"Stanislaw Lem - Ijon Tichy 03 - The Futurological Congress" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lem Stanislaw)

few of the opposition tabloids. Perusing these (with considerable difficulty), I was amazed to find articles
full of saccharine platitudes on the theme of the tender bonds of love as the surest guarantee of universal
peace—right beside articles that were full of dire threats, articles promising bloody repression or else an
equally bloody insurrection. The only explanation I could think of for this peculiar incongruity was that
some of the journalists had been drinking the water that day, and some hadn't. Of course less water
would be consumed by the staff of a right-wing newspaper, since reactionary editors were better paid
than their radical counterparts and consequently could afford to imbibe more exclusive liquids while they
worked. The radicals, on the other hand, though they were known to display a certain degree of
asceticism in the name of higher principles, hardly ever quenched their thirst with water. Especially since
quartzupio, a fermented drink from the juice of the melmenole plant, was extremely cheap in Costa Rica.
We had settled back in our comfortable armchairs, and Professor Dringenbaum of Switzerland was
just delivering the first numeral of his report, when all at once the hollow rumble of an explosion shook
the building and made the windows rattle. The optimists among us passed this off as a simple earthquake,
but I was inclined to think that the group of demonstrators outside that had been picketing the hotel since
morning was now resorting to incendiary tactics. Though the following blast and concussion, much more
powerful, changed my mind; now I could hear the familiar staccato of machine-gun fire in the streets. No,
there was no longer any doubt: Costa Rica had entered into the stage of open hostilities. Our reporters
were the first to disappear; at the sound of shooting they jumped to their feet and rushed out the door,
eager to cover this new assignment. But Professor Dringenbaum went on with his lecture, which was
fairly pessimistic in tone, for it maintained that the next phase of our civilization would be cannibalism. He
cited several well-known American theoreticians, who had calculated that, if things on Earth continued at
their present rate, in four hundred years humanity would represent a living sphere of bodies with a radius
expanding at approximately the speed of light. But new explosions interrupted the report. The
futurologists, confused, began to leave the hall and mingle in the lobby with people from the Liberated
Literature convention. Judging by the appearance of these latter, the outbreak of the fighting had caught
them in the middle of activity which suggested complete indifference to the threat of overpopulation.
Behind some editors from the publishing house of Knopf stood naked secretaries—though not entirely
naked, for their limbs were painted with various op designs. They carried portable water pipes and
hookahs filled with a popular mixture of LSD, marijuana, yohimbine and opium. The liberationists,
someone told me, had just burned the United States Postmaster General in effigy (it seems he had
ordered the destruction of a pamphlet calling for the initiation of mass incest) and now, gathered in the
lobby, they were behaving most inappropriately—particularly given the seriousness of the situation. With
the exception of a few who were exhausted or remained in a narcotic stupor, they all carried on in a
positively scandalous fashion. I heard screams from the reception desk, where switchboard operators
were being raped, and one potbellied gentleman in a leopardskin tore through the hotel cloakroom,
waving a hashish torch as he chased the attendants. It took several porters to restrain him. Then someone
from the mezzanine threw armfuls of photographs down on our heads, photographs depicting in vivid
color exactly how one man could satisfy his lust with another, and a great deal more besides. When the
first tanks appeared in the streets—clearly visible from our windows—panic-stricken phillumenists and
student protesters came pouring from the elevators; trampling underfoot the abovementioned páté
mounds and salad molds (which the publishers had brought out with them), these newcomers scattered in
all directions. And there was the bearded anti-papist bellowing like a bull and wildly swinging his
papalshooter, knocking down anyone who stood in the way. He pushed through the crowd and ran out
in front of the hotel, where he hid behind a corner of the building and—I saw this with my own
eyes—opened fire on the figures running past. Obviously this dedicated, ideologically motivated fanatic
really didn't care, when it came down to it, whom he shot at. The lobby, filled with cries of terror and
revelry, became a scene of utter pandemonium when the huge picture windows began to shatter. I tried
to locate my reporter friends and, seeing them dash up the street, followed after; the atmosphere in the
Hilton had really become too oppressive. Behind a low concrete wall along the hotel driveway crouched
two cameramen, frantically filming everything, which made little sense, since everyone knows that the first