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brother one year his senior, Jeffrey, the whiner, the stealer, Jeffrey the selfish, Jeffrey theunadaptable, Jeffrey who had had to be given to a chute. For an instant Mattern is sickened and dizzied. He starts to fall, and wildly seizes a doorknob to steady himself.
    The door opens. He goes in. He has never been a nightwalker on this floor before. Five children lie asleep in their cots, and on the sleeping platform are a man and a woman, both younger than he is, both asleep. Mattern removes his clothing and lies down by the woman’s left side. He touches her thigh, then her small cool breast. She opens her eyes and he says, “Hello. Charles Mattern, 799.”
    â€œGina Burke,” she says. “My husband Lenny.”
    Lenny awakens. He sees Mattern, nods, turns over, and returns to sleep. Mattern kisses Gina Burke lightly on the lips. She opens her arms to him. He trembles in his need, and sighs as she receives him. God bless, he thinks. It has been a happy day in 2381, and now it is over.

TWO · 2
    The city of Chicago is bounded on the north by Shanghai and on the south by Edinburgh. Chicago currently has 37,402 people, and is undergoing a mild crisis of population that will have to be alleviated in the customary manner. Its dominant profession is engineering. Above, in Shanghai, they are mostly scholars; below, in Edinburgh, computer men cluster.
    Aurea Holston was born in Chicago in 2368 and has lived there all of her life. Aurea is now fourteen years old. Her husband, Memnon, is nearly fifteen. They have been married almost two years. God has not blessed them with children. Memnon has traveled through the entire building, but Aurea has scarcely ever been out of Chicago. Once she went to visit a fertility expert, an old midwife down in Prague, and once she went up to Louisville, where her powerful uncle, an urban administrator, lives. Many times she and Memnon have been to their friend SiegmundKluver’s apartment in Shanghai. Other than that she has not seen much of the building. Aurea does not really care to travel. She loves her own city very much.
    Chicago is the city that occupies the 721st through the 760th floors of Urban Monad 116. Memnon and Aurea Holston live in a dormitory for childless young couples on the 735th floor. The dorm is currently shared by thirty-one couples, eight above optimum.
    â€œThere’s got to be a thinning soon,” Memnon says. “We’re starting to bulge at the seams. People will have to go.”
    â€œMany?” Aurea asks.
    â€œThree couples here, five there—a slice from each dorm. I suppose Urbmon 116 will lose about two thousand couples. That’s how many went the last time they thinned.”
    Aurea trembles. “Where will they go?”
    â€œThey tell me that the new urbmon is almost ready. Number 158.”
    Her soul floods with pity and terror. “How horrid to be sent somewhere else! Memnon, they
wouldn’t
make us leave here!”
    â€œOf course not. God bless, we’re valuable people! I have a skill rating of—”
    â€œBut we have no children. That kind goes first, doesn’t it?”
    â€œGod will bless us soon.” Memnon takes her in his arms. He is strong and tall and lean, with rippling scarlet hair and a taut, solemn expression. Aurea feels weak and fragile beside him, although in fact she is sturdy and supple. Her crown of golden hair is deepening in tone. Her eyes are pale green. Her breasts are full and her hips are broad. Siegmund Kluver says she looks like a goddess of motherhood. Most men desire herand nightwalkers come frequently to share her sleeping platform. Yet she remains barren. Lately she has become quite sensitive about that. The irony of her wasted voluptuousness is not lost on her.
    Memnon releases her and she walks wearily through the dormitory. It is a long, narrow room that makes a right-angle bend around the central service core of the urbmon. Its walls glow with changing