Robert Silverberg - The World Inside

“There’s no need for us to control it,” he tells her. “It’s been mathematically proven that we haven’t begun to exhaust the possibilities of the planet. Our population could double or even triple, and as long as we continued to live in vertical cities, in urban monads, there’d be room for everyone. Without encroaching on productive farmland. We build a new urbmon every few years, and even so. the food supplies aren’t diminishing, the rhythm of our way holds up, and—”

“Do you think this can continue infinitely?”

“Well, no, not infinitely,” Michael concedes. “But for a long time. Five hundred years, maybe, at the present rate of increase, before we’d feel any squeeze.”

“And then?”

“They can solve that problem when the time comes.’

Artha shakes her head furiously. “No! No! How can you say such a thing? To go on breeding, letting the future worry about it—”

“Look,” he says, “I’ve talked to my brother-in-law, who’s a historian. Specializes in the twentieth century. Back then it was believed that everybody would starve if the world’s population got past five or six billion. Much talk of a population crisis, etc., etc. Well, then came the collapse, and afterward things were reorganized, the first urbmons went up, the old horizontal pattern of land use was prohibited, and guess what? We found there was room for ten billion people. And then twenty. And then fifty. And now seventy-five. Taller buildings, more efficient food production, greater concentration of people on the unproductive land. So who are we to say that our descendants won’t continue to cope with expanding population, on up to five hundred billion, a thousand billion, who knows? The twentieth century wouldn’t have believed it was possible to support this many people on Earth. So if we worry in advance about a problem that may, in fact never cause any trouble, if we unblessworthily thwart god by limiting births, -we sin against life without any assurance that—”

“Pah!” Artha snorts. “You will never understand us. And I suppose we will never understand you.” Rising, she strides toward the door. “Tell me this, then. If the urbmon way is so wonderful, why did you slip away, and go out wandering in our fields?” And she does not stay for an answer. The door clicks behind her; he goes to it and finds that she has locked it. He is alone. And still a prisoner.

A long drab day. No one comes to him, except the girl bringing lunch: in and out. The stench of the cell oppresses him. The lack of a cleanser becomes unbearable; he imagines that the filth gathering on his skin is pitting and corroding it. From his narrow window he watches the life of the commune, craning his neck to see it all. The farming machines coming and going. The husky peasants loading sacks of produce aboard a conveyor belt disappearing into the ground — going, no doubt, to the courier-pod system that carries food to the urbmons and industrial goods to the communes. Last’ night’s scapegoat, Milcha, passes by, limping, bruised, apparently exempt from work today; villagers hail her with obvious reverence. She smiles and pats her belly. He does not see Artha at all. Why do they not release him? He is fairly certain that he has convinced her he is no spy. And in any case can hardly harm the commune. Yet here he remains as the afternoon fades. The busy people outside, sweating, sun-tanned, purposeful. He sees only a speck of the commune: outside the scope of his vision there must be schools, a theater, a governmental building, warehouses, repair shops. Images of last night’s unbirth dance glow morbidly in his memory. The barbarism; the wild music; the agony of the woman. But he knows that it is an error to think of these farmers as primitive, simple folk, despite such things. They seem bizarre to him, but their savagery is only superficial, a mask they don to set themselves apart from the urban people. This is a complex society held in a delicate balance. As complex as is his own. Sophisticated machinery to care for. Doubtless a computer center somewhere, controlling the planting and tending and harvesting of the crops, that requires a staff of skilled technicians. Biological needs to consider: pesticides, weed suppression, all the ecological intricacies. And the problems of the barter system that ties the commune to the urbmons. He perceives only the surface of this place, he realizes.

In late afternoon Artha returns to his cell.

“Will they let me go soon?” he asks immediately.

She shakes her head. “It’s under discussion. I’ve recommended your release. But some of them are very suspicious people.”

“What do you mean?”

“The chiefs. You know, they’re old men, most of them, with a natural mistrust of strangers. A couple of them want to sacrifice you to the harvest god.”

“Sacrifice?”

Artha grins. There is nothing stony about her now; she is relaxed, clearly friendly. On his side. “It sounds horrid, doesn’t it? But it’s been known to happen. Our gods occasionally demand lives. Don’t you ever take life in the urbmon?”

“When someone threatens the stability of our society, yes,” he admits. “Lawbreakers go down the chute. In the combustion chambers at the bottom of the building. Contributing their body mass to our energy output. But—”

“So you kill for the sake of keeping everything running smoothly. Well, sometimes so do we. Not often. I don’t really think they’ll kill you. But it isn’t decided yet.”

“When will it be?”

“Perhaps tonight. Or tomorrow.”

“How can I represent any threat to the commune?”

“No one says you do,” Artha tells him. “Even so, to offer the life of an urbmon man may have positive values here. Increasing our blessings. It’s a philosophical thing, not easy to explain: the urbmons are the ultimate consumers, and if our harvest god symbolically consumed an urbmon instead — in a metaphorical way, taking you to stand for the whole society you come from — it would be a mystic affirmation of the unity of the two societies, the link that binds commune to urbmon and urbmon to commune, and — oh, never mind. Maybe they’ll forget about it. It’s only the day after the unbirth dance; we don’t need any more sacred protection so soon. I’ve told them that. I’d say your chances of going free are fairly good.”

“Fairly good,” he repeats gloomily. “Wonderful.” The distant sea. The ashy cone of Vesuvius. Jerusalem. The Taj Mahal. As far away as the stars, now. The sea. The sea. This stinking cell. He chokes on despair.

Artha tries to cheer him. Squatting close beside him on the tipsy floor. Her eyes warm, affectionate. Her earlier military brusqueness gone. She seems fond of him. Getting to know him better, as though she has surmounted the barrier of cultural differences that made him seem so alien to her before. And he the same with her. The separations dwindling. Her world is not his, but he thinks he could adjust to some of its unfamiliar assumptions. Strike up a closeness. He’s a man, she’s a woman, right? The basics. All the rest is facade. But as they talk, he is plunged again and again into new awarenesses of how different she is from him, he from her. He asks her about herself and she says she is unmarried. Stunned, he tells her that there are no unmarried people in the urbmons past the age of twelve or thirteen. She says she is thirty-one. Why has someone so attractive never married? “We have enough married women here,” she replies. “I had no reason to marry.” Does she not want to bear children? No, not at all. The commune has its allotted number of mothers. She has other responsibilities to occupy her. “Such as?” She explains that she is part of the liaison staff handling urbmon commerce. Which is why she can speak the language so well; she deals frequently with the urbmons, arranging for exchanges of produce for manufactured goods, setting up servicing arrangements whenever the commune’s machinery suffers a breakdown beyond the skills of the village technicians, and so forth. “I may have monitored your calls occasionally,” he says. “Some of the nodes I prime run through the procurement level. If I ever get back home, I’ll listen for you, Artha.” Her smile is dazzling. He begins to suspect that love is blossoming in this cell.