Solaris

14 THE OLD MIMOID

I sat by the panoramic window, looking at the ocean. There was nothing to do now that the report, which had taken five days to compile, was only a pattern of waves in space. It would be months before a similar pattern would leave earth to create its own line of disturbance in the gravitational field of the galaxy towards the twin suns of Solaris.

Under the red sun, the ocean was darker than ever, and the horizon was obscured by a reddish mist. The weather was unusually close, and seemed to be building up towards one of the terrible hurricanes which broke out two or three times a year on the surface of the planet, whose sole inhabitant, it is reasonable to suppose, controlled the climate and willed its storms.

There were several months to go before I could leave. From my vantage point in the observatory I would watch the birth of the days — a disc of pale gold or faded purple. Now and then I would come upon the light of dawn playing among the fluid forms of some edifice risen from the ocean, watch the sun reflected on the silver sphere of a symmetriad, follow the oscillations of the graceful agiluses that curve in the wind, and linger to examine old powdery mimoids.

And eventually, the screens of all the videophones would start to blink and all the communications equipment would spring to life again, revived by an impulse originating billions of miles away and announcing the arrival of a metal colossus. The Ulysses, or it might be the Prometheus, would land on the Station to the piercing whine of its gravitors, and I would go out onto the flat roof to watch the squads of white, heavy-duty robots which proceed in all innocence with their tasks, not hesitating to destroy themselves or to destroy the unforeseen obstacle, in strict obedience to the orders echoed into the crystals of their memory. Then the ship would rise noiselessly, faster than sound, leaving a sonic boom far behind over the ocean, and every passenger’s face would light up at the thought of going home.

What did that word mean to me? Earth? I thought of the great bustling cities where I would wander and lose myself, and I thought of them as I had thought of the ocean on the second or third night, when I had wanted to throw myself upon the dark waves. I shall immerse myself among men. I shall be silent and attentive, an appreciative companion. There will be many acquaintances, friends, women — and perhaps even a wife. For a while, I shall have to make a conscious effort to smile, nod, stand and perform the thousands of little gestures which constitute life on Earth, and then those gestures will become reflexes again. I shall find new interests and occupations; and I shall not give myself completely to them, as I shall never again give myself completely to anything or anybody. Perhaps at night I shall stare up at the dark nebula that cuts off the light of the twin suns, and remember everything, even what I am thinking now. With a condescending, slightly rueful smile I shall remember my follies and my hopes. And this future Kelvin will be no less worthy a man than the Kelvin of the past, who was prepared for anything in the name of an ambitious enterprise called Contact. Nor will any man have the right to judge me.

Snow came into the cabin, glanced around, then looked at me again. I went over to the table:

“You wanted me?”

“Haven’t you got anything to do? I could give you some work… calculations. Not a particularly urgent job…”

“Thanks,” I smiled, “you needn’t have bothered.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I was thinking a few things over, and…”

“I wish you’d think a little less.”

“But you don’t know what I was thinking about! Tell me something. Do you believe in God?”

Snow darted an apprehensive glance in my direction:

“What? Who still believes nowadays…”

“It isn’t that simple. I don’t mean the traditional God of Earth religion. I’m no expert in the history of religions, and perhaps this is nothing new — do you happen to know if there was ever a belief in an… imperfect god?”

“What do you mean by imperfect?” Snow frowned. “In a way all the gods of the old religions were imperfect, considering that their attributes were amplified human ones. The God of the Old Testament, for instance, required humble submission and sacrifices, and was jealous of other gods. The Greek gods had fits of sulks and family quarrels, and they were just as imperfect as mortals…”

“No,” I interrupted. “I’m not thinking of a god whose imperfection arises out of the candor of his human creators, but one whose imperfection represents his essential characteristic: a god limited in his omniscience and power, fallible, incapable of foreseeing the consequences of his acts, and creating things that lead to horror. He is a… sick god, whose ambitions exceed his powers and who does not realize it at first. A god who has created clocks, but not the time they measure. He has created systems or mechanisms that served specific ends but have now overstepped and betrayed them. And he has created eternity, which was to have measured his power, and which measures his unending defeat.”

Snow hesitated, but his attitude no longer showed any of the wary reserve of recent weeks:

“There was Manicheanism…”

“Nothing at all to do with the principle of Good and Evil,” I broke in immediately. “This god has no existence outside of matter. He would like to free himself from matter, but he cannot…”

Snow pondered for a while:

“I don’t know of any religion that answers your description. That kind of religion has never been… necessary. If I understand you, and I’m afraid I do, what you have in mind is an evolving god, who develops in the course of time, grows, and keeps increasing in power while remaining aware of his powerlessness. For your god, the divine condition is a situation without a goal. And understanding that, he despairs. But isn’t this despairing god of yours mankind, Kelvin? It is man you are talking about, and that is a fallacy, not just philosophically but also mystically speaking.”

I kept on:

“No, it’s nothing to do with man. Man may correspond to my provisional definition from some points of view, but that is because the definition has a lot of gaps. Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him. Man can serve his age or rebel against it, but the target of his cooperation or rebellion comes to him from outside. If there was only a single human being in existence, he would apparently be able to attempt the experiment of creating his own goals in complete freedom — apparently, because a man not brought up among other human beings cannot become a man. And the being — the being I have in mind — cannot exist in the plural, you see?”

“Oh, then in that case…” He pointed out of the window.

“No, not the ocean either. Somewhere in its development it has probably come close to the divine state, but it turned back into itself too soon. It is more like an anchorite, a hermit of the cosmos, not a god. It repeats itself, Snow, and the being I’m thinking of would never do that. Perhaps he has already been born somewhere, in some corner of the galaxy, and soon he will have some childish enthusiasm that will set him putting out one star and lighting another. We will notice him after a while…”

“We already have,” Snow said sarcastically. “Novas and supernovas. According to you they are the candles on his altar.”

“If you’re going to take what I say literally…”

“And perhaps Solaris is the cradle of your divine child,” Snow went on, with a widening grin that increased the number of lines round his eyes. “Solaris could be the first phase of the despairing God. Perhaps its intelligence will grow enormously. All the contents of our Solarist libraries could be just a record of his teething troubles…”

“… and we will have been the baby’s toys for a while. It is possible. And do you know what you have just done? You’ve produced a completely new hypothesis about Solaris — congratulations! Everything suddenly falls into place: the failure to achieve contact, the absence of responses, various… let’s say various peculiarities in its behavior towards ourselves. Everything is explicable in terms of the behaviour of a small child.”

“I renounce paternity of the theory,” Snow grunted, standing at the window.

For a long instant, we stood staring out at the dark waves. A long pale patch was coming into view to the east, in the mist obscuring the horizon.

Without talcing his eyes off the shimmering waste, Snow asked abruptly:

“What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?”

“I don’t know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfils no purpose — a god who simply is.”

“A mimoid,” Snow breathed.

“What’s that? Oh yes, I’d noticed it. A very old mimoid.”

We both looked towards the misty horizon.

“I’m going outside,” I said abruptly. “I’ve never yet been off the Station, and this is a good opportunity. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

Snow raised his eyebrows:

“What? You’re going out? Where are you going?”

I pointed towards the flesh-colored patch half-hidden by the mist:

“Over there. What is there to stop me? I’ll take a small helicopter. When I get back to Earth I don’t want to have to confess that I’m a Solarist who has never set foot on Solaris!”

I opened a locker and started rummaging through the atmosphere-suits, while Snow looked on silently. Finally he said:

“I don’t like it.”

I had selected a suit. Now I turned towards him:

“What?” I had not felt so excited for a long time. “What are you worrying about? Out with it! You’re afraid that I… I promise you I have no intention… it never entered my mind, honestly.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“Thanks, but I’d rather go alone.” I pulled on the suit. “Do you realize this will be my first flight over the ocean?”

Snow muttered something, but I could not make out what. I was in a hurry to get the rest of the gear together.

He accompanied me to the hangar deck, and helped me drag the flitter out onto the elevator disc. As I was checking my suit, he asked me abruptly:

“Can I rely on your word?”

“Still fretting? Yes, you can. Where are the oxygen tanks?”

We exchanged no further words. I slid the transparent canopy shut, gave him the signal, and he set the lift going. I emerged onto the Station roof; the motor burst into life; the three blades turned and the machine rose — strangely light — into the air. Soon the Station had fallen far behind.

Alone over the ocean, I saw it with a different eye. I was flying quite low, at about a hundred feet, and for the first time I felt a sensation often described by the explorers but which I had never noticed from the height of the Station: the alternating motion of the gleaming waves was not at all like the undulation of the sea or the billowing of clouds. It was like the crawling skin of an animal — the incessant, slow-motion contractions of muscular flesh secreting a crimson foam.

When I started to bank towards the drifting mimoid, the sun shone into my eyes and blood-red flashes struck the curved canopy. The dark ocean, flickering with sombre flames, was tinged with blue.

The flitter came around too wide, and I was carried a long way down wind from the mimoid, a long irregular silhouette looming out of the ocean. Emerging from the mist, the mimoid was no longer pink, but a yellowish grey. I lost sight of it momentarily, and glimpsed the Station, which seemed to be sitting on the horizon, and whose outline was reminiscent of an ancient zeppelin. I changed course, and the sheer mass of the mimoid grew in my line of vision — a baroque sculpture. I was afraid of crashing into the bulbous swellings, and pulled the flitter up so brutally that it lost speed and started to lurch; but my caution was unnecessary, for the rounded peaks of those fantastic towers were subsiding.

I flew past the island; and slowly, yard by yard, I descended to the level of the eroded peaks. The mimoid was not large. It measured about three quarters of a mile from end to end, and was a few hundred yards wide. In some places, it was close to splitting apart. This mimoid was obviously a fragment of a far larger formation. On the scale of Solaris it was only a tiny splinter, weeks or perhaps months old.

Among the mottled crags overhanging the ocean, I found a kind of beach, a sloping, fairly even surface a few yards square, and steered towards it. The rotors almost hit a cliff that reared up suddenly in my path, but I landed safely, cut the motor and slid back the canopy. Standing on the fuselage I made sure that there was no chance of the flitter sliding into the ocean. Waves were licking at the jagged bank about fifteen paces away, but the machine rested solidly on its legs, and I jumped to the ‘ground.’

The cliff I had almost hit was a huge bony membrane pierced with holes, and full of knotty swellings. A crack several yards wide split this wall diagonally and enabled me to examine the interior of the island, already glimpsed through the apertures in the membrane. I edged warily onto the nearest ledge, but my boots showed no tendency to slide and the suit did not impede my movements, and I went on climbing until I had reached a height of about four storeys above the ocean, and could see a broad stretch of petrified landscape stretching back until it was lost from sight in the depths of the mimoid.

It was like looking at the ruins of an ancient town, a Moroccan city tens of centuries old, convulsed by an earthquake or some other disaster. I made out a tangled web of winding sidestreets choked with debris, and alleyways which fell abruptly towards the oily foam that floated close to the shore. In the middle distance, great battlements stood intact, sustained by ossified buttresses. There were dark openings in the swollen, sunken walls — traces of windows or loop-holes. The whole of this floating town canted to one side or another like a foundering ship, pitched and turned slowly, and the sun cast continually moving shadows, which crept among the ruined alleys. Now and again a polished surface caught and reflected the light. I took the risk of climbing higher, then stopped; rivulets of fine sand were beginning to trickle down the rocks above my head, cascading into ravines and alleyways and rebounding in swirling clouds of dust. The mimoid is not made of stone, and to dispel the illusion one only has to pick up a piece of it: it is lighter than pumice, and composed of small, very porous cells.

Now I was high enough to feel the swaying of the mimoid. It was moving forward, propelled by the dark muscles of the ocean towards an unknown destination, but its inclination varied. It rolled from side to side, and the languid oscillation was accompanied by the gentle rustling sound of the yellow and grey foam which streamed off the emerging shore. The mimoid had acquired its swinging motion long before, probably at its birth, and even while it grew and broke up it had retained its initial pattern.

Only now did I realize that I was not in the least concerned with the mimoid, and that I had flown here not to explore the formation but to acquaint myself with the ocean.

With the flitter a few paces behind me, I sat on the rough, fissured beach. A heavy black wave broke over the edge of the bank and spread out, not black, but a dirty green. The ebbing wave left viscous streamlets behind, which flowed back quivering towards the ocean. I went closer, and when the next wave came I held out my hand. What followed was a faithful reproduction of a phenomenon which had been analyzed a century before: the wave hesitated, recoiled, then enveloped my hand without touching it, so that a thin covering of ‘air’ separated my glove inside a cavity which had been fluid a moment previously, and now had a fleshy consistency. I raised my hand slowly, and the wave, or rather an outcrop of the wave, rose at the same time, enfolding my hand in a translucent cyst with greenish reflections. I stood up, so as to raise my hand still higher, and the gelatinous substance stretched like a rope, but did not break. The main body of the wave remained motionless on the shore, surrounding my feet without touching them, like some strange beast patiently waiting for the experiment to finish. A flower had grown out of the ocean, and its calyx was moulded to my fingers. I stepped back. The stem trembled, stirred uncertainly and fell back into the wave, which gathered it and receded.

I repeated the game several times, until — as the first experimenter had observed — a wave arrived which avoided me indifferently, as if bored with a too familiar sensation. I knew that to revive the ‘curiosity’ of the ocean I would have to wait several hours. Disturbed by the phenomenon I had stimulated, I sat down again. Although I had read numerous accounts of it, none of them had prepared me for the experience as I had lived it, and I felt somehow changed.

In all their movements, taken together or singly, each of these branches reaching out of the ocean seemed to display a kind of cautious but not feral alertness, a curiosity avid for quick apprehension of a new, unexpected form, and regretful at having to retreat, unable to exceed the limits set by a mysterious law. The contrast was inexpressible between that lively curiosity and the shimmering immensity of the ocean that stretched away out of sight… I had never felt its gigantic presence so strongly, or its powerful changeless silence, or the secret forces that gave the waves their regular rise and fall. I sat unseeing, and sank into a universe of inertia, glided down an irresistible slope and identified myself with the dumb, fluid colossus; it was as if I had forgiven it everything, without the slightest effort of word or thought.

During that last week, I had been behaving so normally that Snow had stopped keeping a watchful eye on me. On the surface, I was calm: in secret, without really admitting it, I was waiting for something. Her return? How could I have been waiting for that? We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and not even the power of all our feelings combined can defeat those laws. All we can do is detest them. The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger than death, that finis vitae sed non amoris, is a lie, useless and not even funny. So must one be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox…

That liquid giant had been the death of hundreds of men. The entire human race had tried in vain to establish even the most tenuous link with it, and it bore my weight without noticing me any more than it would notice a speck of dust. I did not believe that it could respond to the tragedy of two human beings. Yet its activities did have a purpose… True, I was not absolutely certain, but leaving would mean giving up a chance, perhaps an infinitesimal one, perhaps only imaginary… Must I go on living here then, among the objects we both had touched, in the air she had breathed? In the name of what? In the hope of her return? I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expectation. Since she had gone, that was all that remained. I did not know what achievements, what mockery, even what tortures still awaited me. I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.