I woke up in the middle of the night to find the light on and Rheya crouched at the end of thebed, wrapped in a sheet, her shoulders shaking with silent tears. I called her name and askedher what was wrong, but she only curled up tighter.
Still half asleep, and barely emerged from the nightmare which had been tormenting me only amoment before, I pulled myself up to a sitting position and shielded my eyes against the glareto look at her. The trembling continued, and I stretched out my arms, but Rheya pushed meaway and hid her face.
"Rheya…""Don't talk to me!""Rheya, what's the matter?"I caught a glimpse of her tear-stained face, contorted with emotion. The big childish tearsstreamed down her face, glistened in the dimple above her chin and fell onto the sheets.
"You don't want me.""What are you talking about?""I heard…"My jaw tightened: "Heard what? You don't understand.""Yes I do. You said I wasn't Rheya. You wanted me to go, and I would, I really would…but Ican't. I don't know why. I've tried to go, but I couldn't do it. I'm such a coward.""Come on now…." I put my arms round her and held her with all my strength. Nothingmattered to me except her: everything else was meaningless. I kissed her hands, talked,begged, excused myself and made promise after promise, saying that she had been havingsome silly, terrible dream. Gradually she grew calmer, and at last she stopped crying and hereyes glazed, like a woman walking in her sleep. She turned her face away from me.
"No," she said at last, "be quiet, don't talk like that. It's no good, you're not the same person anymore." I started to protest, but she went on: "No, you don't want me. I knew it before, but Ipretended not to notice. I thought perhaps I was imagining everything, but it was true…you'vechanged. You're not being honest with me. You talk about dreams, but it was you who weredreaming, and it was to do with me. You spoke my name as if it repelled you. Why? Just tellme why.""Rheya, my little….""I won't have you talking to me like that, do you hear? I won't let you. I'm not your littleanything, I'm not a child. I'm…."She burst into tears and buried her face in the pillow. I got up. The ventilation hummed quietly.
It was cold, and I pulled a dressing-gown over my shoulders before sitting next to her andtaking her arm: "Listen to me, I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you the truth."She pushed herself upright again. I could see the veins throbbing beneath the delicate skin ofher neck. My jaw tightened once more. The air seemed to be colder still, and my head wascompletely empty.
"The truth?" she said. "Word of honor?" I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came.
'Word of honor'…it was our special catch-phrase, our old way of making an unconditionalpromise. Once these words had been spoken, neither of us was permitted to lie, or even to takerefuge behind a half-truth. I remembered the period when we used to torture each other in anexaggerated striving for sincerity, convinced that this ingenuous honesty was the preconditionof our relationship.
"Word of honor, Rheya," I answered gravely, and she waited for me to continue. "You havechanged too—we all change. But that is not what I wanted to say. For some reason that neitherof us understands, it seems that…you are forced to stay near me. And that's fine with me,because I can't leave you either…""No, Kris. The change is not in you," Rheya whispered. "It's me. Something is wrong. Perhapsit has to do with the accident?"She looked at the dark, empty rectangle of the door. The previous evening, I had removed theshattered remains—a new one would have to be fitted. Another thought struck me:
"Have you been managing to sleep?""I don't know.""What do you mean?""I have dreams…I don't know whether they really are dreams. Perhaps I'm ill. I lie there andthink, and…""What?""I have strange thoughts. I don't know where they come from."It took all my self-control to steady my voice and tell her to go on, and I found myself tensingfor her answer as if for a blow in the face.
"They are thoughts…" She shook her head helplessly. "…all around me.""I don't understand.""I get a feeling as if they were not from inside myself, but somewhere further away. I can'texplain it, can't put words to it…"I broke in almost involuntarily: "It must be some kind of dream." Then, back in control again:
"And now, we put the light out and we forget our problems until morning. Tomorrow we caninvent some new ones if you like. OK?"She pressed the switch, and darkness fell between us. Stretched out on the bed, I felt her warmbreathing beside me, and put my arms round her.
"Harder!" she whispered, and then, after a long pause:
"Kris!""What?""I love you."I almost screamed.
In the red morning, the sun's swollen disc was rising over the horizon.
An envelope lay in the doorway, and I tore it open. I could hear Rheya humming to herself inthe bath, and from time to time she looked into the room and I would see her face, half hiddenby her wet hair.
I went to the window, and read:
"Kelvin, things are looking up. Sartorius has decided that it may be possible to use some formof energy to destabilize the neutrino structure. He wants to examine some Phi plasma in orbit.
He suggests that you make a reconnaissance flight and take a certain quantity of plasma in thecapsule. It's up to you, but let me know what you decide. I have no opinion. I feel as if I nolonger have anything. If I am more in favor of your going, it's because we would at least bemaking some show of progress. Otherwise, we can only envy G.
SnowP.S. All I ask is for you to stay outside the cabin. You can call me on the videophone."I felt a stir of apprehension as I read the letter, and went over it again carefully before tearing itup and throwing the pieces into the disposal unit.
I went through the same terrible charade that I had begun the previous day, and made up astory for Rheya's benefit. She did not notice the deception, and when I told her that I had tomake an inspection and suggested that she come with me she was delighted. We stopped at thekitchen for breakfast—Rheya ate very little—and then made for the library.
Before venturing on the mission suggested by Sartorius, I wanted to glance through theliterature dealing with magnetic fields and neutrino structures. I did not yet have any clear ideaof how I would set about it, but I had made up my mind to make an independent check onSartorius's activities. Not that I would prevent Snow and Sartorius from 'liberating' themselveswhen the annihilator was completed: I meant to take Rheya out of the Station and wait for theconclusion of the operation in the cabin of an aircraft. I set to work with the automaticlibrarian. Sometimes it answered my queries by ejecting a card with the laconic inscription"Not on file," sometimes it practically submerged me under such a spate of specialist physicstextbooks that I hesitated to use its advice. Yet I had no desire to leave the big circularchamber. I felt at ease in my egg, among the rows of cabinets crammed with tape andmicrofilm. Situated right at the center of the Station, the library had no windows: It was themost isolated area in the great steel shell, and made me feel relaxed in spite of finding myresearches held up.
Wandering across the vast room, I stopped at a set of shelves as high as the ceiling, andholding about six hundred volumes—all classics on the history of Solaris, starting with the ninevolumes of Giese's monumental and already relatively obsolescent monograph. Display for itsown sake was improbable in these surroundings. The collection was a respectful tribute to thememory of the pioneers. I took down the massive volumes of Giese and sat leafing throughthem. Rheya had also located some reading matter. Looking over her shoulder, I saw that shehad picked one of the many books brought out by the first expedition, the InterplanetaryCookery Book. which could have been the personal property of Giese himself. She was poringover the recipes adapted to the arduous conditions of interstellar flight. I said nothing, andreturned to the book resting on my knees. Solaris—Ten Years of Exploration had appeared asvolumes 4-12 of the Solariana collection whose most recent additions were numbered in thethousands.
Giese was an unemotional man, but then in the study of Solaris emotion is a hindrance to theexplorer. Imagination and premature theorizing are positive disadvantages in approaching aplanet where—as has become clear—anything is possible. It is almost certain that the unlikelydescriptions of the 'plasmatic' metamorphoses of the ocean are faithful accounts of thephenomena observed, although these descriptions are unverifiable, since the ocean seldomrepeats itself. The freakish character and gigantic scale of these phenomena go too far outsidethe experience of man to be grasped by anybody observing them for the first time, and whowould consider analogous occurrences as 'sports of nature,' accidental manifestations of blindforces, if he saw them on a reduced scale, say in a mud-volcano on Earth.
Genius and mediocrity alike are dumbfounded by the teeming diversity of the oceanicformations of Solaris; no man has ever become genuinely conversant with them. Giese was byno means a mediocrity, nor was he a genius. He was a scholarly classifier, the type whosecompulsive application to their work utterly divorces them from the pressures of everyday life.
Giese devised a plain descriptive terminology, supplemented by terms of his own invention,and although these were inadequate, and sometimes clumsy, it has to be admitted that nosemantic system is as yet available to illustrate the behavior of the ocean. The 'tree-mountains,'
'extensors,' 'fungoids,' 'mimoids,' 'symmetriads' and 'asymmetriads,' 'vertebrids' and 'agilus' areartificial, linguistically awkward terms, but they do give some impression of Solaris to anyonewho has only seen the planet in blurred photographs and incomplete films. The fact is that inspite of his cautious nature the scrupulous Giese more than once jumped to prematureconclusions. Even when on their guard, human beings inevitably theorize. Giese, who thoughthimself immune to temptation, decided that the 'extensors' came into the category of basicforms. He compared them to accumulations of gigantic waves, similar to the tidal movementsof our Terran oceans. In the first edition of his work, we find them originally named as 'tides.'
This geocentrism might be considered amusing if it did not underline the dilemma in which hefound himself.
As soon as the question of comparisons with Earth arises, it must be understood that the'extensors' are formations that dwarf the Grand Canyon, that they are produced in a substancewhich externally resembles a yeasty colloid (during this fantastic 'fermentation,' the yeast setsinto festoons of starched open-work lace; some experts refer to 'ossified tumors'), and thatdeeper down the substance becomes increasingly resistant, like a tensed muscle which fifty feetbelow the surface is as hard as rock but retains its flexibility. The 'extensor' appears to be anindependent creation, stretching for miles between membranous walls swollen with 'ossifiedgrowths,' like some colossal python which after swallowing a mountain is sluggishly digestingthe meal, while a slow shudder occasionally ripples along its creeping body. The 'extensor'
only looks like a lethargic reptile from overhead. At close quarters, when the two 'canyonwalls' loom hundreds of yards above the exploring aircraft, it can be seen that this inflatedcylinder, reaching from one side of the horizon to the other, is bewilderingly alive withmovement. First you notice the continual rotating motion of a greyish-green, oily sludge whichreflects blinding sunlight, but skimming just above the 'back of the python' (the 'ravine'
sheltering the 'extensor' now resembles the sides of a geological fault), you realize that themotion is in fact far more complex, and consists of concentric fluctuations traversed by darkercurrents. Occasionally this mantle turns into a shining crust that reflects sky and clouds andthen is riddled by explosive eruptions of the internal gases and fluids. The observer slowlyrealizes that he is looking at the guiding forces that are thrusting outward and upward the twogradually crystallizing gelatinous walls. Science does not accept the obvious without furtherproof, however, and virulent controversies have reverberated down the years on the keyquestion of the exact sequence of events in the interior of the 'extensors that furrow the vastliving ocean in their millions.
Various organic functions have been ascribed to the 'extensors.' Some experts have argued thattheir purpose is the transformation of matter; others suggested respiratory processes; still othersclaimed that they conveyed alimentary materials. An infinite variety of hypotheses nowmoulder in library basements, eliminated by ingenious, sometimes dangerous experiments.
Today, the scientists will go no further than to refer to the 'extensors' as relatively simple,stable formations whose duration is measurable in weeks—an exceptional characteristic amongthe recorded phenomena of the planet.
The 'mimoid' formations are considerably more complex and bizarre, and elicit a morevehement response from the observer, an instinctive response, I mean. It can be stated withoutexaggeration that Giese fell in love with the 'mimoids' and was soon devoting all his time tothem. For the rest of his life, he studied and described them and brought all his ingenuity tobear on defining their nature. The name he gave them indicates their most astonishingcharacteristic, the imitation of objects, near or far, external to the ocean itself.
Concealed at first beneath the ocean surface, a large flattened disc appears, ragged, with a tar-like coating. After a few hours, it begins to separate into flat sheets which rise slowly. Theobserver now becomes a spectator at what looks like a fight to the death, as massed ranks ofwaves converge from all directions like contorted, fleshy mouths which snap greedily aroundthe tattered, fluttering leaf, then plunge into the depths. As each ring of waves breaks andsinks, the fall of this mass of hundreds of thousands of tons is accompanied for an instant by aviscous rumbling, an immense thunderclap. The tarry leaf is overwhelmed, battered and tornapart; with every fresh assault, circular fragments scatter and drift like feebly fluttering wingsbelow the ocean surface. They bunch into pear-shaped clusters or long strings, merge and riseagain, and drag with them an undertow of coagulated shreds of the base of the primal disc. Theencircling waves continue to break around the steadily expanding crater. This phenomenonmay persist for a day or linger on for a month, and sometimes there are no furtherdevelopments. The conscientious Giese dubbed this first variation a 'stillbirth,' convinced thateach of these upheavals aspired towards an ultimate condition, the 'major mimoid,' like a polypcolony (only covering an area greater than a town) of pale outcroppings with the faculty ofimitating foreign bodies. Uyvens, on the other hand, saw this final stage as constituting adegeneration or necrosis: according to him, the appearance of the 'copies' corresponded to alocalized dissipation of the life energies of the ocean, which was no longer in control of theoriginal forms it created.
Giese would not abandon his account of the various phases of the process as a sustainedprogression towards perfection, with a conviction which is particularly surprising coming froma man of such a moderate, cautious turn of mind in advancing the most trivial hypothesis onthe other creations of the ocean. Normally he had all the boldness of an ant crawling up aglacier.
Viewed from above, the mimoid resembles a town, an illusion produced by our compulsion tosuperimpose analogies with what we know. When the sky is clear, a shimmering heat-hazecovers the pliant structures of the clustered polyps surmounted by membranous palisades. Thefirst cloud passing overhead wakens the mimoid. All the outcrops suddenly sprout new shoots,then the mass of polyps ejects a thick tegument which dilates, puffs out, changes color and inthe space of a few minutes has produced an astonishing imitation of the volutes of a cloud. Theenormous 'object' casts a reddish shadow over the mimoid, whose peaks ripple and bendtogether, always in the opposite direction to the movement of the real cloud. I imagine thatGiese would have been ready to give his right hand to discover what made the mimoids behavein this way, but these 'isolated' productions are nothing in comparison to the frantic activity themimoid displays when 'stimulated' by objects of human origin.
The reproduction process embraces every object inside a radius of eight or nine miles. Usuallythe facsimile is an enlargement of the original, whose forms are sometimes only roughlycopied. The reproduction of machines, in particular, elicits simplifications that might beconsidered grotesque—practically caricatures. The copy is always modelled in the samecolorless tegument, which hovers above the outcrops, linked to its base by flimsy umbilicalcords; it slides, creeps, curls back on itself, shrinks or swells and finally assumes the mostcomplicated forms. An aircraft, a net or a pole are all reproduced at the same speed. Themimoid is not stimulated by human beings themselves, and in fact it does not react to anyliving matter, and has never copied, for example, the plants imported for experimentalpurposes. On the other hand, it will readily reproduce a puppet or a doll, a carving of a dog, ora tree sculpted in any material.
The observer must bear in mind that the 'obedience' of the mimoid does not constitute evidenceof cooperation, since it is not consistent. The most highly evolved mimoid has its off-days,when it 'lives' in slow-motion, or its pulsation weakens. (This pulsation is invisible to the nakedeye, and was only discovered after close examination of rapid-motion film of the mimoid,which revealed that each 'beat' took two hours.)During these 'off-days,' it is easy to explore the mimoid, especially if it is old, for the baseanchored in the ocean, like the protuberances growing out of it, is relatively solid, and providesa firm footing for a man. It is equally possible to remain inside the mimoid during periods ofactivity, except that visibility is close to nil because of the whitish colloidal dust continuallyemitted through tears in the tegument above. In any case, at close range it is impossible todistinguish what forms the tegument is assuming, on account of their vast size—the smallest'copy' is the size of a mountain. In addition, a thick layer of colloidal snow quickly covers thebase of the mimoid: this spongy carpet takes several hours to solidify (the 'frozen' crust willtake the weight of a man, though its composition is much lighter than pumice stone). Theproblem is that without special equipment there is a risk of being lost in the maze of tangledstructures and crevasses, sometimes reminiscent of jumbled colonnades, sometimes of petrifiedgeysers. Even in daylight it is easy to lose one's direction, for the sun's rays cannot pierce thewhite ceiling ejected into the atmosphere by the 'imitative explosions.'
On gala days (for the scientist as well as for the mimoid), an unforgettable spectacle developsas the mimoid goes into hyperproduction and performs wild flights of fancy. It plays variationson the theme of a given object and embroiders 'formal extensions' that amuse it for hours onend, to the delight of the non-figurative artist and the despair of the scientist, who is at a loss tograsp any common theme in the performance. The mimoid can produce 'primitive'
simplifications, but is just as likely to indulge in 'baroque' deviations, paroxysms ofextravagant brilliance. Old mimoids tend to manufacture extremely comic forms. Looking atthe photographs, I have never been moved to laughter; the riddle they set is too disquieting tobe funny.
During the early years of exploration, the scientists literally threw themselves upon themimoids, which were spoken of as open windows on the ocean and the best opportunity toestablish the hoped-for contact between the two civilizations. They were soon forced to admitthat there was not the slightest prospect of communication, and that the entire process beganand ended with the reproduction of forms. The mimoids were a dead end.
Giving way to the temptations of a latent anthropomorphism or zoomorphism, there were manyschools of thought which saw various other oceanic formations as 'sensory organs,' even as'limbs,' which was how experts like Maartens and Ekkonai classified Giese's 'vertebrids' and'agilus' for a time. Anyone who is rash enough to see protuberances that reach as far as twomiles into the atmosphere as limbs, might just as well claim that earthquakes are thegymnastics of the Earth's crust!
Three hundred chapters of Giese catalogue the standard formations which occur on the surfaceof the living ocean and which can be seen in dozens, even hundreds, in the course of any day.
The symmetriads—to continue using the terminology and definitions of the Giese school—arethe least 'human' formations, which is to say that they bear no resemblance whatsoever toanything on Earth. By the time, the symmetriads were being investigated, it was already clearthat the ocean was not aggressive, and that its plasmatic eddies would not swallow any but themost foolhardy explorer (of course I am not including accidents resulting from mechanicalfailures). It is possible to fly in complete safety from one part to another of the cylindrical bodyof an extensor, or of the vertebrids, Jacob's ladders oscillating among the clouds: the plasmaretreats at the speed of sound in the planet's atmosphere to make way for any foreign body.
Deep funnels will open even beneath the surface of the ocean (at a prodigious expenditure ofenergy, calculated by Scriabin at around 10^19 ergs). Nevertheless the first venture into theinterior of a symmetriad was undertaken with the utmost caution and discipline, and involved ahost of what turned out to be unnecessary safety measures. Every schoolboy on Earth knows ofthese pioneers.
It is not their nightmare appearance that makes the gigantic symmetriad formations dangerous,but the total instability and capriciousness of their structure, in which even the laws of physicsdo not hold. The theory that the living ocean is endowed with intelligence has found its firmestadherents among those scientists who have ventured into their unpredictable depths.
The birth of a symmetriad comes like a sudden eruption. About an hour beforehand, an area oftens of square miles of ocean vitrifies and begins to shine. It remains fluid, and there is noalteration in the rhythm of the waves. Occasionally the phenomenon of vitrification occurs inthe neighbourhood of the funnel left by an agilus. The gleaming sheath of the ocean heavesupwards to form a vast ball that reflects sky, sun, clouds and the entire horizon in a medley ofchanging, variegated images. Diffracted light creates a kaleidoscopic play of color.
The effects of light on a symmetriad are especially striking during the blue day and the redsunset. The planet appears to be giving birth to a twin that increases in volume from onemoment to the next. The immense flaming globe has scarcely reached its maximum expansionabove the ocean when it bursts at the summit and cracks vertically. It is not breaking up; this isthe second phase, which goes under the clumsy name of the 'floral calyx phase' and lasts only afew seconds. The membranous arches soaring into the sky now fold inwards and merge toproduce a thick-set trunk enclosing a scene of teeming activity. At the center of the trunk,which was explored for the first time by the seventy-man Hamalei expedition, a process ofpolycrystallization on a giant scale erects an axis commonly referred to as the 'backbone,' aterm which I consider ill-chosen. The mind-bending architecture of this central pillar is held inplace by vertical shafts of a gelatinous, almost liquid consistency, constantly gushing upwardsout of wide crevasses. Meanwhile, the entire trunk is surrounded by a belt of snow foam,seething with great bubbles of gas, and the whole process is accompanied by a perpetual dullroar of sound. From the center towards the periphery, powerful buttresses spin out and arecoated with streams of ductile matter rising out of the ocean depths Simultaneously thegelatinous geysers are converted into mobile columns that proceed to extrude tendrils thatreach out in clusters towards points rigorously predetermined by the over-all dynamics of theentire structure: they call to mind the gills of an embryo, except that they are revolving atfantastic speed and ooze trickles of pinkish 'blood' and a dark green secretion.
The symmetriad now begins to display its most exotic characteristic—the property of'illustrating,' so............