Stanislaw Lem: Mortal Engines

“The electrosaur is no more,” cried the joyful King, bursting into the vault. “Thank you, old computer … many thanks … you have worked hard … you have earned a rest, so now I will disconnect you.”

“Not so fast, my dear,” the computer replied. “I do the job and you want to disconnect me, and you no longer call me Your Ferromagneticity?! That’s not nice, not nice at all! Now I myself will change into an electrosaur, yes, and drive you from the kingdom, and most certainly rule better than you, for you always consulted me in all the more important matters, therefore it was really I who ruled all along, and not you…”

And huffing, puffing, it began to change into an electrosaur; flaming electroclaws were already protruding from its sides when the King, breathless with fright, tore the slippers off his feet, rushed up to it and with the slippers began beating blindly at its tubes! The computer chugged, choked, and got muddled in its program—instead of the word “electrosaur” it read “electrosauce,” and before the King’s very eyes the computer, wheezing more and more softly, turned into an enormous, gleaming-golden heap of electrosauce, which, still sizzling, emitted all its charge in deep-blue sparks, leaving Poleander to stare dumbstruck at only a great, steaming pool of gravy…

With a sigh the King put on his slippers and returned to the royal bedchamber. However from that time on he was an altogether different king: the events he had undergone made his nature less bellicose, and to the end of his days he engaged exclusively in civilian cybernetics, and left the military kind strictly alone.

The Argonautians were the first of the stellar tribes to tame for metaldom the planetary ocean depths, a realm thought by robots of little courage to be closed to intelligence forever. One of the emerald links of their empire is Aqueon, which shines in the northern sky like a great sapphire in a necklace of topazes. On this underwater planet there reigned, many a year ago, His Supreme Fishiness King Hydrops. One morning he summoned to the throne room his four royal ministers, and, when they had floated down before him on their faces, he spoke to them thus, during which his Lord High Gillard, all in emeralds, moved above him a broad and finsome fan:

“Never-rusting Worthies! For fifteen centuries now have I ruled Aqueon, its underwater cities and blue-meadowed settlements; in that time I did expand the borders of our kingdom, inundating numerous continents, yet in this never sullied the waterproof standard handed down to me by my sire, Ichthyocrates. Indeed, in battles against the ever hostile Microcytes I won a string of victories, whose glory it would ill beseem me to describe. I feel, however, that the crown for me becomes a cheerless burden, and therefore have resolved to acquire a son, one who will with dignity continue my just rule upon the throne of the Innocuids. And so I turn to you, my faithful Hydrocyber Amassid, to you, great programmist Dioptricus, and to you, Philonaut and Minogar, who are my court contrivancers, that you invent for me a son. He must be wise, yet not overly given to books, for too much knowledge numbs the will for action. He must be good, but again not to excess. I would have him be brave as well, yet not audacious, sensitive yet not tender-hearted; and finally, let him resemble me, let his sides be covered by the same tantalum shell, and the crystals of his mind, let them be as transparent as this water that surrounds us, strengthens us, sustains us! And now set ye to work, in the name of the Great Matrix!”

Dioptricus, Minogar, Philonaut and Amassid bowed low and swam away in silence, and each in his heart pondered the King’s words, though not entirely as the mighty Hydrops would have liked. For Minogar above all wished to seize the throne, Philonaut secretly sided with the enemies of the Argonautians, the Microcytes, while Amassid and Dioptricus were mortal enemies and each more than anything longed for the downfall of the other, and of the remaining dignitaries as well.

“It is the King’s desire that we design him a son,” thought Amassid. “What could be simpler, therefore, than to imprint upon the micromatrix of the prince a loathing for Dioptricus, that misbegotten knave inflated like a bladder? Then, after assuming power, the prince would immediately order him smothered, by having his head help up in air. That would be perfect. However,” thought further the illustrious Hydrocyber, “Dioptricus is doubtless hatching some similar intrigue, and as a programmist he has—unfortunately—a number of opportunities to imbue the future prince with hatred of me. A nasty business, this! I must keep my eyes wide open when together we put the matrix into the baby kiln!”

“The simplest thing would be,” at the same time mused the worthy Philonaut, “to implant in the prince sympathy towards the Microcytes. But this would be noticed at once and the King would have me disconnected. One might then only instill in the prince love for small forms—that would be a great deal safer. If they subject me to interrogation I can say that it was of course only underwater minutiae I had in mind, and simply forgot to safeguard the son’s program with the qualification that whatever is not underwater should not be loved. At the very worst the King will relieve me—for this—of my Order of the Great Fluvium, but will not relieve me of my head, which is a thing most precious to me and could not later be restored, not even by Nanoxerus himself, ruler of the Microcytes!”

“Wherefore are you silent, worthy lords?” Minogar now spoke. “We should, I trow, begin our work at once, for surely there can be nothing more sacred than the King’s command!”

“For that very reason do I think upon it,” said Philonaut quickly, and Dioptricus and Amassid added in a single voice:

“We are ready!”

And so, in accordance with the ancient custom, they gave orders for themselves to be locked inside a room with walls of emerald scales, its door sealed seven times from without with undersea resin, and Megacystes himself, Lord of Planetary Floods, stamped upon the seals his crest of the Still Water. No one now could interfere with their work, until such time as, at the signal of its completion, when in a deliberate whirlpool they flushed their aborted efforts out the hatch, the seals would be broken and the great ceremony of filial inauguration begun.

The four dignitaries then settled down to the task at hand, but made little progress withal. For they thought not of how to embody in the prince those virtues which Hydrops desired, but rather how to outwit both the King and each of his three never-rusting rivals in this difficult creative enterprise.

The King grew impatient, eight days and nights had now passed with his son designers behind locked doors, and they gave no sign that the matter was nearing a successful conclusion. They were in fact trying to outlast one another, each waiting for the others to be exhausted, that he might then quickly write into the crystal lattice of the matrix that which in the prince could be turned to his own advantage.

For Minogar was spurred by the thirst for power, Philonaut by the lure of mammon, which the Microcytes had promised him, and Amassid and Dioptricus by their mutual enmity.

Having in this way exhausted more his patience than his strength, the wily Philonaut said:

“I cannot understand, my worthy lords, why our work drags on so. The King, after all, gave us most precise instructions; had we followed them, the prince would by now be finished. I begin to suspect that your delay is occasioned by something connected with the royal son-incepting in a way other than that which would be dear to the heart of our sovereign. If things continue thus, I shall with the deepest regret feel compelled to submit a votum separatum, in other words…”