Solaris

12 THE DREAMS

When six days passed with no reaction from the ocean, we decided to repeat the experiment. Until now, the Station had been located at the intersection of the forty-third parallel and the 116th meridian. We moved south, maintaining a constant altitude of 1200 feet above the ocean — our radar confirmed automatic observations relayed by the artificial satellite which indicated a build-up of activity in the plasma of the southern hemisphere.

Forty-eight hours later, a beam of X-rays modulated by my own brain-patterns was bombarding the almost motionless surface of the ocean at regular intervals.

At the end of this two-day journey we had reached the outskirts of the polar region. The disc of the blue sun was setting to one side of the horizon, while on the opposite side billowing purple clouds announced the dawn of the red sun. In the sky, blinding flames and showers of green sparks clashed with the dull purple glow. Even the ocean participated in the battle between the two stars, here glittering with mercurial flashes, there with crimson reflections. The smallest cloud passing overhead brightened the shining foam on the wave-crests with iridescence. The blue sun had barely set when, at the meeting of ocean and sky, indistinct and drowned in blood-red mist (but signalled immediately by the detectors), a symmetriad blossomed like a gigantic crystal flower. The Station held its course, and after fifteen minutes the colossal ruby throbbing with dying gleams was once again hidden beneath the horizon. Some minutes later, a thin column spouted thousands of yards upwards into the atmosphere, its base obscured from view by the curvature of the planet. This fantastic tree, which went on growing and gushing blood and quicksilver, marked the end of the symmetriad: the tangled branches at the top of the column melted into a huge mushroom shape, illuminated by both suns simultaneously, and carried on the wind, while the lower part bulged, broke up into heavy clusters, and slowly sank. The death-throes lasted well over an hour.

Another two days passed. Our X-rays had irradiated a vast stretch of the ocean, and we made a final repetition of the experiment. From our observation post we spotted a chain of islets two hundred and fifty miles to the south — six rocky promontories encrusted with a snowy substance which was in fact a deposit of organic origin, proving that the mountainous formation had once been part of the ocean bed.

We then moved south-west, and skirted a chain of mountains capped by clouds which gathered during the red day, and then disappeared. Ten days had elapsed since the first experiment.

On the surface, not much was happening in the Station. Sartorius had programmed the experiment for automatic repetition at set intervals. I did not even know whether anybody was checking the apparatus for correct function. In fact, the calm was not as complete as it seemed, but not because of any human activity.

I was afraid that Sartorius had no real intention of abandoning the construction of the disruptor. And how would Snow react when he found out that I had kept information from him and exaggerated the dangers we might run in the attempt to annihilate neutrino structures? Yet neither of the two said anything further about the project, and I kept wondering why they were so silent. I vaguely suspected them of keeping something from me — perhaps they had been working in secret — and every day I inspected the room which housed the disruptor, a windowless cell situated directly underneath the main laboratory. I never found anybody in the room, and the layer of dust over the armatures and cables of the apparatus proved that it had not been touched for weeks.

As a matter of fact, I did not meet anybody anywhere, and could not get through to Snow any more: nobody answered when I tried to call the radio-cabin. Somebody had to be controlling the Station’s movements, but who? I had no idea, and oddly enough I considered the question was out of my province. The absence of response from the ocean left me equally indifferent, so much so that after two or three days I had stopped being either hopeful or apprehensive, and had completely written off the experiment and its possible results.

For days on end, I remained sitting in the library or in my cabin, accompanied by the silent shadow of Rheya. I was aware that there was an unease between us, and that my state of mindless suspension could not go on forever. Obviously it was up to me to break the stalemate, but I resisted the very idea of any kind of change: I was incapable of making the most trivial decision. Everything inside the Station, and my relationship with Rheya in particular, felt fragile and insubstantial, as if the slightest alteration could shatter the perilous equilibrium and bring down ruin. I could not tell where this feeling originated, and the strangest thing of all is that Rheya too had a similar experience. When I look back on those moments today, I have a strong conviction that this atmosphere of uncertainty and suspense, and my presentiment of impending disaster, was provoked by an invisible presence which had taken possession of the Station. I believe too that I can claim that this presence manifested itself just as powerfully in dreams. I have never had visions of that kind before or since, so I decided to note them down and to transcribe them approximately, in so far as my vocabulary permits, given that I can convey only fragmentary glimpses almost entirely denuded of an incommunicable horror.

A blurred region, in the heart of vastness, far from earth and heaven, with no ground underfoot, no vault of sky overhead, nothing. I am the prisoner of an alien matter and my body is clothed in a dead, formless substance — or rather I have no body, I am that alien matter. Nebulous pale pink globules surround me, suspended in a medium more opaque than air, for objects only become clear at very close range, although when they do approach they are abnormally distinct, and their presence comes home to me with a preternatural vividness. The conviction of its substantial, tangible reality is now so overwhelming that later, when I wake up, I have the impression that I have just left a state of true perception, and everything I see after opening my eyes seems hazy and unreal.

That is how the dream begins. All around me, something is awaiting my consent, my inner acquiescence, and I know, or rather the knowledge exists, that I must not give way to an unknown temptation, for the more the silence seems to promise, the more terrible the outcome will be. Yet I essentially know no such thing, because I would be afraid if I knew, and I never feel the slightest fear.

I wait. Out of the enveloping pink mist, an invisible object emerges, and touches me. Inert, locked in the alien matter that encloses me, I can neither retreat nor turn away, and still I am being touched, my prison is being probed, and I feel this contact like a hand, and the hand recreates me. Until now, I thought I saw, but had no eyes: now I have eyes! Under the caress of the hesitant fingers, my lips and cheeks emerge from the void, and as the caress goes further I have a face, breath stirs in my chest — I exist. And recreated, I in my turn create: a face appears before me that I have never seen until now, at once mysterious and known. I strain to meet its gaze, but I cannot impose any direction on my own, and we discover one another mutually, beyond any effort of will, in an absorbed silence. I have become alive again, and I feel as if there is no limitation on my powers. This creature — a woman? — stays near me, and we are motionless. The beat of our hearts combines, and all at once, out of the surrounding void where nothing exists or can exist, steals a presence of indefinable, unimaginable cruelty. The caress that created us and which wrapped us in a golden cloak becomes the crawling of innumerable fingers. Our white, naked bodies dissolve into a swarm of black creeping things, and I am — we are — a mass of glutinous coiling worms, endless, and in that infinity, no, I am infinite, and I howl soundlessly, begging for death and for an end. But simultaneously I am dispersed in all directions, and my grief expands in a suffering more acute than any waking state, a pervasive, scattered pain piercing the distant blacks and reds, hard as rock and ever-increasing, a mountain of grief visible in the dazzling light of another world.

That dream was one of the simplest. I cannot describe the others, for lack of a language to convey their dread. In those dreams, I was unaware of the existence of Rheya, nor was there any echo of past or recent events.

There were also visionless dreams, where in an unmoving, clotted silence I felt myself being slowly and minutely explored, although no instrument or hand touched me. Yet I felt myself being invaded through and through, I crumbled, disintegrated, and only emptiness remained. Total annihilation was succeeded by such terror that its memory alone makes my heart beat faster today.

So the days passed, each one like the next. I was indifferent to everything, fearing only the night and unable to find a means of escape from the dreams. Rheya never slept. I lay beside her, fighting against sleep, and the tenderness with which I clung to her was only a pretext, a way of avoiding the moment when I would be compelled to close my eyes. I had not mentioned these nightmares to her, but she must have guessed, for her attitude involuntarily betrayed a sense of deep humiliation.

As I say, I had not seen Snow or Sartorius for some time, yet Snow gave occasional signs of life. He would leave a note at my door, or call me on the videophone, asking whether I had noticed any new event or change, or anything at all which could be interpreted as a response to the repeated X-ray bombardments. I told him No, and asked him the same question, but there in the little screen Snow only shook his head.

On the fifteenth day after the conclusion of the experiment, I woke up earlier than usual, exhausted by the previous night’s dreams. All my limbs were numbed, as if emerging from the effects of a powerful narcotic. The first rays of the red sun shone through the window, a blanket of red flame ripped over the surface of the ocean, and I realized that the vast expanse which had not been disturbed by the slightest movement in the past four days was beginning to stir. The dark ocean was abruptly covered by a thin veil of mist which seemed at the same time to have a very palpable consistency. Here and there the mist shook, and tremors spread out to the horizon in all directions. Now the ocean disappeared altogether beneath thick, corrugated membranes with pink swellings and pearly depressions, and these strange waves suspended above the ocean swirled suddenly and coalesced into great balls of blue-green foam. A tempest of wind hurled them upwards to the height of the Station, and wherever I looked, immense membranous wings were soaring in the red sky. Some of these wings of foam, which blotted out the sun, were pitch-black, and others shone with highlights of purple as they were exposed obliquely to the sunlight. Still the phenomenon continued, as if the ocean were mutating, or shedding an old scaly skin. Now and again the dark surface of the ocean could be glimpsed through a gap that the foam filled in an instant. Wings of foam planed all around me, only a few yards from the window, and one swooped to rub against the window pane like a silken scarf. As the ocean went on giving birth to these fantastic birds, the first flights were already dissipating high above, decomposing at their zenith into transparent filaments.

The Station remained motionless as long as the spectacle lasted — about three hours, until night intervened. And even after the sun had set and the shadows had spread over the ocean, the lurid glow of myriads of wings could still be discerned rising into the sky, hovering in massed ranks, and climbing effortlessly towards the light.

This performance had terrified Rheya, but it was no less disconcerting for me, although its novelty ought not to have been disturbing, since two or three times a year, and oftener when luck smiled on them, Solarists observed forms and creations never previously recorded.

The following night, an hour before the blue sunrise, we witnessed another effect: the ocean was becoming phosphorescent. Pools of grey light were rising and falling to the rhythm of invisible waves. Isolated at first, these grey patches quickly spread and joined together, and soon made up a carpet of spectral light extending as far as the eye could see. The intensity of the light grew progressively for some fifteen to twenty minutes, then the phenomenon came to a surprising end. A pall of shadow approached from the west, stretching along a front several hundred miles wide. When this moving shadow had overtaken the Station, the phosphorescent part of the ocean, retreating eastward, seemed to be trying to escape from the vast extinguisher. It was like an aurora put to flight, and retreating as far as the horizon, which was edged by a fading glow before the darkness conquered. Shortly afterwards, the sun rose above the ocean wastes, which were furrowed by a few solidified waves, whose mercurial reflections played on my window.

The phosphorescence was a recorded effect, sometimes observed before the eruption of an asymmetriad, but always indicative of a local increase in the activity of the plasma. Nevertheless, in the course of the next two weeks nothing happened either inside or outside the Station, except on one occasion when in the middle of the night I heard the sound of a piercing scream which came from no human throat. The shrill, protracted howling woke me out of a nightmare, and at first I thought that it was the beginning of another. Before falling asleep, I had heard dull noises coming from the direction of the laboratory, part of which lay directly over my cabin. It sounded like heavy objects and machinery being shifted. When I realized that I was not dreaming, I decided that the scream also came from above, but could not understand how it managed to penetrate the sound-proof ceiling. The terrible sounds went on for almost half an hour, until my nerves jangled and I was pouring with sweat. I was about to go up and investigate when the screaming stopped, to be replaced by more muffled sounds as of objects being dragged across the floor.

Rheya and I were sitting in the kitchen two days later when Snow came in. He was dressed as people dress on Earth after their day’s work, and looked like a different person, taller and older. He did not look at us, or pull up a chair, but stood at the table, opened a can of meat and began cramming it down between mouthfuls of bread. His jacket sleeve brushed against the greasy top of the can.

“Look out, Snow, your sleeve!”

“What?” he grunted, then went on stuffing himself with food as if he had not eaten for days. He poured out a glass of wine, drank it at a gulp, sighed, and wiped his lips. Then he looked at me with bloodshot eyes, and mumbled:

“So you’ve stopped shaving? Ah…”

Rheya cleared the table. Snow swayed on his heels, then pulled a face and sucked his teeth noisily, deliberately exaggerating the action. He stared at me insistently:

“So you’ve decided not to shave?” I made no reply. “Believe me,” he went on, “you’re making a mistake. That was how it started with him to…”

“Go and lie down.”

“What? Just when I feel like talking? Listen, Kelvin, perhaps it wishes well… perhaps it wants to please us but doesn’t quite know how to set about the job. It spies out desires in our brains, and only two per cent of mental processes are conscious. That means it knows us better than we know ourselves. We’ve got to reach an understanding with it. Are you listening? Don’t you want to? Why?” — he was sobbing by now — “why don’t you shave?”

“Shut up!.. you’re drunk.”

“Me, drunk? And what if I am? Just because I drift about from one end of space to another and poke my nose into the cosmos, does that mean I’m not allowed to get drunk? Why not? You believe in the mission of mankind, don’t you, Kelvin? Gibarian told me about you before he started letting his beard grow… It was a very good description. Just don’t go to the lab, if you don’t want to lose your faith. It belongs to Sartorius — Faust in reverse… he’s looking for a cure for immortality! He is the last knight of the Holy Contact, the man we need. His latest discovery is pretty good too… prolonged dying. Not bad, eh? Agonia perpetua… of the straw… the straw hats and still you don’t drink, Kelvin?”

He raised his swollen eyelids and looked at Rheya, who was standing quite still with her back to the wall. Then he began chanting:

“O fair Aphrodite, child of Ocean, your divine hand…” He choked with laughter. “It fits, eh, Kel…vin…”

He broke off in a fit of coughing.

“Shut up! Shut up and get out!” I grated through clenched teeth.

“You’re chucking me out? You too? You don’t shave and you chuck me out? What about my warnings, and my advice? Interstellar colleagues ought to help each other! Listen Kelvin, let’s go down and open the traps and call out. It might hear us. But what’s its name? We have named all the stars and all the planets, even though they might already have had names of their own. What a nerve! Come on, let’s go down. We’ll shout it such a description of the trick it’s played us that it will be touched. It will make us silver symmetriads, pray to us in calculus, send us its blood-stained angels. It will share our troubles and terrors, and beg us to help it die. It is already begging us, imploring us. It implores us to help it die with every one of its creations. You’re not amused… but you know I’m just a joker. If man had more of a sense of humor, things might have turned out differently. Do you know what he wants to do? He wants to punish this ocean, hear it screaming out of all its mountains at once. If you think he’ll never have the nerve to submit his plan to that bunch of doddering ancients who sent us here to redeem sins we haven’t committed, you’re right — he is afraid. But he is only afraid of the little hat. He won’t let anybody see the little hat, he won’t dare, not Faust…”

I said nothing. Snow’s swaying increased. Tears were streaming down his cheeks and onto his clothes. He went on:

“Who is responsible? Who is responsible for this situation? Gibarian? Giese? Einstein? Plato? All criminals… Just you think, in a rocket a man takes the risk of bursting like a balloon, or freezing, or roasting, or sweating all his blood out in a single gush, before he can even cry out, and all that remains is bits of bone floating inside armored hulls, in accordance with the laws of Newton as corrected by Einstein, those two milestones in our progress. Down the road we go, all in good faith, and see where it gets us. Think about our success, Kelvin; think about our cabins, the unbreakable plates, the immortal sinks, legions of faithful wardrobes, devoted cupboards… I wouldn’t be talking this way if I weren’t drunk, but sooner or later somebody was bound to say it, weren’t they? You sit there like a baby in a slaughterhouse, and you let your beard grow… Who’s to blame? Find out for yourself.”

He turned slowly and went out, putting an arm out against the doorpost to steady himself. Then his footsteps died away along the corridor.

I tried not to look at Rheya, but my eyes were drawn to hers in spite of myself. I wanted to get up, take her in my arms and stroke her hair. I did not move.