This Perfect Day (11 page)

“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 analyzers?” 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 pass. 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 analyzers. 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 pass 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.

H
E 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, spacious 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 orgasm, 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.”

“Sunday night at eleven, the same place as last time.”

“But no bandage.”

“No bandage,” she said.

He would see them all, Lilac and all the others. “I’ve been wondering when the next meeting would be,” he said.

“I hear you whooshed through step two like a rocket.”

“Stumbled through it, you mean. I wouldn’t have made it at all if not for—” Did she know who King really was? Was it all right to speak of it?

“If not for what?”

“If not for King and Lilac,” he said. “They came here the night before and prepped me.”

“Well of course,” she said.
“None
of us would have made it if not for the capsules and all.”

“I wonder where they get them.”

“I think one of them works in a medicenter.”

“Mm, that would explain it,” he said. She didn’t know. Or she knew but didn’t know that
he
knew. Suddenly he was annoyed by the need for carefulness that had come between them.

She sat up. “Listen,” she said, “it pains me to say this, but don’t forget to carry on as usual with your girlfriend. Tomorrow night, I mean.”

“She’s got someone new,” he said. “You’re my girlfriend.”

“No I’m not,” she said. “Not on Saturday nights anyway. Our advisers would wonder why we took someone from a different house. I’ve got a nice normal Bob down the hall from me, and you find a nice normal Yin or Mary. But if you give her more than a little quick one I’ll break your neck.”

“Tomorrow night I won’t even be able to give her that.”

“That’s all right,” she said, “you’re still supposed to be recovering.” She looked sternly at him. “Really,” she said, “you have to remember not to get too passionate, except with me. And to keep a contented smile in place between the first chime and the last. And to work hard at your assignment but not
too
hard. It’s just as tricky to
stay
undertreated as it is to get that way.” She lay back down beside him and drew his arm around her. “Hate,” she said, “I’d give anything for a smoke now.”

“Is it really so enjoyable?”

“Mm-hmm. Especially at times like this.”

“I’ll have to try it.”

They lay talking and caressing each other for a while, and then Snowflake tried to rouse him again—“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” she said—but everything she did proved unavailing. She left around twelve or so. “Sunday at eleven,” she said by the door. “Congratulations.”

Saturday evening in the lounge Chip met a member named Mary KK whose boyfriend had been transferred to Can earlier in the week. The birth-year part of her nameber was 38, making her twenty-four.

They went to a pre-Marxmas sing in Equality Park. As they sat waiting for the amphitheater to fill, Chip looked at Mary closely. Her chin was sharp but otherwise she was normal: tan skin, upslanted brown eyes, clipped black hair, yellow coveralls on her slim spare frame. One of her toenails, half covered by sandal strap, was discolored a bluish purple. She sat smiling, watching the opposite side of the amphitheater.

“Where are you from?” he asked her.

“Rus,” she said.

“What’s your classification?”

“One-forty B.”

“What’s that?”

“Ophthalmologic technician.”

“What do you do?”

She turned to him. “I attach lenses,” she said. “In the children’s section.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

“Of course.” She looked uncertainly at him. “Why are you asking me so many questions?” she asked. “And why are you looking at me so—as if you’ve never seen a member before?”

“I’ve never seen
you
before,” he said. “I want to know you.”

“I’m no different from any other member,” she said. “There’s nothing unusual about me.”

“Your chin is a little sharper than normal.”

She drew back, looking hurt and confused.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said. “I just meant to point out that there
is
something unusual about you, even if it isn’t something important.”

She looked searchingly at him, then looked away, at the opposite side of the amphitheater again. She shook her head. “I don’t understand you,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was sick until last Tuesday. But my adviser took me to Medicenter Main and they fixed me up fine. I’m getting better now. Don’t worry.”

“Well
that’s
good,” she said. After a moment she turned and smiled cheerfully at him. “I forgive you,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said, suddenly feeling sad for her.

She looked away again. “I hope we sing ‘The Freeing of the Masses,’” she said.

“We will,” he said.

“I love it,” she said, and smiling, began to hum it.

He kept looking at her, trying to do so in a normal-seeming way. What she had said was true: she was no different from any other member. What did a sharp chin or a discolored toenail signify? She was exactly the same as every Mary and Anna and Peace and Yin who had ever been his girlfriend: humble and good, helpful and hard-working. Yet she made him feel sad. Why? And could all the others have done so, had he looked at them as closely as he was looking at her, had he listened as closely to what they said?

He looked at the members on the other side of him, at the scores in the tiers below, the scores in the tiers above. They were all like Mary KK, all smiling and ready to sing their favorite Marxmas songs, and all saddening; everyone in the amphitheater, the hundreds, the thousands, the tens of thousands. Their faces lined the mammoth bowl like tan beads strung away in immeasurable close-laid ovals.

Spotlights struck the gold cross and red sickle at the bowl’s center. Four familiar trumpet notes blasted, and everybody sang:

One mighty Family,

A
single perfect breed,

Free of all selfishness,

Aggressiveness and greed;

Each member giving all he has to give

And get-ting all he needs to live!

But they weren’t a mighty Family, he thought. They were a weak Family, a saddening and pitiable one, dulled by chemicals and dehumanized by bracelets. It was Uni that was mighty.

One mighty Family,

A single noble race,

Sending its sons and daughters

Bravely into space
. . .

He sang the words automatically, thinking that Lilac had been right: reduced treatments brought new unhappiness.

Sunday night at eleven he met Snowflake between the buildings on Lower Christ Plaza. He held her and kissed her gratefully, glad of her sexuality and humor and pale skin and bitter tobacco taste—all the things that were she and nobody else. “Christ and Wei, I’m glad to see you,” he said.

She gave him a tighter hug and smiled happily at him. “It gets to be a shut-off being with normals, doesn’t it?” she said.

“And how,” he said. “I wanted to kick the soccer team instead of the ball this morning.”

She laughed.

He had been depressed since the sing; now he felt released and happy and taller. “I found a girlfriend,” he said, “and guess what; I fucked her without the least bit of trouble.”

“Hate.”

“Not as extensively or as satisfyingly as we did, but with no trouble at all, not twenty-four hours later.”

“I can live without the details.”

He grinned and ran his hands down her sides and clasped her hipbones. “I think I might even manage to do it again tonight,” he said, teasing her with his thumbs.

“Your ego is growing by leaps and bounds.”

“My everything is.”

“Come on, brother,” she said, prying his hands away and holding onto one, “we’d better get you indoors before you start singing.”

They went into the plaza and crossed it diagonally. Flags and sagging Marxmas bunting hung motionless above it, dim in the glow of distant walkways. “Where are we going anyway?” he asked, walking happily. “Where’s the secret meeting place of the diseased corrupters of healthy young members?”

“The Pre-U,” she said.

“The
Museum?”

“That’s right. Can you think of a better place for a group of Uni-cheating abnormals? It’s exactly where we belong. Easy,” she said, tugging at his hand; “don’t walk so energetically.”

A member was coming into the plaza from the walkway they were going toward. A briefcase or telecomp was in his hand.