Peace on Earth by Stanislaw Lem Read Free Book Online

clearance, because the armchair in which I sat so comfortably was riddled with sensors that analyzed my reactions, through microscopic changes in muscle tension, to such key stimulus words as “moon” and “robot.” The diagnostic situation since I left Earth for the Calf constellation had reversed itself: I was evaluated by computer, my human interlocutors serving only to gather data. The next day, I went again to the UN office, I don’t know exactly why, and then they invited me again. They kept wanting to see me; I began having lunch with them in the cafeteria, which wasn’t bad, but the reason for these appointments remained unclear. There was talk about the United Nations publishing my collected works in all the languages of the world: more than four and a half thousand languages. I am not a vain man, but that seemed like a good idea to me. These new acquaintances all turned out to be fans of my Star Diaries. They were Dr. Rorty, Engineer Tottentanz, and the brothers Cybbilkis, identical twins whom I learned to tell apart by their ties. Both mathematicians. The older, Castor, worked in algomathematics, which is the algebra of conflicts that end fatally for all parties. (This branch of game theory is sometimes called sadistics.) The other Cybbilkis, Pollux, was not a sadistician but a statistician and had the curious habit of suddenly interrupting a conversation with such questions as “How many people on earth at this very moment are picking their nose?” A phenomenal calculator, he could come up with answers to such things instantly. One of the four was always waiting for me in the vestibule as big as a hangar to take me to the elevator. We went either to the Cybbilkis’ workshop or to Professor Jonas Kuschtyk, who also loved my books and quoted from them, giving the page number and year of publication. Kuschtyk (like Tottentanz) worked with telefer theory, a new field of remote robotics. The telefer slogan: “Where a man can’t go, a remote can.” Kuschtyk and Tottentanz urged me to try remoting. It’s quite an experience to have all your senses connected by radio to a machine.
    I was willing. It was only much later that I realized they weren’t Ijon Tichy fans at all but had read me strictly in the line of duty. Their task, with many other Lunar Agency people (whom I won’t mention so as not to immortalize them), was to pull me gradually into the Mission. Why gradually? Because I could refuse, after all, and go home, taking with me all the secrets of the Mission. And what if you did? asks someone from the audience, a heckler. Would that be the end of the world? The point is yes, possibly, it would. The person selected from thousands by the Lunar Agency had to be both extremely capable and extremely loyal. Capable we understand, but loyal? And loyal to whom, to the Agency? Yes, inasmuch as it represented the interests of humanity. No nation or coalition of nations could be allowed to learn the results of the lunar reconnaissance, assuming it succeeded, because whoever knew the state of the weapons there first would gain, by that strategic information, immediate supremacy on Earth. The peace, in other words, was far from idyllic.
    So the friendly scientists who let me play with the remotes as a child with a toy were actually dissecting my mind, that is, the computers were, invisible but analyzing our every conversation. Castor Cybbilkis, with his surrealist ties, was there as a theoretician of disastrous endgames, because precisely such a game was being played with me, against me. In order to accept or reject the Mission, I first had to learn about it, but then if I rejected it or if I accepted, returned, and then divulged the results of the reconnaisance, known only to me, it would create a situation the algomathematicians called pre-catastrophic.
    The candidates were of different nationalities, races, professions, and accomplishments. I was one of many though I had no idea of that. The person selected