"Stanislaw Lem - Ijon Tichy 05 - Peace on Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lem Stanislaw)

You have a little container in your suit, just like Armstrong and Aldrin, so you can relieve yourself
anytime, anywhere, but somehow I couldn't, not there in the full sun in the middle of the Sea of Serenity.
Not far from me was a solitary boulder. I went over to its shadow. How was I to know there was an
ultrasound-inducing field there? While I'm urinating, I feel this little snap. Like a crack in the neck, only
higher, in the middle of the skull. It was a remote callotomy. It didn't hurt. I felt funny but the feeling
passed and I continued on my way. The strangeness I attributed to an understandable excitement,
considering all I had been through. The right hand is controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain. That's
why I said I was writing only partly. My right hemisphere obviously doesn't approve of what I'm writing.
And I can't say "I'm writing" -- it's my left hemisphere that's writing. I'll have to reach some compromise
with the opposition because I can't sit forever with my hand tied. I've tried to appease it but nothing
works. It's arrogant, aggressive, vulgar. Fortunately it can read only certain parts of speech, nouns
mainly. I know this because I've been reading up on the subject. It doesn't understand verbs or
adjectives, so while it's watching I have to express myself carefully. Will this work? I don't know. And
why is it that all the civilized behavior is in the left hemisphere?
On the moon too I was supposed to land only partly, but in an entirely different sense, because it
was before the accident, before I was doubled. I was supposed to circle the moon in stationary orbit, the
reconnaissance to be accomplished by my remote, which even looked like me except it was plastic with
antennas. I sit in LEM 1 and LEM 2 lands with the remote. Those war robots hate people. They will kill
at the drop of a hat. At least that's what I was told. But LEM 2 malfunctioned and I decided to land to
see what was going on because I was still in contact with it. Sitting in LEM 1, I suddenly had severe
stomach pains, not in the flesh, that is, but by radio because, as I learned after landing, they broke LEM
2's hatch cover, grabbed the remote, and pulled out its insides. I couldn't disconnect because if I did, my
stomach might stop hurting but I'd lose all contact with my remote and wouldn't be able to locate it. The
Sea of Serenity, where the attack took place, is like the Sahara. Also, I got the wires mixed because
even though each wire is a different color there are too many of them and I couldn't find the emergency
instructions. Trying to find them with a stomachache made me so mad that instead of calling Earth I
decided to land, even though I'd been warned I shouldn't do that under any circumstances. But retreat
just isn't in my nature. Besides, the remote may have been only a machine stuffed with circuitry but I
couldn't leave it in the clutches of those robots.
I see that the more I explain, the less clear it gets. I should probably begin at the beginning.
Except I don't know what the beginning was because most of it is remembered in the right hemisphere,
which I can't get to now. There's a lot I don't remember, and in order to obtain even a little of that
information I have to speak to my left hand with my right in sign language but it doesn't always answer.
The left hand gives me the finger for example, and that's one of its more polite indications of a difference
of opinion.
I'd like to give it a good smack but the problem is, while the right hand is stronger than the left,
the legs are equal, and what's worse, I have a corn on the little toe of my right foot and the left foot
knows about it. When that trouble started on the bus and I shoved my left hand forcibly into my pocket,
its foot took revenge by stomping on the corn so hard, I saw stars. I don't know if it's a loss of
intelligence caused by the doubling but I can see I'm writing nonsense. The foot of my left hand is, of
course, my left foot. There are times my unfortunate body falls into two enemy camps.
I interrupted my writing to kick myself. That is, my left foot kicked my right so it wasn't I, or it
was only partly I, but grammar simply can't describe this situation. I started taking off my shoes but
stopped. A person, even in such straits, shouldn't make a fool of himself. Was I supposed to twist my
own arm to learn what the problem was with the wires and the emergency instructions? True, I had
beaten myself in the past but the circumstances were different. Once in that time loop, when the today me
was against the yesterday me, and once to counteract the poison of the benignimizers in that hotel in
Costa Rica. I had beaten myself black and blue, but remained myself, indivisible. It wasn't so unusual.
Didn't people in the Middle Ages flog themselves? But no one now can put himself in my shoes. It's
impossible. I can't even say that there are two of me because there aren't. Or there are but only partly. If