Peace on Earth by Stanislaw Lem Read Free Book Online Page A

would be a delegate of humanity, not a spy—or potential spy—for any country. His code name would be Missionary. But I was kept in the dark as much as possible. When they finally made me Missionary and I had crawled into the rocket for the n th time only to crawl back out two hours later in my space suit bristling with wires and tubes because again something had gone wrong during countdown, I finally had time to think about the past few months and put two and two together. I understood now the game the LA had been playing with me for the highest possible stakes. If not the highest for humanity and the world, certainly the highest for me: I didn’t need algomathematics and game theory to see that the simplest way for them to ensure secrecy in this situation was to do away with the pilot immediately after his return to Earth, as soon as he made his report. Knowing that they had to send me now, since I had shown myself to be the best of the candidates, I told this to my dear colleagues, the Cybbilkis brothers, Kuschtyk, Blahouse, Tottentanz, and Garraphizi (more about Garraphizi later) who along with a few dozen communications technicians would be the ground support for my selenological expedition, that is they would be for me what Houston was for Armstrong and Co. during the Apollo mission. To make those hypocrites as uncomfortable as possible I asked them if they knew who would take care of me after my return as a hero—the Lunar Agency itself or a hired gun?
    That’s what I said, in those exact words, to see their reaction. If they had considered that scenario, they would understand me immediately. They froze. It made quite a picture: the small area in the cosmodome called the Waiting Room, with its Spartan décor—coke machines, card chairs, metal tables covered with bilious green plastic—and I in my angel-white space suit, my head under my arm (actually my helmet, but that’s how you say it: your head’s under your arm when you’re ready to fly), and facing me, my loyal comrades, scientists, doctors, engineers. I think it was Castor who spoke first. That it wasn’t their doing, it was the equation, the computer, because if you looked at the thing mathematically, abstractly, the solution to the problem of ensuring secrecy did not take into account any coefficient of ethics, and I was insulting them all by suggesting, at such a moment, that they were in on it.
    “I’ve heard that before,” I answered. “Blame it on the computer! Sure, sure. But forget ethics for the moment. I know, you’re all saints and I’m one too. But didn’t any of you, the computer included, think of this?”
    “Of what?” asked a hangdog Cybbilkis.
    “That I might suspect, and might confirm my suspicion, as I’ve done just now. Surely that will affect the equation of my loyalty…”
    “Oh of course that was taken into account,” said the other Cybbilkis. “It’s the ABC of algomathematical statistics: I know that you know that I know that you know that I know. The infinite series of conflict theory.”
    “Very well,” I said, getting interested in the scientific aspect of the thing. “Then how did it work out for you in the end? Does or doesn’t the confirmed suspicion affect my loyalty?”
    “It does,” admitted Castor Cybbilkis reluctantly. “But the second derivative of the curve of your loyalty after a scene like this one (taking place as we speak) shows a leveling off to zero.”
    “Aha.” I scratched my nose, shifting the helmet from my right arm to my left. “So that what is now happening decreases the mathematical expectation of reduction of my loyalty?”
    “It decreases it,” he said. And his brother added, looking at me both kindly and searchingly: “You yourself probably feel…”
    “Exactly,” I muttered, realizing, not without surprise, that they were right, they or the computer, in this psychological calculation: my indignation had noticeably diminished.
    The green light went on over the exit