Mortal Engines (8 page)

Until the King wearied of the war games on the planet and decided to raise his sights. Now it was cosmic wars and sallies that he dreamed of. His planet had a large Moon, entirely desolate and wild; the King laid heavy taxes upon his subjects, to obtain the funds needed to build whole armies on that Moon and have there a new theater of war. And the subjects were more than happy to pay, figuring that King Poleander would now no longer deliver them with his cybermatics, nor test the strength of his arms upon their homes and heads. And so the royal engineers built on the Moon a splendid computer, which in turn was to create all manner of troops and self-firing gunnery. The King lost no time in testing the machine’s prowess this way and that; at one point he ordered it—by telegraph—to execute a volt-vault electrosault: for he wanted to see if it was true, what his engineers had told him, that that machine could do anything. If it can do anything, he thought, then let it do a flip. However the text of the telegram underwent a slight distortion and the machine received the order that it was to execute not an electrosault, but an electrosaur—and this it carried out as best it could.

Meanwhile the King conducted one more campaign, liberating some provinces of his realm seized by cyberknechts; he completely forgot about the order given the computer on the Moon, then suddenly giant boulders came hurtling down from there; the King was astounded, for one even fell on the wing of the palace and destroyed his prize collection of cyberads, which are dryads with feedback. Fuming, he telegraphed the Moon computer at once, demanding an explanation. It didn’t reply however, for it no longer was: the electrosaur had swallowed it and made it into its own tail.

Immediately the King dispatched an entire armed expedition to the Moon, placing at its head another computer, also very valiant, to slay the dragon, but there was only some flashing, some rumbling, and then no more computer nor expedition; for the electrodragon wasn’t pretend and wasn’t pretending, but battled with the utmost verisimilitude, and had moreover the worst of intentions regarding the kingdom and the King. The King sent to the Moon his cybernants, cyberneers, cyberines and lieutenant cybemets, at the very end he even sent one cyberalissimo, but it too accomplished nothing; the hurly-burly lasted a little longer, that was all. The King watched through a telescope set up on the palace balcony.

The dragon grew, the Moon became smaller and smaller, since the monster was devouring it piecemeal and incorporating it into its own body. The King saw then, and his subjects did also, that things were serious, for when the ground beneath the feet of the electrosaur was gone, it would for certain hurl itself upon the planet and upon them. The King thought and thought, but he saw no remedy, and knew not what to do. To send machines was no good, for they would be lost, and to go himself was no better, for he was afraid. Suddenly the King heard, in the stillness of the night, the telegraph chattering from his royal bedchamber. It was the King’s personal receiver, solid gold with a diamond needle, linked to the Moon; the King jumped up and ran to it, the apparatus meanwhile went
tap-tap, tap-tap,
and tapped out this telegram:
THE DRAGON SAYS POLEANDER PARTOBON BETTER CLEAR OUT BECAUSE HE THE DRAGON INTENDS TO OCCUPY THE THRONE
!

The King took fright, quaked from head to toe, and ran, just as he was, in his ermine nightshirt and slippers, down to the palace vaults, where stood the strategy machine, old and very wise. He had not as yet consulted it, since prior to the rise and uprise of the electrodragon they had argued on the subject of a certain military operation; but now was not the time to think of that—his throne, his life was at stake!

He plugged it in, and as soon as it warmed up he cried:

“My old computer! My good computer! It’s this way and that, the dragon wishes to deprive me of my throne, to cast me out, help, speak, how can I defeat it?!”

“Uh-uh,” said the computer. “First you must admit I was right in that previous business, and secondly, I would have you address me only as Digital Grand Vizier, though you may also say to me: ‘Your Ferromagneticity’!”

“Good, good, I’ll name you Grand Vizier, I’ll agree to anything you like, only save me!”

The machine whirred, chirred, hummed, hemmed, then said:

“It is a simple matter. We build an electrosaur more powerful than the one located on the Moon. It will defeat the lunar one, settle its circuitry once and for all and thereby attain the goal!”

“Perfect!” replied the King. “And can you make a blueprint of this dragon?”

“It will be an ultradragon,” said the computer. “And I can make you not only a blueprint, but the thing itself, which I shall now do, it won’t take a minute, King!” And true to its word, it hissed, it chugged, it whistled and buzzed, assembling something down within itself, and already an object like a giant claw, sparking, arcing, was emerging from its side, when the King shouted:

“Old computer! Stop!”

“Is this how you address me? I am the Digital Grand Vizier!”

“Ah, of course,” said the King. “Your Ferromagneticity, the electrodragon you are making will defeat the other dragon, granted, but it will surely remain in the other’s place, how then are we to get rid of it in turn?!”

“By making yet another, still more powerful,” explained the computer.

“No, no! In that case don’t do anything, I beg you, what good will it be to have more and more terrible dragons on the Moon when I don’t want any there at all?”

“Ah, now that’s a different matter,” the computer replied. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place? You see how illogically you express yourself? One moment… I must think.”

And it churred and hummed, and chuffed and chuckled, and finally said:

“We make an antimoon with an antidragon, place it in the Moon’s orbit (here something went snap inside), sit around the fire and sing:
Oh I’m a robot full of fun, water doesn’t scare me none, I dives right in, I gives a grin, tra la the livelong day!!
”

“You speak strangely,” said the King. “What does the antimoon have to do with that song about the funny robot?”

“What funny robot?” asked the computer. “Ah, no, no, I made a mistake, something feels wrong inside, I must have blown a tube.” The King began to look for the trouble, finally found the burnt-out tube, put in a new one, then asked the computer about the antimoon.

“What antimoon?” asked the computer, which meanwhile had forgotten what it said before. “I don’t know anything about an antimoon … one moment, I have to give this thought.”

It hummed, it huffed, and it said:

“We create a general theory of the slaying of electrodragons, of which the lunar dragon will be a special case, its solution trivial.”

“Well, create such a theory!” said the King.

“To do this I must first create various experimental dragons.”

“Certainly not! No thank you!” exclaimed the King. “A dragon wants to deprive me of my throne, just think what might happen if you produced a swarm of them!”

“Oh? Well then, in that case we must resort to other means. We will use a strategic variant of the method of successive approximations. Go and telegraph the dragon that you will give it the throne on the condition that it perform three mathematical operations, really quite simple…”

The King went and telegraphed, and the dragon agreed. The King returned to the computer.

“Now,” it said, “here is the first operation: tell it to divide itself by itself!”

The King did this. The electrosaur divided itself by itself, but since one electrosaur over one electrosaur is one, it remained on the Moon and nothing changed.

“Is this the best you can do?!” cried the King, running into the vault with such haste, that his slippers fell off. “The dragon divided itself by itself, but since one goes into one once, nothing changed!”

“That’s all right, I did that on purpose, the operation was to divert attention,” said the computer. “And now tell it to extract its root!” The King telegraphed to the Moon, and the dragon began to pull, push, pull, push, until it crackled from the strain, panted, trembled all over, but suddenly something gave—and it extracted its own root! The King went back to the computer.

“The dragon crackled, trembled, even ground its teeth, but extracted the root and threatens me still!” he shouted from the doorway. “What now, my old… I mean, Your Ferromagneticity?!”

“Be of stout heart,” it said. “Now go tell it to subtract itself from itself!”

The King hurried to his royal bedchamber, sent the telegram, and the dragon began to subtract itself from itself, taking away its tail first, then legs, then trunk, and finally, when it saw that something wasn’t right, it hesitated, but from its own momentum the subtracting continued, it took away its head and became zero, in other words nothing; the electrosaur was no more!

“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!”