Stanisław Lem - Solaris

“You’re talking about yourself,” I said, my head lowered. “I… I love her.”

“Who? Your memory.”

“No. Her. I told you what she tried to do. There’s many a… real person wouldn’t do that.”

“You admit it yourself when you say—”

“Don’t catch me in my words.”

“All right. So she loves you. And you want to love her. That’s not the same thing.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Kelvin, I’m sorry, but you’re the one who brought up your private affairs. You don’t love her. You do love her. She’s prepared to give up her life. You, too. It’s all very moving, very beautiful, sublime, whatever. But there’s no room for any of that here. No room. Understand? No, you don’t want to understand. You refuse to understand. Forces beyond our control have involved you in a cyclical process of which she is a part. A phase. A repeating rhythm. If she were… if you were being pursued by something hideous that was prepared to do anything for you, you’d not hesitate to get rid of it. Right?”

“Right.”

“Then, then maybe that’s exactly why she isn’t hideous! Does that tie your hands? That’s what it’s about, that your hands should be tied!”

“One more hypothesis to add to the million others in the library. Come off it, Snaut, she’s… no. I don’t want to talk about this with you.”

“All right. You started it. But just remember she’s basically a mirror reflecting part of your brain. If she’s wonderful, it’s because your memories are wonderful. You provided the recipe. A cyclical process, don’t forget!”

“So what do you want from me? You want me… you want me to get rid of her? I already asked you: why should I do that? You didn’t answer.”

“Then I’ll answer you now. I didn’t ask for this conversation. I didn’t go poking around in your business. I’m not ordering or forbidding you to do anything, and I wouldn’t even if I could. It was you, you came here and laid everything out, and do you know why? No? So as to get it off your chest. Dump it on someone else. I know that burden, my friend! That’s right, don’t interrupt! I’m not standing in your way at all, but you, you want me to stand in your way. If I presented obstacles, maybe you’d smash my head in, but then at least you’d be dealing with me, with someone made of the same flesh and blood as yourself, and you’d feel human too. But this way… you can’t handle it and that’s why you’re having this discussion with me… and in fact with yourself! You forgot to mention you’d double up in pain if she were to suddenly vanish. No, don’t say any more…”

“You’ve got a nerve! Out of simple loyalty I came to let you know that I intend to leave the Station with her,” I said, repulsing his attack, though it sounded unconvincing even to me. Snaut shrugged.

“It’s quite possible you need to stick to that story. If I said anything at all in this business, it’s only because you’re rising higher and higher, and a fall from high up, as I’m sure you understand… Come up to Sartorius’s tomorrow morning around nine… Will you?”

“To Sartorius’s?” I replied in surprise. “He doesn’t let anyone in; you said he can’t even be reached on the phone.”

“He’s gotten it together now somehow or other. We don’t talk about it, you know. You’re… that’s a whole other matter. Well, never mind that. You’ll come tomorrow?”

“I will,” I murmured. I stared at Snaut. His left hand was hidden as if by chance behind the door of a locker. When had it opened? It must have been some time ago, except that in the heat of the conversation, which I’d found so onerous, I’d not paid any attention to it. It looked so unnatural… as if… he were hiding something there. Or as if someone had a hold of his hand. I moistened my lips.

“Snaut, what is it?”

“Go now,” he said quietly and very calmly. “Go.”

I went, closing the door behind me in the remains of the red glow. Harey was sitting on the floor ten yards away, right by the wall. She jumped up when she saw me.

“You see…?” she said, looking at me with shining eyes. “It worked, Kris. I’m so pleased. Perhaps… Perhaps it’ll get better and better…”

“I’m sure it will,” I answered distractedly. We walked back to our cabin, while I puzzled over that stupid locker. So he was concealing…? And that entire conversation…? My cheeks started to burn so badly I rubbed them despite myself. Lord, this was madness. And what had we actually decided? Nothing? Oh right, tomorrow morning…

Suddenly I was overcome by fear almost as powerful as the previous night. My encephalogram. A complete recording of all my cerebral processes, converted into the oscillations of a bundle of rays, to be sent down below. Into the depths of that elusive, boundless monster. How did he put it: “If she vanished, you’d suffer terribly, right?” An encephalogram is a total recording. Including subconscious processes. What if I want her to disappear, to perish? Otherwise why would I have been so horrified when she survived that terrible attempt? Can a person be responsible for his own subconscious? If I’m not responsible for it, then who could be…? What foolishness! Why the hell had I agreed the recording should be of me… Of course, I could examine it beforehand, but I wouldn’t be able to read it anyway. No one would. Specialists can determine only what the subject was thinking about, and even then they’re just generalizations: for example, they can say he was solving math problems, but they have no idea which kind. They say it’s not possible to know, because the encephalogram is a random combination of a whole mass of simultaneous processes, only some of which have a mental underpinning. And the subconscious parts…? These they’re unwilling to discuss at all. So they’re a very long way from being able to decipher a person’s memories, suppressed or otherwise… Then why am I so afraid? I myself had told Harey earlier that the experiment wouldn’t do any good. Because if our neurophysiologists can’t read a recording, then how could this utterly alien, black, liquid monster…

Yet it had entered into me, I have no idea how; it had sifted through my entire memory and found its most painful atom. How could that be doubted? And without any assistance, without any “radiation transmission” it had broken through the double hermetic plating, the thick armoring of the Station, had found my body inside it, and had made off with its plunder…

“Kris…?” said Harey quietly. I was standing at the window, gazing with unseeing eyes at the beginnings of the night. The stars were veiled by a delicate film, faint at that geographic latitude — a thin, even covering of clouds that were so high the sun, from far below the horizon, pervaded them with the subtlest silvery-pink glow.

If she disappears afterwards, that will mean I wanted it. Because I killed her. Should I not go there tomorrow? They couldn’t force me. But what would I tell them? Not — that. I couldn’t. No, I needed to pretend, to lie, all the time, always. Though that was because there may have been thoughts in me, intentions, hopes, cruel, wonderful, murderous, yet of which I was quite unaware. Human beings set out to encounter other worlds, other civilizations, without having fully gotten to know their own hidden recesses, their blind alleys, well shafts, dark barricaded doors. To give her up to them… out of shame? To give her up only because I’d run out of courage?

“Kris,” Harey whispered even more softly than before. I felt rather than heard her coming noiselessly up to me, and I pretended I hadn’t noticed. At that moment I wanted to be alone. I had to be alone. I still hadn’t found strength inside myself. I’d reached no decision, no resolution. As I stared at the darkening sky, at the stars that were only a spectral shadow of terrestrial stars, I stood there motionless; in the emptiness that was gradually taking the place of the whirlwind of thoughts from a moment before, there arose without words the dead, indifferent certainty that deep down, in a place I could not reach, I had already chosen; and, pretending that nothing had happened, I didn’t even have the strength to despise myself.