Collected Short Fiction, page 797
“Yes, sir. I know what you mean, sir.”
Siegmund dives into the heap. Musky womansmells. A fountain of sensation. Someone pops something into his mouth. He swallows, and moments later feels the back of his skull lift. Laughter. He is being kissed. Forced down against the carpet by his assailant. Rhea? Yes. Music blaring from above. In the tangle he discovers himself sharing a girl with Nissim Shawke. A cold wink from him; an icy grin. Shawke testing his capacity for pleasure. Everyone watching him, seeing if he’s decadent enough to deserve promotion to their midst.
Let yourself go! Let everything go!
Urgently he compels himself to revel. Much depends on this. Below him 974 wondrous floors of urbmon and if he wants to stay up here he must know how to play. Disillusioned that the administrators are like this. So common, so vulgar, the cheap hedonism of a ruling class. They could be Florentine dukes, Parisian grandees, Borgias, drunken boyars. Unable to accept this image of them, Siegmund constructs a fantasy: they have staged this revel solely to test his character, to determine whether he is indeed merely a dreary drudge or if he has the breadth of spirit a Louisville man needs. Folly to think they spend their priceless time swilling and topping like this; but they are flexible, they can enjoy life, they turn from work to play with equal gusto. And if he wants to live among them he must demonstrate equal many-sidedness. He will. He will.
His furry brain swirls with conflicting chemical messages.
“Let’s sing!” he yells desperately. “Everybody sing!” Bellowing:
If you come to me by the
dark of night
With your blessman all aglow
And you slip down beside me
And try to get inside me—
They sing with him. He cannot hear his own voice. Dark eyes pear into his. “God bless,” a long rippling lass murmurs. “You’re cute. The famous Siegmund Kluver.” She belches tingle bubbles.
“We’ve met before, haven’t we?”
“Once, I think, in Nissim’s office. Scylla Shawke.”
The great man’s wife. Startling in her beauty. Young. Young. No more than twenty-five. He has heard a rumor that the first Mrs. Shawke, Rhea’s mother, went down the chute, flippo. Some day he must check on the truth of that. Scylla Shawke wriggles close to him. Her soft black hair dangling in his face. He is almost paralyzed with fear. The consequences; can this be going too far? Recklessly he grabs her and plunges his hand into her tunic. She cooperates. Full warm breasts. Soft moist lips. Can he fail this test by an excess of shamelessness? Never mind. Never mind. Happy Somatic Fulfillment Day! Her body grinds against his, and he realizes, in shock, that it would be no problem to top her right now, here, in this heaving mass of high-level humanity on the floor of Kipling Freehouse’s sprawling office. Too far, too fast. He slides free of her grasp. Catching the single flicker of disappointment and reproach in her eyes at his withdrawal. Rolls over; Rhea. “Why didn’t you?” she whispers. And Siegmund says, “I couldn’t,” just before another girl, straddling him, kneels and pours something sweet and sticky into his mouth. He whirls within his skull. “It was a mistake,” Rhea tells him. “She was being set up for you.” Her words fracture and the pieces rebound, soaring high and drifting about the room. Something strange has happened to the lights; everything has become prismatic, and from all plane surfaces an eerie radiance is streaming, Siegmund crawls through the tumult, searching for Scylla Shawke. Instead he finds Nissim.
“I’d like to discuss the business of the Chicago sex-ratio petition with you now,” the administrator tells him.
WHEN Siegmund returns to his apartment hours later, he finds Mamelon pacing grimly about. “Where have you been?” she demands. “Somatic Fulfillment Day’s almost over. I’ve called the access nexus, I’ve had tracers all over the building, I’ve—”
“I was in Louisville,” Siegmund says. “Kipling Freehouse had a party.” Stumbles past her. Drops face down on the sleeping platform. First come the dry sobs, then the tears, and by the time they stop flowing Somatic Fulfillment Day might just as well be over.
THIS is the bottom. Siegmund Kluver prowls uneasily among the generators. The weight of the building presses crushingly on him. The whining song of the turbines troubles him. He feels disoriented, a wanderer in the depths. How huge this room is: an immense box far below the ground, so big that the globes of light in its ceiling are barely able to illuminate the distant concrete floor. Siegmund creeps along a catwalk midway between floor and ceiling. Palatial Louisville three kilometers above his head. Carpets and draperies, inlays of rare woods, the trappings of power, very far away now. He hadn’t meant to come here, not this far down. Warsaw was his intended destination tonight. But somehow first here. Stalling for time. Siegmund is frightened. Searching for an excuse not to do it. If they only knew. The cowardice within. UnSiegmundlike.
He rubs his hands along the cat-walk railing. Cold metal, shaky fingers. A constant throbbing boom running through the building here. He is not far from the terminus of the chutes that convey solid wastes to the power plant: discards of all kinds, old clothes, used data cubes, wrappers and packages, the bodies of the dead, occasionally the bodies of the living, coursing down the spiraling slideways and tumbling into the compactors. And moving thence on gliding belts into the combustion chambers. The liberation of heat for electrical generation: waste not, want not. The electrical load is heavy at this hour. Every apartment is lit. Siegmund closes his eyes and receives a vision of Urban Monad 116’s 886,000 people linked by an enormous tangle of wiring. A giant human switchboard.
And I am no longer plugged into it. Why am I no longer plugged into it? What has happened to me? What is happening to me? What is about to happen to me?
Sluggishly he moves along the catwalk and passes out of the generating room. Entering a sleek-walled tunnel; behind its glossy paneled sides, he knows, run the transmission lines along which power flows toward the debooster circuitry. And here the reprocessing plant—urine pipes, fecal reconversion chambers. All the wondrous stuff by which the urbmon lives. No other human being in sight. The heavy weight of the solitude. Siegmund shivers. He must go up to Warsaw soon. Yet he continues to drift like a touring schoolchild through the utility center at the urbmon’s lowest level. Hiding here from himself. The cold eyes of electronic scanners staring at him out of hundreds of shielded openings in floors and walls and ceilings.
J am Siegmund Kluver of Shanghai, 787th floor. I am fifteen years and five months old. My wife’s name is Mamelon, my son is Janus. my daughter is Persephone. I am assigned to work duty as a consultant in Louisville Access Nexus and within the next twelve months I will undoubtedly receive notice of my promotion to the highest administrative levels of this urban monad. Therefore shall I rejoice. I am Siegmund Kluver of Shanghai, 787th floor.
He bows to the scanners. All hail. All hail. The future leader. Passing his hand nervously through his coarse, bushy hair. For an hour now he has wandered about down here. You should go up. What are you afraid of? To Warsaw. To Warsaw.
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 lift-shaft and tells it to take him to the 60th 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?” 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 is on; his eyes adjust and he sees a couple on the sleeping platform and five or six littles 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. 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 a while 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.
“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. She is 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 886,000 people. And I can’t reach her. 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. 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.
HE TAKES the liftshaft randomly to 118, Prague, gets out, walks halfway around the building without entering any apartment or speaking to anyone he meets; gets into a different liftshaft; goes up to 173 in Pittsburgh; stands for a while in a corridor, listening to the pounding of the blood in the capillaries of his temples. Then he steps into a somatic fulfillment hall. Even at this late hour there are people making use of its facilities: a dozen or so in the whirlpool tumbler, five or six prancing on the treadmill, a few couples. His Shanghai clothes earn him some curious stares but no one approaches him. Shoulders slumping, he goes slowly out of the somatic fulfillment hall. Now he takes to the stairs, plodding up the great coil that runs the whole thousand-floor height of Urban Monad 116. He looks up the mighty helix and sees the levels stretching toward infinity, with banks of lights glittering above him to denote each landing. Birmingham, San Francisco, Colombo, Madrid. He grasps the rail and looks down. Eyes spiraling along the descending path. Prague, Warsaw, Reykjavik. A dizzying vortex; a monstrous well through which the light of a million globes drifts from above like snowflakes. He clambers doggedly up the myriad steps. Hypnotized by his own mechanical movements. Before he realizes it, he has climbed forty floors. Sweat drenches him and the muscles of his calves are bunching and knotting. He yanks open the doorway and lurches out into the main corridor. This is the 213th floor. Birmingham. Two men with the smirking look of nightwalkers on their way home stop him and offer him some kind of groover, a small translucent capsule containing a dark, oily orange fluid. Siegmund accepts the capsule without a word and swallows it unquestioningly. They tap his biceps in a show of good fellowship and go on their way. Almost at once he feels nausea. Then blurred red and blue lights sway before his eyes. He wonders dimly what they have given him. He waits for the ecstasy. He waits. He waits.
THE next thing he knows, the thin light of dawn is in his eyes and he is sitting in an unfamiliar room, sprawled out in a web of oscillating, twanging metal mesh. A tall young man with long golden hair stands over him and Siegmund can hear his own voice saying, “Now I know why they go flippo. One day it just gets to be too much for you. The people right up against your skin. You can feel them. And—”
“Easy. Back it up a little. You’re overloading.”
“My head is about to explode.” Siegmund sees an attractive red-haired woman moving around in the far corner of the room. He is having difficulty focusing his eyes. “I’m not sure I know where I am,” he says.
“Three hundred seventieth. That’s San Francisco. You’re really sectioned off, aren’t you?”
