The Star Diaries Page 9

  The following day I sat myself down on a bench outside the barracks and waited for those on furlough to come out. Having spotted in the crowd one of the ones with a circle on the shoulder, I took after him, and when there was no one in the street but us I clapped him on the back with my gauntlet, so that he rang from head to toe, and said:

  “In the name of Hys Inductivitee! Com with me!”

  So frightened was he, he started clattering all over—and followed me without a word, as docile as a lamb. I closed the door to my room, pulled a screwdriver from my pocket, and began unfastening his head. This took an hour. I lifted it off like an iron pot and was confronted by a face, unpleasantly pallid from being in the dark too long, thin, and walleyed with fear.

  “Ye are a mucilid?!” I snarled.

  “Yessir, yer worshipe, but—”

  “But what?!”

  “But I, that ys… I am registred… I swoor aliegiaunce to Hiss Inductivitee!”

  “How long ago? Speak!”

  “Three … three yeer agoon, sire—but—but wherfor dostow—”

  “Hold,” I said. “And do you know of any other mucilids?”

  “On Erthe? Yea an soth to sayn I do, yer grace, I crye yow mercy, ’twas oonly—”

  “Not on Earth, fool, here!”

  “Nay, nossir! Loo! But yif ever I do see ’un, streighte shal I notifye the—”

  “All right,” I said. “You may go. Here, put your head back on.”

  And tossing him the screws, I pushed him out the door, where I could hear him trying to don his metal skull with trembling hands. Then I sat on my bed, greatly surprised by this turn of events. All that next week there was plenty of work to be done, for I pulled individuals off the street at random, took them to the inn and there unscrewed their heads. My hunch was right: they were all of them men, every last one! Not a single robot in the lot! Gradually an apocalyptic image took shape before my eyes…

  A demon, an electrical demon—that Computer! What hell had hatched there in its nest of glowing wires! The planet was wet, humid, rheumatic—and for robots, unhealthy in the highest degree … they must have rusted en masse, and perhaps too there was, as the years passed, an increasing lack of spare parts, and they began to break down, going one by one to that vast cemetery outside of town, where only the wind rang their death knell over sheets of crumbling metal. That was when the Computer, seeing its ranks melt away, seeing its reign endangered, had conceived the most ingenious machination. From its enemies, from the spies dispatched to destroy it, it began to build its own army, its own agents, its own people! Not one of those who were unmasked could betray it—not one of them dared attempt to contact others, other men, having no way of knowing that they weren’t robots, and even if he did find out about this one or that, he’d be afraid that at the first overture the other man would turn him in—just as that first bogus halberdier had tried to do, the one I’d caught off guard in the whortleberry bushes. But the Computer wasn’t satisfied merely to neutralize its enemies—it made of each a champion of its cause, and by requiring them to turn in others, the new arrivals, it gave still further proof of its diabolical cunning, for who could best distinguish men from robots if not those very men, who after all were privy to all the secrets of Intelligence!!

  And so each man, unmasked, included in the register and sworn in, felt himself isolated, and possibly even feared his own kind more than the robots, for the robots were not necessarily agents of the secret police, while the men were—to a man. And that was how this electrical monster kept us in slavery, foiling everyone—with everyone else, for it must have been my own companions in misery who had taken apart my rocket, as they had done (judging by the halberdier’s words) with scores of other rockets.

  “Infernal, infernal!” I thought, quivering with rage. And it wasn’t enough that it drove us to treachery, that the Division itself sent more and more of us to serve the thing’s pleasure—Earth was also supplying it with the very finest, rustproof, top-quality equipment! Were there any robots left among those ironclad minions? I seriously doubted it. And the zeal with which they persecuted men, that too became clear. For being men themselves, they had to be—as neophytes to magnificanism—more robotlike than the authentic robots. Hence that fanatical hatred displayed by my lawyer. Hence that dastardly attempt to turn me in by the man I had first unmasked. Oh what fiendishness of coils and circuitry was here, what electrical finesse!

  Revealing the secret would get me nowhere; at a command from the Computer I would unquestionably be thrown in the dungeon. No, the people had been obedient too long, for too long had they feigned devotion to that plugged-in Beelzebub, why they’d even forgotten how to talk properly!

  What then could I do? Sneak into the palace? That would be madness. But what remained? An uncanny situation: here was a city surrounded by cemeteries, in which the Computer’s subjects lay, long since turned to rust, yet it reigned on, stronger than ever, and confident, for Earth kept sending it more and more new men—idiotic! The longer I thought about it, the more clearly I saw that even this discovery, which certainly must have been made before me by more than one of us, didn’t change things in the least. A single individual could do nothing; he would have to confide in someone, trust someone, but that inevitably resulted in instant betrayal, the traitor counting on a promotion, on getting into the good graces of the machine. “By Saint Electrix!” I thought, “it is a very genius…” And thinking this, noticed that I too was already affecting a slightly archaic mode of speech, that I too had caught that contagion by which the sight of iron hoods comes to seem natural, and a human face—something naked, ugly, indecent … mucilidinous. “Good Lord, I’m going insane,” I thought, “and the others, they must have turned lunatic years ago—help!”

  After a night spent in gloomy meditation, I betook myself to a store downtown, paid thirty pistoons for the sharpest cleaver I could find, waited for the darkness to fall, then stole inside the great garden that surrounded the palace of the Computer. There, hidden in the shrubs, I freed myself of my iron armor with the aid of a pair of pliers and a screwdriver, and on tiptoe, barefoot, without a sound, I shinnied up the rainspout to the second floor. The window was open. Along the corridor, clanking hollowly, a guard was walking back and forth. When he turned his back at the opposite end of the hall, I jumped inside, quickly ran to the closest door and entered quietly—unnoticed.

  This happened to be that same large room in which I’d heard the voice of the Computer. It was dark. I pulled aside the black curtain and saw the tremendous roof-high wall of the Computer, with dials shining like eyes. At the edge a white chink was visible. Apparently a door, left ajar. I approached it on tiptoe and held my breath.

  The interior of the Computer looked like a small room in a second-class hotel. In the back stood a half-open safe, not very large, a cluster of keys hanging from its lock. At a desk piled high with papers sat an elderly, dried-up gentleman in a gray suit, with baggy sleevelets, the kind worn by office clerks; he was writing, filling out page after page of forms. There was a cup of coffee steaming at his elbow. A few crackers lay in the saucer. I tiptoed in, closed the door behind me. The hinges didn’t squeak. “Ahem,” I said, lifting the cleaver with both hands.

  The gentleman started and looked up at me; the gleam of the cleaver in my hands produced in him the utmost consternation. His face twisted, he fell to his knees.

  “No!!” he groaned. “No!!!”

  “Raise your voice once more, and you perish,” I said. “Who are you?”

  “He-heptagonius Argusson, my lord.”

  “I’m not your lord. You will address me as Mister Tichy, understand?!”

  “Yessir! Yes! Yes!”

  “Where is the Computer?”

  “Mi-mister…”

  “There isn’t any Computer, is there?!”

  “No—nossir! I was only following orders!"

  “Of course. And from whom, if one might ask?”

  He trembled like a leaf
. He lifted his hands in entreaty.

  “There’ll be such trouble…” he groaned. “Please! Don’t make me tell, my—forgive me! Mister Tichy!—I—I’m only a secretary, grade 6, on the payroll…”

  “Come now. And the Computer? And the robots?”

  “Mister Tichy, have mercy! I’ll tell you the whole truth! Our chief—he organized it. Funds were allocated—to expand operations, to increase—ah—increase efficiency … research and development, determining the fitness of our people, but the main thing was the allocations…”

  “You mean this was faked? All of it?!”

  “I don’t know! I swear I don’t! From the time I got here—nothing’s changed, you mustn’t think that I’m in charge here, God forbid!—my job is only to maintain these personal files. The question was whether … whether our people would break down in the face of the enemy, in a critical situation—or whether they were ready, you see, to fight to the death.”

  “And why has no one returned to Earth?”

  “Because, well, because they all turned traitor, Mister Tichy … as yet not a single one has been willing to lay down his life for the cause of Gookum—phoo, for our cause, I meant to say, it’s out of habit that I use that word, please try to understand, eleven years sitting here, and in just one more I’m up for retirement, a pension, I have a wife and child, Mister Tichy, so for the love of—”

  “Silence!!” I said angrily. “You want a pension, dog, I’ll give you a pension!!”

  I raised the cleaver. The clerk’s eyes bulged; he began to grovel at my feet.

  I ordered him to stand. Making certain that the safe had a small, grated opening for ventilation, I locked him up inside.

  “And not a peep out of you! And if there’s any knocking or thumping, villain, it’ll be the flesh-shredder!!”

  The rest was simple. That night was not among the most pleasant I had ever spent, for there were papers to look through—reports, statements, affidavits, records, dossiers, each inhabitant of the planet had his own portfolio. Using all the most confidential documents, I made myself a bed on the desk, there being no place to sleep. In the morning I switched on the microphone and, as the Computer, gave the order for the entire populace to assemble in front of the palace. Everyone was to bring with him a pair of pliers and a screwdriver. When they had all lined up like giant chessmen made of iron, I ordered them to unscrew each other’s heads—on behalf of the capacitance of Saint Electrix. At eleven o’clock the first human heads began to show, and there was tumult and confusion, cries of “Treason! Treason!”—which, a few minutes later, when the last iron bowl had clattered to the pavement, merged into a single roar of joy. I then appeared in my own identity and suggested that under my direction they all get down to work—for I wished to put together, out of the raw materials and supplies at hand, a great ship. It turned out, however, that in the palace cellars there were already a number of cosmic ships, and with full tanks, ready to go. Before takeoff I let Argusson out of the safe, but didn’t take him on board, nor would I permit anyone else to. I told him that I intended to inform his chief of everything, and also to let the latter know—in no less detail—exactly what I thought of him.

  Thus concluded one of the most unusual of my adventures and voyages. Notwithstanding all the hardship and pain it had occasioned me, I was glad of the outcome, since it restored my faith, shaken by corrupt cosmic officeholders, in the natural decency of electronic brains. Yes, it’s comforting to know, when you think about it, that only man can be a bastard.

  THE

  TWELFTH

  VOYAGE

  In no voyage did I ever run such hair-raising risks as in the journey to Amauropia, a planet of the constellation Cyclops. What I underwent there I owe entirely to Professor Tarantoga. That learned astrozoologist is not only a great explorer; in his spare time, as you probably know, he invents. Among other things, he invented a fluid for the removal of unpleasant memories, paper currency with horizontal eights to serve as bills of infinite denomination, three methods of staining fog in colors pleasing to the eye, as well as a special powder which one can sprinkle on clouds and then press them into suitable molds, whereby they acquire permanent, solid shapes. His also was an apparatus for tapping the energy, so often wasted, of little children, who as everyone knows cannot sit still for a minute.

  That device consists of a system of cranks, pulleys and levers situated in various places about the dwelling and which the children push, pull and move in the course of their play, unaware that they are thereby pumping water, washing clothes, peeling potatoes, generating electricity, etc. It was out of concern for our youngest citizens, whom parents on occasion do leave in the house alone, that the Professor also devised lighters that will not light. These now are mass-produced on Earth.

  One day the Professor showed me his latest invention. At first it seemed to me that I was looking at a small iron stove, and Tarantoga confessed that that in fact had served him as the point of departure.

  “This is, my dear Ijon, the translation into reality of man’s age-old dream,” he announced, “and namely, a dilator or—if you prefer—a retarder of time. It makes possible the unlimited prolongation of life. One minute inside should last roughly two months, if my calculations are correct. Would you care to try it?…”

  Always interested in technological novelties, I willingly climbed into the contraption. No sooner had I squatted down than the Professor slammed shut the little door. My nose tickled; the force with which the stove had been closed lifted the still remaining bits of soot into the air, so that, breathing in, I sneezed. At that precise moment the Professor turned on the current. Due to the retardation of the passage of time, my sneeze lasted five days and five nights, and when Tarantoga again opened the little door he found me nearly unconscious with exhaustion. At first he was astonished and concerned, but learning what had happened, smiled good-humoredly and said:

  “But in actual fact merely four seconds went by on my watch. Well now, Ijon, what say you of this invention?”

  “To tell the truth, well, I think it needs perfecting—though the thing is certainly significant,” I said, when I was able to catch my breath.

  The worthy Professor was a bit chagrined at this, but then magnanimously made me a present of the device, explaining that it could serve equally well to accelerate the passage of time. Feeling somewhat fatigued, I put off for the moment a test of this additional possibility, thanked him warmly and carried the machine home with me. To tell the truth, I wasn’t all that certain about what to do with it, so I put it in the attic of my rocketshop, where it sat for more than half a year.

  In the course of writing the eighth volume of his celebrated Astrozoology, the Professor became acquainted in some detail with information concerning beings that lived on Amauropia. It occurred to him that these would provide an excellent opportunity to try out the dilator (as well as the accelerator) of time.

  This plan, when I learned of it, excited my interest to such a degree, that in less than three weeks I had loaded my rocket with provisions and fuel, and, placing on board some unfamiliar maps of that region of the Galaxy—as well as the apparatus—I blasted off without further delay. My haste might also be explained by the fact that the journey to Amauropia takes about thirty years. Of what exactly I did in that time I had better write elsewhere. I will only mention here one of the more singular events, which was when I encountered, in the vicinity of the galactic core (an area, I might add, that is dustier than most you can find in this universe), a tribe of interstellar vagabonds known as the Gypsonians.

  These unfortunates haven’t a planet to call their own. To put it politely, they are creatures endowed with great imagination, for practically each one of them told me something different about the origin of the tribe. Later I heard it said that they had simply frittered away their home planet, that is, an inordinate greed had driven them to engage in strip mining and the exportation of various minerals. In these enterprises they tunneled and excavated t
he interior of their planet, depleting it completely, till finally all that remained was one colossal pit, which one day crumbled beneath their feet. True, there are others who maintain that the Gypsonians, embarking long ago on a drunken spree, had simply lost their way and couldn’t get back. Apparently no one knows how it really happened, but in either case the appearance of those cosmic vagabonds is never welcome, for whenever, advancing through space, they stop at any planet, before you know it something’s missing; there might be a little less air, or a river suddenly gone dry, or the islands refusing to add up right.