Stanisław Lem: Solaris

“I wrote a kind of interim report,” he said. “It’s actually good that you took a look at the room. Cause of death… injection of a lethal dose of Pernostal. It’s written here…”

I scanned the brief text.

“Suicide,” I repeated quietly. “And the reason?”

“Nervous breakdown… depression… or whatever it ought to be called. You know these things better than I do.”

“I only know what I can see myself,” I replied and looked up into his eyes, for he was standing over me.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked calmly.

“He injected himself with Pernostal and hid in a closet, yes? If that was the case, it wasn’t depression or nervous breakdown, it was severe psychosis. Paranoia… He probably thought he was seeing something…,” I said, speaking ever more slowly and looking him in the eye.

He walked off to the radio console and started flicking switches again.

“Your signature is here,” I said after a moment’s silence. “What about Sartorius?”

“He’s in the lab. I already told you. He doesn’t come out. I’m assuming that…”

“That what?”

“That he’s locked himself in.”

“Locked himself in? I see. Locked himself in. How about that. Perhaps he’s barricaded the door?”

“Perhaps.”

“Snaut…,” I said. “There’s someone on the Station.”

“You’ve seen?!”

He looked across at me as he leaned over.

“You warned me. About who? Was it a hallucination?”

“What did you see?”

“It’s a human, yes?”

He said nothing. He turned towards the wall, as if he didn’t want me to see his face. He drummed his fingers on a metal partition. I looked at his hands. There was no trace of blood on his knuckles. I had a flash of insight.

“That person is real,” I said softly, almost in a whisper, as if I were telling him a secret that could be overheard. “Right? She can be… touched. She can be… hurt… The last time you saw her was today.”

“How do you know?”

He didn’t turn around. He stood right by the wall, his chest leaning against it as my words struck him.

“Right before I landed… Not long before?”

He flinched as if from a blow. I saw the wild look in his eyes.

“You?!” he stammered out. “Who are YOU?”

He looked as if he was about to pounce on me. That I was not expecting. The situation was upside down. So he didn’t believe I was who I said I was? What was this supposed to mean?! He was staring at me in absolute terror. Was he mad already? Poisoned? Anything was becoming possible. But I’d seen her — this creature; so then I myself… also…?

“Who was it?” I asked. My words calmed him. For a moment he eyed me as if he still didn’t believe me. Before he even opened his mouth I knew it had been a false move on my part and that he wouldn’t answer me.

He eased himself into anarm chair and put his head in his hands.

“The things happening here…,” he said in a low voice. “A malignant fever…”

“Who was it?” I asked once again.

“If you don’t know…,” he murmured.

“Then what?”

“Then nothing.”

“Snaut,” I said, “We’re far enough away from home. Let’s play with open cards. Everything’s complicated enough as it is.”

“What do you mean?”

“That you should tell me who I saw.”

“And you…?” he retorted suspiciously.

“You’re losing it. I’ll tell you and you tell me. You can rest assured I won’t think you’re crazy, because I know…”

“Crazy! Good God!” He tried to laugh. “You don’t, you have no… that would be a perfect solution. If he had believed for a moment it was madness, he wouldn’t have done it, he’d still be alive…”

“So what you said in the report about a nervous breakdown was a lie.”

“Of course!”

“Why won’t you write the truth?”

“Why…?” he repeated.

There was a pause. Once again I was completely in the dark. I didn’t get a thing, though for a moment it seemed I’d managed to convince him to approach the mystery by combining forces. Why, why wouldn’t he say?!

“Where are the automats?” I put in.

“In the depositories. We locked them all away except for the docking bay service.”

“Why?”

Again he didn’t answer.

“You won’t say?”

“I can’t.”

There was something in all this that I couldn’t put my finger on. Maybe I should go upstairs and see Sartorius? I suddenly remembered the note, and at the present moment that seemed the most important thing.

“Can you imagine going on working in these conditions?” I asked.

He gave a contemptuous shrug.

“What difference does it make?”

“Is that so? Then what do you intend to do?”

He said nothing. In the silence the distant sound of bare footsteps could be heard. Amid the plastic and nickel-plated implements, the tall lockers with electronic equipment, glassware, and precision instruments, that ambling, lazy tread sounded like a stupid trick performed by someone with a screw loose. The sound was coming closer. I stood up, intently watching Snaut. He was listening closely, his eyes narrowed to slits, but he didn’t seem at all alarmed. So it wasn’t her he was afraid of?

“Where did she come from?” I asked. Then, when he hesitated to answer: “Do you not want to say?”

“I don’t know.”

“All right.”

The footsteps receded and faded away.

“You don’t believe me?” he said. “I give you my word I don’t know.”

I was silent. I opened a locker containing space suits and pushed aside their heavy empty shells. As I suspected, at the back, hanging on hooks there were gas pistols used to move about in a gravitational vacuum. They weren’t much use, but at least they were some kind of weapon. I preferred that to nothing. I checked the cartridge case and hung the strap of the holster over my arm. Snaut was observing me watchfully. As I adjusted the strap he bared his yellowed teeth in a mocking smile.

“Happy hunting!” he said.

“Thanks for everything,” I retorted, heading for the door. He jumped up from his armchair.

“Kelvin!”

I looked at him. He was no longer smiling. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen such a tired-looking face.

“Kelvin, it’s not… I… I really can’t,” he stammered. I waited to see if he’d say any more, but he just moved his lips as if he was trying to spit something out.

I turned and left without a word.

The corridor was empty. It first led straight, then curved to the right. I’d never been on the Station before but, as part of my preparatory training, for six weeks I’d lived in an exact copy of it on Earth, at the Institute. I knew where the aluminum steps led. The library was in darkness. I felt for the light switch. When I found the first volume of the Yearbook of Solaristics along with its Appendix in the index, a small red light came on as I pressed the key. I checked in the register. The volume had been checked out by Gibarian, along with another book: the aforementioned Minor Apocrypha . I turned the light off and went back downstairs. I was afraid to go into his cabin, despite the footsteps I’d heard before. She could have gone back there. For some time I stood outside the door, till eventually I gritted my teeth, got a grip on myself and entered.

The illuminated room was empty. I started rifling through the books scattered on the floor by the window; at a certain moment I went up to the locker and closed it. I couldn’t look at that empty place among the overalls. The Appendix was not to be found by the window. I went through each book in turn, till I got to the last pile that lay between the locker and the bed. There I found the volume I was looking for.