Authors: Stanislaw Lem
“Truly, hard is the lot of a king who has learned everything there is to learn, so that what is said to him sounds hollow as a broken jug! I wish to be astounded, yet am bored, I seek stimulation, yet hear wearisome twaddle, I long for novelty, and they treat me to insipid flatteries. Know, O wise ones, that today I have ordered all my fools and jesters executed, along with my advisers high and low, and this same fate awaits you if you fail to do my bidding. Let each of you tell me the strangest tale he knows, but if it moves me neither to laughter nor to tears, confounds not nor dismays, provides no entertainment nor food for thought—he parts with his head!” The King made a sign and the sages heard the iron step of the myrmidons that surrounded them at the foot of the throne, and whose naked swords did gleam like flame. They were afraid and nudged one another, for none of them wished to risk the King’s anger and lay his head upon the block. Finally the first spoke:
“O King and ruler! The strangest tale in all the visible and invisible Universe is without question that of the stellar tribe known in the chronicles as the Awks. From the dawn of their history the Awks did everything opposite compared to all other beings of intelligence. Their ancestors settled on Urdruria, a planet famous for its volcanoes; each year it gives birth to new mountain chains, during which time terrible spasms convulse it, so that nothing remains standing. And, to make the misery of the inhabitants complete, the heavens saw fit to have their globe pass through the Meteor Stream; this for two hundred days out of the year pounds the planet with droves of stone battering rams. The Awks (who at that time were not yet called thus) raised edifices of tempered iron and steel, and themselves they covered with such quantities of steel plates, they resembled walking mounds of armor. Nevertheless the ground opened up during the quakes and swallowed their steel cities, and meteor hammers crushed their suits of armor. When the entire race became threatened with annihilation, its sages gathered and held council, and the first one said:—Our people will not survive in their present form and there is no escape save through transmutation. The earth opens from below in crevices, therefore in order not to fall in, each Awk must possess a base that is wide and flat; the meteors on the other hand come from above, and so each Awk must be sharp-ended at the top. As cones, we will be safe from harm.
“And the second one said:—That is not the way to do it. If the earth opens its jaws wide, it will swallow up a cone as well, and a meteor falling at an angle will pierce its side. The ideal shape is a sphere. For when the ground begins to tremble and heave, a sphere will always roll aside by itself, and a falling meteor will hit its oblique surface and skim off; we should therefore transform ourselves in order to roll onward towards a brighter future.
“And the third one said:—A sphere is subject to being crushed or swallowed up no less than any other material form. No shield exists, which a powerful enough sword cannot penetrate, nor a sword which will not be notched by a hard shield. Matter, O my brothers, means perpetual change, flux and transformation, it is impermanent. Not in
it
should beings truly blessed with intelligence take up residence, but in that which is immutable, eternal and all-perfect, though of this world!
“—And what is that?—inquired the other sages.
“—I shall not tell you, but instead show you!—replied the third. And before their eyes he began to undress; he removed his outer robe, studded with crystals, and the second, gold-embroidered, and the silver trousers, then removed the top of his skull and his breast, then stripped himself with increasing speed and precision, going from joints to couplings, from couplings to bolts, from bolts to filaments, scintillas, till finally he got down to atoms. And then that sage began to shell his atoms, and shelled them so swiftly, nothing could be seen except for his dwindling and his disappearing, yet he proceeded so adroitly and in such great haste, that in the course of those dismantling movements—before the eyes of his flabbergasted fellow sages—he remained as a perfect absence, which was so exact as to be, in a manner of speaking, negatively present. For there where he had had, previously, a single atom, now he did not have that single atom, where a moment ago six had been, six were now missing, in the place where a little screw had been, the lack of a little screw appeared, perfectly faithful and in no wise departing from it. And in this way he became a vacuum, arranged just as was arranged, previously, that which it replaced, namely himself; and no existence interfered with his nonexisting, for he had worked quickly and maneuvered nimbly in order that no particle, no material intrusion should pollute the perfection of the presence of his absence! And the others saw him as a void shaped exactly as he had been only an instant before, they recognized his eyes by the absence of their black color, his face by the missing sky-blue shine, and his limbs by the vanished fingers, joints and shoulderplates!—In this very way, O my brothers—said the One There Not There—through active self-incorporation into nothingness, we shall acquire not only tremendous immunity, but immortality as well. For only matter changes, and nothingness does not accompany it on that path of continual uncertainty, therefore perfection lies in nonbeing, not in being, and we must choose the first, and spurn the latter!
“And they decided, and did accordingly. From then on the Awks were, and are to this day, an invincible race. They owe their existence not to that which is within them, for within them there is nothing, but wholly to that which surrounds them. And when one of them enters a home, he is visible as that home’s nonpresence, and if he steps into a mist—as its local discontinuity. Thus, in ridding themselves of the vicissitudes of precarious matter, have they made possible the impossible…”
“But how then do they travel through the cosmic void, my sage?” asked Globares.
“This alone they cannot do, O King, since the outer void would merge with their own and they would cease to exist as nonexistences concentrated locally. Therefore also they must maintain a constant watch over the purity of their absence, over the emptiness of their identities, and this vigilance occupies their time… They call themselves Be-nothings or Nullians…”
“Sage,” said the King, “it is a foolish tale you tell, for how can material diversity be replaced by the uniformity of that which is not there? Is a rock the same as a house? Yet surely the lack of a rock may take the same form as the lack of a house, consequently the one and the other become as if identical.”
“Sire,” the sage defended himself, “there are different kinds of nothingness…”
“We shall see,” said the King, “what happens when I order you beheaded. How think you, will the absence of a head become its presence?” Here the monarch gave a hideous laugh and motioned to his myrmidons.
“Sire!” cried the sage, already in the grip of their steel hands. “You were pleased to laugh, my tale therefore awoke your mirth, thus in keeping with your given word you should spare my life!”
“No, I provided my own amusement,” said the King. “Unless, that is, you go along with the joke: if you agree voluntarily to be beheaded, that will amuse me, and then ’twill be as you wish.”
“I agree!” shouted the sage.
“In that case behead him, seeing that he himself requests it!” said the King.
“But Sire, I agreed in order that you not behead me…”
“If you agree, you must be beheaded,” explained the King. “And if you do not agree, you will have failed to amuse me, and so then too you must be beheaded…”
“No, no, it is the other way around!” the sage cried. “If I agree, then you, amused, should spare my life, and if I do not agree…”
“Enough!” said the King. “Executioner, do your duty!”
The sword flashed and the sage’s head came tumbling down.
After a moment of deathly silence the second of the sages spoke:
“O King and ruler! The strangest of all the stellar tribes is without question the race of the Polyonts, or Multiploids, also called the Pluralites. Each of them has, it is true, only one body, but despite this many legs, and the higher the office held, the greater the number. As far as heads are concerned, they have them as the need arises: each office, among them, carries with it an appropriate head, impoverished families possess in common only one, the wealthy on the other hand accumulate in their safes a variety, for different occasions: they have, then, morning heads and evening, strategic heads in case of war and high-speed heads when they are in a hurry, as well as cool-and-level heads, explosive heads, heads for passion, dalliance, marriage and funerals, and thus they are equipped for every situation in life.”
“Is that it?” asked the King.
“No, Sire!” replied the sage, who saw it wasn’t going well for him. “The Pluralites also derive their name from the fact that all are linked up with their ruler, and in such a way that if ever the majority deems the royal actions to be harmful to the general welfare, that ruler loses his cohesion and disintegrates…”
“Unoriginal, if not—regicidal!” the King said darkly. “Since you yourself, sage, have had so much to say upon the topic of heads, perhaps you can tell me: Am I now going to order you beheaded, or not?”
—If I say he will—quickly thought the sage—then he will indeed, for he is ill-disposed toward me. If I say he will not, that will catch him unawares, and if he is surprised, he will have to set me free according to his promise.—And he said:
“No, Sire, you will not behead me.”
“You are mistaken,” said the King. “Executioner, do your duty!”
“But Sire!” cried the sage, already seized by the myrmidons, “did not my words surprise you? Did you not expect me to say, rather, that you would order me beheaded?”
“Your words did not surprise me,” answered the King, “for they were dictated by fear, which you have written on your face. Enough! Off with his head!”
And with a clang the head of the second sage went rolling across the marble floor. The third and oldest of the sages watched this scene with complete calm. And when the King again demanded an amazing tale, he said:
“O King! I could tell you a story truly extraordinary, but this I shall not do, for I would rather make you honest than cause you to be amazed. Thus will I force you to behead me, not under the paltry pretext of this game into which you seek to turn your killing, but in a manner true to your nature, a nature which, though cruel, dares not work its pleasure without donning first the mask of falsehood. For you wished to behead us, so that it would be said afterwards that the King had put to death fools who pretended to wisdom not theirs. It is my desire, however, that the truth be told, and so will I keep silent.”
“No, I will not give you to the executioner now,” said the King. “I sincerely and honestly crave something novel. You sought to anger me, but I can curb my anger till the proper time. I say to you: Speak, and you will save perchance not only your own self. The tale you tell may border even on lese majesty, which indeed you have already permitted yourself, but this time it must be an affront so monstrous as to become a compliment, and a compliment of such dimensions as to constitute in turn an outrage! Try then at a single blow both to elevate and humiliate, both to magnify and mortify your King!”
A silence fell. Those present made small motions, as if seeing how firmly their heads still rested on their shoulders.
The third sage seemed plunged in thought. At last he said:
“O King, I shall carry out your wish, and reveal to you the reason why. I shall do this thing for the sake of all those present here, for my own sake, yes and for yours also, in order that it not be said in years to come that there lived a king who by his caprice destroyed wisdom in his kingdom. Even if that
is
the case at this moment, even if your wish has little importance or none at all, my task is to impart value to that passing whim, to turn it into something meaningful and lasting—and therefore I shall speak…”
“Old one, enough now of your introduction, which once again borders on lese majesty, and without coming anywhere near a compliment,” said the King angrily. “Speak!”
“O King, you abuse your power,” replied the sage, “yet your abuses are nothing compared to those which became the lot of your remote ancestor, unknown to you, who was also the founder of the Eparid dynasty. This great-great-great-grandfather of yours, Allegoric, likewise abused his royal power. To give you some idea of the enormity of what he did, I ask you to look out upon yon night horizon, visible through the upper windows of the palace hall.” The King gazed up at the sky, starry and clear, and the old one continued slowly:
“Behold and hearken! Everything that is, is ridiculed. No station, however high, is proof against ridicule, for there always will be ones who mock even the majesty of a king. Laughter strikes at thrones and realms. Nations make fun of other nations, or of themselves. It even happens that fun is made of what does not exist—have not mythological gods been laughed at? Even things grimly serious and solemn—tragic even—ofttimes become the butt of jokes. You have but to think of graveyard humor, the jests concerning death and the deceased. And the heavenly bodies themselves have not been spared this treatment. Take for example the Sun, or the Moon. The Moon is now and then depicted as a skinny character with a drooping fool’s cap and a chin that sticks out like a sickle, while the Sun is a fat-faced, friendly humpty-dumpty in a tousled aureola. And yet, though the kingdoms of both life and death serve as objects of ridicule, and things both great and small, there is something at which no one yet has had the courage to laugh or jeer. Nor is this thing the sort which one might easily forget or fail to notice, for I am speaking here of everything that exists, in other words the Universe. Yet if you think upon it, O King, you will see how very ludicrous is the Universe…”
At this point, for the first time, King Globares experienced surprise, and with growing interest listened to the words of the sage, who said:
“The Universe is composed of stars. That sounds serious enough, but when we look into the matter more closely, it is hard to keep from smiling. In actual fact—what are stars? Spheres of fire, suspended in the everlasting night. A compelling image, it would seem. Compelling by its nature? No, purely on account of its size. But size alone cannot decide the significance of a phenomenon. Do the scribblings of a cretin, transferred from a sheet of paper to a broad plain, become thereby momentous?