Stanislaw Lem: Peace on Earth

“Is It speaking?” he whispered as if not wanting to be overheard.

“Yes.”

The message surprised me, but I relayed it:

“It wants a piece of cake.”

The joy on the professor’s face made my blood run cold. Assuring the left hand that if it was patient it would have cake, I said to the professor:

“From your scientific point of view it would be wonderful if It became more independent. I don’t hold that against you, I understand how fantastic it would be having two fully developed individuals in a single body, so much to learn, so many experiments to run, and all that. But I’m not thrilled by the thought of having a democracy established in my head. I want to be less plural, not more.”

“You are giving me a vote of no confidence? Well, I can understand that.” The professor smiled sympathetically. “First let me assure you that all this information will remain confidential. My professional oath of secrecy. Beyond that, I will suggest no therapy for you. You must do what you believe is best. I hope you’ll think it over carefully. Will you be in Melbourne long?”

“I don’t know yet. In any case, I’ll call you.”

Tarantoga, sitting in the waiting room, jumped up when he saw me.

“Well? Professor…? Ijon…?”

“No decisions have been made,” said McIntyre in an official tone. “Mr. Tichy has various things to consider. I am at his service.”

Being a man of my word, I asked the taxi driver to stop at a bakery on the way, and bought a piece of cake and had to eat it immediately in the car because It insisted, even though I wasn’t in the mood for anything sweet. But I had decided, for the present at least, not to torment myself with questions such as who wanted the cake, since no one but me could answer a question like that, and I couldn’t.

Tarantoga and I had adjoining rooms, so I went to his and filled him in on what happened with McIntyre. My hand interrupted me several times because it was dissatisfied. The cake had been flavored with licorice, which I can’t stand. I ate it anyway, thinking I was doing it for It, but apparently It and I — or I and I — have the same taste. Which is understandable, in that the hand can’t eat by itself and It and I do have a mouth, palate, and tongue in common. I had the feeling I was in a dream, part nightmare, part comedy, and carrying not an infant exactly but a small, spoiled, precocious child. I remembered one psychologist’s theory that small children didn’t have a continuous consciousness because the fibers of the commissure were still undeveloped.

“A letter for you.” With these words Tarantoga brought me out of my reverie. I was surprised: no one knew where I was. The letter was postmarked Mexico City, airmail, no return address. In the envelope was a square of paper with the typed words: “He’s from the LA.”

Nothing more. I turned the paper over. It was blank. Tarantoga took it, looked at it, and then at me:

“What does this mean? Do you understand it?”

“No. Yes… the LA is the Lunar Agency. They were the ones who sent me.”

“To the moon?”

“Yes. On a reconnaissance mission. I was supposed to submit a report afterward.”

“And did you?”

“Yes. I wrote what I remembered. And gave it to the barber.”

“Barber?”

“That was the arrangement. Instead of going to them. But who is ‘he’? It must be McIntyre. I haven’t seen anyone else here.”

“Wait. I don’t understand. What was in the report?”

“I can’t tell that even to you. It’s top-secret. But there wasn’t much in it. I forgot a great deal.”

“After your accident?”

“Yes. What are you doing, professor?”

Tarantoga turned the torn envelope over. Someone had printed in pencil, inside: “Burn this. Don’t let the right sink the left.”

I didn’t understand it, yet there was some sense in it. Suddenly I looked at Tarantoga with widened eyes:

“I begin to see. Neither message, on the envelope or in the letter, has proper nouns. Did you notice?”

“So?”

“It understands nouns best. Whoever sent this wants to tell me something and not It…”

As I was saying this, I pointed to my right temple with my right hand. Tarantoga got up, paced the room, drummed his fingers on the table, and said:

“In other words, McIntyre is…”

“Don’t say it.”

I took a notepad from my pocket and wrote on a fresh page: “It understands what it hears better than what it reads. We’ll have to communicate, for a while, in this matter, by writing to each other. My guess is that the things I didn’t put into my report to the LA because I couldn’t remember, It remembers, and that someone knows or at least suspects this. I won’t phone M. or go back to him, because he’s probably the ‘he’ in the letter. He wanted to ask It questions. Perhaps to interrogate It. Please write your reply.”

Tarantoga read my note and frowned. Saying nothing, he bent over the table and wrote: “But if he is from the LA, why this deviousness? The LA can contact you directly, no?”

I wrote back: “Among those to whom I turned in NY there must have been someone from the LA. Through him they learned that I found a way to talk to It. But I left before they could try that themselves. If the anonymous letter is telling the truth, the son of the man who was your father’s friend was supposed to take over. To find out, without arousing my suspicions, what It remembers. Whereas, if they turned to me directly, officially, I could refuse to submit to such an interrogation, and they would be up a tree because legally It is not a separate person and they would need my consent to talk to It. Please use participles, pronouns, verbs, and avoid simple syntax.”

The professor tore out the page I had written on, put it in his pocket, and wrote: “But why is it that you don’t want It to know what is now happening?”

“To be safe. Because of what was written inside that envelope. It can’t be from the LA because the LA obviously wouldn’t warn me about itself. Someone else wrote it.”

Tarantoga’s reply this time was brief:

“Who?”

“About what is taking place where I was and had the accident, many parties would love to know. The LA has plenty of competition. I believe we should avoid the company of kangaroos. Let’s get out of here. It doesn’t understand the imperative mood.”

Tarantoga took all the pieces of paper from his pocket, rolled them into a ball with the letter and envelope, lit it with a match, and tossed it into the fireplace. He watched the paper shrivel into ash.

“I’m on my way to a travel agent,” he said. “And what will you do now?”

“Shave,” I said. “This beard itches like the devil and obviously is no longer needed. The faster the better, professor. Maybe there’s a night flight. And don’t tell me where we’re going.”

As I shaved in the bathroom and looked in the mirror, I made faces. The left eye didn’t even blink. I appeared completely ordinary. When I packed, I looked at my left hand and leg now and then, but they behaved normally. At the last moment, however, as I was putting my ties on top of the folded clothes in the suitcase, the left hand took the green tie with brown dots, a tie I liked though it was quite old, and threw it on the floor. It, apparently, didn’t like it. I picked up the tie with my right hand and tried to make the left hand take part of it so we could lay it neatly in the suitcase. What happened next had happened more than once before: the arm obeyed but the fingers didn’t. They opened, and the tie fell on the bed.

“Hopeless,” I sighed, stuffed the tie into the suitcase with my right hand, and closed the suitcase. Tarantoga appeared in the doorway, showed me two tickets without saying a word, and went to pack.