Stanislaw Lem - Return from the Stars

“No, doctor. It was the two g’s, you understand.”

“That is possible…”

“Seven years. Seven years of doubled weight. My muscles had to become enlarged, the respiratory, the abdominal, and I know the size of my neck. But otherwise I would have suffocated like a rat. They were working even while I slept. Even in hibernation. Everything weighed twice as much. That was the reason.”

“The others, too? Excuse me for asking, it is my medical curiosity… Yours was the longest expedition there ever was, you know.”

“I know. The others? Olaf is pretty much like me. No doubt it depends on the skeleton; I was always broad. Arder was larger. Over two meters. Yes, Arder… What was I saying? The others — well, I was the youngest and therefore able to adapt better. That at least is what Venturi said… Are you familiar with the work of Janssen?”

“Am I? It is a classic for us, Bregg.”

“Really? That’s funny. He was one lively little doctor… I took seventy-nine g’s for a second and a half for him, did you know that?”

“Are you serious?”

I smiled.

“I have it in writing. But that was a hundred and thirty years ago. Now forty would be too much for me.”

“Bregg, today no one could take twenty!”

“Why? Because of the betrization?”

He was silent. It seemed to me that he knew something but did not want to tell me. I got up.

“Bregg,” he said, “since we are on the subject: be careful.”

“Of what?”

“Of yourself and of others. Progress never comes free. We’ve rid ourselves of a thousand dangers, conflicts, but for that we had to pay. Society has softened, while you are… you can be hard. Do you understand me?”

“I do,” I said, thinking of the man in the restaurant the night before who had laughed but fell silent when I walked up to him.

“Doctor,” I said suddenly, “I just remembered… I met a lion last night. Two lions, in fact. Why did they do nothing to me?”

“There are no predators now, Bregg… Betrization… You met them last night? And what did you do?”

“I scratched their necks,” I said and showed him how. “But that Iliad business, doctor, is an exaggeration. I was badly frightened. What do I owe you?”

“I wouldn’t think of it. And if you ever need…”

“Thank you.”

“But don’t put if off too long,” he added, almost to himself, as I was leaving. Only on the stairs did I realize what that meant: he was nearly ninety.

I went back to the hotel. In the hall was a barber. A robot, of course. I had it cut my hair. I was pretty shaggy, with a lot of hair over the ears. The temples were the grayest. When it was done, it seemed to me that I looked a little less savage. In a melodious voice the robot asked if it should darken the hair.

“No,” I said.

“Aprex?”

“What is that?”

“For wrinkles.”

I hesitated. I felt stupid, but perhaps the doctor had been right.

“Go ahead,” I agreed. It covered my face with a layer of sharp-smelling jelly that hardened into a mask. Afterward I lay under compresses, glad that my face was covered.

I went upstairs; the packages with the liquid clothing were already lying in my room. I stripped and went into the bathroom, where there was a mirror.

Yes. I could strike terror. I had not known that I looked like a circus strongman. Indented pectorals, torso, I was knotted all over. When I lifted my arm and flexed the chest, a scar as wide as the palm of my hand appeared on it. I tried to see the other, near the shoulder blade, for which I had been called a lucky bastard, because if the splinter had gone three centimeters more to the left it would have shattered my spine. I punched the plank of my stomach.

“Animal,” I said to the mirror. I wanted a bath, a real one, not in the ozone wind, and looked forward to the swimming pool at the villa. I decided to dress in one of my new things, but somehow could not part with my trousers. So I put on only the white sweater, although I much preferred my old black one tattered at the elbows, and went to the restaurant.

Half the tables were occupied. I passed through three rooms to reach the terrace; from there I could see the great boulevards, the endless streams of gleeders; under the clouds, like a mountain peak, blue in the distant air, stood the Terminal.

I ordered lunch.

“What will you have?” asked the robot. It wanted to give me a menu.

“It doesn’t matter,” I replied. “A regular lunch.”

It was only when I began to eat that I noticed that the tables around me were vacant. I had automatically sought seclusion. I had not even realized it. I did not know what I was eating. I was no longer certain that what I had decided on was good. A vacation, as if I wanted to reward myself, seeing as no one else had thought of it. The waiter approached noiselessly.

“Mr.Bregg?”

“Yes.”

“You have a visitor — in your room.”

“A visitor?”

I thought at once of Nais. I drank the rest of the dark, bubbling liquid and got up, feeling stares at my back as I left. It would have been nice to saw off about ten centimeters. In my room sat a young woman I had never seen before. A fluffy gray dress, a red whimsy around her arms.

“I am from Adapt,” she said. “I spoke with you today.”

“Ah, so that was you?”

I stiffened a little. What did they want of me now?

She sat down. And I sat down slowly.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine. I went to a doctor today, and he examined me. Everything is in working order. I have rented myself a villa. I want to do a little reading.”

“Very wise. Clavestra is ideal for that. You will have mountains, quiet…”

She knew that it was Clavestra. Were they spying on me, or what? I sat motionless, waiting.

“I brought you… something from us.” She pointed to a small package on the table. “It is our latest thing.” She spoke with an animation that seemed artificial. “Before going to sleep you set this machine, and in the course of a dozen nights or so you learn, in the easiest possible way, without any effort, a great many useful things.”

“Really? That’s good,” I said. She smiled at me. And I smiled, the well-behaved pupil.

“You are a psychologist?”

“Yes. You guessed.”

She hesitated. I saw that she wanted to say something.

“Go ahead.”

“You won’t be angry with me?”

“Why should I be angry?”

“Because… you see… the way you are dressed is a bit…”

“I know. But I like these trousers. Maybe in time…”

“Ah, no, not the trousers. The sweater.”

“The sweater?” I was surprised. “They made it for me today. It’s the latest word in fashion, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Except that you shouldn’t have inflated it. May I?”

“Please,” I said quite softly. She leaned forward in her chair, poked me lightly in the chest with straightened fingers, and let out a faint cry.

“What do you have there?”

“Other than myself, nothing,” I answered with a crooked smile.

She clutched the fingers of her right hand with her left and stood up. Suddenly my calm, invested with a malicious satisfaction, became like ice.

“Why don’t you sit down?”

“But… I’m terribly sorry, I…”

“Forget it. Have you been with Adapt long?”

“It’s my second year.”

“Aha — and your first patient?” I pointed a finger at myself. She blushed a little.

“May I ask you something?”

Her eyelids fluttered. Did she think that I would ask her out?

“Certainly.”

“How do they work it so that the sky is visible at every level of the city?”

She perked up.

“Very simple. Television — that is what they called it, long ago. On the ceilings are screens. They transmit what is above the Earth — the sky, the clouds…”