Stanisław Lem - Solaris

“That’s good,” I put in. “It even explains why these peo… these formations have appeared and not others. What’s been selected are the most enduring memory traces, those most isolated from all the others, though naturally no such trace can be completely separated, and in the course of being ‘copied’ the remains of other traces that happen to be in the vicinity are, or can be, included. As a result, the newcomer sometimes shows more knowledge than could be possessed by the real person whose reproduction they’re supposed to be…”

“Kelvin!” said Snaut once again. I was struck by the fact that only he was irked by my careless words. Sartorius seemed unconcerned by them. Could this mean that his guest was by nature less intelligent than Snaut’s? For a split second I imagined some cretinous dwarf at the side of the learned Dr. Sartorius.

“Indeed, we have observed such a thing,” said the man himself. “Now, as concerns the motivation for the appearance of G-formations… The first and as it were natural thought is that an experiment is being conducted upon us. Yet it would not be a terribly impressive one. When we perform an experiment we learn from the results, in particular from our mistakes, so when we repeat it we introduce corrections… Yet there is no question of that here. The same G-formations reappear… unimproved… with no additional protections against our… attempts to get rid of them…”

“In a word, there’s no cycle of action with a corrective reflex loop, as Dr. Snaut would term it,” I remarked. “What does that mean?”

“Only that as an experiment it would be shoddy work, which in fact is rather unlikely. The ocean is… precise. This is manifest in the double-layered construction of the G-formations, for a start. To a certain point they behave like the real…their real…”

He was unable to finish.

“Originals,” Snaut suggested quickly.

“Yes, originals. But where the situation exceeds the normal possibilities of the, um, original, there occurs something like a ‘disconnection of consciousness’ in the G-formation and another kind of action, of an inhuman nature, is directly observed…”

“That’s true,” I said, “but in this way all we’re doing is compiling a catalogue of behaviors of these… these formations, nothing more. This is utterly futile.”

“I’m not so certain of that,” protested Sartorius. All at once I realized what it was about him that irritated me so: he didn’t speak but gave speeches, as if he were taking part in a conference at the Institute. Evidently this was the only way he knew how.

“The matter of individuality arises here. The ocean is entirely devoid of such a concept. This has to be the case. It seems to me, gentlemen, it is completely oblivious to what for us is the most, um, troublesome, shocking aspect of the experiment, that it lies beyond the boundaries of its comprehension.”

“You think it’s unintentional…?” I asked. This assertion took me aback, but after a moment’s reflection I admitted it couldn’t be dismissed.

“That’s right. I don’t believe in any villainy, malice, a desire to hurt us as painfully as possible… Unlike Dr. Snaut.”

“I don’t attribute human emotions to it at all,” said Snaut, speaking up for the first time, “but tell us, how do you explain these perpetual returns?”

“Perhaps they set up some kind of device that operates over and over again, like a gramophone record,” I said, not without a hidden urge to needle Sartorius.

“Now then, gentlemen, let us not become distracted,” the latter declared in his nasal voice. “That is not all I wished to say. Under normal conditions I would regard the submission of even an interim report on my research as premature, but in light of this particular situation I shall make an exception. I have the impression, I repeat, I have the impression, no more for the moment, that Dr. Kelvin’s conjecture is correct. I am referring to his hypothesis about a neutrino-based structure. Such structures are known to us only theoretically, we were not aware they could be stabilized. This opens up a specific opportunity, since the destruction of the force field that provides permanence for the structure…”

For some time I’d been noticing that the dark object covering the screen at Sartorius’s end was shifting; at the very top of the image a bright gap appeared and something pink could be seen moving there slowly. Now the object suddenly slipped off.

“Go away! Go away!!” came an ear-splitting shout from Sartorius. In the unexpectedly lit-up screen, between the doctor’s arms, clad in puffy oversleeves of the kind worn in laboratories, that were wrestling with something, a large golden disk-like object flashed into view and everything went dark before I’d realized the golden circle was a straw hat…

“Snaut?” I said after taking a deep breath.

“Yes, Kelvin,” the cybernetician’s tired voice replied. At that moment I suddenly felt that I liked him. I truly preferred not to know who his companion was. “We’ve had enough for the moment, no?”

“I think you’re right,” I replied. “Listen, if you can, swing by downstairs or to my cabin, OK?” I added in a hurry before he hung up.

“All right,” he said. “Though I don’t know when it’ll be.”

And so ended the discussion of the problem.

In the middle of the night I was woken by a light. I propped myself up on my elbow, covering my eyes with my other hand. Harey was wrapped in the bedsheet; she was sitting at the foot of the bed, hunched over, her hair falling across her face. Her shoulders were shaking. She was crying soundlessly.

“Harey!”

She curled up even more.

“What’s wrong? Harey…”

I sat up on the bed, still not entirely awake, slowly disengaging from the nightmare that had been stifling me a moment ago. The girl was trembling. I put my arms around her. She pushed me away with her elbow and hid her face.

“Darling.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Harey, for goodness’ sake, what is it?”

I saw her quivering, tear-stained face. Big childlike teardrops were rolling down her cheeks; they glistened in the dimple on her chin and fell onto the sheet.

“You don’t want me.”

“Where did you get that idea!”

“I heard.”

I could feel my whole face stiffening.

“What did you hear? You misunderstood, it was only…”

“No. No. You were saying it isn’t me. That I should go away. I would, God I would, but I can’t. I don’t know what it is. I wanted to and I can’t. I’m so, I’m so bad!”

“Come on, kid!”

I snatched her up, pulled her to myself as hard as I could, everything was falling apart. I kissed her hands, her wet salty fingers, I repeated entreaties, oaths, I apologized, I said it was a stupid nasty dream. She gradually calmed down. She stopped crying. Her eyes were huge, somnambulistic. They dried. She turned her head away.

“No,” she said, “don’t say all that, there’s no need. You’re not the same towards me either…”

“ I’m not!”

It came out like a groan.

“That’s right. You don’t want me. I felt it the whole time. I pretended not to see it. I thought I was maybe just imagining it or something. But no. You’re behaving… differently. You don’t take me seriously. It was a dream, that’s true, but you were dreaming me. You called me by my name. You were disgusted. Why? Why?!”

I knelt in front of her and put my arms around her knees.

“Come on now, kid.”

“I don’t want you to talk like that. I don’t want it, you hear? I’m not a kid. I’m…”

She burst out sobbing and fell face down on the bed. I stood up. Cool air blew from the air vents with a faint rustle. I was cold. I threw on a bath robe, sat on the bed and touched her shoulder.