Robert Silverberg - The World Inside

She comes up behind him and leans close. He feels her nipples against his back. Hard, tickling him. “Most of them, perhaps,” she says. “Your thesis may still be right. But we’re wrong. We’re out of place.”

“Yes.”

“Throwbacks to an uglier age.”

“Yes.”

“So we’ve got to stop torturing each other, Jason. We have to wear better camouflage. Do you see?”

“Yes. Otherwise we’ll end up going down the chute. We’re unblessworthy, Micaela.”

“Both of us.”

“Both of us.”

He turns. His arms surround her. He winks. She winks.

“Vengeful barbarian,” she says tenderly.

“Spiteful savage,” he whispers, kissing her earlobe.

They slip together onto the sleeping platform. The nightwalkers will simply have to wait.

He has never loved her as much as he does this minute.

In Louisville, Siegmund Kluver still feels like a very small boy. He cannot persuade himself that he has any rightful business up there. A prowling stranger. An illicit intruder. When he goes up to the city of the urbmon’s masters a strange boyish shyness settles over him that he must consciously strive to hide. He finds himself forever wanting to peer nervously over his shoulder. Looking for the patrols that he fears will intercept him. The stern brawny figure blocking the wide corridor. What are you doing here, son? You shouldn’t be wandering around on these floors. Louisville is for the administrators, don’t you know that? And Siegmund will babble excuses, his face blazing. And rush for the dropshaft.

He tries to keep this silly sense of embarrassment a secret. He knows it doesn’t fit with the image of himself that everyone else sees. Siegmund the cool customer. Siegmund the man of destiny. Siegmund who was obviously Louisville-bound from childhood. Siegmund the swaggering cocksman, plowing his way lustily through the finest womanhood Urban Monad 116 has to offer.

If they only knew. Underneath it all a vulnerable boy. Underneath it a shy, insecure Siegmund. Worried that he’s climbing too fast. Apologizing to himself for his success. Siegmund the humble, Siegmund the uncertain.

Or is that just an image too? Sometimes he thinks that this hidden Siegmund, this private Siegmund, is merely a facade that he has erected so that he can go on liking himself, and that beneath this subterranean veneer of shyness, somewhere beyond the range of his insight, lies the real Siegmund, every bit as ruthless and cocky and rung-grabbing as the Siegmund that the outer world sees.

He goes up to Louisville nearly every morning, now. They requisition him as a consultant. Some of the top men there have made a pet of him — Lewis Holston, Nissim Shawke, Kipling Freehouse, men at the very highest levels of authority. He knows they are exploiting him, dumping on him all the dreary, tedious jobs they don’t feel like handling themselves. Taking advantage of his ambitions. Siegmund, prepare a report on working-class mobility patterns. Siegmund, run a tabulation of adrenal balances in the middle cities. Siegmund, what’s the waste-recycling ratio this month? Siegmund. Siegmund. Siegmund. But he exploits them too. He is rapidly making himself indispensable, as they slide into the habit of using him to do their thinking. In another year or two, beyond much doubt, they will have to ask him to move up in the building. Perhaps they’ll jump him from Shanghai to Toledo or Paris; more likely they’ll take him right into Louisville at the next vacancy. Louisville before he’s twenty! Has anyone ever done that before?

By that time, maybe, he’ll feel comfortable among the members of the ruling class.

He can see them laughing at him behind their eyes. They made it to the top so long ago that they’ve forgotten that others still have to strive. To them, Siegmund knows, he must seem comical — an earnest, pushy little rung-grabber, his gut afire with the upward urge. They tolerate him because he’s capable-more capable, maybe, than most of them. But they don’t respect him. They think he’s a fool for wanting so badly something that they’ve had time to grow bored with.

Nissim Shawke, for instance. Possibly one of the two or three most important men of the urbmon. (Who is the most important? Not even Siegmund knows. At the top level, power becomes a blurry abstraction; in one sense everybody in Louisville has absolute authority over the entire building, and in another sense no one has.) Shawke is about sixty, Siegmund supposes. Looks much younger. A lean, athletic, olive-skinned man, cool-eyed, physically powerful. Alert, wary, a man of great tensile strength. He gives the illusion of being enormously dynamic. A teeming reservoir of potential. Yet so far as Siegmund can see, Shawke does nothing at all. He refers all governmental matters to his subordinates; he glides through his offices at the crest of the urbmon as though the building’s problems are mere phantoms. Why should Shawke strive? He’s at the summit. He has everybody fooled, everyone but Siegmund, perhaps. Shawke need not do but only be. Now he marks time and enjoys the comforts of his position. Sitting there like a Renaissance prince. One word from Nissim Shawke could send almost anybody down the chute. A single memorandum from him might be able to reverse some of the urbmon’s most deeply cherished policies. Yet he originates no programs, he vetoes no proposals, he ducks all challenges. To have such power, and to refuse to exercise it, strikes Siegmund as making a joke out of the whole idea of power. Shawke’s passivity carries implied contempt for Siegmund’s values. His sardonic smile mocks all ambition. It denies that there is merit in serving society. I am here, Shawke says with every gesture, and that is sufficient for me; let the urbmon look after itself; anyone who voluntarily assumes its burdens is an idiot. Siegmund, who yearns to govern, finds that Shawke blights his soul with doubt. What if Shawke is right? What if I get to his place fifteen years from now and discover that it’s all meaningless? But no. Shawke is sick, that’s all. His soul is empty. Life does have a purpose, and service to the community fulfills that purpose. I am well qualified to govern my fellow man; therefore I betray mankind and myself as well if I refuse to do my duty. Nissim Shawke is wrong. I pity him.

But why do I shrivel when I look into his eyes?

Then there is Shawke’s daughter, Rhea. She lives in Toledo, on the 900th floor, and is married to Kipling Freehouse’s son Paolo. There is a great deal of intermarriage among the families of Louisville. The children of the administrators do not generally get to live in Louisville themselves; Louisville is reserved for those who actually govern. Their children, unless they happen to find places of their own in the ranks of the administrators, live mostly in Paris and Toledo, the cities immediately below Louisville. They form a privileged enclave there, the offspring of the great. Siegmund does much of his nightwalking in Paris and Toledo. And Rhea Shawke Freehouse is one of his favorites.

She is ten years older than Siegmund. She has her father’s wiry, supple form: a lean, somewhat masculine body, with small breasts and flat buttocks and long solid muscles. Dark complexion; eyes that glitter with private amusement; a sharp elegant nose. She has only three Tittles. Siegmund does not know why her family is so small. She is quick-wilted, knowing, well-informed. She is more nearly bisexual than anyone Siegmund knows; he finds her tigerishly passionate, but she has told him also of the joy she takes in loving other women. Among her conquests has been Siegmund’s wife Mamelon, who, he thinks, is in many ways a younger version of Rhea. Perhaps that’s why he finds Rhea so attractive: she combines all that he finds most interesting about Mamelon and Nissim Shawke.