Mortal Engines (11 page)

“Ha! Humph!” said Alfred. “A situation indeed! This will take a bit of thought. What exactly do you require?”

“Require? Why, everything: help, rescue, clothes, means of subsistence, there’s nothing here but sand and rocks!”

“H’m! Is that a fact? You’re quite sure? There are not lying about somewhere along the beach chests from the wrecked ship, chests filled with tools, utensils, interesting reading, garments for different occasions, as well as gunpowder?”

Automatthew searched the length and breadth of the beach, but found nothing, not so much as a splinter from the vessel, which apparently had sunk all in one piece, like a stone.

“Nothing at all, you say? Most peculiar. The considerable literature on life on desert islands proves irrefutably that a shipwrecked person always finds at close hand axes, nails, fresh water, oil, sacred books, saws, pliers, firearms, and a great number of other useful items. But if not, then not. Is there at least a cave in the rocks providing shelter?”

“No, there is no cave.”

“What, no cave? Whoo, this
is
unusual! Would you be so good as to climb onto the highest rock and cast an eye around?”

“I’ll do it right away!” cried Automatthew, and scrambled up a steep rock in the middle of the island, and froze: the little volcanic island was surrounded on all sides by limitless ocean!

In a faltering voice he conveyed this news to Alfred, adjusting with a shaky finger the cotton in his ear, so as not to lose his friend. “How lucky I am that it didn’t fall out when the ship went down,” he thought and, suddenly feeling fatigued, sat on a rock and waited impatiently for friendly assistance.

“Now pay attention, my friend! Here is the advice I hasten to give you in this difficult predicament!” finally came the tiny voice of Alfred, so eagerly awaited. “On the basis of the calculations I have made, I conclude that we find ourselves on an unknown island which represents a kind of reef, or more precisely the summit of an underwater mountain chain that is gradually emerging from the depths and will join the mainland in three to four million years.”

“Forget about the million years, what should I do now?!” exclaimed Automatthew.

“The island lies far from all lanes of navigation. The chance of a vessel accidentally appearing in the vicinity is one in four hundred thousand.”

“Good Lord!” cried the castaway, despairing. “This is terrible! What then do you advise me to do?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute, if you will just stop interrupting. Proceed to the edge of the sea and enter the water, more or less chest-high. In that way you will not have to bend over unnecessarily, which would be cumbersome. Next you immerse your head and take in as much water as you possibly can. The stuff is bitter, I realize, but that will not last long. Particularly if at the same time you continue marching forward. You’ll soon grow heavy, and the salt water, filling up your entrails, will in the twinkling of an eye halt all organic processes and thereby instantly terminate your existence. Thanks to this you will avoid the prolonged torment of life upon this island, also the eventual anguish of a lingering death, not to mention the likelihood of losing your sanity prior to that. You might, in addition, hold a heavy stone in each hand. This is not necessary, however…”

“You’re mad!” shouted Automatthew, jumping up. “So I’m to drown myself? You urge me to commit suicide? Some helpful advice, this! And you call yourself my friend?!”

“Indeed yes!” Alfred replied. “I’m not a bit mad, madness doesn’t lie within my capabilities. I never lose my mental balance. All the more unpleasant would it then be for me, dear friend, to be there while you found yourself losing yours and slowly perished in the rays of this scorching sun. I assure you, I have carefully analyzed the entire situation and one by one ruled out every possibility of rescue. You will not make a boat or raft, you haven’t the materials for that; no ship will come and save you, as has been already pointed out; neither do airplanes fly over the island, and you in turn cannot build yourself a flying machine. You could, of course, choose a slow death over one that is swift and easy, but as your closest friend I strongly advise you against so foolish a decision. If you would only take a good, deep breath of water…”

“Your good, deep breath of water be damned!!” screamed Automatthew, quivering with rage. “And to think that for a friend like this I parted with a beautifully cut diamond! You know what your inventor is? A common thief, a swindler, a fraud!”

“You’ll surely retract those words when you have heard me out,” said Alfred quietly.

“You mean there’s more? What now, do you intend regaling me with tales of the afterlife that waits in store? Just what I need!”

“There is no life after death,” said Alfred. “I shall not attempt to deceive you, for I neither wish nor indeed am able to do so. This is not how I understand the duty of a friend. Only listen to me carefully, dear Automatthew! As you are aware, though in general one gives no thought to it, the world is a place of infinite variety and richness. In it you have magnificent cities, filled with mingled voices and fabled treasures, you have royal palaces, hovels, mountains enchanting and drear, murmuring groves, tranquil lakes, torrid deserts and the endless snows of the North. Being what you are, however, you cannot experience at a time more than one single, solitary place among those I have mentioned and the millions I have not. It can therefore be said—without exaggeration—that for the places in which you are not present you represent, as it were, one who is dead, for you are not enjoying the pleasures of palace wealth, nor taking part in the dances of the countries of the South, neither are you feasting your eyes upon the rainbow ices of the North. They do not exist for you, in exactly the same way that they do not exist in death. By the same token, if you use your mind and ponder well what I am telling you, you will realize that in not being everywhere, that is, in all those fascinating places, you are nearly nowhere at all. For there are, as I said, millions upon millions of places to be, while you are able to experience this one place only, an uninteresting place, unpleasant even, in its monotony, bah—repulsive, this little island here of rocks. Now between ‘everywhere’ and ‘nearly nowhere’ the difference is enormous and it constitutes your normal lot in life, for you always have been in only one, single, solitary place at a given time. On the other hand between ‘nearly nowhere’ and ‘nowhere’ the difference is, quite honestly, microscopic. And so the mathematics of sensations proves that even now you can barely be considered alive, for your absence is everywhere, like one departed! That is the first thing. Secondly: gaze upon this sand mixed with gravel, which digs into your tender feet—do you consider it invaluable? Assuredly not. Behold this great quantity of salt water, its revolting abundance—is it of use to you? Hardly! Here are some rocks and there, above you, a broiling sky that dries up the joints in your limbs. Do you need this unendurable heat, these lifeless, burning boulders? Of course you don’t! And therefore you have absolutely no need of all the things surrounding you, of that on which you stand, of that which spreads above you from horizon to horizon. What will remain, if one takes this away? A little hum in the head, a pressure in the temples, a pounding in the chest, some trembling at the knees, and other such chaotic agitations. Do you need, in turn, this hum, pressure, pounding and trembling? Not one whit, dear Automatthew! And if this also is relinquished, what then remains? A few racing thoughts, those expressions—very like curses—which in your heart you are hurling at me now, your own friend, and in addition to this a choking anger and a sickening fear. Do you need—I ask you finally—this wretched terror and this futile rage? Obviously you can do without them. If then we take away those useless feelings as well, what is left is nothing, nothing, I tell you, zero, and it is precisely this zero, this state of infinite patience, unbroken silence and perfect peace, that I wish for you, as your true friend, to have!”

“But I want to live!” howled Automatthew. “To live! To live!! Do you hear me?!”

“Ah, we are speaking now not of what you experience, but of what you desire,” answered Alfred calmly. “You wish to live, in other words to possess a future which will become your present, for this—after all—is what living amounts to. There is nothing more to it than that. But live you will not, for you cannot, as we already determined. The only question then is in what manner you will cease to live—whether in protracted agony or, instead, easily, when with one quick gulp of water…”

“Enough! No more! Go away! Get out!!” screamed Automatthew with all his might, jumping up and down with his fists clenched.

“Now what is this?” returned Alfred. “Putting aside for the moment the insulting form of that command, which does bring to mind our declaration of friendship, really, how can you express yourself so unreasonably? How can you say to me ‘Get out’? Do I have legs, on which I might depart? Or even arms, to crawl away? You know perfectly well that such is not the case. If you wish to be rid of me, then kindly remove me from your ear, which—I assure you—is not the most convenient place in the world to be, and throw me somewhere!”

“Fine!” yelled Automatthew in a fury. “I’ll do it right now!” But in vain did he dig and poke in his ear, using his finger. His friend had been too carefully wedged within and in no way could he extract it, though he shook his head in all directions like one insane.

“That evidently isn’t going to work,” Alfred observed after a long pause. “It would appear that we shall not part, though this is neither to your liking nor to mine. If so, then it is a fact we must accept, for facts have this about them, that the truth is always on their side. Which applies equally—I note in passing—to your current situation. You wish to have a future, and at any price. This seems to me the height of folly, but very well, so be it. Permit me then to depict this future for you in rough outline, since the known is always preferable to the unknown. The anger which presently convulses you will shortly give way to a feeling of helpless despair, and this, after a series of efforts—as violent as they will be unavailing—to find some avenue of escape, will yield in turn to a mindless stupor. Meanwhile the driving heat of the sun, which reaches even me in this shaded portion of your person, will, in accordance with the unrelenting laws of physics and chemistry, dry out more and more your entire being. First the oil in your joints will evaporate off, and the least movement will cause you to squeak and creak dreadfully, poor devil! Next, as your skull begins to bake in the searing heat, you will see whirling circles of various colors, but this will bear no similarity to a rainbow, because…”

“Will
you be quiet, you intolerable pest?!” cried Automatthew. “I don’t
want
to hear what’s going to happen to me! Silence, not another word, do you understand?!”

“You needn’t shout. You know perfectly well that your every whisper, however low, can reach me. And so you do not wish to learn of the torments that your future holds? Yet on the other hand you wish to have that future? How illogical! Very well, in that case I will be silent. I only point out that it is inappropriate for you to be concentrating your anger on me, as though I were to blame for this highly regrettable situation you are in. The cause of the misfortune was, of course, the storm, while I am your friend and my participation in the tortures that await you, that entire spectacle—divided into acts—of suffering and slow death, even now it grieves me to think upon it, yes, the horrifying prospect of what will happen when your oil…”

“So you won’t stop then? Or is it that you can’t, you little monster?!” bellowed Automatthew, and struck himself a blow in the ear that housed his friend. “Oh, if only I had here, in my hand, a stick of some sort, a piece of a twig, which I could use to pry you out, I’d do it and grind you beneath my heel in no time!”

“You dream of destroying me?” said Alfred, saddened. “Truly, you do not deserve an electrofriend, nor any other sympathizing fellow creature!”

Automatthew flared up anew at this and so they quarreled, argued and disputed till the day was almost over, and the poor robot, exhausted from all his screaming, jumping and fist-waving, and suddenly feeling very weak, sat down on a stone where, heaving sighs of hopelessness every now and then, he stared out at the empty ocean. A couple of times he took the edge of a small cloud peering out over the horizon for the smoke of a steamship, but these illusions Alfred quickly dispelled, reminding him of the one-in-four-hundred-thousand probability, which again drove Automatthew to paroxysms of despair and rage, all the more in that each time, as it turned out, Alfred was right. Finally a long silence fell between them. The castaway now gazed at the lengthening shadows of the rocks, which stretched across the white sand of the beach, when Alfred spoke:

“Why do you say nothing? Can it be that those circles I mentioned are even now swimming before your eyes?”

Automatthew did not bother to reply.

“Aha!” Alfred went on, in monologue. “So it’s not only the circles but, in all likelihood, also that mindless torpor which I so accurately predicted. Remarkable, really, the lack of sense displayed by an intelligent being, particularly when beset by circumstances. You trap it on a desert island, where it must perish, you prove as two and two are four that this is inescapable, you show it a way out of the situation, in the taking of which, it will be making the only use it can of its will and reason—and is it thankful? Oh no, it wants hope, and if there is none and can be none, it clings to false hope and would rather sink into madness than into the water which…”

“Stop talking about the water!!” croaked Automatthew.

“I was only demonstrating the irrationality of your motives,” answered Alfred. “I no longer urge anything upon you. That is, any action, for if you wish to die slowly, or rather, by wishing to do nothing in general, you undertake that type of dying, then one must think this through properly. Consider how erroneous and unwise it is to fear death, a state that deserves, rather, vindication! For what can equal the perfection of nonexistence? True, the agony leading up to it does not, in itself, present an especially attractive phenomenon, on the other hand there has never yet been one so feeble in mind or body that he could not endure it and proved unable to die his death completely, all the way and to the very end. It is not, then, a thing of much significance, if any dolt, weakling and good-for-nothing can do it. And if absolutely everyone can handle it (and you must admit that this is so, I at least have never heard of anyone unequal to the task), it is better to think with delight on the all-merciful nothingness that lies just beyond its threshold. Because, when one has passed away, it is impossible to think, inasmuch as death and thought are mutually exclusive, and therefore when else, if not while still in life, is it fitting to contemplate—sensibly and particularly—all those privileges, conveniences and pleasures which death will bestow so generously upon you?! Picture if you will: no struggles, no anxieties or apprehensions, no suffering of the body or the soul, no unhappy accidents, and this on what a scale! Why, even if all the world’s evil forces were to join and conspire against you, they would not reach you! Truly, nothing can compare with the sweet security of one who is no more! And if furthermore you consider that this security is not something transient, fleeting, impermanent, that nothing may repeal or intrude upon it, then with what boundless joy…”