I was not mad. The last ray of hope was extinguished. I unplugged the transmitter, drank the remains of the soup in the vacuum flask, and went to bed.

5 RHEYA

Desperation and a sort of dumb rage had sustained me while working with the computer. Now, overcome with exhaustion, I could not even remember how to let down a mechanical bed. Forgetting to push back the clamps, I hung on to the handle with all my weight and the mattress tumbled down on top of me.

I tore off my clothes and flung them away from me, then collapsed on to the pillow, without even taking the trouble to inflate it properly. I fell asleep with the lights on.

I reopened my eyes with the impression of having dozed off for only a few minutes. The room was bathed in a dim red light. It was cooler, and I felt refreshed.

I lay there, the bedclothes pushed back, completely naked. The curtains were half drawn, and there, opposite me, beside the window-pane lit by the red sun, someone was sitting. It was Rheya. She was wearing a white beach dress, the material stretched tightly over her breasts. She sat with her legs crossed; her feet were bare. Motionless, leaning on her sun-tanned arms, she gazed at me from beneath her black lashes: Rheya, with her dark hair brushed back. For a long time, I lay there peacefully gazing back at her. My first thought was reassuring: I was dreaming and I was aware that I was dreaming. Nevertheless, I would have preferred her not to be there. I closed my eyes and tried to shake off the dream. When I opened them again, Rheya was still sitting opposite me.

Her lips were pouting slightly — a habit of hers — as though she were about to whistle; but her expression was serious. I thought of my recent speculations on the subject of dreams.

She had not changed since the day I had seen her for the last time; she was then a girl of nineteen. Today, she would be twenty-nine. But, evidently, the dead do not change; they remain eternally young. She went on gazing at me, an expression of surprise on her face. I thought of throwing something at her, but, even in a dream, I could not bring myself to harm a dead person.

I murmured: “Poor little thing, have you come to visit me?”

The sound of my voice frightened me; the room, Rheya, everything seemed extraordinarily real. A three-dimensional dream, colored in half-tones…. I saw several objects on the floor which I had not noticed when I went to bed. When I wake up, I told myself, I shall check whether these things are still there or whether, like Rheya, I only saw them in a dream.

“Do you mean to stay for long?” I asked. I realized that I was speaking very softly, like someone afraid of being overheard. Why worry about eavesdroppers in a dream?

The sun was rising over the horizon. A good sign. I had gone to bed during a red day, which should have been succeeded by a blue day, followed by another red day. I had not slept for fifteen hours at a stretch. So it was a dream!

Reassured, I looked closely at Rheya. She was silhouetted against the sun. The scarlet rays cast a glow over the smooth skin of her left cheek and the shadows of her eyelashes fell across her face. How pretty she was! Even in my sleep my memory of her was uncannily precise. I watched the movements of the sun, waiting to see the dimple appear in that unusual place slightly below the corner of the lips. All the same, I would have preferred to wake up. It was time I did some work. I closed my eyelids tightly.

I heard a metallic noise, and opened my eyes again. Rheya was sitting beside me on the bed, still looking at me gravely. I smiled at her. She smiled back at me and leant forward. We kissed. First a timid, childish kiss, then more prolonged ones. I held her for a long time. Was it possible to feel so much in a dream, I wondered. I was not betraying her memory, for it was of her that I was dreaming, only her. It had never happened to me before….

Was it then that I began to have doubts? I went on telling myself that it was a dream, but my heart tightened.

I tensed my muscles, ready to leap out of bed. I was half-expecting to fail, for often, in dreams, your sluggish body refuses to respond. I hoped that the effort would drag me out of sleep. But I did not wake; I sat on the edge of the bed, my legs dangling. There was nothing for it, I should have to endure this dream right to the bitter end. My feeling of well-being had vanished. I was afraid.

“What…” I asked. I cleared my throat. “What do you want?”

I felt around the floor with my bare feet, searching for a pair of slippers. I stubbed my toe against a sharp edge, and stifled a cry of pain. That’ll wake me up, I thought with satisfaction, at the same time remembering that I had no slippers.

But still it went on. Rheya had drawn back and was leaning against the end of the bed. Her dress rose and fell lightly with her breathing. She watched me with quiet interest.

Quick, I thought, a shower! But then I realized that in a dream a shower would not interrupt my sleep.

“Where have you come from?”

She seized my hand and, with a gesture I knew well, threw it up and caught it again, then played with my fingers.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “Are you angry?”

It was her voice, that familiar, low-pitched, slightly faraway voice, and that air of not caring much about what she was saying, of already being preoccupied with something else. People used to think her off-hand, even rude, because the expression on her face rarely changed from one of vague astonishment.

“Did… did anyone see you?”

“I don’t know. I got here without any trouble. Why, Kris, is it important?”

She was still playing with my fingers, but her face now wore a slight frown.

“Rheya.”

“What, my darling?”

“How did you know where I was?”

She pondered. A broad smile revealed her teeth.

“I haven’t the faintest idea. Isn’t it funny? When I came in you were asleep. I didn’t wake you up because you get cross so easily. You have a very bad temper.”

She squeezed my hand.

“Did you go down below?”

“Yes. It was all frozen. I ran away.”

She let go of my hand and lay back. With her hair falling to one side, she looked at me with the half-smile that had irritated me before it had captivated me.

“But, Rheya…” I stammered.

I leaned over her and turned back the short sleeve of her dress. There, just above her vaccination scar, was a red dot, the mark of a hypodermic needle. I was not really surprised, but my heart gave a lurch.

I touched the red spot with my finger. For years now I had dreamt of it, over and over again, always waking with a shudder to find myself in the same position, doubled up between the crumpled sheets — just as I had found her, already growing cold. It was as though, in my sleep, I tried to relive what she had gone through; as though I hoped to turn back the clock and ask her forgiveness, or keep her company during those final minutes when she was feeling the effects of the injection and was overcome by terror. She, who dreaded the least scratch, who hated pain or the sight of blood, had deliberately done this horrible thing, leaving nothing but a few scribbled words addressed to me. I had kept her note in my wallet. By now it was soiled and creased, but I had never had the heart to throw it away.

Time and time again I had imagined her tracing those words and making her final preparations. I persuaded myself that she had only been play-acting, that she had wanted to frighten me and had taken an overdose by mistake. Everyone told me that it must have happened like that, or else it had been a spontaneous decision, the result of a sudden depression. But people knew nothing of what I had said to her five days earlier; they did not know that, in order to twist the knife more cruelly, I had taken away my belongings and that she, as I was closing my suitcases, had said, very calmly: “I suppose you know what this means?” And I had pretended not to understand, even though I knew quite well what she meant; I thought her too much of a coward, and had even told her as much…. And now she was lying across the bed, looking at me attentively, as though she did not know that it was I who had killed her.