So what does all this mean?
I remembered an incident dating from my spell as assistant to Gibarian. A group of schoolchildren visiting the Solarist Institute in Aden were making their way through the main hall of the library and looking at the racks of microfilm that occupied the entire left-hand side of the hall. The guide explained that among other phenomena immortalized by the image, these contained fragmentary glimpses of symmetriads long since vanished – not single shots, but whole reels, more than ninety thousand of them!
One plump schoolgirl (she looked about fifteen, peering inquisitively over her spectacles) abruptly asked: “And what is it for?”
In the ensuing embarrassed silence, the school mistress was content to dart a reproving look at her wayward pupil. Among the Solarists whose job was to act as guides (I was one of them), no one would produce an answer. Each symmetriad is unique, and the developments in its heart are, generally speaking, unpredictable. Sometimes there is no sound. Sometimes the index of refraction increases or diminishes. Sometimes, rhythmic pulsations are accompanied by local changes in gravitation, as if the heart of the symmetriad were beating by gravitating. Sometimes the compasses of the observers spin wildly, and ionized layers spring up and disappear. The catalogue could go on indefinitely. In any case, even if we did ever succeed in solving the riddle of the symmetriads, we would still have to contend with the asymmetriads!
The asymmetriads are born in the same manner as the symmetriads but finish differently, and nothing can be seen of their internal processes except tremors, vibrations and flickering. We do know, however, that the interior houses bewildering operations performed at a speed that defies the laws of physics and which are dubbed ‘giant quantic phenomena.’ The mathematical analogy with certain three-dimensional models of the atom is so unstable and transitory that some commentators dismiss the resemblance as of secondary importance, if not purely accidental. The asymmetriads have a very short life-span of fifteen to twenty minutes, and their death is even more appalling than that of the symmetriads: with the howling gale that screams through its fabric, a thick fluid gushes out, gurgles hideously, and submerges everything beneath a foul, bubbling foam. Then an explosion, coinciding with a muddy eruption, hurls up a spout of debris which rains slowly down into the seething ocean. This debris is sometimes found scores of miles from the focus of the explosion, dried up, yellow and flattened, like flakes of cartilage.
Some other creations of the ocean, which are much more rare and of very variable duration, part company with the parent body entirely. The first traces of these ‘independents’ were identified – wrongly, it was later proved – as the remains of creatures inhabiting the ocean deeps. The free-ranging forms are often reminiscent of many-winged birds, darting away from the moving trunks of the agilus, but the preconceptions of Earth offer no assistance in unravelling the mysteries of Solaris. Strange, seal-like bodies appear now and then on the rocky outcrop of an island, sprawling in the sun or dragging themselves lazily back to merge with the ocean.
There was no escaping the impressions that grew out of man’s experience on Earth. The prospects of Contact receded.
Explorers travelled hundreds of miles in the depths of symmetriads, and installed measuring instruments and remote-control cameras. Artificial satellites captured the birth of mimoids and extensors, and faithfully reproduced their images of growth and destruction. The libraries overflowed, the archives grew, and the price paid for all this documentation was often very heavy. One notorious disaster cost one hundred and six people their lives, among them Giese himself: while studying what was undoubtedly a symmetriad, the expedition was suddenly destroyed by a process peculiar to the asymmetriads. In two seconds, an eruption of glutinous mud swallowed up seventy-nine men and all their equipment. Another twenty-seven observers surveying the area from aircraft and helicopters were also caught in the eruption.
Following the Eruption of the Hundred and Six, and for the first time in Solarist studies, there were petitions demanding a thermo-nuclear attack on the ocean. Such a response would have been more cruelty than revenge, since it would have meant destroying what we did not understand. Tsanken’s ultimatum, which was never offically acknowledged, probably influenced the negative outcome of the vote. He was in command of Giese’s reserve team, and had survived owing to a transmission error that took him off his course, to arrive in the disaster area a few minutes after the explosion, when the black mushroom cloud was still visible. Informed of the proposal for a nuclear strike, he threatened to blow up the Station, together with the nineteen survivors sheltering inside it
Today, there are only three of us on the Station. Its construction was controlled by satellites, and was a technical feat on which the human race has a right to pride itself, even if the ocean builds far more impressive structures in the space of a few seconds. The Station is a disc of one hundred yards radius, and contains four decks at the center and two at the circumference. It is maintained at a height of from five to fifteen hundred yards above the ocean by gravitors programmed to compensate for the ocean’s own field of attraction. In addition to all the machines available to ordinary Stations and the large artificial satellites that orbit other planets, the Solaris Station is equipped with specialized radar apparatus sensitive to the smallest fluctuations of the ocean surface, which trips auxiliary power-circuits capable of thrusting the steel disc into the stratosphere at the first indication of new plasmatic upheavals.
But today, in spite of the presence of our faithful ‘visitors,’ the Station was strangely deserted. Ever since the robots had been locked away in the lower-deck store-rooms – for a reason I had still not discovered – it had been possible to walk around without meeting a single member of the crew of our ghost ship.
As I replaced the ninth volume of Giese on the shelf, the plastic-coated steel floor seemed to shudder under my feet. I stood still, but the vibration had stopped. The library was completely isolated from the other rooms, and the only possible source of vibration must be a shuttle leaving the Station. This thought jerked me back to reality. I had not yet decided to accept Sartorius’s suggestion and leave the Station. By feigning approval of his plan, I had been more or less postponing the outbreak of hostilities, for I was determined to save Rheya. All the same, Sartorius might have some chance of success. He certainly had the advantage of being a qualified physicist, while I was in the ironic position of having to count on the superiority of the ocean. I pored over microfilm texts for an hour, and made myself wrestle with the unfamiliar language of neutrino physics. The undertaking seemed hopeless at first: there were no less than five current theories dealing with neutrino fields, an obvious indication that none was definitive. Eventually I struck promising ground, and was busily copying down equations when there was a knock at the door. I got up quickly and opened it a few inches, to see Snow’s perspiring face, and behind him an empty corridor.
“Yes, it’s me.” His voice was hoarse, and there were dark pouches under the bloodshot eyes. He wore an antiradiation apron of shiny rubber, and the same worn old trousers held up by elastic braces.
Snow’s gaze flickered round the circular chamber and alighted on Rheya where she stood by an armchair at the other end. Then it returned to me, and I lowered my eyelids imperceptibly. He nodded, and I spoke casually:
“Rheya, come and meet Dr. Snow . . . Snow – my wife.”
“I . . . I’m just a minor member of the crew. Don’t get about much . . .” He faltered, but managed to blurt out: “That’s why I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you before . . .”
Rheya smiled and held out her hand, which he shook in some surprise. He blinked several times and stood looking at her, tongue-tied, until I took him by the arm.
“Excuse me,” he said to Rheya. “I wanted a word with you, Kelvin . . .”
“Of course.” (My composure was an ugly charade, but what else could I do?) “Take no notice of us, Rheya. We’ll be talking shop . . .”
I guided Snow over to the chairs on the far side of the room, and Rheya sat in the armchair I had occupied earlier, swivelling it so that she could glance up at us from her book. I lowered my voice:
“Any news?”
“I’m divorced,” he whispered. If anybody had quoted this to me as the opening of a conversation a few days before, I would have burst out laughing, but the Station had blunted my sense of humor. “It feels like years since yesterday morning,” he went on. “And you?”