“He seems to have reached some land of settlement. We never discuss our domestic troubles. With you, it’s another matter. Will you come tomorrow morning?”
“All right,” I grunted.
I noticed that Snow had slipped his left hand inside the cabinet. How long had the door been ajar? Probably for some time, but in the heat of the encounter I had not registered that the position of his hand was not natural. It was as if he was concealing something – or holding somebody’s hand.
I licked my lips:
“Snow, what have you . . .”
“You’d better leave now,” he said evenly.
I closed the door in the final glow of the red twilight. Rheya was huddled against the wall a few paces down the corridor. She sprang to her feet at once:
“You see? I did it, Kris. I feel so much better . . . Perhaps it will be easier and easier . . .”
“Yes, of course . . .” I answered absently.
We went back to my quarters. I was still speculating about that cabinet, and what had been hiding there, perhaps overhearing our entire conversation. My cheeks started to burn so hard that I involuntarily passed the back of my hand over them. What an idiotic meeting! And where did it get us? Nowhere. But there was tomorrow morning
An abrupt thrill of fear ran through me. My encephalogram, a complete record of the workings of my brain, was to be beamed into the ocean in the form of radiation. What was it Snow had said – would I suffer terribly if Rheya departed? An encephalogram records every mental process, conscious and unconscious. If I want her to disappear, will it happen? But if I wanted to get rid of her would I also be appalled at the thought of her imminent destruction? Am I responsible for my unconscious? No one else is, if not myself. How stupid to agree to let them do it. Obviously I can examine the recording before it is used, but I won’t be able to decode it. Nobody could. The experts can only identify general mental tendencies. For instance, they will say that the subject is thinking about some mathematical problem, but they are unable to specify its precise terms. They claim that they have to stick to generalizations because the encephalogram cannot discriminate among the stream of simultaneous impulses, only some of which have any psychological “counterpart,” and they refuse point-blank to hazard any comment on the unconscious processes. So how could they be expected to decipher memories which have been more or less repressed?
Then why was I so afraid? I had told Rheya only that morning that the experiment could not work. If Terran neurophysiologists were incapable of decoding the recording, what chance was there for that great alien creature . . . ?
Yet it had infiltrated my mind without my knowledge, surveyed my memory, and laid bare my most vulnerable point. That was undeniable. Without any assistance or radiation transmissions, it had found its way through the armored shell of the Station, located me, and come away with its spoils . . .
“Kris?” Rheya whispered.
Standing at the window with unseeing eyes, I had not noticed the coming of darkness. A thin veiling of high cloud glowed a dim silver in the light of the vanished sun, and obscured the stars.
If she disappears after the experiment, that will mean that I wanted her to disappear – that I killed her. No, I will not see Sartorius. They can’t force me to cooperate. But I can’t tell them the truth, I’ll have to dissemble and lie, and keep on doing it . . . Because there may be thoughts, intentions and cruel hopes in my mind of which I know nothing, because I am a murderer unawares. Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed. Was I to abandon Rheya there out of false shame, or because I lacked the courage?
“Kris,” said Rheya, more softly still.
She was standing quite close to me now. I pretended not to hear. At that moment, I wanted to isolate myself. I had not yet resolved anything, or reached any decision. I stood motionless, looking at the dark sky and the cold stars, pale ghosts of the stars that shone on Earth. My mind was a blank. All I had was the grim certainty of having crossed some point of no return. I refused to admit that I was travelling towards what I could not reach. Apathy robbed me of the strength even to despise myself.
11 THE THINKERS
“Kris, is it the experiment that’s on your mind?”
The sound of her voice made me start with surprise. I had been lying in the dark for hours with my eyes open, unable to sleep. Not hearing Rheya’s breathing, I had forgotten her, letting myself drift in a tide of aimless speculation. The waking dream had lured me out of sight of the measure and meaning of reality. “How did you know I wasn’t asleep?” “Your breathing changes when you are asleep,” she said gently, as if to apologize for her question. “I didn’t want to interfere . . . If you can’t answer, don’t.”
“Why would I not tell you? Anyway you’ve guessed right, it is the experiment.”
“What do they expect to achieve?”
“They don’t know themselves. Something. Anything. It isn’t ‘Operation Brainwave,’ it’s ‘Operation Desperation.’ Really, one of us ought to have the courage to call the experiment off and shoulder the responsibility for the decision, but the majority reckons that that kind of courage would be a sign of cowardice, and the first step in a retreat. They think it would mean an undignified surrender for mankind – as if there was any dignity in floundering and drowning in what we don’t understand and never will.” I stopped, but a new access of rage quickly built up. “Needless to say they’re not short of arguments. They claim that even if we fail to establish contact we won’t have been wasting our time investigating the plasma, and that we shall eventually uncover the secret of matter. They know very well that they are deceiving themselves. It’s like wandering about in a library where all the books are written in an indecipherable language. The only thing that’s familiar is the color of the bindings!”
“Are there no other planets like this?”
“It’s possible. This is the only one we’ve come across. In any case, it’s in an extremely rare category, not like Earth. Earth is a common type – the grass of the universe! And we pride ourselves on this universality. There’s nowhere we can’t go; in that belief we set out for other worlds, all brimming with confidence. And what were we going to do with them? Rule them or be ruled by them: that was the only idea in our pathetic minds! What a useless waste . . .”
I got out of bed and fumbled in the medicine cabinet. My fingers recognized the shape of the big bottle of sleeping pills, and I turned around in the darkness:
“I’m going to sleep, darling.” Up in the ceiling, the ventilator hummed. “I must get some sleep . . .”
In the morning, I woke up feeling calm and refreshed. The experiment seemed a petty matter, and I could not understand how I had managed to take the encephalogram so seriously. Nor was I much bothered by having to bring Rheya into the laboratory. In spite of all her exertions, she could not bear to stay out of sight and earshot for longer than five minutes, so I had abandoned my idea of further tests (she was even prepared to let herself be locked up somewhere), asked her to come with me, and advised her to bring something to read.
I was especially curious about what I would find in the laboratory. There was nothing unusual about the appearance of the big, blue-and-white-painted room, except that the shelves and cupboards meant to contain glass instruments seemed bare. The glass panel in one door was starred, and in some doors it was missing altogether, suggesting that there had been a struggle here recently, and that someone had done his best to remove the traces.
Snow busied himself with the equipment, and behaved quite civilly, showing no surprise at the sight of Rheya, and greeting her with a quick nod of the head.
I was lying down and Snow was swabbing my temples and forehead with saline solution, when a narrow door opened and Sartorius emerged from an unlighted room. He was wearing a white smock and a black anti-radiation overall that came down to his ankles, and his greeting was authoritative and very professional in manner. We might have been two researchers in some great institute on Earth, continuing from where we had left off the day before. He was not wearing his dark glasses, but I noticed that he had on contact lenses, which I took to be the explanation of his lack of expression.