ALTRUIZINE
or
A True Account of How Bonhomius the Hermetic Hermit Tried to Bring About Universal Happiness, and What Came of It
One bright summer day, as Trurl the constructor was pruning the cyberberry bush in his back yard, he spied a robot mendicant coming down the road, all tattered and torn, a most woeful and piteous sight to behold. Its limbs were held together by sections of old stovepipe fastened with string, its head was a pot so full of holes you could hear its thoughts whir and sputter inside, throwing off sparks, and its makeshift neck was a rusty rail, and in its open belly were vacuum tubes that smoked and rattled so badly, it had to hold them in place with its free hand—the other was needed to tighten the screws that kept coming loose. Just as it hobbled past the gate to Trurl’s residence, it blew four fuses at once and straightway began, spewing a foul cloud of burning insulators, to fall apart, right before the constructor’s eyes. Trurl, full of compassion, took a screwdriver and a roll of electric tape and hastened to offer what aid he could to the poor wayfarer, who swooned repeatedly with a great grinding of gears, due to a total asynchronization. At last Trurl managed to restore it to its senses, such as they were, then helped it inside, sat it down in a comfortable chair and gave it a battery to recharge itself, and while the poor thing did so with trembling urgency, he asked it, unable to contain his curiosity any longer, what had brought it to this sorry pass.
“O kind and noble sir,” replied the strange robot, its armatures still aquiver, “my name is Bonhomius and I am, or rather was, a hermetic hermit, for I lived sixty years and seven in a cave, where I passed the time solely in pious meditation, until one morning it dawned on me that to spend a life in solitude was wrong, for truly, did all my exceedingly profound thoughts and strivings of the spirit ever keep one rivet from falling, and is it not written that thy first duty is to help thy neighbor and not to tend to thine own salvation, for yea and verily—”
“Fine, fine,” interrupted Trurl. “I think I more or less understand your state of mind that morning. What happened then?”
“So I hied myself to Photura, where I chanced to meet a certain distinguished constructor, one Klapaucius.”
“Klapaucius?!” cried Trurl.
“Is something amiss, kind sir?”
“No, nothing—go on, please!”
“I did not recognize him at first: he was indeed a great lord and had an automatic carriage that he not only rode upon but was able to converse with, much as I converse with you now. This same carriage did affront me with a most unseemly epithet as I walked in the middle of the street, unaccustomed to city traffic, and in my surprise I inadvertently put out its headlight with my staff, which drove the carriage into such a frenzy, that its occupant was hard put to subdue it, but finally did, and then invited me to join him. I told him who I was and why I had abandoned my cave and that, forsooth, I knew not what to do next, whereupon he praised my decision and introduced himself in turn, speaking at great length of his work and many achievements. He told me at last the whole moving history of that famous sage, pundit and philosophist, Chlorian Theoreticus the Proph, at whose lamentable end he had had the privilege to be present. From all that he said of the Collected Works of that Greatest of Robots, the part about the H. P. L. D.’s did intrigue me the most. Perchance, kind sir, you have heard of them?”
“Certainly. They are the only beings in the universe who have reached the Highest Possible Level of Development.”
“Indeed you are well-informed, most kind and noble sir! Now while I sat at the side of this worthy Klapaucius in his carriage (which continued to hurl the foulest insults at whatever was imprudent enough to cross its path), the thought suddenly came to me that these beings, developed as much as possible, would surely know what one should do, when one, such as myself, felt the call to help his fellow robot. So I questioned Klapaucius closely concerning this, and asked him if he knew where the H. P. L. D.’s lived, and how to find them. His only reply was a wry smile and a shake of the head. I dared not press the matter further, but later, when we had halted at an inn (the carriage had by this time grown so hoarse that it lost its voice entirely, thus Klapaucius was obliged to wait until the following day) and were sitting over a jug of mulled electrolyte, which quickly put my gracious host in a better humor, and as we watched the thermocouples dance to the spirited tunes of a high-frequency band, he took me into his confidence and proceeded to tell me… but perhaps you grow weary of my tale.”
“Not at all, not at all!” protested Trurl. “I’m all ears, I assure you.”
+ +
“My good Bonhomius,” Klapaucius addressed me in that inn as the dancers worked themselves into a positive heat, “know that I took very much to heart the history of the unfortunate Chlorian and resolved to set out immediately and find those perfectly developed beings whose existence he had so conclusively proven on purely logical and theoretical grounds. The main difficulty of the undertaking, as I saw it, lay in the circumstance that nearly every cosmic race considered itself to be perfectly developed—obviously I would get nowhere by merely asking around. Nor did a trial-and-error method of search promise much, for the Universe contained, as I calculated, close to fourteen centigigaheptatrillion civilizations capable of reason; with such odds one could hardly expect to simply happen on the correct address. So I deliberated, read up on the problem, went methodically through several libraries, pored over all sorts of ancient tomes, until one day I found the answer in the work of a certain Cadaverius Malignus, a scholar who had apparently arrived at exactly the same conclusion as the Proph, only three hundred thousand years earlier, and who was completely forgotten afterwards. Which shows, once more, that there’s nothing new under this or any other sun—Cadaverius even met an end similar to that of our own Chlorian… But I digress. It was precisely from these yellowed and crumbling pages that I learned how to seek the H. P. L. D.’s. Malignus maintained that one must examine star clusters for some impossible astrophysical phenomenon, and that would surely be the place. A rather obscure clue, to be sure, but then aren’t they all? Without further ado I stocked my ship with the necessary provisions, took off and, after numerous adventures we need not go into here, finally spotted in a great swarm of stars one that differed from all the rest, since it was a perfect cube. Now that was quite a shock— every schoolboy knows stars have to be spherical and any sort of stellar angularities, let alone rectangularities, are not only highly irregular but entirely out of the question! I drew near the star and immediately saw that its planet was also cubiform and equipped, moreover, with castellated corner cleats and crenelated quoins. Farther out revolved another planet, which appeared to be quite normal; a look through the telescope, however, revealed hordes of robots locked in mortal combat, a sight which hardly invited closer scrutiny. So I got the square planet back in my finder and increased the resolution to full power. Imagine my surprise and joy when I looked in the eyepiece and beheld a monogram engraved on one of the planet’s mile-long quoins, a monogram consisting of four letters embellished with swirls and curlicues: H. P. L. D.!
—Great Gauss!—I cried. —This must be the place!
But though I circled around again and again, until I was quite dizzy, there was not a living soul to be seen anywhere on the planet’s sandy surface. Only when I dropped to an altitude of six miles was I able to make out a group of dots, which proved to be, upon higher magnification, the inhabitants of this most unusual heavenly body. There were a hundred or so of them lying about in the sand, and so motionless, I thought for a moment they might all be dead. But then I saw one or two scratch themselves, and this clear sign of life encouraged me to land. In my excitement I didn’t wait for the rocket to cool after its descent through the planet’s atmosphere, but jumped out at once and shouted:
—-Excuse me, is this by any chance the Highest Possible Level of Development?!
No answer. In fact, they paid no attention to me at all. Somewhat taken aback by this show of utter indiffer
ence, I looked around. The plain shimmered beneath the square sun. Here and there, things stuck out of the sand, things like broken wheels, sticks, bits of paper and other rubbish, and the inhabitants lay any which way among them, one on his back, another on his stomach, and farther on was one with his legs up in the air. I walked around the nearest and examined him. He wasn’t a robot, but on the other hand neither was he a man, nor any sapient proteinoid of the glutinous-albuminous variety. The head was round and plump, with red cheeks, but for eyes it had two penny whistles, and for ears it had thuribles, which gave off a thick cloud of incense. He was dressed in orchid pantaloons, a dark blue stripe down either side and appliqued with dirty scraps of closely written paper, and he wore high heels. In one hand he held a mandolin made entirely of frosted gingerbread, a few bites already missing from the neck. He was snoring peacefully. I leaned over to read the appliques on his trousers, but could make out only a few since my eyes watered copiously from the incense. The inscriptions were most curious—for example, NO. 7 DIAMOND NET WEIGHT SEVEN HUNDRED CWT, NO. 8 THESPIAN CONFECTIONERY, SOBS WHEN CHEWED, RECITES HAMLET’S SOLILOQUY IN THE STOMACH, ‘OUT BRIEF CANDLE’ FARTHER DOWN, NO. 10 GOLLOCHON-DRILL FOR EMERGENCY SLURGING, FULL-GROWN, and many more, which I simply don’t remember now. As I touched one of these paper scraps in trying to read it, a depression quickly formed in the sand beneath this native’s knee and a tiny voice piped:
—Shall I come out now?
—Who’s that?—I cried.
—It’s me, the Gollochondrill… Are you ready? Is it time?
—No, not yet!—I was quick to reply, and backed off. The next native had a head in the shape of a bell, three horns, several arms of varying length (two massaging its belly), ears that were long and feathery, a cap with a pretty purple balcony on which someone was having an argument with someone else—quite heated too, judging from the little plates that came flying this way and that, shattering on the brim—and he also had a kind of throw pillow, all jewel-spangled, tucked under his shoulders. While I stood before this individual, he pulled one of the horns off his head, sniffed it and tossed it away with a look of disgust, then poured a handful of dirty sand in the opening. Nearby lay something I first took for a pair of twins, and then for a couple of lovers locked in an embrace. I was about to turn away discreetly, when I realized that it wasn’t two people at all, or one, but exactly one and a half. The head was quite ordinary, except for the ears: every now and then they would detach themselves and flit about like butterflies. The lids were closed, but numerous moles on the chin and cheeks were equipped with tiny eyes; these regarded me with undisguised hostility. This remarkable being had a bioad and muscular chest, which however was riddled with holes, as if someone had been careless with a drill, and the holes were haphazardly plugged with raspberry jam. There was only one leg, but it was unusually thick and shod in a handsome morocco leather slipper, its curled toe tipped with a little felt bell. Near the elbow was a sizable pile of apple cores, or perhaps they were pear. My astonishment grew as I walked along and came upon a robot with a human head, a miniature self-winding samovar whistling cheerfully in its left nostril, and then someone reclining on a bed of candied yams, and someone else with a trapdoor in his abdomen, open so I could look in and see the crystal works. Some mechanical elves were putting on a play in there, but it turned out to be so terribly obscene, that I left in a hurry, blushing like mad. In my confusion I tripped and fell, and when I got up I saw yet another inhabitant of this strange planet: stark naked, he was scratching his behind with a solid gold backscratcher, apparently enjoying himself thoroughly, even though he was quite headless. The head lay farther on, neck stuck in the sand; it was touching its teeth with the tip of its tongue. The chin was checkered chintz, the right ear a boiled cauliflower, while the left was an ear all right, but stopped up with a carrot that carried a tag saying PULL. Without thinking I pulled, and out with the carrot came a length of string and then another tag that read YOU’RE GETTING WARM! I kept pulling and pulling, until the string finally ended in a medicine bottle that bore the label NOSY, AREN’T WE?
All these impressions left me feeling so dizzy I hardly knew where I was. But at last I pulled myself together and began to look around for the kind of person who might be communicative enough to answer a question or two. A possible candidate, it seemed, was one fairly pudgy type squatting with his back to me and occupied with something he held on his knees—at least he had only one head, two ears, two arms, and so on. I went up to him and began:
—Pardon me, but if I’m not mistaken, you gentlemen have been fortunate enough to achieve the Highest Possible—
The words died on my lips. He didn’t seem to hear me at all, for he was wholly taken up with what lay on his knees, which happened to be his very own face, removed somehow from the rest of the head and sighing softly as he picked its nose. For a moment I was stupefied, but only for a moment —my curiosity returned in full force, and I simply had to find out, once and for all, just what was going on. I ran from one native to the next, spoke to them, questioned them, raised my voice, insisted, pleaded, reasoned, even threatened, all to no avail. In my exasperation I grabbed the nose picker’s arm, and was horrified to find that it came off in my hand, though that didn’t bother him in the least, he only poked about in the sand and pulled out another exactly like the first—except for the orange plaid fingernails—blew on it a little, then affixed it to the shoulder stump. Curious, I bent over to examine the first arm, but dropped it hastily when it snapped its fingers in my face. By now the sun was setting, already two corners below the horizon, the air grew cool, and the inhabitants of H. P. L. D. began to settle down for the night, scratching, yawning, gargling, one shaking out an emerald quilt, another methodically taking off his nose, ears and legs and carefully putting them in a row at his side. I stumbled around in the dark for a while, then gave it up with a sigh and lay down to sleep too. Making myself as comfortable as possible in the sand, I looked up at the starry sky and tried to think what to do next.
—Indeed-—I said to myself—by all indications this is the very planet both Cadaverius Malignus and Chlorian Theoreticus the Proph spoke of, home of the Most Advanced Civilization in the Entire Universe, a civilization of a few hundred individuals who, being neither people nor robots, lie around on jeweled cushions all day in a dirty, littered desert and do nothing but scratch themselves and pick their noses. No, there has to be some terrible secret behind all of this, and I shall not rest till I’ve uncovered it!!
Then I thought:
—A terrible secret it must be indeed, to account for not only a square sun and planet, but lecherous elves inside bodies and insulting messages in ears! I always thought that if I, a simple robot, could spend my time in study and the pursuit of knowledge, think of the kind of intellectual ferment that went on among those more highly developed— no, the most highly developed! Yet these, whatever they do, they certainly don’t spend their time in edifying conversation; they don’t even care to answer a few questions. I’ll have to force them—but how? Perhaps, if I pester them enough, get under their skin, so to speak, make such a nuisance of myself that they’ll agree to anything, just to get rid of me! Of course, there is some risk involved: they might get angry, and, without a doubt, they could destroy me as easily as swatting a fly.… But no, I cannot believe they’d resort to such brutal measures—and anyway, I simply must find out! Well, here goes!!
And I jumped up in the darkness and started to scream at the top of my lungs, did somersaults and cartwheels, hopped around and kicked sand in their eyes, danced and sang until I was hoarse, did a few sit-ups and deep knee bends, then hurled myself among them like a mad dog. They turned their backs to me and held up their cushions and quilts for protection, and then, in the middle of my hundredth cartwheel, a voice said inside my head:
—And what would your good friend Trurl think if he could see you now, see how you pass your time on the planet that has achieved the Highest Possible Level of Develop
ment, home of the Most Advanced Civilization in the Entire Universe?!—But I ignored the hint and continued to stomp and howl, encouraged by what they were whispering to one another:
—Psst!
—What do you want?
—You hear that?
—How can I help but hear it?
—He practically kicked my head in.
—You can get another.
—But I can’t sleep.
—What?
—I said, I can’t sleep.
—He’s curious—whispered a third.
—He’s awfully curious!
—This is really too much. We’ll have to do something.
—Like what?
—I don’t know… Change his personality?
—No, that’s unethical…
—Just listen to him howl!
—Wait, I have an idea…
They whispered something while I kept jumping around, raising an unholy racket, concentrating my efforts especially in the area where I heard them talking. Then, just as I was doing a headstand on someone’s abdomen, everything went black, and the next thing I knew, I was back on my ship and out in space. My limbs ached from all that exercise, but I could hardly move them anyway, for I was sitting in a pile of trombones, jars of green marmalade, teddy bears, platinum glockenspiels, ducats and doubloons, golden earmuffs, bracelets and brooches glittering so bright they hurt my eyes. When finally I crawled out from under all these valuables and dragged myself to a window, I saw that the constellations were entirely different—not a trace of anything remotely resembling a square sun! A few quick calculations revealed that I would have to travel six thousand years at top velocity to get back to the H. P. L. D.’s. They had disposed of me, indeed. And going back would achieve nothing, that was clear: they would merely send me packing again with that instantaneous hyperspatial telekinesis of theirs, or whatever it was. And so, my good Bonhomius, I decided to tackle the problem in an altogether different way.…” And with these words, most kind and noble sir, did the distinguished constructor Klapaucius finish his tale…
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