This Perfect Day

  “We thought they would welcome newcomers,” Chip said. “To help keep the Family away.”

  The young man, screwing the container back onto the flask, said, “Nobody comes here except two or three immigrants a month. The last time the Family tried to treat the lunkies was back when there were five computers. Since Uni went into operation not one attempt has been made.”

  “Why not?” Lilac asked.

  The young man looked at them. “Nobody knows,” he said. “There are different theories. The lunkies think that either ‘God’ is protecting them or the Family is afraid of the Army, a bunch of drunken incapable louts. Immigrants think—well, some of them think that the island is so depleted that treating everyone on it simply isn’t worth Uni’s while.”

  “And others think—” Chip said.

  The young man turned away and put the flask on a shelf below the boat’s controls. He sat down on the seat and turned to face them. “Others,” he said, “and I’m one of them, think that Uni is using the island, and the lunkies, and all the hidden islands all over the world.”

  “Using them?” Chip said, and Lilac said, “How?”

  “As prisons for us,” the young man said.

  They looked at him.

  “Why is there always a boat on the beach?” he asked. “Always, in Eur and in Afr—an old boat that’s still good enough to get here. And why are there those handy patched-up maps in museums? Wouldn’t it be easier to make fake ones with the islands really omitted?”

  They stared at him.

  “What do you do,” he said, looking at them intently, “when you’re programming a computer to maintain a perfectly efficient, perfectly stable, perfectly cooperative society? How do you allow for biological freaks, ‘incurables,’ possible troublemakers?”

  They said nothing, staring at him.

  He leaned closer to them. “You leave a few ‘un-unified’ islands all around the world,” he said. “You leave maps in museums and boats on beaches. The computer doesn’t have to weed out your bad ones; they do the weeding themselves. They wiggle their way happily into the nearest isolation ward, and lunkies are waiting, with a General Costanza in charge, to take their boats, jam them into Steelytowns, and keep them helpless and harmless—in ways that high-minded disciples of Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei would never dream of stooping to.”

  “It can’t be,” Lilac said.

  “A lot of us think it can,” the young man said.

  Chip said, “Uni let us come here?”

  “No,” Lilac said. “It’s too—twisted.”

  The young man looked at her, looked at Chip.

  Chip said, “I thought I was being so fighting clever!”

  “So did I,” the young man said, sitting back. “I know just how you feel.”

  “No, it can’t be,” Lilac said.

  There was silence for a moment, and then the young man said, “I’ll take you in now. I.A. will take off your bracelets and get your registered and lend you twenty-five bucks to get started.” He smiled. “As bad as it is,” he said, “it’s better than being with the Family. Cloth is more comfortable than paplon —really—and even a rotten fig tastes better than totalcakes. You can have children, a drink, a cigarette—a couple of rooms if you work hard. Some steelies even get rich—entertainers, mostly. If you ‘sir’ the lunkies and stay in Steelytown, it’s all right. No scanners, no advisers, and not one ‘Life of Marx’ in a whole year’s TV.”

  Lilac smiled. Chip smiled too.

  “Put the coveralls on,” the young man said. “Lunkies are horrified by nakedness. It’s ‘ungodly.’” He turned to the boat’s controls.

  They put aside the blankets and got into their moist coveralls, then stood behind the young man as he drove the boat toward the island. It spread out green and gold in the radiance of the just-risen sun, crested with mountains and dotted with bits of white, yellow, pink, pale blue.

  “It’s beautiful,” Lilac said determinedly.

  Chip, with his arm about her shoulders, looked ahead with narrowed eyes and said nothing.

  5

  THEY LIVED IN A CITY called Pollensa, in half a room in a cracked and crumbling Steelytown building with intermittent power and brown water. They had a mattress and a table and a chair, and a box for their clothing that they used as a second chair. The people in the other half of the room, the Newmans—a man and woman in their forties with a nine-year-old daughter—let them use their stove and TV and a shelf in the “fridge” where they stored their food. It was the Newmans’ room; Chip and Lilac paid four dollars a week for their half of it.

  They earned nine dollars and twenty cents a week between them. Chip worked in an iron mine, loading ore into carts with a crew of other immigrants alongside an automatic loader that stood motionless and dusty, unrepairable. Lilac worked in a clothing factory, attaching fasteners to shirts. There too a machine stood motionless, furred with lint.

  Their nine dollars and twenty cents paid for the week’s rent and food and railfare, a few cigarettes, and a newspaper called the Liberty Immigrant. They saved fifty cents toward clothing replacement and emergencies that might arise, and gave fifty cents to Immigrants’ Assistance as partial repayment of the twenty-five-dollar loan they had been given on their arrival. They ate bread and fish and potatoes and figs. At first these foods gave them cramps and constipation, but they soon came to like them, to relish the different tastes and consistencies. They looked forward to meals, although the preparation and the cleaning up afterward became a bother.

  Their bodies changed. Lilac’s bled for a few days, which the Newmans assured them was natural in untreated women, and it grew more rounded and supple as her hair grew longer. Chip’s body hardened and strengthened from his work in the mine. His beard grew out black and straight, and he trimmed it once a week with the Newmans’ scissors.

  They had been given names by a clerk at the Immigration Bureau. Chip was named Eiko Newmark, and Lilac, Grace Newbridge. Later, when they married—with no application to Uni, but with forms and a fee and vows to “God”—Lilac’s name was changed to Grace Newmark. They still called themselves Chip and Lilac, however.

  They got used to handling coins and dealing with shopkeepers, and to traveling on Pollensa’s rundown overcrowded monorail. They learned how to sidestep natives and avoid offending them; they memorized the Vow of Loyalty and saluted Liberty’s red-and-yellow flag. They knocked on doors before opening them, said Wednesday instead of Woodsday, March instead of Marx. They reminded themselves that fight and hate were acceptable words but fuck was a “dirty” one.

  Hassan Newman drank a great deal of whiskey. Soon after coming home from his job—in the island’s largest furniture factory—he would be playing loud games with Gigi, his daughter, and fumbling his way through the room’s dividing curtain with a bottle clutched in his three-fingered saw-damaged hand. “Come on, you sad steelies,” he would say, “where the hate are your glasses? Come on, have a little cheer.” Chip and Lilac drank with him a few times, but they found that whiskey made them confused and clumsy and they usually declined his offer. “Come on,” he said one evening. “I know I’m the landlord, but I’m not exactly a lunky, am I? Or what is it? Do you think I’ll expect you to receep—to reciprocate? I know you like to watch the pennies.”

  “It’s not that,” Chip said.

  “Then what is it?” Hassan asked. He swayed and steadied himself.

  Chip didn’t say anything for a moment, and then he said, “Well, what’s the point in getting away from treatments if you’re going to dull yourself with whiskey? You might as well be back in the Family.”

  “Oh,” Hassan said. “Oh sure, I get you.” He looked angrily at them, a broad, curly-bearded, bloodshot-eyed man. “Just wait,” he said. “Wait till you’ve been here a little longer. Just wait till you’ve been here a little longer, that’s all.” He turned around and groped his way through the curtain, and they heard him muttering, and his wife, Ria, speaking placatingly.

&n
bsp; Almost everyone in the building seemed to drink as much whiskey as Hassan did. Loud voices, happy or angry, sounded through the walls at all hours of the night. The elevator and the hallways smelled of whiskey, and of fish, and of sweet perfumes that people used against the whiskey and fish smells.

  Most evenings, after they had finished whatever cleaning had to be done, Chip and Lilac either went up to the roof for some fresh air or sat at their table reading the Immigrant or books they had found on the monorail or borrowed from a small collection at Immigrants’ Assistance. Sometimes they watched TV with the Newmans—plays about foolish misunderstandings in native families, with frequent stops for announcements about different makes of cigarettes and disinfectants. Occasionally there were speeches by General Costanza or the head of the Church, Pope Clement—disquieting speeches about shortages of food and space and resources, for which immigrants alone weren’t to be blamed. Hassan, belligerent with whiskey, usually switched them off before they were over; Liberty TV, unlike the Family’s, could be switched on and off at one’s choosing.

  One day in the mine, toward the end of the fifteen-minute lunch break, Chip went over to the automatic loader and began examining it, wondering whether it was in fact unrepairable or whether some part of it that couldn’t be replaced might not be by-passed or substituted for in some way. The native in charge of the crew came over and asked him what he was doing. Chip told him, taking care to speak respectfully, but the native got angry. “You fucking steelies all think you’re so God-damned smart!” he said, and put his hand on his gun handle. “Get over there where you belong and stay there!” he said. “Try to figure out a way to eat less food if you’ve got to have something to think about!”

  All natives weren’t quite that bad. The owner of their building took a liking to Chip and Lilac and promised to let them have a room for five dollars a week as soon as one became available. “You’re not like some of these others,” he said. “Drinking, walking around the hallways stark naked—I’d rather take a few cents less and have your kind.”

  Chip, looking at him, said, “There are reasons why immigrants drink, you know.”

  “I know, I know,” the owner said. “I’m the first one to say it; it’s terrible the way we treat you. But still and all, do you drink? Do you walk around stark naked?”

  Lilac said, “Thank you, Mr. Corsham. We’ll be grateful if you can get a room for us.”

  They caught “colds” and “the flu.” Lilac lost her job at the clothing factory but found a better one in the kitchen of a native restaurant within walking distance of the house. Two policemen came to the room one evening, checking identity cards and looking for weapons. Hassan muttered something as he showed his card and they clubbed him to the floor. They stuck knives into the mattresses and broke some of the dishes.

  Lilac didn’t have her “period,” her monthly few days of vaginal bleeding, and that meant she was pregnant.

  One night on the roof Chip stood smoking and looking at the sky to the northeast, where there was a dull orange glow from the copper-production complex on EUR91766. Lilac, who had been taking washed clothes from a line where she had hung them to dry, came over to him and put her arm around him. She kissed his cheek and leaned against him. “It’s not so bad,” she said. “We’ve got twelve dollars saved, we’ll have a room of our own any day now, and before you know it we’ll have a baby.” “A steely,” Chip said. “No,” Lilac said. “A baby.” “It stinks,” Chip said. “It’s rotten. It’s inhuman.” “It’s all there is,” Lilac said. “We’d better get used to it.” Chip said nothing. He kept looking at the orange glow in the sky.

  The Liberty Immigrant carried weekly articles about immigrant singers and athletes, and occasionally scientists, who earned forty or fifty dollars a week and lived in good apartments, who mixed with influential and enlightened natives, and who were hopeful about the chances of a more equitable relationship developing between the two groups. Chip read these articles with scorn—they were meant by the newspaper’s native owners to lull and pacify immigrants, he felt—but Lilac accepted them at face value, as evidence that their own lot would ultimately improve.

  One week in October, when they had been on Liberty for a little over six months, there was an article about an artist named Morgan Newgate, who had come from Eur eight years before and who lived in a four-room apartment in New Madrid. His paintings, one of which, a scene of the Crucifixion, had just been presented to Pope Clement, brought him as much as a hundred dollars each. He signed them with an A, the article explained, because his nickname was Ashi.

  “Christ and Wei,” Chip said.

  Lilac said, “What is it?”

  “I was at academy with this ‘Morgan Newgate,’” Chip said, showing her the article. “We were good friends. His name was Karl. You remember that picture of the horse I had back in Ind?”

  “No,” she said, reading.

  “Well, he drew it,” Chip said. “He used to sign everything with an A in a circle.” And yes, he thought, “Ashi” seemed like the name Karl had mentioned. Christ and Wei, so he had got away too!—had “got away,” if you could call it that, to Liberty, to Uni’s isolation ward. At least he was doing what he’d always wanted; for him Liberty really was liberty.

  “You ought to call him,” Lilac said, still reading.

  “I will,” Chip said.

  But maybe he wouldn’t. Was there any point, really, in calling “Morgan Newgate,” who painted Crucifixions for the Pope and assured his fellow immigrants that conditions were getting better every day? But maybe Karl hadn’t said that; maybe the Immigrant had lied.

  “Don’t just say it,” Lilac said. “He could probably help you get a better job.”

  “Yes,” Chip said, “he probably could.”

  She looked at him. “What’s the matter?” she said. “Don’t you want a better job?”

  “I’ll call him tomorrow, on the way to work,” he said.

  But he didn’t. He swung his shovel into ore and lifted and heaved, swung and lifted and heaved. Fight them all, he thought: the steelies who drink, the steelies who think things are getting better; the lunkies, the dummies; fight Uni.

  On the following Sunday morning Lilac went with him to a building two blocks from theirs where there was a working telephone in the lobby, and she waited while he paged through the tattered directory. Morgan and Newgate were names commonly given to immigrants, but few immigrants had phones; there was only one Newgate, Morgan listed, and that one in New Madrid.

  Chip put three tokens into the phone and spoke the number. The screen was broken, but it didn’t make any difference since Liberty phones no longer transmitted pictures anyway.

  A woman answered, and when Chip asked if Morgan Newgate was there, said he was, and then nothing more. The silence lengthened, and Lilac, a few meters away beside a Sani-Spray poster, waited and then came close. “Isn’t he there?” she asked in a whisper. “Hello?” a man’s voice said.

  “Is this Morgan Newgate?” Chip asked.

  “Yes. Who’s this?”

  “It’s Chip,” Chip said. “Li RM, from the Academy of the Genetic Sciences.”

  There was silence, and then, “My God,” the voice said, “Li! You got pads and charcoal for me!”

  “Yes,” Chip said. “And I told my adviser you were sick and needed help.”

  Karl laughed. “That’s right, you did, you bastard!” he said. “This is great! When did you get over?”

  “About six months ago,” Chip said.

  “Are you in New Madrid?”

  “Pollensa.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Working in a mine,” Chip said.

  “Christ, that’s a shut-off,” Karl said, and after a moment, “It’s hell here, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Chip said, thinking He even uses their words. Hell. My God. I’ll bet he says prayers.

  “I wish these phones were working so I could get a look at you,” Karl said.

  Suddenl
y Chip was ashamed of his hostility. He told Karl about Lilac and about her pregnancy; Karl told him that he had been married in the Family but had come over alone. He wouldn’t let Chip congratulate him on his success. “The things I sell are awful,” he said. “Appealing little lunky children. But I manage to do my own work three days a week, so I can’t complain. Listen, Li—no, what is it, Chip? Chip, listen, we’ve got to get together. I’ve got a motorbike; I’ll come down there one evening. No, wait,” he said, “are you doing anything next Sunday, you and your wife?”

  Lilac looked anxiously at Chip. He said, “I don’t think so. I’m not sure.”

  “I’m having some friends over,” Karl said. “You come too, all right? Around six o’clock.”

  With Lilac nodding at him, Chip said, “We’ll try. We’ll probably be able to make it.”

  “See that you do,” Karl said. He gave Chip his address. “I’m glad you got over,” he said. “It’s better than there anyway, isn’t it?”

  “A little,” Chip said.

  “I’ll expect you next Sunday,” Karl said. “So long, brother.”

  “So long,” Chip said, and tapped off.

  Lilac said, “We’re going, aren’t we?”

  “Do you have any idea what the railfare’s going to be?” Chip said.

  “Oh, Chip . . .”

  “All right,” he said. “All right, we’ll go. But I’m not taking any favors from him. And you’re not asking for any. You remember that.”

  Every evening that week Lilac worked on the best of their clothes, taking off the frayed sleeves of a green dress, remending a trouser leg so that the mend was less noticeable.

  The building, at the very edge of New Madrid’s Steelytown, was in no worse condition than many native buildings. Its lobby was swept, and smelled only slightly of whiskey and fish and perfume, and the elevator worked well.

  A pushbutton was set in new plaster next to Karl’s door: a bell to be rung. Chip pressed it. He stood stiffly, and Lilac held his arm.

  “Who is it?” a man’s voice asked.

  “Chip Newmark,” Chip said.