Solaris (14 page)

Any number of attempts have been made to transpose and
'illustrate' the symmetriad, and Averian's demonstration was
particularly well received. Let us imagine, he said, an edifice
dating from the great days of Babylon, but built of some living,
sensitive substance with the capacity to evolve: the architectonics
of this edifice pass through a series of phases, and we see it
adopt the forms of a Greek, then of a Roman building. The columns
sprout like branches and become narrower, the roof grows lighter,
rises, curves, the arch describes an abrupt parabola then breaks
down into an arrow shape: the Gothic is born, comes to maturity and
gives way in time to new forms. Austerity of line gives way to a
riot of exploding lines and shapes, and the Baroque runs wild. If
the progression continues—and the successive mutations are to
be seen as stages in the life of an evolving organism—we
finally arrive at the architecture of the space age, and perhaps
too at some understanding of the symmetriad.

Unfortunately, no matter how this demonstration may be expanded
and unproved (there have been attempts to visualize it with the aid
of models and films), the comparison remains superficial. It is
evasive and illusory, and side-steps the central fact that the
symmetriad is quite unlike anything Earth has ever produced.

The human mind is only capable of absorbing a few things at a
time. We see what is taking place in front of us in the here and
now, and cannot envisage simultaneously a succession of processes,
no matter how integrated and complementary. Our faculties of
perception are consequently limited even as regards fairly simple
phenomena. The fate of a single man can be rich with significance,
that of a few hundred less so, but the history of thousands and
millions of men does not mean anything at all, in any adequate
sense of the word. The symmetriad is a million—a billion,
rather—raised to the power of
N
: it is
incomprehensible. We pass through vast halls, each with a capacity
of ten Kronecker units, and creep like so many ants clinging to the
folds of breathing vaults and craning to watch the flight of
soaring girders, opalescent in the glare of searchlights, and
elastic domes which criss-cross and balance each other unerringly,
the perfection of a moment, since everything here passes and fades,
The essence of this architecture is movement synchronized towards a
precise objective. We observe a fraction of the process, like
hearing the vibration of a single string in an orchestra of
supergiants. We know, but cannot grasp, that above and below,
beyond the limits of perception or imagination, thousands and
millions of simultaneous transformations are at work, interlinked
like a musical score by mathematical counterpoint. It has been
described as a symphony in geometry, but we lack the ears to hear
it.

Only a long-distance view would reveal the entire process, but
the outer covering of the symmetriad conceals the colossal inner
matrix where creation is unceasing, the created becomes the
creator, and absolutely identical 'twins' are born at opposite
poles, separated by towering structures and miles of distance. The
symphony creates itself, and writes its own conclusion, which is
terrible to watch. Every observer feels like a spectator at a
tragedy or a public massacre, when after two or three
hours—never longer—the living ocean stages its assault.
The polished surface of the ocean swirls and crumples, the
desiccated foam liquefies again, begins to seethe, and legions of
waves pour inwards from every point of the horizon, their gaping
mouths far more massive than the greedy lips that surround the
embryonic mimoid. The submerged base of the symmetriad is
compressed, and the colossus rises as if on the point of being shot
out of the planet's gravitational pull. The upper layers of the
ocean redouble their activity, and the waves surge higher and
higher to lick against the sides of the symmetriad. They envelop
it, harden and plug the orifices, but their attack is nothing
compared to the scene in the interior. First the process of
creation freezes momentarily; then there is 'panic.' The smooth
interpenetration of moving forms and the harmonious play of planes
and lines accelerates, and the impression is inescapable that the
symmetriad is hurrying to complete some task in the face of danger.
The awe inspired by the metamorphosis and dynamics of the
symmetriad intensifies as the proud sweep of the domes falters,
vaults sag and droop, and 'wrong notes'—incomplete, mangled
forms—make their appearance. A powerful moaning roar issues
from the invisible depths like a sigh of agony, reverberates
through the narrow funnels and booms through the collapsing domes.
In spite of the growing destructive violence of these convulsions,
the spectator is rooted to the spot. Only the force of the
hurricane streaing out of the depths and howling through the
thousands of galleries keeps the great structure erect. Soon it
subsides and starts to disintegrate. There are final flutterings,
contortions, and blind, random spasms. Gnawed and undermined, the
giant sinks slowly and disappears, and the space where it stood is
covered with whirlpools of foam.

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?"