Nova 1 Read online

  Here is a happy day in 2381. The morning sun is high enough to reach the uppermost fifty stories of Urban Monad 116. Soon the building’s entire eastern face will glitter like the sea at dawn. Charles Mattern’s window, activated by the dawn’s early photons, deopaques. He stirs. God bless, he thinks. His wife stirs. His four children, who have been up for hours, now can officially begin the day. They rise and parade around the bedroom, singing:

  “God bless, God bless, God bless!

  God bless us every one!

  God bless Daddo,

  God bless Mommo,

  God bless you and me!

  God bless us all, the short and tall,

  Give us fer-til-i-teer!”

  They rush toward their parents’ sleeping platform. Mattern rises and embraces them. Indra is eight, Sandor is seven, Marx is five, Cleo is three. It is Charles Mattern’s secret shame that his family is so small. Can a man with only four children truly be said to have reverence for life? But Principessa’s womb no longer flowers. The medics have said she will not bear again. At twenty-seven she is sterile. Mattern is thinking of taking in a second woman. He longs to hear the yowls of an infant again; in any case, a man must do his duty to God.

  Sandor says, “Daddo, Siegmund is still here. He came in the middle of the night to be with Mommo.”

  The child points. Mattern sees. On Principessa’s side of the sleeping platform, curled against the inflation pedal, lies fourteen-year-old Siegmund Kluver, who had entered the Mattern home several hours after midnight to exercise his rights of propinquity. Siegmund is fond of older women. Now he snores; he has had a good workout. Mattern nudges him. “Siegmund? Siegmund, it’s morning!” The young man’s eyes open. He smiles at Mattern, sits up, reaches for his wrap. He is quite handsome. He lives on the 787th floor and already has one child and another on the way.

  “Sorry,” says Siegmund. “I overslept. Principessa really drains me. A savage, she is!”

  “Yes, she’s quite passionate,” Mattern agrees. So is Siegmund’s wife, Mattern has heard. When she is a little older, Mattern plans to try her. Next spring, perhaps.

  Siegmund sticks his head under the molecular cleanser. Principessa now has risen from bed. She kicks the pedal and the platform deflates swiftly. She begins to program breakfast. Indra switches on the screen. The wall blossoms with light and color. “Good morning,” says the screen. “The external temperature, if anybody’s interested, is 28°. Today’s population figures at Urbmon 116 are 881,115, which is +102 since yesterday and + 14,187 since the first of the year. God bless, but we’re slowing down! Across the way at Urbmon 117 they added 131 since yesterday, including quads for Mrs. Hula Jabotinsky. She’s eighteen and has had seven previous. A servant of God, isn’t she? The time is now 0620. In exactly forty minutes Urbmon 116 will be honored by the presence of Nicanor Gortman, the visiting socio-computator from Hell, who can be recognized by his outbuilding costume in crimson and ultraviolet. Dr. Gortman will be the guest of the Charles Matterns of the 799th floor. Of course we’ll treat him with the same friendly blessmanship we show one another. God bless Nicanor Gortman! Turning now to news from the lower levels of Urbmon 116—”

  Principessa says, “Hear that, children? Well have a guest, and we must be blessworthy toward him. Come and eat.”

  When he has cleansed himself, dressed, and eaten, Charles Mattern goes to the thousandth-floor landing stage to meet Nicanor Gortman. Mattern passes the floors on which his brothers and sisters and their families live. Three brothers, three sisters. Four of them younger than he, two older. One brother died, unpleasantly, young. Jeffrey. Mattern rarely thinks of Jeffrey. He rises through the building to the summit. Gortman has been touring the tropics and now is going to visit a typical urban monad in the temperate zone. Mattern is honored to have been named the official host. He steps out on the landing stage, which is at the very tip of Urbmon 116. A forcefield shields him from the fierce winds that sweep the lofty spire. He looks to his left and sees the western face of Urban Monad 115 still in darkness. To his right, Urbmon 11 y’s eastern windows sparkle. Bless Mrs. Hula Jabotinsky and her eleven littles, Mattern thinks. Mattern can see other urbmons in the row, stretching on and on toward the horizon, towers of superstressed concrete three kilometers high, tapering ever so gracefully. It is as always a thrilling sight. God bless, he thinks. God bless, God bless, God bless!

  He hears a cheerful hum of rotors. A quickboat is landing. Out steps a tall, sturdy man dressed in high-spectrum garb. He must be the visiting sociocomputator from Hell.

  “Nicanor Gortman?” Mattern asks.

  “Bless God. Charles Mattern?”

  “God bless, yes. Come.”

  Hell is one of the eleven cities of Venus, which man has reshaped to suit himself. Gortman has never been on Earth before. He speaks in a slow, stolid way, no lilt in his voice at all; the inflection reminds Mattern of the way they talk in Urbmon 84, which Mattern once visited on a field trip. He has read Gortman’s papers: solid stuff, closely reasoned. “I particularly liked ‘Dynamics of the Hunting Ethic’,” Mattern tells him while they are in the dropshaft. “Remarkable. A revelation.”

  “You really mean that?” Gortman asks, flattered.

  “Of course. I try to keep up with a lot of the Venusian journals. It’s so fascinatingly alien to read about hunting wild animals.”

  “There are none on Earth?”

  “God bless, no,” Mattern says. “We couldn’t allow that! But I love reading about such a different way of life as you have.”

  “It is escape literature for you?” asks Gortman.

  Mattern looks at him strangely. “I don’t understand the reference.”

  “What you read to make life on Earth more bearable for yourself.”

  “Oh, no. No. Life on Earth is quite bearable, let me assure you. It’s what I read for amusement. And to obtain a necessary parallax, you know, for my own work,” says Mattern. They have reached the 799th level. “Let me show you my home first.” He steps from the dropshaft and beckons to Gortman. “This is Shanghai. I mean, that’s what we call this block of forty floors, from 761 to 800. I’m in the next-to-top level of Shanghai, which is a mark of my professional status. We’ve got twenty-five cities altogether in Urbmon 116. Reykjavik’s on the bottom and Louisville’s on the top.”

  “What determines the names?”

  “Citizen vote. Shanghai used to be Calcutta, which I personally prefer, but a little bunch of malcontents on the 775th floor rammed a referendum through in ’75.”

  “I thought you had no malcontents in the urban monads,” Gortman says,

  Mattern smiles. “Not in the usual sense. But we allow certain conflicts to exist. Man wouldn’t be man without conflicts, even here!”

  They are walking down the eastbound corridor toward Mattern’s home. It is now 0710, and children are streaming from their homes in groups of three and four, rushing to get to school. Mattern waves to them. They sing as they run along. Mattern says, “We average 6.2 children per family on this floor. It’s one of the lowest figures in the building, I have to admit. High-status people don’t seem to breed well. They’ve got a floor in Prague—I think it’s 117—that averages 9.9 per family! Isn’t that glorious?”

  “You are speaking with irony?” Gortman asks.

  “Not at all.” Mattern feels an uptake of tension. “We like children. We approve of breeding. Surely you realized that before you set out on this tour of—”

  “Yes, yes,” says Gortman, hastily. “I was aware of the general cultural dynamic. But I thought perhaps your own attitude—”

  “Ran counter to norm? Just because I have a scholar’s detachment, you shouldn’t assume that I disapprove in any way of my cultural matrix.”

  “I regret the implication. And please don’t think I show disapproval of your matrix either, although your world is quite strange to me. Bless God, let us not have strife, Charles.”

  “God bless, Nicanor. I didn’t mean to seem touchy.”<
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  They smile. Mattern is dismayed by his show of irritation. Gortman says, “What is the population of the 799th floor?”

  “805, last I heard.”

  “And of Shanghai?”

  “About 33,000.”

  “And of Urbmon 116?”

  “881,000.”

  “And there are fifty urban monads in this constellation of houses.”

  “Yes.”

  “Making some 40,000,000 people,” Gortman says. “Or somewhat more than the entire human population of Venus. Remarkable!”

  “And this isn’t the biggest constellation, not by any means!” Mattern’s voice rings with pride. “Sansan is bigger, and so is Boswash! And there are several bigger ones in Europe—Berpar, Wienbud, I think two others. With more being planned!”

  “A global population of—”

  “—75,000,000,000,” Mattern cries. “God bless! There’s never been anything like it! No one goes hungry! Everybody happy! Plenty of open space! God’s been good to us, Nicanor!” He pauses before a door labeled 79915. “Here’s my home. What I have is yours, dear guest.” They go in.

  Mattern’s home is quite adequate. He has nearly ninety square meters of floor space. The sleeping platform deflates; the children’s cots retract; the furniture can easily be moved to provide play area. Most of the room, in fact, is empty. The screen and the data terminal occupy two-dimensional areas of wall that once had to be taken up by television sets, bookcases, desks, file drawers, and other encumbrances. It is an airy, spacious environment, particularly for a family of just six.

  The children have not yet left for school; Principessa has held them back, to meet the guest, and so they are restless. As Mattern enters, Sandor and Indra are struggling over a cherished toy, the dream-stirrer. Mattern is astounded. Conflict in the home? Silently, so their mother will not notice, they fight. Sandor hammers his shoes into his sister’s shins. Indra, wincing, claws her brother’s cheek. “God bless,” Mattern says sharply. “Somebody wants to go down the chute, eh?” The children gasp. The toy drops. Everyone stands at attention. Principessa looks up, brushing a lock of dark hair from her eyes; she has been busy with the youngest child and has not even heard them come in.

  Mattern says, “Conflict sterilizes. Apologize to each other.”

  Indra and Sandor kiss and smile. Meekly Indra picks up the toy and hands it to Mattern, who gives it to his younger son Marx. They are all staring now at the guest. Mattern says to him, “What I have is yours, friend.” He makes introductions. Wife, children. The scene of conflict has unnerved him a little, but he is relieved when Gortman produces four small boxes and distributes them to the children. Toys. A blessful gesture. Mattern points to the deflated sleeping platform. “This is where we sleep. There’s ample room for three. We wash at the cleanser, here. Do you like privacy when voiding waste matter?”

  “Please, yes.”

  “You press this button for the privacy shield. We excrete in this. Urine here, feces here. Everything is reprocessed, you understand. We’re a thrifty folk in the urbmons.”

  “Of course,” Gortman says.

  Principessa says, “Do you prefer that we use the shield when we excrete? I understand some outbuilding people do.”

  “I would not want to impose my customs on you,” says Gortman.

  Smiling, Mattern says, “We’re a post-privacy culture, of course. But it wouldn’t be any trouble for us to press the button if—” He falters. “There’s no general nudity taboo on Venus, is there? I mean, we have only this one room, and—”

  “I am adaptable,” Gortman insists. “A trained sociocomputator must be a cultural relativist, of course!”

  “Of course,” Mattern agrees, and he laughs nervously. Principessa excuses herself from the conversation and sends the children, still clutching their new toys, off to school.

  Mattern says, “Forgive me for being overobvious, but I must bring up the matter of your sexual prerogatives. We three will share a single platform. My wife is available to you, as am I. Avoidance of frustration, you see, is the primary rule of a society such as ours. And do you know our custom of nightwalking?”

  “I’m afraid I—”

  “Doors are not locked in Urbmon 116. We have no personal property worth mentioning, and we all are socially adjusted. At night it is quite proper to enter other homes. We exchange partners in this way all the time; usually wives stay home and husbands migrate, though not necessarily. Each of us has access at any time to any other adult member of our community.”

  “Strange,” says Gortman. “I’d think that in a society where there are so many people, an exaggerated respect for privacy would develop, not a communal freedom.”

  “In the beginning we had many notions of privacy. They were allowed to erode, God bless! Avoidance of frustration must be our goal, otherwise impossible tensions develop. And privacy is frustration.”

  “So you can go into any room in this whole gigantic building and sleep with—”

  “Not the whole building,” Mattern interrupts. “Only Shanghai. We frown on nightwalking beyond one’s own city.” He chuckles. “We do impose a few little restrictions on ourselves, so that our freedoms don’t pall.”

  Gortman looks at Principessa. She wears a loinband and a metallic cup over her left breast. She is slender but voluptuously constructed, and even though her childbearing days are over she has not lost the sensual glow of young womanhood. Mattern is proud of her, despite everything.

  Mattern says, “Shall we begin our tour of the building?”

  They go out. Gortman bows gracefully to Principessa as they leave. In the corridor, the visitor says, “Your family is smaller than the norm, I see.”

  It is an excruciatingly impolite statement, but Mattern is tolerant of his guests faux pas. Mildly he replies, “We would have had more children, but my wife’s fertility had to be terminated surgically. It was a great tragedy for us.”

  “You have always valued large familes here?”

  “We value life. To create new life is the highest virtue. To prevent life from coming into being is the darkest sin. We all love our big bustling world. Does it seem unendurable to you? Do we seem unhappy?”

  “You seem surprisingly well adjusted,” Gortman says. “Considering that—” He stops.

  “Go on.”

  “Considering that there are so many of you. And that you spend your whole lives inside a single colossal building. You never do go out, do you?”

  “Most of us never do,” Mattern admits. “I have traveled, of course—a sociocomputator needs perspective, obviously. But Principessa has never been below the 350th floor. Why should she go anywhere? The secret of our happiness is to create self-contained villages of five or six floors within the cities of forty floors within the urbmons of a thousand floors. We have no sensation of being overcrowded or cramped. We know our neighbors; we have hundreds of dear friends; we are kind and loyal and blessworthy to one another.”

  “And everybody remains happy forever?”

  “Nearly everybody.”

  “Who are the exceptions?” Gortman asks.

  “The flippos,” says Mattern. “We endeavor to minimize the frictions of living in such an environment; as you see, we never refuse a reasonable request, we never deny one another anything. But sometimes there are those who abruptly can no longer abide by our principles. They flip; they thwart others; they rebel. It is quite sad.”

  “What do you do with flippos?”

  “We remove them, of course,” Mattern says. He smiles, and they enter the dropshaft once again.

  Mattern has been authorized to show Gortman the entire urbmon, a tour that will take several days. He is a little apprehensive; he is not as familiar with some parts of the structure as a guide should be. But he will do his best.

  “The building,” he says, “is made of superstressed concrete. It is constructed about a central service core two hundred meters square. Originally, the plan was to have fifty families per floor, b
ut we average about 120 today, and the old apartments have all been subdivided into single-room occupancies. We are wholly self-sufficient, with our own schools, hospitals, sports arenas, houses of worship, and theaters.”

  “Food?”

  “We produce none, of course. But we have contractual access to the agricultural communes. I’m sure you’ve seen that nearly nine tenths of the land area of this continent is used for food-production; and then there are the marine farms. There’s plenty of food, now that we no longer waste space by spreading out horizontally over good land.”

  “But aren’t you at the mercy of the food-producing communes?”

  “When were city-dwellers not at the mercy of farmers?” Mattern asks. “But you seem to regard life on Earth as a thing of fang and claw. We are vital to them—their only market. They are vital to us—our only source of food. Also we provide necessary services to them, such as repair of their machines. The ecology of this planet is neatly in mesh. We can support many billions of additional people. Someday, God blessing, we will.”

  The dropshaft, coasting downward through the building, glides into its anvil at the bottom. Mattern feels the oppressive bulk of the whole urbmon over him, and tries not to show his uneasiness. He says, “The foundation of the building is four hundred meters deep. We are now at the lowest level. Here we generate our power.” They cross a catwalk and peer into an immense generating room, forty meters from floor to ceiling, in which sleek turbines whirl. “Most of our power is obtained,” he explains, “through combustion of compacted solid refuse. We burn everything we don’t need, and sell the residue as fertilizer. We have auxiliary generators that work on accumulated body heat, also.”

  “I was wondering about that,” Gortman murmurs.

  Cheerily Mattern says, “Obviously 800,000 people within one sealed enclosure will produce an immense quantity of heat. Some of this is directly radiated from the building through cooling fins along the outer surface. Some is piped down here and used to run the generators. In winter, of course, we pump it evenly through the building to maintain temperature. The rest of the excess heat is used in water purification and similar things.”