Stanislaw Lem - Return from the Stars

“What is the matter?” she asked quietly.

“Nothing.”

She took me by the arm.

“Come.”

A couple passed us and vanished in the shadows. I followed her. There, in the darkness, it had seemed that anything was possible, but when it grew lighter, my outburst of a moment before — which was supposed to have been in reprisal for an insult — became merely amusing. I felt that I was walking into something false, false as the danger had been, the wizardry, everything — and I walked on. No anger, no hatred, nothing. I did not care. I found myself among high-hanging lights and felt this huge, heavy presence of mine, which made my every step by her side grotesque. But she seemed unaware of this. She walked along a rampart, behind which stood rows of gleeders. I wanted to stay behind, but she slid her hand down my arm and grasped my hand. I would have had to tear it away, becoming even more comical — an image of astronautical virtue in the clutches of Potiphar’s wife. I climbed in after her, the machine trembled and took off. It was my first trip in a gleeder, and I understood now why they had no windows. From the inside they were entirely transparent, as if made of glass.

We traveled a long time, in silence. The buildings of the city center gave way to bizarre forms of suburban architecture — under small artificial suns, immersed in vegetation, lay structures with flowing lines, or inflated into odd pillows, or winged, so that the division between the interior of a home and its surroundings was lost; these were products of a phantasmagoria, of tireless attempts to create without repeating old forms. The gleeder left the wide runway, shot through a darkened park, and came to rest by stairs folded like a cascade of glass; walking up them, I saw an orangery spread out beneath my feet.

The heavy gate opened soundlessly. A huge hall enclosed by a high gallery, pale pink shields of lamps neither supported nor suspended; in the sloping walls, windows that seemed to look out into a different space, niches containing not photographs, not dolls, but Aen herself, enormous, directly ahead — Aen in the arms of a dark man who kissed her, above the undulating staircase; Aen in the white, endless shimmer of a dress; and, to the side, Aen bent over flowers, lilies as large as her face. Walking behind her, I saw her again in another window, smiling girlishly, alone, the light trembling on her auburn hair.

Green steps. A suite of white rooms. Silver steps. Corridors from end to end, and in them, slow, incessant movement, as if the space were breathing; the walls slid back silently, making way wherever the woman before me directed her steps. One might think that an imperceptible wind were rounding off the intersections of the galleries, sculpturing them, and that everything I had seen so far were only a threshold, an introduction, a vestibule. Through a room, illuminated from without by the most delicate veining of ice, so white that even the shadows in it seemed milky, we entered a smaller room — after the pure radiance of the other, its bronze was like a shout. There was nothing here but a mysterious light from a source that seemed to be inverted, so that it shone on us and our faces from below; she made a motion of the hand, it dimmed; she stepped to the wall and with a few gestures conjured from it a swelling that immediately began to open out to make a kind of wide double bed — I knew enough about topology to appreciate the research that must have gone into the line of the headrest alone.

“We have a guest,” she said, pausing. From the open paneling a low table emerged, all set, and ran to her like a dog. The large lights went out when, over a niche with armchairs — I cannot describe what sort of armchairs they were — she gestured for a small lamp to appear, and the wall obeyed. She seemed to have had enough of these budding, blooming pieces of furniture; she leaned across the table and asked, not looking in my direction:

“Blar?”

“All right,” I said. I asked no questions; I could not help being a savage, but at least I could be a silent savage.

She handed me a tall cone with a tube in it; it glittered like a ruby but was soft, as though I had touched the fuzzy skin of a fruit. She took one herself. We sat down. Uncomfortably soft, like sitting on a cloud. The liquid had a taste of unknown fresh fruits, with tiny lumps that unexpectedly and amusingly burst on the tongue.

“Is it good?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Perhaps this was a ritual drink. For example, for the chosen ones; or, on the contrary, to pacify the especially dangerous. But I had decided to ask no questions.

“It’s better when you sit.”

“Why?”

“You’re awfully large.”

“That I know.”

“You work at being rude.”

“No. It comes to me naturally.”

She began to laugh, quietly.

“I am also witty,” I said. “All sorts of talents.”

“You’re different,” she said. “No one talks like that. Tell me, how is it? What do you feel?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re pretending. Or perhaps you lied — no, that isn’t possible. You wouldn’t have been able to…”

“Jump?”

“I wasn’t thinking of that.”

“Of what, then?”

Her eyes narrowed.

“You don’t know?”

“Ah, that!” I said. “And isn’t that done any more?”

“It is, but not like that.”

“I do it so well?”

“No, certainly not… but it was as if you had wanted to…” She did not finish.

“To what?”

“You know. I felt it.”

“I was angry,” I confessed.

“Angry!” she said contemptuously. “I thought that… I don’t know what I thought. No one would dare to, you know.”

I began to smile a little.

“And you liked it.”

“You don’t understand a thing. This is a world without fear, but you, one can be afraid of you.”

“You want more?” I asked.

Her lips parted, again she looked at me as at an imaginary beast.

“I do.”

She moved toward me. I took her hand, placed it against my own, flat — her fingers barely reached beyond my palm.

“What a hard hand you have,” she said.

“It’s from the stars. They’re sharp-edged. And now say: What large teeth you have.”

She smiled.

“Your teeth are quite ordinary.”

Then she lifted my hand, and was so careful doing it that I remembered the encounter with the lion, but instead of feeling offended I smiled, because it was awfully stupid.

She got up, stood over me, poured herself a drink from a small dark bottle, and drank it down.

“Do you know what that is?” she asked, screwing up her face as if the liquid burned. She had enormous lashes, no doubt false. Actresses always have false lashes.

“No.”

“You won’t tell anyone?”

“No.”

“Perto.”

“Well,” I said noncommittally.

She opened her eyes.

“I saw you before. You were walking with a horrible old man, and then you came back alone.”

“That was the son of a young colleague of mine,” I replied. The odd thing was, it was pretty much the truth.

“You attract attention — do you know?”

“What can I do?”

“Not only because you’re so big. You walk differently — and you look around as though you…”

“What?”

“Were on your guard.”

“Against what?”

She did not answer. Her expression changed. Breathing more heavily, she examined her own hand. The fingers trembled.

“Now…” she said softly and smiled, though not at me. Her smile became inspired, the pupils dilated, engulfing the irises, she leaned back slowly until her head was on the gray pillow, the auburn hair fell loose, she gazed at me in a kind of jubilant stupor.