Stanislaw Lem - Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

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Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

by Stanislaw Lem

Translated by Michael Kandel and Christine Rose

a.b.e-book v3.0 / Notes at EOF

Back Cover:

"A major figure who just happens to be a science fiction writer. . . very likely, he is also the bestselling

SF writer in the world." -- Fantasy and Science Fiction

With over six million of his books in print worldwide, Stanisiaw Lem is perhaps the most popular

-- and most critically acclaimed -- science fiction writer of our day. InMEMOIRS FOUND IN A

BATHTUB, he projects a future America where a Uranian virus threatens the destruction of all paper.

The final stronghold of the "papyrocracy" is the hermetically sealed underground structure known only as

"The Building." Its labyrinthine net of corridors is a world of complete subterfuge -- with polygraph

mittens, bugged percolators, and microphone pillows. Into the clockwork precision of this vestigial

Pentagon plunges a young wanderer, unaware of the self-devouring complex of espionage that is a way

of life, the rhythm of The Building. . .

Lem has created a chilling, brilliantly satiric vision of "the ultimate bureaucracy" -- where

everyone is a spy, but no-one knows his mission.

"Lem is capable of an amazing richness of image and a great knack for characterization. He is wildly

comic, he is sardonic, perplexing, insightful." --THEODORE STURGEON, inThe New York Times

Original edition:Pamietnik znaleziony w wannie,

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published by Wydawnietwo Literackie, Cracow, 1971.

Work by Christine Rose by arrangement with Forrest J. Ackerman.

AVON BOOKS

A division of

The Hearst Corporation

959 Eighth Avenue

New York, New York 10019

Published by arrangement with The Seabury Press.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 72-10586

ISBN: 0-380-00456-9

or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address

The Seabury Press, 815 Second Ave., New York, N.Y. 10017

First Avon Printing, September, 1976

Printed in the U.S.A.

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Introduction

"Notes from the Neogene" is unquestionably one of the most precious relics of Earth's ancient

past, dating from the very close of the Prechaotic, that period of decline which directly preceded the

Great Collapse. It is indeed a paradox that we know much more of the civilizations of the Early

Neogene, the protocultures of Assyria, Egypt and Greece, than we do of the days of paleoatomics and

rudimentary astrogation. While those archaic cultures left behind permanent monuments in bone, stone,

slate and bronze, almost the only means of recording and preserving knowledge during the Middle and

Late Neogene was a substance called papyr.

Papyr was whitish, flaccid, a derivative of cellulose, rolled out on cylinders and cut into

rectangular sheets. Information of all kinds was impressed on it with a dark tint, after which the sheets

were collated and sewn in a special way.

In order to understand what brought about the Great Collapse, that catastrophic event which in a

matter of weeks totally demolished the cultural achievement of centuries, we must go back three

thousand years. Metamnestics and data crystallization did not exist in those days. Papyr performed all the

functions now served by our mnemonitrons and gnostors. True, there were the beginnings of artificial

memory; but these were large, bulky machines, troublesome to operate and maintain, and used only in

the most limited, narrow way. They were called "electronic brains," an exaggeration comprehensible only

in the historical perspective, much like the boast of the builders of Asia Minor, that their sacred temple

Baa-Bel was "sky-reaching."

No one knows exactly when and where the papyralysis epidemic broke out. Most likely, it

happened in the desert regions of a land called Ammer-Ka, where the first spaceport was built. The

people of that time did not immediately realize the scope of the impending danger. And yet we cannot

accept the harsh judgment delivered by so many subsequent historians, that these were a frivolous

people. To be sure, papyr was not distinguished by its durability; but one should not hold a Prechaotic

civilization responsible for failing to foresee the existence of the RV catalyst, also known as the Hartian

Agent. The true properties of this agent, after all, were discovered only in the Galactic Period by one

Prodoctor Six Folses, who established RV's origin as the third moon of Uranus. Unwittingly brought

back to Earth by an early expedition (the eighth Malaldic, according to Prognostor Phaa-Vaak), the

Hartian Agent set off a chain reaction and papyr disintegrated around the globe.

The details of the cataclysm are not known. According to verbal reports crystallized only in the

Fourth Galactium, the focal points of the epidemic were enormous data storage centers calledli-brees.

The reaction was practically instantaneous. In place of those great treasuries, those reservoirs of society's

memory, lay mounds of gray, powdery ash.

The Prechaotic scientists thought they were dealing with some papyrophagous microbe, and

wasted valuable time in the attempt to isolate it. One can hardly deny the justice of Histognostor Four

Tauridus's bitter remark, that humanity would have been better served had that time been spent engraving

the disintegrating words onto stone.

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Gravitronics, cybereconomics and synthephysics were all unknown in the Late Neogene, when

the catastrophe occurred. The economic systems of various ethnic groups callednashens were relatively

autonomous, and wholly dependent upon the circulation of papyr, as was the flow of supplies to the

Syrtic Tiberis colony on Mars.

Papyralysis ruined a great deal more than the economy. That entire period is rightly named the

Era of Papyrocracy, for not only did papyr regulate and coordinate all group activities, but it determined,

in some obscure way, the fate of individuals (for example, the "identity papyrs"). The functional and ritual

roles of papyr in the folklore of that time (the catastrophe took place when Prechaotic Neogene was at

its height) have yet to be fully catalogued. While we do know the meaning of some expressions, others

remain empty phrases (cheks, dok-ments, ree-seets, etc.) In that era one could not be born, grow up,

obtain an education, work, travel, marry or die except through the aid and mediation of papyr.

Only in the light of these facts can one appreciate the full extent of the disaster which struck

Earth. The quarantine of whole cities and continents, the construction of hermetically sealed shelters -- all

such measures failed. The science of the day was helpless against the catalyst's subatomic structure, the

product of a most unusual anabiotic evolution. For the first time in history society was threatened with

total dissolution. To quote an inscription carved upon the wall of a urinal in the Fris-Ko excavations by an

anonymous bard of the cataclysm: "And the heavens above the cities grew dark with clouds of blighted

papyr and it rained for forty days and forty nights a dirty rain, and thus with wind and streams of mud

was the tale of man washed from the face of the earth forever."

It must have been a cruel blow indeed to the pride of Late Neogene man, who saw himself

already reaching the stars. The papyralysis nightmare pervaded all walks of life. Panic hit the cities;

people, deprived of their identity, lost their reason; the supply of goods broke down; there were incidents

of violence; technology, research and development, schools -- all crumbled into nonexistence; power

plants could not be repaired for lack of blueprints. The lights went out, and the ensuing darkness was

illumined only by the glow of bonfires.

And so the Neogene entered into the Chaotic, which was to last over two hundred years.

Obviously, the first quarter-century of the Great Collapse left no written records. We can only guess

under what conditions government was maintained and anarchy avoided until the establishment, around

mid-century, of the Earth Federation.

The more complex a civilization, the more vital to its existence is the maintenance of the flow of

information; hence the more vulnerable it becomes to any disturbance in that flow. Now that flow, the

lifeblood of the society, had come to a halt. The last storehouse of information lay in the minds of living

experts; to record and preserve that information had priority over all else. But this seemingly simple

problem proved insoluble. In the Late Neogene, knowledge was so compartmentalized that no one

specialist could possibly assimilate the entirety of his field. Reconstruction consequently demanded

tedious, long-term collaboration of different groups of experts. Had the task been undertaken at once --

so Polygnostor Laa Baar Eight of our Bermand Historical School tells us -- Neogene civilization could

have been speedily restored. In answer to the distinguished founder of Neogene Chronologistics, we

must point out the activity he postulates could indeed have led to the accumulation of veritable mountains

of knowledge -- but who would there have been to derive benefit from this? Certainly not the hordes of

nomads who left their devastated cities; nor their children, who grew up wild and illiterate. No, civilization

could have been saved only at the very moment when industry began to fall apart, construction ceased

and transportation ground to a halt, when the starving masses of whole continents first cried out for help,

including the colony on Mars, deprived of supplies and threatened with extinction. Clearly the experts

could not shut themselves up in ivory towers and take the time to develop new techniques of

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Desperate measures were employed. Certain branches of the amusement industry (such asfeelms

) mobilized their entire production to record incoming information on the positions of spaceships and

satellites, for collisions were multiplying rapidly. Circuit diagrams were printed, from memory, on fabrics.

All available plastic writing materials were distributed among the schools. Physics professors personally

had to tend atomic piles. Emergency teams of scientists flitted from one point of the globe to another. But

these were merely tiny particles of order, atoms of organization that quickly dissolved in an ocean of

spreading chaos. Shaken as it was by endless upheavals, engaged in a constant struggle against the tide

of superstition, illiteracy and ignorance, the stagnant culture of the Chaotic should be judged not by what

it lost of the heritage of centuries, but by what it was able to salvage, against all odds.

To check the first fury of the Great Collapse necessitated tremendous sacrifices. Earth's first

footholds on Mars had been saved, and technology, that backbone of all civilization, was reconstructed.

Microphones and tape banks replaced the storage centers of demolished papyr. Unfortunately, cruel

losses were sustained in other areas.

Because the supply of new writing materials failed to meet even the most urgent needs, anything

that did not directly serve to save the bare framework of society had to be jettisoned. The humanities

suffered the worst. Knowledge was disseminated orally, through lectures; the audiences became the

educators of the next generation. This was one of those astonishing primitivisms of Chaotic civilization

that rescued Earth from total disaster, though losses in the areas of history, historiography, paleology and

paleoesthetics were quite irreparable. Only the smallest fragment of a rich literary legacy was preserved.

Millions of volumes of chronicles, priceless relics of the Middle and Late Neogene, turned to dust

forever.

At the end of the Chaotic we find a most paradoxical situation: there was a relatively high level of

technology, including the active initiation of gravitronics and technobiotics, not to mention the success of

cisgalactic mass transport; yet the human race knew next to nothing of its own past. All that survives

today of the enormous achievements of the Neogene are a few scattered and unrelated remnants, factual

accounts altered beyond all recognition and thoroughly garbled through countless retellings in the oral

tradition. Even the most important events are of doubtful chronology.

One must concur with Subgnostor Nappro Leis when he says that papyralysis meant

historioparalysis. Only in this perspective can we assess the true value of the work of Prognostor

Wid-Wiss who, in his single-handed battle against official historiography, discovered the "Notes from the

Neogene," a voice speaking to us across the abyss of centuries, a voice belonging to one of the last

inhabitants of the lost land of Ammer-Ka. This monument is all the more precious in that there are no

others to rival it in importance; it cannot be compared, for example, with the papyrantic finds made by

the archeological expedition of Syrtic Paleognostor Bradrah the Mnemonite at the Marglo shale diggings

in the Lower Preneogene. Those finds concern religious beliefs prevalent during the Eighth Dynasty of

Ammer-Ka; they speak of various Perils -- Black, Red, Yellow -- evidently cabalistic incantations

connected in some way with the mysterious deity Rayss, to whom burnt offerings were apparently made.

But this interpretation is still being debated by the Trans-Sindental and Greater Syrtic Schools, as well as

by a group of disciples of the famous Bog-Wood.

Most of the Neogene, we fear, will forever remain shrouded in mystery, for even chronotraction

methods have failed to provide the most fundamental details of the social life at that age. Any systematic

presentation of those few moments of history which we have been able to re-create goes well beyond the

limits of this introduction. So we will limit ourselves to a few remarks in the way of background to the

"Notes."

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The evolution of ancient beliefs underwent a curious bifurcation. In the first period, the

Archeocredonic, various religions were founded upon the recognition of a supernatural, nonmaterial

principle, causative with respect to everything in existence. The Archeocredonic left behind permanent

monuments -- the pyramids of the Early Neogene, the excavations of the Mesogene (the Gothic

cathedrals of Lafranss).

In the second period, the Neocredonic, faith assumed a different aspect. The metaphysical

principle somehow merged with the materialistic, the earthly. Worship of the deity Kap-eh-Taahl (or, in

the Cremonic palimpests, Kapp-Taah) became one of the dominant cults of the time. This deity was

revered throughout Ammer-Ka and the faith quickly spread to Australindia and parts of the European

Peninsula. Any connection, however, between the cult of Kap-Eh-Taalh and the graven images of the

elephant and the ass found here and there throughout Ammer-Ka does seem somewhat doubtful. It was

forbidden to utter the name itself, "Kap-Eh-Taahl" (analogous to the Hebrew interdiction); in Ammer-Ka

the diety was generally called "Almighty Da-Laahr." But there were many other liturgical names, and

special monastic orders devoted themselves entirely to an appraisal of their changing status (the

Mer-L-Finches, for example). Indeed, the fluctuation in the accepted value of each of the many names

(or were they attributes?) of Kap-Eh-Taahl remains an enigma to this day. The difficulty in understanding

the true nature of that last of the Prechaotic religions lies in the fact that Kap-Eh-Taahl was denied any

supernatural existence, was therefore not a spirit, nor was he even considered a being (which would help

explain the totemistic features of that cult, so unusual in an age of science) -- he was, to all extents and

purposes, equated with assets, liquid, fixed, and hidden, and had no existence beyond that. However, it

has been shown that in times of economic decline, sacrifices of sugar cane, coffee, and grain were made

to placate the angry god. This contradiction is deepened by the fact that the cult of Kap-Eh-Taahl did

possess some elements of the doctrine of incarnation, according to which, the world owed its continuing

existence to "sacred property." Any violation of that doctrine met with the most severe punishment.

As we know, the epoch of global cybereconomics was preceded, at the close of the Neogene,

by the rise of sociostasy. As the cult of Kap-Eh-Taahl, mired in complex corporational rites and intricate

institutional rituals, began in the course of time to lose one territory after another to the followers of

secular sociostatic management, there arose a conflict between the lands still ruled by that antiquated faith

and the remaining world.

Up to the very end -- that is, to the formation of the Earth Federation -- the center of the most

fanatic devotion to Kap-Eh-Taahl was Ammer-Ka, a land governed by a series of dynasties of

Prez-tendz. These were not high priests of Kap-Eh-Taahl in the strict sense of the word. It was during

the Nineteenth Dynasty that the Prez-tendz (or Prexy-dents, in the nomenclature of the Thyrric School)

built in the Pentagon. What was it, that first of many granite leviathans, that stern edifice which ushered in

the twilight of the Neogene? Prehistorians of the Aquillian School considered the Pentagon's tombs for

Prez-tendz, analogous to the Egyptian pyramids. This hypothesis was discarded in the light of subsequent

discoveries, as was the theory that these were shrines to Kap-Eh-Taahl, where crusades were planned

against the Heathen Dog, or strategies devised to ensure his successful conversion.

Lacking the firsthand information needed to solve this puzzle, undoubtedly the key to an

understanding of the whole final phase (the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Dynasties), our historians

turned to the Temporal Institute for help. The Institute's full cooperation made possible the application of

the latest technological developments in chronotraction to the task of penetrating the riddle of the

Pentagons. We sent 290 probes into the far past, tapping 17 trillion erg-seconds from the time wells that

orbit the Moon.

According to the theory of chronotraction, movement back in time is practicable only at a

considerable distance from objects of great mass, since their proximity consumes staggering amounts of

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energy. Consequently, sightings of the past had to be taken from probes placed high in the stratosphere.

Their sudden appearance and disappearance in the sky must have mystified the people of the Neogene.

Prodoctor Two Sturlprans maintains that the projection of a retrochronal probe would show up in the

past as a bulging disc, not unlike two horizontal saucers floating rim-to-rim through space.

Chronotraction yielded an abundance of data, including authentic photoshots of the First

Pentagon soon after its construction. This building, indeed a pentagon, each side measuring 460 feens,

was a veritable labyrinth of steel and concrete. Histognostor Ser Een estimates the corridors ran about

seventeen or eighteen of their mylz. The entrances were guarded day and night by over two hundred

priests of lower rank. Further time delving, prompted by the chronicles excavated in the ruins of

Waa-Sheetn, led to the discovery of the Second Pentagon, a much less imposing structure than the First,

as most of it lay beneath the ground. Certain passages from the chronicles pointed to the existence of yet

another, a Third Pentagon. This was to have been a closed, completely independent unit, a state within a

state, by virtue of sophisticated camouflaging and enormous reserves of food, water and compressed air.

However, after systematic chronoaxial soundings were taken over the entire length and breadth of

twentieth-century Ammer-Ka and revealed not a trace of any such structure, most historians accepted

the thesis that the Waa-Sheetn chronicles spoke of the Third Pentagon in a figurative sense only, that the

building was raised purely in the minds and hearts of the faithful, and that the propagation of the legend

was designed to uplift the flagging spirits of those few remaining followers of Kap-Eh-Taahl.

So stood the official version of our historiography when the young Prognostor Wid-Wiss began

his archeological career.

Wid-Wiss reexamined all the available materials and published a treatise in which he maintained

that, as the power of the Prez-tendz began to wane and their dominions diminish, they resolved to build a

new seat of government, one far from all populated areas, somewhere in the mountainous regions of

Ammer-Ka and hidden deep beneath the rocks, that this last refuge of Kap-Eh-Taahl might be

inaccessible to the uninitiated. Wid-Wiss held that the postulated Pentagon of the Last Dynasty was a

kind of collective military brain whose task was twofold: first, to watch over and preserve the purity of

the faith, and secondly to convert those peoples of the world who had abandoned the true path.

But Wid-Wiss's treatise was pooh-poohed by the experts; it clearly ran counter to most of the

known facts. Critics like Supergnostors Yoo Na Vaak, Quirlsto and Pisuovo of the Martian School of

Comparative Paleography pointed out the many contradictions in Wid-Wiss's chronology.

For example, the Last Pentagon had been built, according to Wid-Wiss, only a few decades

before the papyr catastrophe. But if this Third Pentagon had really existed, argued the critics, the

Prez-tendz within would have surely taken advantage of the postpapyr anarchy and attempted to conquer

the world in the very first days of the Chaotic. And even had such an attempt to overthrow the

Federation been thwarted, some trace of it would have survived in the oral tradition. Yet our

historiography notes nothing of the kind.

Wid-Wiss defended his hypothesis, claiming that when the populace of Ammer-Ka went over to

the side of the "heretics" and joined the Federation, the priests of the Last Pentagon ordered it to be

completely sealed off from the outside world. So the underground Moloch isolated itself from the rest of

humanity and endured to the Chaotic without the least knowledge of what was taking place on the

surface of the earth.

This absolute, hermetic isolation of a community of priests and warriors of Kap-Eh-Taahl did

seem, Wid-Wiss admitted, a bit unlikely. So he went on to speculate that the Last Pentagon may have

possessed scanning devices on the outside. He did not think, however, that the collective military brain of

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the Last Dynasty was capable of any offensive or even diversive action. It certainly could not have

attacked or engineered a coup against the Federation, for once the colossus had buried itself in rock and

severed all ties with the future course of history, it was imprisoned not only by impenetrable walls but by

the very nature of its internal organization. From that time on it thrived exclusively on the myth, the legend

of the glory that was Kap-Eh-Taahl, and investigated, rooted out and waged bitter war against heresy --

the heresy within.

Our Histognostors answered these arguments with a stony silence. But Wid-Wiss did not give in.

For twenty-seven years, with only a handful of loyal colleagues to help him, he combed the Rocket

Mountains from end to end. Just when almost everyone had forgotten him, his stubbornness was

dramatically vindicated. On 28 Mey 3146, the head archeological team, having cleared away several

hundred tons of rubble at the foot of Haar-Vurd Peak, stood before a convex shield, cleverly

camouflaged, excellently preserved: this was the entrance to the Last Pentagon.

Exploration of the underground building, however, proved extremely difficult and demanded

extraordinary methods. In the seventy-second year of its retreat from the world, the Pentagon of the Last

Dynasty succumbed to a natural disaster. A slight shift in the mountain's granite core produced a fissure

that traveled down through several strata until it came into contact with magma. The building's concrete

protective shell could not withstand the volcanic pressure; molten lava entered and filled the interior from

top to bottom. And so that strange anthill of the last of the Prez-tendz became a giant fossil and, as such,

waited one thousand six hundred and eighty years to be discovered.

It is not our task to describe here the tremendous archeological wealth of the Third Pentagon

diggings. We refer the interested reader to the many volumes devoted specially to that subject. Only a

few remarks remain to be added to this introduction to the "Notes."

The "Notes" were discovered in the third year of excavation, on the fourth level, within an

intricate corridor system where there were several sanitation facilities. In one of these facilities, filled as

the rest with igneous rock, were two human skeletons and, beneath them, a scroll of papyr -- the

"Notes."

The reader will see for himself that the daring suppositions of Histognostor Wid-Wiss were for

the most part quite accurate. The "Notes" portray the fate of a community locked beneath the earth, a

community that refused to allow the infiltration of any news of real events, pretending it constituted the

Brain, the Headquarters of an empire that extended even to the most remote galaxies. In time the

pretense became belief, the belief a certainty. The reader will witness how the fanatical servants of

Kap-Eh-Taahl created the myth of the Antibuilding, how they spent their lives in mutual surveillance, in

tests of loyalty and devotion to the Mission, even when the last figment of that Mission's reality had

become an impossibility and nothing remained but to sink ever deeper into the pit of collective madness.

Our historiography has not yet passed final judgment on the "Notes," commonly called, for the

location of their discovery, "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub." Then too, no agreement has been reached as

to when and in what order certain parts of the manuscript were written. The Hyberiad Gnostors, for

example, consider the first twelve pages apocryphal, an addition of later years. But the reader will hardly

be interested in such technical matters. Let us then be silent and allow this last message from the

Neogene, the Era of Papyrocracy, to speak to us in its own voice.

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. . . I couldn't seem to find the right room -- none of them had the number designated on my

pass. First I wound up at the Department of Verification, then the Department of Misinformation, then

some clerk from the Pressure Section advised me to try level eight, but on level eight they ignored me,

and later I got stuck in a crowd of military personnel -- the corridors rang with their vigorous marching

back and forth, the slamming of doors, the clicking of heels, and over that martial noise I could hear the

distant music of bells, the tinkling of medals. Now and then janitors would go by with steaming

percolators, now and then I would stumble into rest rooms where secretaries hastily renewed their

make-up, now and then agents disguised as elevator men would strike up conversations -- one of them

had an artificial leg and he took me from floor to floor so many times that after a while he began waving

to me from a distance and even stopped photographing me with the camera-carnation in his lapel. By

noon we were buddies, and he showed me his pride and joy, a tape recorder under the elevator floor.

But I was getting more and more depressed and couldn't share his enthusiasm.

Stubborn, I went from room to room and pestered people with questions, though the answers

were invariably wrong. I was still on the outside, still excluded from that ceaseless flow of secrecy that

kept the Building strong. But I had to get in somewhere, find an entry at some point, no matter what.

Twice I ended up in a storage cellar and leafed through some secret documents lying about. But there

was nothing there of any value to me. After several hours of this, thoroughly annoyed and hungry as well

(it was past lunchtime and there wasn't even a cafeteria to be found), I decided to take a different tack.

I recalled that the highest concentration of tall, gray officers was on the fourth level, so I headed

there, opened a door bearing the signBY APPOINTMENT ONLYand entered an empty reception

room, from there went through a side door markedKNOCK BEFORE ENTERINGand into a

conference room full of moldering mobilization plans. Here I ran into a problem -- there were two doors.

One saidNO ADMITTANCE,the otherCLOSED.After some deliberation I decided on the second door

-- the correct choice as it turned out, since this was the office of General Kashenblade himself, the

Commander in Chief. I walked in, and the officer who was on duty at the time led me to the Chief

without asking any questions.

A powerful, bald old man, Kashenblade stirred his coffee. His head was perched upon the collar

of his uniform; the bristling, many-folded jowls covered the galactic insignia and stripes like a bib. The

desk was cluttered with phones and surrounded by computer consoles, speakers, buttons, and in the

center was a row of labeled glass jars -- specimens, apparently, though I couldn't see a thing in them

apart from the alcohol. Kashenblade, the veins bulging on his shiny pate, was busy pushing buttons to

silence the phones as soon as they began to ring. When several rang together, he rammed his fist into the

whole bank of buttons. Then he noticed me. In the silence that followed there was only the grim tapping

of his teaspoon.

"So there you are!" he snapped. It was a powerful voice.

"Yes," I answered.

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"Wait, don't tell me, I have a good memory," he growled, watching me from under those bushy

eyebrows. "X-27 contrastellar to Cygnus Eps, right?"

"No," I said.

"No? No! Well then, Morbilantrix B-KuK 81 dash Operation Nail? B as in Bipropodal?"

"No," I said, trying to maneuver my pass before his eyes. He waved it aside impatiently.

"No?" He looked hurt. Then he looked pensive. He stirred his coffee. The phone rang-his hand

came down on the button like a lion's paw.

"Plastic?" he shot at me.

"Plastic?" I said. "Well, hardly. . . I'm just an ordinary --"

Kashenblade stilled the rising din of phones with one quick slap and looked me over once more.

"Operation Cyclogastrosaur. . . Ento-mo. . . pentacla," he kept trying, unwilling to admit to any

gap in his infallibility. When I failed to respond, he suddenly leaned forward and roared:

"Out!!"

And it really looked as if he himself were ready to throw me out bodily. But I was too

determined -- also too much a civilian -- to obey that order. I held my ground and kept the pass under

his nose. At last Kashenblade reluctantly took it and -- without even examining it -- tossed it into a

drawer of some machine, which immediately began to hum and whisper. Kashenblade listened to the

machine; his face clouded over and his eyes glittered. He gave me a furtive glance and started pressing

buttons. The phones rang out together like a brass band. He silenced them and pressed other buttons:

now the speakers drowned one another out with numbers and cryptonyms. He stood there and listened

with a scowl, his eyelid twitching. But I could see the storm had passed.

"All right, hand over your scrap of paper!" he barked.

"I already did. . ."

"To whom?"

"To you."

"To me?"

"To you, sir."

"When? Where?"

"Just a moment ago, and you threw --" I began, then bit my tongue.

Kashenblade glared at me and opened the drawer of that machine: it was empty, my pass had

disappeared. Not that I believed for a moment that this was an accident; in fact, I had suspected for

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MemoirsFoundinaBathtubbyStanislawLemTranslatedbyMichaelKandelandChristineRosea.b.e-bookv3.0/NotesatEOF BackCover: "Amajorfigurewhojusthappenstobeasciencefictionwriter...verylikely,heisalsothebestsellingSFwriterintheworld."--FantasyandScienceFiction Withoversixmillionofhisbooksinprintworl...

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Stanislaw Lem - Memoirs Found in a Bathtub.pdf

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Stanislaw Lem - Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

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