Robert Silverberg: The World Inside

He hears the voice of Rhea Shawke Freehouse, coming as though from a recording mounted at the core of his brain. If I were you, Siegmund, I’d relax and try to enjoy myself more. Don’t worry about what people think, or seem to think, about you. Soak up human nature, work at being more human yourself. Go around the building; do some nightwalking in Warsaw or Prague, maybe. See how simpler people live. Shrewd words. Wise woman. Why be afraid? Go up. Go up. It’s getting late.

Standing outside a NO ADMITTANCE hatch leading to one of the computer ganglia, Siegmund spends several minutes studying the tremor of his right hand. Then he hurries to the liftshaft and tells it to take him to the sixtieth floor. The middle of Warsaw.

Narrow corridors, here. Many doors. A compressed quality to the atmosphere. This is a city of extraordinarily high population density, not only because the inhabitants are so blessworthy in their fecundity, but also because much of the city’s area is given over to industrial plants. Even though the building is much broader here than in its upper reaches, the citizens of Warsaw are pushed together into a relatively small residential zone. Here are the machines that stamp out machines. Dies, lathes, templates, reciprocators, positioners, fabrication plaques. Much of the work is computerized and automated, but there is plenty for human beings to do: feeding the conveyors, guiding and positioning, driving the fork-lifts, tagging the finished work for its destination. Late last year Siegmund pointed out to Nissim Shawke and Kipling Freehouse that nearly everything being done by human labor in the industrial levels could be handled by machines; instead of employing thousands of people in Warsaw, Prague, and Birmingham, they could set up a totally automated output program, with a few supervisors to keep watch over the inventory homeostasis, and a few maintenance men to handle emergencies, such as repairing the repair machines. Shawke gave him a patronizing smile. “But if they had no work, what would all those poor people do with their lives?” he asked. “Do you think we can turn them into poets, Siegmund? Professors of urban history? We deliberately devise labor for them, don’t you see?” And Siegmund embarrassed by his naivete. A rare failure, for him, of insight into the methodology of government. He still feels uncomfortable about that conversation. In an ideal commonwealth, he believes, every person should have meaningful work to do. He wishes the urban monad to be an ideal commonwealth. But yet certain practical considerations of human limitations interpose themselves. But yet. But yet. The makework in Warsaw is a blot on the theory.

Pick a door. Say, 6021. 6023. 6025. Strange to see the apartments bearing four-digit numbers. 6027. 6029. Siegmund puts his hand to the knob. Hesitates. A rush of sudden timidity. Imagining, within, a brawny hairy growling sullen working-class husband, a shapeless weary working-class wife. And he must intrude on their intimacies. Their resentful glare upon seeing his upper-level clothing. What is this Shanghai dandy doing here? Doesn’t he have any regard for decency? And so forth. And so forth. Siegmund almost flees. Then he takes hold of himself. They dare not refuse. They dare not be sullen. He opens the door.

The room is dark. Only the nightglow on; his eyes adjust and he sees a couple on the sleeping platform and five or six Tittles on cots. He approaches the platform. Stands over the sleepers. His imagined portrait of the room’s occupants altogether inaccurate. They could be any young married pair of Shanghai, Chicago, Edinburgh. Strip away the clothes, let sleep eradicate the facial expressions denoting position in the social matrix, and distinctions of class and city perhaps disappear. The naked sleepers are only a few years older than Siegmund-he maybe nineteen, she possibly eighteen. The man slender, narrow shoulders, unspectacular muscles. The woman trim, standard, agreeable body, soft yellow hair. Siegmund lightly touches her shoulder. A ridge of bone lying close beneath the skin. Blue eyes flickering open. Fear giving way to understanding: oh, a nightwalker. And understanding giving way to confusion: the nightwalker wears upper-building clothes. Etiquette demands an introduction. “Siegmund Kluver,” he says. “Shanghai.”

The girl’s tongue passes hurriedly over her lips. “Shanghai? Really?” The husband awakes. Blinking, puzzled. “Shanghai?” he says. “What for, down here, huh?” Not hostile, just wondering. Siegmund shrugs, as if to say a whim, a fancy. The husband gets off the platform. Siegmund assures him that it isn’t necessary for him to leave, that it’ll be quite all right to have him here, but that kind of thing evidently isn’t practiced in Warsaw: the arrival of the nightwalker is the signal for the husband to clear out. Loose cotton wrap already over his pale, almost hairless body. A nervous smile: see you later, love. And out. Siegmund alone with the woman. “I never met anybody from Shanghai before,” she says.

“You haven’t told me your name.”

“Ellen.”

He lies down beside her. Stroking her smooth skin. Rhea’s words echo. Soak up human nature. See how simpler people live. He is so tightly drawn. His flesh mysteriously invaded by a spreading network of fine golden wires. Penetrating the lobes of his brain. “What does your husband do, Ellen?”

“He’s on fork-lift now. Used to be a cabler, but he got hurt sheathing. The whiplash.”

“He works hard, doesn’t he?”

“The sector boss says he’s one of the best. I think he’s okay, too.” A sniggering little giggle. “What floors are Shanghai, anyway? That’s someplace around 700, isn’t it?”

“761 to 800.” Caressing her haunches. Her body quivers — fear or desire? Shyly her hand goes to his clothing. Maybe just eager to get him in and out and gone. The frightening stranger from the upper levels. Or else not accustomed to foreplay. A different milieu. He’d rather talk awhile first. See how simpler people live. He’s here to learn, not merely to top. Looking around the room: the furnishings drab and crude, no grace, no style. Yet designed by the same craftsmen who furnish Louisville and Toledo. Obviously aiming for a lower taste. A prevailing film of grayness over everything. Even the girl. I could be with Micaela Quevedo now. I could be with Principessa. Or with. Or perhaps with. But I am here. He searches for probing questions to ask. To bring out the essential humanity of this obscure person over whom he one day will help to rule. Do you read much? What are your favorite screen shows? What sort of foods do you like? Are you doing what you can to help your littles rise in the building? What do you think of the people down in Reykjavik? And those in Prague? But he says nothing. What’s the use? What can he learn? Impassable barriers between person and person. Touching her here and here and here. Her fingers on him. He is still soft.

“You don’t like me,” she says sadly.

He wonders how often she uses the cleanser. “Maybe I’m a little tired,” he says. “So busy these days.” Pressing his body against hers. The warmth of her possibly will resurrect him. Her eyes staring into his. Blue lenses over inner emptiness. He kisses the hollow of her throat. “Hey, that tickles!” she says, wriggling. He trails his fingers down her belly. To the core of her. Hot and moist and ready. But he isn’t. Can’t. “Is there anything special?” she asks. “If it isn’t too complicated maybe I could.” He shakes his head. He isn’t interested in whips and chains and thongs. Just the usual. But he can’t. His fatigue only a pretense; what cripples him is his sense of isolation. Alone among 885,000 people. And I can’t reach her. Not even with this. Pushing the limp rod against her gate. The Shanghai swell, incapable, unmanned. Now she is no longer afraid of him and not very sympathetic. She takes his failure as a sign of his contempt for her. He wants to tell her how many hundreds of women he has topped in Shanghai and Chicago, and even Toledo. Where he is regarded as devilishly virile. Desperately he turns her over. His sweaty belly against her cool buttocks. “Listen, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but—” Even this won’t help. She squirms indignantly. He releases her. Rises, adjusts himself. Face blazing. As he goes to the door he looks back. She is sitting up wantonly, looking mockery at him. Makes a gesture with three fingers, no doubt a scabrous obscenity here. He says, “I just want you to know. The name I gave you when I came in — it isn’t mine. That’s not me at all.” And goes hastily out. So much for soaking up human nature. So much for Warsaw.