Stanislaw Lem: Peace on Earth

“From the sun. It’s estimated that there are a few trillion of them now, in the air, in the oceans, everywhere.”

“And doing nothing?”

“So far. Which has caused great concern.”

“Why?”

“The sense that this was planned. If you landed, there must have been a reason. But what? They want to know.”

“But I remember nothing, and likewise the other half of me…”

“They are unaware that you are now talking to yourself. In addition, there are different kinds of amnesia. Under hypnosis or in certain other ways one can obtain things from a person that he cannot recall for the life of him. They have been careful with you lest some shock or trauma to your brain damage or wipe out completely what you may know though you can’t dredge it up. Anyway our people disagree about how to proceed with the examination… which until now has spared you much.”

“Yes, I think I know where I stand in this game… But why didn’t the reconnaissance flights that followed yield results?”

“Who told you that?”

“My first visitor. The neurologist.”

“What did he say exactly?”

“That the scouts returned but they’d been shown stage sets. That’s how he put it.”

“Not true. As far as I know, there were three more flights. Two teleferic, and all their remotes were destroyed. They didn’t use mine, only conventional remotes. Equipped with special rockets, however, to shoot samples of the soil up to the ship. But nothing came of that.”

“Who destroyed them?”

“Unknown, because communication was cut off early. When they landed, the area in a radius of several miles became covered with a fog opaque to radar.”

“Something new. And the third scout?”

“He went, landed, and returned. With complete amnesia. He woke up back on his ship. Or so I heard. It might not be the truth. I never saw him. The murkier this business becomes, the more secrecy surrounds it. I don’t know if he too brought back dust. I assume they’re examining the poor man but without success, since they’re still taking such good care of you.”

“What should I do?”

“The situation looks bad but is not hopeless. Very soon now the selenocytes will have paralyzed the last of the moon weapons. Shorting them all out. The moon project has already been written off, not officially yet but that’s not the point. A couple of top information scientists here believe that the moon has begun to take an interest in Earth. They say: ‘The selenosphere has entered the biosphere.’ “

“An invasion, then?”

“No, probably not, or at least not in any traditional sense. A multitude of genies were sent in well-corked bottles. They broke out, battled each other, and as a side effect microorganisms appeared, vital though not alive. It doesn’t have the look of a planned invasion. Rather of an epidemic, a pandemic.”

“I don’t understand the difference.”

“I can present this only in metaphors. The selenosphere reacts to an intruder the way the immune system reacts to a foreign body or an antigen. Even if that’s not quite right, we have no other way of conceptualizing it. The two scouts who went after you had at their disposal the very latest in weaponry. I don’t know the details, but it was not a conventional device, or nuclear. The Agency is keeping what happened on the moon hush-hush, but the dust clouds were so large that they could be seen and photographed by many observatories. What is more — when the clouds dissipated, the ground was changed. Holes had formed, craters, but completely unlike the moon’s typical craters. This the Agency was unable to keep secret, so it said nothing. It was only then that headquarters began to see that the more strong-arm the methods used for reconnaissance, the more strong-arm the counteroffensive would be.”

“So there you are…”

“No. Because we are dealing not with an adversary or enemy, but only with a kind of giant anthill. Such strange theories have occurred to me, I won’t even repeat them. But our time is up. Stay put. As long as they don’t go completely mad, they’ll leave you alone. I’ll be away for three days, will talk to you Saturday at this time if I can. Keep well, intrepid Missionary.”

“Until then,” I said but don’t know if he heard me because there was no answer. I took the olive out of my ear and after a moment of thought wrapped it in tinfoil and hid it in a box of chocolates. I had plenty to think about. I opened the curtains before I got into bed. The moths had left, probably drawn by the bright windows of the other pavilions around the garden. The moon sailed through white, feathery clouds. “We’ve done it this time,” I said to myself, pulling the covers up to my head.

Next morning Kramer knocked at my door while I was still in bed. He told me that yesterday Padderhorn had swallowed a fork. The man had swallowed cutlery before in order to kill himself. Last week he swallowed a shoehorn. They did an esophagoscopy on him — and gave him a new shoehorn a foot and a half long but he pinched someone’s fork in the dining hall.

“You came to talk about flatware?” I asked politely.

Kramer sighed, buttoned the top button of his pajamas, and sat in an armchair beside my bed. “No…” he said in a surprisingly weak voice. “It’s not good, Jonathan.”

“Depends on for whom, Adelaide,” I replied. “In any case I have no intention of swallowing anything.”

“It’s really not good,” Kramer said. He folded his hands over his stomach and twirled his thumbs. “I’m afraid for you, Jonathan.”

“Don’t be,” I said plumping up my pillow behind my head. “I am well protected. Do you know about the selenocytes?”

I took him by such surprise that his mouth fell open. Then his face grew stupid, the face of a millionaire who had nothing left to fantasize about.

“I know you heard me. And perhaps you know about the selenosphere too? Yes? Unless your rank is not high enough for you to be privy. Did they tell you about the sad fate of the quantum collapsar weapon in the last missions? About the clouds above the Mare Ignium? But no, that they wouldn’t tell you…”

He sat staring at me wide-eyed and breathless.

“Do me a favor, Adelaide, and pass that box of chocolates on the desk.” I smiled at him. “I like something sweet before breakfast…”

As he didn’t move, I hopped out of bed and got the box myself. Getting back under the covers, I held it out to him, but keeping my thumb over the piece in the corner.

“Go ahead.”

“How do you know?” he asked in a hoarse voice. “Who…?”

“No need to get upset,” I said, not too clearly because I had caramel on the roof of my mouth. “What I know, I know. And not only what happened to me on the moon but also the troubles of my colleagues.”

He had difficulty breathing. He looked around the room as if he were there for the first time.

“Transmitters, secret lines, antennas, modulators, yes?” I went on. “There’s nothing here except that the showerhead leaks a little. Needs a new washer. Why are you surprised? Can it be you don’t know that they are inside me?"

He sat speechless. He wiped the sweat from his nose. He tugged on an earlobe. I watched him with sympathy.

The chocolates were good. I had to be careful to leave enough in the box. Licking my lips, I said, “Adelaide, move, speak, you’re making me feel bad. You were afraid for me and now I’m afraid for you. You think you’ll be in trouble? Perhaps, if you behave, I can protect you, you know with whose help.”

I was bluffing. But why shouldn’t I? The fact that these few words had so dismayed him proved the powerlessness of whatever power he represented.

“I promise not to name names so I won’t get you into further trouble.”