Stanislaw Lem - Ijon Tichy 05 - Peace on Earth

VIP免费

2024-12-20 0 0 321.03KB 94 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

Peace on Earth

The fifth Ijon Tichy book

by Stanislaw Lem

Translated from the Polish Pokój na Ziemi by Elinor Ford with Michael Kandel

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

Back Cover:

Are the self-programming robots on the moon ensuring "peace on Earth," or are they secretly

plotting a terrestrial invasion of their own? Only Ijon Tichy, sent on a dangerous mission to report on the

robots' activities, knows for sure. But, as luck would have it, he is caught by a highly focused ray, which

severs his corpus collosum and leaves the left side of his brain at odds with the right.

Has he returned to Earth with the secret that could save all humanity? His left brain can't

remember, and his right brain can't tell. Agents from the East and the West race to get to Tichy's

forgotten but priceless information first; Tichy, whose left hand keeps punching him and pinching ladies'

bottoms, struggles for control of the lost memory and of his own two warring sides.

"[A] funny satirical novel about over-saving the world." -- Locus

"Has more ideas in fewer pages than anybody else could manage. Both halves of my brain were thrilled."

-- San Jose Mercury News

Stanislaw Lem, called by a reviewer "one of the jewels of twentieth-century literature," is

internationally renowned for his science fiction, satire, philosophy, and literary criticism. He was born in

Lvov, Poland, and lives in Krakow.

Harcourt Brace & Company

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval

system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be

mailed to: Permissions Department, Harcourt Brace & Company,

6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lem, Stanislaw.

[Pokój na Ziemi. English]

Peace on Earth/Stanislaw Lem; translated from the Polish by

Elinor Ford with Michael Kandel. -- 1st U.S. ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-15-171554-8

ISBN 0-15-600242-6 (pbk.)

Translation of: Pokój na ziemi.

"A Helen and Kurt Wolff book."

I. Title.

PG7158.L39P5713 1992

891.8'537-dc20 91-47970

Printed in the United States of America

First Harvest edition

J I H G F E D C B

Contents

Doubled

Briefing

In Hiding

The Lunar Agency

The Mission

Round Two

Carnage

Invisible

Visits

Contact

Da Capo

Doubled

I don't know what to do. If I could say "I'm miserable," it wouldn't be so bad. I can't say "We're

miserable" either because I can only partly speak for myself even though I'm still Ijon Tichy. I used to talk

to myself while I shaved but I had to stop because of my left eye's lewd winking. Coming back in the

LEM, I didn't realize what happened to me just before lift-off. The LEM, by the way, doesn't have

anything to do with the American NASA module manned by Armstrong and Aldrin to collect a couple of

moon rocks. It was given the same name to disguise my secret mission. Damn that mission. When I

returned from the Calf constellation, I intended to stay put for at least a year. But I agreed to go for the

sake of mankind. I knew I might not come back. Doctor Lopez said my chance of survival was one in

twenty point eight. That didn't stop me: I'm a gambler. You only die once. Either I come back or I don't,

I said to myself. It never occurred to me that I might come back but not come back because we would

come back. To explain I'll have to release some highly classified information but I don't care. That is,

partly. I'm writing this too only partly and with great difficulty, typing with the right hand. The left I had to

tie to the arm of the chair because it kept tearing the paper out of the machine. It wouldn't listen to

reason, and while I was immobilizing it, it punched me in the eye. It's because of the doubling. Our brains

all have two hemispheres connected by the corpus callosum or great commissure. Two hundred million

white nerve fibers connect the brain so it can put its thoughts together but not in my case. It happened on

that range where the moon robots tested their new weapons. I stumbled in there by mistake. I'd

accomplished my mission, had outsmarted those unliving creatures, and was on my way back to the

LEM when I had to urinate. There are no urinals on the moon. They wouldn't work anyway in a vacuum.

You have a little container in your suit, just like Armstrong and Aldrin, so you can relieve yourself

anytime, anywhere, but somehow I couldn't, not there in the full sun in the middle of the Sea of Serenity.

Not far from me was a solitary boulder. I went over to its shadow. How was I to know there was an

ultrasound-inducing field there? While I'm urinating, I feel this little snap. Like a crack in the neck, only

higher, in the middle of the skull. It was a remote callotomy. It didn't hurt. I felt funny but the feeling

passed and I continued on my way. The strangeness I attributed to an understandable excitement,

considering all I had been through. The right hand is controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain. That's

why I said I was writing only partly. My right hemisphere obviously doesn't approve of what I'm writing.

And I can't say "I'm writing" -- it's my left hemisphere that's writing. I'll have to reach some compromise

with the opposition because I can't sit forever with my hand tied. I've tried to appease it but nothing

works. It's arrogant, aggressive, vulgar. Fortunately it can read only certain parts of speech, nouns

mainly. I know this because I've been reading up on the subject. It doesn't understand verbs or

adjectives, so while it's watching I have to express myself carefully. Will this work? I don't know. And

why is it that all the civilized behavior is in the left hemisphere?

On the moon too I was supposed to land only partly, but in an entirely different sense, because it

was before the accident, before I was doubled. I was supposed to circle the moon in stationary orbit, the

reconnaissance to be accomplished by my remote, which even looked like me except it was plastic with

antennas. I sit in LEM 1 and LEM 2 lands with the remote. Those war robots hate people. They will kill

at the drop of a hat. At least that's what I was told. But LEM 2 malfunctioned and I decided to land to

see what was going on because I was still in contact with it. Sitting in LEM 1, I suddenly had severe

stomach pains, not in the flesh, that is, but by radio because, as I learned after landing, they broke LEM

2's hatch cover, grabbed the remote, and pulled out its insides. I couldn't disconnect because if I did, my

stomach might stop hurting but I'd lose all contact with my remote and wouldn't be able to locate it. The

Sea of Serenity, where the attack took place, is like the Sahara. Also, I got the wires mixed because

even though each wire is a different color there are too many of them and I couldn't find the emergency

instructions. Trying to find them with a stomachache made me so mad that instead of calling Earth I

decided to land, even though I'd been warned I shouldn't do that under any circumstances. But retreat

just isn't in my nature. Besides, the remote may have been only a machine stuffed with circuitry but I

couldn't leave it in the clutches of those robots.

I see that the more I explain, the less clear it gets. I should probably begin at the beginning.

Except I don't know what the beginning was because most of it is remembered in the right hemisphere,

which I can't get to now. There's a lot I don't remember, and in order to obtain even a little of that

information I have to speak to my left hand with my right in sign language but it doesn't always answer.

The left hand gives me the finger for example, and that's one of its more polite indications of a difference

of opinion.

I'd like to give it a good smack but the problem is, while the right hand is stronger than the left,

the legs are equal, and what's worse, I have a corn on the little toe of my right foot and the left foot

knows about it. When that trouble started on the bus and I shoved my left hand forcibly into my pocket,

its foot took revenge by stomping on the corn so hard, I saw stars. I don't know if it's a loss of

intelligence caused by the doubling but I can see I'm writing nonsense. The foot of my left hand is, of

course, my left foot. There are times my unfortunate body falls into two enemy camps.

I interrupted my writing to kick myself. That is, my left foot kicked my right so it wasn't I, or it

was only partly I, but grammar simply can't describe this situation. I started taking off my shoes but

stopped. A person, even in such straits, shouldn't make a fool of himself. Was I supposed to twist my

own arm to learn what the problem was with the wires and the emergency instructions? True, I had

beaten myself in the past but the circumstances were different. Once in that time loop, when the today me

was against the yesterday me, and once to counteract the poison of the benignimizers in that hotel in

Costa Rica. I had beaten myself black and blue, but remained myself, indivisible. It wasn't so unusual.

Didn't people in the Middle Ages flog themselves? But no one now can put himself in my shoes. It's

impossible. I can't even say that there are two of me because there aren't. Or there are but only partly. If

you want to know what happened to me, you'll have to read this whole story, word by word, even when

it doesn't make sense. The sense will come, though probably not completely because you can get to the

bottom of it only by callotomy, just as you can't know what it's like to be an otter, say, or a turtle without

being turned into an otter or a turtle, and then you can't communicate it because animals don't talk or

write. Normal people, of which I was one most of my life, don't understand how a split-brain person can

be himself and look like himself and speak about himself in the first person singular and walk normally

and talk coherently while his right hemisphere doesn't know what his left hemisphere is doing (except for

mushroom barley soup in my case). Some say that callotomy must have existed in Biblical times because

it is written that the left hand needn't know what the right hand is doing, but I always thought that was a

figure of speech.

One character followed me for two months trying to wring the truth out of me. He would visit me

at the most uncivil hours to ask me how many of me there really were. The medical textbooks I gave him

didn't help him any more than they had helped me. I loaned him the books only to get rid of him. How

did I meet him? I had gone to buy shoes without laces, the kind with Velcro on the top, because if my left

side didn't want to go for a walk, it was impossible to tie my shoes. As soon as I'd tie a shoe, my left

hand would untie it. So I went to buy a pair of running shoes with Velcro fasteners, not that I'm one of

those jogging types, I just wanted to teach the right hemisphere of my brain a lesson because at that time

I couldn't communicate with it at all and I was furious and covered with bruises. I muttered something to

the salesman to excuse my erratic behavior which wasn't actually mine. Then, as he knelt before me with

the shoehorn, I grabbed his nose with my left hand. My left hand, that is, grabbed his nose, and I tried to

explain this to him, the difference, figuring that even if he thought I was deranged (how could a shoe

salesman know anything about callotomy?) he would still sell me the shoes. No reason for a madman to

go barefoot. Unfortunately the salesman was a philosophy student working part-time in the shoe store

and he was fascinated.

"Mr. Tichy!" he now yelled in my apartment. "According to logic, you're either singular or you're

plural! If your right hand is pulling up your pants and the left hand interferes, it means that behind each

stands a separate half of the brain that thinks its own thoughts and refuses to cooperate with the other.

Because hands and feet don't go around fighting each other on their own!"

That's when I gave him the Gazzanigi. The best research done on the split brain and the results of

that operation are in Professor Gazzanigi's book, The Bisected Brain, published in 1970 by Appleton

Century Crofts, Educational Division, at the Meredith Corporation, and may my brain never grow

together again if I'm inventing Michael Gazzanigi or his father to whom he dedicated his monograph and

whose name is Dante Achilles Gazzanigi, also a doctor (M.D.). If you don't believe me, go to the nearest

medical bookstore and ask for a copy.

The man who hounded me asking over and over what it's like living as two learned nothing from

me. All he accomplished was to drive both my hemispheres to unanimous fury because I grabbed him

with both hands by the neck and threw him out the door. This brief armistice of my dissociated being

sometimes occurs, but I don't know why.

The young philosopher then telephoned me in the middle of the night, hoping that half-asleep I

would spill my incredible secret. He asked me, ignoring the colorful language I was hurling at him, to

place the receiver first to the left ear then to the right. He said it wasn't his questions that were idiotic but

the state I was in, which defied all anthropological and existential concepts of man as a rational being

conscious of his own rationality. He'd probably just finished his finals, that philosophy student, because he

threw Hegel at me and Descartes (I think therefore I am, not we think therefore we are), and Husserl and

Heidegger, to prove that my condition was impossible because it contradicted the greatest minds who for

thousands of years, beginning with the Greeks, studied the conscious ego, and here comes someone with

a severed commissure of the brain, as fit as a fiddle except his right hand doesn't know what his left hand

is doing, likewise with the legs, and while some experts say that he has consciousness on the left side only

and that the right is a soulless computer, others believe he has two consciousnesses but the right one can't

speak because the Broca's area is in the left frontal lobe, but a third group proposes two partially

separated egos. "You can't jump off a train in pieces," he yelled at me, "or die in pieces, and you can't

think in pieces either!" I stopped throwing him out because I felt sorry for him. In his desperation he tried

to bribe me. Eight hundred and forty dollars, he swore that was all he had, what he'd saved for a vacation

with his girl, but he was prepared to part with it and with her as well if I told him who was thinking with

my right hemisphere when I didn't know what it was thinking. I sent him to Professor Eccles, an advocate

of left brain consciousness who believes the right side doesn't think at all, but the student didn't buy that,

knowing that I had painstakingly taught sign language to my right hemisphere. He wanted me to go to

Eccles and tell him he was wrong. The student now read medical papers instead of going to his classes in

the evening. Learning that the nerve pathways are crossed, he searched through the fattest textbooks to

find out why in the hell that crossing happened so that the right brain controls the left half of the body and

vice versa, but of course there was no answer to that question. The crossing either benefits us as human

beings, he reasoned, or it doesn't. He read books by psychiatrists and found one who said that

consciousness is in the left hemisphere and the subconscious in the right, but I was able to get that notion

out of his head. I had read more than he, naturally. Tired of struggling with myself and now with this

student burning with the thirst for knowledge, I left, I fled to New York -- and jumped from the frying

pan into the fire.

I rented a studio apartment near Manhattan and took the subway or bus to the public library to

read Yozatitz, Werner, Tucker, Woods, Shapiro, Riklana, Schwartz, Szwarc, and Shvarts, and

Sai-Mai-Halassza, Rossi, Lishman, Kenyon, Harvey, Fischer, Cohen, Brumbach, and about thirty

different Rappaports. Almost every trip caused a scene, because I pinched the prettier women,

particularly blondes. It was my left hand of course that did the pinching but try to explain that in a few

words. Now and then I was slapped in the face, but the worst part was that most of the women accosted

didn't seem to mind at all. On the contrary they considered it an overture, a pass, which was the last thing

on my mind.

I could see I was getting nowhere trying to extricate myself single-handed from this nightmare, so

I finally contacted a group of leading authorities in the field. These scientists were only too happy to study

me. I was examined, x-rayed, scanned, subjected to positron emission tomography and magnetic

resonance imaging, covered by four hundred electrodes, strapped to a special chair, and asked to look

through a slit at pictures of apples, dogs, forks, combs, old people, tables, mice, mushrooms, cigars,

glasses, nude women, and babies, after which they told me what I already knew: that when they showed

me a billiard ball so that only my left hemisphere could see it and at the same time put my right hand into a

bag with many objects, I wasn't able to choose the ball, and vice versa. They said I was an uninteresting

case, but I said nothing about the sign language. I wanted, after all, to learn something about myself from

them; I didn't care about adding to their knowledge.

I turned then to Professor S. Turteltaub, a loner, but instead of shedding light on my condition all

he did was tell me what a pack of wolves, thieves, and parasites all the others were. Thinking his

contempt for them was on scientific grounds, I listened with interest, but Turteltaub, it turned out, was

angry only because they had rejected his project. The last time I saw Drs. Globus and Savodnisky, or

whatever their names were -- there were so many of them -- they were offended when I told them I was

seeing Dr. Turteltaub. They informed me that he had been expelled from their research group on ethical

grounds. Turteltaub wanted to offer murderers sentenced to death or life imprisonment the chance to

submit to callotomy instead. He argued that since callotomization was performed only on severe

epileptics, it was not known whether the effect of cutting the commissure would be the same in normal

people. And a normal man sentenced to the electric chair for murdering his mother-in-law, for example,

would certainly prefer to have his corpus callosum cut. But Supreme Court Judge Klössenfanger spoke

against this, because if Turteltaub murdered his mother-in-law in cold blood, that could be the decision of

his left hemisphere alone, the right hemisphere knowing nothing about it, or knowing and protesting but

being overruled, and if the murder occurred anyway after such an inner conflict, it would be difficult

indeed to condemn one hemisphere while exonerating the other. In effect fifty-percent of the murderer

would be sentenced to death.

Unable to obtain what he wanted, Turteltaub had to operate on monkeys, which were much

more expensive than convicts, and as his grants were reduced, he feared he would end up with rats and

guinea pigs, which wasn't the same at all. Added to that, the Animal Protection League people and other

antivivisectionists broke his windows regularly. They even burned his car. The insurance company

wouldn't pay, saying he had torched his own car in order to take the animal protectionists to court,

besides the car was too old to be worth anything. Turteltaub was so boring that to shut him up I told him

about the sign language my left hand had taught my right. A mistake. He called Globus immediately, or

maybe it was Maxwell, to announce the presentation of a paper at the next neurologists' conference, a

discovery that would crush everyone. Seeing what was coming, I left Turteltaub's without saying goodbye

and went straight home. They were waiting for me in the lobby, their faces flushed and eyes burning with

the unholy fire of science. I told them I would of course be glad to accompany them to the clinic, I just

had to go up to my room to change first. While they waited for me in the lobby I climbed down the fire

escape from the eleventh floor and grabbed a taxi to the airport. Since it didn't matter to me where I went

as long as it was far from those researchers, I took the first plane out, to San Diego, and at a seedy little

hotel there full of shady characters, before even unpacking my bag, I telephoned Professor Tarantoga for

help. Tarantoga, thank God, was home. You learn who your real friends are when the chips are down.

He flew in to San Diego that night, and when I told him everything as succinctly and precisely as I could

the good soul agreed to take me under his wing. Following his advice, I changed my hotel and started

growing a beard, meanwhile he looked for a doctor who valued the Hippocratic oath more than the fame

achieved by a rare case. We quarreled on the third day because he brought me some good news and I

thanked him only partly. He didn't appreciate the sardonic winking from my left side. I explained of

course that it wasn't I but the right hemisphere of my brain which I couldn't control. But this didn't mollify

him; he said that even if there were two of me in one body, the sneering faces that half of me was making

clearly showed that I must have harbored some animosity toward him in the past, which manifested itself

now as black ingratitude, while he was of the opinion that one was either a friend or one wasn't. A

fifty-percent friendship he had no use for. I finally managed to calm him down, and after he left I bought

an eye patch.

The specialist he found for me was in Australia, so we flew to Melbourne. Joshua McIntyre, a

professor of neurophysiology -- his father and Tarantoga's father had been best friends -- inspired

confidence immediately. He was tall, with a gray crew cut, calm, sober, and, as Tarantoga assured me,

decent. He would not use me or notify the Americans, who were frantic to find me. After the

examination, which lasted three hours, he put a decanter of whiskey on the desk and poured a glass for

me and for himself. When the atmosphere warmed up, he crossed his legs, thought for a moment, cleared

his throat, and said:

"Mr. Tichy, I will address you in the singular, which is more comfortable. There is no question

that your corpus callosum has been severed from anterior to posterior commissure, though the skull

shows no sign of trephination. . ."

"But I've told you, professor," I interrupted him, "the skull wasn't touched, it was a new weapon,

a weapon of the future, designed not to kill but only to give the opposing army a total and remote

cerebellotomy. Every soldier, his brain severed, would fall like a puppet whose strings are cut. That's

what I was told at the center whose name I cannot divulge. By accident I was standing sideways, or

sagittally, as you doctors say, with respect to the ultrasound-inducing field. But this is only conjecture.

Those robots work in secret, and the effects of the ultrasound aren't clear. . ."

"Be that as it may," said the professor, looking at me with kindly, wise eyes from behind his

gold-framed glasses. "Nonmedical circumstances need not concern us right now. As for the number of

minds in a callotomized individual, there are eighteen different theories, each supported by experimental

evidence, therefore none of them wholly wrong and none of them wholly true. You are not one, nor are

you two, nor can we speak of split personalities."

"Then how many am I?" I asked, surprised.

"The question is poorly phrased. Imagine twins, who from birth do nothing but saw wood with a

two-handled saw. They work well together, otherwise they would be unable to saw. Take the saw from

them, and they become like you in your present state."

"But each twin, whether he saws or not, has one and only one consciousness," I said,

disappointed. "Professor, your colleagues in America gave me plenty of such metaphors. Including the

one about the twins and the saw."

"Of course," said McIntyre, winking at me with his left eye, and I wondered whether he too had

something severed. "My American colleagues are as green as a field of corn and their metaphors are a

dime a dozen. I mention the twins one on purpose; it comes from an American and is misleading. If we

were to show the brain graphically, yours would resemble a large letter Y, because you still have a

homogeneous brain stem and midbrain. It's the downstroke of the upsilon, while the arms of the letter are

the divided hemispheres. Do you understand? Intuitively one can see --" the professor broke off with a

groan because I kicked him in the kneecap.

"Sorry, it wasn't me, it was my left leg," I said quickly. "I didn't mean to. . ."

McIntyre gave an understanding smile, but there was something forced about it, like the grimace

of a psychiatrist who pretends that the madman biting him is a fine fellow. He pulled his chair back a little.

"The right hemisphere does tend to be more aggressive than the left," he said, rubbing his knee.

"Would you mind keeping your legs crossed, and arms too? It will make our conversation easier. . ."

"I've tried, but they go limp. Anyway that upsilon business, excuse me, doesn't explain anything.

Where is the consciousness -- under the division, on it, over it, where?"

"That cannot be precisely determined," said the professor, still massaging his knee. "The brain,

Mr. Tichy, is made up of a great number of functional subsystems, which in a normal person connect in

various ways to perform various tasks. In your case the highest systems have been permanently

disconnected and thus cannot communicate with each other."

"And about subsystems too I've heard a hundred times. I don't want to be impolite, professor, or

at least my left hemisphere, the one talking to you now, doesn't, but I'm still in the dark. I walk normally, I

eat, read, sleep, the only problem is I have to keep an eye on my left hand and leg because without

warning they'll misbehave. What I want to know is who is misbehaving. If it's my brain, why am I

unaware of it?"

"Because the hemisphere that's doing it is mute, Mr. Tichy. The center of speech resides in the

left --" On the floor between us lay wires from the different instruments McIntyre had used to examine

me. I had noticed my left foot playing with these wires. It looped one, thick and shiny black, around its

ankle, but I didn't think much about this until suddenly the foot jerked sharply backward and the wire

turned out to be wound around the legs of the chair upon which the professor was sitting. The chair

reared and the professor crashed to the linoleum. But he was an experienced doctor and disciplined

scientist because he picked himself up from the floor and said in an even voice:

"It's nothing. Please don't be concerned. The right hemisphere is the one with spatial ability, so it's

adept at this type of function. I would ask you again, Mr. Tichy, to sit well away from the desk, the

wires, everything. It will facilitate our deliberation as to the therapy indicated."

"I only want to know where my consciousness is," I replied, freeing the wire from my foot, which

wasn't easy because the foot pressed hard on the floor. "Was it I who pulled your chair out from under

you, and if not I, then who?"

"Your lower left extremity, governed by the right hemisphere." The professor adjusted his glasses

on his nose, moved his chair farther away from me, and after a moment's hesitation stood behind the

chair instead of sitting down. Which of my hemispheres suspected that the next time he might

counterattack?

"We could go on like this until Judgment Day," I said, feeling my left side tense up. Uneasy, I

crossed my legs and my arms. McIntyre, watching me carefully, continued in a pleasant voice.

"The left hemisphere is dominant thanks to the speech center. Talking with you now, I'm speaking

to it; the right side can only listen in. Its capacity for language is extremely limited."

"Perhaps in others but not in me," I said, holding my left wrist with my right hand, to be safe. "It's

mute, yes, but I've taught it sign language, you see. Which wasn't easy."

"Impossible!"

The gleam in the professor's eyes, I had seen it before in his American colleagues, and

immediately regretted telling him the truth. But it was too late now.

"The right hemisphere can't conjugate verbs! That's been proved. . ."

"Doesn't matter. Verbs are unnecessary."

"All right, then. Ask it, please, I mean ask yourself, what it thinks of our conversation? Can you

do that?"

I put my right hand in the left one, patting it a few times to pacify it, because that was the best

way to begin, then made signs, touching the palm of my left hand. Its fingers began to move. I watched

them for a while, then, trying to hide my anger, put the left hand on my knee, though it resisted. Of course

it pinched me hard on the thigh. I didn't retaliate, not wanting to wrestle with myself in front of the

professor.

"Well, what did it say?" he asked, imprudently leaning forward from behind the chair.

"Nothing really."

"But I saw myself that it made signs. They weren't coherent?"

"Coherent, yes, very coherent, but nothing important."

"Tell me! In science everything is important."

"It said I'm an asshole."

The professor didn't even smile, he was so impressed.

"Really? Ask it about me now."

"If you wish."

Again I addressed my left hand, and pointed at the professor. This time I didn't have to pat it; it

replied immediately.

"Well?"

"You're an asshole too."

"Is that what it said?"

"Yes. It may not be able to handle verbs but it can make itself understood. I still don't know who

is speaking. Speaking with fingers or lips, it makes no difference. In my head, is there an I and an It as

well? And if an It, how is it I don't experience what it experiences even though it's in my head and part

of my brain? It's not external, after all. If my consciousness was doubled and everything confused, I

could understand that -- but this, no. Where did it come from, this It? Is it also Ijon Tichy? And if so,

why do I have to speak to it indirectly, by signs, professor? And why does it cause me so much trouble?"

No longer seeing any sense in reticence, I told him all about the scenes on the subway and the bus. He

was fascinated.

"Blondes only?"

"Mainly. They can be bleached blondes."

"Is this still going on?"

"Not on the bus."

"Elsewhere?"

"I don't know, I haven't tried. I mean, I haven't given it the opportunity. If you must know, I was

slapped several times. It embarrassed and angered me, being slapped, because I wasn't guilty, yet at the

same time I was pleased. But once a woman slapped me and the slap landed fully on the left cheek, and

when that happened I didn't feel the slightest pleasure. I thought this over and finally figured out the

reason.""But of course!" cried the professor. "When the left-hemisphere Tichy was slapped on the cheek

for the right-hemisphere Tichy, the right-hemisphere Tichy was pleased. But when the slap was wholly on

the left, it didn't like that at all."

"Exactly. So there is some sort of communication in my unfortunate head, but it appears to be

more emotional than rational. Emotions too are experience, though not conscious experience. But how

can experience be unconscious? No, that Eccles with his automatic reflexes was all wet. To see an

attractive girl in a crowd, and maneuver yourself close to her, and pinch her -- that's a whole

premeditated plan of attack, not a bunch of mindless reflexes. But whose plan? Who thinks it, who is

conscious of it, if it's not mine?"

"It can be explained," said the professor, excited. "The light of a candle is visible in the dark but

not in the sun. The right brain may have consciousness, but a consciousness as feeble as candlelight,

extinguished by the dominant consciousness of the left brain. It's entirely possible that --"

The professor ducked, avoiding a shoe in the head. My left foot had slipped it off, propped the

heel against a chair leg, then kicked it so hard that the shoe flew like a missile and crashed into the wall,

missing him by a hair.

"You may be right," I remarked, "but the right hemisphere is damned touchy."

"Perhaps it feels threatened by our conversation, not fully understanding it or misunderstanding it,"

said the professor. "Perhaps we should address it directly."

"You mean, the way I do it? That's possible. But what do you want to say to it?"

"That will depend on its response. Yours, Mr. Tichy, is a unique situation. There's never been a

person completely sound of mind, and not an ordinary mind at that, who underwent a callotomy."

"Let me make myself clear," I answered, stroking the back of my left hand to calm it because it

was starting to move, flexing the fingers, which worried me. "I am not interested in sacrificing myself for

science. If you or someone else enters into communication with It -- you know what I mean -- that could

turn out to be harmful to me, let alone damned unpleasant, if, say, it becomes more independent."

"That's quite impossible," declared the professor, a little too confidently, I thought. He took off

his glasses and wiped them with a piece of flannel. His eyes did not have that helpless expression of most

people who can't see without their glasses. He gave me a sharp look as if he didn't need them at all, then

immediately dropped his eyes.

"What happens is always quite impossible," I said, weighing my words. "The whole history of

mankind consists of impossibilities, and the history of science too. A certain young philosopher told me

that my condition is an impossibility, contradicting all established thought, which says that consciousness

is an indivisible thing. The so-called split personality is essentially a consciousness that alternates between

different states joined imperfectly by memory and a sense of identity. It's not a cake that can be cut into

pieces!""I see you've been reading the literature," observed the professor, putting on his glasses. He

added something I didn't hear. I was going to go on but stopped because my left hand was putting its

fingers into my right palm, making signs. That had never happened before. McIntyre saw me looking at

my hands and understood immediately.

"Is It speaking?" he whispered as if not wanting to be overheard.

"Yes."

The message surprised me, but I relayed it:

"It wants a piece of cake."

The joy on the professor's face made my blood run cold. Assuring the left hand that if it was

patient it would have cake, I said to the professor:

"From your scientific point of view it would be wonderful if It became more independent. I don't

hold that against you, I understand how fantastic it would be having two fully developed individuals in a

single body, so much to learn, so many experiments to run, and all that. But I'm not thrilled by the thought

of having a democracy established in my head. I want to be less plural, not more."

"You are giving me a vote of no confidence? Well, I can understand that." The professor smiled

sympathetically. "First let me assure you that all this information will remain confidential. My professional

oath of secrecy. Beyond that, I will suggest no therapy for you. You must do what you believe is best. I

hope you'll think it over carefully. Will you be in Melbourne long?"

"I don't know yet. In any case, I'll call you."

Tarantoga, sitting in the waiting room, jumped up when he saw me.

"Well? Professor. . . ? Ijon. . . ?"

"No decisions have been made," said McIntyre in an official tone. "Mr. Tichy has various things

to consider. I am at his service."

Being a man of my word, I asked the taxi driver to stop at a bakery on the way, and bought a

piece of cake and had to eat it immediately in the car because It insisted, even though I wasn't in the

mood for anything sweet. But I had decided, for the present at least, not to torment myself with questions

such as who wanted the cake, since no one but me could answer a question like that, and I couldn't.

Tarantoga and I had adjoining rooms, so I went to his and filled him in on what happened with

McIntyre. My hand interrupted me several times because it was dissatisfied. The cake had been flavored

with licorice, which I can't stand. I ate it anyway, thinking I was doing it for It, but apparently It and I --

or I and I -- have the same taste. Which is understandable, in that the hand can't eat by itself and It and I

do have a mouth, palate, and tongue in common. I had the feeling I was in a dream, part nightmare, part

comedy, and carrying not an infant exactly but a small, spoiled, precocious child. I remembered one

psychologist's theory that small children didn't have a continuous consciousness because the fibers of the

commissure were still undeveloped.

"A letter for you." With these words Tarantoga brought me out of my reverie. I was surprised: no

one knew where I was. The letter was postmarked Mexico City, airmail, no return address. In the

envelope was a square of paper with the typed words: "He's from the LA."

Nothing more. I turned the paper over. It was blank. Tarantoga took it, looked at it, and then at

me: "What does this mean? Do you understand it?"

"No. Yes. . . the LA is the Lunar Agency. They were the ones who sent me."

"To the moon?"

"Yes. On a reconnaissance mission. I was supposed to submit a report afterward."

"And did you?"

"Yes. I wrote what I remembered. And gave it to the barber."

"Barber?"

"That was the arrangement. Instead of going to them. But who is 'he'? It must be McIntyre. I

haven't seen anyone else here."

"Wait. I don't understand. What was in the report?"

"I can't tell that even to you. It's top-secret. But there wasn't much in it. I forgot a great deal."

"After your accident?"

"Yes. What are you doing, professor?"

Tarantoga turned the torn envelope over. Someone had printed in pencil, inside: "Burn this. Don't

let the right sink the left."

I didn't understand it, yet there was some sense in it. Suddenly I looked at Tarantoga with

widened eyes:

"I begin to see. Neither message, on the envelope or in the letter, has proper nouns. Did you

notice?""So?"

"It understands nouns best. Whoever sent this wants to tell me something and not It. . ."

As I was saying this, I pointed to my right temple with my right hand. Tarantoga got up, paced

the room, drummed his fingers on the table, and said:

"In other words, McIntyre is. . ."

"Don't say it."

I took a notepad from my pocket and wrote on a fresh page: "It understands what it hears better

than what it reads. We'll have to communicate, for a while, in this matter, by writing to each other. My

guess is that the things I didn't put into my report to the LA because I couldn't remember, It remembers,

and that someone knows or at least suspects this. I won't phone M. or go back to him, because he's

probably the 'he' in the letter. He wanted to ask It questions. Perhaps to interrogate It. Please write your

reply." Tarantoga read my note and frowned. Saying nothing, he bent over the table and wrote: "But if

he is from the LA, why this deviousness? The LA can contact you directly, no?"

I wrote back: "Among those to whom I turned in NY there must have been someone from the

LA. Through him they learned that I found a way to talk to It. But I left before they could try that

themselves. If the anonymous letter is telling the truth, the son of the man who was your father's friend

was supposed to take over. To find out, without arousing my suspicions, what It remembers. Whereas, if

they turned to me directly, officially, I could refuse to submit to such an interrogation, and they would be

up a tree because legally It is not a separate person and they would need my consent to talk to It. Please

use participles, pronouns, verbs, and avoid simple syntax."

The professor tore out the page I had written on, put it in his pocket, and wrote: "But why is it

that you don't want It to know what is now happening?"

"To be safe. Because of what was written inside that envelope. It can't be from the LA because

the LA obviously wouldn't warn me about itself. Someone else wrote it."

Tarantoga's reply this time was brief:

"Who?"

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

PeaceonEarthThefifthIjonTichybookbyStanislawLemTranslatedfromthePolishPokójnaZiemibyElinorFordwithMichaelKandela.b.e-bookv3.0/NotesatEOFBackCover:Aretheself-programmingrobotsonthemoonensuring"peaceonEarth,"oraretheysecretlyplottingaterrestrialinvasionoftheirown?OnlyIjonTichy,sentonadangerousmissiont...

展开>> 收起<<

Stanislaw Lem - Ijon Tichy 05 - Peace on Earth.pdf

共94页,预览19页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Stanislaw Lem - Ijon Tichy 05 - Peace on Earth

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: