“No,” I interrupted him, “I mean a God whose deficiencies don’t arise from the simplemindedness of his human creators, but constitute his most essential, immanent character. This would be a God limited in his omniscience and omnipotence, one who can make mistakes in foreseeing the future of his works, who can find himself horrified by the course of events he has set in motion. This is… a cripple God, who always desires more than he’s able to have, and doesn’t always realize this to begin with. Who has built clocks, but not the time that they measure. Has built systems or mechanisms that serve particular purposes, but they too have outgrown these purposes and betrayed them. And has created an infinity that, from being the measure of the power he was supposed to have, turned into the measure of his boundless failure.”
“Once there was Manicheism,” Snaut began hesitantly. The guarded reserve with which he’d been treating me in recent days had disappeared.
“But this has nothing to do with good and evil,” I interrupted him at once. “This God doesn’t exist outside of matter, he’s unable to free himself of it, and that’s all he wants…”
“I don’t know any religion like that,” he said after a moment of silence. “Such a religion was never… necessary. If I understand you correctly, and I’m afraid I do, then you’re thinking about an evolving god who develops through time and grows, mounting higher and higher levels of power toward the awareness of that power’s impotence? This God of yours is a being who has entered godhood like entering a blind alley, and when he comprehends this, he yields to despair. Fine, but surely a despairing God is a human being, my friend? You’re thinking about human beings… This isn’t just poor philosophy, it’s even poor mysticism.”
“No,” I insisted, “I’m not thinking about human beings. Perhaps in certain features that might match the provisional definition, but only because it’s full of holes. A human being, appearances to the contrary, doesn’t create his own purposes. These are imposed by the time he’s born into; he may serve them, he may rebel against them, but the object of his service or rebellion comes from the outside. To experience complete freedom in seeking his purposes he would have to be alone, and that’s impossible, since a person who isn’t brought up among people cannot become a person. My… one has to be a being devoid of plurality, you follow?”
“Oh,” he said, “right away I should’ve…”
And he pointed out the window.
“No,” I disagreed, “not that either. At the most as something that in its growth missed an opportunity for godhood, having retreated too soon into itself. It’s more of an anchorite, the hermit of the universe, not its god… It repeats itself, Snaut, whereas the one I’m thinking about would never do that. Maybe he’s coming into existence as we speak, in some corner of the Galaxy, and before long, in a fit of youthful intoxication he’ll start extinguishing some stars and lighting others, after a certain time we’ll notice it…”
“We already have,” said Snaut sourly. “ Novas and supernovas… are they candles on his altar, according to you?”
“If you want to treat what I’m saying so literally…”
“Perhaps Solaris is precisely the cradle of this divine infant of yours,” added Snaut. An ever more distinct smile was ringing his eyes with little creases. “Perhaps in your conception this is the origin, the seed of the God of despair, perhaps its exuberant childhood is way beyond our comprehension, and everything our libraries of solariana contain is merely a catalogue of his infant reflexes…”
“And for a while we were his playthings,” I finished. “Yes, that’s possible. You know what we just managed to do? Create an entirely new hypothesis on the subject of Solaris, and that’s no small achievement! Right away you have an explanation of the failure to make Contact, the lack of response, certain, let’s say, extravagances in its treatment of us: the mind of a small child…”
“I don’t need to put my name to it,” he murmured as he stood by the window. For a long moment we gazed at the black waves. On the eastern horizon a pale elongated smudge could be seen through the mist.
“Where did you get that idea of a defective God?” he asked suddenly, not taking his eyes off the emptiness bathed in light.
“I don’t know. It seemed to me very, very authentic, you know? It would be the only God I’d be inclined to believe in, one whose suffering wasn’t redemption, didn’t save anyone, didn’t serve any purpose, it just was.”
“A mimoid,” Snaut said ever so quietly, in a different voice.
“What was that? Oh, right. I noticed it before. It’s really old.”
We both gazed at the misty red horizon.
“I’m going to go fly there,” I said unexpectedly. “All the more because I’ve been on the Station the whole time; this is a good opportunity. I’ll be back in half an hour…”
“What did you say?” Snaut opened his eyes wide. “You’re going out there? Where to?”
“There.” I pointed at the indistinct flesh-colored shape looming in the mist. “What harm could it do? I’ll take the small helicopter. It’d be ridiculous if, one day on Earth, I had to admit that I’m a solaricist who’s never set foot on the planet…”
I went up to the locker and started picking out a set of overalls. Snaut watched me in silence then eventually said:
“I don’t like this.”
“What?” I turned around with the overalls in my hand. I was overcome by an excitement I hadn’t experienced in a long while. “What’s the problem? Come on, cards on the table! You’re afraid that I’ll… that’s absurd! I give you my word I wouldn’t. It hadn’t even occurred to me. No, really no.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“Thanks, but I’d rather be on my own. After all, it’s something new, something completely new.” I was speaking quickly as I pulled on the overalls. Snaut went on talking but I didn’t really listen as I hunted for what I’d need.
He went with me to the docking bay. He helped me wheel out the helicopter from its hangar into the middle of the launch pad. As I was putting on my space suit he suddenly asked:
“Does a man’s word still carry any value with you?”
“For God’s sake, Snaut, are you still on about that? It does. I already gave you it. Where are the backup canisters?”
He didn’t say any more. When I’d closed the transparent cockpit cover I signaled to him. He turned on the lift and I slowly rose to the roof of the Station. The engine sprang to life with a lengthy growl, the three-bladed rotor started spinning and the craft rose up, oddly light, leaving behind it the ever shrinking silver disk of the Station.
It was my first time alone over the ocean. The effect was completely different than what one experiences watching through the windows. This may also have been because of the low altitude — I had dropped to less than three hundred feet above the surface. It was only now that I not only knew but actually felt how the alternating crests and troughs of the vast expanse, with their oily glister, moved not like a marine tide or a cloud, but like an animal. Constant though extremely slow contractions of a muscular naked torso — that was what it looked like. The top of each wave flamed with red foam as it turned over lazily; when I altered course to head directly toward the slowly drifting island of the mimoid, the sun hit me in the eyes; there was a flicker of bloody lightning in the convex windshield, while the ocean itself turned inky blue with spots of dark fire.
The arc that I described somewhat unskillfully brought me far to windward, the mimoid left behind as a broad bright patch whose irregular outline stood out against the ocean. It had lost the pink hue the mist had given it; it was yellow as dry bone. For a moment I lost sight of it, and instead I caught a glimpse of the Station in the distance where it seemed to hang suspended right over the ocean like a huge Zeppelin from the old days. I repeated the maneuver, concentrating intently: the solid mass of the mimoid with its grotesque vertiginous shape hove into view. I suddenly worried that I’d clip the topmost of its bulbous ledges, and I brought the helicopter up so abruptly that it juddered as it lost speed. My caution was unnecessary, as the rounded summits of the bizarre towers sailed by far below me. I guided the craft alongside the drifting island and slowly, foot by foot, I began to reduce altitude till the crumbling peaks rose above the cockpit. It wasn’t big. From one end to the other it measured perhaps three quarters of a mile, and no more than a few hundred yards across; there were some narrower places where it was likely to break up before long. It must have been a fragment from an incomparably larger formation; by Solaris’ standards it was a mere splinter, a remnant, God knows how many weeks or months old.