This Perfect Day Part 9

"Don't ignore it completely," King said. "The report form."

"Notice it," Lilac said. "Glance at it and then act as if it really isn't worth the bother of picking up and reading. As if you don't care much one way or the other."

It was late when they finished; the last chime had sounded half an hour before. "We'd better go separately," King said. "You go first. Wait by the side of the building."

Lilac stood up and Chip stood too. Her hand found his. "I know you're going to make it, Chip," she said.

"I'll try," he said. "Thanks for coming."

"You're welcome," she said, and went to the door. He thought he would see her by the light in the hallway as she went out, but King got up and was in the way and the door closed.

They stood silently for a moment, he and King, facing each other.

"Don't forget," King said. "The red capsule now and the other two when you get up."

"Right," Chip said, feeling for the box in his pocket.

"You shouldn't have any trouble."

"I don't know; there's so much to remember."

They were silent again.

"Thank you very much, King," Chip said, holding out his hand in the darkness.

"You're a lucky man," King said. "Snowflake is a very pa.s.sionate woman. You and she are going to have a lot of good times together."

Chip didn't understand why he had said that. "I hope so," he said. "It's hard to believe it's possible to have more than one o.r.g.a.s.m a week."

"What we have to do now," King said, "is find a man for Sparrow. Then everyone will have someone. It's better that way. Four couples. No friction."

Chip lowered his hand. He suddenly felt that King was telling him to stay away from Lilac, was defining who belonged with whom and telling him to obey the definition. Had King somehow seen him touching Lilac's hand?

"I'm going now," King said. "Turn around, please."

Chip turned around and heard King moving away. The room appeared dimly as the door was opened, a shadow swept across it, and it disappeared again with the door's closing.

Chip turned. How strange it was to think of someone loving one member in particular so much as to want no one else to touch her! Would he be that way too if his treatments were reduced? It was-like so many other things-hard to believe.

He went to the light b.u.t.ton and felt what was covering it: tape, with something square and flat underneath. He picked at the tape, peeled it away, and tapped the b.u.t.ton. He shut his eyes against the ceiling's glare.

When he could see he looked at the tape; it was skin-colored, with a square of blue cardboard stuck to it. He dropped it down the chute and took the box from his pocket. It was white plastic with a hinged lid. He opened it. A red capsule, a white one, and one that was half white and half yellow lay bedded on a cotton filling.

He took the box into the bathroom and tapped on the light. Setting the open box on the edge of the sink, he turned on the water and pulled a cup from the slot and filled it. He turned the water off.

He started to think, but before he could think too much he picked up the red capsule, put it far back on his tongue, and drank the water.

Two doctors, not one, had charge of him. They led him in a pale blue smock from examination room to examination room, conferred with the examining doctors, conferred with each other, and made checks and notations on a clipboarded report form that they handed back and forth between them. One was a woman in her forties, the other a man in his thirties. The woman sometimes walked with her arm around Chip's shoulders, smiling and calling him "young brother." The man watched him impa.s.sively, with eyes that were smaller and set closer together than normal. He had a fresh scar on his cheek, running from the temple to the corner of his mouth, and dark bruises on his cheek and forehead. He never took his eyes off Chip except to look at the report form. Even when conferring with doctors he kept watching him. When the three of them walked to the next examination room he usually dropped behind Chip and the smiling woman doctor. Chip expected him to make a sudden sound, but he didn't.

The interview with the senior adviser, a young woman, went well, Chip thought, but nothing else did. He was afraid to tense his muscles before the metabolic examination because of the doctor watching him, and he forgot about looking above the objective in the depth-perception test until it was too late.

"Too bad you're missing a day's work," the watching doctor said.

"I'll make it up," he said, and realized as he said it that it was a mistake. He should have said It's all for the best or Will I be here all day? or simply a dull overtreated Yes.

At midday he was given a gla.s.s of bitter white liquid to drink instead of a totalcake and then there were more tests and examinations. The woman doctor went away for half an hour but not the man.

Around three o'clock they seemed to be finished and went into a small office. The man sat down behind the desk and Chip sat opposite him. The woman said, "Excuse me, I'll be back in two seconds." She smiled at Chip and went out.

The man studied the report form for a minute or two, running a fingertip back and forth along his scar, and then he looked at the clock and put down the clipboard. "I'll go get her," he said, and got up and went out, closing the door partway.

Chip sat still and sniffed and looked at the clipboard. He leaned over, twisted his head, read on the report form the words cholinesterase absorption factor, unamplified, and sat back in his chair again. Had he looked too long?-he wasn't sure. He rubbed his thumb and examined it, then looked at the room's pictures, Marx Writing and Wood Presenting the Unification Treaty.

They came back in. The woman doctor sat down behind the desk and the man sat in a chair near her side. The woman looked at Chip. She wasn't smiling. She looked worried.

"Young brother," she said, "I'm worried about you. I think you've been trying to fool us."

Chip looked at her. "Fool you?" he said.

"There are sick members in this town," she said; "do you know that?"

He shook his head.

"Yes," she said. "As sick as can be. They cover members' eyes and take them someplace, and tell them to slow down and make mistakes and pretend they've lost their interest in s.e.x. They try to make other members as sick as they are. Do you know any such members?"

"No," Chip said.

"Anna," the man said, "I've watched him. There's no reason to think there's anything wrong beyond what showed on the tests." He turned to Chip and said, "Very easily corrected; nothing for you to think about."

The woman shook her head. "No," she said. "No, it doesn't feel right. Please, young brother, you want us to help you, don't you?"

"n.o.body told me to make mistakes," Chip said. "Why? Why should I?"

The man tapped the report form. "Look at the enzymological rundown," he said to the woman.

"I've looked at it, I've looked at it."

"He's been badly OT'ed there, there, there, and there. Let's give the data to Uni and get him fixed up again."

"I want Jesus HL to see him."

"Why?"

"Because I'm worried."

"I don't know any sick members," Chip said. "If I did I would tell my adviser."

"Yes," the woman said, "and why did you want to see him yesterday morning?"

"Yesterday?" Chip said. "I thought it was my day. I got mixed up."

"Please, let's go," the woman said, standing up holding the clipboard.

They left the office and walked down the hallway outside it. The woman put her arm around Chip's shoulders but she didn't smile. The man dropped behind.

They came to the end of the hallway, where there was a door marked 600A with a brown white-lettered plaque on it: Chief, Chemotherapeutics Division. They went in, to an anteroom where a member sat behind a desk. The woman doctor told her that they wanted to consult Jesus HL about a diagnostic problem, and the member got up and went out through another door.

"A waste of time all around," the man said.

The woman said, "Believe me, I hope so."

There were two chairs in the anteroom, a bare low table, and Wei Addressing the Chemotherapists. Chip decided that if they made him tell he would try not to mention Snowflake's light skin and Lilac's less-slanted-than-normal eyes.

The member came back and held the door open.

They went into a large office. A gaunt gray-haired member in his fifties-Jesus HL-was seated behind a large untidy desk. He nodded to the doctors as they approached, and looked absently at Chip. He waved a hand toward a chair facing the desk. Chip sat down in it.

The woman doctor handed Jesus HL the clipboard. "This doesn't feel right to me," she said. "I'm afraid he's malingering."

"Contrary to the enzymological evidence," the other doctor said.

Jesus HL leaned back in his chair and studied the report form. The doctors stood by the side of the desk, watching him. Chip tried to look curious but not concerned. He watched Jesus HL for a moment, and then looked at the desk. Papers of all sorts were piled and scattered on it and lay drifted over an old-style telecomp in a scuffed case. A drink container jammed with pens and rulers stood beside a framed snapshot of Jesus HL, younger, smiling in front of Uni's dome. There were two souvenir paperweights, an unusual square one from CHI61332 and a round one from ARG20400, neither of them on paper.

Jesus HL turned the clipboard end for end and peeled the form down and read the back of it.

"What I would like to do, Jesus," the woman doctor said, "is keep him here overnight and run some of the tests again tomorrow."

"Wasting-" the man said.

"Or better still," the woman said, louder, "question him now under TP."

"Wasting time and supplies," the man said.

"What are we, doctors or efficiency a.n.a.lyzers?" the woman asked him sharply.

Jesus HL put down the clipboard and looked at Chip. He got up from his chair and came around the side of the desk, the doctors stepping back quickly to let him pa.s.s. He came and stood directly in front of Chip's chair, tall and thin, his red-crossed coveralls stained with yellow spots.

He took Chip's hands from the chair arms, turned them over, and looked at the palms, which glistened with sweat.

He let one hand go and held the wrist of the other, his fingers at the pulse. Chip made himself look up, unconcernedly. Jesus HL looked quizzically at him for a moment and then suspected-no, knew-and smiled his knowledge contemptuously. Chip felt hollow, beaten.

Jesus HL took hold of Chip's chin, bent over, and looked closely at his eyes. "Open your eyes as wide as you can," he said. His voice was King's. Chip stared at him.

"That's right," he said. "Stare at me as if I've said something shocking." It was King's voice, unmistakable. Chip's mouth opened. "Don't speak, please," King-Jesus HL said, squeezing Chip's jaw painfully. He stared into Chip's eyes, turned his head to one side and then the other, and then released it and stepped back. He went back around the desk and sat down again. He picked up the clipboard, glanced at it, and handed it to the woman doctor, smiling. "You're mistaken, Anna," he said. "You can put your mind at rest. I've seen many members who were malingering; this one isn't. I commend you on your concern, though." To the man he said, "She's right, you know, Jesus; we mustn't be efficiency a.n.a.lyzers. The Family can afford a little waste where a member's health is involved. What is the Family, after all, except the sum of its members?"

"Thank you, Jesus," the woman said, smiling. "I'm glad I was wrong."

"Give that data to Uni," King said, turning and looking at Chip, "so our brother here can be properly treated from now on."

"Yes, right away." The woman beckoned to Chip. He got up from the chair.

They left the office. In the doorway Chip turned. "Thank you," he said.

King looked at him from behind his littered desk-only looked, with no smile, no glimmer of friendship. "Thank Uni," he said.

Less than a minute after he got back to his room Bob called. "I just got a report from Medicenter Main," he said. "Your treatments have been slightly out of line but from now on they're going to be exactly right."

"Good," Chip said.

"This confusion and tiredness you've been feeling will gradually pa.s.s away during the next week or so, and then you'll be your old self."

"I hope so."

"You will. Listen, do you want me to squeeze you in tomorrow, Li, or shall we just let it go till next Tuesday?"

"Next Tuesday's all right."

"Fine," Bob said. He grinned. "You know what?" he said. "You look better already."

"I feel a little better," Chip said.

3.

HE FELT A LITTLE BETTER every day, a little more awake and alert, a little more sure that sickness was what he had had and health was what he was growing toward. By Friday-three days after the examination-he felt the way he usually felt on the day before a treatment. But his last treatment was only a week behind him; three weeks and more lay ahead, s.p.a.cious and unexplored, before the next one. The slowdown had worked; Bob had been fooled and the treatment reduced. And the next one, on the basis of the examination, would be reduced even further. What wonders of feeling would he be feeling in five, in six weeks' time?

That Friday night, a few minutes after the last chime, Snowflake came into his room. "Don't mind me," she said, taking off her coveralls. "I'm just putting a note in your mouthpiece."

She got into bed with him and helped him off with his pajamas. Her body to his hands and lips was smooth, pliant, and more arousing than Peace SK's or anyone else's; and his own, as she stroked and kissed and licked it, was more shudderingly reactive than ever before, more strainingly in want. He eased himself into her-deeply, snugly in-and would have driven them both to immediate o.r.g.a.s.m, but she slowed him, stopped him, made him draw out and come in again, putting herself into one strange but effective position and then another. For twenty minutes or more they worked and contrived together, keeping as noiseless as they could because of the members beyond the wall and on the floor below.

When they were done and apart she said, "Well?"

"Well it was top speed, of course," he said, "but frankly, from what you said, I expected even more."

"Patience, brother," she said. "You're still an invalid. The time will come when you'll look back on this as the night we shook hands."

He laughed.

"Shh."

He held her and kissed her. "What does it say?" he asked. "The note in my mouthpiece."