This Perfect Day Part 17

"It's sick," he said. "It was done by a sick member. Chute it."

"Whatever you say," Bob said. He put the kit on the bed and got up and crossed the room; opened the chute and dropped the picture down.

"There are islands full of sick members," Chip said. "All over the world."

"I know," Bob said. "You told us."

"Why can't we help them?"

"That I don't know," Bob said. "But Uni does. I told you before, Li: trust Uni."

"I will," he said, "I will," and tears came into his eyes again.

A red-cross-coveralled member came into the room. "How are we feeling?" he asked.

Chip looked at him.

"He's pretty low," Bob said.

"That's to be expected," the member said. "Don't worry; we'll get him evened up." He went over and took Chip's wrist.

"Li, I have to go now," Bob said.

"All right," Chip said.

Bob went over and kissed his cheek. "In case you're not sent back here, good-by, brother," he said.

"Good-by, Bob," Chip said. "Thanks. Thanks for everything."

"Thank Uni," Bob said, and squeezed his hand and smiled. He nodded at the red-crossed member and went out.

The member took an infusion syringe from his pocket and snapped off its cap. "You'll be feeling perfectly normal in no time at all," he said.

Chip lay still and closed his eyes, wiped with one hand at tears while the member pushed up his other sleeve. "I was so sick," he said. "I was so sick."

"Shh, don't think about it," the member said, gently infusing him. "It's nothing to think about. You'll be fine in no time."

PART THREE.

GETTING AWAY.

1.

OLD CITIES were demolished; new cities were built. The new cities had taller buildings, broader plazas, larger parks, monorails whose cars flew faster though less frequently.

Two more starships were launched, toward Sirius B and 61 Cygni. The Mars colonies, repopulated and safeguarded now against the devastation of 152, were expanding daily; so too were the colonies on Venus and the Moon, the outposts on t.i.tan and Mercury.

The free hour was extended by five minutes. Voice-input telecomps began to replace key-input ones, and totalcakes came in a pleasant second flavor. Life expectancy increased to 62.4.

Members worked and ate, watched TV and slept. They sang and went to museums and walked in amus.e.m.e.nt gardens.

On the two-hundredth anniversary of Wei's birth, in the parade in a new city, a huge portrait banner of smiling Wei was carried at one of its poles by a member of thirty or so who was ordinary in every respect except that his right eye was green instead of brown. Once long ago this member had been sick, but now he was well. He had his a.s.signment and his room, his girlfriend and his adviser. He was relaxed and content.

A strange thing happened during the parade. As this member marched along, smiling, holding the banner pole, he began to hear a nameber saying itself over and over in his head: Anna SG, thirty-eight P, twenty-eight twenty-three; Anna SG, thirty-eight P, twenty-eight twenty-three. It kept repeating itself to him, in time with his marching. He wondered who the nameber belonged to, and why it should be repeating itself in his head that way.

Suddenly he remembered: it was from his sickness! It was the nameber of one of the other sick ones, the one called "Lovely"-no, "Lilac." Why, after so long, had her nameber come back to him? He stamped his feet down harder, trying not to hear it, and was glad when the signal to sing was given.

He told his adviser. "It's nothing to think about," she said. "You probably saw something that reminded you of her. Maybe you even saw her. There's nothing to be afraid of in remembering-unless, of course, it becomes bothersome. Let me know if it happens again."

But it didn't happen again. He was well, thank Uni.

One Christmas Day, when he had another a.s.signment, was living in another city, he bicycled with his girlfriend and four other members to the outlying parkland. They brought cakes and c.o.kes with them, and lunched on the ground near a grove of trees.

He had set his c.o.ke container on an almost-level stone and, reaching for it while talking, knocked it over. The other members refilled his container from theirs.

A few minutes later, while folding his cake wrapper, he noticed a flat leaf lying on the wet stone, drops of c.o.ke shining on its back, its stem curled upward like a handle. He took the stem and lifted the leaf, and the stone underneath it was dry in the leaf's oval shape. The rest of the stone was wet-black, but where the leaf had been it was dry-gray. Something about the moment seemed significant to him, and he sat silently, looking at the leaf in his one hand, the folded cake wrapper in his other, and the dry leaf shape on the stone. His girlfriend said something to him and he took himself away from the moment, put the leaf and the wrapper together and gave them to the member who had the litter bag.

The image of the dry leaf shape on the stone came into his mind several times that day, and on the next day too. Then he had his treatment and he forgot about it. In a few weeks, though, it came into his mind again. He wondered why. Had he lifted a leaf from a wet stone that way sometime before? If he had, he didn't remember it . . .

Every now and then, while he was walking in a park or, oddly enough, waiting on line for his treatment, the image of the dry leaf shape came into his mind and made him frown.

There was an earthquake. (His chair flung him off it; gla.s.s broke in the microscope and the loudest sound he had ever heard roared from the depths of the lab.) A seismovalve half the continent away had jammed and gone undetected, TV explained a few nights later. It hadn't happened before and it wouldn't happen again. Members must mourn, of course, but it was nothing to think about in the future.

Dozens of buildings had collapsed, hundreds of members had died. Every medicenter in the city was overloaded with the injured, and more than half the treatment units were damaged; treatments were delayed up to ten days.

A few days after he was to have had his, he thought of Lilac and how he had loved her differently and more-more excitingly-than he loved everyone else. He had wanted to tell her something. What was it? Oh yes, about the islands. The islands he had found hidden on the pre-U map. The islands of incurables . . .

His adviser called him. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"I don't think so, Karl," he said. "I need my treatment."

"Hold on a minute," his adviser said, and turned away and spoke softly to his telecomp. After a moment he turned back. "You can get it tonight at seven-thirty," he said, "but you'll have to go to the medicenter in T24."

He stood on a long line at seven-thirty, thinking about Lilac, trying to remember exactly what she looked like. When he got near the treatment units, the image of a dry leaf shape on a stone came into his mind.

Lilac called him (she was right there in the same building) and he went to her room, which was the storeroom in the pre-U. Green jewels hung from her earlobes and glittered around her rose-brown throat; she was wearing a gown of gleaming green cloth that exposed her pink-tipped soft-cone b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Bon soir, Chip," she said, smiling. "Comment vastu? Je m'ennuyais tellement de toi." He went to her and took her in his arms and kissed her-her lips were warm and soft, her mouth opening-and he awoke to darkness and disappointment; it was a dream, it had only been a dream.

But strangely, frighteningly, everything was in him: the smell of her perfume (parfum) and the taste of tobacco and the sound of Sparrow's songs, and desire for Lilac and anger at King and resentment of Uni and sorrow for the Family and happiness in feeling, in being alive and awake.

And in the morning he would have a treatment and it would all be gone. At eight o'clock. He tapped on the light, squinted at the clock: 4:54. In a little more than three hours . . .

He tapped the light off again and lay open-eyed in the dark. He didn't want to lose it. Sick or not, he wanted to keep his memories and the capacity to explore and enjoy them. He didn't want to think about the islands-no, never; that was real sickness-but he wanted to think about Lilac, and the meetings of the group in the relic-filled storeroom, and once in a while, maybe, to have another dream.

But the treatment would come in three hours and everything would be gone. There was nothing he could do-except hope for another earthquake, and what chance was there of that? The seismovalves had worked perfectly in the years since and they would go on working perfectly in the years ahead. And what short of an earthquake could postpone his treatment? Nothing. Nothing at all. Not with Uni knowing that he had lied for a postponement once before.

A dry leaf shape on stone came into his mind but he chased it away to think of Lilac, to see her as he had seen her in the dream, not to waste his three short hours of aliveness. He had forgotten how large her eyes were, how lovely her smile and her rose-brown skin, how moving her earnestness. He had forgotten so fighting much: the pleasure of smoking, the excitement of deciphering Francais . . .

The dry leaf shape came back, and he thought about it, irritated, to find out why his mind hung on to it, to get rid of it once and for all. He thought back to the ridiculously meaningless moment; saw again the leaf, with the drops of c.o.ke shining on it; saw his fingers lifting it by its stem, and his other hand holding the folded foil cake wrapper, and the dry gray oval on the black c.o.ke-wet stone. He had spilled the c.o.ke, and the leaf had been lying there, and the stone underneath it had- He sat up in bed and clasped his hand to his pajamaed right arm. "Christ and Wei," he said, frightened.

He got up before the first chime and dressed and made the bed.

He was the first one in the dining room; ate and drank, and went back to his room with a cake wrapper folded loosely in his pocket.

He opened the wrapper, put it on the desk, and smoothed it down flat with his hand. He folded the square of foil neatly in half, and the half into thirds. He pressed the packet flat and held it; it was thin despite its six layers. Too thin? He put it down again.

He went into the bathroom and, from the cabinet's first-aid kit, got cotton and the cartridge of tape. He brought them back to the desk.

He put a layer of cotton on the foil packet-a layer smaller than the packet itself-and began covering the cotton and the packet with long overlapping strips of skin-colored tape. He stuck the tape ends lightly to the desktop.

The door opened and he turned, hiding what he was doing and putting the tape cartridge into his pocket. It was Karl TK from next door. "Ready to eat?" he asked.

"I already have," he said.

"Oh," Karl said. "See you later."

"Right," he said, and smiled.

Karl closed the door.

He finished the taping and then peeled the tape ends from the desk and carried the bandage he had made into the bathroom. He laid it foil-side up on the edge of the sink and pushed up his sleeve.

He took the bandage and put the foil carefully against the inner surface of his arm, where the infusion disc would touch him. He clasped the bandage and pressed its tape border tightly to his skin.

A leaf. A shield. Would it work?

If it did, he would think only of Lilac, not of the islands. If he found himself thinking of the islands, he would tell his adviser.

He drew down his sleeve.

At eight o'clock he joined the line in the treatment room. He stood with his arms folded and his hand over the sleeve-covered bandage-to warm it in case the infusion disc was temperature-sensitive.

I'm sick, he thought. I'll get all the diseases: cancer, smallpox, cholera, everything. Hair will grow on my face!

He would do it just this once. At the first sign of anything wrong he would tell his adviser.

Maybe it wouldn't work.

His turn came. He pushed his sleeve to his elbow, put his hand wrist-deep into the unit's rubber-rimmed opening, and then pushed his sleeve to his shoulder and in the same moment slid his arm all the way in.

He felt the scanner finding his bracelet, and the infusion disc's slight pressure against the cotton-packed bandage . . . Nothing happened.

"You're done," a member said behind him.

The unit's blue light was on.

"Oh," he said, and pushed down his sleeve as he drew out his arm.

He had to go right to his a.s.signment.

After lunch he went back to his room and, in the bathroom, pushed up his sleeve and pulled the bandage from his arm. The foil was unbroken, but so was skin after a treatment. He tore the foil packet from the tape.

The cotton was grayish and matted. He squeezed the bandage over the sink, and a trickle of waterlike liquid ran from it.

Awareness came, more of it each day. Memory came, in sharper, more anguishing detail.

Feeling came. Resentment of Uni grew into hatred; desire for Lilac grew into hopeless hunger.

Again he played the old deceptions; was normal at his a.s.signment, normal with his adviser; normal with his girlfriend. But day by day the deceptions grew more irritating to maintain, more infuriating.

On his next treatment day he made another bandage of cake wrapper, cotton, and tape; and squeezed from it another trickle of waterlike liquid.

Black specks appeared on his chin and cheeks and upper lip -the beginnings of hair. He took apart his clippers, wired the cutter blade to one of the handles, and before the first chime each morning, rubbed soap on his face and shaved the specks away.

He dreamed every night. Sometimes the dreams brought o.r.g.a.s.ms.

More and more maddening it became, to pretend relaxation and contentment, humility, goodness. On Marxmas Day, at a beach, he trotted along the sh.o.r.e and then ran, ran from the members trotting with him, ran from the sunbathing, cake-eating Family. He ran till the beach narrowed into tumbled stone, and ran on through surf and over slippery ancient abutments. Then he stopped, and alone and naked between ocean and soaring cliffs, clenched his hands into fists and hit at the cliffs; cried "Fight it!" at the clear blue sky and wrenched and tore at the untearable chain of his bracelet.

It was 169, the fifth of May. Six and a half years he had lost. Six and a half years! He was thirty-four. He was in USA90058.

And where was she? Still in Ind, or was she somewhere else? Was she on Earth or on a starship?

And was she alive, as he was, or was she dead, like everyone else in the Family?

2.

IT WAS EASIER NOW, now that he had bruised his hands and shouted; easier to walk slowly with a contented smile, to watch TV and the screen of his microscope, to sit with his girlfriend at amphitheater concerts. Thinking all the while of what to do . . .

"Any friction?" his adviser asked.

"Well, a little," he said.