Stanislaw Lem: Peace on Earth

“And the Agency doesn’t want that?”

“The Agency itself is torn. Each interest group has its people in it. Otherwise the Agency would not represent Earth. You have become a trump card in this game. Possibly the highest.”

“I? Because of my problem?”

“Exactly. Whatever information Shapiro and his crew get out of you cannot be verified, after all. Except for a few people no one will know whether they really learned something or only said they did and that they would soon announce it to the public or first go with it to the Security Council. But the announcing doesn’t matter. The point is that no one, including you, will know whether they are lying or telling the truth.”

“It would probably be a lie, since you said before that the verdict has already been delivered…”

“That’s how it looks. But I am not omniscient. In any case they can’t use force on you.”

“But Shapiro said…”

“The attempted abductions? But they were arranged, Tichy, in such a way that you would not lose your life. Because if you did, no one would have anything.”

“Who were they?”

“Different parties and for different purposes. First, to have you. Later, when such efforts were foiled, to frighten you a little, push you, soften you up, so you would run into the welcoming arms of Shapiro.”

“Wait, are you saying that the Agency itself… that the later attacks were staged?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Suppose that nevertheless I let them examine me. What would happen?”

“Bridge or poker.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The game, the bidding. One can foresee the beginning but not what follows. It’s clear that on the moon things didn’t happen as they were supposed to. We’re left with the question: Is or is not Earth in danger? So far everything suggests there is no danger and will be none for the next few hundred years, being very conservative. Perhaps for the next few thousand years or even million. But politics cannot think in such distant terms. We can sleep peacefully till the year three thousand. But many do not want to sleep peacefully. Many need a harmless moon.”

“To do what?”

“To make sure no nation has an arsenal left there, or anything else. That the whole lunar project is defunct, the Geneva Agreement meaningless, and we all have to go back to Clausewitz.”

“So either way it ends badly? If there’s a true threat of invasion, we have to arm ourselves against the moon, and if there’s not, we return to the old way, the Earth way, is that it?”

“That’s it. You grasp the situation.”

“A nice situation. And the secret hidden in my head isn’t worth a plugged nickel…”

“You’re wrong there. Depending on what result they announce from the examination of your person, different scenarios can be set up.”

“Scenarios?”

“According to our computer simulation there are at least twenty. Not from the real result, of course, but from what they announce as the result.”

“You don’t know what that is?”

“No, because they themselves don’t know yet. Even Shapiro’s group is divided. You have to understand, Tichy, the lie they announce will not be a hundred-percent. They could do that only if they were an absolutely solid, sure conspiracy of professional crooks. Which they’re not. They can’t even rule out the possibility that you, although not learning anything from the examination about the contents of your right brain, will nevertheless join the poker game.”

“How?”

“Don’t be naive. What’s to stop you from writing afterward to the New York Times or the Züricher, or wherever you like, and saying that they added, doctored, falsified things? Think of the uproar! Experts would come forward to defend you, to ask for new and better controlled tests. It would be a royal mess.”

“If you see this all so clearly, why don’t Shapiro’s men?”

“But what else can they do other than persuade you to submit to an examination? We are all, despite our different roles, prisoners of the situation.”

“They could kill me.”

“No good. Even if you killed yourself, the suspicion that you were murdered would travel around the world.”

“I can’t believe it’s impossible to repeat what I did on the moon. Shapiro said that they tried and nothing came of it, but surely new scouts could be sent.”

“True, but that too is a labyrinth. You are surprised? Tichy, there is not much time left. We have a stalemate on the global board, with no moves to ensure peace, only different kinds of risk.”

“And what do you advise me as my guardian angel?”

“To take no one’s advice, mine included. I too represent certain interests, I’m not hiding it, it was neither God nor Providence that sent me to you, only a group that doesn’t want the arms race started again.”

“And what does this group wish me to do?”

“Nothing at the moment. Nothing at all. Stay here. Don’t telephone Shapiro. Keep in touch with crazy old Kramer during the next two weeks, or it might be only days, and we’ll see what develops.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“You shouldn’t, as I said. I’ve given you the general picture, that is all. The main transformer was disconnected for about an hour, and now I’ll take my electronic toys and go to bed, because I’m a millionaire suffering from depression, aren’t I? See you later, Jonathan.”

“Good night, Adelaide,” I said.

Kramer crawled to the door, pushed it open, and I thought I saw someone standing in the hall who gave him a sign. Kramer got to his feet, went out, and shut the door quietly behind him. I sat there, my legs pins and needles, until the lights went back on.

Turning them off, I got into bed. Where Kramer had been sitting lay an object like a flattened ring. I picked it up. There was a rolled piece of paper stuck inside. I unrolled it. “Just in case,” said the hasty scrawl. I tried putting the ring on my finger. It was gray, a dull metal, strangely heavy, maybe lead? On one side it had a hump like a lima bean with a pinhole through it. The ring fit only on my little finger. For some reason it troubled me more than both my visitors. What was it for? I tried scratching a windowpane with it. It left no mark on the glass. I licked it. Salty. To keep the ring on or not? I decided to keep it on. I looked at my watch. It was after midnight but I wasn’t sleepy. I didn’t even know what to worry about first. Perhaps the fact that my left arm and leg had been so well behaved, because their passivity, it seemed to me as I grew drowsy, might be a trap, a trap this time from within. I lay half-awake, or else half-asleep, I didn’t know which, and puzzled over this for a long time, until it grew light. Dawn, I thought, therefore I must have managed to sleep a few hours after all, except that the light wasn’t coming from the curtained window, it was coming from under the door.

The light was curiously strong, as if someone were directing a spotlight at the threshold of my room. I sat up. Something was flowing in across the floor, not water, more like mercury. It rolled in tiny balls, came together in a wide puddle that gathered around the small rug before my bed, and in the light from under the door came other rivulets of that strange metallic liquid. Now almost the whole floor gleamed like a mercury mirror. I switched on the table lamp. The stuff wasn’t mercury, it had more the color of tarnished silver. There was so much of it now that the rug floated, then the light behind the door went out. I sat and watched wide-eyed. The syrupy liquid separated into drops and the drops clumped together to form a mushroom shape that swelled like leavened dough and stiffened and lifted. This had to be a dream, I told myself, and yet I didn’t dare let my bare feet touch the “quicksilver,” which was indeed a metaphor come true, for quick meant living and this moved like a thing alive, though not animal or vegetable. The monster changed into a cocoon, a shell, armor that was more and more humanoid, though full of holes, especially the gaping slit in front. When I tried recreating that metamorphosis in my memory, which was much later, the best comparison I could think of was watching a film run in reverse: as if someone had built a weird weapon and then subjected it to high temperature so it would melt, except that what took place before my eyes was all backward, first the liquid, then the hollowed-out body rising from it. The figure lost its sheen now and resembled a large store-window mannequin with a hairless head and face without mouth or nose though two round holes could serve as eyes. Then it turned into a woman, or not a woman but the statue of a woman, empty inside and open like a cupboard, and this statue began to extrude its own clothes, first white underwear then over that a light-green dress.