1 °CONVERSATION

The following morning, I received another note from Snow: Sartorius had left off working on the disruptor and was getting ready for a final experiment with high-power X-rays.

“Rheya, darling, I have to pay a visit to Snow.”

The red dawn blazing through the window divided the room in two. We were in an area of blue shadow. Everything outside this shadow-zone was burnished copper: if a book had fallen from a shelf, my ear would have listened instinctively for a metallic clang.

“It’s to do with the experiment. Only I don’t know what to do about it. Please understand, I’d rather…”

“You needn’t justify yourself, Kris. If only it doesn’t go on too long.”

“It’s bound to take a while. Look, do you think you could wait in the corridor?”

“I can try. But what if I lose control?”

“What does it feel like? I’m not asking just out of curiosity, believe me, but if we can discuss how it works you might find some way of keeping it in check.”

Rheya had turned pale, but she tried to explain:

“I feel afraid, not of some thing or some person — there’s no focus, only a sense of being lost. And I am terribly ashamed of myself. Then, when you come back, it stops. That’s what made me think I might have been ill.”

“Perhaps it’s only inside this damned Station that it works. I’ll make arrangements for us to get out as soon as possible.”

“Do you think you can?”

“Why not? I’m not a prisoner here. I’ll have to talk it over with Snow. Have you any idea how long you could manage to remain by yourself?”

“That depends… If I could hear your voice, I think might be able to hold out.”

“I’d rather you weren’t listening. Not that I have anything to hide, but there’s no telling what Snow might say.”

“You needn’t go on. I understand. I’ll just stand close enough to hear the sound of your voice.”

“I’m going to the operating room to phone him. The doors will be open.”

Rheya nodded agreement.

I crossed the red zone. The corridor seemed dark by contrast, in spite of the lighting. Inside the open door of the operating room, fragments of the Dewar bottle, the last traces of the previous night’s events, gleamed from under a row of liquid oxygen containers. When I took the phone off the hook, the little screen lit up, and I tapped out the number of the radio-cabin. Behind the dull glass, a spot of bluish light grew, burst, and Snow was looking at me perched on the edge of his chair.

“I got your note and I want to talk to you. Can I come over?”

“Yes. Right away?”

“Yes.”

“Excuse me, but are you coming alone or accompanied?”

“Alone.”

His creased forehead and thin, tanned face filled the screen as he leant forward to scrutinize me through the convex glass. Then he appeared to reach an abrupt decision:

“Fine, fine, I’ll be expecting you.”

I went back to the cabin, where I could barely make the shape of Rheya behind the curtain of red sunlight. She was sitting in an armchair, with her hands clutching the armrests. She must have failed to hear my footsteps, and I saw her for a moment fighting the inexplicable compulsion that possessed her and wrestling with the fierce contractions of her entire body which stopped immediately she saw me. I choked back a feeling of blind rage and pity.

We walked in silence down the long corridor with its polychromed walls; the designers had intended the variations in color to make life more tolerable inside the armored shell of the Station. A shaft of red light ahead of us meant that the door of the radio-cabin was ajar, and I looked at Rheya. She made no attempt to return my smile, totally absorbed in her preparations for the coming battle with herself. Now that the ordeal was about to begin, her face was pinched and white. Fifteen paces from the door, she stopped, pushing me forward gently with her fingertips as I started to turn around. Suddenly I felt that Snow, the experiment, even the Station itself were not worth the agonizing price that Rheya was ready to pay, with myself as assistant torturer. I would have retraced my steps, but a shadow fell across the cabin doorway, and I hurried inside.

Snow stood facing me with the red sun behind him making a halo of purple light out of his grey hair. We confronted one another without speaking, and he was able to examine me at his leisure in the sunlight that dazzled me so that I could hardly see him.

I walked past him and leaned against a tall desk bristling with microphones on their flexible stalks. Snow pivoted slowly and went on staring at me with his habitual cheerless smile, in which there was no amusement, only overpowering fatigue. Still with his eyes on mine, he picked his way through the piles of objects littered about the cabin — thermic cells, instruments, spare parts for the electronic equipment — pulled a stool up against the door of a steel cabinet, and sat down.

I listened anxiously, but no sound came from the corridor. Why did Snow not speak? The prolonged silence was becoming exasperating.

I cleared my throat:

“When will you and Sartorius be ready?”

“We can start today, but the recording will take some time.”

“Recording? You mean the encephalogram?”

“Yes, you agreed. Is anything wrong?”

“No, nothing.”

Another lengthening silence. Snow broke it: “Did you have something to tell me?”

“She knows,” I whispered.

He frowned, but I had the impression that he was not really surprised. Then why pretend? I lost all desire to confide in him. All the same, I had to be honest:

“She started to suspect after our meeting in the library. My behavior, various other indications. Then she found Gibarian’s tape-recorder and played back the tape.”

Snow sat intent and unmoving. Standing by the desk, my view of the corridor was blocked by the half-open door. I lowered my voice again:

“Last night, while I was asleep, she tried to kill herself, She drank liquid oxygen…” There was a sound of rustling, like papers stirred by the wind. I stopped and listened for something in the corridor, but the noise did not come from there. A mouse in the cabin? Out of the question, this was Solaris. I stole a glance at Snow. “Go on,” he said calmly.

“It didn’t work, of course. Anyway, she knows who she is.”

“Why tell me?”

I was taken aback for an Instant, then I stammered out: “So as to inform you, to keep you up to date on the situation…”

“I warned you.”

“You mean you knew?” My voice rose involuntarily.

“What you have just told me? Of course not. But 1 explained the position. When it arrives, the visitor is almost blank — only a ghost made up of memories and vague images dredged out of its… source. The longer it stays with you, the more human it becomes. It also becomes more independent, up to a certain point. And the longer that goes on, the more difficult it gets…” Snow broke off, looked me up and down, and went on reluctantly: “Does she know everything?”

“Yes, I’ve just told you.”

“Everything? Does she know that she came once before, and that you…”

“No!”

“Listen Kelvin,” he smiled ruefully, “if that’s how it is, what do you want to do — leave the Station?”

“Yes.”

“With her?”

The silence while he considered his reply also revealed something else. Again, from somewhere close, and without being able to pin it down, I heard the same faint rustling in the cabin, as if through a thin partition.

Snow shifted on his stool.

“All right. Why look at me like that? Do you think I would stand in your way? You can do as you like, Kelvin. We’re in enough trouble already without putting pressure on each other. I know it will be a hopeless job to convince you, but there’s something I have to say: you are doing all you can to stay human in an inhuman situation. Noble it may be, but it isn’t going to get you anywhere. And I’m not so sure about it being noble — not if it’s idiotic at the same time. But that’s your affair. Let’s get back to the point. You renege on the experiment and take her away with you. Has it struck you that you’ll only be embarking on a different kind of experiment?”