Solaris

Sartorius


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.

I’d hoped to find some clue in it, and in fact, there was a bookmark inserted at the index of names. Underlined in red pencil was a name that meant nothing to me: André Berton. It appeared on two different pages. I found the first of these and learned that Berton had been the co-pilot on Shannahan’s ship. The next mention of his name was over a hundred pages later. Immediately after landing, the expedition had proceeded with extreme caution, but when after sixteen days it transpired that the plasmic ocean not only showed no signs of aggression, but retreated from any object moved close to its surface and, whenever it could, avoided direct contact with instruments or people, Shannahan and his second-in-command Timolis lifted some of the restrictions on activities that had been imposed as precautions, since these restrictions seriously impeded the work that was to be done.

At that time the expedition was divided into small two- or three-person teams, each carrying out flights over the ocean that were often several hundred miles in duration. The sweepers that had previously been used to close off the research area were left at the Base. The first four days after this change of method went without any incident, aside from occasional damage to the oxygen apparatus on the space suits, since the exhaust valves proved susceptible to the corrosive effect of the toxic atmosphere. Because of this they had to be replaced almost daily.

On the fifth day, or the twenty-first counting from the moment of landing, two scientists, Carucci and Fechner (the first was a radiologist, the second a physicist), conducted an exploratory flight over the ocean in a small two-person airmobile. It wasn’t a flying craft but a boat that moves on a cushion of condensed air.

When they failed to return after six hours, Timolis, who was in charge at the Base during Shannahan’s absence, ordered the alarm to be sounded and sent all available personnel out to search for the missing men.

By a disastrous coincidence radio contact was lost that day about an hour after the search parties set out; this was caused by a large sunspot on the red sun releasing a powerful burst of corpuscular radiation into the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Only ultra-short-wave equipment worked, allowing communication at a distance of no more than twelve or fifteen miles. To make matters worse, before the sun set the mist thickened and the search had to be interrupted.

When the search parties were already on their way back to the Base one of them found the airmobile no more than 80 miles from the shore. Its engine was working and the craft was drifting undamaged on the waves. Only one man, Carucci, was found in the cockpit, barely conscious.

The airmobile was brought back to the Base and Carucci was given medical treatment. That same evening he recovered. He was unable to say anything about what had happened to Fechner. He only remembered that when they’d already decided to head back he had started to have difficulty breathing. The exhaust valve of his apparatus had been jamming, and at each inbreath a small amount of toxic gas had gotten into his space suit.

Fechner must have unfastened his seatbelt and stood up as he attempted to fix the other man’s equipment. That was the last thing Carucci remembered. According to the experts, the probable subsequent course of events had been as follows: as he worked on Carucci’s oxygen pack, Fechner had opened the roof of the cockpit, probably because it was low and cramped his movements. This was permissible, since on such craft the cabin is not hermetic anyway and merely provides protection against wind and atmospheric conditions. During these operations Fechner’s own apparatus must have developed a fault; growing light-headed, he had climbed up through the roof, gotten onto the top of the airmobile, and fallen into the ocean.

Such is the story of the ocean’s first victim. A search for the body, which ought to have floated on the waves in its space suit, was unsuccessful. Though it might have drifted: it was beyond the expedition’s capabilities to comb thousands of square miles of undulating emptiness almost permanently covered with stretches of mist.

To return to the previous events, by nightfall all the search teams had returned, with the exception of a large freight helicopter that Berton had taken.

He appeared over the Base almost an hour after darkness had fallen, when there were already serious fears for his safety. He was in a state of nervous shock; he climbed out of the helicopter unaided, only to try to run away. Restrained, he shouted and wept; in a man with seventeen years’ experience of space flight, often in the most punishing conditions, this was quite extraordinary.

The doctors suspected that Berton too was suffering from poisoning. Though he ostensibly regained his senses, he refused even for a moment to leave the expedition’s main rocket ship; nor would he go up to the window, from which the ocean could be seen. After two days Berton declared he wished to submit a report concerning his flight. He insisted, claiming it was a matter of the utmost importance. When this report was examined by the expedition’s advisory board it was determined to be the morbid product of a mind poisoned by the toxic gases of the atmosphere. As such it was included not in the records of the expedition but in Berton’s medical case history, upon which the whole matter was closed.

So much was said in the Appendix. I surmised that the heart of the matter lay in Berton’s actual report—what it was that had led a long-distance pilot to suffer a nervous breakdown. I looked once again through the piles of books, but I couldn’t find the Minor Apocrypha. I was feeling more and more tired, so I put off further searching till the next day, and left the cabin. As I passed the aluminum stairs I saw patches of light from above. So Sartorius was still working at this hour! I decided I ought to pay him a visit.

Upstairs it was a little warmer. There was a faint draft in the wide, low-ceilinged corridor. The strips of paper across the air vents were fluttering furiously. The door of the main lab consisted of a thick plate of textured glass in a metal frame. The glass had been covered with something dark from inside; light issued only from a narrow window beneath the ceiling. I pressed on the bar. As I had expected, the door did not yield. Inside there was silence, broken from time to time by what sounded like the low hiss of a Bunsen burner. I knocked. There was no response.

“Sartorius!” I called out. “Dr. Sartorius! It’s me, Kelvin, the new arrival! I have to see you. Open up, please!”

There was a soft rustle, like someone walking on crumpled papers, then silence again.

“It’s me, Kelvin! You must have heard about me! I arrived a few hours ago from the Prometheus!” I said loudly, positioning my mouth close to the place where the metal door frame met the jamb. “Dr. Sartorius! There’s no one else here, only me! Please open up.”

Silence. Then the faint rustle again. A few clinking sounds, very distinct, as if someone were placing metal implements on a metal tray. Then suddenly I was thunderstruck. There came a series of tiny footsteps, like the toddling of a small child—a rapid, hurried patter of small feet. Perhaps. . . perhaps someone was just imitating it, masterfully drumming their fingers on an empty box.

“Dr. Sartorius!!” I yelled. “Are you going to open the door or not?!”

There was no response, only that childlike pattering again, and at the same time a few rapid, barely audible, long steps, as if the person were walking on tiptoe. But if he was walking, surely he couldn’t simultaneously imitate a child’s footsteps? Though what did I care, I thought to myself, and no longer holding back the anger that was building up in me I roared:

“Dr. Sartorius!! I haven’t been traveling for sixteen months just to be brought to a halt by some playacting of yours!! I’m counting to ten. Then I’m going to break down the door!!”

I doubted it would work.

Gas pistols aren’t very powerful, but I was determined to carry out my threat one way or another, even if it meant looking for explosives, which for sure would be plentifully available in the depository. I told myself I mustn’t give in. In other words I mustn’t keep playing with these cards, marked with madness, that the situation had stuck in my hand.

There was a noise that sounded like someone wrestling with someone else, or pushing something. The dark sheet covering the inside of the door moved aside a foot and a half or so; a slender shadow appeared in the lusterless frosted pane, and a slightly hoarse, high-pitched voice said:

“I’ll open the door, but you have to give me your word you’ll not come in.”

“Then why open it?” I thundered.

“I’ll come out to you.”

“All right. You have my word.”

There was the faint click of a key turning in the lock. Then the dark silhouette covering half the door carefully pulled the cover back in place. Some kind of complicated maneuvers were carried out inside—I heard what sounded like the creak of a wooden table being moved—then finally the door opened just enough to allow Sartorius to slip out into the corridor. He stood before me, shielding the door with his body. He was extremely tall and thin; under his cream-colored undershirt his body looked to be nothing but bones. He wore a black scarf around his neck; a folded lab coat dotted with reagent burns was draped over his arm. His narrow head was tilted to the side. Almost half his face was hidden behind a pair of wrap-around black glasses, so I couldn’t see his eyes. He had a long lower jaw, blueish lips, and huge ears that were also blue and looked frostbitten. He was unshaven. Red rubber anti-radiation gloves hung from his wrists on loops. We stood for a moment, eyeing each other with unconcealed animosity. What was left of his hair (he looked as if he’d given himself a buzzcut) was the color of lead, while his beard was completely gray. His forehead was sunburned, like Snaut’s, but the color ended at a horizontal line halfway to his hairline. He’d evidently worn some kind of cap the whole time he was in the sun.

“How can I help you?” he said finally. I had the impression he wasn’t waiting to see what I would say, so much as listening closely to the space behind him, his back pressed up the whole time against the glass pane of the door. For a good while I couldn’t think of how to open without sounding foolish.

“My name is Kelvin. . . you must have heard about me,” I began. “I am, or rather, I was, Gibarian’s colleague. . .”

His skinny face, crisscrossed with horizontal lines—this was what Don Quixote must have looked like—was expressionless. The bulging black surface of the dark glasses directed towards me made it extremely hard for me to talk.

“I heard that Gibarian. . . passed away.” I paused.

“Yes. How can I help?”

He sounded impatient.

“Did he commit suicide? Who found the body, doctor—you or Snaut?”

“Why are you asking me? Did Dr. Snaut not tell you. . . ?”

“I’d like to hear what you have to say about the matter. . .”

“You’re a psychologist, Dr. Kelvin?”

“Yes. What of it?”

“A scholar?”

“Well, yes. What relevance does that have—”

“I thought perhaps you were a detective or a police officer. It’s two forty, and you, Dr. Kelvin—instead of seeking to familiarize yourself with the work being conducted on the Station, which would after all be understandable despite your brutal attempt to break into the laboratory—you’re questioning me as if I were at the very least a suspect.”

I controlled myself, though the effort brought beads of sweat to my forehead.

“You are a suspect, Sartorius!” I said through clenched teeth.

I wanted to needle him at any cost, and so I added unrelentingly:

“As you’re perfectly well aware!”

“If you do not retract that remark and apologize, Kelvin, I shall bring a complaint against you in my next radio report!”

“What am I supposed to apologize for? For the fact that, instead of welcoming me, instead of properly briefing me on what’s been happening, you lock the door and barricade yourself in the laboratory? Have you completely lost your mind?! Are you a scientist or a coward?! Eh? What do you have to say for yourself?!” I don’t know exactly what else I said. He didn’t even flinch. Thick beads of perspiration were trickling down his pale large-pored face. All at once I realized he wasn’t even listening to me. He kept both his hands behind him, with all his strength holding the door shut. It was shuddering slightly, as if someone were pushing on it from the other side.

“You. . . should. . . go,” he whined suddenly in a strange shrill voice. “You should. . . for the love of God! Go now! Go downstairs, I’ll come, I’ll come down, I’ll do whatever you want, but please go!!”

There was such torment in his voice that, in a state of bewilderment, instinctively I raised my hand to try and help him keep the door shut, because that was evidently what he was struggling with. But he gave a fearful cry, as if I’d threatened him with a knife, so I began to back away. He kept shouting in that high voice: “Go! Go!” and then: “I’m coming back! I’ll be back right away!! No! No!!”

He cracked open the door and darted inside. I thought I caught a glimpse of something gold-colored, like a shiny disk, at the level of his chest. There now came a muffled commotion from inside. The cover over the door was knocked aside, a large tall shadow flashed across the pane, the cover was put back in place and nothing more could be seen. What on earth was happening in there? There was the sound of footsteps, the crazy ruckus broke off with a terrifying clatter of glass, and I heard a burst of laughter from a child. . .

My legs were shaking. I looked around me. Everything fell silent. I perched on a low plastic windowsill. I sat there for perhaps fifteen minutes; I couldn’t say if I was waiting for something or had simply been brought to such a pass that I didn’t even have it in me to stand. My head was splitting. Somewhere high up I heard a prolonged grinding sound and at the same time the place grew lighter.

From where I sat I could see only part of the circular corridor that ran around the laboratory. It was located at the very top of the Station, right under the exterior armor plating. For this reason the outside walls were concave and sloping, with windows like loop-holes set into them every few yards. The external shades were just retracting, as the blue day was drawing to a close. A blinding glare burst through the thick glass. Every nickel-plated piece of trim, every door handle burned like a little sun. The lab door with its pane of rough glass glowed like the opening of a furnace. I looked at my hands, which lay in my lap and had turned gray in this ghastly light. In the right I was holding the gas pistol. I had no clue when or how I’d taken it out of its holster. I put it back. I knew by now that even an atomic blaster would be no use. What could I do with one? Break down the door? Force my way into the lab?

I stood up. The disk descending into the ocean, looking like a hydrogen explosion, sent a cluster of almost material horizontal rays in my direction; when they struck my cheek (I was already walking down the stairs) it felt like a red-hot brand.

Halfway down the steps I changed my mind and went back up. I circled the lab. As I mentioned, the corridor ran all the way around it. After a hundred yards or so I found myself on its far side, outside an identical glass door. I didn’t even try to open it. I knew it would be locked.

I looked for some kind of window in the plastic wall, even just a chink; the idea of spying on Sartorius didn’t seem at all dishonorable to me. I wanted to put an end to conjecture and learn the truth, though I couldn’t imagine how I would understand it.

It occurred to me that the labs were lit from skylights in the ceiling, or rather in the exterior plating, and if I went outside I might be able to see in from there. To this end I’d need to go downstairs and get a space suit and oxygen tank. I stood by the stairs, wondering if it was worth the effort. The skylights were likely made of matted glass. But what other option did I have? I went down to the middle level. I had to pass by the radio station. The door was wide open. He was sitting in the armchair, in the same position I’d left him in. He was asleep. At the sound of my footsteps he stirred and opened his eyes.

“Hey there, Kelvin,” he croaked. I remained silent. “So did you find anything out?” he asked.

“Actually yes,” I replied slowly. “He’s not alone.”

Snaut made a face.

“How about that. That’s something. He has guests, you say?”

“I don’t understand why none of you will say what it is,” I put in as if casually. “I mean, I’ll be staying here so sooner or later I’ll find out anyway. So why all the secrets?”

“You’ll understand when you have your own guests,” he said. I had the feeling he was waiting for something and wasn’t in the mood to talk.

“Where are you going?” he asked sharply when I turned around. I didn’t reply. The docking bay was in the same state as when I’d left it earlier. My scorched capsule stood wide open on the pad. I went up to the spacesuit racks, but I’d suddenly lost interest in the idea of venturing out to the plating atop the Station. I spun on my heel and went down the spiral stairs to where the depositories were. The narrow corridor was cluttered with canisters and piles of cases. The walls here were made of bare metal that glinted lividly in the light. A few dozen yards and the frost-covered pipes of the cooling apparatus came into view beneath the ceiling. I traced them back. They disappeared via a thick plastic sleeve into a hermetically sealed room. When I opened the heavy door, which was two hand-widths thick and lined with rubber, a blast of cold chilled me to the bone. I shivered. Icicles hung from a tangle of snow-coated coils. Here too there were crates and capsules, under a thin layer of snow; the shelves lining the walls were stacked with cans and yellow blocks of some kind of fat packed in clear plastic. Further off, the barrel-vaulted ceiling dropped lower. In this place there was a thick curtain glittering with ice needles. I pulled it aside. A large elongated shape lay on a pallet beneath a sheet of gray fabric. I raised the hem and looked into the stiffened face of Gibarian. His black hair, with the gray streak over the forehead, lay flat against his skull. His Adam’s apple jutted upwards, breaking the line of his neck. His dry eyes stared straight up at the ceiling; a cloudy tear of ice had formed in the corner of his eyelid. The cold was so piercing I had trouble preventing my teeth from chattering. Holding the shroud up, with my other hand I touched his cheek. It was exactly like touching frozen wood. The skin was rough with stubble, which poked through in small black points. An expression of boundless disdainful patience had set on his lips. As I lowered the edge of the cloth, I noticed that on the far side of the body some elongated black beads or beans, arranged from smallest to largest, were poking out from under the folds. All at once I was petrified.

It was the toes of bare feet seen from underneath. The oval pads protruded somewhat. Beneath the crumpled edge of the shroud, pressed flat against the pallet, lay the black woman.

She was face down, as if plunged in a deep sleep. I pulled aside the sheet inch by inch. Her head, covered in small tufts of bluish hair, rested in the crook of her massive, equally black arm. The bumps of her spinal column tightened the glistening skin across her back. Her immense body showed not the slightest sign of movement. Once again I looked at the bottoms of her bare feet and I was struck by something odd: they weren’t flattened or squashed by the weight they must have had to carry; they weren’t even callused from walking barefoot, but were covered with a skin that was as thin as that on her back or hands.

I tested this impression with a touch that was much more difficult than touching the dead body. What happened then was quite incredible: her body, subjected to a temperature below zero degrees Fahrenheit, came to life and stirred. She drew up her foot like a sleeping dog when you take hold of its paw.

She’ll freeze to death in here, I thought to myself. But her body was tranquil and not especially cold. I could still feel the soft touch moving through my fingertips. I stepped back behind the curtain, let it fall, and returned to the corridor. It felt extraordinarily hot out there. Stairs led me out to right by the docking bay. I sat on a furled parachute and took my head in my hands. I felt as if I’d been beaten up. I didn’t know what was happening to me. I was shattered. My thoughts seemed to be moving along the edge of a cliff, in danger of falling off at any moment—annihilation or at least loss of consciousness would have been a unutterable, unattainable act of grace.

I had no reason to go see Snaut or Sartorius; I couldn’t imagine assembling into any kind of whole all I’d experienced, seen, touched with my own hands up to this point. The only resort, way out, explanation, was a diagnosis of insanity. Yes: I must have gone mad, immediately after I landed. The ocean had affected my brain in such a way—I’d had one hallucination after another, and since this was the case, there was no point in wasting my energy on vain attempts to solve mysteries that in reality did not exist, but instead I should seek medical assistance, call the Prometheus or another ship from the radio station, send an SOS.

At this point something happened that I scarcely expected: the thought that I had lost my mind calmed me down.

I understood only too well what Snaut had said—if in fact anyone called Snaut even existed, and I had ever spoken to him, because after all, the hallucinations could have begun much earlier. Who knows if I wasn’t still on board the Prometheus, struck down by a sudden bout of mental illness, and everything I’d experienced to this point was the product of a disturbed mind? Yet if I was sick I could get better, and that at least gave me the hope of deliverance, something I couldn’t remotely see being possible among the tangled nightmares of what I’d lived through on Solaris in the space of a few short hours.

What I needed to do, then, was to conduct some kind of logically designed experiment on myself—an experimentum crucis—which would show me whether in fact I’d gone mad and was at the mercy of phantoms created by my own imagination, or whether, however absurd and improbable they were, these experiences were in fact real.

I thought about it all as I gazed at the metal cantilever that supported the weight-bearing structure of the docking bay. It took the form of a steel mast jutting from the wall and reinforced with convex plates. It was painted willow green. In places, at a height of about three feet, the paint was coming off; it had probably been scraped by the rocket carts as they were moved that way. I touched the steel, warming it for a moment with my hand, and tapped the rolled edge of the protective casing. Was it possible for a hallucination to reach such a level of realism? Perhaps, I answered myself. After all, that was my area of specialization; I knew what I was talking about.

But could such a critical experiment be designed? To begin with I thought not, because my sick brain (if indeed it was sick) would produce any illusion I required of it. After all, it’s not just in sickness; even in the most ordinary dream we find ourselves conversing with people we do not know in our waking life, asking these dream figures questions and hearing their answers. When this happens, even though the figures are in fact only products of our own mind, parts of which have temporarily become detached and given a fake independence, we still don’t know what words they will utter until, in that dream, they speak to us. Yet in reality the words are concocted by that other, separated part of our own mind, and so we ought to know them at the moment we think them up and put them in the mouth of a fictional character. Whatever I might plan and carry out, then, I could always tell myself I was acting the way we act in dreams. Neither Snaut nor Sartorius needed to even exist in reality, and so asking either of them questions was pointless.

It occurred to me that I could take some powerful medication, like peyote for example, or something else that produces hallucinations or graphic visions. Experiencing such things would prove that what I had taken really existed and was a part of the material reality surrounding me. But, I thought further, that too would not be the critical experiment I was after, because I knew how the substance (which I of course would have to select) ought to act on me, and so it could also be the case that both the taking of the medication and the effects it caused were equally products of my imagination.

I was already thinking there was no way out of the vicious circle of madness—after all, no one can think with anything but his brain, no one can be outside himself to check whether the processes taking place in his body are normal. Then suddenly I was struck by an idea that was as simple as it was apt.

I jumped up from the pile of parachutes and ran straight to the radio station. It was empty. I glanced at the electric wall clock. It was coming up to four in the agreed-upon night of the Station, because outside a red dawn was breaking. I quickly turned on the long-distance radio equipment, and as I waited for the lamps to warm up, in my mind I went over the various stages of the experiment.

I couldn’t remember the call signal for the automatic station of the planetary Satelloid, but I found it on the bulletin board over the main console. I called it up in Morse code; eight seconds later came the response. The Satelloid, or rather its electronic brain, reported in with a repeated rhythmic signal.

I requested it to tell me which meridians of the galactic canopy it was passing at twenty-second intervals as it orbited Solaris. I asked for figures to the fifth decimal place.

Then I sat down and waited for the response. It came ten minutes later. I tore off the paper printout with the results, stuck it in a drawer (making sure I didn’t so much as glance at it first), then went to the library and brought back large-scale sky maps, logarithmic tables, the almanac of the satellite’s daily movements, and a few additional books. I then proceeded to figure out my own answer to the same question. It took me almost an hour to set up the equations. I don’t remember the last time I performed such difficult computations—it was probably in school, during my practical astronomy exam.

I carried out the work on the Station’s huge calculator. My reasoning was as follows: from the sky maps I ought to derive figures that were not exactly the same as those provided by the Satelloid, since the Satelloid was subject to complex perturbations as a result of Solaris’s gravitational pull, of its two mutually orbiting suns, and also local variations in gravitation caused by the ocean. When I had both sets of figures, those provided by the Satelloid and those calculated theoretically on the basis of the sky maps, I’d correct my own reckonings. At this point the two groups of results ought to match to the fourth decimal place; discrepancies would remain only in the fifth decimal place, as being caused by the unpredictable influence of the ocean.

Even if the figures the Satelloid provided were not real but a product of my own crazy mind, they still couldn’t match the other series of numbers—even if my brain was sick, it would not be capable under any circumstances of the computations performed by the Station’s calculator. Such a thing would have required months of work. So then, if the figures tallied, the calculator existed in reality and I was actually using it, not just imagining I was.

My hands were trembling as I took the telegraphic printout from the drawer and spread it out next to the other, wider sheet from the calculator. Both lists of figures matched as I had predicted, to the fourth decimal place. Discrepancies appeared only in the fifth.

I put all the papers into the drawer. So the calculator existed independently of me; this meant that the Station and everything on it was also real.

I was about to close the drawer when I noticed it was filled with a whole wad of papers covered in hasty calculations. I pulled them out; a single glance was enough to see that someone else had already carried out an experiment like mine, the only difference being that instead of data from the star canopy this person had asked the Satelloid for information about Solaris’s reflectivity at forty-second intervals.

I was not mad. The last ray of hope had faded. I turned off the transmitter, finished what was left of the bouillon in the flask, and went to bed.