Peace on Earth

“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