The Investigation by Stanislaw Lem Page A

Sheppard, To his surprise, the Chief Inspector was hunched over, suddenly looking much older than before. He was clenching his lips as if in pain.
    “Chief Inspector?” he said softly, with unexpected timidity.
    “I would prefer not to give this case to you … but I have no one else,” said Sheppard in a quiet voice. He placed his hand on Gregory’s shoulder. “Please keep in touch with me. I’d like to help you, although I have no idea whether my experience will have much value in a case like this.”
    Gregory drew back and the Chief Inspector’s hand dropped. Both men were now standing outside the circle of light made by the lamp, and in the darkness the faces on the wall stared down at them. The lieutenant felt more drunk than he had all evening.
    “Please sir…” he said, “you know more than you’re willing to tell me, don’t you?” He was a bit breathless, as if he’d been exerting himself strenuously.
    “Sir … are you unwilling to tell me, or unable?” Gregory asked. He wasn’t even shocked at his own audacity.
    Sheppard shook his head in denial, watching Gregory with a look of immeasurable patience. Or was it irony?
    Gregory glanced down at his hands and noticed that he was still holding the photographs, the ones of the live subjects in his left hands, the dead ones in his right. And again he was inspired by the same mysterious compulsion that had made him direct such an odd question to the Chief Inspector. It was as if an invisible hand was touching him.
    “Which of these are … more important?” he asked in a barely audible voice. It was only possible to hear him because the room was absolutely still.
    A tight-lipped expression on his face, Sheppard made a discouraging gesture and went over to the light switch. The room was flooded with brightness, everything became ordinary and natural. Gregory slowly hid the photographs in his pocket.
    The visit was obviously coming to an end. During the remainder of their conversation, which concentrated on such concrete matters as the number and posting of the constables guarding the mortuaries, the organization of a cordon around the areas mentioned by Sciss, and the details of the lieutenant’s actual powers, there remained the shadow of something left unsaid.
    Again and again the Chief Inspector would fall silent and look at Gregory anxiously, as if uncertain whether to leave these businesslike considerations and resume the previous conversation. But he left well enough alone and didn’t say anything.
    Gregory was halfway down the stairs when the lights went out. He managed to feel his way to the door. Suddenly he heard his name.
    “Good luck!” the Chief Inspector shouted after him.
    The lieutenant walked out into the wind and closed the door.
    It was terribly cold. The puddles had all solidified; frozen mud crunched underfoot; in the onrushing wind the drizzling rain was being changed into a blizzard of icy needles that pricked Gregory’s face painfully and made a sharp, paperlike rustle as they bounced off the stiff fabric of his coat.
    Gregory tried to review the details of the evening, but he might just as well have tried to classify the invisible clouds that the wind was driving around over his head. Remembered snatches of this and that struggled in his mind, spilling over into images unconnected with anything except a poignant feeling of depression and being lost. The walls of the room had been covered with posthumous photographs, the desk with open books, and he vehemently regretted now that he hadn’t taken a good look at any of them, or at the papers spread out next to the books. It never even occurred to him that such actions would have been indiscreet. Gregory began to feel that he was standing on the boundary between the definite and the indefinite. Each of his thoughts seemed about to reveal one of many possible meanings, then vanished, melting away with every desperate effort he made to grasp it fully. And he, pursuing