such a disgraceful form!”

  “You are mistaken, Prince,” said Polyphase. “It is precisely this upon which her madness hinges, that ugliness is beautiful, and beauty ugly. Only in this array can you hope to see Crystal…”

  “In that case, so be it!” said Ferrix.

  The sage then mixed cinnabar with mercury and filled four bladders with it, hiding them beneath the prince’s cloak. Next he took bellows, full of the corrupted air from an ancient dungeon, and buried them in the prince’s chest. Then he poured waters, contaminated and clear, into tiny glass tubes, placing two in the armpits, two up the sleeves and two by the eyes. At last he said:

  “Listen and remember all that I tell you, otherwise you are lost. The princess will put tests to you, to determine the truth of your words. If she proffers a naked sword and commands you grasp the blade, you must secretly squeeze the cinnabar bladder, so that the red flows out onto the edge; when she asks you what that is, answer, ‘Blood!’ And if the princess brings her silver-plated face near yours, press your chest, so that the air leaves the bellows; when she asks you what that is, answer, ‘Breath!’ Then the princess may feign anger and order you beheaded. Hang your head, as though in submission, and the water will trickle from your eyes, and when she asks you what that is, answer, ‘Tears!’ After all of this, she may agree to unite with you, though that is far from certain—in all probability, you will perish.”

  “O wise one!” cried Ferrix. “And if she cross-examines me, wishing to know the habits of the paleface, and how they originate, and how they love and live, in what way then am I to answer?”

  “I see there is no help for it,” replied Polyphase, “but that I must throw in my lot with yours. Very well, I will disguise myself as a merchant from another galaxy—a non-spiral one, since those inhabitants are portly as a rule and I will need to conceal beneath my garb a number of books containing knowledge of the terrible customs of the pale-face. This lore I could not teach you, even if I wished to, for such knowledge is alien to the rational mind: the paleface does everything in reverse, in a manner that is sticky, squishy, unseemly and more unappetizing than ever you could imagine. I shall order the necessary volumes, meanwhile you have the court tailor cut you a paleface suit out of the appropriate fibers and cords. We leave at once, and I shall be at your side wherever we go, telling you what to do and what to say.”

  Ferrix, enthusiastic, ordered the paleface garments made, and marveled much at them: covering practically the entire body, they were shaped like pipes and funnels, with buttons everywhere, and loops, hooks and strings. The tailor gave him detailed instructions as to what went on first, and how, and where, and what to connect with what, and also how to extricate himself from those fetters of cloth when the moment arrived.

  Polyphase meanwhile donned the vestments of a merchant, concealing within its folds thick, scholarly tomes on paleface practices, then ordered an iron cage, locked Ferrix inside it, and together they took off in the royal spaceship. When they reached the borders of Armoric’s kingdom, Polyphase proceeded to the village square and announced in a mighty voice that he had brought a young paleface from distant lands and would sell it to the highest bidder. The servants of the princess carried this news to her, and she said, after some deliberation:

  “A hoax, doubtless. But no one can deceive me, for no one knows as much as I about palefaces. Have the merchant come to the palace and show us his wares!”

  When they brought the merchant before her, Crystal saw a worthy old man and a cage. In the cage sat the paleface, its face indeed pale, the color of chalk and pyrite, with eyes like a wet fungus and limbs like moldy mire. Ferrix in turn gazed upon the princess, the face that seemed to clank and ring, eyes that sparkled and arced like summer lightning, and the delirium of his heart increased tenfold.

  “It does look like a paleface!” thought the princess, but said instead:

  “You must have indeed labored, old one, covering this scarecrow with mud and calcareous dust in order to trick me. Know, however, that I am conversant with the mysteries of that powerful and pale race, and as soon as I expose your imposture, both you and this pretender shall be beheaded!”

  The sage replied:

  “O Princess Crystal, that which you see encaged here is as true a paleface as paleface can be true. I obtained it for five thousand hectares of nuclear material from an inter-galactic pirate—and humbly beseech you to accept it as a gift from one who has no other desire but to please Your Majesty.”

  The princess took a sword and passed it through the bars of the cage; the prince seized the edge and guided it through his garments in such a way that the cinnabar bladder was punctured, staining the blade with bright red.

  “What is that?” asked the princess, and Ferrix answered:

  “Blood!”

  Then the princess had the cage opened, entered bravely, brought her face near Ferrix’s. That sweet proximity made his senses reel, but the sage caught his eye with a secret sign and the prince squeezed the bellows that released the rank air. And when the princess asked, “What is that?,” Ferrix answered:

  “Breath!”

  “Forsooth you are a clever craftsman,” said the princess to the merchant as she left the cage. “But you have deceived me and must die, and your scarecrow also!”

  The sage lowered his head, as though in great trepidation and sorrow, and when the prince followed suit, transparent drops flowed from his eyes. The princess asked, “What is that?” and Ferrix answered:

  “Tears!”
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br />   And she said:

  “What is your name, you who profess to be a paleface from afar?”

  And Ferrix replied in the words the sage had instructed him:

  “Your Highness, my name is Myamlak and I crave nought else but to couple with you in a manner that is liquid, pulpy, doughy and spongy, in accordance with the customs of my people. I purposely permitted myself to be captured by the pirate, and requested him to sell me to this portly trader, as I knew the latter was headed for your kingdom. And I am exceeding grateful to his laminated person for conveying me hither, for I am as full of love for you as a swamp is full of scum.”

  The princess was amazed, for truly, he spoke in paleface fashion, and she said:

  “Tell me, you who call yourself Myamlak the paleface, what do your brothers do during the day?”

  “O Princess,” said Ferrix, “in the morning they wet themselves in clear water, pouring it upon their limbs as well as into their interiors, for this affords them pleasure. Afterwards, they walk to and fro in a fluid and undulating way, and they slush, and they slurp, and when anything grieves them, they palpitate, and salty water streams from their eyes, and when anything cheers them, they palpitate and hiccup, but their eyes remain relatively dry. And we call the wet palpitating weeping, and the dry—laughter.”

  “If it is as you say,” said the princess, “and you share your brothers’ enthusiasm for water, I will have you thrown into my lake, that you may enjoy it to your fill, and also I will have them weigh your legs with lead, to keep you from bobbing up…”

  “Your Majesty,” replied Ferrix as the sage had taught him, “if you do this, I must perish, for though there is water within us, it cannot be immediately outside us for longer than a minute or two, otherwise we recite the words ‘blub, blub, blub,’ which signifies our last farewell to life.”

  “But tell me, Myamlak,” asked the princess, “how do you furnish yourself with the energy to walk to and fro, to squish and to slurp, to shake and to sway?”

  “Princess,” replied Ferrix, “there, where I dwell, are other palefaces besides the hairless variety, palefaces that travel predominantly on all fours. These we perforate until they expire, and we steam and bake their remains, and chop and slice, after which we incorporate their corporeality into our own. We know three hundred and seventy-six distinct methods of murdering, twenty-eight thousand five hundred and ninety-seven distinct methods of preparing the corpses, and the stuffing of those bodies into our bodies (through an aperture, called the mouth) provides us with no end of enjoyment. Indeed, the art of the preparation of corpses is more esteemed among us than astronautics and is termed gastronautics, or gastronomy—which, however, has nothing to do with astronomy.”

  “Does this then mean that you play at being cemeteries, making of yourselves the very coffins that hold your four-legged brethren?” This question was dangerously loaded, but Ferrix, instructed by the sage, answered thus:

  “It is no game, Your Highness, but rather a necessity, for life lives on life. But we have made of this necessity a great art.”

  “Well then, tell me, Myamlak the paleface, how do you build your progeny?” asked the princess.

  “In faith, we do not build them at all,” said Ferrix, “but program them statistically, according to Markov’s formula for stochastic probability, emotional-evolutional albeit distributional, and we do this involuntarily and coincidentally, while thinking of a variety of things that have nothing whatever to do with programming, whether statistical, alinear or algorithmical, and the programming itself takes place autonomously, automatically and wholly autoerotically, for it is precisely thus and not otherwise that we are constructed, that each and every paleface strives to program his progeny, for it is delightful, but programs without programming, doing all within his power to keep that programming from bearing fruit.”

  “Strange,” said the princess, whose erudition in this area was less extensive than that of the wise Polyphase. “But how exactly is this done?”

  “O Princess!” replied Ferrix. “We possess suitable apparatuses constructed on the principle of regenerative feedback coupling, though of course all this is in water. These apparatuses present a veritable miracle of technology, yet even the greatest idiot can use them. But to describe the precise procedure of their operation I would have to lecture at considerable length, since the matter is most complex. Still, it is strange, when you consider that we never invented these methods, but rather they, so to speak, invented them- | selves. Even so, they are perfectly functional and we have | nothing against them.”

  “Verily,” exclaimed Crystal, “you are a paleface! That which you say, it’s as if it made sense, though it doesn’t really, not in the least. For how can one be a cemetery without being a cemetery, or program progeny, yet not program it at all?! Yes, you are indeed a paleface, Myamlak, and therefore, should you so desire it, I shall couple with you in a closed-circuit matrimonial coupling, and you shall ascend the throne with me—provided you pass one last test.”

  “And what is that?” asked Ferrix.

  “You must…” began the princess, but suddenly suspicion again entered her heart and she asked, “Tell me first, what do your brothers do at night?”

  “At night they lie here and there, with bent arms and twisted legs, and air goes into them and comes out of them, raising in the process a noise not unlike the sharpening of a rusty saw.”

  “Well then, here is the test: give me your hand!” commanded the princess.

  Ferrix gave her his hand, and she squeezed it, whereupon he cried out in a loud voice, just as the sage had instructed him. And she asked him why he had cried out.

  “From the pain!” replied Ferrix.

  At this point she had no more doubts about his palefaceness and promptly ordered the preparations for the wedding ceremony to commence.

  But it so happened, at that very moment, that the spaceship of Cybercount Cyberhazy, the princess’ Elector, returned from its interstellar expedition to find a paleface (for the insidious Cybercount sought to worm his way into her good graces). Polyphase, greatly alarmed, ran to Ferrix’s side and said:

  “Prince, Cyberhazy’s spaceship has just arrived, and he’s brought the princess a genuine paleface—I saw the thing with my own eyes. We must leave while we still can, since all further masquerade will become impossible when the princess sees it and you together: its stickiness is stickier, its ickiness is ickier! Our subterfuge will be discovered and we beheaded!”

  Ferrix, however, could not agree to ignominious flight, for his passion for the princess was great, and he said:

  “Better to die, than lose her!”

  Meanwhile Cyberhazy, having learned of the wedding preparations, sneaked beneath the window of the room where they were staying and overheard everything; then he rushed back to the palace, bubbling over with villainous joy, and announced to Crystal:

  “You have been deceived, Your Highness, for the so-called Myamlak is actually an ordinary mortal and no paleface. Here is the real paleface!”

  And he pointed to the thing that had been ushered in. The thing expanded its hairy breast, batted its watery eyes and said:

  “Me paleface!”

  The princess summoned Ferrix at once, and when he stood before her alongside that thing, the sage’s ruse became entirely obvious. Ferrix, though he was smeared with mud, dust and chalk, anointed with oil and aqueously gurgling, could hardly conceal his electroknightly stature, his magnificent posture, the breadth of those steel shoulders, that thunderous stride. Whereas the paleface of Cybercount Cyberhazy was a genuine monstrosity: its every step was like the overflowing of marshy vats, its face was like a scummy well; from its rotten breath the mirrors all covered over with a blind mist, and some iron nearby was seized with rust.

  Now the princess realized how utterly revolting a paleface was—when it spoke, it was as if a pink worm tried to squirm from its maw. At last she had seen the light, but her pride would not permit her to reveal this chang
e of heart. So she said:

  “Let them do battle, and to the winner—my hand in marriage…”

  Ferrix whispered to the sage:

  “If I attack this abomination and crush it, reducing it to the mud from which it came, our imposture will become apparent, for the clay will fall from me and the steel will show. What should I do?”

  “Prince,” replied Polyphase, “don’t attack, just defend yourself!”

  Both antagonists stepped out into the palace courtyard, each armed with a sword, and the paleface leaped upon Ferrix as the slime leaps upon a swamp, and danced about him, gurgling, cowering, panting, and it swung at him with its blade, and the blade cut through the clay and shattered against the steel, and the paleface fell against the prince due to the momentum of the blow, and it smashed and broke, and splashed apart, and was no more.

  But the dried clay, once moved, slipped from Ferrix’s shoulders, revealing his true steely nature to the eyes of the princess; he trembled, awaiting his fate. Yet in her crystalline gaze he beheld admiration, and understood then how much her heart had changed.

  Thus they joined in matrimonial coupling, which is permanent and reciprocal—joy and happiness for some, for others misery until the grave—and they reigned long and well, programming innumerable progeny. The skin of Cybercount Cyberhazy’s paleface was stuffed and placed in the royal museum as an eternal reminder. It stands there to this day, a scarecrow thinly overgrown with hair. Many pretenders to wisdom say that this is all a trick and make-believe and nothing more, that there’s no such thing as paleface cemeteries, doughy-nosed and gummy-eyed, and never was. Well, perhaps it was just another empty invention—there are certainly fables enough in this world. And yet, even if the story isn’t true, it does have a grain of sense and instruction to it, and it’s entertaining as well, so it’s worth the telling.