(excerpts)
What did that word mean to me? Earth? I thought of the great, noisy cities through which I would wander and lose myself. I thought of them the way I had thought of the ocean on my second or third night on Solaris, when I had wanted to go out and throw myself into the black waves.

I would immerse myself among people. I would be quiet and attentive, an understanding companion. There would be plenty of acquaintances, friends, women — perhaps even a wife. For a while, I would have to make a conscious effort to smile, to greet people, to stand up, to perform the thousands of small gestures that make up life on Earth. Before long, those gestures would become reflexes again.

I would find new interests and occupations. I would never give myself to them completely; never again would I give myself completely to anyone or anything. Perhaps at night I would look toward the dark nebula concealing the twin suns and remember everything, even what I am thinking now.

I would recall my fantasies and hopes with an indulgent, faintly sorrowful smile. And that future Kelvin would be no less worthy a man than the Kelvin of the past, who had once been ready for anything in pursuit of an ambitious undertaking called Contact. Nor would anyone have the right to judge me.

[…]

Despair and a kind of silent rage had sustained me while I worked at the computer. Now exhaustion had taken over, and I could not even remember how to lower a mechanical bed. I forgot to release the catches first and hung my whole weight on the lever. The mattress came crashing down on my head.

I took off my clothes, threw them aside, and collapsed onto the pillow without even bothering to inflate it. I fell asleep with the lights on.

When I opened my eyes, I had the impression that I had been asleep for only a few minutes. The room was bathed in a dim reddish light. It was cooler, and I felt better.

I remained lying there, uncovered and naked. The curtains were half open, and there, opposite me, beside the window illuminated by the red sun, someone was sitting.

It was Harey.

She was wearing a white summer dress that fitted closely around her breasts. She sat with one leg crossed over the other; she was barefoot. Motionless, her head resting against her sun-browned hands, she watched me from beneath her black eyelashes.

Harey, her black hair swept back.

For a long time I lay there looking at her. My first thought was reassuring: I was dreaming, and I knew it. Even so, I would have preferred her not to be there.

I closed my eyes and tried to drive the dream away. When I opened them again, Harey was still sitting opposite me. She pursed her lips slightly — an old habit of hers — as though she were about to whistle, but her expression was serious.

My thoughts turned to my recent reflections on dreams. She had not changed since the day I had last seen her. She had been nineteen then. Now she should have been twenty-nine.

But apparently the dead do not change. They remain forever young.

She continued to look at me, an expression of surprise on her face. I thought of throwing something at her, but even in a dream I could not bring myself to hurt someone who was dead.

I murmured:

“My poor darling, have you come to see me?”

The sound of my own voice frightened me. The room, Harey, everything seemed impossibly real. A three-dimensional dream, complete with the full range of colors…

On the floor I noticed several objects that I had not seen when I went to bed. When I wake up, I thought, I will check whether all these things are still here, or whether, like Harey, I saw them only in the dream.

“Are you planning to stay long?” I asked.

I realized that I was speaking very softly, like someone afraid of being overheard. Why should you worry about someone listening to you in a dream?

The sun was rising above the horizon. A good sign. I had gone to bed during a red day, which should have been followed by a blue day and then another red one. I could not possibly have slept for fifteen hours straight.

So it was a dream.

Reassured, I looked closely at Harey. Her silhouette stood out against the sun. The crimson rays illuminated the soft skin of her left cheek, while the shadows of her eyelashes fell across her face.

How beautiful she was.

Even in my sleep, my memory of her was astonishingly precise. I watched the sun move, waiting to see the dimple appear in its familiar, unusual place, just below the corner of her mouth.

Still, I would have preferred to wake up. It was time to get some work done. I squeezed my eyelids shut.

I heard a metallic sound and opened my eyes again. Harey was sitting beside me on the bed, still watching me solemnly.

I smiled at her.

She smiled back and leaned toward me. We kissed. At first it was a timid, almost childlike kiss, then longer ones followed. I held her in my arms for a long time.

I wondered how it was possible to feel so many things inside a dream. I was not betraying her memory, because it was precisely her I was dreaming of — her and no one else. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before…

Was that when I first began to doubt?

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