Robert Silverberg - The World Inside

Stacion has gone to help Micaela unload the food from the delivery slot. Michael says to Jason, “I hear you’ve started a new research project. What’s the basic theme?”

Kind of him. Senses that I’m ill at ease. Draw me out of my morbid brooding. All these sick thoughts.

Jason replies, “I’m investigating the notion that urbmon life is breeding a new kind of human being. A type that adapts readily to relatively little living space and a low privacy quotient.”

“You mean a genetic mutation?” Michael asks, frowning. “Literally, an inherited social characteristic?”

“So I believe.”

“Are such things possible, though? Can you call it a genetic trait, really, if people voluntarily decide to band together in a society like ours and—”

“Voluntarily?”

“Isn’t it?”

Jason smiles. “I doubt that it ever was. In the beginning, you know, it was a matter of necessity. Because of the chaos in the world. Seal yourself up in your building or be exposed to the food bandits. I’m talking about the famine years, now. And since then, since everything stabilized, has it been so voluntary? Do we have any choice about where we live?”

“I suppose we could go outside if we really wanted to,” Michael says, “and live in whatever they’ve got out there.”

“But we don’t. Because we recognize that that’s a hopeless fantasy. We stay here, whether we like it or not. And those who don’t like it, those who eventually can’t take it-well, you know what happens to them.”

“But—”

“Wait. Two centuries of selective breeding, Michael. Down the chute for the flippos. And no doubt some population loss through leaving the buildings, at least at the beginning. Those who remain adapt to circumstances. They like the urbmon way. It seems altogether natural to them.”

“Is this really genetic, though? Couldn’t you simply call it psychological conditioning? I mean, in the Asian countries, didn’t people always live jammed together the way we do, only much worse, no sanitation, no regulation — and didn’t they accept it as the natural order of things?”

“Of course,” Jason says. “Because rebellion against the natural order of things had been bred out of them thousands of years ago. The ones who stayed, the ones who reproduced, were the ones who accepted things as they were. The same here.”

Doubtfully Michael says, “How can you draw the line between psychological conditioning and long-term selective breeding? How do you know what to attribute to which?”

“I haven’t faced that problem yet,” Jason admits.

“Shouldn’t you be working with a geneticist?”

“Perhaps later I will. After I’ve established my parameters of inquiry. You know, I’m not ready to defend this thesis, yet. I’m just collecting data to discover if it can be defended. The scientific method. We don’t make a priori assumptions and look around for supporting evidence: we examine the evidence first and—”

“Yes, yes, I know. Just between us, though, you do think it’s really happening, don’t you? An urbmon species.”

“I do. Yes. Two centuries of selective breeding, pretty ruthlessly enforced. And all of us so well adapted now to this kind of life.”

“Ah. Yes. All of us so well adapted.”

“With some exceptions,” Jason says, retreating a bit. He and Michael exchange wary glances. Jason wonders what thoughts lie behind his brother-in-law’s cool eyes. “General acceptance, though. Where has the old Western expansionist philosophy gone? Bred out of the race, I say. The urge to power? The love of conquest? The hunger for land and property? Gone. Gone. (lone. I don’t think that’s just a conditioning process. I suspect it’s a matter of stripping the race of certain genes that lead to—”

“Dinner, professor,” Micaela calls.

A costly meal. Proteoid steaks, root salad, bubble pudding, relishes, fish soup. Nothing reconstituted and hardly anything synthetic. For the next two weeks he and Micaela will have to go on short rations until they’ve made up the deficit in their luxury allotment. He conceals his annoyance. Michael always eats lavishly when he comes here; Jason wonders why, since Micaela is not nearly so solicitous of her seven other brothers and sisters. Scarcely ever invites two or three of them. But Michael here at least five times a year, always getting a feast. Jason’s suspicions reawaken. Something ugly going on between those two? The childhood passions still smoldering? Perhaps it is cute for twelve year-old twins to couple, but should they still be at it when twenty-three and married? Michael a nightwalker in my sleeping platform? Jason is annoyed at himself. Not bad enough that he has to fret over his idiotic homosexual fixation on Michael; now he has to torment himself with fears of an incestuous affair behind his back. Poisoning his hours of relaxation. What if they are? Nothing socially objectionable in it. Seek pleasure where you will. In your sister’s slot if you be so moved. Shall all the men of Urban Monad 116 have access to Micaela Quevedo, save only the unfortunate Michael? Must his status as her wombmate deny her to him? Be realistic, Jason tells himself. Incest taboos make sense only where breeding is involved. Anyway, they probably aren’t doing it, probably never have. He wonders why so much nastiness has sprouted in his soul lately. The frictions of living with Micaela, he decides. Her coldness is driving me into all kinds of unblessworthy attitudes, the bitch. If she doesn’t stop goading me I’ll -

— I’ll what? Seduce Michael away from her? He laughs at the intricacy of his own edifice of schemes.

“Something funny?” Micaela asks. “Share it with us, Jason.”

He looks up, helpless. What shall he say? “A silly thought,” he improvises. “About you and Michael, how much you look like each other. I was thinking, perhaps some night you and he could switch rooms, and then a nightwalker would come here, looking for you, but when he actually got under the covers with you he’d discover that he was in bed with a man, and — and—” Jason is smitten with the overwhelming fatuity of what he is saying and descends into a feeble silence.

“What a peculiar thing to imagine,” Micaela says.

“Besides, so what?” Stacion asks. “The nightwalker might be a little surprised for a minute, maybe, but then he’d just go ahead and make it with Michael, wouldn’t he? Rather than make a big scene or bother to go someplace else. So I don’t see what’s funny.”

“Forget it,” Jason growls. “I told you it was silly. Micaela insisted on knowing what was crossing my mind, and I told you, but I’m not responsible if it doesn’t make any sense, am I? Am I?” He grabs the flask of wine and pours most of what remains into his cup. “This is good stuff,” he mutters.

After dinner they share an expander, all but Stacion. They groove in silence for a couple of hours. Shortly before midnight, Michael and Stacion leave. Jason does not watch as his wife and her brother make their farewell embraces. As soon as the guests are gone, Micaela strips away her sarong and gives him a bright, fierce stare, almost defying him to have her tonight. But though he knows it is unkind to ignore her wordless invitation, he is so depressed by his own inner performance this evening that he feels he must flee. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m restless.” Her expression changes: desire fades and is replaced by bewilderment, and then by rage. He does not wait. Hastily he goes out, rushing to the dropshaft and plummeting to the 59th floor. Warsaw. He enters an apartment and finds a woman of about thirty, with fuzzy blond hair and a soft fleshy body, asleep alone on an unkempt sleeping platform. At least eight littles stacked up on cots in the corners. He wakes her. “Jason Quevedo,” he says. “I’m from Shanghai.”