Solaris

Liquid Oxygen


I had been lying in the dark room, in a trance, staring at the illuminated face of the watch on my wrist, for I don’t know how long. I was listening to my own breathing and feeling surprised at something, but all of this—the staring at the greenish ring of figures, and the surprise—was steeped in an indifference I put down to exhaustion. I turned on my side. The bed was oddly wide, something was missing. I held my breath. There was absolute silence. I froze. Not the slightest whisper came from anywhere. Harey? Why couldn’t I hear her breathing? I felt the bedding with my hand: I was alone.

“Harey!” I was about to call out, but I heard footsteps. It was someone large and heavy, like. . .

“Gibarian?” I said calmly.

“Yes, it’s me. Don’t turn the light on.”

“Really?”

“There’s no need. That way it’ll be better for both of us.”

“But you’re dead?”

“It doesn’t matter. I mean, you do recognize my voice?”

“Yes. Why did you do it?”

“I had to. You were four days late. If you’d gotten here sooner it might not have been necessary. But don’t feel bad. I’m fine.”

“Are you really here?”

“Oh, you think you’re dreaming, like you thought about Harey?”

“Where is she?”

“What makes you think I know?”

“I’m guessing you do.”

“Keep that thought to yourself. Let’s just say I’m here instead of her.”

“I want her to be here as well.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Why not? Look, you do know that really it’s not you, it’s me, right?”

“No. It’s really me. If you wanted to be pedantic you could say it’s me again. But let’s not waste words.”

“Will you go away?”

“Yes.”

“And then she’ll come back?”

“Is that what you want? What is she to you?”

“That’s my business.”

“But you’re afraid of her.”

“No, I’m not.”

“And disgusted by her. . .”

“What do you want from me?”

“You can feel sorry for yourself, but not for her. She’s always going to be twenty years old. Don’t pretend you don’t know that!”

All of a sudden, I have no idea why, I calmed down. I listened to him with equanimity. I had the impression he was standing ever closer, at the foot of the bed, but I still couldn’t see anything in the darkness.

“What are you after?” I asked quietly. My tone seemed to surprise him. He was silent for a moment.

“Sartorius has convinced Snaut that you hoodwinked him. Now they’re doing the same to you. They’re pretending to assemble the X-ray equipment but they’re actually building a field annihilator.”

“Where is she?” I asked.

“Did you not hear what I just said to you? I’m trying to warn you!”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know. Listen up: you’ll need a weapon. You can’t count on anyone.”

“I can count on Harey,” I said. I heard a low rapid sound. He was laughing.

“Sure you can. Up to a certain point. In the end you can always do what I did.”

“You’re not Gibarian.”

“How do you like that. And who am I? A dream of yours maybe?”

“No. Their puppet. But you don’t know it.”

“And how do you know who you are!”

That made me think. I wanted to get up but I couldn’t. Gibarian was saying something. I couldn’t understand the words, I only heard the sound of his voic.; I was struggling desperately with the weakness of the flesh. I made one more colossal effort, jerked my body. . . and woke up. I gasped for air like a half-suffocated fish. It was completely dark. It had been a dream. A nightmare. But just a moment. . . “a dilemma we’re not able to resolve. We persecute our own selves. All Polytheria did was apply a kind of selective amplifier to our thoughts. Seeking a motivation for this is anthropomorphism. Where there are no humans, there are none of the motives available to humans. To continue the projected research we’d have had to destroy either our own thoughts or their material realization. The former is beyond our powers. The latter looks too much like murder.”

In the darkness I listened to the distant, measured voice that I had recognized at once: it was Gibarian. I stretched out my hand. The bed was empty.

I’ve woken into another dream, I thought.

“Gibarian. . . ?” I said. The voice broke off at once in mid-word. There was a soft click and I felt a faint puff of air on my face.

“Really, Gibarian,” I muttered with a yawn. “Following someone from one dream into another, come off it. . .”

There was a rustling sound next to me.

“Gibarian!” I repeated more loudly.

The bedsprings moved.

“Kris. . . It’s me. . . ,” came a whisper right by me.

“Oh, it’s you, Harey. . . Where’s Gibarian?”

“Kris. . . Kris. . . surely he’s. . . you yourself said he died. . .”

“He might be alive in a dream,” I said slowly. I was no longer at all certain it had been a dream. “He was saying something. He was here,” I added. I was fearfully sleepy. If I’m sleepy, I must be asleep, I thought to myself idiotically. I brushed Harey’s cold arm with my lips and arranged myself more comfortably. She said something in reply, but I was already plunged in oblivion.

In the morning, in the red sunlight of the room, I recalled the events of the night. The conversation with Gibarian had been a dream, but the things that had happened next? I’d heard his voice, I could have sworn it; I just didn’t quite remember what he’d been saying. It hadn’t sounded like a conversation, more like a lecture. A lecture. . . ?

Harey was getting washed. I heard the splash of water in the bathroom. I looked under the bed, where I’d shoved the tape recorder a few days before. It wasn’t there.

“Harey!” I called. Her face, dripping water, appeared from behind the locker.

“You didn’t see a tape recorder under the bed by any chance, did you? A little pocket-sized one?”

“There were various things under there. I put them all over on that shelf.” She pointed to near the medicine cabinet and vanished back into the bathroom. I jumped out of bed, but I couldn’t find what I was looking for.

“You must have seen it,” I said when she came back into the main room. She combed her hair in front of the mirror and didn’t reply. It was only now I noticed she was pale, and that when her eyes met mine in the mirror there was a searching look in them.

“Harey,” I began again insistently, “the tape recorder isn’t on the shelf.”

“You don’t have anything more important to tell me?”

“I’m sorry,” I murmured. “You’re right, it’s not that big of a deal.”

That was all we needed—to start an argument!

After that we went to get breakfast. Harey was doing everything differently than usual that day, but I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly had changed. She was looking closely at everything around her; a couple of times she didn’t hear what I was saying to her, as if she’d suddenly gotten lost in thought. One time, when she raised her head I saw her eyes were glistening.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, lowering my voice to a whisper. “Are you crying?”

“Let it be. They’re not real tears,” she stammered. Perhaps I shouldn’t have left it at that, but there was nothing I was so afraid of as “heart-to-hearts.” Besides, I had other things on my mind. Though I knew Snaut and Sartorius’s scheming had only been a dream, I’d begun to wonder if there was some kind of handy weapon on the Station. I’d no idea what I would do with it; I just wanted to have it. I told Harey I needed to swing by the hold and the depositories. She followed me in silence. I searched among the crates and rifled through the capsules; then, when I went all the way down to the lowest floor, I couldn’t resist the temptation to look in on the cold room. I didn’t want Harey to go in there though, so I just half-opened the door and checked the whole place over with my eyes. The dark shroud bulged over the elongated figure beneath, but from where I was standing I couldn’t tell if the black woman was still lying where she had been. It seemed to me that her place was empty.

I didn’t find anything I could use, and I was in an ever-worsening mood as I wandered about, till all at once I realized I couldn’t see Harey. She appeared right after that—she’d stayed back in the corridor—yet the very fact she’d tried to distance herself from me, something that was so hard for her even for a moment, should have made me think. But I was still acting offended at no one in particular, or just generally behaving like a jerk. I’d gotten a headache, I couldn’t find any aspirin and, mad as hell, I tipped out the entire contents of the first aid kit. I couldn’t be bothered to go back to the surgery; I’d rarely been such a mess as I was that day. Harey was moving about the cabin like a shadow; from time to time she’d disappear. In the afternoon, after we’d eaten lunch (though in fact she rarely ate at all, while I’d lost my appetite from the headache and didn’t even press her to have something). All of a sudden she sat down next to me and began picking at the sleeve of my shirt.

“How’s it going?” I murmured absently. I had an urge to go upstairs, because I had the impression the pipes were carrying a faint echo of knocking sounds, meaning that Sartorius was tinkering with the high-tension apparatus. But I lost interest when it occurred to me that I’d have to go with Harey, whose presence might have been semi-understandable in the library, but there, among the machinery, might have led Snaut to make some inopportune remark.

“Kris,” she whispered, “how are things between us. . . ?”

I gave a sigh despite myself. I can’t say it was a happy day for me.

“Couldn’t be better. Why do you ask?”

“I wanted to have a talk with you.”

“Fire away.”

“Not that kind of talk.”

“Then what kind? Like I said, I’ve got a headache, I’ve all kind of things on my mind. . .”

“A little good will, Kris.”

I forced myself to smile. It couldn’t have been impressive.

“What is it, darling? I’m listening.”

“Will you tell me the truth?”

I raised my eyebrows. I didn’t like this as an opener.

“Why would I lie?”

“You might have your reasons. Serious ones. But if you want there to be. . . you know. . . then don’t lie to me.”

I said nothing.

“I’ll tell you something and you’ll tell me something. OK? It’ll be the truth. Regardless of anything else.”

I wasn’t looking her in the eye. She sought my gaze, but I pretended not to notice.

“I already told you that I don’t know how I got here. But maybe you know. Wait, I haven’t finished. Maybe you don’t know. But if you know and it’s just that you’re not able to tell me now, then will you later, one day? That won’t be the worst thing. In any case you’ll give me a chance.”

I had the sensation of an icy current running through my entire body.

“What are you saying, kid? What chance. . . ?” I mumbled.

“Kris, whoever I am, I’m for sure no kid. You promised. Tell me.”

That “whoever I am” gave me such a lump in my throat that all I could do was stare at her, shaking my head like an idiot, as if I were trying to prevent myself from hearing everything.

“I already said you don’t have to tell me. It’s enough for you to say you can’t.”

“I’m not hiding anything. . . ,” I answered hoarsely.

“Very good then,” she replied, standing up. I wanted to say something. I sensed I shouldn’t leave her like that, but all the words stuck in my throat.

“Harey. . .”

She was by the window, her back to me. The empty dark blue ocean lay beneath a bare sky.

“Harey, if you think that. . . Harey, you know I love you. . .”

“You love me?”

I went up to her. I tried to put my arms around her. She freed herself, pushing my hand aside.

“You’re so good,” she said. “You love me? I’d rather you beat me!”

“Harey, darling!”

“No. No. Best just don’t say a thing.”

She went up to the table and began clearing away the plates. I stared into the dark blue emptiness. The sun was starting to set, and the great shadow of the Station moved evenly on the waves. A plate slipped out of Harey’s hands and fell on the floor. Water sounded in the sinks. At the edges of the horizon the ruddy color turned to a dirty reddish gold. If only I knew what to do. Oh, if only I knew. All at once things went quiet. Harey came and stood right by me.

“No. Don’t turn around,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “None of this is your fault, Kris. I know it. Don’t worry.”

I reached out my hand towards her. She escaped to the other side of the cabin and, picking up a whole pile of plates, she said:

“Pity. If they could be broken, I’d smash them, I really would smash all of them!”

For a moment I thought she was actually going to fling them to the ground, but she threw me a keen glance and smiled.

“Don’t be scared, I’m not going to make a scene.”

I woke up in the middle of the night, instantly intent and watchful. I sat up in bed; the room was dark, though a faint light came from the corridor through the cracked-open door. There was a nasty hissing sound that was intensifying, and at the same time there were dull stifled thuds as if something large were thrashing about in the next room. A meteor! came a rapid thought. It’s broken through the armor plating. Someone’s there! There was a prolonged wheezing.

I finally regained my senses. It was the Station, not a rocket; and that awful noise. . .

I ran into the corridor. The door to the small lab was wide open and the light was on. I hurried inside.

I was struck by a wave of fearful cold. The cabin was filled with vapor that turned my breath to snow. A mass of white flakes were spinning over a body wrapped in a bathrobe that was lying on the floor and tossing weakly. I could barely see her through the icy cloud. I rushed up to her, picked her up. The robe burned my hands; she was rasping. I ran back into the corridor, past a series of doors. I no longer felt the cold, except that the breath coming out of her mouth in clouds of condensation scorched my neck like fire.

I laid her on the table, tore open the robe over her breasts. For a moment I looked at her drawn, trembling face; the blood had frozen on her open lips, covering them with a dark coating. Tiny ice crystals glittered on her tongue. . .

Liquid oxygen. There was liquid oxygen in the shop, in Dewar flasks. As I picked her up I’d felt broken glass underfoot. How much could she have swallowed? It made no difference. Her trachea was burned, and her throat and lungs; liquid oxygen is more caustic than any concentrated acid. Her breathing, raucous and dry as the sound of paper being torn, was growing shallower. Her eyes were closed. It was the death throes.

I looked at the large glass-paneled cabinets with instruments and medications. A tracheotomy? An intubation? Except she had no lungs! They were burned up. Medication? There were so many different kinds! The shelves were filled with colored bottles and packets. The wheezing sound filled the whole room; vapor was still coming from her open mouth.

Hot water bottles. . .

I started looking for them, but before I found any I darted across to the other cabinet and began rifling through boxes of ampoules. Now I found a needle, which I fumbled to put in the sterilizer, my fingers stiff with cold and clumsy. I hammered furiously on the lid of the sterilizer, but I couldn’t even feel it, the only sensation was a slight tingling. She made a louder wheezing sound. I hurried over to her. Her eyes were open.

“Harey!”

It wasn’t even a whisper. I couldn’t speak. Her face was alien, as if made of plaster; it brought me up sharp. Her ribs were twitching under her white skin; her hair, wet from melting snow, lay scattered around her head. She was looking at me.

“Harey!”

I was unable to say any more. I stood there like a lump of wood with those unwieldy foreign hands of mine. My feet, lips, eyelids were starting to sting ever more painfully, but I barely felt it. A droplet of blood that had melted in the heat ran down her cheek, leaving a diagonal mark. Her tongue quivered and disappeared; she was still rasping.

I took her wrist; she had no pulse. I pulled apart the lapels of the robe and placed my ear against the fearfully cold body right beneath her breast. Through a crackling roar like a fire I heard a pit-a-pat, a galloping sound too fast to count. I stood there leaning over her, my eyes closed, when something touched my head. She had dug her fingers into my hair. I looked into her eyes.

“Kris,” she croaked. I grasped her hand in mine; she squeezed it back, almost crushing it. Consciousness was ebbing from her horribly distorted face; the whites of her eyes flashed beneath her eyelids, there was a snort from her throat and her whole body was shaken by convulsions. I was barely able to hold onto her as she hung over the side of the table. She knocked her head against the side of a porcelain funnel. I pulled her up and pressed her to the table; with each new spasm she tugged away from me. I immediately became drenched in sweat, my legs felt like cotton wool. When the convulsions eased off I tried to lie her down again. She was making a squeaking sound as she gasped for air. All of a sudden, Harey’s eyes lit up in that terrible bloody face.

“Kris,” she gasped, “How much. . . how much longer, Kris?”

She began to choke; foam appeared on her lips and the convulsions began again. I held her down with all the strength I had left. She collapsed on her back so abruptly her teeth clattered; she was panting.

“No, no, no,” she exclaimed rapidly with each outbreath; each one seemed it would be the last. But the convulsions returned again and once more she writhed in my arms, in the short pauses drawing in air with such an effort her ribcage bulged. Finally her eyelids dropped half way over her open, unseeing eyes. She stopped moving. I thought it was the end. I didn’t even try to wipe the pink foam from her lips. I stood over her, leaning forward, hearing some great distant bell, and waited for her last breath so that after it I could crumple onto the floor; but she kept on breathing, only slightly wheezing, ever quieter, and the tip of her breast, which had almost stopped quivering, began to move to the quick rhythm of a working heart. I stood hunched over her, and her face began to regain color. I still didn’t understand a thing. The palms of both my hands grew moist, and I felt I was going deaf, that something soft and springy was filling my ears; I could still hear the ringing bell, which now sounded hollow, like with a broken heart.

She raised her eyelids and our eyes met.

“Harey,” I tried to say, but I seemed to have no mouth. My face was a heavy lifeless mask, and all I could do was look.

Her eyes ran around the room. Her head moved. Everything was completely quiet. Behind me, in another, far-off world, water was dripping regularly from a tap that hadn’t been properly turned off. She rose on one elbow. She sat up. I drew back. She was watching me.

“So. . . ,” she said. “So. . . ? It didn’t. . . work? Why not. . . ? Why are you looking at me like that. . . ?”

And suddenly, with a terrible scream:

“Why are you looking at me like that!!”

Silence fell. She looked at her hands. Wiggled her fingers.

“Is this me. . . ?” she asked.

“Harey,” I said without breath, merely moving my lips. She raised her head.

“Harey. . . ?” she repeated. She slid down slowly onto the floor and stood up. She staggered, regained her balance, took a few steps. All this she did in a kind of daze, looking at me but seemingly without seeing me.

“Harey,” she repeated slowly one more time. “But . . . I. . . I’m not Harey. And who... am I? Harey? And you, you?!”

Suddenly her eyes opened wide, flashed, and the shadow of a smile, of utter astonishment, lit up her face.

“Maybe you too? Kris! Maybe you too?!”

I said nothing, leaning back against a locker, where fear had driven me.

She dropped her arms.

“No,” she said. “No, because you’re afraid. Listen to me, though, I can’t do it. This isn’t right. I didn’t know anything about it. I still don’t get it even now. I mean, surely it’s not possible?” She clenched her fists so tight they turned white, and pressed them to her chest. “I don’t know anything except, except Harey! Do you think I’m pretending maybe? I’m not pretending, cross my heart, I’m not.”

Her last words turned into a groan. She slumped to the floor, sobbing. What she had shouted had shattered something inside of me; in one long stride I reached her and seized her in my arms. She fought back, pushing me away, sobbing without tears, exclaiming:

“Let me go! Let me go! I disgust you! I know! I don’t want things this way! I don’t! You see it, you know you do, that it’s not me, not me, not me.”

“Quiet!” I cried, shaking her; we were both screaming, on our knees facing one another. Harey’s head was thrashing, knocking against my shoulder; I pulled her to myself with all my strength. All of a sudden we were still, breathing heavily. Water was dripping evenly from the faucet.

“Kris,” she mumbled, pressing her face into my arm. “Tell me what I need to do so I won’t be there anymore. Kris. . .”

“Stop it!” I yelled. She raised her face. Stared at me.

“What do you mean. . . ? You don’t know either? There’s nothing can be done? Nothing?”

“Harey. . . . for pity’s sake. . .”

“I wanted to. . . you saw. No. No. Let me go, I don’t want you to touch me! I disgust you.”

“That’s not true!”

“You’re lying. I must disgust you. I. . . I disgust myself. . . as well. If I could. If I only could. . .”

“You’d kill yourself.”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t want that, you understand? I don’t want you to kill yourself. I want you to be here, with me, I don’t need anything else!”

Her huge gray eyes devoured me.

“If you’re lying. . . ,” she said ever so softly.

I let go of her and stood up. She sat back on the floor.

“Tell me what I need to do to make you believe I’m saying what I think. That it’s the truth. That there’s no other.”

“You can’t say the truth. I’m not Harey.”

“Then who are you?”

She was silent for a long while. Her chin twitched over and over, till she lowered her head and whispered:

“Harey. . . but. . . but I know that isn’t true. It’s not me. . . that you loved back then, long ago. . .”

“Yes,” I said. “What was then is dead and gone. But you, here, I love. You understand?”

She shook her head.

“You’re good. Don’t think I don’t appreciate all that you’ve done. You did the best you could. But it can’t be helped. When I sat by your bed in the early morning three days ago, waiting for you to wake up, I didn’t know a thing. That seems such a very long time ago. I was acting like I wasn’t all there. It was like my head was filled with fog. I didn’t remember what had come earlier and what had come later, and nothing surprised me, it was like coming round after anesthetic, or recovering from a long illness. I even thought maybe I’d been sick, and it was just that you wouldn’t tell me. Then later, more and more things made me wonder. You know which things. I already had an inkling after the conversation you had in the library with that, what’s his name, Snaut. And since you wouldn’t say anything, I got up in the night and played the tape recorder. I only lied that one time, because I hid it afterwards, Kris. What was the name of the man who was talking on it?”

“Gibarian.”

“Right, Gibarian. At that moment I understood everything, though truth be told I still didn’t understand anything. There was one thing I didn’t know: that I couldn’t. . . that I wasn’t. . . that it would end. . . without an end. He didn’t say anything about that. Though maybe he did, but you woke up and I turned off the tape. Even so, I heard enough to find out that I’m not a person but an instrument.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That’s right. To test your reactions or something like that. Each of you has something like me. It’s based on memories or on the imagination; it’s suppressed. Something along those lines. Besides, you know all this better than I do. He said such terrible, inconceivable things, if it hadn’t all added up I don’t think I would have believed him!”

“What added up?”

“You know, that I don’t need sleep and I always have to be by you. Yesterday morning I still thought you hated me, and that made me sad. Good Lord, how stupid I was. But tell me, tell me yourself, could I have imagined this? I mean, he didn’t hate that woman of his at all, but the things he said about her! It was only then I understood that whatever I might do it made no difference, because whether I want it or not, it must be torture for you. Or actually even worse, because a torture implement is as lifeless and innocent as a rock that can fall and kill you. But an implement that could have good intentions and could love—this I couldn’t imagine. I’d like to tell you at least what went on inside me then, later, when I understood, when I listened to the tape. It might at least come in useful for you. I even tried to write it down. . .”

“Is that why you turned on the light?” I asked; I suddenly felt choked, I had difficulty speaking.

“Yes. But nothing came of it. Because I was searching inside myself, you know . . . for them—for that something else, I was completely mad, I can tell you! For a while I had the feeling that I didn’t have a body under my skin, that inside me there was something else, that I was only a surface. There to fool you. You follow?”

“I do.”

“When you lie for hours through the night like that, in your thoughts you can go very far, and in very strange directions, you know. . .”

“I know.”

“But I could feel my heart, and besides, I remembered that you’d tested my blood. What’s my blood like, tell me, tell me the truth. Surely you can now.”

“It’s the same as mine.”

“Really?”

“I swear.”

“What does that mean? You know, later it occurred to me that maybe it is hidden inside me, that it’s. . . I mean, it could be very small. But I didn’t know where. Now I think that at bottom I was dodging the issue, because I was terrified of what I planned to do, and I was looking for another way out. But Kris, if I have the same blood. . . if it’s the way you say, then. . . No, that’s not possible. I mean, I’d be dead already, wouldn’t I? That means there is something after all, but where is it? Maybe in my head? Yet my thoughts are completely ordinary. . . and I don’t know anything. . . If I were thinking through it, I ought to know everything right away, and not love you, just pretend, and know that I’m pretending. . . Kris, please, tell me all you know, maybe something can be done after all?”

“What could be done?”

She was silent.

“Do you want to die?”

“I think so.”

Once again there was silence. I stood above her as she sat there hunched over. I stared at the empty interior of the room, the white enameled surfaces of the apparatus, at the shining scattered implements, as if I were searching for something terribly necessary and I couldn’t find it.

“Harey, can I say something too?”

She waited.

“It’s true that you’re not entirely like me. But that doesn’t mean you’re worse. Quite the opposite. Well, you can think any way you like about it, but it’s thanks to that. . . that you survived.”

A kind of pathetic childlike smile appeared on her face.

“Is that supposed to mean I’m. . . immortal?”

“I don’t know. In any case you’re a lot less mortal than me.”

“How awful,” she whispered.

“Maybe not as much as you think.”

“But you don’t envy me. . .”

“Harey, it’s more a question of your. . . purpose, as I might call it. You know, here on the Station your purpose is essentially as mysterious as mine, as that of any of us. The other men are going to continue Gibarian’s experiment and anything could happen. . .”

“Or nothing.”

“Or nothing, and to be honest I’d rather it was nothing, not even because I’m afraid (though I guess that plays a part, I’m not sure), but because it won’t do any good. That’s the one thing I’m certain of.”

“It won’t do any good ? Why not? Is it about the. . . the ocean?”

She shuddered.

“That’s right. It’s about contact. In my view, the whole thing is in essence extremely simple. Contact means an exchange of experiences, concepts, or at least results, conditions. But what if there’s nothing to exchange? If an elephant isn’t a very large bacterium, then an ocean can’t be a very large brain. Of course, various actions can be performed by both sides. As a result of one of them I’m looking at you right now and trying to explain to you that you’re more precious to me than the twelve years of my life I devoted to Solaris, and that I want to go on being with you. Perhaps your appearance was meant to be torture, perhaps a reward, or perhaps just a test under a microscope. An expression of friendship, a treacherous blow, perhaps a taunt? Perhaps everything at once or—as seems most likely to me—something entirely different. But what can you and I really care about the intentions of our parents, however different they were from one another? You can say that our future depends on those intentions, and I’d agree with you. I can’t predict what’s to come. Nor can you. I can’t even assure you I’ll always love you. If so much has already happened, then anything can happen. Maybe tomorrow I’ll turn into a green jellyfish? It doesn’t depend on me. But in what does depend on us, we’ll be together. Is that not something?”

“Listen,” she said, “there’s one other thing. Am I. . . really like. . . her?”

“You were,” I said, “but now I don’t know any more.”

“What do you mean. . . ?”

She got to her feet and looked at me with eyes wide open.

“You’ve already taken her place.”

“And you’re sure it’s not her but me that you. . . Me?”

“Yes. You. I don’t know. I’m afraid that if you were really her, I’d not be able to love you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I did something terrible.”

“To her?”

“Yes. When we were—”

“Don’t say.”

“Why not?”

“Because I want you to know that I’m not her.”