Lem, Stanislaw (41 page)

provides us with no end of enjoyment. Indeed, the art of the

preparation of corpses is more esteemed among us than astronautics

and is termed gastronautics, or gastronomy—which, however, has

nothing to do with astronomy."

"Does this then mean that you

play at being cemeteries, making of yourselves the very coffins that

hold your four-legged brethren?" This question was dangerously

loaded, but Ferrix, instructed by the sage, answered thus:

"It is no game, Your Highness,

but rather a necessity, for life lives on life. But we have made of

this necessity a great art."

"Well then, tell me, Myamlak the

paleface, how do you build your progeny?" asked the princess.

"In faith, we do not build them

at all," said Ferrix, "but program them statistically,

according to Markov's formula for stochastic probability,

emotional-evolutional albeit distributional, and we do this

involuntarily and coincidentally, while thinking of a variety of

things that have nothing whatever to do with programming,

whether statistical, alinear or algorithmical, and the programming

itself takes place autonomously, automatically and wholly

autoerotically, for it is precisely thus and not otherwise that we

are constructed, that each and every paleface strives to program his

progeny, for it is delightful, but programs without programming,

doing all within his power to keep that programming from bearing

fruit."

"Strange," said the

princess, whose erudition in this area was less extensive than that

of the wise Polyphase. "But how exactly is this done?"

"O Princess!" replied

Ferrix. "We possess suitable apparatuses constructed on the

principle of regenerative feedback coupling, though of course all

this is in water. These apparatuses present a veritable miracle of

technology, yet even the greatest idiot can use them. But to describe

the precise procedure of their operation I would have to lecture at

considerable length, since the matter is most complex. Still, it is

strange, when you consider that we never invented these methods, but

rather they, so to speak, invented them- | selves. Even so, they are

perfectly functional and we have | nothing against them."

"Verily," exclaimed Crystal,

"you are a paleface! That which you say, it's as if it made

sense, though it doesn't really, not in the least. For how can one be

a cemetery without being a cemetery, or program progeny, yet not

program it at all?! Yes, you are indeed a paleface, Myamlak, and

therefore, should you so desire it, I shall couple with you in a

closed-circuit matrimonial coupling, and you shall ascend the

throne with me—provided you pass one last test."

"And what is that?" asked

Ferrix.

"You must…" began the

princess, but suddenly suspicion again entered her heart and she

asked, "Tell me first, what do your brothers do at night?"

"At night they lie here and

there, with bent arms and twisted legs, and air goes into them and

comes out of them, raising in the process a noise not unlike the

sharpening of a rusty saw."

"Well then, here is the test:

give me your hand!" commanded the princess.

Ferrix gave her his hand, and she

squeezed it, whereupon he cried out in a loud voice, just as the sage

had instructed him. And she asked him why he had cried out.

"From the pain!" replied

Ferrix.

At this point she had no more doubts

about his palefaceness and promptly ordered the preparations for the

wedding ceremony to commence.

But it so happened, at that very

moment, that the spaceship of Cybercount Cyberhazy, the

princess' Elector, returned from its interstellar expedition to

find a paleface (for the insidious Cybercount sought to worm his way

into her good graces). Polyphase, greatly alarmed, ran to Ferrix's

side and said:

"Prince, Cyberhazy's spaceship

has just arrived, and he's brought the princess a genuine paleface—I

saw the thing with my own eyes. We must leave while we still can,

since all further masquerade will become impossible when the princess

sees it and you together: its stickiness is stickier, its ickiness is

ickier! Our subterfuge will be discovered and we beheaded!"

Ferrix, however, could not agree to

ignominious flight, for his passion for the princess was great, and

he said:

"Better to die, than lose her!"

Meanwhile Cyberhazy, having learned of

the wedding preparations, sneaked beneath the window of the room

where they were staying and overheard everything; then he rushed back

to the palace, bubbling over with villainous joy, and announced to

Crystal:

"You have been deceived, Your

Highness, for the so-called Myamlak is actually an ordinary mortal

and no paleface. Here is the real paleface!"

And he pointed to the thing that had

been ushered in. The thing expanded its hairy breast, batted its

watery eyes and said:

"Me paleface!"

The princess summoned Ferrix at once,

and when he stood before her alongside that thing, the sage's ruse

became entirely obvious. Ferrix, though he was smeared with mud,

dust and chalk, anointed with oil and aqueously gurgling, could

hardly conceal his electroknightly stature, his magnificent posture,

the breadth of those steel shoulders, that thunderous stride. Whereas

the paleface of Cybercount Cyberhazy was a genuine monstrosity: its

every step was like the overflowing of marshy vats, its face was like

a scummy well; from its rotten breath the mirrors all covered over

with a blind mist, and some iron nearby was seized with rust.

Now the princess realized how utterly

revolting a paleface was—when it spoke, it was as if a pink

worm tried to squirm from its maw. At last she had seen the light,

but her pride would not permit her to reveal this change of heart. So

she said:

"Let them do battle, and to the

winner—my hand in marriage…"

Ferrix whispered to the sage:

"If I attack this abomination and

crush it, reducing it to the mud from which it came, our imposture

will become apparent, for the clay will fall from me and the steel

will show. What should I do?"

"Prince," replied Polyphase,

"don't attack, just defend yourself!"

Both antagonists stepped out into the

palace courtyard, each armed with a sword, and the paleface leaped

upon Ferrix as the slime leaps upon a swamp, and danced about him,

gurgling, cowering, panting, and it swung at him with its blade, and

the blade cut through the clay and shattered against the steel, and

the paleface fell against the prince due to the momentum of the blow,

and it smashed and broke, and splashed apart, and was no more.

But the dried clay, once moved,

slipped from Ferrix's shoulders, revealing his true steely nature to

the eyes of the princess; he trembled, awaiting his fate. Yet in her

crystalline gaze he beheld admiration, and understood then how

much her heart had changed.

Thus they joined in matrimonial

coupling, which is permanent and reciprocal—joy and happiness

for some, for others misery until the grave—and they reigned

long and well, programming innumerable progeny. The skin of

Cybercount Cyberhazy's paleface was stuffed and placed in the royal

museum as an eternal reminder. It stands there to this day, a

scarecrow thinly overgrown with hair. Many pretenders to wisdom

say that this is all a trick and make-believe and nothing more, that

there's no such thing as paleface cemeteries, doughy-nosed and

gummy-eyed, and never was. Well, perhaps it was just another empty

invention—there are certainly fables enough in this world. And

yet, even if the story isn't true, it does have a grain of sense and

instruction to it, and it's entertaining as well, so it's worth

the telling.

THE END