Solaris (8 page)

I was holding her in my arms and gazing into her eyes.

Imperceptibly, almost instinctively, I began to pull her hands
together behind her back at the same time searching the room with
my eyes: I needed something with which to tie her hands.

Suddenly she jerked her elbows together, and there followed a
powerful recoil. I resisted for barely a second. Thrown backwards
and almost lifted off my feet, even had I been an athlete I could
not have freed myself. Rheya straightened up and dropped her arms
to her sides. Her face, lit by an uncertain smile, had played no
part in the struggle.

She was gazing at me with the same calm interest as when I had
first awakened—as though she was utterly unmoved by my
desperate ploy, as though she was quite unaware that anything had
happened, and had not noticed my sudden panic. She stood before me,
waiting—grave, passive, mildly surprised.

Leaving Rheya in the middle of the room, I went over to the
washbasin. I was a prisoner, caught in an absurd trap from which at
all costs I was determined to escape. I would have been incapable
of putting into words the meaning of what had happened or what was
going through my mind; but now I realized that my situation was
identical with that of the other inhabitants of the Station, that
everything I had experienced, discovered or guessed at was part of
a single whole, terrifying and incomprehensible. Meanwhile, I was
racking my brain to think up some ruse, to work out some means of
escape. Without turning round, I could feel Rheya's eyes following
me. There was a medicine chest above the basin. Quickly I went
through its contents, and found a bottle of sleeping pills. I shook
out four tablets—the maximum dose—into a glass, and
filled it with hot water. I made little effort to conceal my
actions from Rheya. Why? I did not even bother to ask myself.

When the tablets had dissolved, I returned to Rheya, who was
still standing in the same place.

"Are you angry with me?" she asked, in a low voice.

"No. Drink this."

Unconsciously, I had known all along that she would obey me. She
took the glass without a word and drank the scalding mixture in one
gulp. Putting down the empty glass on a stool, I went and sat in a
chair in the corner of the room.

Rheya joined me, squatting on the floor in her accustomed manner
with her legs folded under her, and tossing back her hair. I was no
longer under any illusion: this was not Rheya—and yet I
recognized her every habitual gesture. Horror gripped me by the
throat; and what was most horrible was that I must go on tricking
her, pretending to take her for Rheya, while she herself sincerely
believed that she was Rheya—of that I was certain, if one
could be certain of anything any longer.

She was leaning against my knees, her hair brushing my hand. We
remained thus for some while. From time to time, I glanced at my
watch. Half-an-hour went by; the sleeping tablets should have
started to work. Rheya murmured something:

"What did you say?"

There was no reply.

Although I attributed her silence to the onset of sleep,
secretly I doubted the effectiveness of the pills. Once again, I
did not ask myself why. Perhaps it was because my subterfuge seemed
too simple.

Slowly her head slid across my knees, her dark hair falling over
her face. Her breathing grew deeper and more regular; she was
asleep. I stooped in order to lift her on to the bed. As I did so,
her eyes opened; she put her arms round my neck and burst into
shrill laughter.

I was dumbfounded. Rheya could hardly contain her mirth. With an
expression that was at once ingenuous and sly, she observed me
through half-closed eyelids. I sat down again, tense, stupefied, at
a loss. With a final burst of laughter, she snuggled against my
legs.

In an expressionless voice, I asked:

"Why are your laughing?"

Once again, a look of anxiety and surprise came over her face.
It was clear that she wanted to give me an honest explanation. She
sighed, and rubbed her nose like a child.

"I don't know," she said at last, with genuine puzzlement. "I'm
behaving like an idiot, aren't I? But so are you…you look
idiotic, all stiff and pompous like…like Pelvis."

I could hardly believe my ears.

"Like who?"

"Like Pelvis. You know who I mean, that fat man…."

Rheya could not possibly have known Pelvis, or even heard me
mention him, for the simple reason that he had returned from an
expedition three years after her death. I had not known him
previously and was therefore unaware of his inveterate habit, when
presiding over meetings at the Institute, of letting sessions drag
on indefinitely. Moreover, his name was Pelle Villis and until his
return I did not know that he had been nicknamed Pelvis.

Rheya leaned her elbows on my knees and looked me in the eyes. I
put out my hand and stroked her arms, her shoulders and the base of
her bare neck, which pulsed beneath my fingers. While it looked as
though I was caressing her (and indeed, judging by her expression,
that was how she interpreted the touch of my hands) in reality I
was verifying once again that her body was warm to the touch, an
ordinary human body, with muscles, bones, joints. Gazing calmly
into her eyes, I felt a hideous desire to tighten my grip.

Suddenly I remembered Snow's bloodstained hands, and let go.

"How you stare at me," Rheya said, placidly.

My heart was beating so furiously that I was incapable of
speech. I closed my eyes. In that very instant, complete in every
detail, a plan of action sprang to my mind. There was not a second
to lose. I stood up.

"I must go out, Rheya. If you absolutely insist on coming with
me, I'll take you."

"Good."

She jumped to her feet.

I opened the locker and selected a suit for each of us. Then I
asked:

"Why are you bare-foot?"

She answered hesitantly:

"I don't know…I must have left my shoes somewhere."

I did not pursue the matter.

"You'll have to take your dress off to put this on."

"Flying-overalls? What for?"

As she tried to take off her dress, an extraordinary fact became
apparent: there were no zips, or fastenings of any sort; the red
buttons down the front were merely decorative. Rheya smiled,
embarrassed.

As though it were the most normal way of going about it, I
picked up some kind of scalpel from the floor and slit the dress
down the back from neck to waist, so that she could pull it over
her head.

When she had put on the flying-overalls (which were slightly too
large for her) and we were about to leave, she asked:

"Are we going on a flight?"

I merely nodded. I was afraid of running into Snow. But the dome
was empty and the door leading to the radio-cabin was shut.

A deathly silence still hung over the hangar-deck. Rheya
followed my movements attentively. I opened a stall and examined
the shuttle vehicle inside. I checked, one after another, the
micro-reactor, the controls, and the diffusers. Then, having
removed the empty capsule from its stand, I aimed the electric
trolley towards the sloping runway.

I had chosen a small shuttle used for ferrying stores between
the Station and the satellite, one that did not normally carry
personnel since it did not open from the inside. The choice was
carefully calculated in accordance with my plan. Of course, I had
no intention of launching it, but I simulated the preparations for
an actual departure. Rheya, who had so often accompanied me on my
space-flights, was familiar with the preliminary routine. Inside
the cockpit, I checked that the climatization and oxygen-supply
systems were functioning. I switched in the main circuit and the
indicators on the instrument panel lit up. I climbed out and said
to Rheya, who was waiting at the foot of the ladder:

"Get in."

"What about you?"

"I'll follow you. I have to close the hatch behind us."

She gave no sign that she suspected any trickery. When she had
disappeared inside, I stuck my head into the opening and asked:

"Are you comfortable?"

I heard a muffled "yes" from inside the confined cockpit. I
withdrew my head and slammed the hatch to with all my strength. I
slid home the two bolts and tightened the five safety screws with
the special spanner I had brought with me. The slender metal cigar
stood there, pointing upwards, as though it were really about to
take off into space.

Its captive was in no danger: the oxygen-tanks were full and
there were food supplies in the cockpit. In any case, I did not
intend to keep her prisoner indefinitely. I desperately needed two
hours of freedom in order to concentrate on the decisions which had
to be taken and to work out a joint plan of action with Snow.

As I was tightening the last screw but one, I felt a vibration
in the three-pronged clamp which held the base of the shuttle. I
thought I must have loosened the support in my over-eager handling
of the heavy spanner, but when I stepped back to take a look, I was
greeted by a spectacle which I hope I shall never have to see
again.

The whole vehicle trembled, shaken from the inside as though by
some superhuman force. Not even a steel robot could have imparted
such a convulsive tremor to an 8-ton mass, and yet the cabin
contained only a frail, dark-haired girl.

The reflections from the lights quivered on the shuttle's
gleaming sides. I could not hear the blows; there was no sound
whatever from inside the vehicle. But the outspread struts vibrated
like taut wires. The violence of the shock-waves was such that I
was afraid the entire scaffolding would collapse.

I tightened the final screw with a trembling hand, threw down
the spanner and jumped off the ladder. As I slowly retreated, I
noticed that the shock-absorbers, designed to resist a continuous
pressure, were vibrating furiously. It looked to me as though the
shuttle's outer skin was wrinkling.

Frenziedly, I rushed to the control panel and with both hands
lifted the starting lever. As I did so the intercom connected to
the shuttle's interior gave out a piercing sound—not a cry,
but a sound which bore not the slightest resemblance to the human
voice, in which I could nevertheless just make out my name,
repeated over and over again: "Kris! Kris! Kris!"

I had attacked the controls so violently, fumbling in my haste,
that my fingers were torn and bleeding.

A bluish glimmer, like that of a ghostly dawn, lit up the walls.
Swirling clouds of vaporous dust eddied round the launching pad;
the dust turned into a column of fierce sparks and the echoes of a
thunderous roar drowned all other noise. Three flames, merging
instantly into a single pillar of fire, lifted the craft, which
rose up through the open hatch in the dome, leaving behind a
glowing trail which rippled as it gradually subsided. Shutters slid
over the hatch, and the automatic ventilators began to suck in the
acrid smoke which billowed round the room.

It was only later that I remembered all these details; at the
time, I hardly knew what I was seeing. Clinging to the
control-panel, the fierce heat burning my face and singeing my
hair, I gulped the acrid air which smelt of a mixture of burning
fuel and the ozone given off by ionization. I had instinctively
closed my eyes at the moment of lift-off, but the glare had
penetrated my eyelids. For some time, I saw nothing but black, red
and gold spirals which slowly died away. The ventilators continued
to hum; the smoke and the dust were gradually clearing.

The green glow of the radar-screen caught my eye. My hands flew
across its controls as I began to search for the shuttle. By the
time I had located it, it was already flying above the atmosphere.
I had never launched a vehicle in such a blind and unthinking way,
with no pre-set speed or direction. I did not even know its range
and was afraid of causing some unpredictable disaster. I judged
that the easiest thing to do would be to place it in a stationary
orbit around Solaris and then cut the engines. I verified from the
tables that the required altitude was 725 miles. It was no
guarantee, of course, but I could see no other way out.

I did not have the heart to switch on the intercom, which had
been disconnected at lift-off. I could not bear to expose myself
again to the sound of that horrifying voice, which was no longer
even remotely human.

I felt I was justified in thinking that I had defeated the
'simulacra,' and that behind the illusion, contrary to all
expectation, I had found the real Rheya again—the Rheya of my
memories, whom the hypothesis of madness would have destroyed.

At one o'clock, I left the hangar-deck.

My face and hands were badly burnt. I remembered noticing a jar
of anti-burn ointment when I was looking for sleeping pills for
Rheya (I was in no mood to laugh at my naïvete), so I went
back to my room.

I opened the door. The room was glowing in the red twilight.
Someone was sitting in the armchair where Rheya had knelt. For a
second or two, I was paralysed with terror, filled with an
overwhelming desire to turn and run. Then the seated figure raised
its head: it was Snow. His legs crossed, still wearing the
acid-stained trousers, he was looking through some papers, a pile
of which lay on a small table beside him. He put down those he was
holding in his hand, let his glasses slide down his nose, and
scowled up at me.

Without saying a word, I went to the basin, took the ointment
out of the medicine chest and applied it to my forehead and cheeks.
Fortunately my face was not too swollen and my eyes, which I had
closed instinctively, did not seem to be inflamed. I lanced some
large blisters on my temples and cheekbones with a sterilized
needle; they exuded a serous liquid, which I mopped up with an
antiseptic pad. Then I applied some gauze dressing.

Snow watched me throughout these first-aid operations, but I
paid no attention to him. When at last I had finished (and my burns
had become even more painful), I sat myself down in the other
chair. I had first to remove Rheya's dress—that apparently
quite normal dress which was nevertheless devoid of fastenings.

Snow, his hands clasped around one bony knee, continued to
observe me with a critical air.

"Well, are you ready to have a chat?" he asked.

I did not answer; I was busy replacing a piece of gauze which
had slipped down one cheek.

"You've had a visitor, haven't you?"

"Yes," I answered curtly.

He had begun the conversation on a note which I found
displeasing.

"And you've rid yourself of it already? Well, well! That was
quick!"

He touched his forehead, which was still peeling and mottled
with pink patches of new skim. I was thunderstruck. Why had I not
realized before the implications of Snow's and Sartorius's
'sunburn'? No one exposed himself to the sun here.

Without noticing my sudden change of expression he went on:

"I imagine you didn't try extreme methods straight away. What
did you use first—drugs, poison, judo?"

"Do you want to discuss the thing seriously or play the fool? If
you don't want to help, you can leave me in peace."

He half-closed his eyes.

"Sometimes one plays the fool in spite of oneself. Did you try
the rope, or the hammer? Or the well-aimed ink-bottle, like Luther?
No?" He grimaced, "Aren't you a fast worker! The basin is still
intact, you haven't banged your head against the walls, you haven't
even turned the room upside down. One, two and into the rocket,
just like that!" He looked at his watch. "Consequently, we have two
or three hours at our disposal…. Am I getting on your
nerves?" he added, with a disagreeable smile.

"Yes," I said curtly.

"Really? Well, if I tell you a little story, will you believe
me?"

I said nothing.

Still with that hideous smile, he went on:

"It started with Gibarian. He locked himself in his cabin and
refused to talk to us except through the door. And can you guess
what we thought?"

I remained silent.

"Naturally, we thought he had gone mad. He let a bit of it
out—through the locked door—but not everything. You may
wonder why he didn't tell us that there was someone with him. Oh,
suum cuique!
But he was a true scientist. He
begged us to let him take his chance!"

"What chance?"

"He was obviously doing his damnedest to solve the problem, to
get to the bottom of it. He worked day and night. You know what he
was doing? You must know."

"Those calculations, in the drawer of the radio-cabin—were
they his?"

"Yes."

"How long did it go on?"

"This visit? About a week…We thought he was suffering
from hallucinations, or having a nervous breakdown. I gave him some
scopolamine."

"Gave him?"

"Yes. He took it, but not for himself. He tried it out on
someone else."

"What did you do?"

"On the third day we had decided, if all else failed, to break
down the door, maybe injuring his self-esteem, but at least curing
him."

"Ah…"

"Yes."

"So, in that locker…."

"Yes, my friend, quite. But in the meantime, we too had received
visitors. We had our hands full, and didn't have a chance to tell
him what was going on. Now it's…it's become a routine."

He spoke so softly that I guessed rather than heard the last few
words.

"I still don't understand!" I exclaimed. "If you listened at his
door, you must have heard two voices."

"No, we heard only his voice. There were strange noises, but we
thought they came from him too."

"Only his voice! But how is it that you didn't
hear…her?"

"I don't know. I have the rudiments of a theory about it, but
I've dropped it for the moment. No point getting bogged down in
details. But what about you? You must already have seen something
yesterday, otherwise you would have taken us for lunatics."

"I thought it was I who had gone mad."

"So you didn't see anyone?"

"I saw someone."

"Who?"

I gave him a long look—he no longer wore even the
semblance of a smile—and answered:

"That…that black woman…" He was leaning forward,
and as I spoke his body almost imperceptibly relaxed. "You might
have warned me."

"I did warn you."

"You could have chosen a better way!"

"It was the only way possible. I didn't know what you would see.
No one could know, no one ever knows…"

"Listen, Snow, I want to ask you something. You've had some
experience of this…phenomenon. Will she…will the
person who visited me today…?"

"Will she come back, do you mean?"

I nodded.

"Yes and no," he said.

"What does that mean?"

"She…this person will come back as though nothing had
happened, just as she was at the beginning of her first visit. More
precisely, she will appear not to realize what you did to get rid
of her. If you abide by the rules, she won't be aggressive."

"What rules?"

"That depends on the circumstances."

"Snow!"

"What?"

"Don't let's waste time talking in riddles."

"In riddles? Kelvin, I'm afraid you still don't understand." His
eyes glittered. "All right, then!" he went on, brutally. "Can you
tell me who your visitor was?"

I swallowed my saliva and turned away. I did not want to look at
him. I would have preferred to be dealing with anyone else but him;
but I had no choice. A piece of gauze came unstuck and fell on my
hand. I gave a start.

"A woman who…" I stopped. "She died. An
injection…"

"Suicide?"

"Yes."

"Is that all?"

He waited. Seeing that I remained silent, he murmured:

"No, it's not all…"

I looked up quickly; he was not looking at me.

"How did you guess?" He said nothing. "It's true, there's more
to it than that." I moistened my lips. "We quarrelled. Or rather, I
lost my temper and said a lot of things I didn't mean. I packed my
bags and cleared out. She had given me to understand…not in
so many words—when one's lived together for years it's not
necessary. I was certain she didn't mean it, that she wouldn't
dare, she'd be too afraid, and I told her so. Next day, I
remembered I'd left these…these ampoules in a drawer. She
knew they were there. I'd brought them back from the laboratory
because I needed them, and I had explained to her that the effect
of a heavy dose would be lethal. I was a bit worried. I wanted to
go back and get them, but I thought that would give the impression
that I'd taken her remarks seriously. By the third day I was really
worried and made up my mind to go back. When I arrived, she was
dead."

"You poor innocent!"

I looked up with a start. But Snow was not making fun of me. It
seemed to me that I was seeing him now for the first time. His face
was grey, and the deep lines between cheek and nose were evidence
of an unutterable exhaustion: he looked a sick man.

Curiously awed, I asked him:

"Why did you say that?"

"Because it's a tragic story." Seeing that I was upset, he
added, hastily: "No, no, you still don't understand. Of course it's
a terrible burden to carry around, and you must feel like a
murderer, but…there are worse things."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes, really. And I'm almost glad that you refuse to believe me.
Certain events, which have actually happened, are horrible, but
what is more horrible still is what hasn't happened, what has never
existed."

"What are you saying?" I asked, my voice faltering.

He shook his head from side to side.

"A normal man," he said. "What is a normal man? A man who has
never committed a disgraceful act? Maybe, but has he never had
uncontrollable thoughts? Perhaps he hasn't. But perhaps something,
a phantasm, rose up from somewhere within him, ten or thirty years
ago, something which he suppressed and then forgot about, which he
doesn't fear since he knows he will never allow it to develop and
so lead to any action on his part. And now, suddenly, in broad
daylight, he comes across this thing…this thought, embodied,
riveted to him, indestructible. He wonders where he is…Do
you know where he is?"

"Where?"

"Here," whispered Snow, "on Solaris."

"But what does it mean? After all, you and Sartorius aren't
criminals…."

"And you call yourself a psychologist, Kelvin! Who hasn't had,
at some moment in his life, a crazy daydream, an obsession?
Imagine…imagine a fetishist who becomes infatuated with,
let's say, a grubby piece of cloth, and who threatens and entreats
and defies every risk in order to acquire this beloved bit of rag.
A peculiar idea, isn't it? A man who at one and the same time is
ashamed of the object of his desire and cherishes it above
everything else, a man who is ready to sacrifice his life for his
love, since the feeling he has for it is perhaps as overwhelming as
Romeo's feeling for Juliet. Such cases exist, as you know. So, in
the same way, there are things, situations, that no one has dared
to externalize, but which the mind has produced by accident in a
moment of aberration, of madness, call it what you will. At the
next stage, the idea becomes flesh and blood. That's all."

Stupefied, my mouth dry, I repeated:

"That's all?" My head was spinning. "And what about the Station?
What has it got to do with the Station?"

"It's almost as if you're purposely refusing to understand," he
groaned. "I've been talking about Solaris the whole time, solely
about Solaris. If the truth is hard to swallow, it's not my fault.
Anyhow, after what you've already been through, you ought to be
able to hear me out! We take off into the cosmos, ready for
anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death.
Modesty forbids us to say so, but there are times when we think
pretty well of ourselves. And yet, if we examine it more closely,
our enthusiasm turns out to be all sham. We don't want to conquer
the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the
frontiers of the cosmos. For us, such and such a planet is as arid
as the Sahara, another as frozen as the North Pole, yet another as
lush as the Amazon basin. We are humanitarian and chivalrous; we
don't want to enslave other races, we simply want to bequeath them
our values and take over their heritage in exchange. We think of
ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact. This is another lie.
We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need
mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single
world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is.
We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in
quest of a planet, of a civilization superior to our own but
developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the
same time, there is something inside us which we don't like to face
up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which
nevertheless remains, since we don't leave Earth in a state of
primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the
page is turned and that reality is revealed to us—that part
of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in
silence—then we don't like it any more."

I had listened to him patiently.

"But what on earth are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about what we all wanted: contact with another
civilization. Now we've got it! And we can observe, through a
microscope, as it were, our own monstrous ugliness, our folly, our
shame!" His voice shook with rage.

"So…you think it's…the ocean? That the ocean is
responsible for it all? But why? I'm not asking how, I'm simply
asking why? Do you seriously think that it wants to toy with us, or
punish us—a sort of elementary demonomania? A planet
dominated by a huge devil, who satisfies the demands of his satanic
humors by sending succubi to haunt the members of a scientific
expedition…? Snow, you can't believe anything so
absurd!"

He muttered under his breath.

"This devil isn't such a fool as all that…"

I looked at him in amazement. Perhaps what had happened,
assuming that we had experienced it in our right minds, had finally
driven him over the edge? A reaction psychosis?

He was laughing to himself.

"Making your diagnosis? Don't be in too much of a hurry! You've
only been through one ordeal—and that a reasonably mild
one."

"Oh, so the devil had pity on me!"

I was beginning to weary of this conversation.

"What is it you want exactly?" Snow went on. "Do you want me to
tell you what this mass of metamorphic
plasma—
x
-billion tons of metamorphic plasma—is
scheming against us? Perhaps nothing."