Solaris

6 “THE LITTLE APOCRYPHA”

My face and hands were badly burnt. I remembered noticing a jar of anti-burn ointment when I was looking for sleeping pills for Rheya (I was in no mood to laugh at my naïvete), so I went back to my room.

I opened the door. The room was glowing in the red twilight. Someone was sitting in the armchair where Rheya had knelt. For a second or two, I was paralysed with terror, filled with an overwhelming desire to turn and run. Then the seated figure raised its head: it was Snow. His legs crossed, still wearing the acid-stained trousers, he was looking through some papers, a pile of which lay on a small table beside him. He put down those he was holding in his hand, let his glasses slide down his nose, and scowled up at me.

Without saying a word, I went to the basin, took the ointment out of the medicine chest and applied it to my forehead and cheeks. Fortunately my face was not too swollen and my eyes, which I had closed instinctively, did not seem to be inflamed. I lanced some large blisters on my temples and cheekbones with a sterilized needle; they exuded a serous liquid, which I mopped up with an antiseptic pad. Then I applied some gauze dressing.

Snow watched me throughout these first-aid operations, but I paid no attention to him. When at last I had finished (and my burns had become even more painful), I sat myself down in the other chair. I had first to remove Rheya’s dress — that apparently quite normal dress which was nevertheless devoid of fastenings.

Snow, his hands clasped around one bony knee, continued to observe me with a critical air.

“Well, are you ready to have a chat?” he asked.

I did not answer; I was busy replacing a piece of gauze which had slipped down one cheek.

“You’ve had a visitor, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” I answered curtly.

He had begun the conversation on a note which I found displeasing.

“And you’ve rid yourself of it already? Well, well! That was quick!”

He touched his forehead, which was still peeling and mottled with pink patches of new skim. I was thunderstruck. Why had I not realized before the implications of Snow’s and Sartorius’s ‘sunburn’? No one exposed himself to the sun here.

Without noticing my sudden change of expression he went on:

“I imagine you didn’t try extreme methods straight away. What did you use first — drugs, poison, judo?”

“Do you want to discuss the thing seriously or play the fool? If you don’t want to help, you can leave me in peace.”

He half-closed his eyes.

“Sometimes one plays the fool in spite of oneself. Did you try the rope, or the hammer? Or the well-aimed ink-bottle, like Luther? No?” He grimaced, “Aren’t you a fast worker! The basin is still intact, you haven’t banged your head against the walls, you haven’t even turned the room upside down. One, two and into the rocket, just like that!” He looked at his watch. “Consequently, we have two or three hours at our disposal…. Am I getting on your nerves?” he added, with a disagreeable smile.

“Yes,” I said curtly.

“Really? Well, if I tell you a little story, will you believe me?”

I said nothing.

Still with that hideous smile, he went on:

“It started with Gibarian. He locked himself in his cabin and refused to talk to us except through the door. And can you guess what we thought?”

I remained silent.

“Naturally, we thought he had gone mad. He let a bit of it out — through the locked door — but not everything. You may wonder why he didn’t tell us that there was someone with him. Oh, suum cuique! But he was a true scientist. He begged us to let him take his chance!”

“What chance?”

“He was obviously doing his damnedest to solve the problem, to get to the bottom of it. He worked day and night. You know what he was doing? You must know.”

“Those calculations, in the drawer of the radio-cabin — were they his?”

“Yes.”

“How long did it go on?”

“This visit? About a week… We thought he was suffering from hallucinations, or having a nervous breakdown. I gave him some scopolamine.”

“Gave him?”

“Yes. He took it, but not for himself. He tried it out on someone else.”

“What did you do?”

“On the third day we had decided, if all else failed, to break down the door, maybe injuring his self-esteem, but at least curing him.”

“Ah…”

“Yes.”

“So, in that locker….”

“Yes, my friend, quite. But in the meantime, we too had received visitors. We had our hands full, and didn’t have a chance to tell him what was going on. Now it’s… it’s become a routine.”

He spoke so softly that I guessed rather than heard the last few words.

“I still don’t understand!” I exclaimed. “If you listened at his door, you must have heard two voices.”

“No, we heard only his voice. There were strange noises, but we thought they came from him too.”

“Only his voice! But how is it that you didn’t hear… her?”

“I don’t know. I have the rudiments of a theory about it, but I’ve dropped it for the moment. No point getting bogged down in details. But what about you? You must already have seen something yesterday, otherwise you would have taken us for lunatics.”

“I thought it was I who had gone mad.”

“So you didn’t see anyone?”

“I saw someone.”

“Who?”

I gave him a long look — he no longer wore even the semblance of a smile — and answered:

“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 humors 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 exuam — 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.

QUESTION: Did the trees and plants you saw have leaves on them?

BERTON: No, the shapes were only approximate, like a model garden. That’s exactly what it was like: a model, but lifesize. All of a sudden, it began to crack; it broke up and split into dark crevices; a thick white liquid ran out and collected into pools, or else drained away. The ‘earthquake’ became more violent, the whole thing boiled over and was buried beneath the foam. At the same time, the walls of the fog began to close in. I gained height rapidly and came clear at 1000 feet.

QUESTION: Are you absolutely sure that what you saw resembled a garden — there was no other possible interpretation?

BERTON: Yes. I noticed several details. For example, I remember seeing a place where there were some boxes in a row. I realized later that they were probably beehives.

QUESTION: You realized later? But not at the time, not at the moment when you actually saw them?

BERTON: No, because everything looked as though it were made of plaster. But I saw something else.

QUESTION: What was that?

BERTON: I saw things which I can’t put a name to, because I didn’t have time to examine them carefully. Under some bushes I thought I saw tools, long objects with prongs. They might have been plaster models of garden tools. But I’m not absolutely certain. Whereas I’m sure, quite certain, that I recognized an apiary.

QUESTION: It didn’t occur to you that it might be an hallucination?

BERTON: No. I thought it was a mirage. It never occurred to me that it was an hallucination because I felt perfectly well, and I had never seen anything like it before. When I reached 1000 feet and took another look at the fog, it was pitted with more irregularly shaped holes, rather like a piece of cheese. Some of these holes were completely hollow, and I could see the ocean waves; others were only shallow saucers in which something was bubbling. I descended another well and saw — the altimeter read 120 feet — I saw a wall lying beneath the ocean surface. It wasn’t very deep and I could see it clearly beneath the waves. It seemed to be the wall of a huge building, pierced with rectangular openings, like windows. I even thought I could see something moving behind them, but I couldn’t be absolutely certain of that. The wall slowly broke the surface and a mucous bubbling liquid streamed down its sides. Then it suddenly broke in half and disappeared into the depths.

I regained height and continued to fly above the fog, the machine almost touching it, until I discovered another clearing, much larger than the previous one.

While I was still some distance away, I noticed a pale, almost white, object floating on the surface. My first thought was that it was Fechner’s flying-suit, especially as it looked vaguely human in form. I brought the aircraft round sharply, afraid of losing my way and being unable to find the same spot again. The shape, the body, was moving; sometimes it seemed to be standing upright in the trough of the waves. I accelerated and went down so low that the machine bounced gently. I must have hit the crest of a huge wave I was overflying. The body — yes, it was a human body, not an atmosphere-suit — the body was moving.

QUESTION: Did you see its face?

BERTON: Yes.

QUESTION: Who was it?

BERTON: A child.

QUESTION: What child? Did you recognize it?

BERTON: No. At any rate, I don’t remember having seen it before. Besides, when I got closer — when I was forty yards away, or even sooner — I realized that it was no ordinary child.

QUESTION: What do you mean?

BERTON: I’ll explain. At first, I couldn’t understand what worried me about it; it was only after a minute or two that I realized: this child was extraordinarily large. Enormous, in fact. Stretched out horizontally, its body rose twelve feet above the surface of the ocean, I swear. I remembered that when I touched the wave, its face was a little higher than mine, even though my cockpit must have been at least ten feet above the ocean.

QUESTION: If it was as big as that, what makes you say it was a child?

BERTON: Because it was a tiny child.

QUESTION: Do you realize, Berton, that your answer doesn’t make sense?

BERTON: On the contrary. I could see its face, and it was a very young child. Besides, its proportions corresponded exactly to the proportions of a child’s body. It was a… babe in arms. No, I exaggerate. It was probably two or three years old. It had black hair and blue eyes — enormous blue eyes! It was naked — completely naked — like a newborn baby. It was wet, or I should say glossy; its skin was shiny. I was shattered. I no longer thought it was a mirage. I could see this child so distinctly. It rose and fell with the waves; but apart from this general motion, it was making other movements, and they were horrible!

QUESTION: Why? What was it doing?

BERTON: It was more like a doll in a museum, only a living doll. It opened and closed its mouth, it made various gestures, horrible gestures.

QUESTION: What do you mean?

BERTON: I was watching it from about twenty yards away — I don’t suppose I went any closer. But, as I’ve already told you, it was enormous. I could see very clearly. Its eyes sparkled and you really would have thought it was a living child, if it hadn’t been for the movements, the gestures, as though someone was trying… It was as though someone else was responsible for the gestures…

QUESTION: Try to be more explicit.

BERTON: It’s difficult. I’m talking of an impression, more of an intuition. I didn’t analyze it, but I knew that those gestures weren’t natural.

QUESTION: Do you mean, for example, that the hands didn’t move as human hands would move, because the joints were not sufficiently supple?

BERTON: No, not at all. But… these movements had no meaning. Each of our movements means something, more or less, serves some purpose…

QUESTION: Do you think so? The movements of an infant don’t have much meaning!

BERTON: I know. But an infant’s movements are confused, random, uncoordinated. The movements I saw were… er… yes, that’s it, they were methodical movements. They were performed one after another, like a series of exercises; as though someone had wanted to make a study of what this child was capable of doing with its hands, its torso, its mouth. The face was more horrifying than the rest, because the human face has an expression, and this face… I don’t know how to describe it. It was alive, yes, but it wasn’t human. Or rather, the features as a whole, the eyes, the complexion, were, but the expression, the movements of the face, were certainly not.

QUESTION: Were they grimaces? Do you know what happens to a person’s face during an epileptic fit?

BERTON: Yes. I’ve watched an epileptic fit. I know what you mean. No, it was something quite different. Epilepsy provokes spasms, convulsions. The movements I’m talking about were fluid, continuous, graceful… melodious, if one can say that of a movement. It’s the nearest definition I can think of. But this face… a face can’t divide itself into two — one half gay, the other sad, one half scowling and the other amiable, one half frightened and the other triumphant. But that’s how it was with this child’s face. In addition to that, all these movements and changes of expression succeeded one another with unbelievable rapidity. I stayed down there a very short time, perhaps ten seconds, perhaps less.

QUESTION: And you claim to have seen all that in such a short time? Besides, how do you know how long you were there? Did you check your chronometer?

BERTON: No, but I’ve been flying for seventeen years and, in my job, one can measure instinctively, to the nearest second, the duration of what would be called an instant of time. It’s an acquired faculty, and essential for successful navigation. A pilot isn’t worth his salt if he can’t tell whether a particular phenomenon lasts five or ten seconds, whatever the circumstances. It’s the same with observation. We learn, over the years, to take in everything at a glance.

QUESTION: Is that all you saw?

BERTON: No, but I don’t remember the rest so precisely. I suppose I must already have seen more than enough; my attention faltered. The fog began to close in, and I had to climb. I climbed, and for the first time in my life I all but capsized. My hands were shaking so much that I had difficulty in handling the controls. I think I shouted something, called up the base, even though I knew we were not in radio contact.

QUESTION: Did you then try and get back?

BERTON: No. In the end, having gamed height, I thought to myself that Fechner was probably in the bottom of one of the wells. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what I thought. I told myself that everything was possible, and that it would also be possible for me to find Fechner. I decided to investigate every clearing I came across along my route. At the third attempt I gave up. When I had regained height, I knew it was useless to persist after what I had just seen on this, the third, occasion. I couldn’t go on any longer. I should add, as you already know, that I was suffering from bouts of nausea and that I vomited in the cockpit. I couldn’t understand it; I have never been sick in my life.

COMMENT: It was a symptom of poisoning.

BERTON: Perhaps. I don’t know. But what I saw on this third occasion I did not imagine. That was not the effect of poisoning.

QUESTION: How can you possibly know?

BERTON: It wasn’t an hallucination. An hallucination is created by one’s own brain, wouldn’t you say?

COMMENT: Yes.

BERTON: Well, my brain couldn’t have created what I saw. I’ll never believe that. My brain wouldn’t have been capable of it.

COMMENT: Get on with describing what it was!

BERTON: Before I do so, I should like to know how the statements I’ve already made will be interpreted.

QUESTION: What does that matter?

BERTON: For me, it matters very much indeed. I have said that I saw things which I shall never forget. If the Commission recognizes, even with certain reservations, that my testimony is credible, and that a study of the ocean must be undertaken — I mean a study orientated in the light of my statements — then I’ll tell everything. But if the Commission considers that it is all delusions, then I refuse to say anything more.

QUESTION: Why?

BERTON: Because the contents of my hallucinations belong to me and I don’t have to give an account of them, whereas I am obliged to give an account of what I saw on Solaris.

QUESTION: Does that mean that you refuse to answer any more questions until the expedition authorities have announced their findings? You realize, of course, that the Commission isn’t empowered to take an immediate decision?

BERTON: Yes.

The first minute ended here. There followed a fragment of the second minute drawn up eleven days later.

PRESIDENT:… after due consideration, the Commission, composed of three doctors, three biologists, a physicist, a mechanical engineer and the deputy head of the expedition, has reached the conclusion that Berton’s report is symptomatic of hallucinations caused by atmospheric poisoning, consequent upon inflammation of the associative zone of the cerebral cortex, and that Berton’s account bears no, or at any rate no appreciable, relation to reality.

BERTON: Excuse me, what does “no appreciable relation” mean? In what proportion is reality appreciable or not?

PRESIDENT: I haven’t finished. Independently of these conclusions, the Commission has duly registered a dissenting vote from Dr. Archibald Messenger, who considers the phenomena described by Berton to be objectively possible and declares himself in favor of a scrupulous investigation.

BERTON: I repeat my question.

PRESIDENT: The answer is simple. “No appreciable relation to reality” means that phenomena actually observed may have formed the basis of your hallucinations. In the course of a nocturnal stroll, a perfectly sane man can imagine he sees a living creature in a bush stirred by the wind. Such illusions are all the more likely to affect an explorer lost on a strange planet and breathing a poisonous atmosphere. This verdict is in no way prejudicial to you, Berton. Will you now be good enough to let us know your decision?

BERTON: First of all, I should like to know the possible consequences of this dissenting vote of Dr. Messenger’s.

PRESIDENT: Virtually none. We shall carry on our work along the lines originally laid down.

BERTON: Is our interview on record?

PRESIDENT: Yes.

BERTON: In that case, I should like to say that although the Commission’s decision may not be prejudicial to me personally, it is prejudicial to the spirit of the expedition itself. Consequently, as I have already stated, I refuse to answer any further questions.

PRESIDENT: Is that all?

BERTON: Yes. Except that I should like to meet Dr. Messenger. Is that possible?

PRESIDENT: Of course.

That was the end of the second minute. At the bottom of the page there was a note in minuscule handwriting to the effect that, the following day, Dr. Messenger had talked to Berton for nearly three hours. As a result of this conversation, Messenger had once more begged the expedition Council to undertake further investigations in order to check the pilot’s statements. Berton had produced some new and extremely convincing revelations, which Messenger could not divulge unless the Council reversed its negative decision. The Council — Shannahan, Timolis and Trahier — rejected the motion and the affair was closed.

The book also reproduced a photocopy of the last page of a letter, or rather, the draft of a letter, found by Messenger’s executors after his death. Ravintzer, in spite of his researches, had been unable to discover if this letter had ever been sent.

“… obtuse minds, a pyramid of stupidity,” — the text began. “Anxious to preserve its authority, the Council — more precisely Shannahan and Timolis (Trahier’s vote doesn’t count) — has rejected my recommendations. Now I am taking the matter up directly with the Institute; but, as you can well imagine, my protestations won’t convince anybody. Bound as I am by oath, I can’t, alas, reveal to you what Berton told me. If the Council disregarded Berton’s testimony, it was basically because Berton has no scientific training, although any scientist would envy the presence of mind and the gift of observation shown by this pilot. I should be grateful if you could send me the following information by return post:

i) Fechner’s biography, in particular details about his childhood.

ii) Everything you know about his family, facts and dates — he probably lost his parents while still a child.

iii)The topography of the place where he was brought up.

I should like once more to tell you what I think about all this. As you know, some time after the departure of Fechner and Carucci, a spot appeared in the centre of the red sun. This chromospheric eruption caused a magnetic storm chiefly over the southern hemisphere, where our base was situated, according to the information provided by the satellite, and the radio links were cut. The other parties were scouring the planet’s surface over a relatively restricted area, whereas Fechner and Carucci had travelled a considerable distance from the base.

Never, since our arrival on the planet, had we observed such a persistent fog or such an unremitting silence.

I imagine that what Berton saw was one of the phases of a kind of ‘Operation Man’ which this viscous monster was engaged in. The source of all the various forms observed by Berton is Fechner — or rather, Fechner’s brain, subjected to an unimaginable ‘psychic dissection’ for the purposes of a sort of re-creation, an experimental reconstruction, based on impressions (undoubtedly the most durable ones) engraved on his memory.

I know this sounds fantastic; I know that I may be mistaken. But do please help me. At the moment, I am on the Alaric, where I look forward to receiving your reply.

Yours, A.”

It was growing dark, and I could scarcely make out the blurred print at the top of the grey page — the last page describing Berton’s adventure. For my part, my own experience led me to regard Berton as a trustworthy witness.

I turned towards the window. A few clouds still glowed like dying embers above the horizon. The ocean was invisible, blanketed by the purple darkness.

The strips of paper fluttered idly beneath the air-vents. There was a whiff of ozone in the still, warm air.

There was nothing heroic in our decision to remain on the Station. The time for heroism was over, vanished with the era of the great interplanetary triumphs, of daring expeditions and sacrifices. Fechner, the ocean’s first victim, belonged to a distant past. I had almost stopped caring about the identity of Snow’s and Sartorius’s visitors. Soon, I told myself, we would cease to be ashamed, to keep ourselves apart. If we could not get rid of our visitors, we would accustom ourselves to their presence, learn to live with them. If their Creator altered the rules of the game, we would adapt ourselves to the new rules, even if at first we jibbed or rebelled, even if one of us despaired and killed himself. Eventually, a certain equilibrium would be reestablished.

Night had come; no different from many nights on Earth. Now I could make out only the white contours of the basin and the smooth surface of the mirror.

I stood up. Groping my way to the basin, I fumbled among the objects which cluttered up the shelf, and found the packet of cotton wool. I washed my face with a damp wad and stretched out on the bed

A moth fluttered its wings… no, it was the ventilator-strip. The whirring stopped, then started up again. I could no longer see the window; everything had merged into darkness. A mysterious ray of light pierced the blackness and lingered in front of me — against the wall, or the black sky? I remembered how the blank stare of the night had frightened me the day before, and I smiled at the thought. I was no longer afraid of the night; I was not afraid of anything. I raised my wrist and looked at the ring of phosphorescent figures; another hour, and the blue day would dawn.

I breathed deeply, savoring the darkness, my mind empty and at rest.

Shifting my position, I felt the flat shape of the tape-recorder against my hip: Gibarian, his voice immortalized on the spools of tape. I had forgotten to resurrect him, to listen to him — the only thing I could do for him any more. I took the tape-recorder out of my pocket in order to hide it under the bed.

I heard a rustling sound; the door opened.

“Kris?” An anxious voice whispered my name. “Kris, are you there? It’s so dark….”

I answered:

“Yes, I’m here. Don’t be frightened, come!”