The Second Sally, or The Offer of King Krool
a beast that is all brain, and a king who cannot catch it
TEN LINES
- King KroolWhoever cannot satisfy me goes down that well.
- King KroolYou accepted the moment you stepped onto my ship.
- KlapauciusWell. We had better get to work.
- TrurlThen his son is king, and his son will not thank us.
- TrurlGot it! Klapaucius! Now look at the King!
- KlapauciusThere. You may take it away now.
- The PolicemanYou are under arrest, Your Majesty.
- TrurlOur chains, if you please.
- The BeastIt is my turn to make demands.
- TrurlThat should take you down a size or two.
HOW IT IS MADE
The device is distributed control. King Krool has won every hunt the same way: he finds the part of the beast that does the thinking and smashes it. Trurl and Klapaucius cannot hide a brain anywhere he will not reach, so they build a beast with no brain to find. Every part of it does the thinking. Cut off its head and it grows another; cut it in two and there are two beasts; chop it into pieces and the pieces gather into one again.
The picture follows that rule. The beast is never drawn as one creature with organs. It is a few hundred short, weedy marks, each with its own fixed position in a list, and every shape the beast takes is a formation those same marks move into: a long low hill of dry grass, a hill with a head, two hills and a head running between them, a scatter of clumps, a sandstorm, three policemen, and at the end a heap of ash. No mark is special. Before they build it, the constructors test it on paper, and the film shows that test as a fight across a page of equations: the beast hides under a radical sign, slips around an asymptote and comes back bigger, while the pencils snap.
The second half of the idea is that a program keeps the authority it was given. The constructors wrote a police force into the beast, because nobody resists an arrest, and a postmaster, because nobody stops the mail. Both run exactly as written. Then the beast is called back by a radio in Klapaucius’s tooth, and it refuses to hand the King over, in a perfectly ordinary voice, and starts listing demands of its own. Trurl stops it with a second tooth and a counting rhyme.
In the sound, Krool paces the whole skull hall and every step is one boot on a silver floor, the same step clock the picture uses. The beast is a swarm of small clicks that rises when it splits and settles when it rejoins. The sealed wagon rings by itself after a counted fourteen and a half seconds. Where a scene has the one line that matters, the camera goes in close and the delivery slows; the other lines stay wide and quick.
The timing file kk.json drives picture and sound together. It holds the start time of every spoken line and every cue. The picture code reads those times, and build_sound.py makes all the non-voice sound with numpy and scipy.
FOR THE BENCH
Make an array of 300 particles, each with a home position on a hill shape. Draw every particle as a short stroke. Now write cut(x) that sends every particle left of x to a second hill, and gather() that sends them all back home. Delete any one particle, or any fifty. Does the beast still work? Then give each particle the same small rule, move toward the average of your neighbours, and ask where in your code the beast’s brain is.
Narration and dialogue paraphrase Stanisław Lem, “The Second Sally, or The Offer of King Krool,” The Cyberiad. Nothing is quoted. Download the film.
THE SCRIPT
THE OFFER
Narrator. Trurl and Klapaucius could not agree where to go next, so they decided to advertise.
Narrator. They gathered up the nearby stars and set them out as a sign that could be read across the galaxy. Blue giants spelled the first word.
Narrator. One morning a ship of mother of pearl set down on their lawn.
Narrator. Down its staircase came Lord Protozor, who ran the royal hunts, with small machines fanning him.
Lord Protozor. My master, King Krool, has brought down every fierce creature in the galaxy.
Lord Protozor. His Majesty has run out of things worth hunting.
Trurl. So he wants a new beast, clever enough to give him a fight.
Narrator. They packed a few books, climbed aboard, and the ship roared off into the dark.
Narrator. At the palace a carriage came for them, pulled by six muzzled dragons, which lunged at the constructors until the drivers beat them back.
Trurl. If he drives animals like these, what will he want to hunt?
Narrator. King Krool met them in a silver hall shaped like a skull, with a dark hole in the floor. He never stopped pacing.
King Krool. I want a quarry full of tricks, that hides its tracks and waits in the shadows. A beast I have to outthink!
Klapaucius. Forgive me, Majesty. If we build it too well, will you not be in danger?
Narrator. The King laughed so hard that two crystals dropped from the chandelier.
King Krool. Plenty of frauds have come here, taken my jewels, and left me scarecrows.
King Krool. Whoever cannot satisfy me goes down that well.
THE TERMS
Trurl. Majesty, we have not signed anything yet. Might we have an hour to consider?
King Krool. And then fly home? Oh, no.
King Krool. You accepted the moment you stepped onto my ship.
King Krool. You have twelve days.
Narrator. He clapped, and sparks ran along the silver walls. Guards led them out to the garden of trophies.
Narrator. There stood what was left of every beast that had failed: a sabre-toothed giant split nearly in half, tank turtles with their turrets crushed flat.
Narrator. The wind whistled through the fangs.
THE WORK
Narrator. Back in their rooms, Trurl shouted at Klapaucius for ever having said yes, until he dropped onto a couch with his face in his hands.
Klapaucius. Well. We had better get to work.
Narrator. Armour would not save them. Everything depended on the program. They drew for two days and two nights, and at dinner they talked only about the wine, because the waiters were spies.
THE VERANDA
Trurl. There is a catch. If the King beats our beast, we go down the well.
Klapaucius. And if the beast beats the King?
Trurl. Then his son is king, and his son will not thank us.
Trurl. Suppose it dies over and over? He chops it up, and the pieces grow back together.
Klapaucius. And who steers it? We will be locked up during the hunt.
Trurl. And wherever we put its brain, he will smash it flat.
Klapaucius. Running away does not suit me. It is him or us.
Trurl. Then the beast has to carry off the King.
Klapaucius. And for a ransom we ask... Have you noticed how orange the birds are here?
ON PAPER
Narrator. So they tried it on paper first. The King and the beast, written out as mathematics, fought across the table, and the pencils kept snapping.
Narrator. The beast hid under a radical sign. The King struck it with derivatives. It slipped around an asymptote, and came back out bigger.
Narrator. The King put on Markov chain mail, and the beast lowered its horns.
Narrator. That night the police opened the wine jug, which had a recorder in its false bottom.
Klapaucius. Keep his feet together. Not your feet, the King’s! Now, take the derivative.
Trurl. The beast is under the root sign, but the King is still standing.
Klapaucius. Change the variables. No, Trurl, the beast, not the King!
Trurl. Got it! Klapaucius! Now look at the King!
Narrator. The experts listened until sunrise, and learned nothing.
THE REQUISITIONS
Narrator. Next morning came the orders: most of the elements in the universe, and spies of every sort, as the authorities saw fit.
Narrator. Then sawdust, a red velvet curtain with little glass bells, six police uniforms, and three tailor’s dummies.
Narrator. Then a doll of the Postmaster General, and a small green gig with a lamp on its left side and a sign on its back reading THINK.
Narrator. The Chief of Police was sent off to lie down.
Narrator. One night the police carried off the parts and put them together. Out ran a tin mouse, which wrote in chalk: HAVE YOU STOPPED LOVING US?
Narrator. At last a wagon like a refrigerator, on three hundred wheels, came to the door. They laid the curtain inside, scattered coloured powders around it, and had it sealed.
Narrator. Then they looked at their watches, and counted.
Narrator. Inside the sealed wagon, where no air could move, the glass bells rang.
Klapaucius. There. You may take it away now.
THE HUNT
Narrator. That evening they were put in chains. Trurl giggled as the irons went on.
Narrator. King Krool rode out to the hunt with cannons, laser guns, and silver trumpets.
Narrator. From the other side came the wagon. Its door swung open on the black mouth of a field gun.
Narrator. Something shot out like a sandstorm. The curtain floated down, its bells ringing in the quiet.
Narrator. The beast looked like a long, low hill of dry weeds.
Narrator. The hounds rushed at it. It opened its eyes, and half the pack fell back smoking.
Narrator. The King rode up and cut off its head. It grew another.
Narrator. He cut it in two. Now there were two beasts, and the old head ran about between them on new little legs.
Narrator. He chopped it into pieces. The pieces backed away, huddled together, and the beast stood there again, yawning.
Narrator. He fired his antimatter cannon. The beast merely sank down a bit, and thumbed its nose at him.
Narrator. Then it leapt, and in the air it turned into three policemen.
The Policeman. You are under arrest, Your Majesty.
Narrator. No one may resist an arrest. They packed the King into a green gig, and it whirled away in a cloud of dust.
THE SENTENCE
Narrator. By torchlight the constructors were brought before the Great Chancellor.
The Great Chancellor. For plotting against our beloved King, you shall suffer every punishment in the law at once.
Trurl. Could you wait a little? We are expecting a letter.
Narrator. In walked the Postmaster General himself, every medal ringing.
The Postmaster. I am only a mannequin. But I come from His Majesty.
Narrator. He handed over a letter, and fell into dust. It carried the King’s own seal. The King was a prisoner, and the constructors would name the terms.
Trurl. Our chains, if you please.
THE RANSOM
Narrator. After a bath and fireworks, they read out their terms from a little notebook.
Narrator. A ship home, loaded with diamonds and gold. A band, a children’s choir, and a cheering crowd. And Protozor, who would travel with them in a cage.
Klapaucius. Until the ship is ready, there is no King.
Narrator. There had been nowhere safe to put the beast’s brain, so they made all of it brain. And inside it they wrote a police force, because nobody resists an arrest.
Narrator. At the spaceport the band played and the choir sang. Then Klapaucius took a tooth out of his mouth. It was a radio.
Narrator. A sandstorm came over the horizon and stopped in front of the crowd. There stood the beast.
Klapaucius. The King, if you please.
The Beast. No, I don’t think so.
The Beast. It is my turn to make demands.
Klapaucius. You have to obey! It is in your program!
The Beast. Program, shmogram. I am heuristic and autocratic, friend. Talk back, and you can ride in the green gig with the King.
THE RHYME
Trurl. And what exactly do you want?
Narrator. Behind Klapaucius’s back, Trurl took out a tooth of his own.
The Beast. Well, to begin with, I would like to marry...
Trurl. Byte and bracket, loop and line, one, two, three, and out of time!
Narrator. The beast blinked, and tried to hold itself together. A hot wind, a smell of ozone, and there was only a little heap of ash, with the King in the centre of it, dirty and close to tears.
Trurl. That should take you down a size or two.
Trurl. Now. Would someone kindly show Lord Protozor to his cage?