Stanisław Lem - Solaris

“No. Don’t turn around,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “None of this is your fault, Kris. I know it. Don’t worry.”

I reached out my hand towards her. She escaped to the other side of the cabin and, picking up a whole pile of plates, she said:

“Pity. If they could be broken, I’d smash them, I really would smash all of them!”

For a moment I thought she was actually going to fling them to the ground, but she threw me a keen glance and smiled.

“Don’t be scared, I’m not going to make a scene.”

I woke up in the middle of the night, instantly intent and watchful. I sat up in bed; the room was dark, though a faint light came from the corridor through the cracked-open door. There was a nasty hissing sound that was intensifying, and at the same time there were dull stifled thuds as if something large were thrashing about in the next room. A meteor! came a rapid thought. It’s broken through the armor plating. Someone’s there! There was a prolonged wheezing.

I finally regained my senses. It was the Station, not a rocket; and that awful noise…

I ran into the corridor. The door to the small lab was wide open and the light was on. I hurried inside.

I was struck by a wave of fearful cold. The cabin was filled with vapor that turned my breath to snow. A mass of white flakes were spinning over a body wrapped in a bathrobe that was lying on the floor and tossing weakly. I could barely see her through the icy cloud. I rushed up to her, picked her up. The robe burned my hands; she was rasping. I ran back into the corridor, past a series of doors. I no longer felt the cold, except that the breath coming out of her mouth in clouds of condensation scorched my neck like fire.

I laid her on the table, tore open the robe over her breasts. For a moment I looked at her drawn, trembling face; the blood had frozen on her open lips, covering them with a dark coating. Tiny ice crystals glittered on her tongue…

Liquid oxygen. There was liquid oxygen in the shop, in Dewar flasks. As I picked her up I’d felt broken glass underfoot. How much could she have swallowed? It made no difference. Her trachea was burned, and her throat and lungs; liquid oxygen is more caustic than any concentrated acid. Her breathing, raucous and dry as the sound of paper being torn, was growing shallower. Her eyes were closed. It was the death throes.

I looked at the large glass-paneled cabinets with instruments and medications. A tracheotomy? An intubation? Except she had no lungs! They were burned up. Medication? There were so many different kinds! The shelves were filled with colored bottles and packets. The wheezing sound filled the whole room; vapor was still coming from her open mouth.

Hot water bottles…

I started looking for them, but before I found any I darted across to the other cabinet and began rifling through boxes of ampoules. Now I found a needle, which I fumbled to put in the sterilizer, my fingers stiff with cold and clumsy. I hammered furiously on the lid of the sterilizer, but I couldn’t even feel it, the only sensation was a slight tingling. She made a louder wheezing sound. I hurried over to her. Her eyes were open.

“Harey!”

It wasn’t even a whisper. I couldn’t speak. Her face was alien, as if made of plaster; it brought me up sharp. Her ribs were twitching under her white skin; her hair, wet from melting snow, lay scattered around her head. She was looking at me.

“Harey!”

I was unable to say any more. I stood there like a lump of wood with those unwieldy foreign hands of mine. My feet, lips, eyelids were starting to sting ever more painfully, but I barely felt it. A droplet of blood that had melted in the heat ran down her cheek, leaving a diagonal mark. Her tongue quivered and disappeared; she was still rasping.

I took her wrist; she had no pulse. I pulled apart the lapels of the robe and placed my ear against the fearfully cold body right beneath her breast. Through a crackling roar like a fire I heard a pit-a-pat, a galloping sound too fast to count. I stood there leaning over her, my eyes closed, when something touched my head. She had dug her fingers into my hair. I looked into her eyes.

“Kris,” she croaked. I grasped her hand in mine; she squeezed it back, almost crushing it. Consciousness was ebbing from her horribly distorted face; the whites of her eyes flashed beneath her eyelids, there was a snort from her throat and her whole body was shaken by convulsions. I was barely able to hold onto her as she hung over the side of the table. She knocked her head against the side of a porcelain funnel. I pulled her up and pressed her to the table; with each new spasm she tugged away from me. I immediately became drenched in sweat, my legs felt like cotton wool. When the convulsions eased off I tried to lie her down again. She was making a squeaking sound as she gasped for air. All of a sudden, Harey’s eyes lit up in that terrible bloody face.

“Kris,” she gasped, “How much… how much longer, Kris?”

She began to choke; foam appeared on her lips and the convulsions began again. I held her down with all the strength I had left. She collapsed on her back so abruptly her teeth clattered; she was panting.

“No, no, no,” she exclaimed rapidly with each outbreath; each one seemed it would be the last. But the convulsions returned again and once more she writhed in my arms, in the short pauses drawing in air with such an effort her ribcage bulged. Finally her eyelids dropped half way over her open, unseeing eyes. She stopped moving. I thought it was the end. I didn’t even try to wipe the pink foam from her lips. I stood over her, leaning forward, hearing some great distant bell, and waited for her last breath so that after it I could crumple onto the floor; but she kept on breathing, only slightly wheezing, ever quieter, and the tip of her breast, which had almost stopped quivering, began to move to the quick rhythm of a working heart. I stood hunched over her, and her face began to regain color. I still didn’t understand a thing. The palms of both my hands grew moist, and I felt I was going deaf, that something soft and springy was filling my ears; I could still hear the ringing bell, which now sounded hollow, like with a broken heart.

She raised her eyelids and our eyes met.

“Harey,” I tried to say, but I seemed to have no mouth. My face was a heavy lifeless mask, and all I could do was look.

Her eyes ran around the room. Her head moved. Everything was completely quiet. Behind me, in another, far-off world, water was dripping regularly from a tap that hadn’t been properly turned off. She rose on one elbow. She sat up. I drew back. She was watching me.

“So…,” she said. “So…? It didn’t… work? Why not…? Why are you looking at me like that…?”

And suddenly, with a terrible scream:

“Why are you looking at me like that!!”

Silence fell. She looked at her hands. Wiggled her fingers.

“Is this me…?” she asked.

“Harey,” I said without breath, merely moving my lips. She raised her head.

“Harey…?” she repeated. She slid down slowly onto the floor and stood up. She staggered, regained her balance, took a few steps. All this she did in a kind of daze, looking at me but seemingly without seeing me.

“Harey,” she repeated slowly one more time. “But … I… I’m not Harey. And who… am I? Harey? And you, you?!”

Suddenly her eyes opened wide, flashed, and the shadow of a smile, of utter astonishment, lit up her face.

“Maybe you too? Kris! Maybe you too?!”

I said nothing, leaning back against a locker, where fear had driven me.

She dropped her arms.

“No,” she said. “No, because you’re afraid. Listen to me, though, I can’t do it. This isn’t right. I didn’t know anything about it. I still don’t get it even now. I mean, surely it’s not possible?” She clenched her fists so tight they turned white, and pressed them to her chest. “I don’t know anything except, except Harey! Do you think I’m pretending maybe? I’m not pretending, cross my heart, I’m not.”