Urban Monad: The Complete Stories by Robert Silverberg

Author:Robert Silverberg [Silverberg, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jerry eBooks
Published: 2021-03-13T21:00:00+00:00

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, but 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. Oh, we have plenty of food on this planet, 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 an affair of fang and claw. Actually the ecology of our world is neatly in mesh. We are vital to the farmers—their only market, their only source of manufactured goods. They are vital to us—our only source of food. Reciprocal indispensabilities, eh? And the system works. We could support many billions of additional people. Someday, god blessing, we will.”

The dropshaft, coasting downward through the building, glides into its anvil at the very bottom. Mattern feels the oppressive bulk of the whole Urbmon over him, and is vaguely surprised by the intensity of his distress; he tries not to show that he is uneasy. He says, “The foundation of the structure 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 green turbines whirl. “Most of our power is obtained,” he points out, “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. “What you do with the heat.”

Cheerily Mattern says, “Obviously 800,000 people within one sealed enclosure will produce an immense thermal surplus. Some of this heat is directly radiated from the building through cooling fins along the outer surface. Some is piped down here and used to run the generator. 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.”

They peer at the electrical system for a while. Then Mattern leads the way to the reprocessing plant. Several hundred schoolchildren are touring it; silently the two men join the tour.

The teacher says, “Here’s where the urine comes down, see?” She points to gigantic plastic pipes.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.