Stanislaw Lem - Return from the Stars

“Could not tolerate that… ?” I repeated his words. “Was it, then, something like a… phobia?”

“I am no psychologist, but I suppose you could call it that. Anyway, this is ancient history.”

“And are there still such robots?”

“Oh yes, they are found on short-range rockets. Did you meet one of them?”

I gave an evasive answer.

“Will you have time now to take care of your business?” He was concerned.

“My business… ?”

Then I remembered that I was supposed to have something to attend to in the city. We parted at the entrance to the station, where he had led me, all the while thanking me for extricating him from a difficult situation.

I wandered about the streets; I went to a realon but left before sitting through half of the ridiculous show, and I rode to Clavestra in the lowest spirits. I sent back the gleeder a kilometer from the villa and went the rest of the way on foot. Everything was in order. They were mechanisms of metal, wire, glass, one could assemble them and disassemble them, I told myself; but I could not shake off the memory of that hall, of the darkness and the distorted voices, that cacophony of despair which held too much meaning, too much of the most ordinary fear. I could tell myself that I was a specialist on that subject, I had tasted it enough, horror at the prospect of sudden annihilation has ceased to be fiction for me, as it was for them, those sensible designers who had organized the whole thing so well: robots took care of their own kind, did so to the very end, and man did not interfere. It was a closed cycle of precision instruments that created, reproduced, and destroyed themselves, and I had needlessly overheard the agony of mechanical death.

I stopped at the top of a hill. The view, in the slanting rays of the sun, was indescribably beautiful. Every now and then a gleeder, gleaming like a black bullet, sped along the ribbon highway, aimed at the horizon, where mountains rose in a bluish outline, softened by the distance. And suddenly I felt that I could not look — as if I did not have the right to look, as if there lay a horrible deception in this, squeezing at my throat. I sat down among the trees, buried my face in my hands; I regretted having returned. When I entered the house a white robot approached me.

“You have a telephone call,” it said confidingly. “Long distance: Eurasia.”

I walked after it quickly. The telephone was in the hall, so that while speaking I could see the garden through the glass door.

“Hal?” came a faraway but clear voice. “It’s Olaf.”

“Olaf… Olaf!” I repeated in a triumphant tone. “Where are you, friend?”

“Narvik.”

“What are you doing? How is it going? You got my letter?”

“Of course. That’s how I knew where to find you.”

A moment of silence.

“What are you doing… ?” I repeated, less certain.

“What is there to do? I’m doing nothing. And you?”

“Did you go to Adapt?”

“I did. But only for a day. I stopped. I couldn’t, you know…”

“I know. Listen, Olaf… I’ve rented a villa here. It might not be… but — listen! Come and stay here!”

He did not answer at once. When he did, there was hesitation in his voice.

“I’d like to come. And I might, Hal, but you know what they told us…”

“I know. But what can they do to us? Anyway, to hell with them. Come on.”

“What would be the point? Think, Hal. It could be…”

“What?”

“Worse.”

“And how do you know that I’m not having a ball here?”

I heard his short laugh, really more a sigh: he laughed so quietly.

“Then what do you want with me there?”

Suddenly an idea hit me.

“Olaf. Listen. It’s a kind of summer resort here. A villa, a pool, gardens. The only problem… but you must know what things are like now, the way they live, right?”

“I have a rough idea.”

The tone said more than the words.

“There you are, then. Now pay attention! Come here. But first get hold of some… boxing gloves. Two pairs. We’ll do some sparring. You’ll see, it’ll be great!”

“Christ! Hal, Where am I going to find you boxing gloves? There probably haven’t been any made for years.”

“So have them made. Don’t tell me it’s impossible to make four stupid gloves. We’ll set up a little ring — we’ll pound each other. We two can, Olaf! You’ve heard about betrizating, I take it?”

“H’m. I’d tell you what I think of it. But not over the phone. Somebody might have delicate ears.”

“Look, come. You’ll do what I said?”

He was silent for a while.

“I don’t know if there’s any sense to it, Hal.”

“All right. Then tell me, while you’re at it, what plans you have. If you have any, then naturally I wouldn’t think of bothering you with my whims.”

“I have none,” he said. “And you?”

“I came here to rest, educate myself, read, but these aren’t plans, just… I simply couldn’t see anything else ahead for me.”

Silence.

“Olaf?”

“It appears that we have got off to an even start,” he muttered. “What the hell. After all, I can leave at any time, if it turns out that…”

“Oh, stop it!” I said impatiently. “There is nothing to discuss. Pack a bag and come. When can you be here?”

“Tomorrow morning. You really want to box?”

“And you don’t?”

He laughed.

“Hell, yes. And for the same reason you do.”

“It’s a deal, then,” I said quickly. “I’ll be expecting you. Take care.”

I went upstairs. I looked through some things I had put in a separate suitcase and found the rope. A large coil. Ropes for a ring. Four posts, some rubber or springs, and we would be set. No referee. We wouldn’t need one.

Then I sat down to the books. But it was as if my head were full of cement. When I had had that feeling in the past, I had chewed my way through the text like a bark beetle through iron-wood. But I had never had this much trouble. In two hours I skimmed through twenty books and could not keep my attention on anything for longer than five minutes. I threw aside even the fairy tales. I decided not to indulge myself. I took what seemed to me the most difficult thing, a monograph on the analysis of metagens, and threw myself at the first equations as if, head lowered, I were charging a stone wall.

Mathematics, however, had certain beneficial properties, particularly for me, because after an hour I understood suddenly, my jaw dropped, I was struck with awe — this Ferret, how had he been able to do it? Even now, going back over the trail that he had blazed, I had moments when I lost my way; step by step I could still manage, but that man must have accomplished it in one leap.

I would have given all the stars to have in my head, for a month, something resembling the contents of his.

The signal sang out dinner, and at the same time something prodded me in the gut, reminding me that I was not alone here. For a second I considered eating upstairs. But shame overcame me. I threw under the bed the awful tight shirt that made me look like an inflated monkey, put on my priceless old loose-fitting sweater, and went down to the dining room. Apart from the exchange of a few trite civilities, there was silence. No conversation. They did not require words. They communicated in glances; she spoke to him with her head, her lashes, with her faint smile. And slowly a cold weight began to grow inside me, I felt my arms hungering, how they longed to seize something, and squeeze, and crush. Why was I so savage? I wondered with despair. Why, instead of thinking about Ferret’s book, about the questions raised by Starck, instead of looking to my own affairs, why did I have to wrestle myself to keep from leering at that girl like a wolf?