The Star Diaries (7 page)

With these words pandemonium broke loose in the amphitheater. I cowered—flying through the air in every direction came portfolios, volumes of the Interplanetary Penal Code, and even material evidence, objects such as badly rust-eaten jugs, barrels, pokers, though Lord knows how they got there; perhaps the clever Iridians, having some score to settle with the Rhohches, had been conducting archeological research on Earth since time immemorial, collecting the incriminating evidence, which was all carefully stored on board their Flying Saucers; but I found it difficult to ponder such a point, for everything was heaving around me, tentacles and claws flashed past, and my Rhohch, extremely agitated, leaped up from his seat screaming something, but it was lost in the general bedlam, while I continued to sit, as it were, in the eye of the storm, and the last thought that pounded in my brain was the question of that sneeze with premeditation which had brought us into the world.

The next thing I knew, someone seized me by the hair, painfully, till I groaned; it was the Rhohch, trying to demonstrate how solidly I’d been fashioned by Earth’s evolution and how little I deserved being called a paltry sort of creature, stuck together—and flimsily at that—out of rotten bits of refuse, and he walloped me over the head again and again with his enormous, heavy claw… I felt the life slowly going out of me, my struggling grew weak, weaker, I couldn’t breathe, I gave a few last kicks in agony—and collapsed on my pillow. Half-conscious, I jumped up immediately, sat on the bed, feeling my neck, head, chest, to make sure that all that I had undergone was but the product of an awful dream. I heaved a sigh of relief, but then, later, some slight doubts began to trouble me. I told myself, “For God’s sake, it’s only a dream!” Somehow that didn’t help. Finally, to dispel these gloomy thoughts I went to see my aunt on the Moon. But an eight-minute ride on a lunibus that stops right outside my house, no, I can hardly call this the eighth stellar voyage—more worthy of that title, surely, would be the journey taken in my sleep, in which I suffered so for all humanity.

I
t was going to be one of those days. The mess in the house, bad enough when I’d had my servant sent out for repairs, was growing worse. I couldn’t find a thing. There were mice nesting in my meteor collection. They had gnawed the prettiest chondrite.

While I was making coffee the milk boiled over. That electrical numskull had hidden the dishrags along with my handkerchiefs. I really should have taken him in for an overhaul back when he started shining my shoes on the inside. I used an old parachute for a dishrag, then went upstairs, dusted off the meteors and set a mousetrap. I’d collected all the specimens myself. It’s not that difficult—all you do is come up on the meteor from behind and drop a net over it.

Then I remembered the toast and ran downstairs.

Burnt to a crisp, of course. I tossed the toast in the sink. The sink stopped up. I waved my hand in disgust and took a look in the mailbox.

It was full of the usual morning fare—two invitations to conferences somewhere in the godforsaken backwaters of the Crab Nebula, fliers advertising cream for polishing your rocket, a new issue of
The Jet Trackman,
nothing of interest. The last item was a dark, thick envelope sealed with five seals. I weighed it in my hand, then opened it.

The Secret Minister for matters concerning Cercia has the honor to request the presence of Mr. Ijon Tichy at a meeting to be held on the 16th of this month, 17.30 hours, in the small lecture hall of Lambretanum. Admittance only to those bearing invitations. X-rays required.

We urge the matter be kept in strictest confidence.

 

An illegible signature, a seal,
and stamped across in red,
diagonally, the words:

C
OSMIC
I
MPORTANCE
. C
LASSIFIED
!!

Well now, here was something at last, I thought. Cercia, Cercia… I knew the name, but couldn’t quite place it. I looked it up in the
Cosmic Encyclopedia.
Ceres, Cerulia, that was all. Curious, I thought. The
Almanac
didn’t have it either. Yes, this was interesting indeed. Definitely a secret planet. “That’s what I like,” I murmured and began to dress. It was ten already, but I had to straighten up after my servant. The socks I found right away, in the refrigerator, and it seemed to me that I was finally catching on to the train of thought of that unhinged electronic brain, when suddenly I was faced with a singular fact: no pants. None, nowhere. Only jackets and coats were hanging in the closet. I searched the whole house, I even cleaned out the rocket—nothing. Except I discovered that that broken-down blockhead of mine had drunk up all the oil in the basement. He must have done it recently too, because a week ago I’d counted the cans and they were all full. This was so infuriating that I seriously considered whether I shouldn’t have him scrapped after all. He didn’t like getting up in the morning, and for months now would stuff his earphones with wax at night. You could ring until your arm fell off. Absent-mindedness, was his excuse. I threatened to unscrew his fuses, but he only rattled in disdain. He knew I needed him.

I divided the entire house into squares according to the Pinkerton method and began a search as thorough as if I’d been looking for a pin. Finally I found a laundry ticket. The scoundrel had sent all my pants to the cleaner’s. But what had happened to the pants I was wearing the day before? I simply couldn’t recall. Meanwhile it was time for lunch. No point in trying the refrigerator—besides the socks, it contained only stationery. I was getting desperate. I took my spacesuit out of the rocket, put it on and walked to the nearest department store. They stared at me a little on the street, but I bought two pair of pants, one black, one gray, returned home in the spacesuit, changed and—in the foulest possible mood—went out to a Chinese restaurant. I ate what they gave me, drank down my anger with a bottle of Mosel, and, looking at my watch, realized it was almost five. I’d wasted an entire day.

There weren’t any helicopters in front of the Lambretanum, and not a single car, not even a private rocket—nothing. “It’s
that
bad?” flashed the thought. I crossed a vast garden full of dahlias to reach the main entrance. For a long time no one answered. At last the cover over the one-way peephole lifted and an invisible eye scrutinized me, after which the gate opened, just enough for me to squeeze through,

“Mr. Tichy,” the man who let me in said into his pocket microphone. “Upstairs please,” he told me. “The door on the left. They’re waiting for you.”

Upstairs it was pleasantly cool. I entered the lecture hall and found myself in a highly select gathering. Except for two characters behind the conference table whom I’d never seen before, there on velvet upholstered armchairs sat the flower of cosmography. I recognized Professor Gargarragh and his assistants. Nodding to one and all, I took a seat in the back. One of the men behind the conference table, tall and graying at the temples, opened a drawer, pulled out a rubber bell and tinkled it noiselessly. What fantastic precautions, I thought.

“Gentlemen! Rectors, deans, professors, and you, our esteemed Ijon Tichy,” began the man with the gray temples, rising. “As Plenipotentiary and Minister to Matters of the Utmost Gravity and Secrecy, I hereby open this special session convened to consider the case of Cercia. Secret Adviser Xaphirius has the floor.”

In the first row a stout, broad-shouldered man, his hair as white as milk, stood up; he ascended the podium, made a slight bow to the assembly and said without preface:

“Gentlemen! About sixty years ago a Galactic Company freighter, the
Jonathan II,
set off from the planetary port at Yokohama. This vessel, under the command of one Astrocenty Peapo, a seasoned spacer, was carrying lumber to Areclandria, a planet of the gamma Orion. It was last sighted by a stellar beacon in the vicinity of Cerberon. Then it disappeared without a trace. A year passed, and the insurance people of Securitas Cosmica, SECOS for short, paid over full damages for the loss of the ship. Some two weeks after that a certain amateur radio operator from New Guinea received a telegram with the following text.”

The speaker lifted a card from the table and read:

KEMPOOTAR GUN BZIRCK
ASS HO ASS JUNYJANTU

“At this point, gentlemen, I must make mention of certain facts which are indispensable for a further understanding of the matter. The radio operator in question was practically illiterate and in addition had a speech impediment. By force of habit and due, one may assume, to his total lack of experience, he distorted the message, which, according to the reconstruction made by our experts at Universal Codes, originally read: ‘Computer gone berserk S. O. S. Jonathan II.’ The experts maintained, on the basis of this text, that the rare event of a mutiny in deep space had in fact taken place—we are speaking of the mutiny of the ship’s computer. Now because the insurance payment had been made to the owners and they were therefore no longer in any position to lay claim to the lost ship, for all the property rights to it (including the cargo) had been assumed by SECOS, it was SECOS who engaged the Pinkerton Agency, in the persons of Abstrahazy and Mnemonius Pinkerton, to conduct the appropriate inquiries. The investigation undertaken by these competent professionals revealed that the computer of the
Jonathan,
a luxury model in its day, but which, by the time of its final voyage, was well along in years, had recently been filing complaints against one of the crew. This was a rocket engineer named Symileon Gitterton, who was supposed to have tormented it in a variety of ways—lowering its output potential, flicking its tubes, taunting it, and even heaping upon the Computer such offensive epithets and slurs as, for example, ‘old screw-loose solderhead’ and ‘uncle frammus.’ Gitterton denied everything, claiming that the Computer was simply hallucinating—which does indeed on occasion happen to our senior automata. At any rate Professor Gargarragh will shortly fill you gentlemen in on this particular aspect of the case.

“All efforts to locate the ship during the next ten years failed. Soon after that time, however, the Pinkerton agents, still tirelessly working on the mysterious disappearance of the
Jonathan,
learned that there was a half-crazed, sickly beggar who would sit in front of the restaurant of the Hotel Galax and sing the most wondrous tales, professing to be Astrocenty Peapo the former starship commander. This old man, bedraggled and tattered beyond description, did indeed answer to the name of Astrocenty Peapo, yet not only was his reason dimmed, but he had lost the power of speech—and could only sing. When questioned patiently by the Pinkerton men, he chanted an incredible tale: how something terrible had taken place on deck, as a result of which he was thrown overboard with only the spacesuit on his back, and how with a handful of loyal rocketeers he had to return to Earth on foot from the murky regions of Andromeda, which took a good two hundred years. He wandered, so he sang, sometimes on meteors heading in the right direction, or sometimes hopped a passing barge—it was only a small part of the journey that he spent on the Lumeon, an unmanned cosmic probe which happened to be flying towards Earth at a velocity just under the velocity of light. This ride astraddle the back of the Lumeon he paid for (as he put it) with the loss of speech, though he also grew younger by many years, thanks to the well-known phenomenon of the contraction of time on bodies traveling at speeds approaching
c.

“So went the story, or rather, the swan song of the old man. But of the events that had occurred aboard the
Jonathan
he stubbornly refused to croon a single note. Only after they placed recording devices around the hotel entrance where he often sat were the Pinkerton men able to tape the old beggar’s tunes; in several of these he let loose a volley of the most dreadful imprecations—against a common calculator that proclaimed itself Sublime Arch-imperator of the Macropanopticontinuum. Pinkerton concluded, from this, that the reading of the message had been correct, that the Computer, having gone mad, did indeed dispose of all persons on the ship.

“The investigation took on new life with the discovery, made five years later by a cruiser of the Metagalactological Institute, the
Astromeg,
of a rusty hulk drifting in orbit around the unexplored planet of Procyon and similar in profile to the lost
Jonathan.
The
Astromeg,
nearly out of fuel, turned back without landing on the planet, but it notified Earth by radio. A small patrolship, the
Deucron,
was dispatched at once, searched the regions surrounding Procyon and finally came upon a wreck. This was in fact the
Jonathan,
or rather, what remained of that ship. The
Deucron
reported that it found the abandoned vessel in frightful condition—the machines had been removed, the bulkheads, decks, partitions, hatches—everything down to the last screw, so that all that was circling the planet was an empty, gutted hull. Further probes conducted by the crew of the
Deucron
revealed that the mutinous Computer of the
Jonathan
had decided, afterwards, to settle on Procyon, and plundered the ship of its contents so as to install itself more comfortably on that planet. As a result of which information, a file was accordingly set up in our division, under the code name of CERCIA, which stands for: Cargo and Effects Repossession—Caution, Insubordinate Autopilot.

“The Computer—as subsequent research showed—had established itself on the planet and multiplied, producing numerous progeny in the form of robots, over which it enjoyed absolute power and dominion. Since however Cercia lies well within the sphere of influence, political-gravitational, of Procyon and its Melmanites, with which intelligent race it is in Earth's interest to maintain friendly relations, we had no wish to intervene militarily and so for a certain period of time left Cercia and the robot colony founded there by the Computer—in our division files bearing the code name ROBCOL—in peace. But SECOS petitioned for repossession, on the grounds that the Computer and all its robots were by law the property of the Insurance Company. We approached the Melmanites in this matter; their reply was that to their knowledge the Computer had created not a colony, but an independent state, called by its inhabitants Magnifica, and that the Melmanite government, although it had not recognized the existence of this state
de jure,
nor indeed had there even been an exchange of diplomatic representatives, nonetheless accepted the presence of that social organism
de facto
and did not feel it had justification or, for that matter, the authority to initiate any change in the situation. So far the robots in question had conducted themselves peacefully, vegetating on the planet, and gave no sign of any aggressive or destructive tendencies. But obviously our department could not simply drop the matter there, the general feeling being that such an action would smack of frivolity; thus we sent several of our men to Cercia, disguising them first as robots, for the youthful nationalism of the Robcol had taken the form of an unreasonable hatred of all things human. The Cercian press never tires of repeating that we are abominable slaveowners, who illegally exploit and prey upon innocent robots. And so all the negotiations which we had attempted to conduct on behalf of the SECOS organization, in the spirit of mutual respect and understanding, came to naught, since even our most modest demands—namely, that the Computer turn itself and its robots over to the insurance company—were rewarded with an insulting silence.