This Perfect Day Part 15

Chip said, "I want to know what it's like on the Falkland Islands."

King lowered his hand. "On what islands?" he said.

"Falkland," Chip said. "Where you got the tobacco seeds. And the perfume you gave Lilac."

"I made the perfume," King said.

"And the tobacco seeds? Did you make them?"

King said, "Someone gave them to me."

"In ARG20400?"

After a moment King nodded.

"Where did he get them?"

"I don't know."

"You didn't ask?"

"No," King said, "I didn't. Why don't you get back where you're supposed to be? We can talk about this tomorrow night."

"I'm staying," Chip said. "I'm staying here until I hear the truth. I'm due for a treatment at 8:05. If I don't take it on time, everything's going to be finished-me, you, the group. You're not going to be king of anything."

"You brother-fighter," King said, "get out of here."

"I'm staying," Chip said.

"I've told you the truth."

"I don't believe it."

"Then go fight yourself," King said, and lay down and turned over onto his stomach.

Chip stayed as he was. He sat looking at King and waiting.

After a few minutes King turned over again and sat up. He threw aside the blanket, swung his legs around, and sat with his bare feet on the floor. He scratched with both hands at his pajamaed thighs. "'Americanueva,'" he said, "not 'Falkland.' They come ash.o.r.e and trade. Hairy-faced creatures in cloth and leather." He looked at Chip. "Diseased, disgusting savages," he said, "who speak in a way that's barely understandable."

"They exist, they've survived."

"That's all they've done. Their hands are like wood from working. They steal from one another and go hungry."

"But they haven't come back to the Family."

"They'd be better off if they did," King said. "They've still got religion going. And alcohol-drinking."

"How long do they live?" Chip asked.

King said nothing.

"Past sixty-two?" Chip asked.

King's eyes narrowed coldly. "What's so magnificent about living," he said, "that it has to be prolonged indefinitely? What's so fantastically beautiful about life here or life there that makes sixty-two not enough of it instead of too fighting much? Yes, they live past sixty-two. One of them claimed to be eighty, and looking at him, I believed it. But they die younger too, in their thirties, even in their twenties-from work and filth and defending their 'money.'"

"That's only one group of islands," Chip said. "There are seven others."

"They'll all be the same," King said. "They'll all be the same."

"How do you know?"

"How can they not be?" King asked. "Christ and Wei, if I'd thought a halfway-human life was possible I'd have said something!"

"You should have said something anyway," Chip said. "There are islands right here in Stability Bay. Leopard and Hush might have got to them and still be living."

"They'd be dead."

"Then you should have let them choose where they died," Chip said. "You're not Uni."

He got up and put the chair back by the desk. He looked at the phone screen, reached over the desk, and took the adviser's-nameber card from under the rim of it: Anna SG38P2823.

"You mean you don't know her nameber?" King said. "What do you do, meet in the dark? Or haven't you worked your way out to her extremities yet?"

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 Francais, 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 f.u.c.king. 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 f.u.c.k 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.

6.

HE 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 Sat.u.r.day."

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."