This Perfect Day (17 page)

Chip put the card into his pocket. “We don’t meet at all,” he said.

“Oh come on,” King said, “I know what’s been going on. What do you think I am, a dead body?”

“Nothing’s been going on,” Chip said. “She came to the museum once and I gave her the word lists for Français, that’s all.”

“I can just imagine,” King said. “Get out of here, will you? I need my sleep.” He lay back on the bed, put his legs in under the blanket, and spread the blanket up over his chest.

“Nothing’s been going on,” Chip said. “She feels that she owes you too much.”

With his eyes closed, King said, “But we’ll soon take care of that, won’t we?”

Chip said nothing for a moment, and then he said, “You should have told us. About Americanova.”

“Americanueva,” King said, and then said nothing more. He lay with his eyes closed, his blanketed chest rising and falling rapidly.

Chip went to the door and tapped off the light. “I’ll see you tomorrow night,” he said.

“I hope you get there,” King said. “The two of you. To Americanueva. You deserve it.”

Chip opened the door and went out.

King’s bitterness depressed him, but after he had been walking for fifteen minutes or so he began to feel cheerful and optimistic, and elated with the results of his night of extra clarity. His right-hand pocket was crisp with a map of Stability Bay and the Andaman Islands, the names and locations of the other incurable strongholds, and Lilac’s red-printed nameber card. Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei, what would he be capable of with no treatments at all?

He took the card out and read it as he walked.
Anna SG38P2823.
He would call her after the first chime and arrange to meet her—during the free hour that evening. Anna SG. Not she, not an “Anna”; a Lilac she was, fragrant, delicate, beautiful. (Who had picked the name, she or King? Incredible. The hater thought they had been meeting and fucking. If only!)
Thirty-eight
P, twenty
-eight
twenty
-three.
He walked to the swing of the nameber for a while, then realized he was walking too briskly and slowed himself, pocketing the card again.

He would be back in his building before the first chime, would shower, change, call Lilac, eat (he was starving), then get his treatment at 8:05 and keep his 8:15 dental appointment (“It feels much better today, sister. The throbbing’s almost completely gone”). The treatment would dull him, fight it, but not so much that he wouldn’t be able to tell Lilac about the Andaman Islands and start planning with her—and with Snowflake and Sparrow if they were interested—how they would try to get there. Snowflake would probably choose to stay. He hoped so; it would simplify things tremendously. Yes, Snowflake would stay with King, laugh and smoke and fuck with him, and play that mechanical paddle-ball game. And he and Lilac would go.

Anna SG,
thirty
-eight P, twenty-
eight
twenty-
three
. . .

He got to the building at 6:22. Two up-early members were coming down his hallway, one naked, one dressed. He smiled and said, “Good morning, sisters.”

“Good morning,” they said, smiling back.

He went into his room, tapped on the light, and Bob was on the bed, lifting himself up on his elbows and blinking at him. His telecomp lay open on the floor, its blue and amber lights gleaming.

H
E CLOSED
the door behind him.

Bob swung his legs off the bed and sat up, looking at him anxiously. His coveralls were partway open. “Where’ve you been, Li?” he asked.

“In the lounge,” Chip said. “I went back there after Photography Club—I’d left my pen there—and I suddenly got very tired. From being late on my treatment, I guess. I sat down to rest and”—he smiled—“all of a sudden it’s morning.”

Bob looked at him, still anxiously, and after a moment shook his head. “I checked the lounge,” he said. “And Mary KK’s room, and the gym, and the bottom of the pool.”

“You must have missed me,” Chip said. “I was in the corner behind—”

“I
checked
the
lounge,
Li,” Bob said. He pressed closed his coveralls and shook his head despairingly.

Chip moved from the door, walked a slow away-from-Bob curve toward the bathroom. “I’ve got to ure,” he said.

He went into the bathroom and opened his coveralls and urined, trying to find the extra mental clarity he had had before, trying to think of an explanation that would satisfy Bob or at worst seem like only a one-night aberration. Why had Bob come there anyway? How long had he been there?

“I called at eleven-thirty,” Bob said, “and there was no answer. Where have you been between then and now?”

He closed his coveralls. “I was walking around,” he said— loudly, to reach Bob in the room.

“Without touching scanners?” Bob said.

Christ and Wei.

“I must have forgot,” he said, and turned on the water and rinsed his fingers. “It’s this toothache,” he said. “It’s gotten worse. The whole side of my head aches.” He wiped his fingers, looking in the mirror at Bob on the bed looking back at him. “It was keeping me awake,” he said, “so I went out and walked around. I told you that story about the lounge because I know I should have gone right down to the—”

“It was keeping
me
awake too,” Bob said, “that ‘toothache’ of yours. I saw you during TV and you looked tense and abnormal. So finally I pulled the nameber of the dental-appointment clerk. You were offered a Friday appointment but you said your treatment was on Saturday.”

Chip put the towel down and turned and stood facing Bob in the doorway.

The first chime sounded, and “One Mighty Family” began to play.

Bob said, “It was all an act, wasn’t it, Li—the slowdown last spring, the sleepiness and overtreatedness.”

After a moment Chip nodded.

“Oh, brother,” Bob said. “What have you been doing?”

Chip didn’t say anything.

“Oh, brother,” Bob said, and bent over and switched his telecomp off. He closed its cover and snapped the catches. “Are you going to forgive me?” he asked. He stood the telecomp on end and steadied the handle between the fingers of both hands, trying to get it to stay standing up. “I’ll tell you something funny,” he said. “I have a streak of vanity in me. I do. Correction, I did. I thought I was one of the two or three best advisers in the house. In the house, hate; in the
city.
Alert observant,
sensitive
. . . ‘Comes the rude awakening.’” He had the handle standing, and slapped it down and smiled drily at Chip. “So you’re not the only sick one,” he said, “if that’s any consolation.”

“I’m not sick, Bob,” Chip said. “I’m healthier than I’ve been in my entire life.”

Still smiling, Bob said, “That’s kind of contrary to the evidence, isn’t it?” He picked up the telecomp and stood up.

“You can’t see the evidence,” Chip said. “You’ve been dulled by your treatments.”

Bob beckoned with his head and moved toward the door. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go get you fixed up.”

Chip stayed where he was. Bob opened the door and stopped, looking back.

Chip said, “I’m perfectly healthy.”

Bob held out his hand sympathetically. “Come on, Li,” he said.

After a moment Chip went to him. Bob took his arm and they went out into the hallway. Doors were open and members were about, talking quietly, walking. Four or five were gathered at the bulletin board, reading the day’s notices.

“Bob,” Chip said, “I want you to listen to what I’m going to say to you.”

“Don’t I always listen?” Bob said.

“I want you to try to open your mind,” Chip said. “Because you’re not a stupid member, you’re bright, and you’re good-hearted and you want to help me.”

Mary KK came toward them from the escalators, holding a pack of coveralls with a bar of soap on top of it. She smiled and said, “Hi,” and to Chip, “Where were you?”

“He was in the lounge,” Bob said.

“In the middle of the night?” Mary said.

Chip nodded and Bob said, “Yes,” and they went on to the escalators, Bob keeping his hand lightly on Chip’s arm.

They rode down.

“I know you think your mind is open already,” Chip said, “but will you try to open it even more, to listen and think for a few minutes as if I’m just as healthy as I say I am?”

“All right, Li, I will,” Bob said.

“Bob,” Chip said, “we’re not free. None of us is. Not one member of the Family.”

“How can I listen as if you’re healthy,” Bob said, “when you say something like that? Of course we’re free. We’re free of war and want and hunger, free of crime, violence, aggressiveness, sel—”

“Yes, yes, we’re free
of
things,” Chip said, “but we’re not free to
do
things. Don’t you see that, Bob? Being ‘free of really has nothing to do with being free at all.”

Bob frowned. “Being free to do what?” he said.

They stepped off the escalator and started around toward the next one. “To choose our own classifications,” Chip said, “to have children when we want, to go where we want and do what we want, to refuse treatments if we want . . .”

Bob said nothing.

They stepped onto the next escalator. “Treatments really do dull us, Bob,” Chip said. “I know that from my own experience. There are things in them that ‘make us humble, make us good’—like in the rhyme, you know? I’ve been undertreated for half a year now”—the second chime sounded—“and I’m more awake and alive than I’ve
ever
been. I think more clearly and feel more deeply. I fuck four or five times a week, would you believe that?”

“No,” Bob said, looking at his telecomp riding on the handrail.

“It’s true,” Chip said. “You’re more sure than ever that I’m sick now, aren’t you. Love of Family, I’m not. There are others like me, thousands, maybe millions. There are islands all over the world, there may be cities on the mainland too”—they were walking around to the next escalator—“where people live in true freedom. I’ve got a list of the islands right here in my pocket. They’re not on maps because Uni doesn’t want us to know about them, because they’re
defended
against the Family and the people there won’t
submit
to being treated. Now, you want to help me, don’t you? To
really
help me?”

They stepped onto the next escalator. Bob looked grievingly at him. “Christ and Wei,” he said, “can you doubt it, brother?”

“All right, then,” Chip said, “this is what I’d like you to do for me: when we get to the treatment room tell Uni that I’m okay, that I fell asleep in the lounge the way I told you. Don’t input anything about my not touching scanners or the way I made up the toothache. Let me get just the treatment I would have got yesterday, all right?”

“And that would be helping you?” Bob said.

“Yes, it would,” Chip said. “I know you don’t think so, but I ask you as my brother and my friend to—to respect what I think and feel. I’ll get away to one of these islands somehow and I won’t harm the Family in any way. What the Family has given me, I’ve given back to it in the work I’ve done, and I didn’t ask for it in the first place, and I had no choice about accepting it.”

They walked around to the next escalator.

“All right,” Bob said when they were riding down, “I listened to
you,
Li; now
you
listen to
me.”
His hand above Chip’s elbow tightened slightly. “You’re very, very sick,” he said, “and it’s entirely my fault and I feel miserable about it. There are no islands that aren’t on maps; and treatments don’t dull us; and if we had the kind of ‘freedom’ you’re thinking about we’d have disorder and overpopulation and want and crime and war. Yes, I’m going to help you, brother. I’m going to tell Uni everything, and you’ll be cured and you’ll thank me.

They walked around to the next escalator and stepped onto it.
Third floor—Medicenter,
the sign at the bottom said. A red-cross-coveralled member riding toward them on the up escalator smiled and said, “Good morning, Bob.”

Bob nodded to him.

Chip said, “I don’t
want
to be cured.”

“That’s proof that you need to be,” Bob said. “Relax and trust me, Li. No, why the hate should you? Trust Uni, then; will you do that? Trust the members who programmed Uni.”

After a moment Chip said, “All right, I will.”

“I feel awful,” Bob said, and Chip turned to him and struck away his hand. Bob looked at him, startled, and Chip put both hands at Bob’s back and swept him forward. Turning with the movement, he grasped the handrail—hearing Bob tumble, his telecomp clatter—and climbed out onto the up-moving central incline. It wasn’t moving once he was on it; he crept sideways, clinging with fingers and knees to metal ridges; crept sideways to the up-escalator handrail, caught it, and flung himself over and down into the sharp-staired trench of humming metal. He got quickly to his feet—“Stop him!” Bob shouted below—and ran up the upgoing steps taking two in each stride. The red-crossed member at the top, off the escalator, turned. “What are you—” and Chip took him by the shoulders—elderly wide-eyed member—and swung him aside and pushed him away.

He ran down the hallway. “Stop him!” someone shouted, and other members: “Catch that member!” “He’s sick; stop him!”

Ahead was the dining hall, members on line turning to look. He shouted, “Stop that member!” running at them and pointing; “Stop him!” and ran past them. “Sick member in there!” he said, pushing past the ones at the doorway, past the scanner. “Needs help in there! Quickly!”

In the dining hall he looked, and ran to the side, through a swing-door to the behind-the-dispensers section. He slowed, walked quickly, trying to still his breathing, past members loading stacks of cakes between vertical tracks, members looking down at him while dumping tea powder into steel drums. A cart filled with boxes marked
Napkins;
he took the handle of it, swung it around, and pushed it before him, past two members standing eating, two more gathering cakes from a broken carton.

Ahead was a door marked
Exit
, the door to one of the corner stairways. He pushed the cart toward it, hearing raised voices behind him. He rammed the cart against the door, butted it open, and went with the cart out onto the landing; closed the door and brought the cart handle back against it. He backed down two steps and pulled the cart sideways to him, wedged it tight between the door and the stair-rail post with one black wheel turning in air.