Stanisław Lem - Solaris

“Maybe,” I said. “Yeah, it’s possible I dreamed it…”

That evening, when we were already getting ready for bed, I started talking again about our voyage together, about our return to Earth.

“I don’t want to listen to all that,” she said. “Stop it, Kris. I mean, you know…”

“What?”

“No. Nothing.”

When we were already in bed, she said she wanted a drink.

“There’s a glass of juice on the table over there. Can you pass me it?”

She drank half and gave it to me. I wasn’t thirsty.

“Drink to my health,” she said with a smile. I finished the juice, which tasted a little salty to me, though I didn’t give it a second thought.

“If you don’t want to talk about Earth, what do you want to talk about?” I asked after she turned the light out.

“Would you get married if I wasn’t in the picture?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I was on my own for ten years and I didn’t marry. Let’s not talk about that, darling…”

My head was buzzing as if I’d drunk a bottle of wine or more.

“No, let’s talk about it, let’s talk about that. What if I asked you to?”

“To get married? That’s nonsense, Harey. I don’t need anyone but you.”

She leaned over me. I felt her breath on my mouth; she took hold of me so firmly that for a brief second the overpowering drowsiness I was feeling was dispelled.

“Say it a different way.”

“I love you.”

Her forehead rested against my shoulder; I felt the tense flutter of her eyelashes and the wetness of tears.

“Harey, what is it?”

“Nothing. Nothing. Nothing,” she repeated ever more quietly. I strove to keep my eyes open, but they were closing of their own accord. I don’t know when I fell asleep.

I was woken by the red dawn. My head was leaden and my neck stiff, as if all the vertebrae had fused into a single bone. My tongue felt rough, repulsive, and I couldn’t move it in my mouth. I must have eaten something bad, I thought to myself, lifting my head with an effort. I reached out my hand to Harey. It encountered cold bedding.

I jerked upright.

The bed was empty, and no one was in the cabin. The sun was reflected in multiple red disks in the windows. I jumped to the floor. I must have looked comical, I staggered like a drunk. I held onto the furniture, grabbed hold of the locker. There was no one in the bathroom. Or the corridor. Or in the workshop either.

“Harey!!” I shouted, standing in the middle of the corridor and flailing my arms wildly. “Harey,” I croaked one more time. I already knew.

I don’t remember exactly what happened next. I must have run half-naked around the entire Station; I remember I even burst into the cold room, then the last depository, where I hammered on the closed door with my fists. I may even have been there more than once. The stairs echoed, I fell over, jumped up, hurtled off somewhere else, till I came to the transparent bulkhead beyond which was the hatch to the outside — a double reinforced door. I pushed against it with all my strength and shouted, wanting all this to be a dream. And someone had been with me for some time and was tugging at me, pulling me somewhere. Then I was in the small workshop, my shirt wet with icy water, my hair bedraggled; my nostrils and tongue were stinging from surgical spirit, I was half-lying on something cold and metallic, and Snaut in his stained linen pants was bustling about by the medicine cabinet, tipping something over, the implements and glassware making a fearful clatter.

All at once I saw him in front of me; he was staring into my eyes, hunched over and intent.

“Where is she?”

“She’s gone.”

“But, but Harey…”

“Harey’s gone,” he said slowly and distinctly, bringing his face close to mine as if he’d delivered a blow and was now observing its effect on me.

“She’ll come back,” I whispered, closing my eyes. And for the first time I was truly not afraid of it. I’d lost my fear of her ghostly return. I couldn’t understand how I’d once been so frightened of it!

“Drink this.”

He handed me a glass of warm liquid. I looked at it, then all of a sudden flung the contents in his face. He took a step back, wiping his eyes. When he opened them again I was standing over him. He was tiny.

“It was you?!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t lie, you know what I mean. It was you talking with her the other night? You made her give me a sleeping draft for the…? What have you done with her? Tell me!!”

He felt in his breast pockets and took out a crumpled envelope. I snatched it from him. It was sealed. There was nothing written on the outside. I tore it open. A sheet of paper folded in four fell out. Large, rather childlike handwriting in uneven lines. I recognized whose it was.

Darling, it was me who asked him to do it. He’s a good man. It’s awful that I had to deceive you, but there was no other way. I ask one thing of you — listen to him and don’t hurt yourself. You were wonderful.

At the bottom there was one word that had been crossed out. I managed to make it out: she’d written “Harey,” then erased it; there was one other letter, that looked like an H or a K, which had been turned into a blot. I read it again, and one more time. Then yet again. By now my head had cleared too much for me to get hysterical; I couldn’t even manage a groan, I could barely speak.

“How?” I whispered.” “How?”

“Later, Kelvin. Keep it together.”

“I am. Tell me. How?”

“The annihilator.”

“What do you mean? What about the apparatus?” I asked with a start.

“The Roche machine was no use. Sartorius built another special destabilizer. A small one. It only operates over a range of a few yards.”

“What happened to her…?”

“She disappeared. There was a flash and a puff of wind. A faint puff. Nothing more.”

“Over a short range, you say?”

“Right. We didn’t have the materials for anything bigger.”

Suddenly the walls began to lean in on me. I closed my eyes.

“Lord… she… but she’ll come back…”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“No, Kelvin. You remember the rising foam? Since that time they haven’t come back any more.”

“They haven’t?”

“No.”

“You killed her,” I said quietly.

“Yes. Would you not have done so? In my place?”

I jumped to my feet and set off walking faster and faster. From the wall to the corner and back again. Nine paces. Turn. Nine paces.

I came to a halt in front of him.

“Listen, we’ll submit a report. We’ll demand direct communication with the Board. It can be done. They’ll agree. They have to. The planet’ll be excluded from the Convention of the Four. All means will be permissible. We’ll bring in antimatter generators. You think anything can resist antimatter? Nothing can! Nothing! Nothing!” I was shouting exultantly, blinded by tears.

“You want to destroy it?” he said. “What for?”

“Go away. Leave me alone!”

“I’m not going.”

“Snaut!”

He looked into my eyes. “No,” he said with a shake of the head.

“What do you want? What do you want from me?”

He retreated to the table.

“All right. We’ll submit a report.”

I turned around and began pacing again.

“Sit down.”

“Get off my back.”

“There are two matters. The first are the facts. The second are our demands.”

“You want to talk about that now?”

“Yes, now.”

“I won’t. Understand? I don’t care about any of that.”

“The last communique we sent was before Gibarian died. That was over two months ago. We need to establish the exact sequence of events surrounding the appearance of—”