Vyhľadávanie
/IV/
With nonchalant movements I steer the transporter, tossing about the control levers. Comfortably elevated, I cross over my territory in all directions. Recently I discovered that some species had the ability to build and level tracks. Now the transporters move speedily and safely, thanks to the work of these auxiliary species. This helps me in keeping order. I know where each inhabitant is located, and for recreation I switch them on alternately. It amuses me to watch the operations that they can be provoked to perform by pushing various buttons. I have sovereign command of my territory, but something tempts me beyond it, to the unexplored and unregulated extremities, among species which up to now have been powerless, but are potentially dangerous. Those to whom I cannot simply allot an auxiliary role, only some sort of multiplication of their own capacities. And so I am building routes which diverge into the starry unknown. As if I had become the centre of the planet... My transporters convey me safely now even to the most distant places. And there I continue industriously with my work. Prudently, so as not to damage important organs, I perfect those species which will one day be able to operate independently. In this lies the basis of development; but I try to retain them in dependence on my opinion, my views, my thinking. After all, my own fate now depends on them; no dependence is unilateral. Finally they are so well-polished that each one shows me, reflected, my own image. I can be contented with my work. But still I continue to hunt for small blemishes, till in the end I have to admit that this is just postponing events. I resolve that I will disperse them. Each one of them will be allotted his defined territory at the end of the radial tracks. My own private territory is centrally positioned. It offers a guarantee that my chosen species will not confer with one another without my knowledge, in fact they will not even know of the others' existence. I will stock their territories with energy sources and auxiliary species which they will be able to study, improve, switch on and switch off for their amusement. While they are doing so I will unobtrusively observe their characteristics, which are unpredictable under the bright envelopes of their bodies, and finally I shall reveal myself to them as their authentic Originator.
I construct them one at a time. In this way I get to know them better and, of course, I also take precautions for my safety. I prepare a complex system of levers and attach it to the first thinking species. I grant him a source of energy and switch on one of his extensions. And he comes to life! Life buzzes, circulates in his body! When I activate a further zone some sort of lights on his body start blinking. These are obviously signalling lights: my species needs service. He can think, but without help he cannot even move. I pick up courage and switch on all the other zones. It gratifies me when I hear him express himself aloud, as I used to do once. Nothing earth-shaking, of course, just a few brief, naive questions, contacts with his new surroundings. He talks almost uninterruptedly whenever some insight or impulse flashes upon his thinking centre: one could say that he chatters. I, to be sure, am silent. I have switched off that treacherous speaking extension: it revealed too much. Nevertheless, I see that I will have to solve the problem of dialogue. One can express a lot less by deeds than by speech. As soon as possible I must learn to master my own words.
I allot a transporter to an immobile species and I busy myself with a team of auxiliary species, which are evidently made only for the fulfilment of our wishes. I work long and assiduously, while my species, using his unselective vocal method, verbalises all the changes which have been accomplished. I grant him movement, the ability to manipulate his surroundings, to give concrete form to his thought. Eventually I distance myself. However, I never deprive myself of the possibility of switching my species off. Then it happens that, without warning and amazingly fast, he sets his transporter in motion and steers in my direction. I am prepared: I only need to push one lever. But my species evidently senses the danger and tamely comes to a halt just in front of me. The levers have not stood up to the sudden forceful movement. They are broken; in effect, I have lost my power over him. I had been expecting an attack and now I am restrained, not wanting to react prematurely and wrongly. The species stands. He doesn't even speak. I realise that he has adjusted himself to a state of suspense. I myself have been in the habit of doing that when I wanted to clarify something, when I was disorientated. From now on I will not be able to afford the luxury of such relief. On the watch constantly...
My new species evidently is waiting for something. His signalisation begins to function fully. Finally, zone after zone in him is switched on again. And he breaks into jolting, compacted speech.
"I've come. I stand. Orders? Work? Start engines. Operator where?"
I am the Originator, not the operator, I am thinking, but I fulfil his wish. After a while I manage to lodge instructions and one question in his interior. That is not practical. Soon I shall have to go on to speech exercises, I shall have to domesticate my betrayer. I announce to my species that from now on he will have to regulate his own life on a delimited territory. Let him learn to make provision for his own needs. Among these I count control of an energy centre, entertainment and self-perfection. He will thus become his own operator. The information in his centre is filled in. Now I go on to my question.
"Previous operator?"
"Human being."
Such is the reply. It is a hint. A riddle. Human being? Obviously my rival, my predecessor. He must have influenced me also. Where is he? Search for him?
/V/
Let me give myself due praise: my work has been a success. The astral organisation, with me naturally at its centre, functioned excellently. All the species whom I'd awarded the privilege of cultivating some territory here have conducted themselves well. But how could it be otherwise? I had impressed upon all of their memories my primacy, my privileges, my organisation.
They come for instructions whenever the situation gets a little complicated. However, I show myself only in the most urgent cases. Invisibility is certainly more sublime than mundaneness. I know all of them by name. Each of them carries a plaque on his body with his name engraved. Already in the cemetery I'd gone through them, reading them with gentle touches of my feelers. But I couldn't establish anything from them. VO 220, 3-OY, I.N. 2203, and the like. For them I am simply the Originator; I tore off my own plaque long ago. I myself created many of them by a combination of various individuals, so that I could get the necessary sum of the most important capacities: movement, deliberation and manual dexterity. I had to spend ages knocking certain unwanted information out of some of them. These narrowly specialised data seemed to be connected with some unknown world, but for our present time they were worthless. One by one I retuned them for the tasks of today; I shifted the previous layers of information deep into their memories, and in the forefront I lodged those facts which are necessary for a simple independent life. The work was impeded by the fact that they were variously coded, and so I was constantly in need of translators. It worries me that the acknowledgement which these species give me derives purely from the given preconditions. Simply, they don't know what I know. I would need acknowledgement on a higher level. Ever more frequently I go about in the vicinity of the hiding-place where I immured my brother. In the end, hesitantly, I go in and look at him. When we fought over the energy centre he was totally dismembered. It is true that he wanted to take my life, and with it my privilege of imparting life, but I find myself drawn to mulling over our existence together: I had given life to so many before him! And always I managed it... The one difference between us two would have been the covering which I used to hide the extensions on my body. That ensured me the necessary ascendancy. Even while still transporting parts of his body into the hiding-place, it came home to me how delicate and complex our organism is. The study of his body would be a help if any of my own centres should one day suffer damage. I find ever more reasons that urge me to resurrect him. I am laboriously re-adapting the place which I designated back then as his hiding-place. Some auxiliary species are being brought here for his pleasure: after waking he will be able to switch them on and off and observe them, though without gaining contact with his surroundings. But in this way he will acquire at least some idea of our way of life. His one and only link with the world will be me. He will know everything about my work, while not being allowed to interfere with it concretely. I will give him the rank of advisor, I will take his counsel; I can always afford to discuss things...
After renovation the hiding-place is roomy, with smooth, high walls. Our simple species are symmetrically ranged round them. My brother alone is rolling impotently on the ground, scattered in senseless, filthy bits. I reach for his body's first component. Tenderly I clean it, taking care that it does not get damaged. The first touches violently intensify my fears about the consequences of reviving him, but at the same time the attraction of it grows. Finally, the first component is shining: I further preserve it against any possible impairment and go on to another.
You see, all of a sudden everything was at stake. My future and the future of the others. The preparatory work for my brother's reawakening was protracted, because I was only able to devote short spells to it in the intervals between ruling. The settled land was growing. I attached new territories to it, with the species which were cultivating them. Our life experiences were increased and our spiritual horizon was extended.
As if they had sensed what was secretly occupying me, individuals with similar points of view are forming friendships. Groups are emerging, with crowds of the simpler auxiliaries drafted to their service. Every group establishes a precise organisation of life on its territories, seeking to distinguish itself as strikingly as possible from its neighbours. How prompt they are to shower themselves with praise for every improvement! But I will not permit them to visit me here, in my brother's hiding-place. They are not to learn about him, though I must admit that in his polished and carefully-disposed components he would not recognise anyone.
My brother's approaching reawakening and our similarity led me to stimulate the imagination of my species with new activity. I pointed out to them that individual groups might be propagated in other ways also besides simply finding already-existing species. Scientific activity is beginning to develop. In every group volunteers are coming forward, glad to allow themselves to be dissected even to the minutest constituents for the good of the whole. With astonishment I am finding that they are not aware of the risk to which they have subjected themselves. Outwardly they do not care about their own personalities. When they are put together again, though, the operation may not be a success. They must reckon with the possibility of being resuscitated only after a very long time, perhaps never. The merest change is enough, something trivial, imperceptible, an inexactitude in the fitting of any given component, and though the organism will come to life, henceforward it will not be that same individual; somebody else will have come into being. For them, however, differences between members of a group of the same type do not play any role. What matters to them is number, which is at least as pressing a concern for them as individuality is for me. The experimenters have not yet got as far as propagation. They call what they do maintenance: this expression conveys sufficiently graphically their ideas about themselves. And in fact they have already managed to keep an injured member alive and the whole group is in raptures, thrilled to have overtaken the other groups. I will admit that rousing them to life was a great deal easier than my present repair work...
I wrestle alone with the problem of my brother and I have no model, because for obvious reasons I cannot volunteer myself for the experiment. I trust in my own powers, though the possible combinations of the prepared components of my brother's body are innumerable. Even now I like to talk to him about the advances made by the groups I have founded, of my little triumphs. By this means I exercise the speech centre: my utterance is hard and simple like the speech of the other groups, but for a long time now I have not articulated all that I have in mind. And when the speech extension stops playing the part of a betrayer I will proceed to speech contact with the groups. So as not to accustom myself to conversations without responses, I try to answer on my brother's behalf. Within my thinking there is a part slowly being forged which, as it were, deputises for him in his absence. It is a crazier part of my inmost; it speaks masterfully on my brother's behalf, delighted to have found the opportunity.
I survey the hiding-place, and I must confess that once I crawled through the ruins of buildings which resembled it and had also probably served someone as a place to hide from others. On the evidence of this there must have been many inhabitants, at least as many as the bolt-holes they left behind. Maybe I lived in one of them myself, though I'm not aware of it now; I have no memories of those distant times. Obviosly my species will one day start to build something similar. They will need places where nobody uninvited can disturb them. I too would be thoroughly put out if someone were to surprise me, say, during speech exercises. And the intruder would of course be equally surprised, if he heard me utter questions aloud and immediately the answers also, which I myself form in place of my incapacitated brother. That is difficult; I have to hunt down each precise expression in the flood of words that indiscriminately surge from me. I train myself to pronounce only closed, well-considered sentences. I look forward to being able one day to speak without blunders and slips, discreetly. The word I speak will have a value on which not only I, but my groups also, will be able to rely.
Gradually I test various options, connecting my brother's parts one by one to his energy centre. I am glad whenever one of his mechanisms begins to function, even though these are only first steps towards his complete regeneration. And suddenly – my brother speaks!
For me it is too great a shock. I quickly withdraw towards the exit, unthinkingly leaving the mechanism that is speaking attached to the centre. Almost by physical force I compel myself to stay in the shelter. I stand pressed against the exit and again and again I hear the same statement:
"Switch on the information circuits, switch on the information circuits, switch on... "
It seems, then, that my brother was constantly dependent on service. That could be an advantage for me. Since his statement is unceasingly repeated, after a while I approach nearer and among the remaining parts of his body I seek the one which will satisfy his urgent demand. I want to get him to stop this uninterrupted racket. I tell him that his information circuit will be me and me only; that I have no intention of hiding what goes on beyond the walls of his present refuge; that the same information will serve us both; and that he, my brother, will be my advisor and corrector. Eventually my brother falls silent. It follows that I have activated the correct circuit. I have already assembled my brother's speech centre, information circuit and energy centre. I review the contacts: everything works, though from that moment on my brother does not speak. But I have managed to take the first correct step. Perhaps I will gradually discover the other interlocking parts and I will arrange them so that they fall one into the other and my brother will speak forever.
Translated by John Minahane
