Stanislaw Lem: Mortal Engines

The Pallatinids had need of neither lamps nor fires at night, for all the mountains of their planet were radioactive, so that during the new moon you could thread a needle. In the day, when the sun was too much for comfort, they slept in the depths of their mountains; only at nighttime did they assemble in the metal valleys. But cruel Archithorius ordered lumps of uranium to be thrown into the kettles used to melt palladium with platinum, and issued a proclamation throughout the land. Each Pallatinid was to come to the royal palace, where his measurements would be taken for a new suit of armor, and pauldrons and breastplates were made, gauntlets and greaves, a visor and helmet, with everything glowing, for that garb was of uranium alloy, and brightest of all shone the earpieces.

After this the Pallatinids could no longer come together and hold council, for if a gathering grew too numerous, it exploded. Thus they had to lead their lives apart, passing one another at a distance, fearful of a chain reaction; Archithorius meanwhile delighted in their sorrow and burdened them with ever newer levies. His mints in the heart of the mountains hammered out ducats of lead, for lead was scarce on Actinuria and had the highest value.

Evil days fell upon the subjects of the cruel ruler. Some wished to foment rebellion against Archithorius and for this purpose communicated in pantomime, but nothing came of that, since there was always someone slow of understanding, who approached the others to ask them what they meant, and as a result of his obtuseness the conspiracy immediately blew up.

There lived on Actinuria a young inventor by the name of Pyron, who learned to pull wires of platinum so thin, you could make nets with them for catching clouds. Pyron invented the wire telegraph, and then he pulled the wire out so fine, it wasn’t there, and in this fashion he obtained the wireless. Hope entered the hearts of the inhabitants of Actinuria, for they thought it would now be possible to establish a conspiracy. But the cunning Archithorius monitored their conversations, holding in each of his six hundred hands a platinum conductor, whereby he knew what his subjects were saying, and at the first mention of the word “revolt” or “coup” he instantly dispatched ball lightning, which reduced the conspirators to a flaming puddle.

Pyron decided to outwit the wicked ruler. When he spoke to his friends, instead of “rebelling” he said “reheeling,” instead of “insurrection”—“instep,” and in this way he planned the overthrow. Archithorius meanwhile was puzzled why his subjects had taken such a sudden interest in shoe repair, for he did not know that when they said “thread the laces,” by this they meant “run him through and through,” and boots too tight signified his tyranny. But those to whom Pyron addressed himself did not always understand him rightly, as he could explain his schemes only in the cobbler’s jargon. He put it this way and that, and when they failed to comprehend, he once was careless enough to telegraph: “Cut the plutonium down to size”—as if fitting a sole. But here the King took fright, for plutonium is most closely related to uranium, and uranium—to thorium, and Archithorius after all was his own name. So he sent out an armored guard, which seized Pyron and hurled him on the leaden floor before the face of the King. Pyron admitted to nothing, but the King imprisoned him in his palladium tower.

All hope left the Pallatinids. However the time had now come when the cosmogonist, the creator of the three planets, returned to their vicinity.

From afar he observed the state of affairs on Actinuria and said to himself: “This must not be!” Whereupon he spun the thinnest and hardest radiation into a cocoon, placed his own body inside, there to wait until his return, and he himself assumed the form of an indigent almoner and went down to the planet.

When darkness fell and only the distant mountains in a cold ring threw light upon the platinum valley, the cosmogonist sought to approach the subjects of King Archithorius, but they avoided him in great alarm, for they feared a uranium explosion. In vain did he pursue now this one, now that, not knowing the reason that they fled. So he roamed the hills, hills like the shields of warriors, his footsteps clanging, until he came to the foot of the very tower where Archithorius held Pyron chained. Pyron saw him through the bars and noticed that the cosmogonist, albeit in the form of a simple robot, was different from all other Pallatinids: he did not glow in the dark, but was as murky as a corpse, for in his armor there was not a single atom of uranium. Pyron desired to call out to him, but his lips had been bolted shut, so he struck sparks by beating his head against the walls of the cell; the cosmogonist, observing this light, approached the tower and peered through the grating of a small window. Pyron was unable to speak, but could rattle his chains, and thus rattled out the whole truth to the cosmogonist.

“Have patience and wait,” the latter told him, “and you shall not wait in vain.”

The cosmogonist repaired to the wildest mountains of Actinuria and spent three days searching for crystals of cadmium, and when he found them he hammered them into metal sheets, using boulders of palladium. From this cadmium metal he cut earmuffs and laid them on the doorstep of every home. The Pallatinids, when they discovered them, were astonished, but put them on at once, it being winter.

That night the cosmogonist appeared among them and swung an incandescent rod so rapidly, that from it fiery lines were formed. In this manner he wrote to them in the darkness: “You may now approach each other safely, the cadmium will protect you.” But they took him for one of the King’s spies and would not trust his counsel. The cosmogonist grew angry, seeing that they believed him not, and he went into the mountains, and gathered uranium ore, and with it smelted a silvery metal, and beat out gleaming ducats. On one side of the ducats was stamped the radiant profile of Archithorius, on the other—an image of his six hundred arms.

Weighed down with uranium ducats, the cosmogonist returned to the valley and showed the Pallatinids a wondrous thing: he threw the ducats far from himself, one at a time, till he made of them a ringing pile, and when he tossed on yet one more ducat above the limit, the air shuddered, light burst from the ducats and they turned into a ball of white flame. When the wind blew everything away, only a crater remained, melted into the rock.

Then the cosmogonist began a second time to throw ducats from his sack, but now differently, for each ducat that he threw he covered first with a cadmium plate, and though the pile that rose was six times greater than the one before, nothing happened. The Pallatinids believed him then and, gathering together, lost no time but eagerly took to plotting against Archithorius. They wanted to unthrone the King, but didn’t know how, for the palace was surrounded by a dazzling wall and on the drawbridge stood a death machine—whomever failed to give the password it would chop to pieces.

The time arrived to pay the new tribute, which the greedy Archithorius had decreed. The cosmogonist distributed uranium ducats among the King’s subjects and advised them to pay the tribute with these. And this they did.

The King was pleased to see so many gleaming ducats come into his treasury, for he did not know that they were of uranium and not lead. That same night the cosmogonist melted the bars of the prison and freed Pyron, and as they walked through the valley in silence, in the light of the radioactive mountains, which was as though a ring of moons had fallen and encircled the horizon on every side, suddenly a terrible radiance poured forth, for the pile of uranium ducats in the royal treasury had grown too great, setting off a chain reaction. The detonation blew the palace and the metal hulk of Archithorius sky-high; its force was such, that the tyrant’s six hundred dismembered hands went flying into interstellar space. There was much rejoicing on Actinuria, Lord Pyron became its just ruler, and the cosmogonist, having departed into the darkness, retrieved his body from its energy cocoon and set off once more to kindle stars. As for the six hundred platinum hands of Archithorius, they rotate about the planet to this very day, like a ring, similar to Saturn’s, shining with a splendor that is a hundred times brighter than the glow of the radioactive mountains, and the happy Pallatinids say: “Look how Thorius lights our way!” It is indeed a handsome sight among the spectacles in our wide Galaxy, and serves moreover as a constant reminder of the virtues of disarmament.