Stanislaw Lem - Return from the Stars

“How many pilots were there besides you?”

“On the Prometheus , five.”

“How many came back?”

“Olaf Staave and myself. I know what you’re thinking, doctor — that this was heroism. I, too, thought that way once, reading books about such people. But it isn’t so. Do you hear? If I could have, I would have left Arder and returned at once, but I couldn’t. He would not have returned, either. None of us would have. Including Gimma…”

“Why do you protest so much?” he asked softly.

“Because there is a difference between heroism and necessity. I did what anyone would have done. Doctor, to understand it you would have had to be there. A man is a bubble of fluid. All it takes is a defocalized drive or a demagnetized field, vibrations are set up, and in an instant the blood coagulates. Bear in mind that I’m not talking about outside causes, such as meteors, but only about malfunctions, defects. The least damned thing, a burned-out filament in the transmitter — and that’s it. If people were to let one another down under such conditions, the expeditions would amount to suicide. You understand?” I closed my eyes for a second. “Doctor — they don’t fly now? How can that be?”

“You want to fly?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you. None of us would have flown had he known. What it is like, no one knows. No one who wasn’t there. We were a group of mortally frightened, desperate animals.”

“How do you reconcile this with what you said a moment ago?”

“I don’t. That is how it was. We were afraid. Doctor, while I was orbiting that sun, waiting for Arder, I conjured up various people and spoke with them. I spoke for myself and for them, and toward the end I believed that they were there with me. Each saved himself the best way he knew how. Think about it, doctor. Here I sit before you. I’ve rented myself a villa, I’ve bought an old car; I want to leam, read, swim; but I have all that inside me. That space, that silence, and how Venturi cried for help, and I, instead of saving him, went into full reverse!”

“Why?”

“I was piloting the Prometheus ; his pile broke down. He could have blown us all up. It did not blow up; it would not have blown up. Perhaps we would have had time to pull him out, but I did not have the right to risk it. Then, with Arder, it was the other way around. I wanted to save him, but Gimma ordered me in, because he was afraid that we would both die.”

“Bregg… tell me, what did you all expect of us? Of Earth?”

“I have no idea. I never thought about it. It was like someone talking about the hereafter or heaven: it would come, but none of us could picture it. Doctor — enough. Let’s not talk about it. I did want to ask you one thing. This betrization… what exactly is it?”

“What do you know about it?”

I told him, but said nothing of how or from whom I had acquired my knowledge.

“Yes,” he said, “that is more or less so, in the popular conception.”

“And I… ?”

“The law makes an exception in your case, because the betrization of adults can affect the health and even be dangerous. Besides which, it is considered — rightly, in my opinion — that you have passed a test… of moral attitude. And, in any event, there are so few of you.”

“Doctor, one more thing. You mentioned women. Why did you say that to me? But perhaps I am taking up too much of your time.”

“No, you’re not. Why did I say that? Who can a man be close to, Bregg? To his parents. His children. Friends. A woman. You have neither parents nor children. You cannot have friends.”

“Why?”

“I was not thinking of your comrades, although I don’t know if you would want to be constantly in their company, to remember…”

“God, no! Never!”

“And so? You know two eras. In the first you spent your youth, and the second you will get to know soon enough. If we include those ten years, your experience cannot be compared with that of people your age. You cannot be on an equal footing with them. What then? Are you to live among old people? That leaves women, Bregg. Only women.”

“Perhaps just one,” I muttered.

“Ah, just one is difficult nowadays.”

“How so?”

“Ours is a period of prosperity. Translated into the language of sexual matters this means: arbitrariness. Because you cannot acquire love or women for… money. Material factors have ceased to exist here.”

“And this you call arbitrariness? Doctor!”

“Yes. No doubt you think — since I spoke of buying love — that I meant prostitution, whether concealed or in the open. No. That now belongs to the distant past. Once, success used to attract a woman. A man could impress her with his salary, his professional qualifications, his social position. In an egalitarian society that is not possible. With one or two exceptions. If, for example, you were a realist…”

“I am a realist.”

The doctor smiled.

“The word has another meaning now. A realist is an actor appearing in the real. Have you been to the real?”

“No.”

“Take in a couple of melodramas and you will understand what the criteria for sexual selection are today. The most important thing is youth. That is why everyone struggles for it so much. Wrinkles and gray hair, especially when premature, evoke the same kind of feelings as leprosy did, centuries ago…”

“But why?”

“It is hard for you to understand. But arguments based on reason are powerless against prevailing customs. You fail to appreciate how many factors, once decisive in the erotic sphere, have vanished. Nature abhors a vacuum; other factors had to take their place. Consider, for example, something you have become accustomed to, so accustomed that you no longer see the exceptional nature of the phenomenon: risk. It does not exist any more, Bregg. A man cannot impress a woman with heroics, with reckless deeds, and yet literature, art, our whole culture for centuries was nourished by this current: love in the face of adversity. Orpheus went to Hades for Eurydice. Othello killed for love. The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet… Today there is no tragedy. Not even the possibility of it. We eliminated the hell of passion, and then it turned out that in the same sweep, heaven, too, had ceased to be. Everything is now lukewarm, Bregg.”

“Lukewarm?”

“Yes. Do you know what even the unhappiest lovers do? They behave sensibly. No impetuosity, no rivalry…”

“You mean to say all that has disappeared?” I asked. For the first time I felt a kind of superstitious dread of this world. The old doctor was silent.

“Doctor, it’s not possible. Really?”

“Yes, really. And you must accept it, Bregg, like air, like water. I said that it is difficult to have just one woman. For a lifetime it is practically impossible. The average length of a marriage is roughly seven years. And that represents progress. Half a century ago, it was less than four…”

“Doctor, I don’t want to take up your time. What do you advise me to do?”

“What I mentioned before: restore the original color of your hair. It sounds trivial, I know. But it is important. I am embarrassed to be giving you such advice. Embarrassed not for myself. But what can I… ?”

“Thank you. Really. One last thing. Tell me, how do I look out on the street? To the people on the street? What is there about me… ?”

“Bregg, you are Different. First, there is your size. Something out of the Iliad. Antediluvian proportions. It could even be an opportunity, although you know, don’t you, the fate of those who are too different?”

“I know.”

“You are a little too big. I do not remember such people even in my youth. You look now like a very tall man dressed terribly, but it is not that the clothes hang badly on you, it is just because you are so incredibly well muscled. Before the voyage, too?”