Robert Silverberg: The World Inside

He does his best, laboring under his handicap. A sense of coming apart. A dislocation of the soul.

Midnight. Sleep will not come. He lies beside Mamelon, tossing. He has topped her, and still his nerves rustle in the darkness. She knows he is awake. Her soothing hand roams him. “Can’t you relax?” she asks.

“It gets harder.”

“Would you like some tingle? Or even mindblot.”

“No. Nothing.”

“Go nightwalking then,” she suggests. “Burn up some of that energy. You’re all wired up, Siegmund.”

Held together by golden thread. Coming apart. Coming apart.

Go up to Toledo, maybe? Seek consolation in Rhea’s arms. She always is helpful. Or even nightwalk Louisville. Drop in on Nissim Shawke’s wife Scylla. The audacity of it. But they were trying to push me onto her at that party, Somatic Fulfillment Day. Seeing whether I had the blessmanship to deserve promotion to Louisville. Siegmund knows he failed a test that day. But maybe it is not too late to undo that. He will go to Scylla. Even if Nissim’s there. See, I have the requisite amorality! See, I defy all bounds. Why should a Louisville wife not be accessible to me? We all live under the- same code of law, regardless of the inhibitions of custom that we have lately imposed upon ourselves. So he will say if he finds Nissim. And Nissim will applaud his bravado.

“Yes,” he tells Mamelon. “I think I’ll nightwalk.”

But he remains on the sleeping platform. Some minutes go by. A failure of impulse. He does not want to go; he pretends to be asleep, hoping Mamelon will doze. Some minutes more. Cautiously he opens one eye, slit-wide. Yes, she sleeps. How beautiful she is, how noble even while asleep. The fine bones, the pale skin, the jet-black hair. My Mamelon. My treasure. Lately he has felt little desire even for her. Boredom born of fatigue? Fatigue born of boredom?

The door opens and Charles Mattern comes in.

Siegmund watches the sociocomputator tiptoe toward the platform and silently undress. Mattern’s lips are tightly compressed, his nostrils flaring. Signs of yearning. His penis already half erect. Mattern hungers for Mamelon; something has been developing between them over the past two months, Siegmund suspects, something more than mere nightwalking. Siegmund hardly cares. Just so she is happy. Mattern’s harsh breathing loud in the room. He starts to awaken Mamelon.

“Hello, Charles,” Siegmund says.

Mattern, caught by surprise, flinches and laughs nervously. “I was trying not to wake you, Siegmund.”

“I’ve been up. Watching you.”

“You might have said something, then. To save me all this stealthing around.”

“I’m sorry. It didn’t occur to me.”

Mamelon is awake now too. Sitting up, bare to the waist. A stray coil of ebony hair passing deliciously across her pink left nipple. The whiteness of her skin illuminated by the faint glow of the nightlight. Smiling chastely at Mattern: the dutiful female citizen, ready to accept her nocturnal visitor.

Siegmund says, “Charles, as long as you’re here, I can tell you that I’ve got an assignment to do that’ll involve working with you. For Stevis. He wants to see if people are spending more time than usual with blessmen and consolers, and less in sonic centers. A double flow- chart that—”

“It’s late, Siegmund.” Curtly. “Why don’t you tell me about it in the morning.”

“Yes. All right. All right.” Flushing, Siegmund rises from the sleeping platform. He does not have to leave, even with a nightwalker here for Mamelon, but he does not want to stay. Like a Warsaw husband, granting a superfluous and unasked privacy to the other two. He hurriedly finds some clothing. Mattern reminds him that he’s free to remain. But no. Siegmund leaves, a little wildly. Almost running down the hall. I will go up to Louisville, to Scylla Shawke. However, instead of asking the liftshaft to take him to the level where the Shawkes live, he calls out a Shanghai floor, 799. Charles and Principessa Mattern live there. He does not dare risk attempting Scylla while he is in this jangled state. Failure could be costly. Principessa will do. A tigress, she is. A savage. Her sheer animal vigor may restore his well-being. She is the most passionate woman he knows, short of Mamelon. And a good age, ripe but not overripe. Siegmund halts outside Principessa’s door. It strikes him that it is somewhat bourgeois, something of a pre-urbmon thing, for him to be seeking the wife of the man who is now with his own wife. Nightwalking should be more random, less structured, merely a way of extending the range of one’s life-experiences. Nevertheless. He nudges the door open. Relieved and dismayed to hear sounds of ecstasy from within. Two people on the platform: he sees arms and legs that must be Principessa’s, and, covering her, emitting earnest grunts, is Jason Quevedo, thrusting and pumping. Siegmund quickly ducks out. Alone in the corridor. Where to, now? The world is too complicated for him tonight. The obvious next destination is Quevedo’s apartment. For Micaela. But no doubt she will have a visitor too. Siegmund’s forehead begins to throb. He does not want to roam the urbmon endlessly. He wants only to go to sleep. Nightwalking suddenly seems an abomination to him: forced, unnatural, compulsive. The slavery of absolute freedom. At this moment thousands of men roam the titanic building. Each determined to do the blessworthy thing. Siegmund, scuffing at the floor, strolls along the corridor and halts by a window. Outside, a moonless night. The sky ablaze with stars. The neighboring urbmons seeming farther away than usual. Their windows bright, thousands of them. He wonders if it is possible to see a commune, far to the north. The crazy farmers. Micaela Quevedo’s brother Michael, the one who went flippo, supposedly visited a commune. At least so the story goes. Micaela still brooding about her brother’s fate. Down the chute with him as soon as he stuck his head back inside the urbmon. But of course a man like that can’t be permitted to resume his former life here. An obvious malcontent, spreading poisons of dissatisfaction and unblessworthiness. A hard thing for Micaela, though. Very close to her brother, she says. Her twin. Thinks he should have had a formal hearing in Louisville. He did, though. She won’t believe it, but he did. Siegmund remembers when the papers came through. Nissim Shawke issuing the decree: if this man ever returns to 116, dispose of him at once. Poor Micaela. Something unhealthy going on, maybe, between her and her brother. I might ask Jason. I might.

Where shall I go now?

He realizes that he has been standing by the window for more than an hour. He stumbles toward the stairs and jogs down twelve levels to his own. Mattern and Mamelon lie sleeping side by side. Siegmund drops his clothing and joins them on the platform. Coming apart. Dislocation. Finally he sleeps too.

The solace of religion. Siegmund has gone to see a blessman. The chapel is on the 770th floor: a small room off a commercial arcade, decorated with fertility symbols and incrustations of captive light. Entering, he feels like an intruder. Never any religious impulses before. His mother’s grandfather was a Christer, but everyone in the family assumed it was because the old man had antiquarian instincts. The ancient religions have few followers, and even the cult of god’s blessing, which is officially supported by Louisville, can claim no more than a third of the building’s adult population, according to the last figures Siegmund has seen. Though perhaps things are changing lately.

“God bless,” the blessman says, “what is your pain?”

He is plump, smooth-skinned, with a round complacent face and cheerily shining eyes. At least forty years old. What does he know of pain?