The World Inside (26 page)

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?

“I have begun not to belong,” Siegmund says. “My future is unraveling. I am coming unplugged. Everything has lost its meaning and my soul is hollow.”

“Ah. Angst. Anomie. Dissociation. Identity drain. Familiar complaints, my son. How old are you?”

“Past fifteen.”

“Career profile?”

“Shanghai going on Louisville. Perhaps you know of me. Siegmund Kluver.”

The blessman's lips go taut. The eyes veil themselves. He toys with sacred emblems on his tunic's collar. He has heard of Siegmund, yes.

He says, “Are you fulfilled in your marriage?”

“I have the most blessworthy wife imaginable.”

“Littles?”

“A boy and a girl. We will have a second girl next year.”

“Friends?”

“Sufficient,” Siegmund says. “And yet this feeling of decomposition. Sometimes my skin itchy all over. Films of decay drifting through the building and wrapping themselves about me. A great restlessness. What's happening to me?”

“Sometimes,” the blessman says, “those of us who live in the urban monads experience what is called the crisis of spiritual confinement. The boundaries of our world, that is to say our building, seem too narrow. Our inner resources become inadequate. We are grievously disappointed in our relationships with those we have always loved and admired. The result of such a crisis is often violent: hence the flippo phenomenon. Others may actually leave the urbmon and seek a new life in the communes, which, of course, is a form of suicide, since we are incapable of adapting to that harsh environment. Now, those who neither go berserk nor separate themselves physically from the urbmon occasionally undertake an internal migration, drawing into their own souls and, in effect, contracting as a response to the impingement of adjacent individuals on their psychic space. Does this have any meaning for you?” As Siegmund nods doubtfully, the blessman goes smoothly on, saying, “Among the leaders of this
building, the executive class, those who have been propelled upward by the blessworthy drive to serve their fellow men, this process is particularly painful, bringing about as it does a collapse of values and a loss of motivation. But it can be easily cured.”

“Easily?”

“I assure you.”

“Cured? How?”

“We will do it at once, and you will go out of here healthy and whole, Siegmund. The way to health is through kinship with god, you see, god being considered in our view the integrative force giving wholeness to the universe. And I will show you god.”

“You will show me god,” Siegmund repeats, uncomprehending.

“Yes. Yes.” The blessman, bustling around, is busy darkening the chapel, switching off lights and cutting in opaquers. From the floor sprouts a cup-shaped web-seat into which Siegmund is gently nudged. Lying there looking up. The chapel's ceiling, he discovers, is a single broad screen. In its glassy green depths an image of the heavens appears. Stars strewn like sand. A billion billion points of light. Music issues from concealed speakers: the plashy plinks of a cosmos group. He makes out the magical sounds of a vibrastar, the dark twangs of a comet-harp, the wild lurches of an orbital diver. Then the whole group going at once. Perhaps Dillon Chrimes is playing. His friend of that dismal night. Overhead the depth of the perceptive field is deepening; Siegmund sees the orange glint of Mars, the pearly blaze of Jupiter. So god
is a light-show plus a cosmos group? How shallow. How empty.

The blessman, speaking over the music, says, “What you see is a direct relay from the thousandth floor. This is the sky over our urbmon at our present moment. Look into the black cone of night. Accept the cool light of the stars. Open yourself to the immensity. What you see is god. What you see is god.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere. Immanent and all-enduing.”

“I don't see.”

The music is turned up. Siegmund now is surrounded by a cage of heavy sound. The astronomical scene takes on a greater intensity. The blessman directs Siegmund's attention to this group of stars and to that, urging him to merge with the galaxy. The urbmon is not the universe, he murmurs. Beyond these shining walls lies an awesome vastness that is god. Let him take you into himself and heal you. Yield. Yield. Yield. But Siegmund cannot yield. He wonders if the blessman should have given him some sort of drug, a multiplexer of some kind that would make it easier for him to open himself to the universe. But the blessman scoffs at the idea. One can reach god without chemical assistance. Simply stare. Contemplate. Peer into infinity. Search for the divine pattern. Meditate on the forces in balance, the beauties of celestial mechanics. God is within and without us. Yield. Yield. Yield. “I still don't feel it,” Siegmund says. “I'm locked up inside my own head.” A note of impatience enters the blessman's tone. What's wrong with you, he seems to be saying. Why can't
you? It's a perfectly good religious experience. But it is no use. After half an hour Siegmund sits up, shaking his head. His eyes hurt from staring at the stars. He cannot make the mystical leap. He authorizes a credit transfer to the blessman's account, thanks him, and goes out of the chapel. Perhaps god was somewhere else today.

 

The solace of the consoler. A purely secular therapist, relying heavily on metabolic adjustments. Siegmund is apprehensive about seeing him; he has always regarded those who have to go to a consoler as somehow defective, and it pains him to be joining that group. Yet he must end this inner turmoil. And Mamelon insists. The consoler he visits is surprisingly young, perhaps thirty-three, with a pinched, bleak face and frosty, ungenerous eyes. He knows the nature of Siegmund's complaint almost before it is described to him. “And when you attended this party in Louisville,” he asks, “what effect did it have on you to learn that your idols weren't quite the men you thought they were?”

“It emptied me out,” Siegmund says. “My ideals, my values, my guiding images. To see them cavorting like that. Never having imagined they did. I think that's where all the trouble started.”

“No,” says the consoler, “that's merely where the trouble surfaced. It was there before. In you, deep, waiting for something to push it up into view.”

“How can I learn to cope with it?”

“You can't. You'll have to be sent into therapy. I'm going to
turn you over to the moral engineers. You can use a reality adjustment.”

 

He is afraid of being changed. They will put him into a tank and let him drift there for days or weeks, while they cloud his mind with their mysterious substances and whisper things to him and massage his aching body and alter the imprinting of his brain. And he will come forth healthy and stable and different. Another person. All his Siegmundness lost along with his anguish. He remembers Aurea Holson, whose number came up in the lottery for the stocking of the new Urbmon 158, and who did not want to go, and who was persuaded by the moral engineers that it would not be so bad to leave her native urbmon. And came forth from her tank docile and placid, a vegetable in place of a neurotic. Not for me, Siegmund thinks.