I was about to call her name, when I heard the tread of heavy footsteps coming towards me. A numb calm descended:
“Gibarian?”
“Yes, it’s me. Don’t switch the light on.”
“No?”
“There’s no need, and it’s better for us to stay in the dark.”
“But you are dead . . .”
“Don’t let that worry you. You recognize my voice, don’t you?”
“Yes. Why did you kill yourself?”
“I had no choice. You arrived four days late. If you had come earlier, I would not have been forced to kill myself. Don’t worry about it, though, I don’t regret anything.”
“You really are there? I’m not asleep?”
“Oh, you think you’re dreaming about me? As you did with Rheya?”
“Where is she?”
“How should I know?”
“I have a feeling that you do.”
“Keep your feelings for yourself. Let’s say I’m deputizing for her.”
“I want her here too!”
“Not possible.”
“Why not? You know very well that it isn’t the real you, just my . . .”
“No, I am the real Gibarian – just a new incarnation. But let’s not waste time on useless chatter.”
“You’ll be leaving again?”
“Yes.”
“And then she’ll come back?”
“Why should you care about that?”
“She belongs to me.”
“You are afraid of her.”
“No.”
“She disgusts you.”
“What do you want with me?”
“Save your pity for yourself – you have a right to it – but not for her. She will always be twenty years old. You must know that.”
I felt suddenly at ease again, for no apparent reason, and ready to hear him out. He seemed to have come closer, though I could not see him in the dark.
“What do you want?”
“Sartorius has convinced Snow that you have been deceiving him. Right now they are trying to give you the same treatment. Building the X-ray beamer is a cover for constructing a magnetic field disruptor.”
“Where is she?”
“Didn’t you hear me? I came to warn you.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. Be careful. You must find some kind of weapon. You can’t trust anyone.”
“I can trust Rheya.”
He stifled a laugh: “Of course, you can trust Rheya – to some extent. And you can always follow my example, if all else fails.”
“You are not Gibarian.”
“No? Then who am I? A dream?”
“No, you are only a puppet. But you don’t realize that you are.”
“And how do you know what _you_ are?”
I tried to stand up, but could not stir. Although Gibarian was still speaking, I could not understand his words; there was only the drone of his voice. I struggled to regain control of my body, felt a sudden wrench and . . . I woke up, and drew down great gulps of air. It was dark, and I had been having a nightmare. And now I heard a distant, monotonous voice: “. . . a dilemma that we are not equipped to solve. We are the cause of our own sufferings. The Polytheres behave strictly as a kind of amplifier of our own thoughts. Any attempt to understand the motivation of these occurrences is blocked by our own anthropomorphism. Where there are no men, there cannot be motives accessible to men. Before we can proceed with our research, either our own thoughts or their materialized forms must be destroyed. It is not within our power to destroy our thoughts. As for destroying their material forms, that could be like committing murder.”
I had recognized Gibarian’s voice at once. When I stretched out my arm, I found myself alone. I had fallen asleep again. This was another dream. I called Gibarian’s name, and the voice stopped in mid-sentence. There was the sound of a faint gasp, then a gust of air.
“Well, Gibarian,” I yawned, “You seem to be following me out of one dream and into the next . . .”
There was a rustling sound from somewhere close, and I called his name again. The bed-springs creaked, and a voice whispered in my ear:
“Kris . . . it’s me . . .”
“Rheya? Is it you? What about Gibarian?”
“But . . . you said he was dead, Kris.”
“He can be alive in a dream,” I told her dejectedly, although I was not completely sure that it had been a dream. “He spoke to me . . . He was here . . .”
My head sank back onto the pillow. Rheya said something, but I was already drifting into sleep.
In the red light of morning, the events of the previous night returned. I had dreamt that I was talking to Gibarian, But afterwards, I could swear that I had heard his voice, although I had no clear recall of what he had said, and it had not been a conversation – more like a speech.
Rheya was splashing about in the bathroom. I looked under the bed, where I had hidden the tape-recorder a few days earlier. It was no longer there.
“Rheya!” She put her face round the door. “Did you see a tape-recorder under the bed, a little pocket one?”
“There was a pile of stuff under the bed. I put it all over there.” She pointed to a shelf by the medicine cabinet, and disappeared back into the bathroom.
There was no tape-recorder on the shelf, and when Rheya emerged from the bathroom I asked her to think again. She sat combing her hair, and did not answer. It was not until now that I noticed how pale she was, and how closely she was watching me in the mirror. I returned to the attack:
“The tape-recorder is missing, Rheya.”
“Is that all you have to tell me?”
“I’m sorry. You’re right, it’s silly to get so worked up about a tape-recorder.”
Anything to avoid a quarrel.
Later, over breakfast, the change in Rheya’s behavior was obvious, yet I could not define it. She did not meet my eyes, and was frequently so lost in thought that she did not hear me. Once, when she looked up, her cheeks were damp.
“Is anything the matter? You’re crying.”
“Leave me alone,” Rheya blurted. “They aren’t real tears.”
Perhaps I ought not to have let her answer so, but ‘straight talking’ was the last thing I wanted. In any case, I had other problems on my mind; I had dreamt that Snow and -Sartorius were plotting against me, and although I was certain that it had been nothing more than a dream, I was wondering if there was anything on the Station that I might be able to use to defend myself. My thinking had not progressed to the point of deciding what to do with a weapon once I had it. I told Rheya that I had to make an inspection of the store-rooms, and she trailed behind me silently.
I ransacked packing-cases and capsules, and when we reached the lower deck I was unable to resist looking into the cold store. Not wanting Rheya to go in, I put my head inside the door and looked around. The recumbent figure was still covered by its dark shroud, but from my position in the doorway I could not make out whether the black woman was still sleeping by Gibarian’s body. I had the impression that she was no longer there.
I wandered from one store-room to another, unable to locate anything that might serve as a weapon, and with a rising feeling of depression. All at once I noticed that Rheya was not with me. Then she reappeared; she had been hanging back in the corridor. In spite of the pain she suffered when she could not see me, she had been trying to keep away. I should have been astonished: instead, I went on acting as if I had been offended – but then, who had offended me? – and sulking like a child.
My head was throbbing, and I rifled the entire contents of the medicine cabinet without finding so much as an aspirin. I did not want to go back to the sick bay. I did not want to do anything. I had never been in a blacker temper. Rheya tiptoed about the cabin like a shadow. Now and then she went off somewhere. I don’t know where, I was paying her no attention; then she would creep back inside.
That afternoon, in the kitchen (we had just eaten, but in fact Rheya had not touched her food, and I had not attempted to persuade her), Rheya got up and came to sit next to me. I felt her hand on my sleeve, and grunted: “What’s the matter?”
I had been meaning to go up to the deck above, as the pipes were carrying the sharp crackling sound of high-voltage apparatus in use, but Rheya would have had to come with me. It had been hard enough to justify her presence in the library; among the machinery, there was a chance that Snow might drop some clumsy remark. I gave up the idea of going to investigate.