Stanislaw Lem - Memoirs of a Space Traveler

I shook my head. “You can try, but I doubt that even one… No, impossible.”

“But why?” he asked, and for the first time his voice trembled. “You think it is not… worth anything to anyone? That no one will want it? How can that be?”

“That’s how it is,” I said.

“Let’s not be hasty,” he implored. “Tichy, everything is still in my hands. I can adapt, alter… I can endow the soul with artificial senses. Of course, that would bar it from eternity, but if the senses are so important to them… the ears, the eyes…”

“And what would those eyes see?” I asked.

He was silent.

“The freezing of Earth… the collapse of the galaxies… the death of the stars in black infinity, isn’t that so?” I said slowly.

He was silent.

“People do not want immortality,” I continued. “They simply do not want to die. They want to live, Decantor. They want to feel the ground beneath their feet, see the clouds overhead, love other people, be with them, and think. Nothing more. Everything that has been said beyond that is a lie. An unconscious lie. I doubt that many would want to hear you out as patiently as I have. Don’t even think of getting customers.”

Decantor stood motionless for a moment, staring at the white package in front of him on the desk. Suddenly he picked it up and, with a slight nod to me, headed for the door.

“Decantor!” I cried. He stopped at the threshold. “What are you going to do with that?”

“Nothing,” he answered coldly.

“Please… come back. One moment more. We can’t leave it like this.”

Gentlemen, I do not know whether he was a great scientist, but a great scoundrel he definitely was. I will not describe the haggling that followed. I had to do it. I knew that if I let him go, even if I found out later that he had lied to me and everything he said had been a fiction from beginning to end, even so, at the bottom of my soul, my flesh-and-blood soul, would burn the thought that somewhere, in some junk-filled desk, in a drawer stuffed with papers, a human mind might be resting, the living consciousness of the unfortunate woman he had killed. And, as if killing her were not enough, he had bestowed upon her the most terrible thing, the most terrible, I repeat, for nothing can compare with the horror of being condemned to solitude for all eternity. The word, of course, is beyond our comprehension. When you return home, try lying down in a dark room, so that no sound or ray of light reaches you, and close your eyes and imagine that you will go on like that, in utter silence, without any, without even the slightest change, for a day and night, and then for another day; imagine that weeks, months, years, even centuries will go by. Imagine, furthermore, that your brain has been subjected to a treatment that makes escape into madness impossible. The thought of a person condemned to such torment, in comparison with which all the images of hell are a trifle, spurred me during our grim bargaining. I intended to destroy the box, of course. The sum he asked — gentlemen, let’s skip the details. I will say this much: all my life I have considered myself a skinflint. If I doubt that today, it is because… but enough. In short: it was not a payment, it was everything I had at the time. Money… yes. We counted it. Then he told me to turn out the light. In the darkness there was first a tearing of paper; suddenly, on a square white background (the cotton lining of the box) there appeared, like a lambent jewel, a faint glow. As I grew accustomed to the darkness, it seemed to shine with a stronger, blue light. Then, feeling his uneven, heavy breathing on my neck, I leaned over, grasped the hammer I had ready, and with a single blow —

Gentlemen, I believe he was telling the truth. Because as I struck my hand failed me, and I only glanced the oval crystal slightly… but even so it went out. In a split second something occurred like a microscopic, noiseless explosion; a myriad of violet dust motes whirled as if in panic and disappeared. The room became pitch-dark. Decantor said in a hollow voice:

“You needn’t hit it again, Mr. Tichy… The deed is done.”

He took it from my hands, and I believed him then, for I had visible proof. Besides, I knew. How, I could not say. I turned on the light, and we looked at each other, blinded, like two criminals. He stuffed both pockets of his overcoat with the bank notes and left without a word.

I never saw him again and do not know what became of him — of the inventor of the immortal soul that I killed.

Only once did I see the man I am going to talk about. You would shudder at the sight of him. He was a hunchbacked freak of indeterminate age, with a face that seemed loose, so full of wrinkles and folds was its skin. In addition one of his neck muscles was shorter than the other and kept his head to one side, as if he had started out to look at his own hump but changed his mind in the middle. I say nothing new in asserting that intelligence rarely goes hand in hand with beauty, but he, the very image of deformity, arousing revulsion more than pity, should certainly have been a genius. Though even as a genius he would have frightened people by appearing in their midst. Now then, Zazul… His name was Zazul. I had heard about his horrible experiments a long time before. The issue was something of a cause célèbre in its day, thanks to the press. The Antivivisection League brought an action against him, but nothing came of it. He wriggled out of it somehow. He was a professor, but in name only; he could not lecture because he stuttered. He would in fact lose his voice whenever he grew excited, which happened frequently. He did not come to me, no. He was not that sort. He would rather have died than turn to anyone. What happened was that I lost my way in the woods during an excursion outside of town. I had actually been enjoying this until suddenly it began to rain. I thought I’d wait it out under a tree, but the rain did not let up. The sky clouded over completely and I decided to look for shelter.

Running from tree to tree, and soaked to the skin, I came out onto a gravel path, which led to a road long unused and overgrown with weeds. The road went to an estate surrounded by a wall. On the gate, once painted green but now rusty, hung a wood sign with the barely legible inscription BEWARE OF THE DOG. I was not eager to encounter a vicious animal, but with the rain I had no choice; so, cutting a hefty stick from a nearby bush to arm myself, I tackled the gate. I say “tackled” because I had to strain every muscle before it opened, finally, with an infernal creaking. I found myself in a garden so choked with weeds that it was hard to tell where the paths were. Far in the rear, behind trees swaying in the rain, stood a high, dark house with a steep roof. Three upstairs windows, covered by white shades, were lit. It was still early, but darkening clouds scudded across the sky. At forty or fifty paces from the house I noticed two rows of trees flanking the approach to the veranda. White cedars, graveyard cedars. The occupant of this house, I thought, must have a gloomy disposition. I saw no dog, however, despite the warning on the gate. I went up the steps and, partly shielded from the rain by the lintel, rang the bell. The tinkle within was answered by a dead silence. After a long while I rang again, with the same result; so I began to knock, then pounded more and more vigorously. Only then did I hear shuffling steps come from the interior of the house and an unpleasant, raspy voice ask: “Who’s there?”

I gave my name, in the faint hope that it might not be unknown. The person seemed to deliberate. Finally, a chain rattled, heavy bolts were pushed aside, and there, in the light of a chandelier high above the hallway, stood a near-dwarf. I recognized him, although I had seen his picture only once — I forget where, but the picture would have been hard to forget. The man was almost bald. On the side of his skull, above the ear, ran a bright-red scar like a saber gash. Gold pince-nez sat crookedly on his nose. He blinked as if he had just emerged from the dark. I apologized, using the formulas customary in such circumstances, then fell silent. He remained in front of me, as if not intending to let me one step farther into that large, dark, silent house.