Mortal Engines (16 page)

The whole problem of electrical dementia, I must confess, has always intrigued me. I thought to myself that a visit to such a sanatorium might be profitable. I did not know Vliperdius personally, but the name was not unknown to me: Professor Tarantoga had spoken of him. When an idea comes to me, I usually act on it at once.

So as soon as I got home I telephoned the sanatorium. Dr. Vliperdius at first had many reservations, but when I referred to our mutual friend Tarantoga, he relented. I got an appointment for the following day, since that was Sunday and I had plenty of free time before noon. And so after breakfast I drove to the city, where in a district famous for small lakes was located, picturesquely set in an old park, the psychiatric institution. Vliperdius, they said, was waiting for me in his office. Sunlight filled the building, for the walls were of aluminum and glass, in the modem fashion. On the ceilings were colorful panels showing robots at play. You could not have called this hospital gloomy; from unseen rooms came the sounds of music; passing through the lobby, I saw Chinese puzzles, colorful albums, and a sculpture, a boldly executed robot nude.

The Doctor did not rise from behind his wide desk, but was most gracious: as I found out, he had read and was quite familiar with more than one of my books of travel. It’s true he was a bit old-fashioned, and not merely in his manner, for he was completely fastened to the floor, like some antique Eniac. Possibly I did not conceal my surprise upon seeing his iron feet, for he said with a laugh:

“I am, you see, so devoted to my work and to my patients, that I feel no need to leave the sanatorium!”

Now I knew how sensitive psychiatrists could be on the subject of their speciality, and also how offended by the attitude of the average man, who finds exoticism and monstrosity in mental aberrations, therefore I was very careful in presenting my request. The Doctor hemmed, frowned, raised his anode potential and said:

“If that is what you wish … but I think you will be disappointed. These days there are no raving robots, Mr. Tichy, that is ancient history. Our therapy is modern. The methods of the last century—the soldering of wires to soften the main pipe, the use of chokes and other instruments of torture—already belong to the annals of medicine. H’m. How might this be best demonstrated to you? Perhaps if you would simply go into the park and there acquaint yourself directly with our patients. They are individuals most refined and cultured. I trust you have no—ah—aversion, no irrational fear in the presence of slight deviations…?”

I assured him this was the case, whereat Vliperdius said he regretted that he was unable to escort me on my walk, indicated the way and asked that I drop in again on my way back.

I went down the stairs, across wide verandas, and found myself on a graveled path. All around spread the park, full of flower beds and elaborate palms. Farther on, in a pond swam a small flock of swans, the patients were feeding them, others on gayly colored benches were devoting themselves to chess or friendly conversation. I walked slowly on, when someone called me by my name. I turned to face a completely unknown person.

“Tichy! Is it you?!” repeated that individual, extending his hand. I shook it, in vain attempting to recollect who he might be.

“I see you don’t recognize me. I am Prolaps… I worked on the
Cosmic Almanac
…”

“Ah yes, of course! Forgive me,” I muttered. Obviously this was Prolaps, the honest linotype who had printed practically all my books. I valued him highly, he was truly infallible. He took me familiarly by the arm and we started down the shaded lane. Patches of light and shadow animated the tranquil face of my companion. We talked for a while of new books and publishing; he expressed himself as precisely as ever, with his usual acumen, altogether he was in excellent intellectual form. I found not a trace of abnormality in him. But when we came to a small gazebo and had seated ourselves on a stone bench, he lowered his voice to a confidential whisper and asked:

“But what are you doing here? Did they replace you too…?”

“Well, you see… I came here of my own accord, because…”

“Of course! I did too!” he interrupted. “When the thing happened to me, I went straight to the police, but I quickly saw that that was useless. My friends suggested I try Vliperdius—he went about my case altogether differently! He’s conducting a search and I’m certain it will soon be found…”

“Excuse me—what is that?” I asked.

“What do you mean? My body.”

“Aha … yes…” I nodded several times, trying my best not to look startled. But Prolaps noticed nothing.

“How well I recall that day, the 26th of June,” he said, suddenly grown gloomy. “Sitting down at the table, to read the newspaper, I clanked. That caught my attention, I mean, after all, what man clanks when he sits down? I So I feel my legs—curiously hard, the arms—the same, I tapped myself and suddenly realized that I had been substituted! Some scoundrel had made a forgery—I searched my entire apartment, not a sign of it, they must have carried it off in the night…”

“Carried what off?”

“I already told you! My body. My natural body, surely you can see that THIS”—and he rapped his chest until it rang—“is artificial…”

“Ah, of course! I wasn’t thinking … obviously…”

“Can it be that you too…?” he asked with hope in his voice. Suddenly he seized my hand and with it struck the stone slab of the table at which we were sitting. I groaned. He dropped the hand, disappointed.

“Forgive me,” he muttered, “I thought I saw it glitter.”

I understood now that he held himself to be a man whose body had been stolen, and that, like so many ill who are eager to have around them companions in misery, he hoped that the very same thing had happened to me.

Rubbing my battered hand beneath the table, I tried to change the topic of our conversation, but now he began describing with great enjoyment and emotion the charms of his former corporality, he went on and on about the blond forelock he was supposed to have possessed, the silkiness of his cheeks, even the runny nose—I didn’t know how to get rid of him, for I was feeling more and more uncomfortable. But Prolaps himself delivered me from this awkward situation. For all at once he jumped to his feet and cried: “Oh, I think that is IT over there!!”—and he bounded straight across the lawn after some indistinct figure. I was still sitting, lost in thought, when someone behind me said:

“May I…?”

“Yes, certainly,” I replied.

The stranger sat down and fixed his eyes on me, unblinking, as if he wished to hypnotize me. For a long time he contemplated my face and hands with an expression of growing sorrow. Finally he looked deep into my eyes with such tremendous sympathy, and at the same time with such satisfaction, that I became confused. I didn’t know what to make of this. The silence between us increased, I tried to break it, but couldn’t think of a single neutral statement with which to begin a conversation: for his gaze expressed too much, and yet too little.

“Poor wretch…” he said softly, unutterable feeling in his voice, “how I pity you…”

“But really—I don’t—that is—” I blurted, looking for words to defend myself against this strange excess of commiseration he was heaping on me.

“You needn’t speak, I understand everything. More than you imagine. I know, too, that you take me for a lunatic.”

“Not in the least,” I started to protest, but he cut me off with a peremptory gesture.

“In a sense I am a lunatic,” he said, almost majestically. “Like Galileo, Newton, like Giordano Bruno. If my views were only rational … humph! But more important are one’s feelings. How I pity you, victim of the Universe! What misery it is, what a hopeless trap—to live…”

“Yes, life can be difficult,” I put in quickly, having found at last some point of departure. “Nevertheless, as a phenomenon which is, so to speak, natural…”

“Precisely!” he seized upon my last word. “Natural! Is there anything more contemptible than Nature? The scientists, the philosophers have always tried to understand Nature, while the thing to do is to destroy it!”

“In its entirety…?” I asked, despite myself fascinated by such a radical presentation of the matter.

“Only so!” he said categorically. “Look at this, I ask you.”

Gingerly, as if it were some caterpillar deserving study, yet at the same time disgusting (his revulsion he attempted to control), he lifted my hand and, holding it between us like a curious specimen, continued quietly though with emphasis:

“How watery it is … how pulpy … squashy… Albumin! Ach, that albumin… A curd that moves for a time—a thinking cheese—the tragic product of a dairy accident, a walking slop…”

“Excuse me, but…”

He paid no attention to my words. I hid my hand beneath the table and he released it, as though no longer able to endure the touch, but then he placed his palm upon my head. It was uncannily heavy.

“How is it possible! How is it possible to produce such a thing!” he repeated, increasing the pressure on my skull, until it grew painful, but I didn’t dare object. “These knobs, holes … cauliflowers—” with an iron finger he poked my nose and ears—“and this is supposed to be an intelligent creature? For shame! For shame, I say!! What use is a Nature that after four billion years comes up with THIS?!”

Here he gave my head a shove, so that it wobbled and I saw stars.

“Give me one, just one billion years, and you’ll see what I create!!”

“True, the imperfection of biological evolution,” I began, but he didn’t let me finish.

“Imperfection?!” he snorted. “Droppings! Trash! An outright botch-job! If you can’t do something right, you shouldn’t do it at all!”

“Not that I want to make excuses,” I said quickly, “but Nature, don’t forget, worked with what it had at hand. In the primordial sea…”

“Garbage floated!!” he roared so loud, I winced. “Isn’t that right? A star exploded, planets formed, and from the dregs, which couldn’t be used for anything, from those gobbets and scraps life arose! Enough, no more! No more of these pudgy suns, inane galaxies, this mucilage that has a soul—enough!”

“Still, the atoms,” I began, but he interrupted. Already I saw the orderlies approaching across the grass: they had been alerted by the shouts of my interlocutor.

“To hell with the atoms!” he roared. They took him by the arms from both sides. He let himself be led away, but, still looking at me—for he went backward, like a crab—he thundered, till the whole park rang:

“We must involute! Do you hear, O pale colloidal soup!? Instead of discovering, we must make undiscoveries, we must cover up more and more, so nothing remains, you glutinous ooze draped over bone! That’s the way! Progress through regress! Nullify! Revert! Destroy! Down with Nature! Away with Nature! Awaaay!”

His cries grew fainter and more and more distant, and once again the silence of the lovely noon was filled with the drone of bees and the smell of flowers. I thought to myself that Dr. Vliperdius had exaggerated after all, when he spoke of the disappearance of raving robots. Apparently those new methods of therapy did not always work. However the experience itself, the outspoken diatribe on Nature I had heard a moment before, seemed worth these few bruises and the bump on my head. I found out later that that robot, formerly an analyzer of harmonic Fourier series, had created his own theory of existence, which was based on the accumulation of discoveries made by civilization, an accumulation that would reach such extreme proportions, the only thing left would be to cover up those discoveries one by one. For in this way, upon the completion of the work of science, there is no room—not only no room for civilization, but for the Universe that gave rise to it. A total liquidation of progress follows and the whole cycle begins again from the beginning. He considered himself a prophet of this second, undiscovering phase of development. He had been put away in Vliperdius’s sanatorium at the request of his family, when from the taking apart of friends and relatives he turned to the dismantling of third persons.

I left the gazebo and for a time watched the swans. Next to me some crank was throwing them broken bits of metal wire. I told him that swans didn’t eat that.

“I don’t care if they don’t,” he replied, continuing his activity.

“But they could choke, and that would be a shame,” I said.

“They won’t choke, because the wire sinks. It is heavier than water,” he explained cogently.

“Then why do you throw it?”

“I like to feed the swans.”

That exhausted the subject. Upon leaving the pond, we struck up a conversation. As it turned out, I was dealing with a famous philosopher, the creator of the ontology of nothingness, otherwise known as neantics, and the continuator of the work of Gorgias of Leontinoi—Professor Urlip. The Professor at great length told me of the newest development in his theory. According to him there is nothing, not even himself. The nothingness of being is perfectly intact. The fact of the apparent existence of this and that has no significance whatever, for the argument, in keeping with Ockham’s razor, runs as follows: it would seem that reality, or actuality, exists, and also dream. But the hypothesis of reality is unneeded. So then, dream exists. But a dream demands a dreamer. Now the postulation of someone dreaming is—again—an unnecessary hypothesis, for it sometimes happens that in a dream another dream is dreamed. Thus everything is a dream dreamt by a succeeding dream, and so on to infinity. Now because—and here is the main point—each succeeding dream is less real than the one preceding (a dream borders directly on reality, while a dream dreamed within a dream borders on it indirectly, through that same intermediate dream, and the third through two dreams, and so on)—the upper bound of this series equals zero.
Ergo,
in the final analysis no one is dreaming and zero is dreamt,
ergo
only nothingness has existence, in other words there isn’t anything. The elegance and precision of the proof filled me with admiration. The only thing I didn’t understand was what Professor Urlip was doing in this place. It turned out that the poor philosopher had gone quite mad—he told me so himself. His insanity consisted in the fact that he no longer believed in his own doctrine and had moments in which it seemed to him that there was something after all. Dr. Vliperdius was to cure him of this delusion.