I was holding her in my arms and gazing into her eyes.
Imperceptibly, almost instinctively, I began to pull her hands together behind her back at the same time searching the room with my eyes: I needed something with which to tie her hands.
Suddenly she jerked her elbows together, and there followed a powerful recoil. I resisted for barely a second. Thrown backwards and almost lifted off my feet, even had I been an athlete I could not have freed myself. Rheya straightened up and dropped her arms to her sides. Her face, lit by an uncertain smile, had played no part in the struggle.
She was gazing at me with the same calm interest as when I had first awakened — as though she was utterly unmoved by my desperate ploy, as though she was quite unaware that anything had happened, and had not noticed my sudden panic. She stood before me, waiting — grave, passive, mildly surprised.
Leaving Rheya in the middle of the room, I went over to the washbasin. I was a prisoner, caught in an absurd trap from which at all costs I was determined to escape. I would have been incapable of putting into words the meaning of what had happened or what was going through my mind; but now I realized that my situation was identical with that of the other inhabitants of the Station, that everything I had experienced, discovered or guessed at was part of a single whole, terrifying and incomprehensible. Meanwhile, I was racking my brain to think up some ruse, to work out some means of escape. Without turning round, I could feel Rheya’s eyes following me. There was a medicine chest above the basin. Quickly I went through its contents, and found a bottle of sleeping pills. I shook out four tablets — the maximum dose — into a glass, and filled it with hot water. I made little effort to conceal my actions from Rheya. Why? I did not even bother to ask myself.
When the tablets had dissolved, I returned to Rheya, who was still standing in the same place.
“Are you angry with me?” she asked, in a low voice.
“No. Drink this.”
Unconsciously, I had known all along that she would obey me. She took the glass without a word and drank the scalding mixture in one gulp. Putting down the empty glass on a stool, I went and sat in a chair in the corner of the room.
Rheya joined me, squatting on the floor in her accustomed manner with her legs folded under her, and tossing back her hair. I was no longer under any illusion: this was not Rheya — and yet I recognized her every habitual gesture. Horror gripped me by the throat; and what was most horrible was that I must go on tricking her, pretending to take her for Rheya, while she herself sincerely believed that she was Rheya — of that I was certain, if one could be certain of anything any longer.
She was leaning against my knees, her hair brushing my hand. We remained thus for some while. From time to time, I glanced at my watch. Half-an-hour went by; the sleeping tablets should have started to work. Rheya murmured something:
“What did you say?”
There was no reply.
Although I attributed her silence to the onset of sleep, secretly I doubted the effectiveness of the pills. Once again, I did not ask myself why. Perhaps it was because my subterfuge seemed too simple.
Slowly her head slid across my knees, her dark hair falling over her face. Her breathing grew deeper and more regular; she was asleep. I stooped in order to lift her on to the bed. As I did so, her eyes opened; she put her arms round my neck and burst into shrill laughter.
I was dumbfounded. Rheya could hardly contain her mirth. With an expression that was at once ingenuous and sly, she observed me through half-closed eyelids. I sat down again, tense, stupefied, at a loss. With a final burst of laughter, she snuggled against my legs.
In an expressionless voice, I asked:
“Why are your laughing?”
Once again, a look of anxiety and surprise came over her face. It was clear that she wanted to give me an honest explanation. She sighed, and rubbed her nose like a child.
“I don’t know,” she said at last, with genuine puzzlement. “I’m behaving like an idiot, aren’t I? But so are you… you look idiotic, all stiff and pompous like… like Pelvis.”
I could hardly believe my ears.
“Like who?”
“Like Pelvis. You know who I mean, that fat man….”
Rheya could not possibly have known Pelvis, or even heard me mention him, for the simple reason that he had returned from an expedition three years after her death. I had not known him previously and was therefore unaware of his inveterate habit, when presiding over meetings at the Institute, of letting sessions drag on indefinitely. Moreover, his name was Pelle Villis and until his return I did not know that he had been nicknamed Pelvis.
Rheya leaned her elbows on my knees and looked me in the eyes. I put out my hand and stroked her arms, her shoulders and the base of her bare neck, which pulsed beneath my fingers. While it looked as though I was caressing her (and indeed, judging by her expression, that was how she interpreted the touch of my hands) in reality I was verifying once again that her body was warm to the touch, an ordinary human body, with muscles, bones, joints. Gazing calmly into her eyes, I felt a hideous desire to tighten my grip.
Suddenly I remembered Snow’s bloodstained hands, and let go.
“How you stare at me,” Rheya said, placidly.
My heart was beating so furiously that I was incapable of speech. I closed my eyes. In that very instant, complete in every detail, a plan of action sprang to my mind. There was not a second to lose. I stood up.
“I must go out, Rheya. If you absolutely insist on coming with me, I’ll take you.”
“Good.”
She jumped to her feet.
I opened the locker and selected a suit for each of us. Then I asked:
“Why are you bare-foot?”
She answered hesitantly:
“I don’t know… I must have left my shoes somewhere.”
I did not pursue the matter.
“You’ll have to take your dress off to put this on.”
“Flying-overalls? What for?”
As she tried to take off her dress, an extraordinary fact became apparent: there were no zips, or fastenings of any sort; the red buttons down the front were merely decorative. Rheya smiled, embarrassed.
As though it were the most normal way of going about it, I picked up some kind of scalpel from the floor and slit the dress down the back from neck to waist, so that she could pull it over her head.
When she had put on the flying-overalls (which were slightly too large for her) and we were about to leave, she asked:
“Are we going on a flight?”
I merely nodded. I was afraid of running into Snow. But the dome was empty and the door leading to the radio-cabin was shut.
A deathly silence still hung over the hangar-deck. Rheya followed my movements attentively. I opened a stall and examined the shuttle vehicle inside. I checked, one after another, the micro-reactor, the controls, and the diffusers. Then, having removed the empty capsule from its stand, I aimed the electric trolley towards the sloping runway.
I had chosen a small shuttle used for ferrying stores between the Station and the satellite, one that did not normally carry personnel since it did not open from the inside. The choice was carefully calculated in accordance with my plan. Of course, I had no intention of launching it, but I simulated the preparations for an actual departure. Rheya, who had so often accompanied me on my space-flights, was familiar with the preliminary routine. Inside the cockpit, I checked that the climatization and oxygen-supply systems were functioning. I switched in the main circuit and the indicators on the instrument panel lit up. I climbed out and said to Rheya, who was waiting at the foot of the ladder: