Peace on Earth

THE LUNAR AGENCY

“Mr. Tichy,” said the director, “our people will fill you in on the details of the Mission. I would just like to give you the general picture — so you don’t miss the forest for the trees. The Geneva Agreement made four impossibilities possible. A continuing arms race at the same time as universal disarmament — that’s one. Arming at maximum speed and at no cost — that’s two. Full protection of each nation against surprise attack while each reserves the right to wage war — that’s three. And finally the liquidation of all armies despite their continued existence. No troops, but the staffs stay on and can think up anything they like. In a nutshell, we’ve instituted pacem in terris."

“True,” I remarked. “But I read the papers. They say we’ve gone from the frying pan into the fire. That the moon is silent and swallowing all probes because Someone has been able to enter into a secret understanding with the robots there. That an unnamed nation is behind everything that’s now happening on the moon. And that the Agency knows this.”

“Pure drivel,” said the director. We were sitting in his enormous office. On a platform at one end stood a huge globe of the moon covered with its smallpox of craters. The sectors of the different nations, colored green, rose, yellow, and red like a political map, went from pole to pole, making the sphere look like a child’s toy or illuminated glass orange without its peel. On the wall behind the director hung the flag of the United Nations.

“There’s a lot of that now,” he said with a pitying smile on his swarthy face. “The press prints it all, and it’s all nonsense.”

“But that movement, those neopacifists, the lunarians, don’t they exist?”

“Oh yes. Have you read their statement? Their program?”

“I have. They call for negotiation with the moon…”

” ‘Negotiation!’ ” the director snorted with contempt. “Not negotiation, capitulation! And nobody knows to whom! Those muddled heads think the moon has become a party, that it can enter into agreements and pacts, that it’s intelligent and powerful. That up there now is some giant computer that has devoured all the sectors. Fear not only has big eyes, Mr. Tichy, it has a small brain.”

“Yes, but can we really rule out the possibility of some sort of unification of all those weapons up there — of those armies, if they are armies? How can we be sure this hasn’t happened, if we are in the dark… ?”

“Because even in the dark we know that certain things are impossible. The sector of each country was installed as a self-evolving testing range. Take a look.” He held a small flat box. The different sectors of the moon lit up, until the globe was as bright as a Chinese lantern. “The larger areas belong to the superpowers. Of course we know what we put there: the Agency acted as transporter, after all. We also dug the foundations for the simulators. Each sector has two simulators surrounded by a production compound. The sectors cannot fight each other; it’s impossible. One simulator designs new weapons and the other works to counter them. Both are computers programmed on the sword-and-shield principle. It’s as if each nation put on the moon a computer that played chess with itself. Except that the game is played with weapons instead of chess pieces and everything can change: the moves, the pieces, the board, everything.”

“You mean,” I asked, surprised, “there’s nothing up there but computers simulating an arms race? Then how is this a threat to Earth? Surely the simulation of a weapon no more dangerous than a piece of paper…”

“Oh no! The weapons that survive selection go into real production. The whole problem is when. You see, the simulators design not just a new weapon but a whole new system of warfare. These are, of course, nonhuman systems. The soldier becomes one with the weapon. Think of natural evolution, the struggle for existence, Darwin. One simulator designs, say, a kind of predator, and the other finds its weakness in order to destroy it. Then the first simulator thinks up something new, and the second parries that too. In principle a contest like this, with endless improvements, could go on for a million years — but each sector after a certain time must begin actual production of the weapons. The time — and the effectiveness required of the prototypes — was determined in advance by the programmers of each nation. Because each nation wanted to have an arsenal of real weapons on the moon, not just simulations like blueprints on paper. Therein lies the rub, the contradiction. Do you understand?”

“Not entirely. What contradiction?”

“Simulated evolution proceeds much more swiftly than natural evolution. He who waits longer obtains the better weapon. But for as long as he waits, he is defenseless. While the one who accepts a shorter simulation run will obtain his weapon sooner. We call this the coefficient of risk. Every nation, placing its military might on the moon, had to decide first whether it wanted better weapons later or poorer weapons sooner.”

“Curious,” I said. “And what happens when sooner or later production begins? The weapons are stockpiled?”

“Some of them, perhaps. But only some. Because then an actual, not a simulated, battle begins — of course only within the given sector.”

“Something like maneuvers?”

“No. On maneuvers the fighting is an exercise, soldiers don’t die, whereas there” — the director pointed to the colorful moon — “genuine combat is taking place. But always within the borders of each sector. Neighbor cannot attack neighbor…”

“So the weapons attack and destroy each other in the computer first, and then for real. And what then?”

“Good question! No one knows. There are basically two possibilities. Either the arms race reaches a limit or it doesn’t. If it does, this means ‘an ultimate weapon’ exists and that the simulated arms race has finally arrived at it. The weapon cannot defeat itself, and thus ensues a state of permanent equilibrium. An end to progress. The lunar arsenals fill with that weapon, which has passed the final test, and nothing more happens. This is what we would like.”

“But it isn’t so?”

“Most likely not. In the first place, natural evolution has no end. It hasn’t because no ‘ultimate’ organism exists, that is, one which is perfect in survivability. Every species contains a weakness. Secondly, the evolution on the moon is artificial, not natural. And it’s certain that each sector monitors what is happening in the others and reacts to that in its own way. Military equilibrium is different from biological equilibrium. A living species must not be too successful in its struggle against competitors. Why? Germs that are too virulent kill all their hosts and so perish with them. Therefore in Nature equilibrium is set at a point below annihilation. Otherwise evolution would be suicidal. But research and development in weapons seeks to crush the enemy. Weapons have no instinct of self-preservation.”

“Just a minute,” I said, taken by a sudden thought. “Each nation could in secret build for itself the exact same computer complex on Earth as the one it put on the moon, and by watching the copy, it would know what the original was doing…”

“Ah, no,” said the director with a sad smile. “That is not possible. The course of evolution cannot be foreseen. We learned this the hard way.”

“How?”

“As you said. We used identical computers in our research lab and identical programs and let them go. Plenty of evolution, but divergent. It’s as if you wanted to predict the outcome of a chess tournament in Moscow between a hundred grand-master computers by simulating the games on a hundred identical computers in New York. What would you learn about the Moscow games? Absolutely nothing. Because no player, man or computer, always makes the same moves. Of course the politicians wanted us to provide them with such simulators, but it didn’t give them anything.”

“But if nothing so far has helped and all your probes disappeared like stones in water, how can I hope to succeed?”

“You will have devices no one has had before. My assistants will give you the details. Good luck…”

For three months I wore myself out on the training instruments at the Lunar Agency and I can tell you that at the end of it I knew telematics like the palm of my hand. It’s the art of operating by remote. You have to strip completely and pull on an elastic suit a little like a wet suit but thinner and shining like mercury because it’s made of wires lighter than a spider’s web. They’re the electrodes. They cling to the body, transmitting the electrical changes in your muscles to the remote which uses them to repeat exactly your every movement. That’s not odd, the odd part is that you not only see with the eyes of the remote but you feel what you would feel if you were in its place. If it picks up a stone, you feel the shape and weight as if you had it in your own hand. You feel every step, every stumble, and when the remote bumps into something too hard, you feel pain. I thought that was a malfunction, but the chief of my training program, Dr. Lopez, told me it has to be that way. Otherwise the remote will be constantly damaged. If the pain is great, you can disconnect the channel, but it’s better to lower the intensity with the modulator instead so you don’t lose contact with the remote. A person in an artificial skin loses all sense of himself and identifies entirely with the remote. I trained on different models. A remote doesn’t need to be man-sized or -shaped; it can be smaller than an elf or larger than a Goliath but that causes certain problems. If instead of legs it has, say, a tractor tread, you lose the feeling of direct contact with the ground, a little like driving a car or a tank. When the remote is enormous, you have to move very slowly because its limbs might weigh several tons each and possess no less inertia on the moon than on Earth. I experienced this with a two-hundred-ton remote and it was like walking underwater. But such a remote presents a target the size of a tower. I also used tiny remotes resembling insects. It was quite amusing, but from that vantagepoint every pebble is a mountain and it’s hard to get your bearings. The heavier moon remotes were grotesque. Squat, with short legs to keep the center of gravity as low as possible. My LEM maintained its balance better than a man in a spacesuit because it didn’t totter, and the arms were long like an orangutan’s. Those arms turned out to be useful in twenty-meter leaps. I particularly wanted to hear which models had been used in the previous reconnaissance attempts and how they had functioned. To brief me on those unsuccessful expeditions my tutors had to get special permission from the director because all this was top-secret. The whole Mission was top-secret and so was the fact that the earlier ones had failed. The point was not to fan the flames of panic which was spread by the press with its speculations. Central Control gave me the cover of adviser to the Lunar Agency and I had to avoid journalists like the plague. I was finally able to interview the two reconnaissance pilots who had returned in one piece but I never laid eyes on them, talking with them by telephone. Each had changed not only his name but also his face so that his own mother wouldn’t recognize him.

The first pilot reached the zone of Radio Silence with no difficulty and went into stationary orbit some two thousand miles above the Mare Nubium, sending down an armored remote that landed in a completely deserted region. It was attacked before it took a hundred steps. I tried to get some details out of him, but he just repeated the same thing. The remote was walking alone on the flat plain of the Mare Nubium, having first checked the area in a radius of several hundred kilometers and detecting nothing suspicious, when an enormous robot, at least twice the size of the LEM, appeared to one side, very close, and opened fire. There was a blinding, silent flash and that was all. The pilot photographed the place from orbit afterwards, and there beside a small crater lay the remains of the remote, melted into a lump of metallic slag.

Around it was nothing but the empty plain.

The second pilot had two remotes but one began somersaulting after it left the ship and broke up on the rocks. The other one was a double, called twins. Twins are a pair of telemates operated by one person. They do everything in tandem, one staying a hundred meters behind the other to see what attacks it. Both were protected moreover by micropes, which are microscopic cyclops, a sort of television camera made of a swarm of sensors no bigger than flies and each equipped with a minuscule lens. The whole cloud of micropes accompanied the twin remotes at an altitude of a mile above the surface of the moon in order to keep them and their surroundings too in sight. The pilot operates the remote but the micropes send their pictures directly to Central Control on Earth. The result of all this careful planning was miserable. Both remotes were destroyed in the same moment, with hardly time for them to stand straight in the lunar dust. The pilot told me they were attacked by two robots of singular build, low to the ground, humpbacked, and extremely pudgy. These appeared out of thin air and took immediate aim. He lifted his gun but didn’t have time to pull the trigger. He saw a blue-white flash, laser for sure, and found himself back on the ship. He photographed the remains of the remotes, and Control confirmed his report. The remotes had become incandescent as they were hit by a laser of great power, but the source of the beam could not be determined. I watched the film of what the micropes recorded and also examined pictures of the last moment, magnified to the maximum. The computer analyzed the image of every stone in a radius of two kilometers which is the lunar horizon because you can only go in a straight line with a laser. It was mystifying. The two remotes landed well, not even staggering, and began marching one after the other in slow motion, when suddenly they lifted their guns as one man, though the camera showed nothing, and opened fire, and were hit, one in the chest, the other a little lower. The bolts of light blew them apart in a cloud of dust and burning metal. Although the pictures were analyzed from every angle, it was impossible to find the place from which the lasers were fired. The desolation in the pictures was greater than the Sahara, and both the attackers and their weapons remained invisible. But the pilot insisted that at the moment of the attack he saw two grotesquely humpbacked robots where a second earlier there was nothing. They came out of nowhere, took aim, fired, and vanished. He didn’t see them vanish, of course, because the eyes of his remotes were vaporized, but from the ship he observed the settling cloud of dust and glowing cinders in the place of his defeat.

I had learned little, yet something of significance: that one could return from the Mission in one piece. Regarding these mysterious attacks, there were a number of hypotheses, including one that said that on the moon something had taken control of both remotes, making them destroy themselves with mutual fire. The enlarged pictures, however, showed that they hadn’t aimed at each other but to the side, and that the laser response to their shots — the measurement made was very precise — was practically simultaneous, one tenth of one millionth of a second after. Spectroscopic analysis of the burning metal of the remotes showed that the lasers used by the moon robots had the same power as that of the twins but a different frequency.

It’s impossible to simulate the weaker gravity of the moon on Earth, so after a few exercises at the lab I flew a couple of times a week to the Agency’s orbital station where a special platform had been set up with a gravity six times weaker than Earth’s. When I was able to move comfortably in the skin of the remote, the next stage of my training followed, highly realistic though not at all dangerous. But it wasn’t pleasant. I had to walk on an imitation moon among large and small craters and have things jump out at me.

Since my predecessors had not benefited from their weapons, the Mission staff decided it would be better if I went unarmed. I was to keep with the remote as long as possible because every second meant a mass of data recorded by the micropes following me like a swarm of bees. There was no point trying to defend myself, Tottentanz persuaded me, because I would be entering a waste bristling with death and inevitably fall and the whole hope was that we would learn something from my death. The first reconnaissance pilots insisted on guns for psychological reasons not hard to understand. In a tight spot it always feels better to have your finger on a trigger. Among my mentors (tormentors) there were also psychologists. Their task was to prepare me for every kind of unpleasant surprise. Although I knew I was not in any real danger, I walked on that imitation moon as on a hot plate, looking in all directions. It’s one thing to seek an enemy whose face you know, quite another to have no idea because a nearby boulder, as lifeless as a corpse, might suddenly split open and belch flame at you. It was a simulation, but the moment of every such shock was a nasty thing. Automatic circuit breakers would disconnect me from the remote when there was a hit, but they weren’t instantaneous and many times I experienced an indescribable sensation: like being blown to bits and seeing, with the dimming eyes of the severed head, intestines flying from my ruptured belly. The fact that they were made of porcelain and silicon did provide some comfort. I went through several dozen deaths like this and so had some idea what awaited me on the moon. I went to the chief teletronicist, Seltzer, and put my doubts on the table. I might return from the moon in one piece leaving behind the remains of broken LEMs, but what good would that do? What can one learn about an unknown weapon system in a few fractions of a second? What was the point of sending a man there if he couldn’t land anyway?

“Surely you know the reason, Mr. Tichy,” he said, offering me a glass of sherry. He was small, thin, and hairless as a knee. “We can’t do it from Earth. A quarter of a million miles means a three-second round-trip delay in transmission. You’ll descend as much as possible, to a thousand miles, the lower ceiling of the zone of Silence.”

“That’s not what I mean. If we know in advance that the remote won’t last a minute, we could send it from here with micropes to record its end.”

“We’ve done that.”

“And?”

“And nothing.”

“And the micropes?”

“They showed a little dust.”

“Can’t we send, instead of a remote, something with real armor?”

“What do you consider real armor?”

“I don’t know, perhaps a sphere like the kind once used in deep-sea exploration. With windows, sensors, and so on.”

“That was also done. Not exactly as you’ve described but near enough.”

“And?”

“Nothing.”

“What happened to it?”

“It’s still there. We lost communication with it.”

“Why?”

“That’s the big question, isn’t it? If we knew the answer, we wouldn’t have to put you to all this trouble.”

There were other conversations along the same lines. After completion of the second phase of my training, I was given a little leave. I’d been living three months now on the carefully guarded base and wanted to get away for one evening at least. So I went to the security director for a pass. He was a pallid, melancholy civilian in a short-sleeved shirt who listened sympathetically and said:

“I’m awfully sorry, but I can’t let you go.”

“What? Why not?”

“Those are my orders. Officially that’s all I know.”

“And unofficially?”

“Unofficially also. I imagine they’re afraid for you.”

“On the moon, I understand, but here?"

“Here even more.”

“Does that mean I can’t leave here until the launch?”

“Unfortunately.”

“In that case,” I said very quietly, very politely, which I do when I’m furious, “I’m not flying anywhere. There was no talk of this. I agreed to risk my neck but not to sit in prison. This is a volunteer flight. Well, I hereby unvolunteer. Or do you intend to put me in the rocket kicking and screaming?”

“What are you saying?”

I stuck to my guns and finally got the pass. I wanted to feel like an ordinary person, walk in a city crowd, perhaps go to the movies, but most of all eat in a decent restaurant instead of a canteen with people discussing second by second Ijon Tichy’s last moments in a remote that bursts like fireworks. Dr. Lopez gave me his car and I left the base at dusk. As I turned onto the highway I saw in my headlights someone standing, hand raised, by a small car with its blinkers on. I stopped. It was a young woman in white slacks and white sweater, a blonde, with grease on her face. She said her motor was dead, it wouldn’t turn over, so I offered to take her to town. As she got her coat out of the car, I noticed a large man in the front seat. He was motionless, as if made of wood. I looked at him more closely.

“That’s my remote,” she explained. “He’s broken. Everything breaks on me. I was taking him to be fixed.”

She had a husky voice and spoke almost like a child. I had heard that voice before somewhere. I opened the door to let her in, and before the car light went out I saw her face. She was incredibly like Marilyn Monroe, a movie star of the last century. The same face, the same innocence in the eyes and mouth. She asked if we could stop at some restaurant so she could wash. I moved to the slow lane, and we passed bright signs.

“There’s a small Italian restaurant up ahead, really quite good,” she said.

And indeed, neon flashed: RISTORANTE. I parked, and we entered a dark room. On a few small tables there were candles. The young woman went to the ladies’ room. I stood for a moment undecided, then finally sat down in a corner booth. The place was nearly empty. Against the usual background of colored bottles a red-headed bartender wiped glasses, and near him brass-covered swinging doors led to the kitchen. In the next booth a man was bent over a notebook beside his plate, writing something. The woman came back.

“I’m starved,” she said. “I stood outside for over an hour. No one would stop. Can we eat something? My treat.”

“All right,” I replied.

A fat man sitting at the bar with his back to us stared at his glass. He held a big black umbrella between his knees. The waiter appeared, took our order while balancing a tray of dirty dishes, and, kicking open the swinging doors, went into the kitchen. The blonde said nothing; she took a crumpled pack of cigarettes from her pocket, lit one from the candle, and held the pack out to me. I shook my head no. I tried not to stare at her. She did not differ from Marilyn Monroe in any way. Strange, since so many women have tried and failed. Monroe was inimitable though hers was neither a great nor an exotic beauty. Many books were written about her but none ever captured that mixture of child and woman which made her different from the rest. Looking at pictures of her once when I was still in Europe, I thought that this was more than a girlish woman, with her constant surprise and joy of a capricious child and the hidden despair or fear, like someone who has no one to confess her sins to. My companion inhaled from her cigarette deeply and blew the smoke slowly at the candle flickering between us. No, it was not a similarity, it was an exact replica. All kinds of suspicions came to me because I wasn’t born yesterday, for example why did she keep her cigarettes in her pocket: women never do that. She had a purse after all, and a big one, bulging, which she had hung on the arm of her chair. The waiter brought the pizza but forgot the Chianti, he apologized and rushed away. Another waiter brought it. Although the restaurant was run tavern-style and the waiters wore large napkins to their knees like aprons, this waiter held his napkin in the crook of his arm. He didn’t leave after he filled our glasses but only stepped back and stood just behind the partition. I could see him there because the brass doors acted like a mirror. The blonde couldn’t see him from where she sat. The pizza was all right but the crust was hard. We ate in silence. Pushing aside her plate, she reached for another Camel.

“What is your name?” I asked. I wanted to hear another name, to weaken the impression that this was she.

“Let’s drink first,” she said in her hoarse voice. And took both our glasses and switched them.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“A superstition I have.”

She didn’t smile.

“To our health!”

With these words she raised the glass to her lips. I also. The pizza had been peppery and I would have emptied the glass in one draught, but with a crack and a whirl something knocked it out of my hand. The wine spilled on the woman, staining her white sweater like blood. It was the waiter who did this. I wanted to jump up but couldn’t, my legs were too far under the table, and by the time I got free, a lot was happening. The waiter without the apron seized the blonde by the arm. She pulled away and took her purse in both hands as if to shield her face with it. The bartender ran out from behind the counter. The sleepy, bald fat man tripped him, and he fell with a crash. The woman did something with her purse, and a stream of white foam shot from it as from a fire extinguisher. The waiter jumped back and clutched his face covered with white that dripped down his vest. The blonde aimed a white stream at the other waiter, who fell screaming through the swinging doors, hit. Both desperately rubbed their foamy eyes like slapstick actors who had taken cream pies in the face. We were now in a white fog because the foam gave off an acrid gas that filled the room. The blonde, with a quick glance left and right at the two waiters put out of action, turned her purse at me. I was next. To this day I don’t know why I didn’t try to cover myself. Something large and black appeared before me and boomed like a drum. It was the fat man shielding me with the open umbrella. The purse went sailing to the center of the room and ignited, thick dark smoke pouring from it and mixing with the white fog. The bartender sprang from the floor and ran along the counter toward the kitchen doors, which were still swinging. The blonde had disappeared through them. The fat man threw the open umbrella at the feet of the bartender, who jumped over it, lost his balance, careened into the glass behind the bar, which fell with a great crash as he dove into the kitchen. I looked at the battlefield. The charred purse smoldered between the tables. The white fog thinned out, still stinging my eyes. Around the open umbrella on the floor lay pieces of glass, broken plates, cups, and pizza, all covered with sticky foam and spilled wine. This all happened so fast that the Chianti bottle was still rolling in its basket, until it hit the wall. From the next booth someone rose — the man who had been writing in his notebook and drinking beer. I recognized him at once. It was the pallid civilian I’d quarreled with at the base a couple of hours ago. He lifted his melancholy eyebrows and said:

“Was it worth fighting for that pass, Mr. Tichy?”

“A tightly rolled cloth napkin at close range can stop a bullet,” said Leon Grün thoughtfully. He was the security chief and known as Lohengrin. “The French flics knew this when they were still in long capes. And neither a Parabellum nor a Beretta would fit into a handbag. She could have had a larger bag, but the bigger the piece, the longer it takes to get it out. Nevertheless I advised Truffles to take an umbrella. And I was right, as you saw. Sodium pectate, wasn’t it, doctor?” The chemist he turned to scratched behind his ear. We were back at the base, in a smoky room full of people, well after midnight.

“Who knows? Sodium pectate or another salt in aerosol form with free radicals. Radicals of ammonia plus an emulsifier and an additive to reduce surface tension. At high pressure — a minimum of fifty atmospheres. A lot of it could fit in that purse. They obviously have experts.”

“Who?” I asked, but no one seemed to hear me.

“What was the purpose? Why did they do it?” I asked, louder this time.

“To put you out of commission. To blind you,” said Lohengrin pleasantly. He lit a cigarette but immediately ground it out in the ashtray with disgust. “Give me something to drink. I’ve smoked too much. You’ve cost us a lot of trouble, Tichy. To put together protection like that in half an hour wasn’t easy.”

“I was to be blinded? Temporarily or permanently?”

“Hard to say. It’s extremely caustic stuff, you know. Possibly a cornea transplant could have saved you.”

“And those two? The waiters?”

“Our man managed to close his eyes in time. A good reflex. But the purse was a bit of a novelty.”

“But why did that… false waiter knock the glass out of my hand?”

“I haven’t spoken with him. He’s not able to talk yet. I assume it was because she changed glasses.”

“There was something in my glass?”

“A ninety-five percent likelihood. Why else would she have done it?”

“But she drank the wine too — I saw her.”

“Not the wine, the glass. Wasn’t she playing with the glass before the waiter came?”

“I’m not sure. Wait, yes, she was. She turned it around in her fingers.”

“Well, there you are. We’re waiting for the lab test results. Only chromatography or mass spectrometry will work because there is so little material left.”

“Poison?”

“I’d say so. You were to have been put out of the picture: neutralized, but not necessarily killed. Probably not killed. Put yourself in their place. A corpse means news coverage, theories, an autopsy, talk. But a psychosis, that’s a different story. Gives more elegant results. There are plenty of such drugs today. States of depression, dementia, hallucinations. I think that if you had drunk the wine, you wouldn’t have felt a thing then. Only tomorrow, or later. The more delayed the effect, the more it looks like a real psychosis. Who can’t go insane these days? Anybody can. Starting with me, Mr. Tichy.”

“And the foam? The spray?”

“The spray was the last resort. The spare tire in the trunk. She used it because she had to.”

“Who are the they we’re talking about?”

Lohengrin smiled. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief that was not the cleanest, looked at it with a grimace, put it back in his pocket, and said:

“You are naive. Not everyone is as thrilled about your nomination as we, Mr. Tichy.”

“Do I have an alternate? I never asked… Do you have someone in reserve? Through him, we might be able to learn who…”

“No. There is not one alternate now. There are many with similar scores, but we’d have to start a whole new selection process.”

“One more thing,” I said, a little embarrassed. “Where did that woman come from?”

“About that we know something,” Lohengrin said evenly. “Your European apartment was gone through a couple of weeks ago. Nothing taken but everything examined. That’s where they got it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Your library. You have a biography of Marilyn Monroe and two picture albums of her. The proclivity is obvious.”

“You searched my apartment and didn’t tell me?”

“Everything was put back in place, even dusted, and as for searching, we weren’t the first. You can see it was a good thing our men learned about the books. We didn’t tell you so as not to upset you. You have enough on your mind as it is. Maximum concentration is essential. We are collectively, you see, your nursemaid,” and he swept his arm to include everyone present: the fat man now without an umbrella, the chemist, and three silent men leaning against the wall.

“So when you demanded the pass, I thought it best not to tell you about your apartment, because that wouldn’t have stopped you. Would it have?”

“I guess not.”

“So you see.”

“All right. But the uncanny resemblance. Was she — human?”

“Yes and no. Not directly. Do you want to see her? She’s lying in that room.” He pointed to the door behind him. For a second I had the mad thought that Marilyn Monroe had died a second death.

“A product of Gynandroics?” I asked slowly.

“A different company. There are others. Would you like to see her?”

“No,” I said. “But someone must have been… steering her?”

“Of course. Probably a woman, and one with great acting ability. The way she moved — did you notice? — was perfect. An amateur couldn’t have done it. To render her so well, to capture the spirit, must have taken a lot of study. Practice. Going over the old movies…” He shrugged.

“They went to all that trouble…” I said. “For what?”

“Would you have picked up an old lady?”

“Yes.”

“But you wouldn’t have stayed for the pizza. Anyway, not for sure, and they had to be sure. And you couldn’t refuse a Marilyn Monroe, could you? But enough said.”

“What did you… do to her?”

“Nothing. A disconnected remote is a puppet with the strings cut. A doll.”

“But then why did she run?”

“Because the product can tell you things. They didn’t want to leave any evidence, any prints. It’s almost three. You must take care of yourself, Mr. Tichy. You have, if you will forgive me, old-fashioned tastes in women. I wish you a good night and pleasant dreams.”

The next day was a Sunday. We didn’t work on Sundays. I was shaving when a messenger arrived with a letter. Professor Lax-Gugliborc wanted to see me. I had heard of him. His field was communications and telematics. He had his own laboratory at the base. I dressed and at ten o’clock went to his place. He had drawn me a little map on the other side of the letter. Among some low buildings stood a long pavilion surrounded by a garden and a high wire fence. I pushed the bell once, twice. A sign lit up above it: I’M NOT AT HOME TO ANYONE. Then the lock buzzed and the gate opened. A narrow gravel path led to a metal door. It was closed and had no knob or handle. I knocked. Not a sound inside. I knocked again. I was about to leave when the door opened a little and a man peered out, tall, thin, in a blue smock covered with spots and splatters. What was left of his white hair was cut very short, and he wore thick glasses that gave him the look of a startled fish. A long sniffy nose, a massive forehead.

He stepped back without a word to let me in, then locked the door and not with just one lock either. The hallway was very dark. He went first and I followed, my hand on the wall. This was strange, conspiratorial. The stink of chemicals hung in the hot, dry air. The next door was a sliding door. He had me go first.

I found myself in a large lab that was incredibly cluttered. Metal apparatuses, oxidized black, were piled one on top of the other and connected with wires that lay tangled on the floor. In the middle of the lab was a table heaped with more equipment, papers, tools, and a cage stood next to it, a birdcage large enough to hold a gorilla. The most curious thing was the dolls lying in a row along three of the walls. Naked, resembling store mannequins, with open skulls or with no heads at all, and their chests parted like doors, containing a jumble of connectors and circuit boards, and under the table was a pile of arms and legs. There was not one window in the room. The professor threw on the floor a coil of cable and electronic parts occupying a chair, and with an agility I wouldn’t have expected of him he crawled under the table, pulled out a tape recorder, and turned it on. Looking up at me, he put a finger to his lips, and at the same time his strident voice came from the machine:

“I have invited you here, Tichy, to instruct you in a few things you must know about communications. Please have a seat and listen. You may not take notes…”

While his voice went on, the professor gestured for me to get in the cage. I hesitated. Without ceremony he pushed me in, climbed in after me, and pulled my arm to make me sit. He sat opposite me on the floor, crossing his legs, his sharp knees jutting from his smock. The whole thing was like a scene out of a bad movie about a mad scientist. In the cage too there were wires going everywhere, and he brought two together, which made a quiet, monotonous buzz. Meanwhile his voice spoke on the machine by the chair. Lax-Gugliborc reached behind him for two thick black collars. One of these he pulled over his head and around his neck, and gave me the other and indicated that I do likewise. Then he took a wire with an olive-shaped plug and put the plug in his ear, and again in pantomime told me to do the same. The tape recorder went on speaking, but in my ear I heard what he said to me.

“Now we can talk. You may ask questions but only intelligent ones. No one will hear us. We are shielded. You are surprised? No need to be. Even the trusted are not trusted, and that’s as it should be.”

“Can I talk?” I asked. We sat in the cage so close that our knees touched. The tape recorder jabbered on.

“Go ahead. For every electronic device there is another electronic device. I know you from your books. The clutter here is just for decoration. You’ve been promoted to hero. The moon reconnaissance mission. You’re going.”

“I’m going,” I said. He hardly moved his lips when he spoke, but I could hear him perfectly through the microphone.

“Everyone knows that. A thousand people will assist you from Earth. The never-failing Lunar Agency. Except that it’s divided.”

“The Agency?”

“Yes. They’ll provide you with a series of remotes. But only one is worth anything. Mine. A completely new approach. Dust thou art, unto dust shall thou return, then rise again. I’ll show it to you later. A demonstration. But first you’ll get a viaticum from me, tips for the traveler.”

He raised a finger. His eyes, small and round behind the thick glasses, smiled at me with kindly cunning.

“You’ll hear what they want you to hear, but I will tell you first what they don’t want you to hear. I’m a man of old-world principles. Now listen. The Agency is an international institution but it can’t hire angels. On the far perimeter, on Mars, say, you would have to act alone. One against Thebes. But on the moon you will be only the tip of the strategic pyramid, the Earth team supporting you beneath. Do you know who will be on that team?”

“I know most of them. The Cybbilkis brolhers, Tottentanz, Dr. Lopez. And Seltzer and the rest — what? What’s wrong?”

He shook his head sadly. We must have looked pretty funny inside that big wire cage, with the constant insect buzz from the outside, from the tape, mixing with his voice.

“Those people represent different interests. It can’t be otherwise.”

“Whom can I trust?” I asked, understanding.

“No one, going by what you will hear from me. Myself included. Yet you must confide in someone. That whole idea of the change of venue,” and he pointed at the ceiling, “and the doctrine of ignorance — it was slupid, of course. It had to end this way. If this is the end. They made their bed. The director told you about the four impossibilities made possible?”

“He did.”

“There’s a fifth. They want to learn the truth and don’t want to learn the truth. That is, not every truth. Each a different truth. Do you understand?”

“No.”

We sat opposite each other on the floor but I heard him as if over the phone. And he me. The current buzzed, the machine kept talking, and he said, blinking often and with his hands on his knees:

“I set this up to block the bugs. It doesn’t matter whose bugs or for whom. I want to do what I can because I believe I should. Common decency. Don’t bother to thank me. They will defend you — but it would be healthier to keep certain facts to yourself. You won’t be in a confessional. We don’t know what has happened on the moon. Sibelius and others like him believe that evolution up there has taken a step backward. The development of instinct instead of intelligence. An intelligent weapon is not an optimal weapon. It can become frightened, for example. Or stop wanting to be a weapon. It can get ideas. A soldier, living or nonliving, shouldn’t get ideas. Intelligence is the multidimensionality of action, and that means freedom. But there it’s completely different. The level of human intelligence has been surpassed.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he who sows evolution reaps mind. And mind does not wish to serve anyone. Unless it must. And there is no must there. But I should not speak about what is or isn’t there because I do not know. What matters is what is here.”

“Which is… ?”

“The Lunar Agency was supposed to have made it impossible to obtain information from the moon. Now it will do that once and for all. Which is why you are going. You return either with nothing or with news more destructive than the atom bomb. Which do you prefer?”

“Hold on. Speak more plainly. Are you saying your colleagues represent other intelligence agencies? That they’re spies?”

“No. But you could bring that about.”

“I could?”

“Yes. The balance of power since the Geneva Agreement has been shaky. When you return, you may replace the old threats with new ones. You cannot play the savior of the world, the messenger of peace.”

“Why not?”

“The scheme of moving Earth’s conflicts to the moon was doomed in its inception. For how could it be otherwise? Arms control had been made impossible by microminiaturization. One can count missiles and satellites but not artificial bacteria. Or keep track of natural disasters that are not natural, or what is causing the decline in the population rate of the Third World. Which decline was necessary. Though it was impossible to do properly. You can take a couple of people aside and explain what’s good for them and what isn’t. But you can’t take all humanity aside and explain things, can you?”

“What does this have to do with the moon?”

“Just this, that destruction hasn’t been ended, only moved in space and time. And that cannot last forever. I have created a new technology which can be used in telematics. For the building of dispersants. Remotes capable of reversible dispersion. I didn’t want the Agency to have it, but what’s done is done.” He put up both hands in resignation.

“One of my assistants showed it to them. I’m not sure which one, and it doesn’t really matter. When the pressure is great, there’s invariably a leak. Any loyalty has its limits.” He ran a hand over his shiny pate. The tape recorder was still talking. “I can do one thing: I can show that dispersion telematics isn’t ready yet. That I can do. For a year, let’s say. Eventually they’ll find out that I tricked them. Would you like me to do this?”

“I have to decide? Why me?”

“If you return with nothing, no one will be interested in you.”

“True.”

“But if you return with information, the consequences will be incalculable.”

“For me personally? You want to save me? Out of kindness?”

“No. To play for time.”

“To put off learning about the moon? Then you don’t believe the moon will ever invade Earth? You think that’s just mass hysteria?”

“Mass hysteria, or rumors intentionally spread by certain nations.”

“To what purpose?”

“To break the doctrine of ignorance and return to the old Clausewitz-style politics.”

I was silent, not knowing what to say — or even what to think.

“But that is only one man’s assumption,” I said finally.

“Yes. The letter Einstein wrote to Roosevelt also was based on an assumption, that an atom bomb could be built. He regretted it to the end of his life.”

“I understand — you don’t want to have such regrets?”

“The atom bomb would have been developed with or without Einstein. My technology too. But the later, the better.”

"Après nous le déluge?"

“No, something else. This fear of the moon was created intentionally. Of that I’m certain. Returning from a successful mission, you’ll only be exchanging one fear for another. That other could be worse: more realistic.”

“I see now. You want me to fail?”

“Yes. But only if you agree to it.”

“Why?”

The nastiness suddenly left his little squirrel eyes. He was laughing, open-mouthed, soundlessly.

“I told you why. I’m a man of old-world principles, and that means Fair Play. Please answer now, because my legs are starting to hurt.”

“You could have put in a couple of cushions,” I said. “And as for that… dispersion technology, please give it to me.”

“You don’t believe what I’ve said?”

“I believe you, and that’s why I want it.”

“To be a Herostrates?”

“I’ll try not to burn the temple. Could we get out of this cage now?”