Lem, Stanislaw

THE
CYBERIAD

FABLES FOR THE

CYBERNETIC AGE

STANISLAW LEM

Translated from the Polish by MICHAEL

KANDEL

Illustrated by DANIEL MROZ

A CONTINUUM BOOK

THE SEABURY PRESS

NEW YORK

English translation copyright ©

1974 by The Seabury Press, Inc. Printed in the United States of

America.

Original edition:
Cyberiada
,

Wydawnictwo Literackie, Cracow, 1967, 1972

All rights reserved. No part of this

book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief reviews, without

the written permission of the publisher.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN

PUBLICATION DATA

Lem, Stanislaw. The cyberiad.

(A continuum book)

I. Title.

Contents

Babies

The Fifth Sally,
or The Mischief of King Balerion

The Fifth Sally
(
A
), or Trurl's Prescription

The Sixth Sally,
or How Trurl and Klapaucius Created a Demon of the Second Kind to

Defeat the Pirate Pugg

The Seventh Sally,
or How Trurl's Own Perfection Led to No Good

Tale
of the Three

Storytelling Machines of King Genius

Altruizine

FROM THE CYPHROEROTICON,

OR TALES OF
DEVIATIONS, SUPERFIXATIONS AND

ABERRATIONS OF THE HEART

Prince Ferrix and

the Princess Crystal

THE

CYBERIAD

How the World

Was Saved

One day Trurl the constructor put

together a machine that could create anything starting with
n
.

When it was ready, he tried it out, ordering it to make needles, then

nankeens and negligees, which it did, then nail the lot to narghiles

filled with nepenthe and numerous other narcotics. The machine

carried out his instructions to the letter. Still not completely sure

of its ability, he had it produce, one after the other, nimbuses,

noodles, nuclei, neutrons, naphtha, noses, nymphs, naiads, and

natrium. This last it could not do, and Trurl, considerably

irritated, demanded an explanation.

"Never heard of it," said

the machine.

"What? But it's only sodium. You

know, the metal, the element…"

"Sodium starts with an
s
,

and I work only in
n
."

"But in Latin it's
natrium
."

"Look, old boy," said the

machine, "if I could do everything starting with
n
in

every possible language, I'd be a Machine That Could Do Everything in

the Whole Alphabet, since any item you care to mention undoubtedly

starts with
n
in one foreign language or another. It's not

that easy. I can't go beyond what you programmed. So no sodium."

"Very well," said Trurl and

ordered it to make Night, which it made at once—small perhaps,

but perfectly nocturnal. Only then did Trurl invite over his friend

Klapaucius the constructor, and introduced him to the machine,

praising its extraordinary skill at such length, that Klapaucius grew

annoyed and inquired whether he too might not test the machine.

"Be my guest," said Trurl.

"But it has to start with
n
."

"
N
?" said

Klapaucius. "All right, let it make Nature."

The machine whined, and in a trice

Trurl's front yard was packed with naturalists. They argued, each

publishing heavy volumes, which the others tore to pieces; in the

distance one could see flaming pyres, on which martyrs to Nature were

sizzling; there was thunder, and strange mushroom-shaped columns of

smoke rose up; everyone talked at once, no one listened, and there

were all sorts of memoranda, appeals, subpoenas and other documents,

while off to the side sat a few old men, feverishly scribbling on

scraps of paper.

"Not bad, eh?" said Trurl

with pride. "Nature to a T, admit it!"

But Klapaucius wasn't satisfied.

"What, that mob? Surely you're

not going to tell me that's Nature?"

"Then give the machine something

else," snapped Trurl. "Whatever you like." For a

moment Klapaucius was at a loss for what to ask. But after a little

thought he declared that he would put two more tasks to the machine;

if it could fulfill them, he would admit that it was all Trurl said

it was. Trurl agreed to this, whereupon Klapaucius requested

Negative.

"Negative?!" cried Trurl.

"What on earth is Negative?"

"The opposite of positive, of

course," Klapaucius coolly replied. "Negative attitudes,

the negative of a picture, for example. Now don't try to pretend you

never heard of Negative. All right, machine, get to work!"

The machine, however, had already

begun. First it manufactured antiprotons, then antielectrons,

antineutrons, antineutrinos, and labored on, until from out of all

this antimatter an antiworld took shape, glowing like a ghostly cloud

above their heads.

"H'm," muttered Klapaucius,

displeased. "That's supposed to be Negative? Well… let's

say it is, for the sake of peace. … But now here's the third

command: Machine, do Nothing!"

The machine sat still. Klapaucius

rubbed his hands in triumph, but Trurl said:

"Well, what did you expect? You

asked it to do nothing, and it's doing nothing."

"Correction: I asked it to do

Nothing, but it's doing nothing."

"Nothing is nothing!"

"Come, come. It was supposed to

do Nothing, but it hasn't done anything, and therefore I've won. For

Nothing, my dear and clever colleague, is not your run-of-the-mill

nothing, the result of idleness and inactivity, but dynamic,

aggressive Nothingness, that is to say, perfect, unique, ubiquitous,

in other words Nonexistence, ultimate and supreme, in its very own

nonperson!"

"You're confusing the machine!"

cried Trurl. But suddenly its metallic voice rang out:

"Really, how can you two bicker

at a time like this? Oh yes, I know what Nothing is, and Nothingness,

Nonexistence, Nonentity, Negation, Nullity and Nihility, since all

these come under the heading of
n
,
n
as in Nil.

Look then upon your world for the last time, gentlemen! Soon it shall

no longer be…"

The constructors froze, forgetting

their quarrel, for the machine was in actual fact doing Nothing, and

it did it in this fashion: one by one, various things were removed

from the world, and the things, thus removed, ceased to exist, as if

they had never been. The machine had already disposed of nolars,

nightzebs, nocs, necs, nallyrakers, neotremes and nonmalrigers. At

moments, though, it seemed that instead of reducing, diminishing and

subtracting, the machine was increasing, enhancing and adding, since

it liquidated, in turn: nonconformists, nonentities, nonsense,

nonsupport, nearsightedness, narrowmindedness, naughtiness, neglect,

nausea, necrophilia and nepotism. But after a while the world very

definitely began to thin out around Trurl and Klapaucius.

"Omigosh!" said Trurl. "If

only nothing bad comes out of all this…"

"Don't worry," said

Klapaucius. "You can see it's not producing Universal

Nothingness, but only causing the absence of whatever starts with n.

Which is really nothing in the way of nothing, and nothing is what

your machine, dear Trurl, is worth!"

"Do not be deceived,"

replied the machine. "I've begun, it's true, with everything in

n
, but only out of familiarity. To create however is one

thing, to destroy, another thing entirely. I can blot out the world

for the simple reason that I'm able to do anything and everything—and

everything means everything—in
n
, and consequently

Nothingness is child's play for me. In less than a minute now you

will cease to have existence, along with everything else, so tell me

now, Klapaucius, and quickly, that I am really and truly everything I

was programmed to be, before it is too late."

"But—" Klapaucius was

about to protest, but noticed, just then, that a number of things

were indeed disappearing, and not merely those that started with n.

The constructors were no longer surrounded by the gruncheons, the

targalisks, the shupops, the calinatifacts, the thists, worches and

pritons.

"Stop! I take it all back!

Desist! Whoa! Don't do Nothing!!" screamed Klapaucius. But

before the machine could come to a full stop, all the brashations,

plusters, laries and zits had vanished away. Now the machine stood

motionless. The world was a dreadful sight. The sky had particularly

suffered: there were only a few, isolated points of light in the

heavens—no trace of the glorious worches and zits that had,

till now, graced the horizon!

"Great Gauss!" cried

Klapaucius. "And where are the gruncheons? Where my dear,

favorite pritons? Where now the gentle zits?!"

"They no longer are, nor ever

will exist again," the machine said calmly. "I executed, or

rather only began to execute, your order…"

"I tell you to do Nothing, and

you… you…"

"Klapaucius, don't pretend to be

a greater idiot than you are," said the machine. "Had I

made Nothing outright, in one fell swoop, everything would have

ceased to exist, and that includes Trurl, the sky, the Universe, and

you—and even myself. In which case who could say and to whom

could it be said that the order was carried out and I am an efficient

and capable machine? And if no one could say it to no one, in what

way then could I, who also would not be, be vindicated?"

"Yes, fine, let's drop the

subject," said Klapaucius. "I have nothing more to ask of

you, only please, dear machine, please return the zits, for without