Return From the Stars

by Stanisław Lem

  “What?”

  “Did you get a hypnagog?”

  “Hypna — that machine for learning while you sleep? Yes.”

  “Have you used it?” he almost shouted.

  “No, what’s the problem… ?”

  “You are lucky. Throw it into the pool.”

  “But why? What is it? Did you use one?”

  “No. I had a hunch and listened to it while I was awake, although the instructions forbid that. Well, you’d never guess!”

  I turned to him.

  “What’s in it?”

  He looked at me grimly.

  “Sweets. A regular confectionary, I’m telling you. That you should be calm, that you should be polite. That you should resign yourself to every unpleasantness, and if someone does not understand you or does not want to be good to you — a woman, in other words — it is your fault and not hers. That the greatest good is social equilibrium, stability, and so on and so on, in a circle, a hundred times. The conclusion: live quietly, write your memoirs, not for publication, of course, but just for yourself, engage in sports, and educate yourself. Mind your elders.”

  “A substitute for betrization,” I muttered.

  “Of course. And a lot more of the same: that one should never use force or even an aggressive tone toward anyone, and it is a great disgrace to strike anyone, a crime, even, for it causes a terrible shock. That under no circumstances should one fight, because only animals fight, that…”

  “But wait,” I said. “What if some wild animal escapes from a reserve… no… there are no wild animals any more…”

  “No wild animals,” he said, “but there are robots.”

  “What is that supposed to mean? Are you saying that one could give them an order to kill?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t know for sure. But they have to be prepared for emergencies. Even a betrizated dog can go mad, can’t it?”

  “But, then, that… wait a minute! So they can kill, after all? By giving orders? Isn’t it the same thing, whether I do the killing or give the order?”

  “Not for them. But it would be only in extremis, you understand. In the face of a calamity, a threat, such as the mad dog. Ordinarily it does not happen. But if we…”

  “We?”

  “Yes, for example, you and I — if we were to… you know… then, of course, the robots would attend to us, not they. They cannot. They are good.”

  He was silent for a moment. His broad chest, reddened now by the sun and the sand, heaved.

  “Hal. If I had known. If I had known this! If… I… had… known… this…”

  “Stop it.”

  “Have you had anything happen to you yet?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “Yes. There have been two. One invited me, as soon as I left the station, although not exactly like that. I got lost at that damned station. She took me home.”

  “She knew who you were?”

  “I told her. At first she was frightened, but later… advances of a sort — out of pity or not, I don’t know — and then she got really scared. I went to a hotel. The next day… do you know who I met? Roemer!”

  “Don’t tell me! He must be, what, a hundred and seventy?”

  “No, it was his son. Even so, the man is nearly a hundred and fifty. A mummy. Horrible. I talked with him. And you know what? He envies us…”

  “There is nothing to envy.”

  “He does not understand that. Although, yes, there is. And then an actress. They call them realists. She was delighted with me: a true pithecanthropus! I went to her place, and escaped the next day. It was a palace. Magnificent. Flowering furniture, moving walls, beds that read your thoughts and wishes… yes.”

  “H’m. She wasn’t afraid, eh?”

  “No, she was afraid, but she drank something — I don’t know what it was, some narcotic, maybe. Perto, something like that.”

  “Perto?”

  “Yes. You know what it is? You’ve had it?”

  “No,” he said slowly. “I haven’t. But that’s the name of the thing that nullifies…”

  “Betrization? No!”

  “That’s what the person told me.”

  “Who?”

  “I can’t tell you; I gave my word.”

  “All right. So that is why… that is why she…”

  I broke off.

  “Sit down.”

  I sat.

  “And what about you?” I said. “Here I keep talking about myself…”

  “Me? Nothing. That is — nothing has worked out for me. Nothing…” he repeated.

  I was silent.

  “What is this place called?” he asked.

  “Clavestra. But the town is actually a few kilometers away. Say, let’s go there. I wanted to have the car repaired. We’ll come back cross-country — a little run. How about it?”

  “Hal,” he said slowly, “you old hothead…”

  “What?”

  His eyes were smiling.

  “You think you can drive out the devil with athletics? You’re an ass.”

  “Make up your mind, a hothead or an ass,” I said. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It won’t work. Did you ever touch one of them?”

  “Did… did I offend one? No. Why?”

  “No, did you touch one of them?”

  Finally I understood.

  “There was no reason to. Why do you ask?”

  “Don’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s like striking an old woman. You understand?”

  “More or less. You got into a fight?”

  I tried not to show my surprise. Olaf had been one of the most self-controlled men on board.

  “Yes. I made a perfect idiot of myself. It was on the first day. At night, to be exact. I couldn’t get out of the post office — there was no door, only a kind of spinning thing. Have you seen one?”

  “A revolving door?”

  “No. I think it has to do with their controlling gravitation. In short, I spun around like a top, and some character who was with a girl pointed at me and laughed…”

  The skin on my face seemed to grow tighter.

  “Old woman or not,” I said, “he probably won’t laugh any more.”

  “No. He has a broken collarbone.”

  “They didn’t do anything to you?”

  “No. Because I had just got out of the machine and he provoked me — I didn’t hit him right away, Hal. No, I asked what was so funny, since I had been away for so long, and he laughed again, pointing upward, and said, ‘Ah, from that monkey circus?’ “

  “‘Monkey circus’?”

  “Yes. And then…”

  “Hold on. Why ‘monkey circus’?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps he heard that astronauts are spun in centrifuges. I don’t know because I wasn’t talking to him by that time… So, that was that. They let me go, only from now on the Luna Adapt will have to do a better job on its new arrivals.”

  “There are others returning?”

  “Yes. Simonadi’s group, in eighteen years.”

  “Then we have time.”

  “Plenty.”

  “You have to admit that they are easygoing,” I said. “You break his collarbone and they let you off like that…”

  “I have the impression it was because of that ‘circus,’ ” he said. “Even they are… toward us… you know. And they’re not stupid. It would have caused a scandal. Hal, man — you don’t know anything.”

  “Well?”

  “Do you know the reason they didn’t publicize our return?”

  “There was something in the real. I didn’t see it, but someone told me.”

  “Yes, there was. You would have died laughing if you had seen it. ‘Yesterday, in the morning hours, a party of explorers returned to Earth from outer space. Its members are well. The scientific results of the expedition are now
being studied.’ The end, period.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Word of honor. And do you know why they did that? Because they fear us. That is also why they scattered us over the Earth.”

  “No. I don’t understand that. They’re not stupid. You said so yourself a moment ago. Surely they don’t think that we are predators, that we will throw ourselves at people’s throats!”

  “If they thought that, they wouldn’t have let us come. No, Hal. This doesn’t have to do with us. More is at stake. Can’t you see it?”

  “Apparently I’ve grown stupid. Tell me.”

  “The public is not aware…”

  “Of what?”

  “Of the fact that the spirit of exploration is dead. That there are no expeditions, they know. But they don’t think about it. They think that there are no expeditions because expeditions are unnecessary, and that’s all. But there are some who see and know perfectly well what is going on, and what consequences it will have. Has already had.”

  “Well?”

  “Pap. Pap and more pap for all eternity. No one will fly to the stars now. No one will risk a dangerous experiment now. No one will test a new medicine on himself now. What, they don’t know this? They know! And if the word got out who we are, what we did, why we flew, what it was all about, then it would be impossible, you see, impossible to conceal the tragedy!”

  “Pap and more pap?” I asked, using his expression; someone listening to our conversation might have found this funny, but I was in no mood to laugh.

  “Of course. And you don’t think it’s a tragedy?”

  “I don’t know. Olaf, listen. For us that must be and will always be a great thing. The way we gave up those years — and everything — well, we believe this to be of the utmost importance. But perhaps it isn’t. One has to be objective. Because — tell me yourself — what did we accomplish?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, unpack the bags. Dump out everything you brought back from Fomalhaut.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Not at all. What was the value of this expedition?”

  “We were pilots, Hal. Ask Gimma, Thurber.”

  “Olaf, don’t give me that. We were there together, and you know perfectly well what they did, what Venturi did before he died, what Thurber did — why are you looking at me like that? What did we bring back? Four loads of various analyses, spectral, elemental, et-ceteral, mineral samples, and then there is that soup or metaplasm or whatever that rotten stuff from Beta Arcturi was called. Normers verified his theory of gravimagnetic rotations, and it turned out, in addition, that on planets of type C Meoli there can exist not tri- but tetraploids of silicon, and on that moon where Arder nearly did himself in there is nothing but lousy lava and bubbles the size of skyscrapers. And was it in order to learn that that lava hardens into those goddamn big bubbles that we vomited ten years out of our lives and came back here to be side-show freaks? Then why in hell did we go there? For what? Maybe you can tell me. For what?”

  “Not so loud,” he said.

  I was angry. And he was angry. His eyes had narrowed. I thought that we might fight yet, and my lips began to twitch into a grin. And then suddenly he, too, smiled.

  “Still a hothead,” he said. “You can drive a man into a fury, you know that?”

  “Get to the point, Olaf. To the point.”

  “To the point? You haven’t got to the point yet. And what if we had brought back an elephant that had eight legs and talked algebra, what then, would that have made you happy? What were you expecting on Arcturus? Paradise? A triumphal arch? What do you want? In ten years I didn’t hear so much nonsense from you as now, in one minute.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “Olaf, you are trying to make a fool of me. You know what I meant. I meant that people can live without it…”

  “I should think they can! Indeed, yes!”

  “Wait. They can live, and even if it is as you say, that they have stopped flying because of betrization, still, was it worth it, was it right to pay such a price — that is the question before us, my friend.”

  “Is it? And suppose you marry. Why do you make a face? You can’t get married? You can. I’m telling you, you can. And you will have children. And you will carry them to be betrizated with a song on your lips. Well?”

  “Not with a song. But what could I do? I can’t war against the whole world.…”

  “Well, then, the blessing of the firmament upon you,” he said. “And now, if you like, we can go to the city.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Lunch will be in two and a half hours. We can make it.”

  “And if we don’t make it, they won’t give us anything to eat?”

  “They will, but…”

  I turned red. Pretending not to notice, he brushed the sand off his bare feet. We went upstairs, changed, and took the car to Clavestra. The traffic on the road was heavy. For the first time I saw colored gleeders, pink and pastel-lemon. We found a service station. I fancied I saw surprise in the glass eyes of the robot that examined the damage. We left the car there and returned on foot. It turned out that there were two Clavestras, an old and a new; in the old city was the local industrial center, where I had been the previous day with Marger. The new part was a fashionable summer resort, and there were people everywhere, almost exclusively young, teen-agers. In their gaudy, glittering outfits the boys looked dressed up as Roman soldiers, since the materials caught the sun like the half armor of that period. A lot of girls, most of them attractive, often in bathing suits more daring than anything I had seen so far. Walking with Olaf, I felt the eyes of the whole street on me. Colorful groups stopped under the palms at the sight of us. We were taller than anyone there, people stood and exchanged looks, it was extremely embarrassing.

  When at last we got to the highway and turned south across the fields, in the direction of the house, Olaf wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. I was sweating a little, too.

  “Damn them,” he said.

  “Save it for a better occasion… .”

  He gave a sour smile.

  “Hal!”

  “What?”

  “You know what it was like? A set in a movie studio. Romans, courtesans, and gladiators.”

  “We were the gladiators?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Shall we run?” I said.

  “Let’s go.”

  We went over the fields. It was about eight kilometers. But we ended up too far to the right and had to double back a little. Even so, we had time to take a bath before lunch.

  FIVE

  I knocked on Olaf’s door.

  “If I know you, come on in,” I heard him call.

  He stood naked in the middle of the room and was spraying himself, from the flask that he held, with a pale yellow fluid that immediately set to form a fluffy mass.

  “Liquid underwear?” I said. “How can you?”

  “I didn’t bring a spare shirt,” he muttered. “You don’t care for it?”

  “No. You do?”

  “My shirt got torn.”

  At my look of surprise, he added with a grimace:

  “The guy who grinned.”

  I did not say another word. He put on his old trousers — I remembered them, from the Prometheus — and we went downstairs. Only three places were set, and no one was in the dining room.

  “There will be four of us,” I addressed the white robot.

  “No, sir. Mr. Marger has gone. The lady, yourself, and Mr. Staave make three. Shall I serve, or wait for the lady?”

  “We’ll wait,” Olaf replied carelessly.

  A terrific fellow. Just then, the girl entered. She had on the same skirt as the day before; her hair was a little damp, as if she had come from the water. I introduced Olaf to her; he was calm and dignified. I had never managed to be that dignified.

  We talked a little. She said that every week her husband had to go away for three days in connection with his work, and that t
he water in the pool was not so warm as it could have been, despite the sun. But the conversation quickly died, and, try as I might, I could think of nothing to say. I ate in silence, with their sharply contrasting profiles before me. I noticed that Olaf was studying her, but only when I spoke to her and she looked in my direction. His face was without expression. As if he was thinking the whole time of something else.

  Toward the end of the meal, the white robot approached and said that the water in the pool would be heated for the evening, in accordance with Mrs. Marger’s wishes. Mrs. Marger thanked it and went to her room. The two of us were alone. Olaf looked at me, and again I reddened terribly.

  “How is it,” he said, putting to his lips the cigarette I had given him, “that a customer who could crawl into that stinking hole on Kereneia, an old space dog — an old rhinoceros, rather, a hundred and fifty — now starts to… ?”

  “Please,” I muttered, “if you really want to know, I’d crawl in there again…”

  I didn’t finish.

  “All right. I’ll stop. Word of honor. But, Hal, I have to say this: I understand you. And I’ll bet you don’t even know why…”

  I pointed my head in the direction in which she had gone.

  “Why her?”

  “Yes. Do you know?”

  “No. And neither do you.”

  “But I do. Shall I tell you?”

  “Yes. But without your jokes.”

  “You really have gone crazy!” exclaimed Olaf. “It is very simple. But you always did have that fault — you didn’t see what was under your nose, only what was far removed, those Cantors, Corbasileuses…”

  “Don’t preen.”

  “The style is sophomoric, I know, but our development was halted when they put those six hundred and eighty screws on us.”

  “Go on.”

  “She is exactly like a girl from our time. Doesn’t have that red rubbish in her nose or those plates on her ears, and no shining cotton on her head; she doesn’t drip with gold; she’s a girl you could have met in Ceberto or Apprenous. I remember some just like her. That’s all.”

  “I’ll be damned,” I said quietly. “Yes. Yes, but there is one difference.”

  “Well?”

  “I told you already. At the very beginning. I never behaved like this before. And, to be perfectly honest, I never imagined myself… I thought I was the quiet type.”