Peace on Earth by Stanislaw Lem Page A

them in project LEM, but with results as mystifying as they were catastrophic.
    Chief Engineer Paridon Sawekahu showed me around the Gynandroics plant. Tottentanz and Blahouse were with me. Engineer Sawekahu complained about the new legal restrictions that hampered the firm’s research and development of prototypes. And banks, he said, were now putting sensors at their entrances to detect remotes, but that was only the half of it. The banks, of course, feared remote robbery. But instead of using a simple alarm they employed thermoinduction. The remote, as soon as it is recognized, is blasted with high-frequency waves, which cause its wires to melt and turn it into scrap. And the customers complain not to the banks but to Gynandroics. Also, there have been attacks, with bombs even, on trucks carrying remotes, especially attractive females. Engineer Paridon said his firm suspected the women’s liberation movement for these acts of terrorism but at the moment it had nothing that would hold up in court.
    I was shown the whole production process, from the welding of the duraluminum skeletons to the covering of the “chassis” with fleshlike material. Most of the remotes are produced in eight sizes. A custom-made model costs twenty times more. Remotes don’t have to resemble people, but the more different they are from a human build, the harder they are to control. A prehensile tail would be an excellent safety feature for remotes working at great heights, installing cables on suspension bridges for example, but a man has nothing with which to operate a tail. Then we drove in a small electric car (because of the size of the place) to the warehouses, and there I saw planetary and lunar remotes. The greater the gravity, the harder it is to build a remote, because a remote too small cannot accomplish much, and one too big, powered with big engines to make it move, will weigh too much.
    We returned to the assembly hall. If Dr. Wahatan of the UN had been a diplomatic Asian, with a politely restrained smile, Engineer Paridon was an enthusiastic Asian: his bluish lips never closed, and when he smiled, he showed all his perfect teeth.
    “Do you know, Ijon, what the team from General Pedipulatrics and its robots couldn’t manage? Walking on two legs! They flopped because their prototype kept flopping over! Good, eh? Ha, ha, ha! Gyroscopes, counterweights, double feedback in the knees—nothing helped. Of course we have no problem there, a man balances his remote naturally!”
    I watched the female remotes coming down the conveyor belt, their skin as rosy-white as a baby’s. One after another they were taken by other belts to the packing area, so that we stood under a line of naked women moving steadily over our heads, inert but their long hair swinging as though it were alive. I asked Paridon if he was married.
    “Ha, ha, ha! You make a joke, Ijon! I have a wife and children, of course. A shoemaker doesn’t wear the shoes he makes. But we give our workers one a year as a bonus.”
    “What workers?” I asked. There were none in the hall. On the assembly line worked robots painted yellow, green, and blue, their articulated arms extending like geometric caterpillars.
    “Ha, ha, ha! In the office we still have a few people. And in the sorting room, the control room, the packing department. Uh-oh, a reject! The legs are not quite right. Crooked! Would you like to try one, Ijon? No charge, you can have a week, and we deliver.”
    “No, thanks,” I said. “I’m not the Pygmalion type.”
    “Pygmalion? Ah yes, of course, George Bernard Shaw! I see the allusion. True, some find it repugnant. But you must admit, it’s better to make women than war! Eh?”
    “There are still objections,” I said. “I saw the picket line at the gate.”
    “Yes. An ordinary woman just can’t compete with one who’s remote. In life, beauty is the exception to the rule, but with us it is the norm! The marketplace, supply and demand, yes, that’s