Lem, Stanislaw (12 page)

Special Case of a Bogus Polypolice Transmogrification Conversion on

an Oscillating Harmonic Field of Glass Bells and Green Gig, Kerosene

Lamp on the Left to Divert Attention, Solved by Beastly

Incarceration-Concatenation,” which was subsequently exploited

by the tabloids as "The Police State Rears Its Ugly Head."

Obviously none of the ministers, dignitaries or huntsmen understood a

single word of what was said, but that hardly mattered. The loving

subjects of King Krool knew not whether they should despise these

constructors or stand and gape in awe and admiration.

Now all was in readiness for takeoff.

Trurl, as stipulated in the agreement, went through the King's

private chambers with a large sack and calmly appropriated whatever

object he took a fancy to. Finally, the carriage arrived and took the

victors to the spaceport, where a crowd cheered wildly and a

children's chorus sang, then a charming little girl in local costume

curtsied and presented them with a ribboned nosegay, and

high-ranking officials took turns to express their undying gratitude,

bidding them both a fond farewell, and the band played, several

ladies fainted, and then a hush fell over the multitude. Klapaucius

had pulled a tooth from his mouth, not an ordinary tooth but a

transmitter-receiver, a two-way bicuspid. He threw a tiny switch and

a sandstorm appeared on the horizon, growing and growing, whirling

faster and faster, until it dropped into an empty space between

the ship and the crowd and came to a sudden stop, scattering dust and

debris in all directions. Everyone gasped and stepped back—there

stood the beast, looking unusually bestial as it flashed its laser

eyes and flailed its dragon tail!

"The King, if you please,"

said Klapaucius. But the beast answered, speaking in a perfectly

normal voice:

"Not on your life. It's my turn

now to make demands…"

"What? Have you gone mad? You

have to obey, it's in the matrix!" shouted Klapaucius. Everyone

stared, thunderstruck.

"Matrix-schmatrix. Look pal, I'm

not just any beast, I'm algorithmic, heuristic and sadistic, fully

automatic and autocratic, that means undemocratic, and I've got

loads of loops and plenty of feedback so none of that back talk or

I'll clap you in irons, that means in the clink with the King, in the

brig with the green gig, get me?"

"I'll give you feedback!"

roared Klapaucius, furious. But Trurl asked the beast:

"What exactly do you want?"

And he sneaked around behind

Klapaucius and pulled out a special tooth of his own, so the beast

wouldn't see.

"Well, first of all I want to

marry—"

But they never learned whom in

particular the beast had in mind, for Trurl threw a tiny switch and

quickly chanted:

"Eeny, meeny, miney, mo, input,

output, out—you—go!"

The fantastically complex

electromagnetic wave system that held the beast's atoms in place now

came apart under the influence of those words, and the beast blinked,

wiggled its ears, swallowed, tried to pull itself together, but

before it could even grit its teeth there was a hot gust of wind, a

strong smell of ozone, then nothing left to pull together, just a

little mound of ashes and the King standing in the middle, safe and

sound, but in great need of a bath and mortified to tears that it had

come to this.

"That'll cut you down to size,"

said Trurl, and no one knew whether he meant the beast or the King.

In either case, the algorithm had done its job well.

"And now, gentlemen," Trurl

concluded, "if you'll kindly help the Master of the Royal Hunt

into his cage, we can be on our way …"

The

Third Sally

Or

The Dragons

of

Probability

Trurl and Klapaucius were former

pupils of the great Cerebron of Umptor, who for forty-seven years in

the School of Higher Neantical Nillity expounded the General Theory

of Dragons. Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this

simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice

for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in

fact wholly unconcerned with what
does
exist. Indeed, the

banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no

need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron,

attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct

kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely

hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each

nonexisted in an entirely different way. And then there were the

imaginary dragons, and the a-, anti-and minus-dragons (colloquially

termed nots, noughts and oughtn'ts by the experts), the minuses

being the most interesting on account of the well-known dracological

paradox: when two minuses hypercontiguate (an operation in the

algebra of dragons corresponding roughly to simple

multiplication), the product is 0.6 dragon, a real nonplusser. Bitter

controversy raged among the experts on the question of whether, as

half of them claimed, this fractional beast began from the head down

or, as the other half maintained, from the tail up. Trurl and

Klapaucius made a great contribution by showing the error of both

positions. They were the first to apply probability theory to this

area and, in so doing, created the field of statistical draconics,

which says that dragons are thermodynamically impossible only in the

probabilistic sense, as are elves, fairies, gnomes, witches, pixies

and the like. Using the general equation of improbability, the two

constructors obtained the coefficients of pixation, elfinity,

kobolding,
etc.
They found that for the spontaneous manifestation of

an average dragon, one would have to wait a good sixteen

quintoquadrillion heptillion years. In other words, the whole problem

would have remained a mathematical curiosity had it not been for that

famous tinkering passion of Trurl, who decided to examine the

nonphenome non empirically. First, as he was dealing with the highly

improbable, he invented a probability amplifier and ran tests in his

basement—then later at the Dracogenic Proving Grounds

established and funded by the Academy. To this day those who (sadly

enough) have no knowledge of the General Theory of Improbability ask

why Trurl probabilized a dragon and not an elf or goblin. The answer

is simply that dragons are more probable than elves or goblins to

begin with. True, Trurl might have gone further with his amplifying

experiments, had not the first been so discouraging—

discouraging in that the materialized dragon tried to make a meal of

him. Fortunately, Klapaucius was nearby and lowered the

probability, and the monster vanished. A number of scholars

subsequently repeated the experiment on a phantasmatron, but, as they

lacked the necessary know-how and sang-froid, a considerable quantity

of dragon spawn, raising an ungodly perturbation, broke loose. Only

then did it become clear that those odious beasts enjoyed an

existence quite different from that of ordinary cupboards, tables and

chairs; for dragons are distinguished by their probability rather

than by their actuality, though granted, that probability is

overwhelming once they've actually come into being. Suppose, for

example, one organizes a hunt for such a dragon, surrounds it, closes

in, beating the brush. The circle of sportsmen, their weapons cocked

and ready, finds only a burnt patch of earth and an unmistakable

smell: the dragon, seeing itself cornered, has slipped from real to

configurational space. An extremely obtuse and brutal creature, it

does this instinctively, of course. Now, ignorant and backward

persons will occasionally demand that you show them this

configurational space of yours, apparently unaware that electrons,

whose existence no one in his right mind would question, also move

exclusively in configurational space, their comings and goings fully

dependent on curves of probability. Though it is easier not to

believe in electrons than in dragons: electrons, at least taken

singly, won't try to make a meal of you.

A colleague of Trurl, one Harborizian

Cybr, was the first to quantize a dragon, detecting a particle known

as the dracotron, the energy of which is measured—obviously—in

units of dracon by a dracometer, and he even determined the

coordinates of its tail, for which he nearly paid with his life. Yet

what did these scientific achievements concern the common folk, who

were now greatly harassed by dragons ranging the countryside, filling

the air with their howls and flames and trampling, and in places even

exacting tribute in the form of young virgins? What did it concern

the poor villagers that Trurl's dragons, indeterministic hence

heuristic, were behaving exactly according to theory though

contrary to all notions of decency, or that his theory could

predict the curve of the tails that demolished their barns and

leveled their crops? It is not surprising, then, that the general

public, instead of appreciating the value of Trurl's revolutionary

invention, held it much against him. A group of individuals

thoroughly benighted in matters of science waylaid the famous

constructor and gave him a good thrashing. Not that this deterred him

and his friend Klapaucius from further experimentation, which showed

that the extent of a dragon's existence depends mainly on its whim,

though also on its degree of satiety, and that the only sure method

of negating it is to reduce the probability to zero or lower. All

this research, naturally enough, took a great deal of time and

energy; meanwhile the dragons that had gotten loose were running

rampant, laying waste to a variety of planets and moons. What was

worse, they multiplied. Which enabled Klapaucius to publish an

excellent article entitled "Covariant Transformation from

Dragons to Dragonets, in the Special Case of Passage from States

Forbidden by the Laws of Physics to Those Forbidden by the Local

Authorities." The article created a sensation in the scientific

world, where there was still talk of the amazing polypolice beast

that had been used by the intrepid constructors against King Krool to

avenge the deaths of their colleagues. But far greater was the

sensation caused by the news that a certain constructor known as

Basiliscus the Gorgonite, traveling through the Galaxy, was

apparently making dragons appear by his presence—and in

places where no one had ever seen a dragon before. Whenever the

situation grew desperate and catastrophe seemed imminent, this

Basiliscus would turn up, approach the sovereign of that

particular area and, settling on some outrageous fee after long hours

of bargaining, would undertake to extirpate the beasts. At which he

usually succeeded, though no one knew quite how, since he worked

in secret and alone. True, the guarantee he offered for dragon

removal—dracolysis—was only statistical; though one ruler

did pay him in similar coin, that is, in ducats that were only

statistically good. After that, the insolent Basiliscus always used

aqua regia to check the metallic reliability of his royal payments.

One sunny afternoon Trurl and Klapaucius met and held the following

conversation:

“Have you heard about this

Basiliscus?" asked Trurl.

"Yes."

"Well, what do you think?"

"I don't like it."

"Nor do I. How do you suppose he

does it?"

"With an amplifier."

"A probability amplifier?"

"Either that, or oscillating

fields."

"Or a paramagnedracic generator."

"You mean, a draculator?"

"Yes."

"Ah."

"But really," cried Trurl,

"that would be criminal! That would mean he was bringing the

dragons with him, only in a potential state, their probability near

zero; then, after landing and getting the lay of the land, he was

increasing the chances, raising the potential, strengthening the

probability until it was almost a certainty. And then, of

course, you have visualization, materialization, full manifestation."

"Of course. And he probably

shuffles the letters of the matrix to make the dragons grand."

"Yes, and the poor people groan

in agony and gore. Terrible!"

"What do you think; does he then

apply an irreversible antidraconian retroectoplasmatron, or simply

lower the probability and walk off with the gold?"

"Hard to say. Though if he's only

improbabilizing, that would be an even greater piece of villainy,

since sooner or later the fractional fluctuations would have to give

rise to a draconic iso-oscillation—and the whole thing would

start all over again."