The World Inside (13 page)

He skims a few novels and dips into several films. Even though it is only the first day of his research, he perceives patterns, a fitful loosening of taboos throughout the century, accelerating greatly between 1920 and 1930 and again after 1960. Timid experiments in revealing the ankle lead, shortly, to bared breasts. The curious custom of prostitution erodes as liberties become more commonly obtained. The disappearance
of taboos on the popular sexual vocabulary. He can barely believe some of what he learns. So compressed were their souls! So thwarted were their urges! And why? And why? Of course, they did grow looser. Yet terrible restraints prevail throughout that dark century, except toward the end, when the collapse was near and all limits burst. But even then there was something askew in their liberation. He sees a forced, self-conscious mode of amorality coming into being. The shy nudists. The guilt-wracked orgiasts. The apologetic adulterers. Strange, strange, strange. He is endlessly fascinated by the twentieth century's sexual concepts. The wife as husband's property. The premium on virginity: well, they seemed to get rid of
that
! Attempts by the state to dictate positions of sexual intercourse and to forbid certain supplementary acts. The restrictions even on words! A phrase leaps out of a supposedly serious twentieth-century work of social criticism: “Among the most significant developments of the decade was the attainment of the freedom, at last, for the responsible writer to use such words as
fuck
and
cunt
where necessary in his work.” Can that have been so? Such importance placed on mere words? Jason pronounces the odd monosyllables aloud in his research cubicle. “Fuck. Cunt. Fuck. Cunt. Fuck.” They sound merely antiquated. Harmless, certainly. He tries the modern equivalents. “Top. Slot. Top. Slot. Top.” No impact. How can words ever have held such inflammatory content that an apparently penetrating scholar would feel it worthwhile to celebrate their free public use? Jason is aware of his limitations as a historian when he runs into such things. He simply cannot comprehend the twentieth century's obsession with words. To insist on giving God a capital letter, as though
He might be displeased to be called god! To suppress books for printing words like c—t and f—k and s—t!

By the close of his day's work he is more convinced than ever of the validity of his thesis. There has been a monumental change in sexual morality in the past three hundred years, and it cannot be explained only on cultural grounds. We are different, he tells himself. We have changed, and it is a cellular change, a transformation of the body as well as the soul. They could not have permitted, let alone encouraged, our total-accessibility society. Our nightwalking, our nudity, our freedom from taboos, our lack of irrational jealousies, all of this would have been wholly alien to them, distasteful, abominable. Even those who lived in a way approaching ours, and there were a few, did so for the wrong reasons. They were responding not to a positive societal need but to an existing system of repression. We are different. We are fundamentally different.

Weary, satisfied with what he has found, he leaves his office an hour ahead of time. When he returns to his apartment, Micaela is not there.

This puzzles him. Always here at this hour. The littles left alone, playing with their toys. Of course it is a bit early, not much. Just stepped out for a chat? I don't understand. She hasn't left a message. He says to his eldest son, “Where's Mommo?”

“Went out.”

“Where?”

A shrug. “Visiting.”

“How long ago?”

“An hour. Maybe two.”

Some help. Fidgety, perturbed, Jason calls a couple of
women on the floor, Micaela's friends. They haven't seen her. The boy looks up and says brightly, “She was going to visit a man.” Jason stares sharply at him. “A man? Is that what she said? What man?” But the boy has exhausted his information. Fearful that she has gone off for a rendezvous with Michael, he debates phoning Edinburgh. Just to see if she's there. A lengthy inner debate. Furious images racing in his skull. Micaela and Michael entangled, indistinguishable, united, inflamed. Locked together in incestuous passion. As perhaps every afternoon. How long has this been going on? And she comes to me at dinnertime every evening hot and wet from
him.
He calls Edinburgh and gets Stacion on the screen. Calm, bulgy. “Micaela? No, of course she isn't here. Is she supposed to be?”

“I thought maybe—dropping in—”

“I haven't heard from her since we were at your place.”

He hesitates. Just as she moves to break the connection he blurts, “Do you happen to know where Michael is right now?”

“Michael? He's at work. Interface Crew Nine.”

“Are you sure?”

Stacion looks at him in obvious surprise. “Of course I'm sure. Where else would he be? His crew doesn't break till 1730.” Laughs. “You aren't suggesting that Michael—that Micaela—”

“Of course not. What kind of fool do you think I am? I just wondered—that perhaps—if—” He is adrift. “Forget it, Stacion. Give him my love when he comes home.” Jason cuts the contact. Head bowed, eyes full of unwanted visions. Michael's long fingers encircling his sister's breasts. Rosy nipples poking through. Mirror-image faces nose to nose. Tonguetips touching. No. Where is she, then? He is tempted
to try to reach him in Interface Crew Nine. Find out if he really is on duty. Or maybe off in some dark cubbyhole topping his sister. Jason throws himself face down on the sleeping platform to consider his position. He tells himself that it is not important that Micaela is letting her brother top her. Not at all. He will not let himself be trapped into primeval twentieth-century attitudes of morality. On the other hand, it is a considerable violation of custom for Micaela to go off in mid-afternoon to be topped. If she wants Michael, Jason thinks, let him come here decently after midnight, as a nightwalker. Instead of this skulking and sneaking. Does she think I'd be shocked to know who her lover is? Does she have to hide it from me this way? It's a hundred times as bad to steal away like this. It introduces a note of deceit. Old-fashioned adultery; the secret rendezvous. How ugly! I'd like to tell her—

The door opens and Micaela comes in. She is naked under a translucent flutter-robe and has a flushed, rumpled look. She smirks at Jason. He perceives the loathing behind the smirk.

“Well?” he says.

“Well?”

“I was surprised not to find you here when I got home.”

Coolly Micaela disrobes. She gets under the cleanser. From the way she scrubs herself there can be no doubt that she has just been topped. After a moment she says, “I got back a little late, didn't I? Sorry.”

“Got back from where?”

“Siegmund Kluver's.”

He is astounded and relieved all at once. What is this?
Daywalking?
And a woman taking the sexual initiative? But at least it wasn't Michael. At least it wasn't Michael. If he can
believe her. “Siegmund?” he says. “What do you mean, Siegmund?”

“I visited him. Didn't the littles tell you? He had some free time today and I went up to his place. Quite blessworthy, I must say. An expert slotman. Not my first time with him, of course, but by far the best.”

She steps out from the cleanser, seizes two of the littles, strips them, thrusts them under for their afternoon bath. Paying almost no attention to Jason. He contemplates her lithe bare body in dismay. A lecture on urbmon sexual ethics almost spills from him, but he dams his lips, baffled and agog. Having laboriously adjusted himself to accept the unacceptable notion of her incestuous love, he cannot easily come to terms with this other business of Siegmund. Chasing after him? Daywalking.
Daywalking.
Has she no shame? Why has she done this? Purely for spite, he tells himself. To mock me. To anger me. To show me how little she cares for me. Using sex as a weapon against me. Flaunting her illicit hour with Siegmund. But Siegmund should have had more sense. A man with his ambitions, violating custom? Perhaps Micaela overwhelmed him. She can do that. Even to Siegmund. The bitch! The bitch! He sees her looking at him now, eyes sparkling, mouth quirked in a hostile smile. Daring him to start a fight. Begging him to try to make trouble. No, Micaela, I won't play your game. As she bathes the littles he says quite serenely, “What are you programing for dinner tonight?”

 

At work the next day he decubes a motion picture of 1969—ostensibly a comedy, he imagines, about two California couples
who decide to exchange mates for a night, then find themselves without the courage to go through with it. Jason is wholly drawn into the film, enthralled not only by the scenes of private houses and open countryside but by the sheer alienness of the characters' psychology—their transparent bravado, their intense anguish over a matter as trivial as who will poke what into whom, their ultimate cowardice. It is easier for him to understand the nervous hilarity with which they experiment with what he takes to be cannabis, since the film, after all, dates from the dawn of the psychedelic era. But their sexual attitudes are wondrously grotesque. He watches the film twice, taking copious notes. Why are these people so timid? Do they fear an unwanted pregancy? A social disease? No, the time of the film is after the veneral era, he believes. Is it pleasure itself that they fear? Tribal punishment for violation of the monopolistic concept of twentieth-century marriage? Even if the violation is conducted with absolute secrecy? That must be it, Jason concludes. They dread the laws against extramarital intercourse. The rack and the thumbscrew, the stocks and the ducking stool, so to speak. Hidden eyes watching. The shameful truth destined to out. So they draw back; so they remain locked in the cells of their individual marriages.

Watching their antics, he suddenly sees Micaela in the context of twentieth-century bourgeois morality. Not a timid fool like the four people in the film, of course. Brazen, defiant—bragging about her visit to Siegmund, using sex as a way of diminishing her husband. A very twentieth-century attitude, far removed from the easy acceptance characteristic of the urbmon world. Only someone whose view of sex is tied to its nature as a commodity could have done what Micaela has
done. She has reinvented adultery in a society where the concept has no meaning! His anger rises. Out of 800,000 people in Urban Monad 116, why must he be married to the one sick one? Flirting with her brother because she knows it annoys me, not because she's really interested in topping him. Going to Siegmund instead of waiting for Siegmund to come to her. The slotty barbarian! I'll show her, though. I know how to play her silly sadistic game!

At midday he leaves his cubicle, having done less than five hours' work. The liftshaft takes him to the 787th floor. Outside the apartment of Siegmund and Mamelon Kluver he succumbs to sudden terrible vertigo and nearly falls. He recovers his balance; but his fear is still great, and he is tempted to leave. He argues with himself, trying to purge his timidity. Thinking of the people in the motion picture. Why is he afraid? Mamelon's just another slot. He's had a hundred as attractive as she. But she's clever. Might cut me down with a couple of quick quips. Still, I want her. Denied myself all these years. While Micaela blithely marches off to Siegmund in the afternoon. The bitch. The bitch. Why should I suffer? We aren't supposed to have to feel frustration in the urbmon environment. I want Mamelon, therefore. He pushes open the door.

The Kluver apartment is empty. A baby in the maintenance slot, no other sign of life.

“Mamelon?” he asks. Voice almost cracking.

The screen glows and Mamelon's pre-programed image appears. How beautiful, he thinks. How radiant she is. Smiling. She says, “Hello. I have gone to my afternoon polyrhythm class and will be home at 1500 hours. Urgent messages may be relayed to me in Shanghai Somatic Fulfillment Hall, or to my
husband Siegmund at Louisville Access Nexus. Thank you.” The image fades.

1500 hours. Nearly a two-hour wait. Shall he go?

He craves another glimpse of her loveliness. “Mamelon?” he says.

She reappears on screen. He studies her. The aristocratic features, the dark mysterious eyes. A self-contained woman, undriven by demons. A personality in her own right, not, like Micaela, a frayed neurotic whipped by the psychic winds. “Hello. I have gone to my afternoon polyrhythm class and will be home at 1500 hours. Urgent messages may be relayed—”

He waits.

The apartment, which he has seen before, impresses him anew with its elegance. Rich textures of hangings and draperies, sleek objects of art. Marks of status; soon Siegmund will move up to Louisville, no doubt, and these private possessions are harbingers of his coming elevation to the ruling caste. To ease his impatience Jason toys with the wall panels, inspects the furniture, programs all the scent apertures. He peers at the baby, cooing in its maintenance slot. He paces. The other Kluver child must be two years old by now. Will it come home from the creche soon? He is not eager to entertain a little all afternoon while waiting tautly for Mamelon.

He tunes the screen and watches one of the afternoon abstractions. The flow of forms and colors carries him through another impatient hour. Mamelon will be here soon.

1450. She comes in, holding her little's hand. Jason rises, athrob, dry-throated. She is dressed simply and unglamorously in a cascading blue tunic, knee-length, and gives an unusually disheveled impression. Why not? She has spent the
afternoon in physical exercise; he cannot expect her to be the impeccable, glistening Mamelon of the evenings.

“Jason? Is something wrong? Why—”

“Just a visit,” he says, barely able to recognize his own voice.

“You look half flippo, Jason! Are you ill? Can I get you anything?” She discards her tunic and tosses it, crumpled, under the cleanser. Now she wears only a filmy wrap; he averts his eyes from her blazing nudity. And stares out of the corners as she drops the wrap also, washes, and dons a light housecoat. Turning to him again, she says, “You're acting very strangely.”