huge you’d need an ocean to make soup out of it, the clenching of teeth, darkness, so much darkness you can’t even tell what’s what. The Steelypips look—nothing, not a thing, just all their mechanisms lying around like so much scrap metal and without a sign of life.
Now they rolled up their sleeves. “After all,” they say, “we are mechanics and mechanists, all mechanically minded, and we have a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect, so how can this nasty thing just sit there and not budge?”
This time they make nothing less than an enormous cyberivy-bushwhacker: it’ll creep up casually, as if minding its own business, glance over its shoulder, grow a little bolder, send out a root or two, grow up from behind, taking its time, and then when it closes in, that’ll be the end of that. And truly, everything happened exactly as predicted, except, when it was over, that wasn’t exactly the end of that, not at all.
They fell into despair, and they didn’t even know what to think because this had never happened to them before, so they mobilized and analyzed, made nets and glues, lariats and screws, traps and contraptions to make it drown, break it down, make it fall, or maybe wall it up—they try this way and that and the other, but one is as poor as another. They turn everything upside-down, but nothing helps. They’re about ready to give up hope when suddenly they see—someone’s coming: he’s on horseback, but no, horses don’t have wheels—it must be a bicycle, but wait, bicycles don’t have prows, so maybe it’s a rocket, but rockets don’t have saddles. What he’s riding no one can tell, but who’s in the saddle we all know well: it’s Trurl himself, the constructor, out on a spree, or maybe on one of his famous sallies, serene and smiling, coming closer, flying by—but even from a distance you’d know that this wasn’t just anybody.
He lowers, he hovers, so they tell him the whole story: “We are the Steelypips, we have a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect, we saved up all our atoms, put them all together ourselves, we hadn’t a care, no spats in our vats, no rules, no schools,until something flew up, landed, sat down and won’t budge.”
“Did you try scaring it off?” Trurl asks with a kindly smile.
“We tried a scarechrome and a servospook and a megalo-mechanism, all hydraulic and high caliber, spouting mesons like caissons, pi- and mu- and neutrinos too, protons and photons, but nothing worked.”
“No machine, you say?”
“No sir, no machine.” .
“H’m, interesting. And what exactly is it?”
“That we don’t know. It appeared, flew here, what it is nobody knows, except that it’s hideous and no matter from which angle you look at it, it’s even more hideous. It flew up, landed, so heavy you can’t imagine, and just sits there. But it’s an awful nuisance, all the same.”
“Well, I really don’t have much time,” says Trurl. “The most I can do is stay here for a while, in an advisory capacity. Is that agreeable with you?”
It certainly is and the Steelypips immediately ask what he wants them to bring—photons, screws, hammers, artillery, or how about some dynamite, or TNT? And would our guest like coffee or tea? From a vending machine, of course.
“Coffee’s fine,” agrees Trurl, “not for me, but for the business at hand. As for the rest of it, I don’t think so. You see, if neither scarechrome, nor servospook, nor cyberivy-bushwhacker will do the job, then other methods are indicated: archaic and archival, legalistic hence sadistic. I’ve yet to see the remittance due and payable in full fail.”
“Come again?” ask the Steelypips, but Trurl, rather than explain, continues:
“It’s quite simple, really. All you need is paper, ink, stamps and seals, sealing wax and thumbtacks, sand to sprinkle, blotters, a teller window, a zinc teaspoon, a saucer—the coffee we already have—and a mailman. And something to write with—do you have that?”
“We’ll get it!” And they take off.
Trurl pulls up a chair and dictates: “Notice is hereby given, that in re hindrance of Tenant, as stated under Rev. Stat. c.117(e) dash 2 dash KKP4 of the CTSP Comm. Code, in clear violation of paragraph 199, thereby constituting a most reprehendable offense, we do declare the termination, desummation and full cessation of all services accruing thereunto, by authority of Ordinance 67 DPO No. 14(j) 1101
Trurl attaches the seal, affixes the stamp, has it entered in the Central Ledger, consults the Official Register, and says:
“Now let the mailman deliver it.”
The mailman takes it, they wait, they wait, the mailman returns.
“Did you deliver it?” asks Trurl.
“I did.”
“And the return receipt?”
“Here it is, signed on this line. And here’s the appeal.”
Trurl takes the appeal and, without reading it at all, orders it returned to sender and writes diagonally across it: “Unacceptable—Proper Forms Not Attached.” And he signs his name illegibly.
“And now,” he says, “to work!”
He sits and writes, while those who are curious look on and, understanding nothing, ask what this is and what it’s supposed to do.
“Official business,” answers Trurl. “And things will go well, now that it’s under way.”
The mailman runs back and forth all day like one possessed; Trurl notarizes, issues directives, the typewriter chatters, and little by little an entire office takes shape, rubber stamps and rubber bands, paper clips and paper wads, portfolios and pigeonholes, foolscap and scrip, teaspoons, signs that say “No Admittance,” inkwells, forms on file, writing all the while, the typewriter chattering, and everywhere you look you see coffee stains, wastepaper, and bits of gum eraser. The Steelypips are worried, they don’t understand a thing, meanwhile Trurl uses special delivery registered C.O.D., certified with return receipt, or, best of all, remittance due and payable in full—he sends out no end of dunning letters, bills of lading, notices, injunctions, and there are already special accounts set up, no entries at the moment but he says that’s only temporary. After a while, you can see that that is not quite so hideous, especially in profile—it’s actually gotten smaller!—yes, yes, it
“No idle talk permitted on the premises,” is his answer. And he staples, stamps, inspects vouchers, revokes licenses, dots an i, loosens his tie, asks who’s next, I’m sorry, the office is closed, come back in an hour, the coffee is cold, the cream sour, cobwebs from ceiling to floor, an old pair of nylons in the secretary’s drawer, install four new file cabinets over here, and there’s an attempt to bribe an official, a pile of problems and a problem with piles, a writ of execution, incarceration for miscegenation, and appeals with seven seals.
And the typewriter chatters: “Whereas, pursuant to the Tenant’s failure to quit and surrender the demised premises in compliance with the warrant served, habere facias posses-sionem, by Div. of Rep. Cyb. Gt. KRS thereof, the Court of Third Instance, in vacuo and ex nihilo, herewith orders the immediate vacuation and vacation thereunder. The Tenant may not appeal this ruling.”
Trurl dispatches the messenger and pockets the receipts. After which, he gets up and methodically hurls the desks, chairs, rubber stamps, seals, pigeonholes, etc., out into deep space. Only the vending machine remains.
“What on earth are you doing?” cry the Steelypips in dismay, having grown accustomed to it all. “How can you?”
“Tut-tut, my dears,” he replies. “Better you take a look instead!”
And indeed, they look and gasp—why, there’s nothing there, it’s gone, as if it had never been! And where did it go, vanished into thin air? It beat a cowardly retreat, and grew so small, so very small, you’d need a magnifying glass to see it. They root around, but all they can find is one little spot, slightly damp, something must have dripped there, but what or why they cannot say, and that’s all.
“Just as I thought,” Trurl tells them. “Basically, my dears, the whole thing was quite simple: the moment it accepted the first dispatch and signed for it, it was done for. I employed a special machine, the machine with a big
