This Perfect Day

  He stood up and found one of his blankets, shook it out and spread it over her up to her arms. “Are you all right?” he asked, crouching beside her.

  She didn’t say anything.

  He found his flashlight and looked at his palm. Blood was running from an oval of bright wounds. “Christ and Wei,” he said. He poured water over it, washed it with soap, and dried it. He looked for the first-aid kit and couldn’t find it. “Did you take the first-aid kit?” he asked.

  She didn’t say anything.

  Holding his hand up, he found her kit on the ground and opened it and got out the first-aid kit. He sat on a stone and put the kit in his lap and the flashlight on another stone alongside.

  “Animal,” she said.

  “I don’t bite,” he said. “And I also don’t try to kill. Christ and Wei, you thought the gun was working.” He sprayed healer on his palm; a thin coat and then a thicker one.

  “Cochon,” she said.

  “Oh come on,” he said, “don’t start that again.”

  He unwrapped a bandage and heard her getting up, heard her coveralls rustling as she took them off. She came over nude and took the flashlight and went to her kit; took out soap, a towel, and coveralls, and went to the back of the place, where he had piled stones between the spurs, making steps leading out toward the stream.

  He put the bandage on in the dark and then found her flashlight on the ground near her bike. He put the bike with his, gathered blankets and made the two usual sleeping places, put her kit by hers, and picked up the gun and the pieces of her coveralls. He put the gun in his kit.

  The moon slid over one of the spurs behind leaves that were black and motionless.

  She didn’t come back and he began to worry that she had gone away on foot.

  Finally, though, she came. She put the soap and towel into her kit and switched off the flashlight and got between her blankets.

  “I got excited having you under me that way,” he said. “I’ve always wanted you, and these last few weeks have been just about unbearable. You know I love you, don’t you?”

  “I’m going alone,” she said.

  “When we get to Majorca,” he said, “if we get there, you can do what you want; but until we get there we’re staying together. That’s it, Lilac.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  He woke hearing strange sounds, squeals and pained whimpers. He sat up and shone the light on her; her hand was over her mouth, and tears were running down her temple from her closed eyes.

  He hurried to her and crouched beside her, touching her head. “Oh Lilac, don’t,” he said. “Don’t cry, Lilac, please don’t.” She was doing it, he thought, because he had hurt her, maybe internally.

  She kept crying.

  “Oh Lilac, I’m sorry!” he said. “I’m sorry, love! Oh Christ and Wei, I wish the gun had been working!”

  She shook her head, holding her mouth.

  “Isn’t that why you’re crying?” he said. “Because I hurt you? Then why? If you don’t want to go with me, you don’t really have to.”

  She shook her head again and kept crying.

  He didn’t know what to do. He stayed beside her, caressing her head and asking her why she was crying and telling her not to, and then he got his blankets, spread them alongside her, and lay down and turned her to him and held her. She kept crying, and he woke up and she was looking at him, lying on her side with her head propped on her hand. “It doesn’t make sense for us to go separately,” she said, “so we’ll stay together.”

  He tried to recall what they had said before sleeping. As far as he could remember, nothing; she had been crying. “All right,” he said, confused.

  “I feel awful about the gun,” she said. “How could I have done that? I was sure you had lied to King.”

  “I feel awful about what I did,” he said.

  “Don’t,” she said. “I don’t blame you. It was perfectly natural. How’s your hand?”

  He took it out from under the blanket and flexed it; it hurt badly. “Not bad,” he said.

  She took it in her hand and looked at the bandage. “Did you spray it?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  She looked at him, still holding his hand. Her eyes were large and brown and morning-bright. “Did you really start for one of the islands and turn back?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  She smiled. “You’re tres fou,” she said.

  “No I’m not,” he said.

  “You are,” she said, and looked at his hand again. She took it to her lips and kissed his fingertips one by one.

  4

  THEY DIDN’T GET STARTED until mid-morning, and then they rode quickly for a long while to make up for their laxness. It was an odd day, hazy and heavy-aired, the sky greenish gray and the sun a white disc that could be looked at with fully opened eyes. It was a freak of climate control; Lilac remembered a similar day in Chi when she was twelve or thirteen. (“Is that where you were born?” “No, I was born in Mex.” “You were? I was too!”) There were no shadows, and bikes coming toward them seemed to ride above the ground like cars. Members glanced at the sky apprehensively, and coming nearer, nodded without smiling.

  When they were sitting on grass, sharing a container of coke, Chip said, “We’d better go slowly from now on. There are liable to be scanners in the path and we want to be able to pick the right moment for passing them.”

  “Scanners because of us?” she said.

  “Not necessarily,” he said. “Just because it’s the city nearest to one of the islands. Wouldn’t you set up extra safeguards if you were Uni?”

  He wasn’t as much afraid of scanners as he was that a medical team might be waiting ahead.

  “What if there are members watching for us?” she said. “Advisers or doctors, with pictures of us.”

  “It’s not very likely after all this time,” he said. “We’ll have to take our chances. I’ve got the gun, and the knife too.” He touched his pocket.

  After a moment she said, “Would you use it?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I think so.”

  “I hope we don’t have to,” she said.

  “So do I.”

  “You’d better put your sunglasses on,” she said.

  “Today?” He looked at the sky.

  “Because of your eye.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Of course.” He took his glasses out and put them on, looked at her and smiled. “There’s not much that you can do,” he said, “except exhale.”

  “What do you mean?” she said, then flushed and said, “They’re not noticeable when I’m dressed.”

  “First thing I saw when I looked at you,” he said. “First things I saw.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said. “You’re lying. You are. Aren’t you?”

  He laughed and poked her on the chin.

  They rode slowly. There were no scanners in the path. No medical team stopped them.

  All the bicycles in the area were new ones, but nobody remarked on their old ones.

  By late afternoon they were in ’12082. They rode to the west of the city, smelling the sea, watching the path ahead carefully.

  They left their bikes in parkland and walked back to a canteen where there were steps leading down to the beach. The sea was far below them, spreading away smooth and blue, away and away into greenish-gray haze.

  “Those members didn’t touch,” a child said.

  Lilac’s hand tightened on Chip’s. “Keep going,” he said. They walked down concrete steps jutting from rough cliff-face.

  “Say, you there!” a member called, a man. “You two members!”

  Chip squeezed Lilac’s hand and they turned around. The member was standing behind the scanner at the top of the steps, holding the hand of a naked girl of five or six. She scratched her head with a red shovel, looking at them.

  “Did you touch just now?” the member asked.

  They looked at each other and at the member. “Of co
urse we did,” Chip said. “Yes, of course,” Lilac said.

  “It didn’t say yes,” the girl said.

  “It did, sister,” Chip said gravely. “If it hadn’t we wouldn’t have gone on, would we?” He looked at the member and let a smile show. The member bent and said something to the girl.

  “No I didn’t,” she said.

  “Come on,” Chip said to Lilac, and they turned and walked downward again.

  “Little hater,” Lilac said, and Chip said, “Just keep going.”

  They went all the way down and stopped at the bottom to take off their sandals. Chip, bending, looked up: the member and the girl were gone; other members were coming down.

  The beach was half empty under the strange hazy sky. Members sat and lay on blankets, many of them in their coveralls. They were silent or talked softly, and the music of the speakers—“Sunday, Fun Day”—sounded loud and unnatural. A group of children jumped rope by the water’s edge: “Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei, led us to this perfect day; Marx, Wood, Wei, and Christ—”

  They walked westward, holding hands and holding their sandals. The narrow beach grew narrower, emptier. Ahead a scanner stood flanked by cliff and sea. Chip said, “I’ve never seen one on a beach before.”

  “Neither have I,” Lilac said.

  They looked at each other.

  “This is the way we’ll go,” he said. “Later.”

  She nodded and they walked closer to the scanner.

  “I’ve got a fou impulse to touch it,” he said. “‘Fight you, Uni; here I am.’”

  “Don’t you dare,” she said.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, “I won’t.”

  They turned around and walked back to the center of the beach. They took their coveralls off, went into the water, and swam far out. Treading with their backs to the sea, they studied the shore beyond the scanner, the gray cliffs lessening away into greenish-gray haze. A bird flew from the cliffs, circled, and flew back. It disappeared, gone in a hairline cranny.

  “There are probably caves where we can stay,” Chip said.

  A lifeguard whistled and waved at them. They swam back to the beach.

  “It’s five of five, members,” the speakers said. “Litter and towels in the baskets, please. Be mindful of the members around you when you shake out your blankets.”

  They dressed, went back up the steps, and walked to the grove of trees where they had left their bikes. They carried them farther in and sat down to wait. Chip cleaned the compass and the flashlights and the knife, and Lilac packed the other things they had into a single bundle.

  An hour or so after dark they went to the canteen and gathered a carton of cakes and drinks and went down to the beach again. They walked to the scanner and beyond it. The night was moonless and starless; the haze of the day was still above. In the water’s lapping edge phosphorescent sparks glittered now and then; otherwise there was only darkness. Chip held the carton of cakes and drinks under his arm and shone his flashlight ahead of them every few moments. Lilac carried the blanket-bundle.

  “Traders won’t come ashore on a night like this,” she said.

  “Nobody else will be on the beach either,” Chip said. “No sex-wild twelve-year-olds. It’s a good thing.”

  But it wasn’t, he thought; it was a bad thing. What if the haze remained for days, for nights, blocking them at the very brink of freedom? Was it possible that Uni had created it, intentionally, for just that purpose? He smiled at himself. He was tres fou, exactly as Lilac had said.

  They walked until they guessed themselves to be midway between ’082 and the next city to the west, and then they put down the carton and the bundle and searched the cliff face for a usable cave. They found one within minutes; a low-roofed sand-floored burrow littered with cake wrappers and, intriguingly, two pieces—a green “Egypt,” a pink “Ethiop”—torn from a pre-U map. They brought the carton and the bundle into the cave, spread their blankets, ate, and lay down together.

  “Can you?” Lilac said. “After this morning and last night?”

  “Without treatments,” Chip said, “all things are possible.”

  “It’s fantastic,” Lilac said.

  Later Chip said, “Even if we don’t get any farther than this, even if we’re caught and treated five minutes from now, it’ll have been worth it. We’ve been ourselves, alive, for a few hours at least.”

  “I want all of my life, not just a little of it,” Lilac said.

  “You’ll have it,” Chip said. “I promise you.” He kissed her lips, caressing her cheek in the darkness. “Will you stay with me?” he asked. “On Majorca?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “You weren’t going to,” he said. “Remember? You weren’t even going to come this far with me.”

  “Christ and Wei, that was last night,” she said, and kissed him. “Of course I’m going to stay,” she said. “You woke me up and now you’re stuck with me.”

  They lay holding each other and kissing each other.

  “Chip!” she cried—in reality, not in his dream.

  She wasn’t beside him. He sat up and banged his head on stone, groped for the knife he had left stuck in the sand. “Chip! Look!”—as he found it and threw himself over onto knees and one hand. She was a dark shape crouched at the cave’s blinding blue opening. He raised the knife, ready to slash whoever was coming.

  “No, no,” she said, laughing. “Come look! Come on! You won’t believe it!”

  Squinting at the brilliance of sky and sea, he crawled over to her. “Look,” she said happily, pointing up the beach.

  A boat sat on the sand about fifty meters away, a small two-rotor launch, old, with a white hull and a red skirting. It sat just clear of the water, tipped slightly forward. There were white splatters on the skirting and the windscreen, part of which seemed to be missing.

  “Let’s see if it’s good!” Lilac said. With her hand on Chip’s shoulder she started to rise from the cave; he dropped the knife, caught her arm, and pulled her back. “Wait a minute,” he said.

  “What for?” She looked at him.

  He rubbed his head where he had bumped it, and frowned at the boat—so white and red and empty and convenient in the bright morning haze-free sun. “It’s a trick of some kind,” he said. “A trap. It’s too convenient. We go to sleep and wake up and a boat’s been delivered for us. You’re right, I don’t believe it.”

  “It wasn’t ‘delivered’ for us,” she said. “It’s been here for weeks. Look at the bird stuff on it, and how deep in the sand the front of it is.”

  “Where did it come from?” he asked. “There are no islands nearby.”

  “Maybe traders brought it from Majorca and got caught on shore,” she said. “Or maybe they left it behind on purpose, for members like us. You said there might be a rescue operation.”

  “And nobody’s seen it and reported it in the time it’s been here?”

  “Uni hasn’t let anyone onto this part of the beach.”

  “Let’s wait,” he said. “Let’s just watch and wait a while.”

  Reluctantly she said, “All right.”

  “It’s too convenient,” he said.

  “Why must everything be inconvenient?”

  They stayed in the cave. They ate and rebundled the blankets, always watching the boat. They took turns crawling to the back of the cave, and buried their wastes in sand.

  Wave edges slipped under the back of the boat’s skirting, then fell away toward low tide. Birds circled and landed on the windscreen and handrail, four that were sea gulls and two smaller brown ones.

  “It’s getting filthier every minute,” Lilac said. “And what if it’s been reported and today’s the day it’s going to be taken away?”

  “Whisper, will you?” Chip said. “Christ and Wei, I wish I’d brought a telescope.”

  He tried to improvise one from the compass lens, a flashlight lens, and a rolled flap of the food carton, but he couldn’t make
it work.

  “How long are we going to wait?” she asked.

  “Till after dark,” he said.

  No one passed on the beach, and the only sounds were the waves’ lapping and the wingbeats and cries of the birds.

  He went to the boat alone, slowly and cautiously. It was older than it had looked from the cave; the hull’s flaking white paint showed repair scars, and the skirting was dented and cracked. He walked around it without touching it, looking with his flashlight for signs—he didn’t know what form they would take—of deception, of danger. He didn’t see any; he saw only an old boat that had been inexplicably abandoned, its center seats gone, a third of its windscreen broken away, and all of it spattered with dried white birdwaste. He switched his light off and looked at the cliff—touched the boat’s handrail and waited for an alarm. The cliff stayed dark and deserted in pale moonlight

  He stepped onto the skirting, climbed into the boat, and shone his light on its controls. They seemed simple enough: on-off switches for the propulsion rotors and the lift rotor, a speed-control knob calibrated to 100 KPH, a steering lever, a few gauges and indicators, and a switch marked Controlled and Independent that was set in the independent position. He found the battery housing on the floor between the front seats and unlatched its cover; the battery’s fade-out date was April 171, a year away.

  He shone his light at the rotor housings. Twigs were piled in one of them. He brushed them out, picked them all out, and shone the light on the rotor within; it was new, shiny. The other rotor was old, its blades nicked and one missing.

  He sat down at the controls and found the switch that lighted them. A miniature clock said 5:11 Fri 27 Aug 169. He switched on one propulsion rotor and then the other; they scraped but then hummed smoothly. He switched them off, looked at the gauges and indicators, and switched the control lights off.

  The cliff was the same as before. No members had sprung from hiding. He turned to the sea behind him; it was empty and flat, silvered in a narrowing path that ended under the nearly full moon. No boats were flying toward him.

  He sat in the boat for a few minutes, and then he climbed out of it and walked back to the cave.

  Lilac was standing outside it. “Is it all right?” she asked.