Solaris

The Minor Apocrypha


I had burns on my face and hands. I remembered that when I’d been looking for sleeping pills for Harey (I’d have laughed now at my naivety, if I only could), in the first-aid kit I’d noticed sunburn lotion, so I went back to my cabin. I opened the door and in the red light of the dawn I saw someone sitting in the armchair that Harey had been kneeling by earlier on. I was paralyzed with fear, I jerked back instinctively, about to flee. It only lasted a split second. The person in the chair looked up. It was Snaut. With his back to me and his legs crossed (he was still wearing the same linen pants with the reagent burns), he was looking through some papers. There was a whole pile of them on a small table. When he saw me he put them all aside and stared at me for a moment despondently over his eyeglasses, which were perched on the tip of his nose.

Without a word I went up to the washbasin, took the semi-liquid lotion from the first aid kit and began applying it to the worst places on my forehead and cheeks. Luckily I wasn’t too swollen and my eyes were fine, thanks to the fact that I’d closed them tight. I took a sterile needle, punctured some of the bigger blisters on my temples and cheeks and squeezed out the serous fluid. Then I placed two sheets of moistened gauze on my face. The whole time Snaut observed me closely. I paid him no heed. When I finally finished these operations (my face stung more and more), I sat in the other armchair. I first had to remove Harey’s dress from it. It was a perfectly ordinary dress, aside from the matter of the missing fastener.

Snaut, his hands folded on his bony knees, was following my movements critically.

“How about a chat?” he said when I sat down.

I didn’t answer. I pressed on the gauze, which had begun to slide down my cheek.

“So we had guests, did we?”

“Yes,” I retorted drily. I didn’t have the slightest desire to play along with his tone.

“And we got rid of them? I must say you went about it very energetically.”

He touched his forehead, which was still peeling. Fresh patches of new skin were beginning to appear. I stared at them, suddenly feeling a fool. Why hadn’t I thought about Snaut’s and Sartorius’s so-called “sunburn” till now? All this time I’d thought it was from the sun—but of course no one goes sunbathing on Solaris. . .

“Though it was a fairly modest beginning, right?” he said, ignoring the sudden flash of understanding in my eyes. “Various narcotics, poisons, catch-as-catch-can, eh?”

“What’s your point? Now we can talk as equals. If you feel like acting the fool you’d be better off leaving.”

“Sometimes a person can’t help being a fool,” he said. He looked up at me through narrowed eyes.

“You’re not going to try and tell me you never used rope or hammer? You never threw an inkpot like Luther? No? How about that,” he said with a grimace. “You’re quite the stand-up guy. Even the washbasin is undamaged; you didn’t try to break any heads on it, nothing. You didn’t smash the cabin up. Right away you just opened the rocket, slammed it shut and wham-bam thank you ma’am, launched it into space and that was that?!”

He glanced over at the clock.

“In that case we should have two hours, three even,” he finished. He stared at me, stared with a disagreeable smile, till he went on:

“So you reckon I’m a swine?”

“A complete swine,” I agreed forcefully.

“Is that so? Would you have believed me if I’d told you? Would you have believed a single word of it?”

I said nothing.

“Gibarian was the first one it happened to,” he continued, still with his fake smile. “He locked himself in his cabin. He’d only talk through the door. And us, can you guess what we figured?”

I knew, but I preferred to remain silent.

“It’s obvious—we thought he’d gone mad. He told us some of it through the door, but not everything. You can probably even guess why he wouldn’t say who exactly was with him. You know full well: suum cuique—to each his own. But he was a true scientist. He demanded that we give him a chance.”

“What chance?”

“I guess he was trying to classify it somehow, figure it out. He worked through the night. You know what he did? I think you do!”

“Those calculations,” I said. “In the drawer. At the radio station. That was him?”

“Yes. But at that point I knew nothing about it all.”

“How long did it go on?”

“The visit? A week maybe. Talking through the door. All sorts of things went on. We thought he was having hallucinations, that he was under some kind of motor stimulus. I gave him Scopolamine.”

“You gave it to him?!”

“Well, yes. He accepted it, but not for himself. He was experimenting. That was how things went.”

“What about you two?”

“Us? On the third day we decided to force our way into his cabin, to break down the door if we had to. We had noble intentions of treating him.”

“Oh. . . That explains it!” I exclaimed inadvertently.

“Right.”

“And there. . . in the locker. . .”

“Exactly, dear boy. Exactly. He didn’t know that in the meantime we’d had visitors, too. And we couldn’t attend to him anymore. He didn’t know. Now it’s. . . it’s kind of. . . routine.”

He said it so faintly that I surmised the last word rather than actually hearing it.

“Wait a minute, I don’t follow,” I said. “Surely you must have heard something. You said yourself that you listened in at the door. You must have heard two voices, so. . .”

“No. There was only his voice. And even if there’d been other unidentifiable noises, you understand we’d have assumed it was all him. . .”

“Only him alone? But. . . why?”

“I don’t know. I admit I have a theory. But I’m in no hurry to share it, especially since it doesn’t help any, even if it explains a few things. That’s right. But you must have seen something yesterday already, or you’d have taken both of us for madmen?”

“I thought I’d gone mad myself.”

“Is that right. So you didn’t see anyone?”

“I did.”

“Who?!”

His grimace was no longer a smirk. I gave him a long stare before I answered:

“The. . . black woman. . .”

He didn’t say anything, but the whole of his body, tense and leaning forward, relaxed imperceptibly.

“You might have warned me,” I began, with less conviction now.

“I did.”

“But how!”

“The only possible way. You have to understand, I didn’t know who it would be! No one knows that, it can’t be known. . .”

“Listen, Snaut, I have some questions. You’ve known about it. . . for some time. Will she. . . it. . . What’ll happen to her?”

“Are you asking if she’ll come back?”

“Right.”

“Yes and no. . .”

“What does that mean?”

“She’ll come back like at the beginning. . . of the first visit. She won’t know anything, or, to be precise, she’ll act as if everything you did to get rid of her simply never took place. She won’t be aggressive unless you create conditions in which she has to be.”

“What conditions?”

“It depends on the circumstances.”

“Snaut!”

“What’s the problem?”

“We can’t afford the luxury of keeping secrets!”

“It’s not a luxury,” he interrupted drily. “Kelvin, I have the impression you still don’t understand. . though wait a moment!”

His eyes flashed.

“Can you tell me who was here?!”

I swallowed hard, and lowered my head. I didn’t want to look at him. I wished it were someone else, not him. But I had no choice. A strip of gauze came unstuck and fell onto my arm. I shuddered at the wet touch.

“A woman that I. . .”

I trailed off.

“She killed herself. She made a. . .she injected herself. . .”

He waited.

“She committed suicide?” he asked, seeing I wasn’t saying anything.

“Yes.”

“And that’s all?”

I said nothing.

“That can’t be all. . .”

I glanced up sharply. He wasn’t looking at me.

“How do you know?”

He didn’t answer.

“All right,” I said. I licked my lips. “We had a falling out. Well, not exactly. It was me who said something to her, you know, the way you do when you’re angry. I packed my things and left. She’d given me to understand, she didn’t say it outright, but when you’ve lived with someone for years you don’t need to. . . I was convinced it was just talk—that she’d be afraid to do it. And. . . I told her that, too. The next day I remembered I’d left the... the shots in a drawer. She knew they were there—I’d brought them home from the lab, I’d needed them. At the time I told her what effect they have. I got scared, I was going to go get them, but then I realized it would look like I was taking her seriously, and. . . I let it be. The day after that I went all the same, it was nagging at me. When I got there. . . she was already dead.”

“Oh, you poor, innocent boy. . .”

I started in anger. But when I looked at him I could see he wasn’t making fun of me. I felt like I was looking at him for the first time. His face was ashen. Unutterable exhaustion lay in the deep folds of his cheeks, he looked like someone gravely ill.

“Why do you say that?” I asked, strangely abashed.

“Because the story’s tragic. No no,” he added hurriedly, seeing me stir, “You still don’t get it. Of course, you can experience that as profoundly as you want, you can even see yourself as a murderer. But. . . it’s not the worst thing in all this.”

“Is that so!” I said sardonically.

“I’m glad you don’t believe me, really. What happened may have been terrible, but the most terrible thing is what. . . didn’t happen. Ever.”

“I don’t follow. . . ,” I said faintly. I truly didn’t. He nodded.

“A normal person,” he said. “What is a normal person? Someone who’s never done anything heinous? Right, but has he never even thought about it? Or maybe he never thought about it, but something inside him thought it, the idea popped into his head, ten or thirty years ago, maybe he fought it off and forgot about it, and he wasn’t afraid, because he knew he’d never carry it out. Right, but now, imagine that suddenly, in broad daylight, among other people, he meets IT embodied, chained to him, indestructible. What then? What do you have then?”

I said nothing.

“The Station,” he said quietly. “Then you have Solaris Station.”

“But. . . what could it actually be?” I asked hesitantly. “You’re not a criminal, after all, nor Sartorius. . .”

“Come on, Kelvin, you’re a psychologist!” he interrupted me impatiently. “Who hasn’t had a dream like that? An imagining? Think of. . . of the fetishist who’s in love with, I don’t know, some dirty underwear, who risks his skin to obtain by hook or by crook a disgusting scrap of cloth that he adores. That has to be amusing, right? He’s disgusted by the object of his desire, and yet at the same time crazy about it, prepared to put his life in danger for it—his passion may equal Romeo’s for Juliet. . . Such things happen, it’s undeniable. But surely you understand there are also other things. . . situations. . . the kind that no one has dared enact beyond their own thoughts, in a single moment of confusion, breakdown, madness, call it what you will. After which, the word becomes flesh. That’s all.”

“That’s. . . all,” I repeated mindlessly, in a hollow voice. My head was in a whirl. “But, but the Station? What does the Station have to do with it?”

“Surely you’re kidding,” he murmured. He peered at me. “This whole time I’m talking about Solaris, nothing but Solaris. It’s not my fault if it’s so drastically different from your expectations. Besides, you’ve already seen enough to at least hear me out.

“We head out into space, ready for anything, which is to say, for solitude, arduous work, self-sacrifice, and death. Out of modesty we don’t say it aloud, but from time to time we think about how magnificent we are. In the meantime—in the meantime, we’re not trying to conquer the universe; all we want is to expand Earth to its limits. Some planets are said to be as hot and dry as the Sahara, others as icy as the poles or tropical as the Brazilian jungle. We’re humanitarian and noble, we’ve no intention of subjugating other races, we only want to impart our values to them and in return, to appropriate their heritage. We see ourselves as Knights of the Holy Contact. That’s another falsity. We’re not searching for anything except people. We don’t need other worlds. We need mirrors. We don’t know what to do with other worlds. One world is enough, even there we feel stifled. We desire to find our own idealized image; they’re supposed to be globes, civilizations more perfect than ours; in other worlds we expect to find the image of our own primitive past. Yet on the other side there’s something we refuse to accept, that we fend off; though after all, from Earth we didn’t bring merely a distillation of virtues, the heroic figure of Humankind! We came here as we truly are, and when the other side shows us that truth—the part of it we pass over in silence—we’re unable to come to terms with it!”

“Then what is it?” I asked, having heard him out patiently.

“It’s what we wanted: contact with another civilization. We have it, this contact! Our own monstrous ugliness, our own buffoonery and shame, magnified as if it was under a microscope!”

Rage shook in his voice.

“So you think it’s. . . the ocean? What for, though? Never mind how for a moment. For the love of God, what for?! Do you really think it’s trying to play with us? Or punish us? That would be some truly primitive demonology! A planet taken over by a huge devil who satisfies his satanic sense of humor by sending succubi to members of a scientific expedition! Surely you don’t believe in such utter nonsense?!”

“This devil is far from stupid,” he muttered through his teeth. I looked at him in surprise. It crossed my mind that after all, he could have had a nervous breakdown, even if what had happened on the Station couldn’t be explained by madness. Reactive psychosis... ? I wondered further, when he began to laugh very quietly, hardly making any sound.

“You’re diagnosing me? Wait a while yet. You’ve actually only experienced it in such a mild form you still don’t know anything!”

“I get it—the devil took pity on me,” I retorted. The conversation was beginning to tire me.

“What is it you’re really after? You want me to tell you what plans are being hatched against us by x-billion cells of metamorphic plasma? Maybe none at all.”

“What do you mean, none?” I asked, taken aback. Snaut was still smiling.

“You know as well as I do that science is only concerned with how something happens, not why it happens. How, then? Well, it began about eight or nine days after the X-ray experiment. Maybe the ocean was responding to the radiation with another kind of radiation, maybe it was using it to probe our brains and get them to release some kind of mental encystments.”

“Encystments?”

This was beginning to interest me.

“Right, processes separated from the rest of the mind, enclosed, suppressed, walled in, sore spots of the memory. It was treating them as a recipe, as a plan for reconstruction. . . I mean, you know the close resemblance between asymmetrical crystals of chromosomes and the nucleic compounds of cerebrosides that constitute the substrate of memory processes. . . After all, hereditary plasma is plasma that remembers. So it took it from us, made a note of it, and next, well, you know what came next. But why was it done? Ha! In any case, it wasn’t to destroy us. That would have been a lot easier to accomplish. With its technological abilities it could do anything at all, for example confront us with our own doppelgangers.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “So that’s why you were so scared the first evening when I arrived!”

“Yes. Though,” he added, “it may in fact have done so. How do you know I’m the same good old Rat who came here two years ago. . .?”

He started laughing softly, as if my bewilderment gave him God knows what kind of satisfaction; but he soon stopped.

“No, no,” he murmured, “There’s enough going on without that. . . There may be other differences, but I only know one—you and I can be killed.”

“And they can’t?”

“I’d advise you not to try. It’s a terrible thing to behold!”

“Not with anything?”

“I don’t know. In any case not with poison, knife, rope. . .”

“Atomic blaster?”

“Would you be prepared to try?”

“I’m not sure. If you know they’re not human.”

“The thing is, they are, in a certain sense. Subjectively they’re human. They have no awareness of their. . . origins. You must have noticed?”

“Right. So then. . . how is it?”

“They regenerate amazingly quickly. Impossibly quickly, before your eyes, I’m telling you. Then they start all over again, behaving like. . . like. . .”

“Like what?”

“Like our imaginations of them, the mental record that was used to. . .”

“That’s right. It’s true,” I agreed. I was ignoring the fact that lotion was dripping from my cheeks onto my arms.

“Did Gibarian know. . . ?” I asked abruptly. He gave me an intent look.

“Did he know what we know?”

“Yes.”

“Almost certainly.”

“How do you know, did he tell you?”

“No. But I found a book in his cabin. . .”

“The Minor Apocrypha?” I exclaimed, jumping up.

“Right. How could you know about it?” he asked, suddenly worried, his eyes boring into me. I shook my head.

“Take it easy,” I said. “Come on, you can see I’m burned and not regenerating at all, right? In his cabin there was a letter to me.”

“Is that so? A letter? What did it say?”

“Not a lot. It was actually more of a note than a letter. It was bibliographic references to the Appendix of the Yearbook of Solaristics, and to this Minor Apocrypha. What is it?”

“It’s an old thing. It might have something to do with all this. Here.”

From his pocket he took a slim little leather-bound volume with tattered corners and handed it to me.

“And Sartorius?” I asked as I put the book away.

“What about Sartorius? In a situation like this everyone acts whatever way. . . they can. He’s trying to be normal—with him that means being official.”

“Come off it!”

“Seriously. One time I was in a situation with him, never mind the details, suffice it to say we only had eleven hundred pounds of oxygen left for eight people. One after another we gave up our daily tasks, by the end everyone was walking around with a beard; he was the only one who shaved, polished his shoes—that’s the kind of guy he is. Of course, whatever he does now is going to be playacting, comedy or crime.”

“Crime?”

“Well, maybe not crime. We need a new term for it. Like ‘jet-propelled divorce.’ Does that sound better?”

“You’re quite the wit,” I said.

“Would you rather I was crying? You suggest something.”

“Give me a break.”

“No, I mean it: now you know more or less as much as me. Do you have a plan?”

“I like that! I don’t even know what I’m going to do when. . . she appears again. She has to appear again, right?”

“Probably.”

“How do they actually get in? I mean, the Station is hermetically sealed. Maybe through the plating. . .”

He shook his head.

“The plating is in good shape. I’ve no idea how they do it. The ‘guests’ are usually there when you wake up, and everyone has to sleep from time to time, after all.”

“What about locking them up?”

“It helps for a short time. Then there are other methods—you know what I’m talking about.”

He stood up. I followed suit.

“Listen, Snaut. . . You think the Station should be closed down, but you want the idea to come from me?”

He shook his head.

“It’s not that simple. Naturally we could escape, if only to the Satelloid, and send an SOS from there. Obviously they’d treat us like lunatics—there’d be a sanatorium on Earth, until we’d obligingly retract the whole thing. After all, there have been cases of group madness at isolated outposts like this. . . It wouldn’t be so bad. A nice garden, peace and quiet, white rooms, walks with the orderlies. . .”

He was completely serious, his hands in his pockets, staring vacantly into the corner of the room. The red sun had already dropped below the horizon and the curling waves had melted into an inky wasteland. The sky was afire. Clouds with lilac-tinted edges drifted over the unutterably dismal two-toned landscape.

“So do you want to run away? Or not? Not just yet?”

He smiled.

“You undaunted conqueror. . . You haven’t had a real taste of it yet, or you wouldn’t keep insisting like that. It’s not a matter of what I want but of what’s possible.”

“What is?”

“That’s what I don’t know.”

“So we stay here? You reckon a means’ll be found. . .”

He looked at me, scrawny, the skin on his wrinkled face peeling.

“Who knows? Maybe it’ll be worth it,” he said finally. “We’re unlikely to learn anything about it, but maybe about ourselves. . .”

He turned, picked up his papers and left. I wanted to stop him, but my open mouth made no sound. There was nothing to be done; I could only wait. I went up to the window and looked out at the blood-black ocean without really seeing it. It occurred to me that I could lock myself in one of the rockets at the docking bay, but I didn’t take the idea seriously, it was too silly—sooner or later I’d have to come out. I sat down by the window and took out the book Snaut had given me. There was still enough light; it turned the pages pink, while the whole room glowed red. The book contained a number of articles and studies, mostly of very dubious value, collected by one Otto Ravintzer, M. Phil. Every science comes with its own pseudo-science, a bizarre distortion that comes from a certain kind of mind: astronomy has its caricaturist in astrology, chemistry used to have alchemy. So little wonder that the emergence of solaristics was accompanied by a veritable explosion of the oddest notions. Ravintzer’s book was filled with this sort of mental matter—prefaced, to be fair, by an introduction in which the editor distanced himself from this house of wonders. He simply believed, not without reason, that such a collection might constitute a record of the times that would be of value both to historians and to psychologists of science.

Berton’s report occupied a prominent place in the book. It consisted of several parts. The first was a transcription of his extremely laconic logbook.

From fourteen hundred to sixteen forty ship’s time, the notes were terse and negative.

Altitude 3000 feet, or 4000, or 2500. Nothing observed, ocean deserted. This was repeated several times.

Then at 16.40: Red mist rising. Visibility 700 yards. Ocean deserted.

17.00: Fog thickening, silence, visibility 400 yards with clearer moments. Descending to 700 feet.

17.20: In fog. Altitude 700. Visibility 20-40 yards. Silence. Climbing to 1300.

17.45: Altitude 1600. Banks of fog to the horizon. In the fog, funnel-shaped openings through which ocean can be seen. Something happening inside them. Attempting to enter one such funnel.

17.52: Kind of whirlpool visible, throwing up yellow foam. Am surrounded by wall of fog. Altitude 300. Descending to 60.

This was the end of the transcription from Berton’s logbook. The next part of the so-called report was an excerpt from his medical history; to be precise, it was the text of a statement dictated by Berton and interspersed with questions from members of the commission.


Berton: When I dropped to a hundred feet, maintaining altitude became difficult, because in the circular space free of fog there were gusty winds. I had to keep a firm hold on the rudder, and for this reason, for some time—perhaps 10 or 15 minutes—I didn’t look out of the cockpit. As a result, I unintentionally entered into the fog, blown there by a strong gust. It wasn’t ordinary fog but a kind of suspension, colloidal in nature it seemed, because it clouded all my windows. I had a lot of trouble cleaning them. The suspension was extremely sticky. At the same time, my rotor speed had been reduced by thirty-some percent because of resistance from the fog or whatever it was, and I began to lose altitude. I was very low and I was worried I’d flip over on the waves, so I gave it full power. The craft maintained altitude, but didn’t rise any higher. I still had four cartridges of rocket boosters. I chose not to use them, thinking the situation could get worse and then I’d need them. At maximum revs the craft began to vibrate badly; I figured the rotors must have gotten covered in the strange suspension. But the load indicators were still showing zero, so there was nothing I could do. I hadn’t seen the sun from the moment I entered the cloud, though the fog was a phosphorescent red in that direction. I was still circling in the hope that I’d eventually come upon one of those holes in the fog, and in fact I did about half an hour later. I climbed into a free zone that was almost perfectly circular, with a diameter of several hundred yards. It was bounded by fog that was swirling dramatically, as if it were being lifted by powerful convection currents. For this reason I attempted to remain as best I could in the center of the hole—that was where the air was calmest. At that time I noticed a change in the surface of the ocean. The waves had almost completely disappeared, and the top of the fluid—the stuff the ocean is made of—had become semi-transparent, with smoky spots that faded away until, after a very short time, the whole thing was completely clear and I could see several yards, I believe, into the depths. Deep down there was a kind of gold-colored ooze that was gathering and sending thin streaks upwards. When it emerged onto the surface it became glassy and shining, it started seething and foaming, and solidifying. At this point it looked like dense burned caramel. This ooze or sludge collected into thick knots, rose up out of the ocean, it formed cauliflower-like swellings and slowly made various shapes. I started being pulled towards the wall of fog, so for a few minutes I had to counter the drift with the engine and the rudder. When I was able to look out again, down below, underneath me, I saw something that resembled a garden. That’s right, a garden. I saw dwarf trees and hedges, paths, none of it real—it was all made of the same substance, which by now had completely hardened, like yellowish plaster. That was how it appeared. The surface glistened brightly. I descended as low as I could to get a closer look.

Question: Did the trees and other plants you saw have leaves?

Berton: No. It was just a general shape—like a model of a garden. Yes, that’s it—a model. That was what it looked like. A model, but a life-sized one, I guess. After a while it all began to crack and break apart. Through gaps that were completely black, a dense sludge rose to the surface in waves and congealed, part trickled down, part remained, and the whole thing began swirling and getting covered in foam, so that now I couldn’t see anything else but it. At the same time the fog began to draw in around me on every side, so I cranked it up and ascended to 1000 feet.

Q: Are you completely certain that what you saw resembled a garden and nothing else?

Berton: Yes. Because I noticed various details: I remember, for example, that in one place there was a row of what looked like square boxes. It occurred to me later they could have been beehives.

Q: It occurred to you later? But not at the moment you saw it?

Berton: No, because it all looked like it was made of plaster. I saw other things as well.

Q: What things?

Berton: I can’t say, because I didn’t get a close look at them. I had the impression that under several of the bushes there were some kinds of tools. They were elongated shapes with protruding teeth, like plaster casts of small gardening implements. But this I’m not entirely sure about. The other thing I am.

Q: Did it not occur to you that this might be a hallucination?

Berton: No. I thought it was a mirage. I didn’t think about hallucinations, because I was feeling absolutely fine, and also because I’d never seen anything like it in my life before. When I climbed to 1000 feet the fog underneath me was pocked with cavities; it looked like Swiss cheese. One of the holes was empty and I could see the waves; in others there was agitation. I descended into one of these places and at a distance of about a hundred twenty feet I saw that under the ocean’s surface—though only just—there was a wall, like the wall of a very large building. It was clearly visible through the waves, and it had rows of regular rectangular openings in it, like windows. I even had the impression that in some of the windows something was moving. That, I’m no longer completely sure about. The wall began to rise slowly and emerge from the ocean. Whole waterfalls of ooze were dripping from it and there were some kind of things made of ooze, sort of grainy condensations. All of a sudden the wall broke in two and sank so quickly it disappeared at once. I brought the craft back up higher and flew right over the fog, so close I was almost touching it with my undercarriage. I saw another empty funnel-shaped place—it was several times bigger than the first one, I believe.

Even from far off I could see something floating. Since it was light-colored, almost white, I thought it was Fechner’s space suit, especially because its shape looked human. I made an abrupt about-turn; I was afraid I’d pass the place and not be able to find it again. The figure rose upwards slightly at this moment; it looked as if it was swimming, or standing up to its waist in the ocean. I made a hurried descent, and came so close I felt the undercarriage hit something soft, the crest of a wave, I guessed, since they were high in that place. The person—yes, it was a person—was not wearing a space suit. Despite this he was moving.

Q: Did you see his face?

Berton: Yes.

Q: Who was it?

Berton: It was a child.

Q: What child? Had you ever seen it before in your life?

Berton: No. Never. In any case, not that I can recall. Besides, as soon as I drew closer—I was forty-odd yards away, maybe a little more—I realized there was something wrong with it.

Q: What do you mean?

Berton: Let me explain. At first I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was only a moment later that I realized: it was extraordinarily big. Gigantic would be more like it. It was maybe thirteen feet in length. I remember distinctly that when the undercarriage hit the wave, its face was a little higher than mine, and though I was sitting in the cockpit, I must have been a good ten feet above the surface of the ocean.

Q: If it was so big, how do you know it was a child?

Berton: Because it was a very small child.

Q: Does that answer not strike you as illogical?

Berton: No. Not at all. Because I saw its face. Besides, its body was proportioned like that of a child. It looked to me like. . . almost like a baby. No, that’s going too far. It was perhaps two or three years old. It had black hair and blue eyes. They were huge! And it was naked. Completely naked, like a new-born infant. It was wet, or rather slimy; its skin sort of shimmered.

This sight had a terrible effect on me. I no longer believed it could be a mirage. I’d seen it too close up. It was rising and falling with the waves, but it was also moving independently of them. It was disgusting!

Q: Why? What was it doing?

Berton: It looked, well, like something in a museum, like a doll, but a living doll. It was opening and closing its mouth and making different movements. Disgusting. Because they weren’t its own movements.

Q: Can you say what you mean by that?

Berton: I didn’t get closer than fifteen or so yards, maybe twenty would be more accurate. But I already mentioned how huge it was, and because of this I could see it extremely distinctly. Its eyes were shining and in general it gave the impression of a living child; it was just those movements, as if someone were attempting. . . as if someone were trying them out.

Q: Can you explain that further?

Berton: I’m not sure I can. That was the impression I had. It was intuitive. I didn’t think about it. The movements were unnatural.

Q: Are you trying to say that the arms, for example, were moving in a way that isn’t possible for human arms because of the limitations of mobility in the joints?

Berton: No. That’s not it at all. It was just. . . the movements made no sense. Normally any movement has some meaning, it serves some purpose. . .

Q: You think so? The movements of an infant don’t have to mean anything.

Berton: I’m aware of that. But an infant’s movements are chaotic, uncoordinated. They’re not specific. Whereas these movements, they were. . . Oh, I know! They were methodical. They took place in sequence, in groups and series. As if someone were trying to find out what the child was capable of doing with its arms, what it could do with its torso and its mouth. The worst was the face, I guess because the face is the most expressive part of the body. That face was like a face. . . No, I don’t know how to describe it. It was alive, yes, yet it wasn’t human. I mean, the features very much were, the eyes, the complexion, everything. But the look, the expressions, not at all.

Q: Were these grimaces? Do you know what a person’s face looks like during an epileptic seizure?

Berton: Yes, I’ve seen such a seizure. I understand. No, it was something else. In epilepsy there are contractions and twitches, while these movements were entirely smooth and continuous, graceful, you might say melodious. I can’t think of another word. And the face, with the face it was the same. A face can’t look as if one half of it is happy and the other half sad, as if one part is threatening or afraid and the other half exultant, or something like that. But with this child that’s how it was. Plus, all these movements and facial expressions took place at an amazing speed. I was only there for a short time. Ten seconds perhaps. I don’t know if it was even that long.

Q: And you’re suggesting that you managed to see all that in such a short time? Besides, how do you know how long it lasted, did you check your watch?

Berton: No. I didn’t check my watch, but I’ve been flying for sixteen years. In my line of work you have to be able estimate time to the second, I mean short stretches of time; it becomes a matter of instinct. You need it for landings. A pilot isn’t worth his salt if he can’t tell whether a particular phenomenon lasts five seconds or ten, regardless of what’s going on around him. It’s the same with observation. You learn it over the years, to take in as much as possible in the shortest time.

Q: Is that all you saw?

Berton: No. But the rest I don’t remember in as much detail. I suppose it was too powerful a dose for me. It felt like my brain was bunged up. The fog was beginning to drop and I must have increased altitude. I must have, but I don’t remember how or when I did so. It was the first time in my life I came close to flipping over. My hands were shaking so badly I couldn’t hold onto the rudder properly. I believe I was shouting and calling the Base, though I knew the radio was down.

Q: At that time did you attempt to return?

Berton: No, because when I finally reached my ceiling it occurred to me that Fechner might be in one of those holes. I know it sounds ridiculous. All the same, that’s what I thought. Since these kinds of things are happening, I thought to myself, maybe I’ll manage to find Fechner as well. So I decided to enter as many of the holes in the fog as I could. But the third time, when I climbed back up again I realized that after what I’d seen I was in no state to continue. I couldn’t do it. I have to say this, and besides, it’s no secret. I suddenly felt sick, and I vomited in the cockpit. I’d never experienced this before. I’d never felt queasy.

Q: It was a symptom of poisoning, Berton.

Berton: Maybe. I don’t know. But what I saw the third time, I didn’t make that up, that wasn’t caused by poisoning.

Q: How do you know?

Berton: It wasn’t a hallucination. A hallucination is something created by my own brain, right?

Q: That’s correct.

Berton: Exactly. But this my brain could not have created. I’ll never believe that. It wouldn’t have been capable.

Q: How about you rather tell us what it was?

Berton: First I need to know how what I’ve said so far is going to be treated.

Q: What does that have to do with it?

Berton: For me it’s fundamental. I’ve said that I saw something I’ll never ever forget. If the commission determines that what I said is even one percent plausible, such that certain research on the ocean needs to be begun, then I’ll tell everything. But if the commission is going to see it all as figments of my imagination, I won’t say another word.

Q: Why not?

Berton: Because the content of my hallucinations, however ghastly they might be, is my private matter. Whereas the content of my experiences on Solaris is not.

Q: Does that mean you refuse to answer any more questions until a decision is reached by the appropriate organs of the expedition? You do understand that this committee is not authorized to make any immediate decisions?

Berton: That’s right.


The first transcript ended at this point. There was also an excerpt from a second, recorded eleven days later.


Chairman: . . . and taking all this into consideration, the commission, comprising three medical doctors, three biologists, one physicist, one mechanical engineer and the second in command of the expedition, has concluded that the incidents described by Berton constitute a hallucinatory syndrome resulting from poisoning by the atmosphere of the planet, a condition in which symptoms of confusion were accompanied by a stimulation of the associative regions of the cerebral cortex; and that these incidents had little or no correspondence in reality.

Berton: Excuse me, what does “little or no” mean? What is “little”? How big is it?

Chairman: Allow me to finish. A separate minority report was filed by Dr. Archibald Messenger, physicist, who testified that what Berton described could in his opinion have happened in reality and deserved careful investigation. That is all.

Berton: I repeat my previous question.

Chairman: The matter is simple. “Little” means that certain real phenomena could have triggered your hallucinations, Berton. On a windy night the most normal person in the world can mistake a swaying bush for a human figure. All the more so on an alien planet, when the observer’s mind is affected by poison. This is no affront to you, Berton. In light of the preceding, what is your decision?

Berton: First, I’d like to know the consequences of Dr. Messenger’s minority report.

Chairman: Practically speaking, there are none. That is to say, no investigation will be undertaken in that regard.

Berton: Is what we are saying going to be transcribed?

Chairman: Yes.

Berton: In that case I wish to say that in my view the commission’s decision is an affront not to me—I’m not important here—but to the spirit of this expedition. As I stated the first time, I will not respond to further questions.

Chairman: Is that all?

Berton: Yes. But I would like to talk with Dr. Messenger. Is that possible?

Chairman: Of course.


That was the end of the second transcript. At the bottom of page there was a note in small print reporting that the following day Dr. Messenger met with Berton and spoke with him privately for almost three hours, after which he wrote to the Expeditionary Board, calling once again for an inquiry into the pilot’s testimony. He stated that this was necessitated by additional new data given to him by Berton, which he could reveal only if the Board agreed to the inquiry. The Board, comprising Shannahan, Timolis and Trahier, turned down the request, and the matter was closed.

The book also contained a photocopy of one page of a letter found in Messenger’s papers after he died. It was probably a rough draft; Ravintzer had been unable to determine whether the letter itself had been sent, or what its consequences had been. The text began:

. . . their colossal obtuseness. Out of concern for its authority the Board, and specifically Shannahan and Timolis (Trahier’s voice didn’t count), rejected my demands. Now I’m appealing directly to the Institute, but you yourself know such a protest is ineffectual. I’m bound by my word, so unfortunately I can’t tell you what Berton told me. The Board’s decision was of course influenced by the fact that the revelations had come from a person with no academic standing, though a good many researchers would have envied that pilot his presence of mind and gift for observation. Please, send me the following by return mail:

Fechner’s bio information, including his childhood.



Anything you know about his family and family matters; I gather he left behind a small child.



The topography of the region in which he grew up.





I’d also like to give you my own take on all this. As you know, a short time after Fechner and Carucci set out, in the center of the red sun a spot appeared whose corpuscular radiation shut down radio communication, especially, according to data from the Satelloid, in the southern hemisphere; in other words where our Base was. Of all the search parties, Fechner and Carucci went furthest from the Base.

The whole time we’d been on the planet, up until the day of the accident we had never seen such dense, stubbornly lingering fog, accompanied by complete silence.

I think that what Berton saw was part of an “Operation Human” being carried out by the viscous monster. The actual source of all the formations seen by Berton was Fechner—was his brain, in the course of some “mental autopsy” unimaginable to us. This was an experimental re-creation, a reconstruction of certain traces in his memory—probably those that were most enduring.

I know this sounds fantastical; I know I could be wrong. So I’m asking you for help. I’m presently on Alaric, where I’ll be waiting for your response.

Yours,

A.

It had gotten so dark I was barely able to read; the book turned gray in my hands, the print began to melt away before my eyes, but the blank space below the text showed I had come to the end of the story, which in light of my own experiences I regarded as highly plausible. I turned toward the window. Outside there was a deep purple, a few clouds smoldering above the horizon like dying embers. The ocean was invisible, swathed in darkness. I heard the subdued flutter of the paper strips over the vents. The heated air, with its faint taste of ozone, had grown lifeless. An absolute silence filled the entire Station. I thought to myself that in our decision to remain, there was nothing heroic. The time of valiant planetary struggles, fearless expeditions, terrible deaths, like that of Fechner, the ocean’s first victim—this era had come to an end long ago. I no longer really cared who had “visited” Snaut or Sartorius. After a time, I thought, we’ll stop feeling embarrassed and hiding ourselves away. If we won’t be able to get rid of our “guests,” we’ll grow used to them and we’ll live with them, and if their Creator changes the rules of the game we’ll adapt to the new ones, even if for a while we’ll kick against the pricks, raise a storm. One or another of us might even commit suicide, but in the end the new state of affairs will also reach equilibrium. The room was filling with a darkness ever more like that on Earth. The only lighter places now were the white shapes of the washbasin and the mirror. I stood up, felt for the wad of cotton wool on the shelf, moistened a ball of it and wiped my face. Then I lay down on my back on the bunk. Somewhere overhead the vent thrummed and fell silent in turn, sounding like a fluttering moth. I couldn’t even make out the window; everything was taken over by blackness. A glimmering streak from who knew where was hovering before me; I couldn’t tell whether it was on the wall or far away in the barrenness beyond the window. I recalled how horrified I’d been at the empty gaze of the Solarian space the previous evening, and I almost smiled. I wasn’t afraid of it. I wasn’t afraid of anything. I brought my wrist close to my eyes. The face of my watch lit up with its phosphorescent ring of figures. In an hour the blue sun would rise. I reveled in the pervasive darkness. I was breathing deeply, liberated from all thoughts.

At a certain moment, when I moved I felt the flat shape of the tape recorder against my hip. That’s right. Gibarian. His voice recorded on tape. It didn’t even occur to me to bring him back to life, to hear what he had to say. That was all I could have done for him. I took out the recorder to stow it under the bunk. I heard a rustle and the faint creak of the door opening.

“Kris?” came a soft voice, almost a whisper. “Are you there, Kris? It’s so dark.”

“Don’t mind that,” I said. “Don’t be afraid. Come here.”