A Conversation
The next day, when I came back from lunch I found a note from Snaut on the table by the window. He reported that for the moment Sartorius was holding off with work on the annihilator so as to make one last attempt at irradiating the ocean with a bundle of hard rays.
“Darling,” I said, “I have to go see Snaut.”
The red dawn was blazing in the window panes and dividing the room in two. We were in the pale blue shadow. Beyond its border everything looked like it was made of copper; you might have thought each book would clang if it fell from the shelf.
“It’s about the experiment. But I’m not sure how to go about it. You understand, I’d rather. . .”
“There’s no need to explain yourself, Kris. I so wish I could. . . Maybe if it didn’t last long?”
“It’ll have to take a little while,” I said. “Listen, how about you go with me and wait in the corridor?”
“All right. But if it’s too much for me?”
“What’s it actually like?” I said, adding quickly: “I’m not asking out of curiosity, you understand; but maybe if you figured it out you could overcome it yourself.”
“It’s fear,” she said. She turned a little pale. “I can’t even say what it is I’m afraid of, because really I’m not afraid, I just lose myself. At the last moment I also feel this, this shame, I can’t explain. Then nothing more. That’s why I thought it was some kind of illness. . .” she finished more quietly, and shuddered.
“Perhaps it’s only that way on this damn Station,” I said. “As for me, I’m going to do everything I can for us to leave here as soon as we can.”
“Do you think that’s possible?” she said, opening her eyes wide.
“Why not? I mean, I’m not shackled to the place. . . Though it’ll also depend on what I decide with Snaut. What do you think? Will you be able to be alone for long?”
“It depends. . . ,” she said slowly. She lowered her head. “So long as I can hear your voice I should be fine.”
“I’d rather you didn’t hear what we’re saying. Not that I have anything to hide from you, but I don’t know, I can’t know, what Snaut will say.”
“Say no more. I understand. All right. I’ll put myself somewhere where I can only hear the sound of your voice. That’ll do.”
“Then I’ll call him right away from the lab. I’ll leave the door open.” She nodded. I walked through the wall of red rays and out into the corridor which, from the contrast, seemed almost pitch black despite the artificial lighting. The door of the small laboratory was wide open. The reflective shards of the Dewar flask lying on the floor by the row of large liquid oxygen cylinders were the last signs of the nighttime events. The small screen lit up when I took the receiver and called the radio station. The blueish membrane of light that seemed to coat the lusterless glass from within suddenly broke, and Snaut was leaning over the arm of a tall chair and looking straight into my eyes.
“Hello there,” he said.
“I read your note. I’d like to talk. Can I come over?”
“Sure. Right now?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Will you. . . have company?”
“No.”
His gaunt, sunburned face with thick wrinkles on the forehead, tilting in the convex glass screen like some bizarre fish peering from its aquarium, assumed an ambiguous expression.
“Well, well,” he said. “I’ll be expecting you.”
“We can go, darling,” I began with a not entirely natural animation as I entered the cabin through swathes of red light beyond which I could only make out Harey’s looming silhouette. My voice failed me; she was sitting clinging to the chair, her elbows locked under the armrests. Whether she hadn’t heard my footsteps in time, or hadn’t been able to release her terrified grip quickly enough to take on a normal pose—whatever the reason, suffice it to say that I saw her for a moment grappling with the incomprehensible power that lay concealed within her, and my heart was overcome with a blind fury mingled with pity. We walked in silence down the long corridor, passing its various sections that were painted in different-colored enamel, something the architects had intended to lend variety to life inside the armored shell. From far off I saw the open door of the radio station. It let out a long band of red light into the corridor, since the sun reached there as well. I glanced at Harey, who didn’t even try to smile; I could see how the whole way there she was intently preparing for the struggle with herself. The approaching effort has already changed her face, which was pale and seemed to have grown smaller. Ten or fifteen steps from the door she came to a halt. I turned towards her; with her fingertips she gave me a gentle push to tell me to keep walking. All at once my plans, Snaut, the experiment, the whole Station, it all seemed nothing to me compared to the torment she was now facing. I felt like a torturer, and I was about to turn back when a human shadow appeared in the broad strip of sunlight bending against the wall. I quickened my pace and entered the cabin. Snaut was just across the threshold, as if he’d been coming to meet me. The red sun was directly behind him and a crimson glare seemed to radiate from his gray hair. We looked at each other for a good while without saying anything. He seemed to be studying my face. I was blinded by the light from the window and couldn’t see his expression. I walked past him and stood by the high console bristling with the curving stems of microphones. He turned slowly around on the spot, following me calmly with that slight twist of the mouth of his that, almost without changing at all, became now a smile, now a grimace of exhaustion. Without taking his eyes off me, he went up to the metal cabinet that occupied the entire wall, in front of which on either side were heaps of spare radio parts, thermic batteries and tools that seemed to have been piled there hurriedly and chaotically. He pulled up a chair and sat down, leaning his head against the enameled door of the cabinet.
The silence we’d kept up till now was becoming strange to say the least. I listened intently to it, concentrating on the quiet that filled the corridor where Harey was waiting, from where there came not the slightest murmur.
“When will the two of you be ready?” I asked.
“We could even start today, but the recording’ll take some time.”
“Recording? You mean the encephalogram?”
“Right. I mean, you agreed. Is there a problem?” His voice trailed off.
“No, not at all.”
“Go on,” Snaut said when the silence again began to gather between us.
“She already knows. . . about herself.” I had dropped my voice almost to a whisper. He raised his eyebrows.
“Is that so?”
I had the impression he wasn’t really surprised. Then why was he pretending? All at once I no longer felt like talking, but I forced myself. Let it be loyalty, I thought to myself, if nothing more.
“It seems she got an inkling after our conversation in the library. She observed me, put two and two together, then she found Gibarian’s tape recorder and listened to the tape.. .”
He didn’t change position, leaning the whole time against the cabinet, but a tiny glint appeared in his eye. From where I stood at the console I had a clear view of the open door to the corridor. I lowered my voice even more:
“Last night, while I was asleep she tried to kill herself. Liquid oxygen. . .”
There was a sudden rustling sound like a draft of air blowing through loose sheets of paper. I froze and listened hard for what was happening in the corridor, but the source of the noise was closer. It scratched like a mouse. . . A mouse? How ridiculous! There were no mice here. I watched Snaut from the corner of my eye.
“Go on,” he said calmly.
“It goes without saying she didn’t succeed. . . In any case she knows who she is.”
“Why are you telling me this?” he suddenly asked. To begin with I didn’t know what to say.
“I want you to be informed. . . I want you to know how things are,” I mumbled.
“I warned you.”
“You mean to say that you knew,” I said, raising my voice despite myself.
“No. Of course not. But I told you how it is. Every ‘guest’ is almost a ghost when they arrive; aside from a hodgepodge of memories and images taken from their. . . Adam. . . they’re basically empty. The longer they’re with you here, the more human they become. And the more independent, within certain limits of course. That’s why the longer it goes on, the harder it is—”
He broke off. He looked askance at me and asked casually:
“She knows everything?”
“Yes, I already told you.”
“Everything? Including that she was already here once before and that you—”
“No!”
He smiled.
“Kelvin, listen, if things have gone that far. . . then what do you actually mean to do? Leave the Station?”
“Yes.”
“With her?”
“Yes.”
He was silent, as if weighing up his reply, but there was something more in his silence. . . What was it? Once again that imperceptible breeze rustled, as if right behind a thin wall. He shifted in his chair.
“Very good,” he said. “Why are you staring at me like that? Did you think I’d stand in your way? You can do whatever you want, my dear fellow. We’d be in fine shape if, on top of everything else, we started using force here! I’ve no intention of trying to dissuade you. I’ll only say one thing: in an inhuman situation you’re trying to behave like a human being. That may be admirable, but it’s also futile. Though in fact I’m not even sure it’s admirable—I’m not sure something foolish can also be admired. But that’s beside the point. You’re backing out of any further experiments, you want to go, and take her with you. Is that it?”
“Yes.”
“But that’s also. . . an experiment. Don’t you think?”
“How do you mean? Whether she’ll. . . be able to? If she’s with me, I don’t see why not. . .”
I was speaking ever more slowly, till I broke off. Snaut gave a soft sigh.
“We’re all sticking our heads in the sand here, Kelvin, but at least we’re aware of it and we’re not trying to act noble.”
“I’m not acting anything.”
“All right, I didn’t mean to insult you. I take back what I said about being noble, but the thing about hiding our heads in the sand is still true. You’re doing it in an especially dangerous way. You’re deceiving yourself and her, and yourself again. Do you know the stabilization conditions for systems built of neutrino matter?”
“No. And neither do you. No one does.”
“Of course. But we do know one thing, that such a system is unstable and can only exist if it has a constant supply of energy. I know that from Sartorius. The energy creates a warped stabilizing field. The question is, is that field external or is its source located inside the guest’s body? You get the difference?”
“Yes,” I said slowly. “If it’s external, then she. . . then such a. . .”
“Then when the system becomes separated from Solaris it will fall apart,” he finished for me. “We can’t predict it, though you already conducted an experiment. The rocket you sent up. . . it’s still orbiting, you know. In a spare moment I even calculated its path. You could fly up into orbit and check what happened with the. . . passenger. . .”
“Are you mad!” I hissed.
“You think so? Well. . . what if. . . we brought it back down here, the rocket? That can be done. It’s controlled remotely. We’ll guide it out of its orbit and. . .”
“Enough!”
“Not that either? Then there’s one other way, a very simple one. It wouldn’t have to land at the Station. It could stay in orbit. We could simply make radio contact. . . if she’s alive she’ll say something and. . .”
“The oxygen will’ve run out there long ago!” I stammered.
“Maybe she doesn’t need oxygen. Shall we try?”
“Snaut. . . Snaut. . .”
“Kelvin. . . Kelvin. . .” he mimicked, angry. “Think about what kind of person you are. Who are you trying to make happy here? Or save? Yourself? Her? Which one? This one or the other one? Do you lack the courage to save both of them? You see yourself where this leads! I’m telling you for the last time: this, here, this is a situation beyond morality.”
All at once I heard the same scratching sound as before, as if someone were scraping their fingernails down the wall. I don’t know why I was overcome by a kind of passive, miry calm. It was as if I were looking at the whole situation, the two of us, everything, from a great distance, through the wrong end of a telescope. It was all tiny, rather funny, of little consequence.
“All right then,” I said. “So according to you what should I do? Get rid of her? Then tomorrow another one just like her will appear, right? And again? And like that day after day? For how long? What for? What will that give me? Or you? Or Sartorius? Or the Station?”
“No, you answer me first. You’ll take off with her and, let’s say, you’ll witness the following transformation. In a few minutes you’ll see before you—”
“What?” I said sneeringly. “A monster? A demon? Hm?”
“No. Ordinary, the most ordinary, death throes. Have you already come to believe they’re immortal? Let me assure you, they die. . . What will you do then? Will you come back for. . . a copy?”
“Stop it!!” I roared, clenching my fists. He gazed at me with an expression of indulgent mockery in his narrowed eyes.
“Oh, I’m the one who should stop? You know something, if I were you I’d give this conversation a rest. Find something else to do instead. You could go and give the ocean a good whipping, for example, to teach it a lesson. What is your problem? If you—” he made a playful gesture of farewell with his hand, at the same time raising his eyes slowly towards the ceiling as if following a receding figure—“then you’ll be the bad guy? And otherwise you won’t? Smile when you feel like howling, act happy and composed when you want to gnaw your knuckles—then you won’t be a bad guy? What if it’s impossible not to be, in this place? What then? You’ll rage in front of Snaut, who’s responsible for everything, huh? Then on top of everything else you’re an idiot, my friend. . .”
“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.