Stanislaw Lem: Return from the Stars

She began to laugh.

“But that’s… you think that I keep all these bottles here, in my apartment?”

“You don’t? Where, then?”

“Where they come from, I don’t know. In your day, was there tap water?”

“There was,” I said glumly. There might not have been. Sure! I could have climbed into the rocket straight from the forest. I was furious for a moment, but I calmed down; it was not, after all, her fault.

“There, you see — did you know in which direction the water flowed before it… ?”

“I understand, no need to go on. All right. So it’s a kind of safety measure? Very strange!”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “What do you have there, the white thing under your sweater?”

“A shirt.”

“What is that?”

“You never saw a shirt? Sort of, well, clothing. Made of nylon.”

I rolled up my sleeve and showed her.

“Interesting,” she said.

“It’s a custom,” I said, at a loss. Actually, they had told me at Adapt to stop dressing in the style of a hundred years ago; I didn’t want to. I had to admit, however, that she was right; brit was for me what a shirt was for her. In the final analysis, no one had forced people to wear shirts, but they all had. Evidently, it was the same with brit.

“How long does brit work?” I asked.

She blushed a little.

“You’re in such a hurry. You still know nothing.”

“I didn’t say anything wrong,” I defended myself. “I only wanted to know… Why are you looking at me like that? What’s the matter with you? Nais!”

She got up slowly. She stood behind the armchair.

“How long ago, did you say? A hundred and twenty years?”

“A hundred and twenty-seven. What about it?”

“And were you… betrizated?”

“What is that?”

“You weren’t?”

“I don’t even know what it means. Nais… girl, what’s the matter with you?”

“No, you weren’t,” she whispered. “If you had been, you would know.”

I started toward her. She raised her hands.

“Keep away. No! No! I beg you!”

She retreated to the wall.

“But you yourself said that brit… I’m sitting now. You see, I’m sitting. Calm yourself. Tell me what it is, this bet… or whatever.”

“I don’t know exactly. But everyone is betrizated. At birth.”

“What is it?”

“They put something into the blood, I think.”

“To everyone?”

“Yes. Because… brit… doesn’t work without that. Don’t move!”

“Child, don’t be ridiculous.”

I put out my cigarette.

“I am not, after all, a wild animal. Don’t be angry, but… it seems to me that you’ve all gone a little mad. This brit… well, it’s like handcuffing everyone because someone might turn out to be a thief. I mean, there ought to be a little trust.”

“You’re terrific.” She seemed calmer, but still she did not sit. “Then why were you so indignant before, about my bringing home strangers?”

“That’s something else.”

“I don’t see the difference. You’re sure you weren’t betrizated?”

“I wasn’t.”

“But maybe now? When you returned?”

“I don’t know. They gave me all kinds of shots. Is it so important?”

“It is. They did that? Good.”

She sat down.

“I have a favor to ask you,” I said as calmly as I could. “You must explain to me…”

“What?”

“Your fear. Did you think I would attack you, or what? But that’s ridiculous!”

“No. If one looks at it rationally, no, but — it was overwhelming, you see. Such a shock. I never saw a person who was not…”

“But surely you can’t tell?”

“You can. Oh, you can!”

“How?”

She was silent.

“Nais…”

“And if…”

“What?”

“I’m afraid.”

“To say?”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

“You’d understand if I told you. Betrization, you see, isn’t done by brit. With the brit, it’s only — a side effect… Betrization has to do with something else.” She was pale. Her lips trembled. What a world, I thought, what a world this is!

“I can’t. I’m terribly afraid.”

“Of me?”

“Yes.”

“I swear that…”

“No, no. I believe you, only… no. You can’t understand this.”

“You won’t tell me?”

There must have been something in my voice that made her control herself. Her face became grim. I saw from her eyes the effort it was for her.

“It is… so that… in order that it be impossible to… kill.”

“No! People?”

“Anyone.”

“Animals, too?”

“Animals. Anyone.”

She twisted and untwisted her fingers, not taking her eyes off me, as if with these words she had released me from an invisible chain, as if she had put a knife into my hand, a knife I could stab her with.

“Nais,” I said very quietly. “Nais, don’t be afraid. Really, there’s nothing to fear.”

She tried to smile.

“Listen…”

“Yes?”

“When I said that…”

“Yes?”

“You felt nothing?”

“And what was I supposed to feel?”

“Imagine that you are doing what I said to you.”

“That I am killing? I’m supposed to picture that?”

She shuddered.

“Yes.”

“And now?”

“And you feel nothing?”

“Nothing. But, then, it’s only a thought, and I don’t have the slightest intention…”

“But you can? Right? You really can? No,” she whispered, as if to herself, “you are not betrizated.”

Only now did the meaning of it all hit me, and I understood how it could be a shock to her.

“This is a great thing,” I muttered. After a moment, I added, “But it would have been better, perhaps, had people ceased to do it… without artificial means.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps,” she answered. She drew a deep breath. “You know, now, why I was frightened?”

“Yes, but not completely. Maybe a little. But surely you didn’t think that I…”

“How strange you are! It’s altogether as though you weren’t…” She broke off.

“Weren’t human?”

Her eyelids fluttered.

“I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just that, you see, if it is known that no one can — you know — even think about it, ever, and suddenly someone appears, like you, then the very possibility… the fact that there is one who…”

“I can’t believe that everyone would be — what was it? — ah, betrizated!”

“Why? Everyone, I tell you!”

“No, it’s impossible,” I insisted. “What about people with dangerous jobs? After all, they must…”

“There are no dangerous jobs.”

“What are you saying, Nais? What about pilots? And various rescue workers? And those who fight fire, floods… ?”

“There are no such people,” she said. It seemed to me that I had not heard her right.

“ What?"

“No such people,” she repeated. “All that is done by robots.”

There was silence. It would not be easy for me, I thought, to stomach this new world. And suddenly came a reflection, surprising in that I myself would never have expected it if someone had presented me with this situation purely as a theoretical possibility: it occurred to me that this destruction of the killer in man was a disfigurement.

“Nais,” I said, “it’s already very late. I think I’ll go.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Hold on! A person from Adapt was supposed to meet me at the station. I completely forgot! I couldn’t find him, you understand. So I’ll look for a hotel. There are hotels?”

“There are. Where are you from?”

“Here. I was born here.”

With these words the feeling of the unreality of everything returned, and I was no longer certain either of that city, which existed only within me, or of this spectral one with rooms into which the heads of giants peered, so that for a second I wondered if I might not be on board and dreaming yet another particularly vivid nightmare of my return.