Free Memoirs of a Space Traveler by Stanislaw Lem

doubt that many would want to hear you out as patiently as I have. Don’t even think of getting customers.”
    Decantor stood motionless for a moment, staring at the white package in front of him on the desk. Suddenly he picked it up and, with a slight nod to me, headed for the door.
    “Decantor!” I cried. He stopped at the threshold. “What are you going to do with that?”
    “Nothing,” he answered coldly.
    “Please … come back. One moment more. We can’t leave it like this.”
    Gentlemen, I do not know whether he was a great scientist, but a great scoundrel he definitely was. I will not describe the haggling that followed. I had to do it. I knew that if I let him go, even if I found out later that he had lied to me and everything he said had been a fiction from beginning to end, even so, at the bottom of my soul, my flesh-and-blood soul, would burn the thought that somewhere, in some junk-filled desk, in a drawer stuffed with papers, a human mind might be resting, the living consciousness of the unfortunate woman he had killed. And, as if killing her were not enough, he had bestowed upon her the most terrible thing, the most terrible, I repeat, for nothing can compare with the horror of being condemned to solitude for all eternity. The word, of course, is beyond our comprehension. When you return home, try lying down in a dark room, so that no sound or ray of light reaches you, and close your eyes and imagine that you will go on like that, in utter silence, without any, without even the slightest change, for a day and night, and then for another day; imagine that weeks, months, years, even centuries will go by. Imagine, furthermore, that your brain has been subjected to a treatment that makes escape into madness impossible. The thought of a person condemned to such torment, in comparison with which all the images of hell are a trifle, spurred me during our grim bargaining. I intended to destroy the box, of course. The sum he asked—gentlemen, let’s skip the details. I will say this much: all my life I have considered myself a skinflint. If I doubt that today, it is because … but enough. In short: it was not a payment, it was everything I had at the time. Money … yes. We counted it. Then he told me to turn out the light. In the darkness there was first a tearing of paper; suddenly, on a square white background (the cotton lining of the box) there appeared, like a lambent jewel, a faint glow. As I grew accustomed to the darkness, it seemed to shine with a stronger, blue light. Then, feeling his uneven, heavy breathing on my neck, I leaned over, grasped the hammer I had ready, and with a single blow—
    Gentlemen, I believe he was telling the truth. Because as I struck my hand failed me, and I only glanced the oval crystal slightly … but even so it went out. In a split second something occurred like a microscopic, noiseless explosion; a myriad of violet dust motes whirled as if in panic and disappeared. The room became pitch-dark. Decantor said in a hollow voice:
    “You needn’t hit it again, Mr. Tichy… The deed is done.”
    He took it from my hands, and I believed him then, for I had visible proof. Besides, I knew. How, I could not say. I turned on the light, and we looked at each other, blinded, like two criminals. He stuffed both pockets of his overcoat with the bank notes and left without a word.
    I never saw him again and do not know what became of him—of the inventor of the immortal soul that I killed.
     
III
    Only once did I see the man I am going to talk about. You would shudder at the sight of him. He was a hunchbacked freak of indeterminate age, with a face that seemed loose, so full of wrinkles and folds was its skin. In addition one of his neck muscles was shorter than the other and kept his head to one side, as if he had started out to look at his own hump but changed his mind in the middle. I say nothing new in asserting that intelligence rarely goes hand in hand with beauty, but he,