This Perfect Day Part 29

He said good-by to Ashi, and kissed Julia. "Pack your kit and get ready to see the world," he said.

"Be careful," she said. "And try praying."

He got on the boat, sat on the deck in front of the kits with John Newman and the others-Buzz and Karl, Jack and Ria; strange-looking and Family-like with their clipped hair, their beardless similar faces.

Dover started the boat and steered it out of the harbor, then turned it toward the faint orange glow that came from '91766.

2.

IN PALLID PRE-DAWN LIGHT they slipped from the barge and pushed the kit-loaded raft away from it. Three of them pushed and three swam along beside, watching the black high-cliffed sh.o.r.e. They moved slowly, keeping about fifty meters out. Every ten minutes or so they changed places; the ones who had been swimming pushed, the ones who had been pushing swam.

When they were well below '91772 they turned and pushed the raft in. They beached it in a small sandy cove with towering rock walls, and unloaded the kits and unwrapped them. They opened the secondary kits and put on coveralls; pocketed guns, watches, compa.s.ses, maps; then dug a hole and packed into it the two emptied kits and all the plastic wrappings, the deflated raft, their Liberty clothing, and the shovel they had used for digging. They filled the hole and stamped it level, and with kits slung on their shoulders and sandals in their hands, began walking in single file down the narrow strip of beach. The sky lightened and their shadows appeared before them, sliding in and out over rocky cliff-base. Near the back of the line Karl started whistling "One Mighty Family." The others smiled, and Chip, at the front, joined it. Some of the others did too.

Soon they came to a boat-an old blue boat lying on its side, waiting for incurables who would think themselves lucky. Chip turned, and walking backward, said, "Here it is, if we need it," and Dover said, "We won't," and Jack, after Chip had turned and they had pa.s.sed it, picked up a stone, turned, threw it at the boat, and missed.

They switched their kits from one shoulder to the other as they walked. In a little less than an hour they came to a scanner with its back to them. "Home again," Dover said, and Ria groaned, and Buzz said, "Hi, Uni, how are you?"-patting the scanner's top as he pa.s.sed it. He was walking without limping; Chip had looked around a few times to check.

The strip of beach began to widen, and they came to a litter basket and more of them, and then lifeguard platforms, speakers and a clock-6:54 Thu 25 Dec 171 Y.U.-and a stairway zigzagging up the cliff with red and green bunting wound around some of its railing supports.

They put their kits down, and their sandals, and took their coveralls off and spread them out. They lay down on them and rested under the sun's growing warmth. Chip mentioned things that he thought they should say when they spoke to the Family-afterwards-and they talked about that and about the extent to which Uni's stopping would block TV and how long the restoring of it would take.

Karl and Dover fell asleep.

Chip lay with his eyes closed and thought about some of the problems the Family would face as it awakened, and different ways of dealing with them.

"Christ, Who Taught Us" began on the speakers at eight o'clock, and two red-capped lifeguards in sungla.s.ses came walking down the zigzag stairs. One of them came to a platform near the group. "Merry Christmas," he said.

"Merry Christmas," they said to him.

"You can go in now if you want," he said, climbing up onto the platform.

Chip and Jack and Dover got up and went into the water. They swam around for a while, watching members come down the stairs, and then they went out and lay down again.

When there were thirty-five or forty members on the beach, at 8:22, the six got up and began putting on their coveralls and shouldering their kits.

Chip and Dover went up the stairs first. They smiled and said "Merry Christmas" to members coming down, and easily false-touched the scanner at the top. The only members nearby were at the canteen with their backs turned.

They waited by a water fountain, and Jack and Ria came up, and then Buzz and Karl.

They went to the bike racks, where twenty or twenty-five bikes were lined up in the nearest slots. They took the last six, put their kits in the baskets, mounted, and rode to the entrance of the bike path. They waited there, smiling and talking, until no cyclists and no cars were going by, and then they pa.s.sed the scanner in a group, touching their bracelets to the side of it in case someone could see them from a distance.

They rode toward EUR91770 singly and in twos, s.p.a.ced out widely along the path. Chip went first, with Dover behind him. He watched the cyclists who approached them and the occasional cars that rushed past. We're going to do it, he thought. We're going to do it.

They went into the airport separately and gathered near the flight-schedule signboard. Members pressed them close together; the red-and-green-streamered waiting room was densely crowded, and so voice-filled that Christmas music could only intermittently be heard. Beyond the gla.s.s, large planes turned and moved ponderously, took members on from three escalators at once, let lines of members off, rolled to and from the runways.

It was 9:35. The next flight to EUR00001 was at 11:48.

Chip said, "I don't like the idea of staying here so long. The barge either used extra power or came in late, and if the difference was conspicuous, Uni may have figured out what caused it."

"Let's go now," Ria said, "and get as close to '001 as we can and then bike again."

"We'll get there a lot sooner if we wait," Karl said. "This isn't such a bad hiding place."

"No," Chip said, looking at the signboard, "let's go-on the 10:06 to '00020. That's the soonest we can manage it, and it's only about fifty kilometers from '001. Come on, the door's over that way."

They made their way through the crowd to the swing-door at the side of the room and cl.u.s.tered around its scanner. The door opened and a member in orange came out. Excusing himself, he reached between Chip and Dover to touch the scanner-yes, it winked-and went on.

Chip slipped his watch from his pocket and checked it against a clock. "It's lane six," he said. "If there's more than one escalator, be on line for the one at the back of the plane; and make sure you're near the end of the line but with at least six members behind you. Dover?" He took Dover's elbow and they went through the door into the depot area. A member in orange standing there said, "You're not supposed to be in here."

"Uni okayed it," Chip said. "We're in airport design."

"Three-thirty-seven A," Dover said.

Chip said, "This wing is being enlarged next year."

"I see what you meant about the ceiling," Dover said, looking up at it.

"Yes," Chip said. "It could easily go up another meter."

"Meter and a half," Dover said.

"Unless we run into trouble with the ducts," Chip said.

The member left them and went out through the door.

"Yes, all the ducts," Dover said. "Big problem."

"Let me show you where they lead," Chip said. "It's interesting."

"It certainly is," Dover said.

They went into the area where members in orange were readying cake and drink containers, working more quickly than members usually did.

"Three-thirty-seven A?" Chip said.

"Why not?" Dover said, and pointed at the ceiling as they separated for a member pushing a cart. "You see the way the ducts run?" he said.

"We're going to have to change the whole setup," Chip said. "In here too."

They false-touched and went into the room where coveralls hung on hooks. No one was in it. Chip closed the door and pointed to the closet where the orange coveralls were kept.

They put orange coveralls on over their yellow ones, and toeguards on their sandals. They tore openings inside the pockets of the orange coveralls so that they could reach into the pockets of the inner ones.

A member in white came in. "h.e.l.lo," he said. "Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas," they said.

"I was sent up from '765 to help out," he said. He was about thirty.

"Good, we can use it," Chip said.

The member, opening his coveralls, looked at Dover, who was closing his. "What have you got the other ones on underneath for?" he asked.

"It's warmer that way," Chip said, going to him.

He turned to Chip, puzzled. "Warmer?" he said. "What do you want to be warmer for?"

"I'm sorry, brother," Chip said, and hit him in the stomach. He bent forward, grunting, and Chip swung his fist up under his jaw. The member straightened and fell backward; Dover caught him under the arms and lowered him to the floor. He lay with his eyes closed, as if sleeping.

Chip, looking down at him, said, "Christ and Wei, it works."

They tore up a set of coveralls and tied the member's wrists and ankles and knotted a sleeve between his teeth; then lifted him and put him into the closet where the floor polisher was.

The clock's 9:51 became 9:52.

They wrapped their kits in orange coveralls and went out of the room and past the members working at the cake and drink containers. In the depot area they found a half-empty carton of towels and put the wrapped kits into it. Carrying the carton between them, they went out through the portal onto the field.

A plane was opposite lane six, a large one, with members leaving it on two escalators. Members in orange waited at each escalator with a container cart.

They went away from the plane, toward the left; crossed the field diagonally with the carton between them, skirting a slow-moving maintenance truck and approaching the hangars that lay in a flat-roofed wing extending toward the runways.

They went into a hangar. A smaller plane was there, with members in orange underneath it, lowering a square black housing from it. Chip and Dover carried the carton to the back of the hangar where there was a door in the side wall. Dover opened it, looked in, and nodded to Chip.

They went in and closed the door. They were in a supply room: racks of tools, rows of wood crates, black metal drums marked Lub Oil SG. "Couldn't be better," Chip said as they put the carton on the floor.

Dover went to the door and stood at its hinge side. He took out his gun and held it by its barrel.

Chip, crouching, unwrapped a kit, opened it, and took out a bomb, one with a yellow four-minute handle.

He separated two of the oil drums and put the bomb on the floor between them, with its taped-down handle facing up. He took his watch out and looked at it. Dover said, "How long?" and he said, "Three minutes."

He went back to the carton and, still holding the watch, closed the kit and rewrapped it and closed the carton's leaves.

"Is there anything we can use?" Dover asked, nodding at the tool racks.

Chip went to one and the door of the room opened and a member in orange came in. "h.e.l.lo," Chip said, and took a tool from the rack and put the watch in his pocket. "h.e.l.lo," the member said, coming to the other side of the rack. She glanced over it at Chip. "Who're you?" she asked.

"Li RP," he said. "I was sent up from '765 to help." He took another tool from the rack, a pair of calipers.

"It's not as bad as Wei's Birthday," the member said.

Another member came to the door. "We've got it, Peace," he said. "Li had it."

"I asked him and he said he didn't," the first member said.

"Well he did," the second member said, and went away.

The first member went after him. "He was the first one I asked," she said.

Chip stood and watched the door as it slowly closed. Dover, behind it, looked at him and closed it all the way, softly. Chip looked back at Dover, and then at his hand holding the tools. It was shaking. He put the tools down, let his breath out, and showed his hand to Dover, who smiled and said, "Very unmemberlike."

Chip drew a breath and got the watch from his pocket. "Less than a minute," he said, and went to the drums and crouched. He pulled the tape from the bomb's handle.

Dover put his gun into his pocket-poked it into the inner one-and stood with his hand on the doork.n.o.b.

Chip, looking at the watch and holding the fuse handle, said, 'Ten seconds." He waited, waited, waited-and then pulled the handle up and stood as Dover opened the door. They picked up the carton and carried it from the room and pulled the door closed.

They walked with the carton through the hangar-"Easy, easy," Chip said-and across the field toward the plane opposite lane six. Members were filing onto the escalators, riding up.

"What's that?" a member in orange with a clipboard asked, walking along with them.

"We were told to bring it over there," Chip said.

"Karl?" another member said at the other side of the one with the clipboard. He stopped and turned, saying "Yes?" and Chip and Dover kept walking.

They brought the carton to the plane's rear escalator and put it down. Chip stayed opposite the scanner and looked at the escalator controls; Dover slipped through the line and stood at the scanner's back. Members pa.s.sed between them, touching their bracelets to the green-winking scanner and stepping onto the escalator.

A member in orange came to Chip and said, "I'm on this escalator."

"Karl just told me to take it," Chip said. "I was sent up from '765 to help."

"What's wrong?" the member with the clipboard asked, coming over. "Why are there three of you here?"

"I thought I was on this escalator," the other member said. The air shuddered and a loud roar clapped from the hangars.

A black pillar, vast and growing, stood on the wing of hangars, and rolling orange fire was in the black. A black and orange rain fell on the roof and the field, and members in orange came running from the hangars, running and slowing and looking back up at the fiery pillar on the roof.

The member with the clipboard stared, and hurried forward. The other member hurried after him.

The members on line stood motionless, looking upward toward the hangars. Chip and Dover caught at their arms and drew them forward. "Don't stop," they said. "Keep moving, please. There's no danger. The plane is waiting. Touch and step on. Keep moving, please." They herded the members past the scanner and onto the escalator and one was Jack-"Beautiful," he said, gazing past Chip as he false-touched; and Ria, who looked as excited as she had the first time Chip had seen her; and Karl, looking awed and somber; and Buzz, smiling. Dover moved to the escalator after Buzz; Chip thrust a wrapped kit to him and turned to the other members on line, the last seven or eight, who stood looking toward the hangars. "Keep moving, please," he said. "The plane is waiting for you. Sister!"

"There is no cause for alarm," a woman's voice loudspeakered. "There has been an accident in the hangars but everything is under control."

Chip urged the members to the escalator. "Touch and step on," he said. "The plane's waiting."

"Departing members, please resume your places in line," the voice said. "Members who are boarding planes, continue to do so. There will be no interruption of service."

Chip false-touched and stepped onto the escalator behind the last member. Riding upward with his wrapped kit under his arm, he glanced toward the hangars: the pillar was black and smudging; there was no more fire. He looked ahead again, at pale blue coveralls. "All personnel except forty-sevens and forty-nines, resume your a.s.signed duties," the woman's voice said. "All personnel except forty-sevens and forty-nines, resume your a.s.signed duties. Everything is under control." Chip stepped into the plane and the door slid down behind him. "There will be no interruption of-" Members stood confusedly, looking at filled seats.

"There are extra pa.s.sengers because of the holiday," Chip said. "Go forward and ask members with children to double up. It can't be helped."