And indeed, the sacks already blocked out the sky, and the room grew dim. The magnate finished speaking, though his hand, raised in eloquence, remained in midair. Trurl took this opportunity to say:
“I am much obliged to His Royal Highness Protuberon, but affairs of the heart, you understand, are not exactly my specialty. Though…” he added, uncomfortable under the magnate’s dazzling gaze, “perhaps you would explain the problem to me…”
The magnate gave a nod.
“That is simply done, Sir Constructor! The heir to the throne has fallen in love with Amarandina Cybernella, the only daughter of the ruler of the neighboring state of Ib. But an ancient enmity divides our kingdoms, and doubtless, if our Beloved Sovereign, yielding to the unwearying pleas of the prince, were to ask that emperor for the hand of Amarandina, the answer would be a categorical never. And so a year has passed, and six days, and the crown prince wastes away before our eyes. All attempts to restore him to reason have failed, and now our only hope lies in Your Most Iridescent Eminence!”
Here the magnate made a deep bow. Trurl, observing rows of warriors right outside his window, coughed and said in a feeble voice:
“Well, I really don’t see how I could be of… though, of course, if the King wishes it… in that case…”
“Wonderful!” cried the magnate and clapped his hands with a mighty clang. Immediately twelve cuirassiers, black as night, rushed in with clattering armor and bore Trurl off to the ship, which fired its engines twenty-one times, pulled anchor and, banners waving, lifted up into the open sky.
During the flight the magnate, who was Grand Seneschal and Artifactotum to the King, filled Trurl in on the details of the prince’s ill-starred enamorization. Directly upon their arrival, after the welcoming ceremonies and ticker-tape parade through the streets of the capital, the constructor got down to work. He set up his equipment in the magnificent royal gardens and in three weeks had converted the Temple of Contemplation there into a strange edifice full of metal, cables and glowing screens. This was, he told the King, a femfatalatron, an erotifying device stochastic, elastic and orgiastic, and with plenty of feedback; whoever was placed inside the apparatus instantaneously experienced all the charms, lures, wiles, winks and witchery of all the fairer sex in the Universe at once. The femfatalatron operated on a power of forty megamors, with a maximum attainable efficiency—given a constant concupiscence coefficient—of ninety-six percent, while the system’s libidinous lubricity, measured of course in kilocupids, produced up to six units for every remote-control caress. This marvelous mechanism, moreover, was equipped with reversible ardor dampers, omnidirectional consummation amplifiers, absorption philters, paphian peripherals, and “first-sight” flip-flop circuits, since Trurl held here to the position of Dr. Yentzicus, creator of the famous oculo-oscular feel theory.
There were also all sorts of auxiliary components, like a high-frequency titillizer, an alternating tantalator, plus an entire set of lecherons and debaucheraries; on the outside, in a special glass case, were enormous dials, on which one could carefully follow the course of the whole decaptivation process. Statistical analysis revealed that the femfatalatron gave positive, permanent results in ninety-eight cases of unrequited amatorial superfixation out of a hundred. The chances of saving the crown prince therefore were excellent.
It took forty venerable peers of the kingdom four hours and more to push and pull their prince through the gardens to the Temple of Contemplation, for though fully determined, they had to show proper respect for his royal person, and the prince, having no desire whatever of becoming de-captivated, kicked and butted his faithful courtiers with great vigor. When finally His Majesty was shoved, with the application of numerous feather pillows, into the machine and the trapdoor shut after him, Trurl, full of misgivings, threw the switch, and the computer began its countdown in a dreary monotone: “Five, four, three, two, one, zero… start!” The synchroerotorotors, bumping and grinding, set up powerful counterseduction currents to displace the prince’s so tragically misplaced affections. After an hour of this, Trurl looked at the dials: their needles trembled under the terrible load of lascivicity but, alas, failed to show any significant improvement. He began to have serious doubts about the success of the treatment, but it was too late to do anything now—other than fold his hands and wait patiently. He only checked to make sure that the autolips were landing in the right place and at the proper angle, that the aphrodisial philanderoids and satyriacal panderynes weren’t going too far, for he didn’t want the patient to undergo a total dotal transferral and end up idolizing the machine instead of Amarandina, but only to fall thoroughly out of love. At last the trapdoor was opened in solemn silence. Out of the dim interior, wreathed with a cloud of the sweetest perfume, stumbled the pale prince through crushed rose petals—and fell in a swoon, stunned by that awesome access of passion. His faithful servants rushed up and, as they lifted his limp limbs, heard him utter in a hoarse whisper one solitary word: Amarandina. Trurl cursed under his breath, for all of it had been in vain, and the prince’s mad love had proven stronger than all the megamors and kilocuddles the femfatalatron could bring to bear. The rapturometer, when pressed against the brow of the stupefied prince, registered one hundred and seven, then the glass shattered and the mercury poured out, still quivering, as if it too had come under the influence of those raging emotions. The first attempt, then, was a complete failure.
Trurl returned to his quarters in the foulest mood, and anyone eavesdropping would have heard how he paced from wall to wall, seeking a solution. Meanwhile there was an awful racket back in the gardens: some stonemasons, ordered to fix the wall of a small arborium, had out of curiosity crawled into the femfatalatron and accidentally turned it on. It became necessary to summon the fire department, for they jumped out so inflamed, that they started to smoke.
Next Trurl tried a retropruriginous eroginator with heavy-duty volupticles, but that too—to make a long story short— was a flop. The prince was not a whit less smitten with Amarandina’s charms; in fact, he was more smitten than ever. Once again Trurl paced the floor of his room, back and forth for many miles, and sat up half the night reading professional manuals, till he hurled them against the wall. That morning he went to the Grand Seneschal and requested an audience with the King. Admitted to the presence of His Majesty, Trurl spoke in this fashion:
“Your Royal Highness and Gracious Sovereign! The dis-enamorment methods which I employed upon Your son are the most powerful possible. He simply will not be dis-enamored, not alive—Your Majesty must know the truth.”
The King was silent, crushed by this news, but Trurl went on:
“Of course, I could deceive him, synthesizing an Amarandina according to the parameters I have at hand, but sooner or later the prince would find out, when news of the true Amarandina reached his ears. No, I see no other way: the prince must marry the Emperor’s daughter!”
“Bah, but that is the whole problem, O foreigner! The Emperor will never agree to such a marriage!”
“And if he were conquered? If he had to sue for peace, beg for mercy?”
“Why then, certainly—but would you have me plunge two large kingdoms into a bloody war, which is a risky proposition at best, solely in order to win the hand of the Emperor’s daughter for my son? No, that is quite out of the question!”
“Precisely the answer I expected of Your Royal Highness!” said Trurl calmly. “However, there are wars and there are wars; the kind I have in mind would be absolutely bloodless. For we would not attack the Emperor’s realm with arms; in fact, we would not take the life of a single citizen, but just the opposite!”
“What are you saying? What do you mean?” exclaimed the King.
And as Trurl whispered his secret plan into the royal ear, the monarch’s careworn face gradually brightened, and he cried:
“Go then, and do this thing, good foreigner, and may the gods be with thee!”
The very next day the royal forges and workshops
undertook the construction, according to Trurl’s specifications, of a great number of tremendous cannons, though for what purpose intended it was not clear. These were placed around the planet and disguised as defense installations, so that no one would guess a thing. Meanwhile Trurl sat day and night in the royal cybergenetic laboratory, watching over secret cauldrons in which mysterious concoctions gurgled and percolated. A spy on the premises would have discovered nothing, except that now and then behind the double-locked doors there was an odd mewling, puling sound, and technicians and assistants ran frantically back and forth with piles of diapers.
The bombardment began a week later, at midnight. The cannons, primed by veteran cannoneers, were aimed, muzzles raised, straight at the white star of the Emperor’s empire, and they fired—not death-dealing, but life-giving missiles. For Trurl had loaded the cannons with newborn babies, which rained down upon the enemy in gooing, cooing myriads and, growing quickly, crawled and drooled over everything; there were so many of them, that the air shook with their ear-splitting ma-ma’s, da-da’s, kee-kee’s and waa’s. This infant inundation lasted until the economy began to collapse under the strain and the kingdom was faced with the dread specter of a depression, and still out of the sky came tots, tads, moppets and toddlers, all chubby and chuckling, their diapers fluttering. The Emperor was forced to capitulate to King Protuberon, who promised to call a halt to the hostilities on the condition that his son be granted Amarandina’s hand in marriage—to which the Emperor hastily agreed. Whereupon the baby cannons were all carefully spiked and put away, and, to be safe, Trurl himself took apart the femfatalatron. Later, as best man, in a suit of emeralds and holding the ceremonial baton, he played toastmaster at the riotous wedding feast. Afterwards, he loaded his rocket with the titles, diplomas and citations which both the King and the Emperor had bestowed upon him, and then, sated with glory, he headed for home.
The Fifth Sally
or
The Mischief of King Balerion
Not by being cruel did Balerion, King of Cymberia, oppress his people, but by having a good time. And again, it wasn’t feasts or all-night orgies that were dear to His Majesty’s heart, but only the most innocent games—tiddlywinks, mumbledypeg, old maid and go fish into the wee hours of the morning, then hopscotch, leapfrog, but more than anything he loved to play hide-and-seek. Whenever there was an important decision to be made, a State document to be signed, interstellar emissaries to be received or some Commodore requesting an audience, the King would hide, and they would have to find him, else suffer the most dreadful punishments. So the whole court would chase up and down the palace, check the dungeons, look under the drawbridge, comb the towers and turrets, tap the walls, turn the throne inside out, and quite often these searches lasted a long time, for the King was always thinking up new places to hide. Once, a terribly important war never got declared, and all because the King, decked in spangles and crystal pendants, hung three days from the ceiling of the main hall and passed for a chandelier, holding his mouth to keep from laughing out loud at the ministers rushing about frantically below. Whoever found the King was instantly given the title of Royal Discoverer—there were already seven hundred and thirty-six of those at court. But he who would gain the King’s special favor had to beguile him with some new game, one the King had never heard of. Which was by no means easy, considering that Balerion was unusually well-versed in the subject; he knew all the ancient games, like jackstones or knucklebones, and all the latest games, like spin the electron, and he often said that everything was a game, his Crown included, and for that matter the whole wide world.
These thoughtless and frivolous words outraged the venerable members of the King’s privy council; the prime minister in particular, My Lord Papagaster of the great house of Pentaperihelion, was much provoked, saying the King held nothing sacred and even dared expose his own Exalted Person to ridicule.
Then, when the King unexpectedly announced it was time for riddles, terror filled the hearts of everyone. He had always had a passion for riddles; once, right in the middle of the coronation, he confounded the Lord High Chancellor with the question, why was antimatter like an antimacassar?
It wasn’t very long before the King realized that his courtiers weren’t putting forth the proper effort in solving the conundrums he posed. They replied in any which way, said whatever came into their heads, and this infuriated the King. However, as soon as he began to base all royal appointments and promotions upon the answers to his riddles, things improved considerably. Decorations and dismissals came thick and fast, and the whole court, like it or not, had to play the game in earnest. Unfortunately, many dignitaries attempted to deceive the King, who, though basically good-natured, could simply not tolerate a cheater. The Keeper of the Great Seal was sent into exile because he had used a crib (concealed beneath his cuirass) in the Royal Presence; he never would have been discovered, had not one of his old enemies, a certain general, brought this to the King’s attention. Papagaster himself had to part with his high post, for he didn’t know what was the darkest place in outer space. In time, the King’s Cabinet was composed of the most accomplished solvers of crosswords, acrostics and rebuses in the land, and his ministers never went anywhere without their encyclopedias. The courtiers soon became so proficient, that they could supply the correct answer before the King had finished asking the question, though this was hardly surprising when you considered that they were all avid subscribers to the “Official Register,” which, instead of a tedious list of acts and administrative decisions, contained nothing but puzzles, puns and parlor games.
As the years went by, however, the King liked less and less to have to think, and gradually returned to his first and greatest love, hide-and-seek. One day, in a particularly playful mood, he offered a most handsome prize to the one who could find for him the best hiding place in all the world. The prize was to be nothing less than the Royal Diadem of the Cymberanide Dynasty, a cluster of truly priceless jewels. No one had laid eyes on this wonder for many centuries, for it lay locked and coffered in the Royal Vault.
Now it so happened that Trurl and Klapaucius chanced upon Cymberia in the course of one of their travels. News of the King’s proclamation, having quickly spread throughout the realm, reached our constructors too; they learned of it from the local villagers at the inn where they were spending the night.
The next day they repaired to the palace to announce that they knew a hiding place unequaled by any other. Unfortunately, so many others had come to claim the prize, that it was next to impossible to get by the crowd at the gate. Trurl and Klapaucius therefore returned to their lodgings and resolved to try their luck the following day. Though they didn’t leave it to luck alone; this time the prudent constructors came prepared. To every guard who barred the way and then to every court official who challenged them, Trurl quietly slipped a few coins and, whenever that didn’t work, a few more, and in less than five minutes they were standing before the throne of His Royal Highness. His Royal Highness was of course delighted to hear that such famous wise men had come so far for the sole purpose of imparting to him the secret of the perfect hiding place. It took them a little time to explain the how and the why of it to Balerion, but his mind, schooled from childhood in the ways of tricks and puzzles, finally grasped the idea. Burning with enthusiasm, the King jumped down from his throne, assured the two friends of his undying gratitude, promised they would receive the prize without fail—provided only they let him try out their secret method at once. Klapaucius was reluctant on this point, muttering to himself that they ought to write up a proper contract first, with parchment, seals and tassels; but the King was so insistent, and pleaded with such vehemence, swearing great oaths the prize was as good as theirs, that the constructors had to give in. Trurl opened a small box he had brought with him, took out the necessary device and showed it to the King. This invention actually had nothing to do with hide-and-seek, but could be applied to that game wonderfully well. It was a portable bilate
ral personality transformer, with retroreversible feedback, of course. Using it, any two individuals could quickly and easily exchange minds. The device, fitted onto one’s head, resembled a pair of horns; when these came into contact with the forehead of the one with whom one wished to effect the exchange, and were lightly pressed, the device was activated and instantaneously set up two opposing series of antipodal impulses. Through one horn, one’s own psyche flowed into the other, and through the other, the other into one’s own. Hence the total deenergizing of the one memory and the simultaneous energizing of the other in its place, and contrariwise. Trurl had set the apparatus on his head for purposes of demonstration and was explaining the procedure to the King, bringing the royal forehead into proximity with the horns, when the King impulsively butted against them, which triggered the mechanism and immediately brought about a personality transfer. It all happened so quickly that Trurl, who had never really tested the device on himself, didn’t notice. Nor did Klapaucius, standing to one side; it did strike him rather odd that Trurl suddenly stopped in the middle of a sentence and Balerion instantly took up where Trurl had left off,, using such words as “the potentials involved with nonlinear conversion of submnemonic quanta” and “the adiabatic flux differential of the id.” The King went on in his squeaky voice for almost a minute before Klapaucius realized there was something wrong. Balerion, finding himself inside the body of Trurl, was no longer listening to the lecture, but wiggled his fingers and toes, as if making himself more comfortable in this novel shape, which he inspected with the greatest curiosity. Meanwhile Trurl, in a long purple robe, was waving his arms and explaining the reversed entropy of mutually transposed systems, until he grew aware that something was in the way, looked down at his hand and was dumbfounded to find himself holding a scepter. He was about to speak, but the King burst out laughing and took to his heels. Trurl started after him, but tripped over the royal robe and fell flat on his face. This commotion quickly brought the royal bodyguards, who straightway threw themselves upon Klapaucius, thinking he had attacked the Royal Person. By the time Trurl managed to get his royal personage off the floor and convince the guards it stood in no danger, Balerion was far away, rollicking somewhere in Trurl’s body. Trurl attempted to give chase, but the courtiers wouldn’t permit it, and when he protested he wasn’t the King at all but there had been a personality transfer, they concluded that excessive puzzle-solving had finally unhinged the Royal Reason and politely but firmly locked him in the royal bedchamber, then sent for the royal physicians while he roared and pounded on the door. Klapaucius meanwhile, thrown out of the palace on his ear, headed back to the inn, thinking—not without alarm—of the complications that might arise from what had just taken place. “Undoubtedly,” he thought, “had I been in Trurl’s shoes, my great presence of mind would have saved the day. Instead of making a scene and ranting on about telepsychic transfers, which couldn’t help but create suspicions as to his sanity, I would have taken advantage of the King’s body and ordered them to seize Trurl, namely Balerion, at once-—whereas now he’s running around free somewhere in the city—and also, I would have had the other constructor remain at my side, in the capacity of special adviser. But that complete idiot"—by which he meant Trurl—"completely lost his head, and now I’ll have to bring all my tactical talents into play, else this business may end badly…”
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