This Perfect Day

“Uni’ll be up,” Dover said.

  “Till we put it to sleep,” Karl said.

  The tunnel bent to a slight incline, and they stopped and looked—at plastic roundness glimmering away and away and away into blackest black.

  “Christ and Wei,” Karl said.

  They started walking again, at a brisker pace, side by side between the tracks. “We should have brought the bikes,” Dover said. “We could have coasted.”

  “Let’s keep the talk to a minimum,” Chip said. “And just one light at a time. Yours now, Karl.”

  They walked without talking, behind the light of Karl’s flashlight. They took their binoculars off and put them in their kits.

  Chip felt that Uni was listening to them, was recording the vibrations of their footsteps or the heat of their bodies. Would they be able to overcome the defenses it surely was readying, outfight its members, resist its gases? (Were the gas masks any good? Had Jack fallen because he had got his on too late, or would getting it on sooner have made no difference?)

  Well, the time for questioning was over, he told himself. This was the time for going ahead. They would meet whatever was waiting for them and do their best to get to the refrigerating plants and blast them.

  How many members would they have to hurt, to kill? Maybe none, he thought; maybe the threat of their guns would be enough to protect them. (Against helpful unselfish members seeing Uni in danger? No, never.)

  Well, it had to be; there was no other way.

  He turned his thoughts to Lilac—to Lilac and Jan and their room in New Madrid.

  The tunnel grew cold but the air stayed good.

  They walked on, into plastic roundness that glimmered away into blackest black with the tracks reaching into it. We’re here, he thought. Now. We’re doing it.

  At the end of an hour they stopped to rest. They sat on the tracks and divided a cake among them and passed a container of tea around. Karl said, “I’d give my arm for some whiskey.”

  “I’ll buy you a case when we get back,” Chip said.

  “You heard him,” Karl said to Dover.

  They sat for a few minutes and then they got up and started walking again. Dover walked on a track. “You look pretty confident,” Chip said, flashing his light at him.

  “I am,” Dover said. “Aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Chip said, shining his light ahead again.

  “I’d feel better if there were six of us,” Karl said.

  “So would I,” Chip said.

  It was funny about Dover: he had hidden his face in his arms when Jack had started shooting, Chip remembered, and now, when they would soon be shooting, perhaps killing, he seemed cheerful and carefree. But maybe it was a cover-up, to hide anxiety. Or maybe it was just being twenty-five or twenty-six, however old he was.

  They walked, shifting their kits from one shoulder to the other.

  “Are you sure this thing ends?” Karl said.

  Chip flicked the light at his watch. “It’s eleven-thirty,” he said. “We should be past the halfway mark.”

  They kept walking into the plastic roundness. It grew a little less cold.

  They stopped again at a quarter of twelve, but they found themselves restless and got up in a minute and went on.

  Light glinted far away in the center of the blackness, and Chip pulled out his gun. “Wait,” Dover said, touching his arm, “it’s my light. Look!” He switched his flashlight off and on, off and on, and the glint in the blackness went and came back with it. “It’s the end,” he said. “Or something on the tracks.”

  They walked on, more quickly. Karl took his gun out too. The glint, moving slightly up and down, seemed to stay the same distance from them, small and faint.

  “It’s moving away from us,” Karl said.

  But then, abruptly, it grew brighter, was nearer.

  They stopped and raised their masks, fastened them, and walked on.

  Toward a disc of steel, a wall that sealed the tunnel to its rim.

  They went close to it but didn’t touch it. It would slide upward, they saw; bands of fine vertical scratches ran down it and its bottom was shaped to fit over the tracks.

  They lowered their masks and Chip put his watch to Dover’s light. “Twenty of one,” he said. “We made good time.”

  “Or else it goes on on the other side,” Karl said.

  “You would think of that,” Chip said, pocketing his gun and unslinging his kit. He put it down on the rock, got on one knee beside it, and pulled it open. “Come closer with the light, Dover,” he said. “Don’t touch it, Karl.”

  Karl, looking at the wall, said, “Do you think it’s electrified?”

  “Dover?” Chip said.

  “Hold on,” Dover said.

  He had backed a few meters into the tunnel and was shining his light at them. The tip of his L-beam protruded into it. “Don’t panic, you’re not going to be hurt,” he said. “Your guns don’t work. Drop yours, Karl. Chip, let me see your hands, then put them on your head and stand up.”

  Chip stared above the light. There was a glistening line: Dover’s clipped blond hair.

  Karl said, “Is this a joke or what?”

  “Drop it, Karl,” Dover said. “Put down your kit too. Chip, let me see your hands.”

  Chip showed his empty hands and put them on his head and stood up. Karl’s gun clattered on the rock, and his kit bumped. “What is this?” he said, and to Chip, “What’s he doing?”

  “He’s an espion,” Chip said.

  “A what?”

  Lilac had been right. An espion in the group. But Dover? It was impossible. It couldn’t be.

  “Hands on your head, Karl,” Dover said. “Now turn around, both of you, and face the wall.”

  “You brother-fighter,” Karl said.

  They turned around and faced the steel wall with their hands on their heads.

  “Dover,” Chip said. “Christ and Wei—”

  “You little bastard,” Karl said.

  “You’re not going to be hurt,” Dover said. The wall slid upward—and a long concrete-walled room extended before them, with the tracks going halfway into it and ending. A pair of steel doors were at the room’s far end.

  “Six steps forward and stop,” Dover said. “Go on. Six steps.”

  They walked six steps forward and stopped.

  Kit-strap fittings clinked behind them. “The gun is still on you,” Dover said—from lower down; he was crouching. They glanced at each other. Karl’s eyes questioned; Chip shook his head.

  “All right,” Dover said, his voice coming from his standing height again. “Straight ahead.”

  They walked through the concrete-walled room, and the steel doors at the end of it slid apart. White-tiled wall stood beyond.

  “Through and to the right,” Dover said.

  They went through the doorway and turned to the right. A long white-tiled corridor stretched before them, ending at a single steel door with a scanner beside it. The right-hand wall of the corridor was solid tile; the left was broken by evenly spaced steel doors, ten or twelve of them, each with its scanner, about ten meters apart.

  Chip and Karl walked side by side down the corridor with their hands on their heads. Dover! Chip thought. The first person he had gone to! And why not? So bitterly anti-Uni he had sounded, that day on the I.A. boat! It was Dover who had told him and Lilac that Liberty was a prison, that Uni had let them get to it! “Dover!” he said. “How the hate can you—”

  “Just keep walking,” Dover said.

  “You’re not dulled, you’re not treated!”

  “No.”

  “Then—how? Why?”

  “You’ll see in a minute,” Dover said.

  They neared the door at the end of the corridor and it slid abruptly open. Another corridor stretched beyond it: wider, less brightly lit, dark-walled, not tiled.

  “Keep going,” Dover said.

  They went through the doorway and stopped, staring.

  “Go ahead,?
?? Dover said.

  They walked on.

  What kind of corridor was this? The floor was carpeted, with a gold-colored carpet thicker and softer than any Chip had ever seen or walked on. The walls were lustrous polished wood, with numbered gold-knobbed doors (12, 11) on both sides. Paintings hung between the doors, beautiful paintings that were surely pre-U: a woman sitting with folded hands, smiling knowingly; a hillside city of windowed buildings under a strange black-clouded sky; a garden; a woman reclining; a man in armor. A pleasant odor spiced the air; tangy, dry, impossible to name.

  “Where are we?” Karl asked.

  “In Uni,” Dover said.

  Ahead of them double doors stood open; a red-draped room lay beyond.

  “Keep going,” Dover said.

  They went through the doorway and into the red-draped room; it spread away on both sides, and members, people, were sitting and smiling and starting to laugh, were laughing and rising and some were applauding; young people, old people, were rising from chairs and sofas, laughing and applauding; applauding, applauding, they all were applauding!; and Chip’s arm was pulled down—by Dover, laughing—and he looked at Karl, who looked at him, stupefied; and still they were applauding, men and women, fifty, sixty of them, alert- and alive-looking, in coveralls of silk not paplon, green-gold-blue-white-purple; a tall and beautiful woman, a black-skinned man, a woman who looked like Lilac, a man with white hair who must have been over ninety; applauding, applauding, laughing, applauding . . .

  Chip turned, and Dover, grinning, said, “You’re awake,” and to Karl, “It’s real, it’s happening.”

  “What is?” Chip said. “What the hate is this? Who are they?”

  Laughing, Dover said, “They’re the programmers, Chip! And that’s what you’re going to be! Oh if you could only see your faces!”

  Chip stared at Karl, and at Dover again. “Christ and Wei, what are you talking about?” he said. “The programmers are dead! Uni’s—it goes on by itself, it doesn’t have—”

  Dover was looking past him, smiling. Silence had spread through the room.

  Chip turned around.

  A man in a smiling mask that looked like Wei (Was this really happening?) was coming to him, moving springily in red silk high-collared coveralls. “Nothing goes on by itself,” he said in a voice that was high-pitched but forceful, his smiling mask-lips moving like real ones. (But was it a mask—the yellow skin shrunken tight over the sharp cheekbones, the glinting slit-eyes, the wisps of white hair on the shining yellow head?) “You must be ‘Chip’ with the one green eye,” the man said, smiling and holding out his hand. “You’ll have to tell me what was wrong with the name ‘Li’ that inspired you to change it.” Laughter lifted around them.

  The outstretched hand was normal-colored and youthful. Chip took it (I’m going mad, he thought), and it gripped his hand strongly, squeezed his knucklebones to an instant’s pain.

  “And you’re Karl,” the man said, turning and holding out his hand again. “Now if you had changed your name I could understand it.” Laughter rose louder. “Shake it,” the man said, smiling. “Don’t be afraid.”

  Karl, staring, shook the man’s hand.

  Chip said, “You’re—”

  “Wei,” the man said, his slit-eyes twinkling. “From here up, that is.” He touched his coverall’s high collar. “From here down,” he said, “I’m several other members, principally Jesus RE who won the decathlon in 163.” He smiled at them. “Didn’t you ever bounce a ball when you were a child?” he asked. “Didn’t you ever jump rope? ‘Marx, Wood, Wei, and Christ; all but Wei were sacrificed.’ It’s still true, you see. ‘Out of the mouths of babes.’ Come, sit down, you must be tired. Why couldn’t you use the elevators like everyone else? Dover, it’s good to have you back. You’ve done very well, except for that awful business at the ’013 bridge.”

  They sat in deep and comfortable red chairs, drank pale yellow tart-tasting wine from sparkling glasses, ate sweetly stewed cubes of meat and fish and who-knew-what brought on delicate white plates by young members who smiled at them admiringly—and as they sat and drank and ate, they talked with Wei.

  With Wei!

  How old was that tight-skinned yellow head, living and talking on its lithe red-coveralled body that reached easily for a cigarette, crossed its legs casually? The last anniversary of his birth had been what—the two-hundred-and-sixth, the two-hundred-and-seventh?

  Wei died when he was sixty, twenty-five years after the Unification. Generations before the building of Uni, which was programmed by his “spiritual heirs.” Who died, of course, at sixty-two. So the Family was taught.

  And there he sat, drinking, eating, smoking. Men and women stood listening around the group of chairs; he seemed not to notice them. “The islands have been all those things,” he said. “At first they were the strongholds of the original incurables; and then, as you put it, ‘isolation wards’ to which we let later incurables ‘escape,’ although we weren’t so kind as to supply boats in those days.” He smiled and drew on his cigarette. “Then, however,” he said, “I found a better use for them, and now they serve as, forgive me, wildlife preserves, where natural leaders can emerge and prove themselves exactly as you have done. Now we supply boats and maps, rather obliquely, and ‘shepherds’ like Dover who accompany returning members and prevent as much violence as they can. And prevent, of course, the final intended violence, Uni’s destruction—although the visitors’ display is the usual target, so there’s no real danger whatsoever.”

  Chip said, “I don’t know where I am.” Karl, spearing a cube of meat with a small gold fork, said, “Asleep in the parkland,” and the men and women nearby laughed.

  Wei, smiling, said, “Yes, it’s a disconcerting discovery, I’m sure. The computer that you thought was the Family’s changeless and uncontrolled master is in fact the Family’s servant, controlled by members like yourselves—enterprising, thoughtful, and concerned. Its goals and procedures change continually, according to the decisions of a High Council and fourteen sub-councils. We enjoy luxuries, as you can see, but we have responsibilities that more than justify them. Tomorrow you’ll begin to learn. Now, though”—he leaned forward and pressed his cigarette into an ashtray—“it’s very late, thanks to your partiality to tunnels. You’ll be shown to your rooms; I hope you find them worth the walk.” He smiled and rose, and they rose with him. He shook Karl’s hand—“Congratulations, Karl,” he said—and Chip’s. “And congratulations to you, Chip,” he said. “We suspected a long time ago that sooner or later you would be coming. We’re glad you haven’t disappointed us. I’m glad, I mean; it’s hard to avoid talking as if Uni has feelings too.” He turned away and people crowded around them, shaking their hands and saying, “Congratulations, I never thought you’d make it before Unification Day, it’s awful isn’t it when you come in and everyone’s sitting here congratulations you’ll get used to things before you congratulations.”

  The room was large and pale blue, with a large pale-blue silken bed with many pillows, a large painting of floating water lilies, a table of covered dishes and decanters, dark green armchairs, and a bowl of white and yellow chrysanthemums on a long low cabinet.

  “It’s beautiful,” Chip said. “Thank you.”

  The girl who had led him to it, an ordinary-looking member of sixteen or so in white paplon, said, “Sit down and I’ll take off your—” She pointed at his feet.

  “Shoes,” he said, smiling. “No. Thanks, sister; I can do it myself.”

  “Daughter,” she said.

  “Daughter?”

  “The programmers are our Fathers and Mothers,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said. “All right. Thanks, daughter. You can go now.”

  She looked surprised and hurt. “I’m supposed to stay and take care of you,” she said. “Both of us.” She nodded toward a doorway beyond the bed. Light and the sound of running water came from it.

  Chip went to it.

  A pale-blue bathr
oom was there, large and gleaming; another young member in white paplon kneeled by a filling tub, stirring her hand in the water. She turned and smiled and said, “Hello, Father.”

  “Hello,” Chip said. He stood with his hand on the jamb and looked back at the first girl—drawing the cover from the bed— and back again at the second girl. She smiled up at him, kneeling. He stood with his hand on the jamb. “Daughter,” he said.

  4

  HE WAS SITTING IN BED—had finished his breakfast and was reaching for a cigarette—when a knock at the door sounded. One of the girls went to answer it and Dover came in, smiling and clean and brisk in yellow silk. “How you doing, brother?” he asked.

  “Pretty well,” Chip said, “pretty well.” The other girl lit his cigarette, took the breakfast tray, and asked him if he wanted more coffee. “No, thanks,” he said. “Do you want some coffee?”

  “No, thanks,” Dover said. He sat in one of the dark green chairs and leaned back, his elbows on the chair arms, his hands meshed across his middle, his legs outstretched. Smiling at Chip, he said, “Over the shock?”

  “Hate, no,” Chip said.

  “It’s a long-standing custom,” Dover said. “You’ll enjoy it when the next group comes in.”

  “It’s cruel, really cruel,” Chip said.

  “Wait, you’ll be laughing and applauding with everyone else.”

  “How often do groups turn up?”

  “Sometimes not for years,” Dover said, “sometimes a month apart. It averages out to one-point-something people a year.”

  “And you were in contact with Uni the whole time, you brother-fighter?”

  Dover nodded and smiled. “A telecomp the size of a matchbox,” he said. “In fact, that’s what I kept it in.”

  “Bastard,” Chip said.

  The girl with the tray had taken it out, and the other girl changed the ashtray on the night table and took her coveralls from a chairback and went into the bathroom. She closed the door.

  Dover looked after her, then looked at Chip quizzically. “Nice night?” he asked.

  “Mm-hmm,” Chip said. “I gather they’re not treated.”

  “Not in all departments, that’s for sure,” Dover said. “I hope you’re not sore at me for not dropping a hint somewhere along the way. The rules are ironclad: no help beyond what’s asked of you, no suggestions, no nothing; stay on the sidelines as much as you can and try to prevent bloodshed. I shouldn’t have even been doing that routine on the boat—about Liberty being a prison—but I’d been there for two years and nobody was even thinking of trying anything. You can see why I wanted to move things along.”