Peace on Earth

VISITS

I returned from my aborted shopping excursion as if in a dream. I don’t remember how I got back to my room, I was thinking so hard about what had happened in front of that department store. Having no desire to sit at the table with Kramer and the others, I ate all the cookies in the desk drawer and washed them down with a Coke. It was dusk when someone knocked. Thinking it was Dr. House, I opened the door. A stranger stood in a dark suit and with a thin black briefcase in his hand. He looked like a funeral director.

“May I come in?” he asked. I stepped back without a word. Not looking around, he sat on a chair, the one I had thrown my pajamas over, put his briefcase on his knees, and took out a bunch of typewritten pages. From his pocket he took pince-nez and set them on his nose, and regarded me awhile in silence. His hair was gray but his eyebrows black, his face gaunt, and his bloodless lips turned down at the corners. I stood by the desk, waiting, and finally he laid his card on the blotter. I read PROFESSOR ALLEN SHAPIRO, I.C.G.D. The address and telephone number were so small, I couldn’t make them out, but I didn’t pick up the card. I was filled with a weary indifference which was like drowsiness.

“I am a neurologist,” he said. “Fairly prominent.”

“Yes, I think I’ve read you,” I mumbled. “Callotomy, the lateralization of brain function… Is that right?”

“Yes. I am also a consultant for the Lunar Agency. It’s thanks to me that you were allowed to proceed as you have. I believe that in the present situation you should be protected but no more than that. The escape attempt was infantile. Consider. You have become the bearer of a priceless treasure. Geheimnisträger, the Germans would say. Your every step has been followed and not only by the Agency. To date the Agency has thwarted eight attempts to kidnap you, Mr. Tichy. When you flew to Australia, you were under observation by special satellites and not just ours. It’s been all I can do to keep our own government leaders at bay. They want you arrested, put out of commission, and so on. The advice you obtained through your friend is worthless. When the stakes are high enough, the law means nothing. As long as you are alive, everyone — all the players — are stalemated. This can’t go on. If they are unable to get you, they’ll kill you.”

“Who?” I asked, without surprise. Seeing that this would be a long visit, I took a seat, throwing a few newspapers and books to the floor.

“It doesn’t matter. You have acted in good faith. Your official report was compared with what you wrote here and buried in the jar. In addition the Agency has all the tapes from Control.”

“And?” I said, because he had paused.

“Some is the truth, some confabulation. But not done by design. You believed both what was in your report and what you put down here. When there are gaps in the memory, it is natural for a person to fill them in. One does it quite unconsciously. Anyway we don’t really know if your right brain contains a treasure.”

“Which means?”

“The callotomy might not have been an accident.”

“What then?”

“A maneuver to divert attention.”

“By the moon?”

“It’s possible.”

“Is this really so crucial?” I asked. “The Agency can always send more scouts.”

“And has. You returned after six weeks. Once the diagnosis was made — your callotomy, I mean — three more people were sent.”

“And they didn’t succeed?”

“They succeeded in returning. All of them. Unfortunately…”

“Yes?”

“Their experiences were totally different from yours.”

“Totally?”

“It’s better for you not to know the details.”

“But you know them, so you too, Professor Shapiro, are in danger,” I said with a smile. He nodded philosophically.

“The scientists have a hundred different theories, but there’s general agreement that the classical remotes were no surprise to the moon. The surprise was the molecular remote, your final remote. But now this too the moon is aware of.”

“Which means?”

“You’ve probably already figured it out. You penetrated farther than the ones who followed you.”

“The moon put on a show for them?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“And not for me?”

“You got through the stage sets, at least partly.”

“Why did they let me return?”

“In their strategic game, it was the optimal solution to the problem. You returned, the mission completed, and at the same time did not return or complete your mission. Had you not returned at all, the Security Council would have voted against further reconnaissance.”

“And instead, to destroy the moon?”

“Not destroy so much as neutralize.”

“That’s something new to me. How is it done?”

“There’s a way. Incredibly expensive, since it’s a completely new technology. I don’t know the details. It’s better not to know them.”

“You must have picked up something…” I muttered. “It would have to be a post-atomic technology in any case. No warheads or rockets, something more discreet. Something the moon would not be able to detect in time…”

“For a man with only half a brain, you’re not stupid. But let’s get back to the subject, that is, to you.”

“You want me to agree to be examined? By the Agency? Let them give my right hemisphere the third degree?”

“It’s more complicated than you think. We have, besides your report and the tapes of the mission, certain hypotheses. One says that the individual sectors on the moon are at war. That they have not united, neither for the destruction of some by others nor to plan an attack on Earth.”

“What exactly has happened, then?”

“If we knew exactly, I wouldn’t have to bother you. The barriers between the sectors definitely failed. The military games have engaged each other. It’s produced unprecedented effects.”

“Such as?”

“I’m no expert on this, but as far as I know, there are no experts on this. We’re at the mercy of conjecture under the banner of, if you’ll pardon my Latin, Ceterum censeo humanitatem preservandam esse.”

“What is it you want of me?”

“Nothing at the moment. You are, excuse the metaphor, a man with the plague before there were antibiotics. I came to see you because I insisted. They finally agreed. You are sort of a last resort. Who unfortunately multiplied the possibilities of what is happening on the moon. Speaking plainly, after your return we know less, not more.”

“Less?”

“Of course less. We’re not even sure that your right brain contains any critical information. The number of unknowns has increased.”

“You speak like an oracle.”

“The Lunar Agency transported to the moon and placed into sectors what it was supposed to under the Geneva Agreement. But the computer programs of that first generation remained the secret of the participating nations. The Agency wasn’t privy to them.”

“So it was wild cards from the very beginning?”

“Of course, because of the world’s antagonisms. The question is, is it possible to tell the difference between a program that after a few decades derails from the safeties installed by its designers and a program designed to derail in a certain way?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps computer scientists could tell.”

“No, no one can tell except those who wrote the programs.”

“Professor Shapiro,” I said, getting up and going to the window. “I have the impression that you are drawing me into a web. The more we talk, the cloudier the subject becomes. What has happened on the moon? We don’t know. What I experienced there, was it real? We don’t know. What was the reason for this damned callotomy of mine? We don’t know. Does half of my brain hold important information? We don’t know. I most respectfully ask you to get to the point.”

“Most respectfully. You have been treated most respectfully up to now.”

“Because it was in the Agency’s interest, and perhaps in the interest of others as well. Or are you telling me I was saved and protected out of the goodness of your hearts?”

“No. Goodness doesn’t enter into it. As I said before, the stakes are too high. So high, that had we been able to extract what we want from you by torturing you to death, that would have been done long ago.”

An unexpected thought came to me. I turned, my back to the now dark window, and smiled, crossing my arms on my chest.

“Thank you, professor. Only now do I understand who has really been protecting me all this time.”

“But I told you.”

“But I know better. It is they…” And opening the window, I pointed at the moon rising above the trees, a sharp white crescent against the dark blue sky.

The professor said nothing.

“It must have something to do with my landing,” I went on. “With the fact that I went down myself to take what the last remote found, which I could do because there was a spacesuit and lander in the bay. They put them there just in case, and I used them. True, I don’t remember what happened to me when I stood on the moon with my own two feet. I remember and don’t remember. I found the remote but I don’t think it was the molecular one. I remember that I knew why I came down: not to save it, which was impossible and made no sense, but to take something. A sample? Of what? That’s what I can’t recall. The callotomy itself I either didn’t feel or don’t remember, as with amnesia after a concussion, but when I returned to the ship and put my spacesuit back into its special closet, I remember how it was covered with a fine, soft powder. A strange powder, dry between your fingers, like salt, yet difficult to wipe off your hands. It wasn’t radioactive. But I washed as if it had been. Later I didn’t even try to find out what the stuff was, though I didn’t have the opportunity anyway to ask such questions. When I learned that my brain had been severed, I was too taken up with that trouble to think about my hour on the moon. Did you hear anything about that powder? Like talcum. Anyway, I brought something back… but what?”

My visitor squinted at me through his pince-nez, poker-faced.

“You’re warm,” he said. “Even hot… Yes, you brought back something… That’s probably why you returned alive despite your landing.”

He got up and came to where I stood. We both looked at the moon, innocent and bright among the stars.

“The molecular LEMs remained behind,” my visitor said as if to himself. “But, let us hope, destroyed beyond duplication! You destroyed your own although you didn’t know it, when you went to the bay for your spacesuit. That activated the autodestruct program. I can tell you this now because it no longer matters.”

“For a neurological consultant you are remarkably well informed,” I said, my eyes still on the moon as it went behind a cloud. “Perhaps you even know what came back with me. Was that their micropes, that powder so unlike ordinary sand?…”

“No. As far as I know, just silicon-based polymers.”

“And not a virus?”

“No.”

“Then why is it so important?”

“Because it accompanied you back.”

“The spacesuit closet lost its hermetic seal?”

“No. Most likely you inhaled some of the particles while in the rocket, getting out of your suit.”

“And they’re in me?”

“I don’t know if they still are. The fact that it wasn’t normal moon dust we learned when you ran off to Australia.”

“Ah! Every place I’ve been has been put under a microscope?”

“More or less.”

“And… they were found?”

He nodded. We were standing at the window, and the moon sailed through the clouds.

“Does everybody know?”

“Everybody?”

“All the interested parties…”

“Probably not yet. At the Agency, only a few people, and in the clinical department only I.”

“Why did you tell me?”

“You were on the track of it yourself, besides I want you to understand the situation.”

“My situation?”

“Yours and in general.”

“So they’re keeping me under observation?”

“I don’t know to what extent. There are different levels of secrecy here. Based on what I’ve heard from a couple of friends, completely off the record, research is still in progress and they haven’t yet ruled out the possibility that those particles are in contact with the moon…”

“What kind of contact? Radio?”

“Definitely not.”

“Another means of communication?”

“I flew here to ask you a few questions and you’re grilling me.”

“You said you came to fill me in on my situation.”

“But I can’t answer questions to which I don’t know the answers.”

“In a nutshell, then, I have been protected so far by the possibility that the moon is interested in my fate and can step in… ?”

Shapiro didn’t answer. The room was dark. He walked over and turned on the light, which hurt my eyes and also brought me back to earth. I pulled the curtain, took a decanter and two glasses from the bar, and poured what was left of the sherry. I gave him a glass, pointed to the armchair, and sat down.

"Chi va piano, va sano,” the professor said unexpectedly. Only wetting his lips with the sherry, he put the glass on the desk and sat down with a sigh. “Human beings always proceed according to a model,” he said. “In a case like this, however, there are no models. And yet we must act, because no good will come of procrastination. Nor does guesswork help us any. As a neurologist I can say this much: There is short-term memory and long-term memory. The short-term turns into long-term if there are no violent disruptions. It is hard to imagine a disruption more violent than the severing of the great commissure! Therefore what happened just before and immediately after that event does not exist in your memory. As for the warfare on the moon, we don’t even know who is attacking and who is defending. No nation will ever admit that its programmers didn’t follow the directives of the Geneva Agreement, which everyone signed. But even if one of those programmers came forward and confessed, it would be of little use, because neither he nor anyone else knows what course things have taken on the moon. And you… are about as safe in this asylum as in a den of lions. You think I exaggerate? In any case you won’t be here forever.”

“A long conversation,” I said, “and yet we go in circles. What you want is for me to put myself in your hands?” I tapped the right side of my head.

“I think you should. I personally doubt that it will help either you or the Agency that much, but I see nothing better.”

“Your skepticism may be only to disarm me…” I muttered to myself as if thinking aloud. “Are the effects of a callotomy absolutely irreversible?”

“If it was done surgically, the severed white matter would definitely not grow back. But your skull, I believe, was not cut into… ?”

“I see,” I answered after a moment of thought. “You offer the hope that something different could have happened to me. Either to tempt me, or you believe it a little yourself…”

“And your decision?”

“I’ll tell you within forty-eight hours. All right?”

He nodded and pointed at the card on the blotter.

“My number.”

“You mean we’ll do this in the open?”

“Yes and no. No one will pick up the receiver. You will wait ten rings and phone again after one minute. And wait ten rings again and hang up.”

“And that will mean I agree?”

He nodded and rose. “We’ll take care of the rest. But now I must go. Good night.”

After he left, I stood awhile in the middle of the room, staring vacantly at the curtain. Suddenly the ceiling light went out. The bulb blew, I thought, but when I looked out the window, I saw that all the buildings of the asylum were dark. Even the distant lights on the ramp to the highway were out. It had to be a power failure. My watch said eleven. I didn’t feel like hunting for a flashlight or candles, so I opened the curtain and in the weak light of the moon undressed and took a shower in my small bathroom. Deciding to put on a bathrobe instead of pajamas, I opened the closet door and froze. Someone was standing there, fat, short, almost completely bald, as rigid as a statue, his finger to his lips. It was Kramer.

“Adelaide,” I said but stopped because he shook his finger sharply. He pointed at the window. When I didn’t move, he got down and crawled on all fours around the desk and to the window, and carefully reached up and closed the curtain. It was so dark that I could hardly see him return to the closet, still on his hands and knees, and take out something rectangular and flat, but when my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I saw that Kramer was opening a briefcase, sorting through strings or wires, connecting something, then there was a snap, and, sitting on the rug, he whispered:

“Come over here, Tichy, and we’ll talk…”

I sat beside him, too surprised to say anything. Kramer moved closer, his knees touching mine, and said quietly:

“We have at least three-quarters of an hour before the power goes back on. Some of the bugging devices are on batteries but they’re low-tech and we have first-class screening. Tichy, you can keep calling me Kramer, Kramer will do…”

“Who are you?” I asked, and heard him chuckle.

“Your guardian angel.”

“But haven’t you been here a long time? How could you know I would come to this asylum? Surely Tarantoga…”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Kramer replied mildly. “There are more important things for you to think about, Tichy. For example, I would not advise you to do what Shapiro says. That would be the worst thing you could do.”

I was silent, and Kramer chuckled again. He was obviously in a good mood. His voice was different, not as drawling as before, and there was nothing asinine about the man now.

“You think I am an ‘agent of a foreign power,’ yes?” he said, clapping me on the back. “I understand, you are suspicious in eighteen different ways, but let me appeal to your reason. Suppose you take Professor Shapiro’s advice. They’ll get you in their clutches, without torture, God forbid, no, in their clinic you’ll be treated like the President himself. They’ll pull something out of the right side of your head, or they won’t, either way it will make no difference, because the verdict has already been delivered.”

“What verdict?”

“The diagnosis, the results of the scientific auscultation, through your arm, leg, foot, who cares? Please don’t interrupt, I’m telling you everything. Everything that’s known.”

He paused, as if waiting for my go-ahead. We were sitting in the dark. Suddenly I said:

“Dr. House might come.”

“He won’t. No one will come, don’t fret about that. We’re not playing cowboys and Indians here. Pay attention now. On the moon the programs of different parties have been going after each other. Who started it is not important, at least not now. To put it very simply, there’s a cancer proliferating there. The mutual production of chaos, the interpenetration of weapons both hardware and software, the blows and counterblows, call it what you like.”

“The moon has gone mad?”

“In a sense, yes. When the programs as well as what they created were destroyed, altogether new processes began, processes no one on Earth foresaw.”

“What were they?”

Kramer sighed.

“I’d light a cigarette now,” he said, “but can’t, because you don’t smoke. What were they? You brought back the first evidence.”

“That dust on my spacesuit?”

“It’s silicon polymers, the beginning, the scientists say, of an orthogenesis, the birth of nonliving organisms. What’s taking place up there is no threat to Earth, and yet for that very reason the Agency sees a threat.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The Agency stands guard over the doctrine of ignorance. There are nations that seek the end of that doctrine, of the whole business of packing weapons off to the moon. But it’s more complicated than that. Different interest groups exist, and some would like to see a growing panic under the rubric of The Moon Invades Earth, so that a coalition will form, in the UN or outside it, to strike preemptively, whether in the traditional way, which means thermonuclear, or with that new quantum gravity collapsar technology, don’t ask me about it now, I’ll tell you later. What they want is to arm on a grand scale, a global scale, for if a true invasion threatens, it would be necessary to crush it before it begins.”

“And the Agency doesn’t want that?”

“The Agency itself is torn. Each interest group has its people in it. Otherwise the Agency would not represent Earth. You have become a trump card in this game. Possibly the highest.”

“I? Because of my problem?”

“Exactly. Whatever information Shapiro and his crew get out of you cannot be verified, after all. Except for a few people no one will know whether they really learned something or only said they did and that they would soon announce it to the public or first go with it to the Security Council. But the announcing doesn’t matter. The point is that no one, including you, will know whether they are lying or telling the truth.”

“It would probably be a lie, since you said before that the verdict has already been delivered…”

“That’s how it looks. But I am not omniscient. In any case they can’t use force on you.”

“But Shapiro said…”

“The attempted abductions? But they were arranged, Tichy, in such a way that you would not lose your life. Because if you did, no one would have anything.”

“Who were they?”

“Different parties and for different purposes. First, to have you. Later, when such efforts were foiled, to frighten you a little, push you, soften you up, so you would run into the welcoming arms of Shapiro.”

“Wait, are you saying that the Agency itself… that the later attacks were staged?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Suppose that nevertheless I let them examine me. What would happen?”

“Bridge or poker.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The game, the bidding. One can foresee the beginning but not what follows. It’s clear that on the moon things didn’t happen as they were supposed to. We’re left with the question: Is or is not Earth in danger? So far everything suggests there is no danger and will be none for the next few hundred years, being very conservative. Perhaps for the next few thousand years or even million. But politics cannot think in such distant terms. We can sleep peacefully till the year three thousand. But many do not want to sleep peacefully. Many need a harmless moon.”

“To do what?”

“To make sure no nation has an arsenal left there, or anything else. That the whole lunar project is defunct, the Geneva Agreement meaningless, and we all have to go back to Clausewitz.”

“So either way it ends badly? If there’s a true threat of invasion, we have to arm ourselves against the moon, and if there’s not, we return to the old way, the Earth way, is that it?”

“That’s it. You grasp the situation.”

“A nice situation. And the secret hidden in my head isn’t worth a plugged nickel…”

“You’re wrong there. Depending on what result they announce from the examination of your person, different scenarios can be set up.”

“Scenarios?”

“According to our computer simulation there are at least twenty. Not from the real result, of course, but from what they announce as the result.”

“You don’t know what that is?”

“No, because they themselves don’t know yet. Even Shapiro’s group is divided. You have to understand, Tichy, the lie they announce will not be a hundred-percent. They could do that only if they were an absolutely solid, sure conspiracy of professional crooks. Which they’re not. They can’t even rule out the possibility that you, although not learning anything from the examination about the contents of your right brain, will nevertheless join the poker game.”

“How?”

“Don’t be naive. What’s to stop you from writing afterward to the New York Times or the Züricher, or wherever you like, and saying that they added, doctored, falsified things? Think of the uproar! Experts would come forward to defend you, to ask for new and better controlled tests. It would be a royal mess.”

“If you see this all so clearly, why don’t Shapiro’s men?”

“But what else can they do other than persuade you to submit to an examination? We are all, despite our different roles, prisoners of the situation.”

“They could kill me.”

“No good. Even if you killed yourself, the suspicion that you were murdered would travel around the world.”

“I can’t believe it’s impossible to repeat what I did on the moon. Shapiro said that they tried and nothing came of it, but surely new scouts could be sent.”

“True, but that too is a labyrinth. You are surprised? Tichy, there is not much time left. We have a stalemate on the global board, with no moves to ensure peace, only different kinds of risk.”

“And what do you advise me as my guardian angel?”

“To take no one’s advice, mine included. I too represent certain interests, I’m not hiding it, it was neither God nor Providence that sent me to you, only a group that doesn’t want the arms race started again.”

“And what does this group wish me to do?”

“Nothing at the moment. Nothing at all. Stay here. Don’t telephone Shapiro. Keep in touch with crazy old Kramer during the next two weeks, or it might be only days, and we’ll see what develops.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“You shouldn’t, as I said. I’ve given you the general picture, that is all. The main transformer was disconnected for about an hour, and now I’ll take my electronic toys and go to bed, because I’m a millionaire suffering from depression, aren’t I? See you later, Jonathan.”

“Good night, Adelaide,” I said.

Kramer crawled to the door, pushed it open, and I thought I saw someone standing in the hall who gave him a sign. Kramer got to his feet, went out, and shut the door quietly behind him. I sat there, my legs pins and needles, until the lights went back on.

Turning them off, I got into bed. Where Kramer had been sitting lay an object like a flattened ring. I picked it up. There was a rolled piece of paper stuck inside. I unrolled it. “Just in case,” said the hasty scrawl. I tried putting the ring on my finger. It was gray, a dull metal, strangely heavy, maybe lead? On one side it had a hump like a lima bean with a pinhole through it. The ring fit only on my little finger. For some reason it troubled me more than both my visitors. What was it for? I tried scratching a windowpane with it. It left no mark on the glass. I licked it. Salty. To keep the ring on or not? I decided to keep it on. I looked at my watch. It was after midnight but I wasn’t sleepy. I didn’t even know what to worry about first. Perhaps the fact that my left arm and leg had been so well behaved, because their passivity, it seemed to me as I grew drowsy, might be a trap, a trap this time from within. I lay half-awake, or else half-asleep, I didn’t know which, and puzzled over this for a long time, until it grew light. Dawn, I thought, therefore I must have managed to sleep a few hours after all, except that the light wasn’t coming from the curtained window, it was coming from under the door.

The light was curiously strong, as if someone were directing a spotlight at the threshold of my room. I sat up. Something was flowing in across the floor, not water, more like mercury. It rolled in tiny balls, came together in a wide puddle that gathered around the small rug before my bed, and in the light from under the door came other rivulets of that strange metallic liquid. Now almost the whole floor gleamed like a mercury mirror. I switched on the table lamp. The stuff wasn’t mercury, it had more the color of tarnished silver. There was so much of it now that the rug floated, then the light behind the door went out. I sat and watched wide-eyed. The syrupy liquid separated into drops and the drops clumped together to form a mushroom shape that swelled like leavened dough and stiffened and lifted. This had to be a dream, I told myself, and yet I didn’t dare let my bare feet touch the “quicksilver,” which was indeed a metaphor come true, for quick meant living and this moved like a thing alive, though not animal or vegetable. The monster changed into a cocoon, a shell, armor that was more and more humanoid, though full of holes, especially the gaping slit in front. When I tried recreating that metamorphosis in my memory, which was much later, the best comparison I could think of was watching a film run in reverse: as if someone had built a weird weapon and then subjected it to high temperature so it would melt, except that what took place before my eyes was all backward, first the liquid, then the hollowed-out body rising from it. The figure lost its sheen now and resembled a large store-window mannequin with a hairless head and face without mouth or nose though two round holes could serve as eyes. Then it turned into a woman, or not a woman but the statue of a woman, empty inside and open like a cupboard, and this statue began to extrude its own clothes, first white underwear then over that a light-green dress.

Convinced now I was asleep and dreaming, I got out of bed and approached the apparition. The green dress turned white like a hospital gown and the face grew more defined. On the head a white nurse’s cap with a red silk ribbon appeared over blond hair. Enough, I thought, time to wake up, this dream is too stupid — but I hadn’t the courage to touch the thing. Looking around, I saw my whole room in the light of the lamp, the desk, the curtain, the chairs. I stood undecided, then turned again to the phantom. She looked a lot like Didi, a nurse I had seen often in the garden or Dr. House’s office, though was much larger and taller. She said: “Get in me, you’ll leave here, take the doctor’s Toyota, you can drive out because the gate is open. Get dressed and take money, you’ll buy a ticket and fly straight to Tarantoga. Don’t stand there like a moron, no one will stop you as a nurse…”

“But Didi is smaller than you…” I stammered, surprised not only by her words but also by the fact that she was speaking although not with her mouth. The voice came from the body which together with the white coat opened so wide, I could actually step inside. But should I, that was the question. Suddenly I was thinking very clearly: it didn’t have to be a dream because of the technology of molecular teleferics which I had used myself. But if it was real, might it not be a trap?

“Size doesn’t matter at night. Come on, get moving! Dress, and take your checkbook,” she said.

“But why should I leave and who are you anyway?” I asked, but started dressing at the same time, not because I really intended to participate in this unexpected escapade, it’s just that one feels more confident when clothed.

“I am not a person — you can see that,” she replied. The voice was a woman’s, however, low, warm, a little husky, I knew it from somewhere. I was sitting on the edge of the bed tying my shoes.

“So who sent you, Mrs. Nonperson?” I asked, looking up, and the next thing I knew, she had fallen upon me, that is, engulfed me, wrapped me not in her arms but in her whole body, and this happened so quickly that one moment I was sitting in my sweater and no tie, thinking I’d tied the left shoe too tight, and the next moment I was pulled inside and surrounded as if I’d been swallowed by a python. I can’t describe it better because nothing like that had ever happened to me before. It was soft inside, and I saw the room through the eye openings, but I couldn’t move, that is I could but only as she wanted to, she or it, though of course somebody was operating this remote for the purpose of taking me to where they were waiting impatiently for Ijon Tichy. I fought the monster with all my strength but to no avail. My limbs moved not as I wanted them to but against my will, my hand opening the door, turning the knob, even though I resisted every inch of the way. The hall was dim, lit with green night-lights, and there was not a soul about. I hadn’t time to wonder who was behind this, because the who-less thing that had swallowed me, a veritable Frankenstein suit, was walking steadily, unhurriedly, then I remembered the ring from Kramer, but how could it help me? Even if I knew I was supposed to bite it or turn it on my finger as in a fairy tale to make the genie appear, I couldn’t have done anything.

The front door of the pavilion loomed ahead, swinging doors, and my captive hand pushed them open. In the shadow of an old palm tree was the black shape of a car, rivers of distant light on its body. One of its rear doors opened but there was no one inside, at least I couldn’t see anyone.

I got in or rather was got in, still pulling back for all I was worth, until I realized my mistake. I shouldn’t pull back — that was what the operator of the remote expected. I should go instead in the direction imposed on me, but in such a way as to achieve my own ends. Bent over in the doorway of the car, I hurled myself forward, hit my head against something, passed out, and opened my eyes.

I was lying on the floor beside my bed. The curtains were gray with dawn. I raised my hand to my eyes and saw no ring. Was it a dream after all? But at what point did it begin? Kramer had definitely been here. I went to the closet where he had stood and yes, my clothes were all pushed to one side. Something white lay on the floor of the closet, a letter. I picked it up — no address — and tore open the envelope. Inside was a sheet of paper that had typewritten words, no date, no letterhead. I checked to see if the door was locked, turned on the lamp, not wanting to open the curtains, and read:

If you’ve had a dream about being abducted or tortured and it was vivid and in color, that means you’ve been subjected to a test, given a drug. They may be examining your reaction to certain substances. We aren’t sure about this. The only one you can turn to besides me is your doctor.

— Slug Eater

Slug Eater. So the letter was from Kramer. He could be telling the truth or lying. I tried to remember as precisely as possible what Shapiro had said and what Kramer had said. According to both, the lunar mission had failed. But on other things they parted company. The professor wanted me to be examined, Kramer wanted me to wait. The professor represented the Lunar Agency, or at least that’s what he claimed, while Kramer didn’t say anything about who stood behind him. But why hadn’t he warned me about the possibility of drugs, leaving only this letter? Could there be another player in this game? Both spoke at length, yet I still hadn’t been told why what my right brain held was so important. And why hadn’t that poor, practically mute half of my head shown any sign of life since — when was it? — yesterday? Did I swallow something which put it to sleep? Let’s suppose. But for what reason? It seemed to me that all these hunters of Tichy didn’t really know what to do and were playing for time. In which game I was a wild card, maybe a high trump, maybe nothing, and each was preventing the others from finding out. Had they put my right hemisphere to sleep so I couldn’t communicate with myself? This at least I could verify immediately. I took my left hand in my right and addressed it in the way I had developed.

“What’s new?” I asked with my fingers.

The little finger and the thumb of the left hand twitched, but weakly.

“Hello, are you there?” I signaled.

My ring finger and my thumb made a circle that meant “Hello.”

“So how are you doing?”

“Get lost.”

“Tell me how you feel. Look, we have a common interest.”

“My head hurts.”

And at that moment I felt that my head hurt too. I had read enough in the neurological literature by now to know that emotionally I was not halved but whole, because the seat of the emotions is in the midbrain, which was not touched by the callotomy.

“The same head hurts both of us. Do you understand?”

“No.”

“You don’t?”

“Don’t.”

I was in a sweat from this silent exchange but decided, come what may, not to let go. I would learn something if it killed me. Then I had an inspiration. The sign language of the deaf required a lot of work and dexterity. But I knew Morse code, had known it since childhood. So I made my left hand flat and with the forefinger of my right began to draw dots and dashes. The left hand submitted to this for a while, but suddenly it clenched into a fist and punched me hard. “Isn’t working,” I thought, but then the hand extended a finger and began marking dots and dashes on my right cheek. Yes, son of a gun, it was answering in Morse code.

“Don’t tickle or you’ll get it.”

This was the first English sentence I had received, albeit only by touch, from It. I sat perfectly still on the edge of my bed, because the hand was continuing.

“Jackass.”

“Me?”

“You. You should have done that to begin with.”

“Why didn’t you let me know?”

“A hundred times, jerk. You didn’t notice.”

It dawned on me now, yes, that the left hand had been tapping at me quite a bit, but it never entered my head (my side of my head) that this was in Morse.

“Amazing,” I tapped back, on the hand. “Then you can speak?”

“Better than you.”

“Then speak. You will save me, that is, save us.”

I don’t know whether it was I or It who got better at this, but our silent conversation went faster and faster.

“What happened on the moon?”

“Tell me what you remember.”

This sudden turning of the tables floored me.

“You don’t know?”

“I know that you wrote it down. Then buried it in a jar. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Did you write the truth?”

“Yes. What I could remember.”

“And they dug it up. That first one.”

“Shapiro?”

“I don’t remember names. The one who looked at the moon.”

“Do you understand spoken speech?”

“Not well. It’s better in French.”

Whatever that meant.

“Only in Morse?”

“Morse is best.”

“So talk.”

“You’ll write it down and they’ll steal it.”

“I won’t, word of honor.”

“Okay. You know some of it and I know some of it You go first.”

“You didn’t read what I wrote?”

“I can’t read.”

“All right… The last thing I remember… I was trying to make contact with Wivitch after getting out of that underground ruin in the Japanese sector, but I couldn’t. Or if I did, I don’t remember. All I know is that later I landed myself. Sometimes I think maybe I wanted to retrieve something from the remote, which had got into something… or else it had discovered something… but I don’t know what, or even which remote it was. Probably not the molecular remote. I don’t know what happened to that.”

“The powdered one?”

“Yes. But… you must know,” I suggested carefully.

“First tell yours to the end,” It answered. “Sometimes you think. And other times?”

“That there was no remote there at all, or there might have been but I wasn’t looking for it, because…”

“Because what?”

I hesitated. What I sometimes remembered was like a surreal dream impossible to put into words and which left only the feeling of an extraordinary revelation.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” It tapped on me, “but I know you have something up your sleeve. I can feel it.”

“Why should I have something up my sleeve?”

“Why, because. I’m the intuition half. Continue. You think you were looking for…”

“Sometimes I think I landed because I was summoned.”

“What did you write in the log?”

“About that, nothing.”

“But they have tapes. If you were summoned by the moon, they would know. The Agency was monitoring.”

“I don’t know what the Agency knows. I never laid eyes on any tapes at the base. But you must know that.”

“I know more than that.”

“What?”

“You lost the powdered one.”

“The dispersant? Well, obviously, if I later got into a spacesuit myself and —”

“Not what I mean.”

“It broke down?”

“No. They took it.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. The moon. The remote was changing down there. By itself. One could see it from the ship.”

“I saw it?”

“Yes, and you had no control over it.”

“Then who was operating it?”

“I don’t know. It had been disconnected from the ship but was still changing. Using all those different programs.”

“Impossible.”

“But true. And then back on the moon, down there. I was. That is, you and I were. And then Tichy fell.”

“What are you saying?”

“He fell. It must have been the callotomy. There’s a hole there for me. Then back on the ship and you put the spacesuit in its container and the sand fell out.”

“Did I go down to see what happened to the molecular remote?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. There’s a hole there. The callotomy was for that.”

“On purpose?”

“I think. I’m sure. So you’d come back and not come back.”

“They already told me that. Shapiro and Kramer too, though not so clearly.”

“Because it’s a game. There are things they know and things they don’t. They must have a hole too.”

“But wait, why did I fall?”

“The callotomy, stupid. You lost consciousness. How could you not fall?”

“And that sand? The talcum dust? Where did it come from?”

“I have no idea.”

I thought furiously. It was light now, almost eight o’clock. The lunar project failed? But in the rubble of that failure was more than senseless battles and tactics — for from it also had emerged something that no one on Earth ever programmed or anticipated. And this something had apparently taken control of the remote of Professor Lax-Gugliborc. Then lured me to land, intending evil or something else. Why deprive me of my memory? What purpose would that serve? None that I could see. Or was it to give me something? Or to tell me something? But in that case I wouldn’t have needed to land. Did it give me that dust? And then something — another party — not wanting this to succeed, cut the great commissure of my brain. Let’s say that’s what happened. Then did the thing operating the dispersant save me? But was the point to save Ijon Tichy? Probably not. The point was that the thing that was given reach Earth. The powder, the sticky dust, was the message. No, it had to be more than information. A material thing. And I was to bring it back with me. Yes. A piece of the puzzle had been fitted in. I quickly explained this theory to my other half.

“Could be,” It said finally. “They have the dust. But it’s not enough.”

“Hence the abductions and rescues, the persuading, visits, and nightmares?”

“To get you to submit to an examination. That is, me.”

“But they’ll learn nothing if you know no more than you’re saying.”

“True.”

“But if something has arisen there that is powerful enough to take over the molecular remote, why couldn’t it communicate directly with Earth? With the Agency, with Control, with anyone it wanted. At the very least with the men the Agency sent after my return.”

“Where did they land?”

“I don’t know. In any case it appears that there are opposing parties both here and there. What could have evolved on the moon, out of that cancer, that chaos? What word did Kramer use? Orthogenesis. Order out of chaos. Electronic self-organization. But to what end?”

“To no end. Like life on Earth. The hardware fought claw and fang, and the programs diverged. Some went in circles, repeating themselves, some broke down completely, and some entered the no man’s land and set up mirrors and mirages…”

“Maybe, maybe.” I felt a strange exaltation. “Yes, I can picture it. Out of the general deterioration something grew like photobacteria, viruses made of integrated circuits. But it couldn’t have been everywhere, it happened only in one particular place, an extremely rare event… and from there it began to multiply and spread. Fine, I agree that’s possible. But for some entity to arise out of that — no! This is pure fantasy. You can’t have an intelligence coming into the world made of spare parts, broken bits of electronics.”

“Then who took control of the molecular remote?”

“You’re sure that’s what happened?”

“Consider the evidence. After you left the Japanese ruin, you weren’t able to contact the base, were you?”

“Yes, but I have no idea what happened after that. I tried to raise Control and also the Trojan satellites through the ship’s computer to see if Control had me on its screen. But no one answered, no one. So the micropes must have been destroyed again, and the Agency didn’t learn what happened to the remote. All they knew was that shortly after that I landed on my own, then returned. The rest is only guesses. So?”

“But that’s the evidence. The only person who knows more is the inventor of the dispersant. What was his name?”

“Lax-Gugliborc. But he works for the Agency.”

“He didn’t want to give you the remote.”

“He said it was my decision.”

“That’s evidence too.”

“You think so?”

“Yes. He had misgivings.”

“You mean he feared that the moon — ?”

“There is no technology that can’t be figured out.”

“And that’s what happened?”

“I’m sure. Except differently from what he imagined."’

“How can you know that?”

“Everything is always different from what we imagine.”

“I see it now,” I tapped in the surrounding silence. “This was no taking over of controls. Hybridization, more likely! The thing that came into being there joined with the thing fashioned here in Professor Lax-Gugliborc’s workshop. One dispersion electronics combined with another that also had the ability to dissipate and metamorphose. The molecular remote, you see, contained a memory, and transformation programs, like little crystals of ice that can join together to form millions of different snowflakes. Each flake has hexagonal symmetry yet is different. Yes! I operated the remote, in a sense was the remote, but at the same time I was only providing it with signals telling it in which way to change. It did the changing itself, at the scene, on the surface of the moon and also below.”

“Did it have intelligence?”

“I really don’t know. One doesn’t need to know how a car is constructed to drive one. I drove, and saw what it saw, that was all. I couldn’t tell you whether it was an ordinary remote, an empty shell, or could function like a robot.”

“But Lax-Gugliborc could tell us.”

“Indeed. But I would prefer not to approach him, at least not directly.”

“Write to him.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Write so that only he will understand.”

“They read all letters. The telephone is out too.”

“Write, but don’t sign it.”

“And the handwriting?”

“I’ll write, you dictate.”

“It’ll be chicken scrawls.”

“So? Now I’m hungry, I want an omelette with jam. And then we’ll do the letter.”

“Who will send it? And how?”

“Breakfast first.”

The letter seemed an impossible task. I didn’t know the professor’s home address. And that was the least of our problems. We had to let him know that I wished to see him but in such a way that nobody else would understand the message. All correspondence was examined by the best experts, so we would have to be fiendishly clever. Forget about codes. Moreover there was no one I could trust even in the matter of sending the letter. And possibly Lax-Gugliborc wasn’t working anymore at the Agency, and even if by some miracle the letter reached him and he decided to see me, a horde of agents and intelligence operatives would not let him out of their sight. Also, there were probably special satellites in stationary orbit keeping my building under constant surveillance. I trusted House no more than I did Kramer. Nor could I turn to Tarantoga, whom I trusted like myself but there was no way to inform him of my (our) plan without drawing attention to him, and even as it was, ultrasensitive laser microphones were no doubt aimed at his every window, and when he bought corn flakes and yogurt at the supermarket, they were both no doubt x-rayed as he carried his groceries to the car.

After breakfast I went to the town, taking the same bus I took the first time. In front of the department store was a stand selling colorful postcards, and I looked through them and found the perfect one: it showed, against a red background, a golden cage and in it a white owl with big round eyes. I wasn’t so stupid as to reach for this card then and there, but selected it with eight others, and one with a parrot, then two more. I bought stamps and headed back to the asylum on foot. The town was almost deserted. A few people puttering in their gardens, and at a car wash across from the spot where that shoot-out for me took place cars were moving slowly through water and big blue brushes. No one seemed to be following me, or watching me, or preparing to kidnap me. The sun beat down. My shirt was soaked with sweat when I returned after an hour of walking, so I showered and changed, then sat down to send greetings to friends — Tarantoga, both Cybbilkises, Wivitch, two of Tarantoga’s cousins — the messages not too short and not too long, and of course with no mention of the Agency, the Mission, the moon, only pleasant, innocent sentiments, and my return address, why not? To make clear the lightheartedness of the postcards, I drew on each one, two black-and-white pandas for the twins, with mustaches and ties, a dachshund with a halo for Tarantoga, and I gave the owl glasses just like the professor’s, and on the bar where it was perched I drew a mouse. How does a mouse behave, especially around an owl? It is quiet, quiet as a mouse, and the professor might know that my name, Tichy, meant quiet in Czech or Russian, moreover at his place we had sat together in a cage. Writing to each one that it would be nice to see him, I could do the same with the professor, and thanked him for everything, and in a postscript conveyed greetings from Mrs. Mudstone, a subtle allusion, by anagram, to moon dust. If the professor didn’t get it, the card would fail, but I couldn’t be more explicit.

I didn’t call Shapiro, and Kramer did not go out of his way to talk to me. I spent half the day by the pool. My other self, since I had come to an understanding with it, caused no trouble. At night, lying in bed, I sometimes exchanged a few words with It before dropping off to sleep. It occurred to me that it might have been better to send Lax-Gugliborc the parrot instead of the owl, but it was too late, the ball was in his court now. Three days passed and nothing happened. Twice I swung with Kramer in the canopied swing by the fountain, but he didn’t talk business. Perhaps he too was waiting. He sweat, breathed heavily, groaned, complained about his rheumatism, was obviously in a bad mood. Bored, I took to watching television in the evening and reading the paper. The Lunar Agency reported that analysis of the data from the lunar reconnaissance was under way and so far revealed no irregularities or malfunctions in the various sectors. The media demanded more information, called for a hearing, for the director of the Lunar Agency and the heads of its different departments to appear before a special commission of the UN, and that a press conference be held to throw light on matters about which a fearful public was in the dark.

Russell, the young ethnologist who wanted to write his dissertation about millionaires, came to see me in the evenings. He had most of his material now thanks to his interviews with Kramer, but I couldn’t tell him those interviews were worthless and that Kramer was only playing the role of a Croesus while the true millionaires, especially the ones from Texas, were dull as dishwater. Even in the asylum they had their own secretaries, masseurs, and bodyguards, and each had a pavilion to himself. They were so reclusive, Russell had to set up a special telescope on my roof to observe them through their windows. He was discouraged, because even when they were stark raving mad, what they did was unoriginal. Since nothing was happening, Russell would come down his ladder and drop in on me for some human conversation.

The prosperity that obtained after the weapons were moved to the moon had unfortunate consequences, made worse by automation. Russell called it the electronics Stone Age. Illiteracy increased, particularly since now you didn’t even have to sign a check, only a thumbprint was necessary and a computer scanner did the rest. The American Medical Association finally lost the battle to save their profession, because computers gave better diagnoses and were much more patient with patients. Prosthetic sex was replaced by a simple device called an Orgaz. This was a headset with electrodes and a handgrip that resembled a toy pistol. Pulling the trigger gave you the ultimate pleasure because the appropriate place in your brain was stimulated with no effort, no exertion necessary, plus there were no upkeep expenses for male or female remotes, nor indeed the aggravations of natural courtship and matrimony. Orgazes flooded the market. To be fitted you went to special clinics. Gynandroics and other firms that manufactured synthetic women, angels, nymphs, fauns, etc., went out of business with much gnashing of teeth. As for education, most of the developed countries did away with compulsory school attendance. “Children,” went the new doctrine, “should not be subjected to daily imprisonment and the psychological torture called learning.” Who needs to know how many men’s shirts you can sew out of six yards of Egyptian cotton if one shirt requires seven eighths of a yard, or when two trains will collide if one engineer is eighteen, drunk, and going 100 miles an hour and the other is colorblind and doing 75, if they’re separated by 15 miles of track and 43 pre-automation semaphores? Equally useless are facts about kings, wars, battles, crusades, and all the other rotten behavior of history. Geography is best learned by traveling. All you have to know is the price of the ticket and when the plane takes off. Why learn foreign languages when you can put a translator chip in your ear? The study of biology depresses and depraves young minds, nor is it practical since no one now can become a doctor or dentist (after the appearance of dentautomata, about thirty thousand out-of-work dentists in both the Americas and Eurasia have committed suicide each year). And chemistry is of no more value than a knowledge of hieroglyphics. Meanwhile on traffic signs and street signs words are slowly being replaced with pictures.

Russell saw no point complaining about this state of affairs because nothing could be done. There were still some fifty thousand scientists and scholars left in the world but their average age was now 61.7. Everything had been smothered in the boredom of prosperity, and that was why, said Russell, most people were actually pleased by the prospect of an invasion from the moon, and the panic reported in the papers and on television was only to increase sales. Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur, the ethnologist concluded, staring at the now empty bottle of bourbon. His field work was so disappointing that he had stopped aiming his telescope at the windows of the millionaires and turned it instead to the solarium where the nurses and their aides sunbathed in the nude. I thought that odd, since after all he could simply go there and look at them up close but when I said this, he shrugged, remarking that that was the problem: nowadays one could just do that.

In the rec room of the new pavilion workmen were almost finished setting up the fants. Russell took me there one evening. You put a cassette into a fant and an image appears in front of the machine. More than an image, a whole artificial reality, Mount Olympus, for example packed with gods and goddesses, or something more from life, a two-wheel tumbrel carrying a bunch of illustrious people through a furious crowd toward the guillotine. Or Hansel and Gretel at the witch’s house stuffing themselves with shingles of gingerbread. Or a convent after Tartars or Martians break in. The idea is that what happens next depends on the viewer, who has a pedal under each foot and a joystick in his hand. You can go from idyll to bloodbath, have the gods depose Zeus, put ear wings on the heads falling into the guillotine basket so they fly away. Anything is possible. The witch wants to make cutlets out of Hansel, but you can have Hansel make cutlets out of her. The Prince of Denmark can steal the royal jewels and run off with Ophelia, or with Rosencrantz, depending on which key you push, because some fants have a keyboard. The instruction manual is a thick book but you can do without it. We tired of the fants after fifteen minutes of playing, even though we were both a little drunk, and went to bed. The asylum bought twenty fants, but they are hardly ever used. Dr. House is not happy about that. He went from patient to patient, trying to persuade them to give it a try because it’s good therapy. But apparently none of the millionaires or billionaires ever heard of Hansel and Gretel or Olympus or Hamlet. Tartars or Martians, it’s all the same to them. The guillotine they consider an oversize cigar cutter and silly. Dr. House worked the fants himself, probably out of a sense of duty, mixing the Middle Ages, Shakespeare, Agatha Christie, and volcanoes, and tried to get me to join him, but I refused. I was still waiting for a sign from Professor Lax-Gugliborc. Kramer too seemed to be waiting for something, and that’s probably why he avoided me. Waiting for new instructions? But I was in a good mood, having reached an understanding with myself.