Stanislaw Lem - Peace on Earth

Suddenly a large tank came at me out of that darkness, squat, huge, its wide treads grinding and rumbling, which was odd because one can’t hear on the moon, there’s no air to carry the sound waves. Nevertheless I heard the noise, heard even the gravel crunching under the steel tracks. The tank bore down on me. Behind it appeared a long column of other tanks. I would gladly have stepped aside to let them pass, but it was too narrow where I stood. I was going to disperse but when the first tank reached me, it went through like fog, making everything a little darker for a couple of seconds. More phantoms, I thought, and let the next tanks roll through me. After them came a line of soldiers, ordinary soldiers, with almond eyes, bayonets fixed on short rifles, and among them walked an officer with a saber and a flag that displayed the rising sun. They all went through me like smoke, and I was alone again. It grew darker in the deepening ravine so I turned on my lights, which bordered all my eyes, and proceeding more slowly I came to the mouth of a cave behind a rampart of scrap iron. The opening was too low for me, so in order not to have to keep stooping I changed into a dachshund-centaur, which sounds stupid but is descriptive because my legs shortened and my belly brushed stones as I entered the moon’s interior, going where no human being had ever set foot though my feet weren’t exactly human either. I stumbled more and more, my hooves slipping on gravel, when I remembered what I was capable of and turned them into padded paws that held the floor like a lion’s or tiger’s. I felt more at home in my new body but didn’t have time to play games. Lighting up the irregularly cut walls of the cave, I reached a grating that filled the entire passageway, and I thought how polite these Japanese weapons were to intruders because on the ceiling above the grating glowed the large sign: NOT ENTERING! NOT TO TRESPASS THIS BARRIER! YOU HAVE WARNING TO KEEP OUT! and beyond the bars floated a phosphorescent skull and cross-bones with the words DEATH IS A VERY PERMANENT CONDITION. That didn’t deter me. I went to powder, passed through the grating, and pulled myself together on the other side. The natural stone of the corridor gave way to an oval tunnel, its walls bright and smooth like ceramic. I tapped it with a finger, and from the place I touched a small root emerged and flattened into a plaque that read MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN. It was clear they weren’t joking but I hadn’t come this far to retreat now, so I proceeded on quiet paws, feeling my tail following softly, ready to come to my assistance at any moment. It didn’t bother me that Control couldn’t see me. The radio had fallen silent, and I could hear only a low, plaintive sound, like keening. I came to a wider place where the tunnel forked. Above the left passage glowed a neon THIS IS LAST WARNING but over the right there was no sign so I went left of course and saw white: a wall, and an enormous armored door with a row of locks and keyholes, like a door to a sultan’s treasure. I clouded my right hand and slipped it through one of the keyholes. It was darker than midnight inside. I felt around, then slipped my whole body through in the form of a mist or aerosol, hoping that intruders flowing through keyholes was something the Japanese or rather their machines hadn’t foreseen. I had difficulty breathing but only figuratively because I didn’t breathe. I lit up the place not only with the lights around all my eyes but also with my whole self, like a glowworm, remembering the versatility of this LEM. So much light blinded me at first, but I soon grew accustomed to it.

The tunnel kept descending, straight as an arrow, until it was blocked by a curtain of what seemed ordinary straw. I pushed it aside and entered a large room lit with ceiling lights. The scene was one of complete chaos. In the center lay a ruin among large shiny pieces of porcelain; it looked like a supercomputer taken apart by a bomb. Broken curling cables went in and out between these fragments covered with crushed glass and the glittering flakes of integrated chips. Someone had been here before me and wreaked havoc in the heart of the Japanese weapons complex. The strangest part was that the giant computer, several stories high, had been smashed by a force acting from within and probably from the bottom up, since its thick armor-plated walls had buckled and split outward. Some of the sections were like library shelves or cabinets, filled with tight coils of wire, banks of switches, and circuit boards. As if an unbelievable hand had struck up into this colossus and ripped and shattered, but in that case I should have been able to see that hand in the center of the destruction. So I began climbing the rubble, which was as dead and empty as a plundered pyramid, and reached the top and looked down.

Someone lay there as if in a deep and well-earned sleep. At first I thought this was the same robot who had greeted me so warmly during my second reconnaissance, calling me brother only to knock me flat and open me like a can of sardines. I looked at him lying at the bottom of the uneven funnel of debris from the smashed computer. He was man-shaped though larger than a man. There is no hurry to wake him up, I thought. Better to figure out first what happened here. Obviously the Japanese weapons factory had not wished this attack upon itself. I dismissed the hara-kiri possibility as unlikely. Seeing as the borders between sectors were so well guarded, the invasion may have been carried out below them, by burrowing through the rock. In that way the unknown attacker could have made it to the very heart of the computer arsenal to demolish it. I should question this robot who slept so soundly after completing his murderous mission. The prospect didn’t fill me with enthusiasm. In my head I went through all the different forms I could assume, to choose the one that would be safest for our conversation, because this character, awakened, might prove hostile. I couldn’t speak as a cloud but could as a partial cloud, a cloud with a voice box inside it. That seemed the most prudent. To wake the giant I didn’t bother with niceties but pushed a chunk of computer so it would roll down on him, and changed myself as quickly as I could. It hit his head, which made the whole mountain of rubble tremble, and other pieces of electronic debris began to sift down. He got to his feet immediately, stood at attention, and barked:

“Mission a success! Enemy position taken, for the fatherland! Reporting for further instructions!”

“At ease,” I said.

He probably hadn’t expected a command like that but he relaxed, stood with his legs apart, and only then noticed me. Something inside him whirred.

“Hello,” he said. “How are you? You’re a little hazy, my friend. But it’s good that you’ve finally come. Come closer, we’ll have a chat, sing a song, put our heads together. You’ll like it with us. We’re meek, peaceful, we don’t want war, we hate war. Which sector are you from exactly…” he added in a different tone, as if suddenly suspicious, or else he had switched to a more appropriate program. What lay around us was hardly evidence of peaceful activity. He held out his huge, iron right hand, and I saw that each finger was a muzzle.

“You want to shoot a friend?” I asked, wafting gently over the porcelain heap. “Well then go ahead, brother. Shoot, and may it do you good.”

“A Japanese spy!” he barked, blasting at me with all five fingers. Pieces of wall fell but I, still hovering calmly above him, lowered my voice box so it wouldn’t be hit. Thickening the bottom half of the cloud, which was myself, I pushed a chunk of computer the size of a chest of drawers, and it bore down on him, carrying with it an avalanche of rubble.

“An attack!” he yelled. “I’ll draw their fire! For the fatherland!”