Return from the Stars (6 page)

"Nais," I said very quietly. "Nais, don't be afraid. Really, there's nothing to fear."

She tried to smile.

"Listen…"

"Yes?"

"When I said that…"

"Yes?"

"You felt nothing?"

"And what was I supposed to feel?"

"Imagine that you are doing what I said to you."

"That I am killing? I'm supposed to picture that?"

She shuddered.

"Yes."

"And now?"

"And you feel nothing?"

"Nothing. But, then, it's only a thought, and I don't have the slightest intention…"

"But you can? Right? You really can? No," she whispered, as if to herself, "you are not betrizated."

Only now did the meaning of it all hit me, and I understood how it could be a shock to her.

"This is a great thing," I muttered. After a moment, I added, "But it would have been better, perhaps, had people ceased to do it … without artificial means."

"I don't know. Perhaps," she answered. She drew a deep breath. "You know, now, why I was frightened?"

"Yes, but not completely. Maybe a little. But surely you didn't think that I…"

"How strange you are! It's altogether as though you weren't…" She broke off.

"Weren't human?"

Her eyelids fluttered.

"I didn't mean to offend you. It's just that, you see, if it is known that no one can—you know—even think about it, ever, and suddenly someone appears, like you, then the very possibility … the fact that there is one who…"

"I can't believe that everyone would be—what was it?—ah, betrizated!"

"Why? Everyone, I tell you!"

"No, it's impossible," I insisted. "What about people with dangerous jobs? After all, they must…"

"There are no dangerous jobs."

"What are you saying, Nais? What about pilots? And various rescue workers? And those who fight fire, floods…?"

"There are no such people," she said. It seemed to me that I had not heard her right.

"What?"

"No such people," she repeated. "All that is done by robots."

There was silence. It would not be easy for me, I thought, to stomach this new world. And suddenly came a reflection, surprising in that I myself would never have expected it if someone had presented me with this situation purely as a theoretical possibility: it occurred to me that this destruction of the killer in man was a disfigurement.

"Nais," I said, "it's already very late. I think I'll go."

"Where?"

"I don't know. Hold on! A person from Adapt was supposed to meet me at the station. I completely forgot! I couldn't find him, you understand. So I'll look for a hotel. There are hotels?"

"There are. Where are you from?"

"Here. I was born here."

With these words the feeling of the unreality of everything returned, and I was no longer certain either of that city, which existed only within me, or of this spectral one with rooms into which the heads of giants peered, so that for a second I wondered if I might not be on board and dreaming yet another particularly vivid nightmare of my return.

"Bregg." I heard her voice as if from a distance. I started. I had completely forgotten about her.

"Yes?"

"Stay."

"What?"

She did not speak.

"You want me to stay?"

She did not speak. I went up to her, bent over the chair, took hold of her by her cold arms, and lifted her up. She stood submissively. Her head fell back, I saw her teeth glistening; I did not want her, I wanted only to say, "But you're afraid," and for her to say that she was not. Nothing more. Her eyes were closed, but suddenly the whites shone from underneath her lashes; I bent over her face, looked closely into her glassy eyes, as though I wished to know her fear, to share it. Panting, she struggled to break loose, but I did not feel it, it was only when she began to groan "No! No!" that I slackened my grip. She practically fell. She stood against the wall, blocking out part of a huge, chubby face that reached the ceiling, that there, behind the glass, spoke endlessly, with exaggeration, moving its huge lips and meaty tongue.

"Nais…" I said quietly. I dropped my hands.

"Don't come near me!"

"But it was you who said…"

Her eyes were wild.

I paced the room. She followed me with her eyes, as if I were … as if she stood in a cage…

"I'm going now," I announced. She did not speak. I wanted to add something—a few words of apology, of thanks, so as not to leave this way—but I couldn't. Had she been afraid only as a woman is of a man, a strange, even threatening, unknown man, then I wouldn't have given a damn; but this was something else. I looked at her and felt anger growing in me. To grab those naked white arms and shake her…

I turned and left. The outer door yielded when I pushed it; the large corridor was almost completely dark. I was unable to find the exit to that terrace, but I did come upon cylinders filled with an attenuated bluish light—elevators. The one I approached was already on its way up; maybe the pressure of my foot on the threshold was enough. The elevator took a long time going down. I saw alternating layers of darkness, and the cross sections of ceilings; white with reddish centers, like fat on muscle, they passed upward, I lost count of them; the elevator fell, fell, it was like a journey to the bottom, as if I had been thrown down a sterile conduit, and this colossal building, deep in its sleep and security, was ridding itself of me. A part of the transparent cylinder opened, I began walking.

Hands in pockets, darkness, a hard long stride, greedily I inhaled the cool air, feeling the movement of my nostrils, my heart working slowly, pumping blood; lights flickered in the low apertures over the road, covered from time to time by the noiseless machines; there was not one pedestrian. Between black silhouettes was a glow, which I thought might be a hotel. It was only an illuminated walkway. I took it. Above me the whitish spans of structures sailed by; somewhere in the distance, above the black edges of the buildings, tripped the steadily shining letters of the news; suddenly the walkway took me into a lighted interior and came to an end.

Wide steps ran down, silvery like a mute waterfall. The desolation surprised me; since leaving Nais, I had not encountered a single passer-by. The escalator was very long. A wide street gleamed below, on either side opened passageways in buildings; beneath a tree with blue leaves—but possibly it was not a real tree—I saw people standing; I approached them, then walked away. They were kissing. I walked toward the muffled sound of music, some all-night restaurant or bar not set off from the street. A few people were sitting there. I wanted to go inside and ask about a hotel. Suddenly I crashed, with my whole body, into an invisible barrier. It was a sheet of glass, perfectly transparent. The entrance was nearby. Inside, someone began laughing and pointed me out to others. I went in. A man in a black undershirt that was actually somewhat similar to my sweater but with a full, inflated collar sat sideways at a table, a glass in his hand, and looked at me. I stopped in front of him. The smile froze on his half-open mouth. I stood still. There was a hush. Only the music played, as though from behind the wall. A woman made a strange, weak noise. I looked around at the motionless faces and left. Not until I was out on the street did I remember that I had intended to ask about a hotel.

I entered a mall. It was filled with displays. Tourist offices, sports shops, mannequins in different poses. These were not exactly displays, for everything stood and lay in the street, on either side of the raised walkway that ran down the middle. Several times I mistook the figures moving within for people. They were puppets, for advertising, performing a single action over and over again. For a while I watched one—a doll almost as large as myself, a caricature with puffed-out cheeks, playing a flute. It did this so well that I had the impulse to call out to it. Farther along were halls for games of some kind; large rainbow wheels revolved, silver pipes hanging loosely from the ceiling struck one another with the sound of sleigh bells, prismatic mirrors glittered, but everything was deserted. At the very end of the mall, in the darkness, flashed a sign:
HERE HAHAHA
. It disappeared. I went toward it. Again the
HERE HAHAHA
lit up and disappeared as if blown out. In the next flash I saw an entrance. I heard voices. I entered through a curtain of warm, moving air.

Inside stood two of the wheelless cars; a few lamps shone, and under them three people gesticulated heatedly, as if quarreling. I went up to them.

"Hello!"

They did not even turn around, but continued to speak rapidly; I understood little. "Then sap, then sap," piped the shortest, who had a potbelly. On his head he wore a tall cap.

"Gentlemen, I'm looking for a hotel. Where is there…?"

They paid no attention to me, as if I did not exist. I got furious. Without a word I stepped in their midst. The one nearest me—I saw stupid eyes, whites shining, and trembling lips—lisped:

"I should sap? Sap yourself!"

Just as if he were talking to me.

"Why do you play deaf?" I asked, and suddenly, from the spot where I stood—as if from me, from out of my chest—came a shrill cry:

"I'll show you. So help me!"

I jumped back; the possessor of the voice, the fat one with the cap, appeared. I went to grab him by the arm, but my fingers passed clean through him and closed on air. I stood dumbstruck, and they prattled on; suddenly it seemed to me that from the darkness above the cars, from high up, someone was watching me. I went closer to the edge of the light and saw the pale blotches of faces; there was something like a balcony up there. Blinded by the light, I could not see much; enough, however, to realize what a terrible fool I had made of myself. I fled as if someone were at my heels. The next street headed up and ended at an escalator. I thought that maybe there I would find an infor, and got on the pale gold stairs. I found myself in a circular plaza, fairly small. In the center rose a column, high, transparent as glass; something danced in it, purple, brown, and violet shapes, unlike anything I knew, like abstract sculptures come to life, but very amusing. First one color and then another swelled, became concentrated, took shape in a highly comical way; this melee of forms, although devoid of faces, heads, arms, legs, was very human in character, like a caricature, even. After a while I saw that the violet was a buffoon, conceited, overbearing, and at the same time cowardly; when it burst into a million dancing bubbles, the blue set to work, angelic, modest, collected, but somehow sanctimonious, as if praying to itself. I do not know how long I watched. I had never seen anything remotely like it. Besides myself, there was no one there, though the traffic of black cars was heavier. I did not even know if they were occupied or not, since they had no windows. Six streets led from the circular plaza, some up, some down; they extended far, it seemed, in a delicate mosaic of colored lights. No infor. By now I was exhausted, not only physically—I felt that I could not take in any more impressions. Occasionally, walking, I lost track of things, although I did not doze at all; I do not recall how or when I entered a wide avenue; at an intersection I slackened my pace, lifted my head, and saw the glow of the city on the clouds. I was surprised, for I had thought that I was underground. I went on, now in a sea of moving lights, of displays without glass fronts, among gesticulating mannequins that spun like tops, that furiously did gymnastics; they handed one another shining objects, were inflating something—but I did not even look in their direction. In the distance several people were walking; I was not sure, however, that they were not dolls, and did not try to catch up with them. The buildings parted, and I caught sight of a huge sign—
TERMINAL PARK
—and a shining green arrow.

An escalator began in the space between the buildings, suddenly entered a tunnel, silver with a gold pulse in the walls, as though underneath the mercury mask of the walls the noble metal truly flowed; I felt a hot gust, everything went out—I stood in a glass pavilion. It was in the shape of a shell, with a ribbed ceiling that glimmered a barely perceptible green; the light was from delicate veins, like the luminescence of a single giant trembling leaf. Doors opened in all directions; beyond them darkness and small letters, moving along the floor:
TERMINAL PARK TERMINAL PARK
.

I went outside. It was indeed a park. The trees rustled incessantly, invisible in the gloom. I felt no wind; it must have been blowing higher up, and the voice of the trees, steady, stately, encompassed me in an invisible arch. For the first time I felt alone, but not as in a crowd, for the feeling was agreeable. There must have been a number of people in the park: I heard whispers, occasionally the blur of a face shone, once I even brushed by someone. The crowns of the trees came together, so that the stars were visible only through their branches. I recalled that to reach the park I had ridden up, yet back there, in the plaza with the dancing colors and where the streets were filled with displays, I had had a cloudy sky over me; how, then, did it happen that now, a level higher, the sky I was seeing was starry? I could not account for this.

The trees parted, and before I saw the water, I smelled it, the odor of mud, of rotting, or sodden leaves; I froze.

Brushwood formed a black circle around the lake. I could hear the rustling of rushes and reeds, and in the distance, on the other side, rose, in a single immensity, a mountain of luminous, glassy rock, a translucent massif above the plains of the night; spectral radiance issued from the vertical cliffs, pale, bluish, bastion upon bastion, crystal battlements, chasms—and this shining colossus, impossible and unbelievable, was reflected in a long, paler copy on the black waters of the lake. I stood, dumbstruck and enraptured; the wind brought faint, fading echoes of music, and, straining my eyes, I could see the tiers and horizontal terraces of the giant. It came to me in a flash that for the second time I was seeing the station, the mighty Terminal in which I had wandered the day before, and that perhaps I was even looking from the bottom of the dark expanse that had puzzled me so in the place where I met Nais.