Solaris (21 page)

I countered clumsily:

"I came to tell you, because I thought you ought to know, that I intend leaving the Station with her."

"Still on the same tack," Snow shrugged. "I only offered my opinion because I realized that you were losing touch with reality. And the further you go, the harder you fall. Can you come and see Sartorius around nine tomorrow morning?"

"Sartorius? I thought he wasn't letting anybody in. You told me you couldn't even phone him."

"He seems to have reached some land of settlement. We never discuss our domestic troubles. With you, it's another matter. Will you come tomorrow morning?"

"All right," I grunted.

I noticed that Snow had slipped his left hand inside the cabinet. How long had the door been ajar? Probably for some time, but in the heat of the encounter I had not registered that the position of his hand was not natural. It was as if he was concealing something—or holding somebody's hand.

I licked my lips:

"Snow, what have you…"

"You'd better leave now," he said evenly.

I closed the door in the final glow of the red twilight. Rheya was huddled against the wall a few paces down the corridor. She sprang to her feet at once:

"You see? I did it, Kris. I feel so much better… Perhaps it will be easier and easier…"

"Yes, of course…" I answered absently.

We went back to my quarters. I was still speculating about that cabinet, and what had been hiding there, perhaps overhearing our entire conversation. My cheeks started to burn so hard that I involuntarily passed the back of my hand over them. What an idiotic meeting! And where did it get us? Nowhere. But there was tomorrow morning…

An abrupt thrill of fear ran through me. My encephalogram, a complete record of the workings of my brain, was to be beamed into the ocean in the form of radiation. What was it Snow had said—would I suffer terribly if Rheya departed? An encephalogram records every mental process, conscious and unconscious. If I want her to disappear, will it happen? But if I wanted to get rid of her would I also be appalled at the thought of her imminent destruction? Am I responsible for my unconscious? No one else is, if not myself. How stupid to agree to let them do it. Obviously I can examine the recording before it is used, but I won't be able to decode it. Nobody could. The experts can only identify general mental tendencies. For instance, they will say that the subject is thinking about some mathematical problem, but they are unable to specify its precise terms. They claim that they have to stick to generalizations because the encephalogram cannot discriminate among the stream of simultaneous impulses, only some of which have any psychological "counterpart," and they refuse point-blank to hazard any comment on the unconscious processes. So how could they be expected to decipher memories which have been more or less repressed?

Then why was I so afraid? I had told Rheya only that morning that the experiment could not work. If Terran neurophysiologists were incapable of decoding the recording, what chance was there for that great alien creature…?

Yet it had infiltrated my mind without my knowledge, surveyed my memory, and laid bare my most vulnerable point. That was undeniable. Without any assistance or radiation transmissions, it had found its way through the armored shell of the Station, located me, and come away with its spoils…

"Kris?" Rheya whispered.

Standing at the window with unseeing eyes, I had not noticed the coming of darkness. A thin veiling of high cloud glowed a dim silver in the light of the vanished sun, and obscured the stars.

If she disappears after the experiment, that will mean that I wanted her to disappear—that I killed her. No, I will not see Sartorius. They can't force me to cooperate. But I can't tell them the truth, I'll have to dissemble and lie, and keep on doing it… Because there may be thoughts, intentions and cruel hopes in my mind of which I know nothing, because I am a murderer unawares. Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed. Was I to abandon Rheya there out of false shame, or because I lacked the courage?

"Kris," said Rheya, more softly still.

She was standing quite close to me now. I pretended not to hear. At that moment, I wanted to isolate myself. I had not yet resolved anything, or reached any decision. I stood motionless, looking at the dark sky and the cold stars, pale ghosts of the stars that shone on Earth. My mind was a blank. All I had was the grim certainty of having crossed some point of no return. I refused to admit that I was travelling towards what I could not reach. Apathy robbed me of the strength even to despise myself.

"Kris, is it the experiment that's on your mind?"

The sound of her voice made me start with surprise. I had been lying in the dark for hours with my eyes open, unable to sleep. Not hearing Rheya's breathing, I had forgotten her, letting myself drift in a tide of aimless speculation. The waking dream had lured me out of sight of the measure and meaning of reality.

"How did you know I wasn't asleep?"

"Your breathing changes when you are asleep," she said gently, as if to apologize for her question. "I didn't want to interfere… If you can't answer, don't."

"Why would I not tell you? Anyway you've guessed right, it is the experiment."

"What do they expect to achieve?"

"They don't know themselves. Something. Anything. It isn't 'Operation Brainwave,' it's 'Operation Desperation.' Really, one of us ought to have the courage to call the experiment off and shoulder the responsibility for the decision, but the majority reckons that that kind of courage would be a sign of cowardice, and the first step in a retreat. They think it would mean an undignified surrender for mankind—as if there was any dignity in floundering and drowning in what we don't understand and never will." I stopped, but a new access of rage quickly built up. "Needless to say they're not short of arguments. They claim that even if we fail to establish contact we won't have been wasting our time investigating the plasma, and that we shall eventually uncover the secret of matter. They know very well that they are deceiving themselves. It's like wandering about in a library where all the books are written in an indecipherable language. The only thing that's familiar is the color of the bindings!"

"Are there no other planets like this?"

"It's possible. This is the only one we've come across. In any case, it's in an extremely rare category, not like Earth. Earth is a common type—the grass of the universe! And we pride ourselves on this universality. There's nowhere we can't go; in that belief we set out for other worlds, all brimming with confidence. And what were we going to do with them? Rule them or be ruled by them: that was the only idea in our pathetic minds! What a useless waste…"

I got out of bed and fumbled in the medicine cabinet. My fingers recognized the shape of the big bottle of sleeping pills, and I turned around in the darkness:

"I'm going to sleep, darling." Up in the ceiling, the ventilator hummed. "I must get some sleep…"

In the morning, I woke up feeling calm and refreshed. The experiment seemed a petty matter, and I could not understand how I had managed to take the encephalogram so seriously. Nor was I much bothered by having to bring Rheya into the laboratory. In spite of all her exertions, she could not bear to stay out of sight and earshot for longer than five minutes, so I had abandoned my idea of further tests (she was even prepared to let herself be locked up somewhere), asked her to come with me, and advised her to bring something to read.

I was especially curious about what I would find in the laboratory. There was nothing unusual about the appearance of the big, blue-and-white- painted room, except that the shelves and cupboards meant to contain glass instruments seemed bare. The glass panel in one door was starred, and in some doors it was missing altogether, suggesting that there had been a struggle here recently, and that someone had done his best to remove the traces.

Snow busied himself with the equipment, and behaved quite civilly, showing no surprise at the sight of Rheya, and greeting her with a quick nod of the head.

I was lying down and Snow was swabbing my temples and forehead with saline solution, when a narrow door opened and Sartorius emerged from an unlighted room. He was wearing a white smock and a black anti-radiation overall that came down to his ankles, and his greeting was authoritative and very professional in manner. We might have been two researchers in some great institute on Earth, continuing from where we had left off the day before. He was not wearing his dark glasses, but I noticed that he had on contact lenses, which I took to be the explanation of his lack of expression.

Sartorius looked on with arms folded as Snow attached the electrodes and wrapped a bandage around my head. He looked around the room several times, ignoring Rheya, who sat on a stool with her back against the wall, pretending to read.

Snow stepped back, and I moved my head, which was bulging with metal discs and wires, to watch him switch on. At this point Sartorius raised his hand and launched into a flowery speech:

"Dr. Kelvin, may I have your attention and concentration for a moment. I do not intend to dictate any precise sequence of thought to you, for that would invalidate the experiment, but I do insist that you cease thinking of yourself, of me, our colleague Snow, or anybody else. Make an effort to eliminate any intrusion of individual personalities, and concentrate on the matter in hand. Earth and Solaris; the body of scientists considered as a single entity, although generations succeed each other and man as an individual has a limited span; our aspirations, and our perseverance in the attempt to establish an intellectual contact; the long historic march of humanity, our own certitude of furthering that advance, and our determination to renounce all personal feelings in order to accomplish our mission; the sacrifices that we are prepared to make, and the hardships we stand ready to overcome… These are the themes that might properly occupy your awareness. The association of ideas does not depend entirely on your own will. However, the very fact of your presence here bears out the authenticity of the progression I have drawn to your attention. If you are unsure that you have acquitted yourself of your task, say so, I beg you, and our colleague Snow will make another recording. We have plenty of time."

A dry little smile flickered over his face as he spoke these last words, but his expression remained morose. I was still trying to unravel the pompous phraseology which he had spun out with the utmost gravity.

Snow broke the lengthening silence:

"Ready Kris?"

He was leaning with one elbow on the control-panel of the electro­encephalograph, looking completely relaxed. His confident tone reassured me, and I was grateful to him for calling me by my first name.

"Let's get started." I closed my eyes.

A sudden panic had overwhelmed me after Snow had fixed the electrodes and walked over to the controls: now it disappeared just as suddenly. Through half-closed lids, I could see the red lights winking on the black control- panel. I was no longer aware of the damp, unpleasant touch of the crown of clammy electrodes. My mind was an empty grey arena ringed by a crowd of invisible onlookers massed on tiers of seats, attentive, silent, and emanating in their silence an ironic contempt for Sartorius and the Mission. What should I improvise for these spectators? … Rheya … I introduced her name cautiously, ready to withdraw it at once, but no protest came, and I kept going. I was drunk with grief and tenderness, ready to suffer prolonged sacrifices patiently. My mind was pervaded with Rheya, without a body or a face, but alive inside me, real and imperceptible. Suddenly, as if printed over that despairing presence, I saw in the grey shadows the learned, professorial face of Giese, the father of Solarist studies and of Solarists. I was not visualizing the nauseating mud-eruption which had swallowed up the gold-rimmed spectacles and carefully brushed moustache. I was seeing the engraving on the title-page of his classic work, and the close-hatched strokes against which the artist had made his head stand out—so like my father's, that head, not in its I features but in its expression of old-fashioned wisdom and honesty, that I was finally no longer able to tell which of them was looking at me, my father or Giese. They were dead, and neither of them buried, but then deaths without burial are not uncommon in our time.

The image of Giese vanished, and I momentarily forgot the Station, the experiment, Rheya and the ocean. Recent memories were obliterated by the overwhelming conviction that these two men, my father and Giese, nothing but ashes now, had once faced up to the totality of their existence, and this conviction afforded a profound calm which annihilated the formless assembly clustered around the grey arena in the expectation of my defeat.

I heard the click of circuit-breakers, and light penetrated my eyelids, which blinked open. Sartorius had not budged from his previous position, and was looking at me. Snow had his back turned to operate the control-panel. I had the impression that he was amusing himself by making his sandals slap on the floor.

"Do you think that stage one has been successful, Dr. Kelvin?" Sartorius inquired, in the nasal voice which I had come to detest.

"Yes."

"Are you sure?" he persisted, obviously rather surprised, and perhaps even suspicious.

"Yes."

My assurance and the bluntness of my answers made him lose his composure briefly.

"Oh … good," he stammered.

Snow came over to me and started to unwrap the bandage from my head. Sartorius stepped back, hesitated, then disappeared into the dark-room.

I was rubbing the circulation back into my legs when he came out again, holding the developed film. Zigzag lines traced a lacy pattern along fifty feet of glistening black ribbon. My presence was no longer necessary, but I stayed, and Snow fed the ribbon into the modulator. Sartorius made a final suspicious examination of the last few feet of the spool, as if trying to decipher the content of the wavering lines.