"Stanislaw Lem - The Offer Of King Krool" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lem Stanislaw)

The Release of Krool

All the ministers and dignitaries turned blue, but what could they do? They had ¹choice, so
a ship was immediately ordered.
But then the constructors unexpectedly showed up after a leisurely breakfast, to surprise
the work, and nothing suited them: this material, for instance, was ¹good, and that engineer
was an absolute idiot, and they had to have a revolving magic lantern in the main hall, one
with four pneumatic widgets and a calibrated cuckoo clock on top—and if the natives here
didn't know what a widget was, so much the worse for them, considering that the King was
¹doubt most impatient for his release and would (when he could) deal harshly with anyone
who dared to delay it. This remark occasioned a general numbness, a great weakness about
the knees, and much trembling, but the work continued apace.
Finally the ship was ready and the royal stevedores began to stow the cargo in the hold,
diamonds, sacks of pearls, so much gold it kept spilling out the hatch. Meanwhile the police
were secretly running all about the countryside, turning everything upside down, much to the
amusement of Trurl and Klapaucius, who didn't mind explaining to a fearful but fascinated
audience how it all happened, how they had discarded one idea after another until they hit
upon an altogether different kind of beast. Not knowing where or how to place the
controls—that is, the brain —so that they would be safe, the constructors had simply made
everything brain, enabling the beast to think with its leg, or tail, or jaws (equipped with
wisdom teeth only). But that was just the beginning.
The real problem had two aspects, algorithmic and psychoanalytic.
First they had to determine what would check the King, catch him flatfooted, so to speak.
To this end, they created by nonlinear transmutation a police subset within the beast, since
everyone knows that resisting or interfering with an officer who is making an arrest lege artis
is a cosmic offense and utterly unthinkable.
So much for the psychology of it—except that the Postmaster General was utilized here on
similar grounds: an official of lower rank might not have made it past the guards, the letter
then would not have been delivered, and the constructors would have very literally lost their
heads. Moreover, the Postmaster mannequin had been given means to bribe the guards,
should that have proved necessary. Every eventuality had been anticipated and provided for.
Now as far as the algorithms went: they had only to find the proper domain of beasts,
closed, bounded and bonded, with plenty of laws both associative and distributive in
operation, throw in a constable constant or two, some graphs of graft, squadratic equations
and crime waves and the thing took over from there, once activated by the expedient of
writing a document-program (behind the curtain with the bells) in castor oil ink, rendering it
thereby sufficiently hard to swallow to serve as a red-tape generator. We might add here that
later on the constructors had an article published in a prominent scientific journal under the
title of “Recursive B—Metafunctions in the Special Case of a Bogus Polypolice
Transmogrification Conversion on an Oscillating Harmonic Field of Glass Bells and Green Gig,
Kerosene Lamp on the Left to Divert Attention, Solved by Beastly
Incarceration-Concatenation,” which was subsequently exploited by the tabloids as “The
Police State Rears Its Ugly Head.” Obviously none of the ministers, dignitaries or huntsmen
understood a single word of what was said, but that hardly mattered. The loving subjects of
King Krool knew not whether they should despise these constructors or stand and gape in awe
and admiration.
Now all was in readiness for takeoff. Trurl, as stipulated in the agreement, went through
the King's private chambers with a large sack and calmly appropriated whatever object he
took a fancy to.