“All right, choke me—but carefully, you dog!” said the King.
Everything happened just as the Perfect Adviser said it would. True, the King wanted to have Trurl’s legs pulled off before they threw him into the moat, but somehow this wasn’t done—no doubt a mix-up in the orders, the King thought later, but actually it was owing to the machine’s discreet intervention with one of the executioner’s helpers. Afterward, the King pardoned his Adviser and reinstated it at court; Trurl meanwhile, battered and bruised, painfully hobbled home. Immediately after his return, he went to see Klapaucius and told him the whole story. Then he said:
“That Mandrillion was more of a villain than I thought. Not only did he shamefully deceive me, but he even used the very Adviser I gave him, used it to further his scurvy scheme against me! Ah, but he is sadly mistaken if he thinks that Trurl accepts defeat! May rust eat through me if ever I forget the vengeance that I owe the tyrant!”
“What do you intend to do?” inquired Klapaucius.
“I’ll take him to court, I’ll sue him for the amount of my fee, and that’s only the beginning: there are damages he’ll have to pay—for insults and injuries.”
“This is a difficult legal question,” said Klapaucius. “I suggest you hire yourself a good lawyer before you try anything.”
“Why hire a lawyer? I’ll make myself one!”
And Trurl went home, threw six heaping teaspoons of transistors into a big pot, added again as many condensers and resistors, poured electrolyte over it, stirred well and covered tightly with a lid, then went to bed, and in three days the mixture had organized itself into a first-rate lawyer. Trurl didn’t even need to remove it from the pot, since it was only to serve this once, so he set the pot on the table and asked:
“What are you?”
“I’m a consulting attorney and specialist in jurisprudence,” the pot gurgled, for there was a little too much electrolyte in it. Trurl related the whole affair, whereupon it said:
“You say you qualified the Adviser’s program with an instruction making it incapable of engineering your death?”
“Yes, so it couldn’t destroy me. That was the only condition.”
“In that case you failed to live up to your part of the bargain: the Adviser was to have been perfect, without any limitations. If it couldn’t destroy you, then it wasn’t perfect.”
“But if it destroyed me, then there would be no one to receive payment!”
“A separate matter and a different question entirely, which comes under those paragraphs in the docket determining Mandrillion’s criminal liability, while your claim has more the character of a civil action.”
“Look, I don’t need some pot handing me a lot of legalistic claptrap!” fumed Trurl. “Whose lawyer are you anyway, mine or that hoodlum king’s?”
“Yours, but he did have the right to refuse you payment.”
“And did he have the right to order me thrown from his castle walls into the moat?”
“As I said, that’s another matter entirely, criminal, not civil,” answered the pot.
Trurl flew into a rage.
“Here I make an intelligent being out of a bunch of old wires, switches and grids, and instead of some honest advice I get technicalities! You cheap cybernetic shyster, I’ll teach you to trifle with me!”
And he turned the pot over, shook everything out onto the table, and pulled it apart before the lawyer had a chance to appeal the proceedings.
Then Trurl got to work and built a two-story Juris Con-sulenta, forensically reinforced fourfold, complete with codices and codicils, civil and criminal, and, just to be safe, he added international and institutional law components. Finally he plugged it in, stated his case and asked:
“How do I get what’s coming to me?”
“This won’t be easy,” said the machine. “I’ll need an extra five hundred transistors on top and two hundred on the side.”
Which Trurl supplied, and it said:
“Not enough! Increase the volume and give me two more spools, please.”
After this it began:
“Quite an interesting case, really. There are two things that must be taken into consideration: the grounds of the allegation, for one, and here I grant you there is much that we can do—and then we have the litigation process itself. Now, it is absolutely out of the question to summon the King before any court on a civil charge, for this is contrary to international as well as interplanetary law. I will give you my final opinion, but first you must give me your word you won’t pull me apart when you hear it.”
Trurl gave his word and said: