This Perfect Day

  Though she had awakened his, crouching before him with her hands on his knees . . .

  Not at the risk of her own, though. Or at least not at as great a risk.

  He went to the Pre-U Museum; went the old way, at night, without touching scanners. It was the same as the one in IND26110. Some of the exhibits were slightly different, standing in different places.

  He found another pre-U map, this one made in 1937, with the same eight blue rectangles pasted to it. Its backing had been cut and crudely taped; someone else had been at it before him. The thought was exciting; someone else had found the islands, was maybe on the way to one at that very moment.

  In another storeroom—this one with only a table and a few cartons and a curtained boothlike machine with rows of small levers—he again held a map to the light, again saw the hidden islands. He traced on paper the nearest one, “Cuba,” off Usa’s southeast tip. And in case he decided to risk seeing Lilac, he traced the shape of Afr and the two islands near it, “Madagascar” to the east and little “Majorca” to the north.

  One of the cartons held books; he found one in Français, Spinoza et ses contemporains. Spinoza and his contemporaries. He looked through it and took it.

  He put the reframed map in its place and browsed through the museum. He took a wrist-strap compass that still seemed to be working, and a bone-handled “razor” and the stone for sharpening it.

  “We’re going to be reassigned soon,” his section head said at lunch one day. “GL4 is taking over our work.”

  “I hope I go to Afr,” he said. “My parents are there.”

  It was a risky thing to say, slightly unmemberlike, but maybe the section head had an indirect influence on who went where.

  His girlfriend was transferred and he went with her to the airport to see her off—and to see whether it was possible to get aboard a plane without Uni’s permission. It didn’t seem to be; the close single line of boarding members would allow no false touching of the scanner, and by the time the last member in the line was touching, a member in orange coveralls was at his side ready to stop the escalator and sink it in its pit. Getting off a plane presented the same difficulty: the last member out touched the scanner while orange-coveralled members looked on; they reversed the escalator, touched, and went aboard with steel containers for the cake and drink dispensers. He might manage to get on a plane waiting in the hangar area —and hide in it, although he didn’t recall any hiding place in planes—but how could he know where it would eventually go?

  Flying was impossible, till Uni said he could fly.

  He claimed the visit to his parents. It was denied.

  New assignments were posted for his section. Two 663’s were sent to Afr, but not he; he was sent to USA36104. During the flight he studied the plane. There was no hiding place. There was only the long seat-filled hull, the bathroom at the front, the cake and drink dispensers at the back, and the TV screens, with an actor playing Marx on all of them.

  USA36104 was in the southeast, close to Usa’s tip and Cuba beyond it. He could go bicycling one Sunday and keep bicycling; go from city to city, sleeping in the parkland between them and going into the cities at night for cakes and drinks; it was twelve hundred kilometers by the MFA map. At ’33037 he could find a boat, or traders coming ashore like the ones in ARG20400 that King had spoken of.

  Lilac, he thought, what else can I do?

  He claimed the visit to Afr again, and again it was denied.

  He began bicycling on Sundays and during the free hour, to ready his legs. He went to the ’36104 Pre-U and found a better compass and a tooth-edged knife he could use for cutting branches in the parkland. He checked the map there; this one’s backing was intact, unopened. He wrote on it, Yes, there are islands where members are free. Fight Uni!

  Early one Sunday morning he set out for Cuba, with the compass and a map he had drawn in one of his pockets. In the bike’s basket, Wei’s Living Wisdom lay on a folded blanket along with a container of coke and a cake; within the blanket was his take-along kit, and in that were his razor and its sharpening stone, a bar of soap, his clippers, two cakes, the knife, a flashlight, cotton, a cartridge of tape, a snapshot of his parents and Papa Jan, and an extra set of coveralls. Under his right sleeve there was a bandage on his arm, though if he were taken for treatment it would almost certainly be found. He wore sunglasses and smiled, pedaling southeast among other cyclists on the path toward ’36081. Cars skimmed past in rhythmic sequence over the roadway that paralleled the path. Pebbles kicked by the cars’ airjets pinged now and then against the metal divider.

  He stopped every hour or so and rested for a few minutes. He ate half a cake and drank some of the coke. He thought about Cuba, and what he would take from ’33037 to trade there. He thought about the women on Cuba. Probably they would be attracted by a new arrival. They would be completely untreated, passionate beyond imagining, as beautiful as Lilac or even more beautiful . . .

  He rode for five hours, and then he turned around and rode back.

  He forced his mind to his assignment. He was the staff 663 in a medicenter’s pediatrics division. It was boring work, endless gene examinations with little variation, and it was the sort of assignment from which one was seldom transferred. He would be there for the rest of his life.

  Every four or five weeks he claimed a visit to his parents in Afr.

  In February of 170 the claim was granted.

  He got off the plane at four in the morning Afr time and went into the waiting room, holding his right elbow and looking uncomfortable, his kit slung on his left shoulder. The member who had got off the plane behind him, and who had helped him up when he had fallen, put her bracelet to a phone for him. “Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” he said, smiling. “Thanks, and enjoy your visit.” To the phone he said, “Anna SG38P2823.” The member went away.

  The screen flashed and patterned as the connection was made, and then it went dark and stayed dark. She’s been transferred, he thought; she’s off the continent. He waited for the phone to tell him. But she said, “Just a second, I can’t—” and was there, blurry-close. She sat back down on the edge of her bed, rubbing her eyes, in pajamas. “Who is it?” she asked. Behind her a member turned over. It was Saturday night. Or was she married?

  “It’s Li RM,” he said.

  “Who?” she asked. She looked at him and leaned closer, blinking. She was more beautiful than he remembered; a little older-looking, beautiful. Were there ever such eyes?

  “Li RM,” he said, making himself be only courteous, memberlike. “Don’t you remember? From IND26110, back in 162.”

  Her brow contracted uneasily for an instant. “Oh yes, of course,” she said, and smiled. “Of course I remember. How are you, Li?”

  “Very well,” he said. “How are you?”

  “Fine,” she said, and stopped smiling.

  “Married?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m glad you called, Li. I want to thank you. You know, for helping me.”

  “Thank Uni,” he said.

  “No, no,” she said. “Thank you. Belatedly.” She smiled again.

  “I’m sorry to call at this hour,” he said. “I’m passing through Afr on a transfer.”

  “That’s all right,” she said. “I’m glad you did.”

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “In ’14509.”

  “That’s where my sister lives.”

  “Really?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “Which building are you in?”

  “P51.”

  “She’s in A-something.”

  The member behind her sat up and she turned and said something to him. He smiled at Chip. She turned and said, “This is Li XE.”

  “Hello,” Chip said, thinking ’14509, P51; ’14509, P51.

  “Hello, brother,” Li XE’s lips said; his voice didn’t reach the phone.

  “Is something wrong with your arm?” Lilac asked.
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  He was still holding it. He let it go. “No,” he said. “I fell getting off the plane.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. She glanced beyond him. “There’s a member waiting,” she said. “We’d better say good-by now.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Good-by. It was nice seeing you. You haven’t changed at all.”

  “Neither have you,” she said. “Good-by, Li.” She rose and reached forward and was gone.

  He tapped off and gave way to the member behind him.

  She was dead; a normal healthy member lying down now beside her boyfriend in ’14509, P51. How could he risk talking to her of anything that wasn’t as normal and healthy as she was? He should spend the day with his parents and fly back to Usa; go bicycling next Sunday and this time not turn back.

  He walked around the waiting room. There was an outline map of Afr on one wall, with lights at the major cities and thin orange lines connecting them. Near the north was ’14510, near where she was. Half the continent from ’71330, where he was. An orange line connected the two lights.

  He watched the flight-schedule signboard flashing and blinking, revising the Sunday 18 Feb schedule. A plane for ’14510 was leaving at 8:20 in the evening, forty minutes before his own flight for USA33100.

  He went to the glass that faced the field and watched members single-filing onto the escalator of the plane he had left. An orange-coveralled member came and waited by the scanner.

  He turned back to the waiting room. It was nearly empty. Two members who had been on the plane with him, a woman holding a sleeping infant and a man carrying two kits, put their wrists and the infant’s wrist to the scanner at the door to the carport—yes, it greened three times—and went out. An orange-coveralled member, on his knees by a water fountain, unscrewed a plate at its base; another pushed a floor polisher to the side of the waiting room, touched a scanner—yes—and pushed the polisher out through a swing-door.

  He thought for a moment, watching the member working at the fountain, and then he crossed the waiting room, touched the carport-door scanner—yes—and went out. A car for ’71334 was waiting, three members in it. He touched the scanner—yes—and got into the car, apologizing to the members for having kept them waiting. The door closed and the car started. He sat with his kit in his lap, thinking.

  When he got to his parents’ apartment he went in quietly, shaved, and then woke them. They were pleased, even happy, to see him.

  The three of them talked and ate breakfast and talked more. They claimed a call to Peace, in Eur, and it was granted; they talked with her and her Karl, her ten-year-old Bob and her eight-year-old Yin. Then, at his suggestion, they went to the Museum of the Family’s Achievements.

  After lunch he slept for three hours and then they railed to the Amusement Gardens. His father joined a volleyball game, and he and his mother sat on a bench and watched. “Are you sick again?” she asked him.

  He looked at her. “No,” he said. “Of course not. I’m fine.”

  She looked closely at him. She was fifty-seven now, gray-haired, her tan skin wrinkled. “You’ve been thinking about something,” she said. “All day.”

  “I’m well,” he said. “Please. You’re my mother; believe me.”

  She looked into his eyes with concern.

  “I’m well,” he said.

  After a moment she said, “All right, Chip.”

  Love for her suddenly filled him; love, and gratitude, and a boylike feeling of oneness with her. He clasped her shoulder and kissed her cheek. “I love you, Suzu,” he said.

  She laughed. “Christ and Wei,” she said, “what a memory you have!”

  “That’s because I’m healthy,” he said. “Remember that, will you? I’m healthy and happy. I want you to remember that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” he said.

  He told them that his plane left at eight. “We’ll say good-by at the carport,” he said. “The airport will be too crowded.”

  His father wanted to come along anyway, but his mother said no, they would stay in ’334; she was tired.

  At seven-thirty he kissed them good-by—his father and then his mother, saying in her ear, “Remember”—and got on line for a car to the ’71330 airport. The scanner, when he touched it, said yes.

  The waiting room was even more crowded than he had hoped it would be. Members in white and yellow and pale blue walked and stood and sat and waited in line, some with kits and some without. A few members in orange moved among them.

  He looked at the signboard; the 8:20 flight for ’14510 would load from lane two. Members were in line there, and beyond the glass, a plane was swinging into place against a rising escalator. Its door opened and a member came out, another behind him.

  Chip made his way through the crowd to the swing-door at the side of the room, false-touched its scanner, and pushed through: into a depot area where crates and cartons stood ranked under white light, like Uni’s memory banks. He un-slung his kit and jammed it between a carton and the wall.

  He walked ahead normally. A cart of steel containers crossed his path, pushed by an orange-coveralled member who glanced at him and nodded.

  He nodded back, kept walking, and watched the member push the cart out through a large open portal onto the floodlit field.

  He went in the direction from which the member had come, into an area where members in orange were putting steel containers on the conveyor of a washing machine and filling other containers with coke and steaming tea from the taps of giant drums. He kept walking.

  He false-touched a scanner and went into a room where coveralls, ordinary ones, hung on hooks, and two members were taking off orange ones. “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello,” they both said.

  He went to a closet door and slid it open; a floor polisher and bottles of green liquid were inside. “Where are the cuvs?” he asked.

  “In there,” one of the members said, nodding at another closet.

  He went to it and opened it. Orange coveralls were on shelves; orange toeguards, pairs of heavy orange gloves.

  “Where did you come from?” the member asked.

  “RUS50937,” he said, taking a pair of coveralls and a pair of toeguards. “We kept the cuvs in there.”

  “They’re supposed to be in there,” the member said, closing white coveralls.

  “I’ve been in Rus,” the other member, a woman, said. “I had two assignments there; first four years and then three years.”

  He took his time putting on the toeguards, finishing as the two members chuted their orange coveralls and went out.

  He pulled the orange coveralls on over his white ones and closed them all the way to his throat. They were heavier than ordinary coveralls and had extra pockets.

  He looked in other closets, found a wrench and a good-sized piece of yellow paplon.

  He went back to where he had left his kit, got it out, and wrapped the paplon around it. The swing-door bumped him. “Sorry,” a member said, coming in. “Did I hurt you?”

  “No,” he said, holding the wrapped kit.

  The orange-coveralled member went on.

  He waited for a moment, watching him, and then he tucked the kit under his left arm and got the wrench from his pocket. He gripped it in his right hand, in a way that he hoped looked natural.

  He followed after the member, then turned and went to the portal that opened onto the field.

  The escalator leaning against the flank of the lane-two plane was empty. A cart, probably the one he had seen pushed out, stood at the foot of it, beside the scanner.

  Another escalator was sinking into the ground, and the plane it had served was on its way toward the runways. There was an 8:10 flight to Chi, he recalled.

  He crouched on one knee, put his kit and the wrench down on concrete, and pretended to have trouble with his toeguard. Everyone in the waiting room would be watching the plane for Chi when it lifted; that was when he would go onto the escalator. Orange legs rustled past
him, a member walking toward the hangars. He took off his toeguard and put it back on, watching the plane pivot . . .

  It raced forward. He gathered his kit and the wrench, stood up, and walked normally. The brightness of the floodlights unnerved him, but he told himself that no one was watching him, everyone was watching the plane. He walked to the escalator, false-touched the scanner—the cart beside it helped, justifying his awkwardness—and stepped onto the upgoing stairs. He clutched his paplon-wrapped kit and the damp-handled wrench as he rose quickly toward the open plane door. He stepped off the escalator and into the plane.

  Two members in orange were busy at the dispensers. They looked at him and he nodded. They nodded back. He went down the aisle toward the bathroom.

  He went into the bathroom, leaving the door open, and put his kit on the floor. He turned to a sink, worked its faucets, and tapped them with the wrench. He got down on his knees and tapped the drainpipe. He opened the jaws of the wrench and put them around the pipe.

  He heard the escalator stop, and then start again. He leaned over and looked out the door. The members were gone.

  He put down the wrench, got up, closed the door, and pulled open the orange coveralls. He took them off, folded them lengthwise, and rolled them into as compact a bundle as he could. Kneeling, he unwrapped his kit and opened it. He squeezed in the coveralls, and folded the yellow paplon and put that in too. He took the toeguards off his sandals, nested them together, and tucked them into one of the kit’s corners. He put the wrench in, stretched the cover tight, and pressed it closed.

  With the kit slung on his shoulder, he washed his hands and face with cold water. His heart was beating quickly but he felt good, excited, alive. He looked in the mirror at his one-green-eyed self. Fight Uni!

  He heard the voices of members coming aboard the plane. He stayed at the sink, wiping his already-dry hands.

  The door opened and a boy of ten or so came in.

  “Hi,” Chip said, wiping his hands. “Did you have a nice day?”

  “Yes,” the boy said.