The Star Diaries

by Stanisław Lem

  But to what end did he do this? Oh, this had nothing in common with the action of that ancient monarch, who ordered the sea flogged because it had swallowed up his ships. No, in this Sisyphean toil carried out with such heroism I sense the presence of an idea that is more than simply unusual. Future generations will understand that Jeremiah hammered in the name of humanity. He wanted to drive matter to the limit, to torture it, exhaust it, pound from it its ultimate essence and thereby triumph over it. What was supposed to have followed then? The total anarchy of defeat, an end to all physical laws? Or perhaps the rise of new laws? We do not know. Someday those who follow in Jeremiah’s footsteps will find out.

  I would be only too glad to conclude his story on this note, but it must be added that, even afterwards, the scandalmongers spread the most incredible nonsense, saying that the deceased had been hiding in the cellar from his wife and creditors! That is how the world repays its gifted for their greatness!

  The next of whom the chronicles speak was Igor Sebastian Tichy, son of Jeremiah, an ascetic and cybermystician. With him terminates the earthly branch of our lineage, for thereafter all the descendants of Anonymus go off into the Galaxy. Igor Sebastian was by nature contemplative, and for that reason only—and not because of any mental retardation, which was wrongfully attributed to him—did he utter his first word at the age of eleven. Like all the great revolutionary minds, who with a critical eye perceive man in a new light, he did accordingly and arrived at the conclusion that the root of all evil lay in the animal vestiges within us, destructive of both individual and society. In his opposition of the darkness of the instinctual drives and the brightness of the human spirit there was nothing new as yet, but Igor Sebastian went a step farther than ever dared his predecessors. Man—he said to himself—must bring his spirit to where only the body, till now, has reigned! A remarkably talented control-system stereochemist, after many years of research he came up with a substance that transformed his dreams into reality. I am speaking, of course, of the well-known drug obnoxynol, a pentose derivative of dial­ly­lor­tho­pen­tyl­per­hy­dro­phe­nan­thre­ne. Obnoxynol, nontoxic, when taken in microscopic amounts, causes the act of procreation to become—the reverse of what it has been—highly unpleasant. With the aid of a pinch of white powder a man begins to look upon the world with an eye unclouded by desire, he discerns the proper priority of things, not blinded at every step by animal urges. He acquires a great deal of time and, delivered from the slavery of sex imposed by evolution, throws off the chains of erotic alienation and at last is free. The perpetuation of the species should be, after all, the result of a conscious decision, of a sense of responsibility towards humanity, and not the involuntary—since autonomic—outcome of the gratification of carnal appetites. At first Igor Sebastian planned to make the act of copulation neutral; he realized however that this was not enough, since people do too many things not for pleasure but simply out of boredom or else by force of habit. The act was to become, from then on, a sacrifice laid at the altar of the common good, a burden willingly assumed; those who produced offspring, by this demonstration of courage, were counted heroes, as is anyone who gives of himself for the sake of others. Like a true scientist, Igor Sebastian tested the effects of obnoxynol on himself first, and then, in order to prove that even after heavy doses of it one could still reproduce, with unremitting fortitude, with the greatest self-control he sired thirteen children. His wife, they say, ran away from home on several occasions—there is some truth to this, however the main reason for those domestic tiffs was, as in Jeremiah’s time, the neighbors, who set that woman—none too bright to begin with—against her husband. They accused Igor Sebastian of maltreating his wife, though he explained to them many times that he wasn’t tormenting her at all, it was merely the above-mentioned act, now a source of suffering, which had turned his house into a place of howls and groans. But those narrow minds only kept repeating, like parrots, that the father beat electrobrains, and the son—his wife. Yet this was but the prologue to the tragedy, for when, unable to find volunteers and spurred by the vision of purifying man everlastingly of lust, he put obnoxynol in all the village wells, Igor was beaten by an angry mob, then lynched most shamefully. He was not unaware of the risk he ran. He understood that the triumph of the spirit over the body would not come of its own accord; many passages of his book, published posthumously at the expense of his family, testify to this. In it, he writes that every great idea must be backed by force, as one can see in numerous examples from history, which illustrate that the best argument in defense of a theory is the police. Regrettably he didn’t have his own and hence came to a sad end.

  There were, of course, men with evil tongues, who maintained that the father had been a sadist, and the son—a masochist. There’s not a word of truth in that. I may be getting into delicate matters, but the good name of our family must be protected, kept from being dragged through the mud. Igor was no masochist, despite his self-control he more than once had to resort to the physical assistance of two devoted cousins, who held him down, particularly after large doses of obnoxynol, on the marriage bed, from which—as soon as the deed was done—he fled like one scalded.

  The sons of Igor did not carry on their father’s work. The eldest dabbled for a time in the synthesis of ectoplasm, a substance well-known to spiritualists, being emanated by mediums under trance, but he failed because—so he said—the margarine which served as the starting material had contained impurities. The youngest son was the black sheep of the family. They bought him a one-way ticket to the star Mira Coeti, which not long after his arrival there went out. Of the fate of the daughters I know nothing.

  One of the first astronauts after the one hundred and fifty year interruption—or, as they were already calling them then, spacefarers—was my great-uncle Pafnuce. He owned a star ferry in one of the smaller galactic sounds and carried on his little craft innumerable travelers. He spent a quiet and uneventful life among the stars, not at all like his brother, Euzebius, who became a pirate, though—true—relatively late in life. A born practical joker, Euzebius had a marvelous sense of humor; the entire crew called him “a card.” He would rub out the stars with shoe polish and scatter tiny flashlights along the Milky Way, to confuse the captains, and the rockets that went off course he fell upon and plundered. But then he would return the victims everything, order them to continue on their way, overtake them in his black cruiser, board them and start plundering all over again; this would happen six, even ten times in a row. The passengers could hardly see each other for the bruises.

  And yet Euzebius was not a wicked man. It was only that, lying in wait for years on end at sidereal crossroads for prey, he grew terribly bored, so that when finally someone did come his way he simply couldn’t bring himself to part with them immediately upon completion of the robbery. Interplanetary buccaneering is, as you know, financially unprofitable, which no doubt accounts for the fact that it hardly exists. Euzebius Tichy did not act out of low, materialistic motives, on the contrary, he was fired by the spirit of ancient ideals, for he wanted to bring back the venerable Earth tradition of piracy on the high seas, seeing in this his sacred mission. People imputed to him many vile tendencies, there were even some who called him a necrophiliac, since numerous corpses circled his ship. Nothing could be further from the truth than these loathsome slanders. In space, you can’t just bury someone who meets an untimely end, the only way to dispose of the body is by chucking it out the hatch of the rocket; the fact that it doesn’t leave but goes into orbit around the bereaved rocket is the result of Newton’s laws of motion, and not of anyone’s perverted inclinations. Indeed, with the passing years the number of bodies surrounding the ship of my relative grew considerably; maneuvering, he moved as if in an aureole of death, practically a thing out of Dürer’s dances, but—I repeat—this wasn’t his idea, it was Nature’s.

  In the nephew of Euzebius and my cousin, Arystarch Felix Tichy, were united all the valuable talents which till now h
ad appeared separately in our family. He was the only one, also, to achieve fame and a considerable fortune—through gastronomical engineering, or gastronautics, which he so brilliantly developed. The origin of this branch of technology goes back as far as the second half of the 20th century; it was known then in the crude, primitive form of “rocketry cannibalization.” In order to conserve material and space, ship partitions and bulkheads began to be manufactured out of laminated food concentrates, i.e. various cereals, tapiocas, legumes, etc. Later the scope of this construction enterprise was expanded to include the rocket’s furniture. My cousin aptly summed up the quality of those early products when he said that on a good-tasting chair you can’t sit, and one that’s comfortable gives you indigestion. Arystarch Felix set about the problem in an altogether different way. Small wonder, that the United Shipyards of Aldebaran named their first three-stage rocket (Hors D’oeuvres, Entrée, Dessert) after him. Today no one looks twice at frosted petit-four dashboards (electrotartlets), layer cake condensers, macaroni insulation, marzipan solenoids, or cells with gingerbread and alternating currants, or even windows made of rock candy, though naturally not everyone goes in for suits of scrambled eggs, or pillows of pumpkin pie and feather turnovers (they do make crumbs in bed). All this is the work of my cousin. He was the one who invented beef jerky towlines, strudel bedsheets, soufflé quilts, as well as the semolina noodle drive, he too was the first to use Emmenthaler in radiators. Substituting yeast for nitric acid, he came up with a fuel that made a delicious and refreshing (and nonalcoholic!) beverage. No less ingenious are his cranberry fire extinguishers, which can quench a fire or a thirst equally well. Arystarch had imitators too, but none of them could match him. A certain Globkins tried to put on the market, as a source of illumination—a Sacher torte with a wick, which proved a complete fiasco, since the torte gave off little light and had a burnt taste besides. Similarly, his risotto doormats attracted few buyers, as was the case with the halvah siding, that splattered at the first touch of a meteor. Once again it had been shown that a general concept is not enough, that each and every concrete application of it must be, in itself, creative—as for example that idea of my cousin’s, brilliant in its simplicity, to fill all the empty places in the rocket’s frame with consommé, whereby wasted space was put to use, and nutritiously too. This Tichy, I think, fully deserved to be called the benefactor of cosmic navigation. Its pioneers assured us—not so long ago, either—when we couldn’t look at an algae hamburger or a moss-and-lichen stew, that that was the diet of men traveling to the stars. Bless you, cousin! A good thing, that I’ve lived to see better times, for in my youth how very many crews there were that starved to death, adrift among the dark currents of space, their only choice being whether to draw lots or vote democratically, the simple majority deciding. He will agree with me, who remembers the oppressive atmosphere of those gatherings where such distasteful matters were debated. You also had the Drulps Plan, which created quite a sensation in its day, to spread throughout the entire solar system—having shipwrecks in mind—oatmeal or cream of wheat, also instant cocoa, but the thing was never adopted, first, because it turned out to be too expensive, and secondly, with clouds of cocoa in the way one couldn’t see the stars to steer by. Yes, it was only rocket cannibalism that freed us from all that.

  And now, as I move on up the genealogical tree and come to modern times, and to my own beginnings, my task as family chronicler grows more and more difficult. Not merely because those ancestors of long ago, who led relatively sedentary lives, are more easily portrayed than their interstellar heirs, but also because in space one has the as-yet-unexplained effects of physical phenomena on blood relations. I’ve tried putting these documents in the proper sequence—and have given it up as hopeless, so will simply present them in the way they come down to us. Here, then, are the speed-singed pages of the log kept by star captain Cosimo Tichy:

  Entry 116,303. So many years now without gravitation! The hourglasses don’t work, the balance clocks have stopped, in the wind-ups the mainsprings refuse to budge. For a while we tore pages off the calendar at random, but now that too is in the past. The last guidelines left to us are breakfast, lunch and dinner, but the first indigestion that comes along can scotch that reckoning of time as well. I have to stop here, someone’s just entered, it’s either the twins or light-wave interference.

  Entry 116,304. Off the port bow, a planet not indicated on the maps. A little later, around teatime, a meteor, small thank goodness, it broke through three of our compartments—the pressure chamber, the detention room, the sobering tank. I ordered them cemented. At dinner—Cousin Patrick absent. A conversation with Grandfather Arabeus about the uncertainty principle. And what, really, can we be certain of? That we set out from Earth as young people, that we called our ship “The Cosmocyst,” that Grandpa and Grandma took on board twelve other married couples, who today form a single family, joined by ties of blood. I’m worried about Patrick—and the cat, too, has disappeared. Weightlessness, by the way, appears to have a positive effect on flat feet.

  Entry 116,305. The first-born of Uncle Oliphant is so sharp-sighted and still so small, he can actually see neutrons with the naked eye. Conducted a search for Patrick: negative. We’re increasing speed. During the maneuver our stern cut across an isochronal. After dinner Oliphant’s brother-in-law, Amphotericus, came by and confided that he is now his own father, apparently his time line knotted up into a loop. He asked me not to tell anyone. I consulted our cousin physicists—they shrugged. Who knows what else is in store for us!

  Entry 116,306. I have noticed that the chins and foreheads of several older uncles, both on the maternal and paternal sides, are receding. What is this, the effect of a gyroscopic displacement, the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction perhaps, or the result of lost teeth and the frequent knocking of heads against the crossbeam when the dinner bell sounds? We are flying through a sizable nebula; Aunt Barabella divined our future trajectory in the old-fashioned way, from coffee grounds. I checked it out on the electrocalculator—quite close!

  Entry 116,307. A brief stopover on the planet of the Gallivants. Four persons didn’t return on board. At takeoff, blockage in the left jet. I ordered it blown out. Poor Patrick! In the column under “Cause of Death” I wrote: absent-mindedness. What else could it have been?

  Entry 116,308. Uncle Timothy dreamed we were being attacked by marauding mogs. Fortunately we got off without losses or serious casualties. It’s growing crowded on the ship. Three deliveries today and four moves, because of divorces. Oliphant’s child has eyes like stars. In order to renovate the living quarters I asked all the aunts to step into the hibernating freezers. The only argument that worked was that in a state of reversible death they wouldn’t age. Now it’s very quiet around here, very pleasant

  Entry 116,309. We are approaching the speed of light. Hundreds of unknown phenomena. A new kind of elementary particle has made its appearance—squarks. Not very large, but noisy. Something peculiar is happening to my head. I remember that my father was Barnaby, but I had another named Balaton. Unless that’s a lake in Albania. I must check in the encyclopedia. The aunts are buckling under, quantum by quantum, yet still gamely knitting away. Bad smell on the 3rd deck. Oliphant’s child doesn’t crawl now, it only flies, making use of the recoil from front and back discharges alternately. Amazing, the organism’s capacity for adaptation!

  Entry 116,310. I was at the laboratory of Cousin Josiah and his wife. The work there never stops. My cousin says that the highest stage of gastronautics will be furniture not only edible, but alive as well. That kind will not spoil, you won’t have to keep it—until using—in the icebox. Fine, but who is going to raise a hand to butcher a living armchair? They don’t exist yet, but Josiah claims it won’t be long before he’s treating us to jellied chair’s feet. On the way back to the control room I thought and thought, his worlds still in my ears. He had spoken of living rockets of the future. Will it be possible to have a child by such a rocket? Wh
at strange ideas I’m having lately!

  Entry 116,311. Grandfather Arabeus complains that his left leg is headed for the North Star, and his right—for the Southern Cross. Besides that I think he’s up to something, he goes around on all fours constantly. I’d better keep an eye on him. Balthazar, Josiah’s brother, disappeared. Particle dispersion? While looking for him I discovered that the atom room was full of dust. Hadn’t been swept in years! I removed Bartholomew, the room sweep, from his post and appointed his brother-in-law Titus, That evening, in the parlor, right in the middle of Aunt Melanie’s performance, Grandpa suddenly blew up. I ordered him cemented. That was pure reflex on my part. However I let the order stand, so as not to call into question the captain’s authority. I miss Grandpa. What was it, anger or energy conversion? He was always on edge. During my watch I got this craving for meat, ate a little veal from the freezer. Yesterday it turned out that the piece of paper with our destination on it is missing, a pity too, seeing as how we’ve been traveling now some 36 years. The veal, oddly enough, was full of buckshot—since when are calves gone after with shotguns? A meteor flying by, with someone sitting on it. Bartholomew was the first to notice. For the time being I pretend not to see this.