anything.”
“Why hire a lawyer? I’ll make myself one!”
And Trurl went home, threw six heaping teaspoons of transistors into a big pot, added again as many condensers and resistors, poured electrolyte over it, stirred well and covered tightly with a lid, then went to bed, and in three days the mixture had organized itself into a first-rate lawyer. Trurl didn’t even need to remove it from the pot, since it was only to serve this once, so he set the pot on the table and asked:
“What are you?”
“I’m a consulting attorney and specialist in jurisprudence,” the pot gurgled, for there was a little too much electrolyte in it. Trurl related the whole affair, whereupon it said:
“You say you qualified the Adviser’s program with an instruction making it incapable of engineering your death?”
“Yes, so it couldn’t destroy me. That was the only condition.”
“In that case you failed to live up to your part of the bargain: the Adviser was to have been perfect, without any limitations. If it couldn’t destroy you, then it wasn’t perfect.”
“But if it destroyed me, then there would be no one to receive payment!”
“A separate matter and a different question entirely, which comes under those paragraphs in the docket determining Mandrillion’s criminal liability, while your claim has more the character of a civil action.”
“Look, I don’t need some pot handing me a lot of legalistic claptrap!” fumed Trurl. “Whose lawyer are you anyway, mine or that hoodlum king’s?”
“Yours, but he did have the right to refuse you payment.”
“And did he have the right to order me thrown from his castle walls into the moat?”
“As I said, that’s another matter entirely, criminal, not civil,” answered the pot.
Trurl flew into a rage.
“Here I make an intelligent being out of a bunch of old wires, switches and grids, and instead of some honest advice I get technicalities! You cheap cybernetic shyster, I’ll teach you to trifle with me!”
And he turned the pot over, shook everything out onto the table, and pulled it apart before the lawyer had a chance to appeal the proceedings.
Then Trurl got to work and built a two-story Juris Con-sulenta, forensically reinforced fourfold, complete with codices and codicils, civil and criminal, and, just to be safe, he added international and institutional law components. Finally he plugged it in, stated his case and asked:
“How do I get what’s coming to me?”
“This won’t be easy,” said the machine. “I’ll need an extra five hundred transistors on top and two hundred on the side.”
Which Trurl supplied, and it said:
“Not enough! Increase the volume and give me two more spools, please.”
After this it began:
“Quite an interesting case, really. There are two things that must be taken into consideration: the grounds of the allegation, for one, and here I grant you there is much that we can do—and then we have the litigation process itself. Now, it is absolutely out of the question to summon the King before any court on a civil charge, for this is contrary to international as well as interplanetary law. I will give you my final opinion, but first you must give me your word you won’t pull me apart when you hear it.”
Trurl gave his word and said:
“But where did you get the idea I would ever do such a thing?”
“Oh, I don’t know—it just seemed to me you might.”
Trurl guessed this was due to the fact that, in its construction, he had used parts from the potted lawyer; apparently some trace of the memory of that incident had found its way into the new circuits, creating a kind of subconscious complex.
“Well, and your final opinion?” asked Trurl.
“Simply this: no suitable tribunals exist, hence there can be no suit. Your case, in other words, can be neither won nor lost.”
Trurl leaped up and shook his fist at the legal machine, but had to keep his word and did it no harm. He went to Klapaucius and told him everything.
“From the first I knew it was a hopeless business,” said Klapaucius, “but you wouldn’t believe me.”
“This outrage will not go unpunished,” replied Trurl. “If I can’t get satisfaction through the courts, then I must find some other way to settle with that scoundrel of a king!”
“I wonder how. Remember, you gave the King a Perfect Adviser, which can do anything except destroy you; it can fend off whatever blow, plague or misfortune you direct against the King or his realm—and will do so, I am sure, for I have complete confidence, my dear Trurl, in your constructing ability!”
“True.… It would appear that, in creating the Perfect Adviser, I deprived myself of any hope of defeating that royal bandit. But no, there must be some chink in the armor! I’ll not rest until I’ve found it!”
“What do you mean?” Klapaucius asked, but Trurl only shrugged and went home. At home he sat and meditated; sometimes he leafed impatiently through hundreds of volumes in his library, and sometimes he conducted secret experiments in his laboratory. Klapaucius visited his friend from time to time, amazed to see the tenacity with which Trurl was attempting to conquer himself, for the Adviser was, in a sense, a part of him and he had given it his own wisdom. One afternoon, Klapaucius came at the usual time but didn’t find Trurl at home. The doors were all locked and the windows shuttered. He concluded that Trurl had begun operations against the ruler of the Multitudians. And he was not mistaken.
Mandrillion meanwhile was enjoying his power as never before; whenever he ran out of ideas, he asked his Adviser, who had an inexhaustible supply. Neither did the King have to fear palace coups or court intrigues, or any enemy whatsoever, but reigned with an iron hand, and truly, as many grapes there were that ripened in the vineyards of the south, more gallows graced the royal countryside.
By now the Adviser had four chests full of medals for suggestions made to the King. A microspy Trurl sent to the land of the Multitudians returned with the news that, for its most recent achievement—it gave the King a ticker-tape parade, using citizens for confetti—Mandrillion had publicly called the Adviser his “pal.”
Trurl then launched his carefully prepared campaign by sitting down and writing the Adviser a letter on eggshell-yellow stationery decorated with a freehand drawing of a cassowary tree. The content of the letter was simple.
Dear Adviser!—he wrote—I hope that things are going as well with you as they are with me, and even better. Your master has put his trust in you, I hear, and so you must keep in mind the tremendous responsibility you bear in the face of Posterity and the Common Weal and therefore fulfill your duties with the utmost diligence and alacrity. And should you ever find it difficult to carry out some royal wish, employ the Extra-special Method which I told you of in days gone by. Drop me a line if you feel so inclined, but don’t be angry if I’m slow to reply, for I’m working on an Adviser for King D. just now and haven’t much time. Please convey my respects to your kind master. With fondest wishes and best regards, I remain
Your constructor,
Naturally this letter aroused the suspicions of the Multitudian Secret Police and was subjected to the most meticulous examination, which revealed no hidden substances in the paper nor, for that matter, ciphers in the drawing of the cassowary tree—a circumstance that threw Headquarters into a flurry. The letter was photographed, facsimiled and copied out by hand, then the original was resealed and sent on to its destination. The Adviser read the message with alarm, realizing that this was a move to compromise if not ruin its position, so immediately it told the King of the letter, describing Trurl as a blackguard bent on discrediting it in the eyes of its master; then it tried to decipher the message, for it was convinced those innocent words were a mask concealing something dark and dreadful.
But here the wise Adviser stopped and thought a minute —then informed the King of its intention to decode Trurl’s letter, explaining that it wished in this way to unmask the constructor’s treachery; then, gathering up the necessary number of tripods, filters, funnels, test tubes and chemical reagents, it began to analyze the paper of
