Solaris

by Stanisław Lem

  "That … that black woman…" He was leaning forward, and as I spoke his body almost imperceptibly relaxed. "You might have warned me."

  "I did warn you."

  "You could have chosen a better way!"

  "It was the only way possible. I didn't know what you would see. No one could know, no one ever knows…"

  "Listen, Snow, I want to ask you something. You've had some experience of this … phenomenon. Will she … will the person who visited me today…?"

  "Will she come back, do you mean?"

  I nodded.

  "Yes and no," he said.

  "What does that mean?"

  "She … this person will come back as though nothing had happened, just as she was at the beginning of her first visit. More precisely, she will appear not to realize what you did to get rid of her. If you abide by the rules, she won't be aggressive."

  "What rules?"

  "That depends on the circumstances."

  "Snow!"

  "What?"

  "Don't let's waste time talking in riddles."

  "In riddles? Kelvin, I'm afraid you still don't understand." His eyes glittered. "All right, then!" he went on, brutally. "Can you tell me who your visitor was?"

  I swallowed my saliva and turned away. I did not want to look at him. I would have preferred to be dealing with anyone else but him; but I had no choice. A piece of gauze came unstuck and fell on my hand. I gave a start.

  "A woman who…" I stopped. "She died. An injection…"

  "Suicide?"

  "Yes."

  "Is that all?"

  He waited. Seeing that I remained silent, he murmured:

  "No, it's not all…"

  I looked up quickly; he was not looking at me.

  "How did you guess?" He said nothing. "It's true, there's more to it than that." I moistened my lips. "We quarrelled. Or rather, I lost my temper and said a lot of things I didn't mean. I packed my bags and cleared out. She had given me to understand … not in so many words—when one's lived together for years it's not necessary. I was certain she didn't mean it, that she wouldn't dare, she'd be too afraid, and I told her so. Next day, I remembered I'd left these … these ampoules in a drawer. She knew they were there. I'd brought them back from the laboratory because I needed them, and I had explained to her that the effect of a heavy dose would be lethal. I was a bit worried. I wanted to go back and get them, but I thought that would give the impression that I'd taken her remarks seriously. By the third day I was really worried and made up my mind to go back. When I arrived, she was dead."

  "You poor innocent!"

  I looked up with a start. But Snow was not making fun of me. It seemed to me that I was seeing him now for the first time. His face was grey, and the deep lines between cheek and nose were evidence of an unutterable exhaustion: he looked a sick man.

  Curiously awed, I asked him:

  "Why did you say that?"

  "Because it's a tragic story." Seeing that I was upset, he added, hastily: "No, no, you still don't understand. Of course it's a terrible burden to carry around, and you must feel like a murderer, but … there are worse things."

  "Oh, really?"

  "Yes, really. And I'm almost glad that you refuse to believe me. Certain events, which have actually happened, are horrible, but what is more horrible still is what hasn't happened, what has never existed."

  "What are you saying?" I asked, my voice faltering.

  He shook his head from side to side.

  "A normal man," he said. "What is a normal man? A man who has never committed a disgraceful act? Maybe, but has he never had uncontrollable thoughts? Perhaps he hasn't. But perhaps something, a phantasm, rose up from somewhere within him, ten or thirty years ago, something which he suppressed and then forgot about, which he doesn't fear since he knows he will never allow it to develop and so lead to any action on his part. And now, suddenly, in broad daylight, he comes across this thing … this thought, embodied, riveted to him, indestructible. He wonders where he is… Do you know where he is?"

  "Where?"

  "Here," whispered Snow, "on Solaris."

  "But what does it mean? After all, you and Sartorius aren't criminals…"

  "And you call yourself a psychologist, Kelvin! Who hasn't had, at some moment in his life, a crazy daydream, an obsession? Imagine … imagine a fetishist who becomes infatuated with, let's say, a grubby piece of cloth, and who threatens and entreats and defies every risk in order to acquire this beloved bit of rag. A peculiar idea, isn't it? A man who at one and the same time is ashamed of the object of his desire and cherishes it above everything else, a man who is ready to sacrifice his life for his love, since the feeling he has for it is perhaps as overwhelming as Romeo's feeling for Juliet. Such cases exist, as you know. So, in the same way, there are things, situations, that no one has dared to externalize, but which the mind has produced by accident in a moment of aberration, of madness, call it what you will. At the next stage, the idea becomes flesh and blood. That's all."

  Stupefied, my mouth dry, I repeated:

  "That's all?" My head was spinning. "And what about the Station? What has it got to do with the Station?"

  "It's almost as if you're purposely refusing to understand," he groaned. "I've been talking about Solaris the whole time, solely about Solaris. If the truth is hard to swallow, it's not my fault. Anyhow, after what you've already been through, you ought to be able to hear me out! We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. Modesty forbids us to say so, but there are times when we think pretty well of ourselves. And yet, if we examine it more closely, our enthusiasm turns out to be all sham. We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos. For us, such and such a planet is as arid as the Sahara, another as frozen as the North Pole, yet another as lush as the Amazon basin. We are humanitarian and chivalrous; we don't want to enslave other races, we simply want to bequeath them our values and take over their heritage in exchange. We think of ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact. This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, of a civilization superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don't like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don't leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us—that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence—then we don't like it any more."

  I had listened to him patiently.

  "But what on earth are you talking about?"

  "I'm talking about what we all wanted: contact with another civilization. Now we've got it! And we can observe, through a microscope, as it were, our own monstrous ugliness, our folly, our shame!" His voice shook with rage.

  "So … you think it's … the ocean? That the ocean is responsible for it all? But why? I'm not asking how, I'm simply asking why? Do you seriously think that it wants to toy with us, or punish us—a sort of elementary demonomania? A planet dominated by a huge devil, who satisfies the demands of his satanic humour by sending succubi to haunt the members of a scientific expedition…? Snow, you can't believe anything so absurd!"

  He muttered under his breath.

  "This devil isn't such a fool as all that…"

  I looked at him in amazement. Perhaps what had happened, assuming that we had experienced it in our right minds, had finally driven him over the edge? A reaction psychosis?

  He was laughing to himself.

  "Making your diagnosis? Don't be in too much of a hurry! You've only been through one ordeal—and that a reasonably mild one."

>   "Oh, so the devil had pity on me!"

  I was beginning to weary of this conversation.

  "What is it you want exactly?" Snow went on. "Do you want me to tell you what this mass of metamorphic plasma x-billion tons of metamorphic plasma—is scheming against us? Perhaps nothing."

  "What do you mean, nothing?"

  Snow smiled.

  "You must know that science is concerned with phenomena rather than causes. The phenomena here began to manifest themselves eight or nine days after that X-ray experiment. Perhaps the ocean reacted to the irradiation with a counter-irradiation, perhaps it probed our brains and penetrated to some kind of psychic tumor."

  I pricked up my ears.

  "Tumor?"

  "Yes, isolated psychic processes, enclosed, stifled, encysted—foci smouldering under the ashes of memory. It deciphered them and made use of them, in the same way as one uses a recipe or a blue-print. You know how alike the asymmetric crystalline structures of a chromosome are to those of the DNA molecule, one of the constituents of the cerebrosides which constitute the substratum of the memory-processes? This genetic substance is a plasma which 'remembers.' The ocean has 'read' us by this means, registering the minutest details, with the result that … well, you know the result. But for what purpose? Bah! At any rate, not for the purpose of destroying us. It could have annihilated us much more easily. As far as one can tell, given its technological resources, it could have done anything it wished—confronted me with your double, and you with mine, for example."

  "So that's why you were so alarmed when I arrived, the first evening!"

  "Yes. In fact, how do you know it hasn't done so? How do you know I'm really the same old Ratface who landed here two years ago?"

  He went on laughing silently, enjoying my discomfiture, then he growled:

  "No, no, that's enough of that! We're two happy mortals; I could kill you, you could kill me."

  "And the others, can't they be killed?"

  "I don't advise you to try—a horrible sight!"

  "Is there no means of killing them?"

  "I don't know. Certainly not with poison, or a weapon, or by injection…"

  "What about a gamma pistol?"

  "Would you risk it?"

  "Since we know they're not human…"

  "In a certain subjective sense, they are human. They know nothing whatsoever about their origins. You must have noticed that?"

  "Yes. But then, how do you explain…?"

  "They … the whole thing is regenerated with extraordinary rapidity, at an incredible speed—in the twinkling of an eye. Then they start behaving again as…"

  "As?"

  "As we remember them, as they are engraved on our memories, following which…"

  "Did Gibarian know?" I interrupted.

  "As much as we do, you mean?"

  "Yes."

  "Very probably."

  "Did he say anything to you?"

  "No. I found a book in his room…"

  I leapt to my feet.

  "The Little Apocrypha!"

  "Yes." He looked at me suspiciously. "Who could have told you about that?"

  I shook my head.

  "Don't worry, you can see that I've burnt my skin and that it's not exactly renewing itself. No, Gibarian left a letter addressed to me in his cabin."

  "A letter? What did it say?"

  "Nothing much. It was more of a note than a letter, with bibliographic references—allusions to the supplement to the Annual and to the Apocrypha. What is this Apocrypha?"

  "An antique which seems to have some relevance to our situation. Here!" He drew from his pocket a small, leatherbound volume, scuffed at the edges, and handed it to me.

  I grabbed the little book.

  "And what about Sartorius?"

  "Him! Everyone has his own way of coping. Sartorius is trying to remain normal—that is, to preserve his respectability as an envoy of an official mission."

  "You're joking!"

  "No, I'm quite serious. We were together on another occasion. I won't bother you with the details, but there were eight of us and we were down to our last 1000 pounds of oxygen. One after another, we gave up our chores, and by the end we all had beards except Sartorius. He was the only one who shaved and polished his shoes. He's like that. Now, of course, he can only pretend, act a part—or else commit a crime."

  "A crime?"

  "Perhaps that isn't quite the right word. 'Divorce by ejection!' Does that sound better?"

  "Very funny!"

  "Suggest something else if you don't like it."

  "Oh, leave me alone!"

  "No, let's discuss the thing seriously. You know pretty well as much as I do by now. Have you got a plan?"

  "No, none. I haven't the least idea what I'll do when … when she comes back. She will return, if I've understood you correctly?"

  "It's on the cards."

  "How do they get in? The Station is hermetically sealed. Perhaps the layer on the outer hull…"

  He shook his head.

  "The outer hull is in perfect condition. I don't know where they get in. Usually, they're there when you wake up, and you have to sleep eventually!"

  "Could you barricade yourself securely inside a cabin?"

  "The barricades wouldn't survive for long. There's only one solution, and you can guess what that is…"

  We both stood up.

  "Just a minute, Snow! You're suggesting we liquidate the Station and you expect me to take the initiative and accept the responsibility?"

  "It's not as simple as that. Obviously, we could get out, if only as far as the satellite, and send an SOS from there. Of course, we'll be regarded as lunatics; we'll be shut up in a mad-house on Earth—unless we have the sense to retract. A distant planet, isolation, collective derangement—our case won't seem at all out of the ordinary. But at least we'd be better off in a mental home than we are here: a quiet garden, little white cells, nurses, supervised walks…"

  Hands in his pockets, staring fixedly at a corner of the room, he spoke with the utmost seriousness.

  The red sun had disappeared over the horizon and the ocean was a sombre desert, mottled with dying gleams, the last rays lingering among the long tresses of the waves. The sky was ablaze. Purple-edged clouds drifted across this dismal red and black world.

  "Well, do you want to get out, yes or no? Or not yet?"

  "Always the fighter! If you knew the full implications of what you're asking, you wouldn't be so insistent. It's not a matter of what I want, it's a matter of what's possible."

  "Such as what?"

  "That's the point, I don't know."

  "We stay here then? Do you think we'll find some way…?"

  Thin, sickly-looking, his peeling face deeply lined, he turned towards me:

  "It might be worth our while to stay. We're unlikely to learn anything about it, but about ourselves…"

  He turned, picked up his papers, and went out. I opened my mouth to detain him, but no sound escaped my lips.

  There was nothing I could do now except wait. I went to the window and ran my eyes absently over the dark-red glimmer of the shadowed ocean. For a moment, I thought of locking myself inside one of the capsules on the hangar- deck, but it was not an idea worth considering for long: sooner or later, I should have to come out again.

  I sat by the window, and began to leaf through the book Snow had given me. The glowing twilight lit up the room and colored the pages. It was a collection of articles and treatises edited by an Otho Ravintzer, Ph.D., and its general level was immediately obvious. Every science engenders some pseudo-science, inspiring eccentrics to explore freakish by-ways; astronomy has its parodists in astrology, chemistry used to have them in alchemy. It was not surprising, therefore, that Solaristics, in its early days, had set off an explosion of marginal cogitations. Ravintzer's book was full of this sort of intellectual speculation, prefaced, it is only fair to add, by an introduction in which the editor dissociated himself from some of the texts
reproduced. He considered, with some justice, that such a collection could provide an invaluable period document as much for the historian as for the psychologist of science.

  Berton's report, divided into two parts and complete with a summary of his log, occupied the place of honor in the book.

  From 14.00 hours to 16.40 hours, by expedition time, the entries in the log were laconic and negative.

  Altitude 3000—or 3500—2500 feet; nothing visible; ocean empty. The same words recurred over and over again.

  Then, at 16.40 hours: A red mist rising. Visibility 700 yards. Ocean empty.

  17.00 hours: fog thickening; visibility 400 yards, with clear patches. Descending to 600 feet.

  17.20 hours: in fog. Altitude 600. Visibility 20-40 yards. Climbing to 1200.

  17.45: altitude 1500. Pall of fog to horizon. Funnel-shaped openings through which I can see ocean surface. Attempting to enter one of these clearings; something is moving.

  17.52: have spotted what appears to be a waterspout; it is throwing up a yellow foam. Surrounded by a wall of fog. Altitude 300. Descending to 60 feet.

  The extract from Berton's log stopped at this point. There followed his case-history, or, more precisely, the statement dictated by Berton and interrupted at intervals by questions from the members of the Commission of Enquiry.

  BERTON: When I reached 100 feet it became very difficult to maintain altitude because of the violent gusts of wind inside the cone. I had to hang on to the controls and for a short period—about ten or fifteen minutes—I did not look outside. I realized too late that a powerful undertow was dragging me back into the fog. It wasn't like an ordinary fog, it was a thick colloidal substance which coated my windows. I had a lot of trouble cleaning them; that fog—or glue rather—was obstinate stuff. Due to this resistance, the speed of my rotor-blades was reduced by thirty percent and I began losing height. I was afraid of capsizing on the waves; but, even at full power, I could maintain altitude but not increase it. I still had four booster-rockets left but felt the situation was not yet desperate enough to use them. The aircraft was shaken by shuddering vibrations that grew more and more violent. Thinking my rotor-blades must have become coated with the gluey substance, I glanced at the overload indicator, but to my surprise it read zero. Since entering the fog, I had not seen the sun—only a red glow. I continued to fly around in the hope of emerging into one of the funnels, which, after half an hour, was what happened. I found myself in a new 'well,' perfectly cylindrical in shape, and several hundred yards in diameter. The walls of the cylinder were formed by an enormous whirlpool of fog, spiralling upwards. I struggled to keep in the middle, where the wind was less violent. It was then that I noticed a change in the ocean's surface. The waves had almost completely disappeared, and the upper layer of the fluid—or whatever the ocean is made of—was becoming transparent, with murky streaks here and there which gradually dissolved until, finally, it was perfectly clear. I could see distinctly to a depth of several yards. I saw a sort of yellow sludge which was sprouting vertical filaments. When these filaments emerged above the surface, they had a glassy sheen. Then they began to exude foam—they frothed—until the foam solidified; it was like a very thick treacle. These glutinous filaments merged and became intertwined; great bubbles swelled up on the surface and slowly began to change shape. Suddenly I realized that my machine was being driven towards the wall of fog. I had to manoeuver against the wind, and when I was able to look down again, I saw something which looked like a garden. Yes, a garden. Trees, hedges, paths—but it wasn't a real garden; it was all made of the same substance, which had hardened and by now looked like yellow plaster. Beneath this garden, the ocean glittered. I came down as low as I dared in order to take a closer look.