Robert Silverberg - The World Inside

He pulls his clothing hastily on. She watches him, stony-faced. A tough one, she is. He says, “In the urbmons we don’t worry much about covering our bodies. We live in what we call a post-privacy culture. I didn’t realize—”

“You don’t happen to be in an urbmon just now.”

“I realize that. I’m sorry if I’ve given offense through my ignorance of your customs.”

He is fully dressed. She seems to soften a bit, perhaps at his apology, perhaps merely because he has concealed his nudity. Taking a few steps farther into the room, she says, “It’s a long time since we’ve had a spy from your people among us.”

“I’m not a spy.”

A cool, skeptical smile. “No? Then why are you here?”

“I didn’t intend to trespass on your commune’s land. I was just passing through, heading eastward. On my way toward the sea.”

“Really?” As though he had said he had set out to walk to Pluto. “Traveling alone, are you?”

“I am.”

“When did this marvelous journey begin?”

“Yesterday morning, very early,” Michael says. “I’m from Urban Monad 116. A computer-primer, if that means anything to you. Suddenly I felt I couldn’t stay inside that building any more, that I had to find out what the outside world was like, and so I arranged to get an egress pass and slipped out just before dawn, and started walking, and then I came to your fields and your machines saw me, I guess, and I was picked up, and because of the language problem I couldn’t explain to anyone who I—”

“What do you hope to gain by spying on us?”

His shoulders slump. “I told you,” he says wearily. “I’m not a spy.”

“Urbmon people don’t slip out of their buildings. I’ve dealt with your kind for years; I know how your minds work.” Her eyes level with his. Cold, cold. “You’d be paralyzed with terror five minutes after you set out,” she assures him. “Obviously you’ve been trained for this mission, or you’d never have been able to keep your sanity for a full day in the fields. What I don’t understand is why they’d send you. You have your world and we have ours; there’s no conflict, no overlapping; there’s no need for espionage.”

“I agree,” Michael says. “And that’s why I’m not a spy.” He finds himself drawn to her despite the severity of her attitude. Her competence and self-confidence attract him. And if she would only smile she would be quite beautiful. He says, “Look, how can I get you to believe this? I just wanted to see the world outside the urbmon. All my life indoors. Never smelling fresh air, never feeling the sun on my skin. Thousands of people living on top of me. I’m not really well adjusted to urbmon society, I discovered. So I went outside. Not a spy. All I want to do is travel. To the sea, particularly. Have you ever seen the sea? . . . No? That’s my dream — to walk along the shore, to hear the waves rolling in, to feel the wet sand under my feet—”

Possibly the fervor in his tone is beginning to convince her. She shrugs, looking less flinty, and says, “What’s your name?”

“Michael Statler.”

“Age?”

“Twenty-three.”

“We could put you aboard the next courier pod, with the fungus shipment. You’d be back at your urbmon in half an hour.”

“No,” he says softly. “Don’t do that. Just let me keep going east. I’m not ready to go back so soon.”

“Haven’t gathered enough information, you mean?”

“I told you, I’m not—” He stops, realizing she is teasing him.

“All right. Maybe you aren’t a spy. Just a madman, perhaps.” She smiles, for the first time, and slides down until she is squatting against the wall, facing him. In an easy conversational tune she says, “What do you think of our village, Statler?”

“I don’t even know where to begin answering that.”

“How do we strike you? Simple? Complicated? Evil? Frightening? Unusual?”

“Strange,” he says.

“Strange in comparison to the kind of people you’ve lived among, or just strange, absolutely?”

“I’m not sure I know the distinction. It’s like another world out here, anyway. I — I — what’s your name, by the way?”

“Artha.”

“Arthur? Among us that’s a man’s name.”

“A-R-T-H-A.”

“Oh. Artha. How interesting. How beautiful.” He knots his fingers tightly. “The way you live so close to the soil here, Artha. There’s something dreamlike about that for me. These little houses. The plaza. Seeing you walking around in the open. The sun. Building fires. Not having any upstairs or downstairs. And that business last night, the music, the pregnant woman. What was that all about?”

“You mean the unbirth dance?”

“Is that what it was? Some kind of” — he falters — “sterility rite?”

“To ensure a good harvest,” Artha says. “To keep the crops healthy and childbirths low. We have rules about breeding, you understand.”

“And the woman everybody was hitting — she got pregnant illegally, is that it?”

“Oh, no.” Artha laughs. “Milcha’s child is quite legal.”

“Then why — tormenting her like that — she could have lost the child—”

“Someone had to do it,” Artha tells him. “The commune has eleven pregnants, just now. They drew lots and Milcha lost. Or won. It isn’t punishment, Statler. It’s a religious thing: she’s the celebrant, the holy scapegoat, the — the — I don’t have the words in your language. Through her suffering she brings health and prosperity upon the commune. Ensuring that no unwanted children will come into our women, that all will remain in perfect balance. Of course, it’s painful for her. And there’s the shame, being naked in front of everyone. But it has to be done. It’s a great honor. Milcha will never have to do it again, and she’ll have certain privileges for the rest of her life, and of course everyone is grateful to her for accepting our blows. Now we’re protected for another year.”

“Protected?”

“Against the anger of the gods.”

“Gods,” he says quietly. Swallowing the word and trying to comprehend it. After a moment he asks, “Why do you try to avoid having children?”

“Do you think we own the world?” she replies, her eyes abruptly fiery. “We have our commune. Our allotted zone of land. We must make food for ourselves and also for the urbmons, right? What would happen to you if we simply bred and bred and bred, until our village sprawled out over half of the present fields, and such remaining food as we produced was merely enough for our own needs? With nothing to spare for you. Children must be housed. Houses occupy land. How can we farm land covered by a house? We must set limits.”

“But you don’t need to sprawl your village out into the fields. You could build upward. As we do. And increase your numbers tenfold without taking up any more land area. Well, of course, you’d need more food and there’d be less to ship to us, that’s true, but—”

“You absolutely don’t understand,” Artha snaps. “Should we turn our commune into an urbmon? You have your way of life; we have ours. Ours requires us to be few in number and live in the midst of fertile fields. Why should we become like you? We pride ourselves on not being like you. So if we expand, we must expand horizontally, right? Which would in time cover the surface of the world with a dead crust of paved streets and roads, as in the former days. No. We are beyond such things. We impose limits on ourselves, and live in the proper rhythm of our way, and we are happy. And so it shall be forever with us. Does this seem so wicked? We think the urbmon folk are wicked, for they will not control their breeding. And even encourage breeding.”