This Perfect Day (7 page)

One thing alone in the world was indisputably right: Karl’s drawing of the horse. He framed it—not in a supply-center frame but in one he made himself, out of wood strips ripped from the back of a drawer and scraped smooth—and hung it in his rooms in Usa, his room in Ind, his room in Chi. It was a lot better to look at than
Wei Addressing the Chemotherapists
or
Marx Writing
or
Christ Expelling the Money Changers.

In Chi he thought of getting married, but he was told that he wasn’t to reproduce and so there didn’t seem much point in it.

In mid-Marx of 162, shortly before his twenty-seventh birthday, he was transferred back to the Institute of Genetic Engineering in IND26110 and assigned to a newly established Genie Subclassification Center. New microscopes had found distinctions between genes that until then had appeared identical, and he was one of forty 663B’s and C’s put to defining subclassifications. His room was four buildings away from the Center, giving him a short walk twice a day, and he soon found a girlfriend whose room was on the floor below his. His adviser was a year younger than he, Bob RO. Life apparently was going to continue as before.

One night in April, though, as he made ready to clean his teeth before going to bed, he found a small white something lodged in his mouthpiece. Perplexed, he picked it out. It was a triple bend of tightly rolled paper. He put down the mouthpiece and unrolled a thin rectangle filled with typing. You
seem to be a fairly unusual member,
it said.
Wondering about which classification you would choose, for instance. Would you like to meet some other unusual members? Think about it. You are only partly alive. We can help you more than you can imagine.

The note surprised him with its knowledge of his past and disturbed him with its secrecy and its “You are only partly alive.” What did it mean—that strange statement and the whole strange message? And who had put it in his mouthpiece, of all places? But there was no better place, it struck him, for making certain that he and he alone should find it. Who then, not so foolishly, had put it there? Anyone at all could have come into the room earlier in the evening or during the day. At least two other members had done so; there had been notes on his desk from Peace SK, his girlfriend, and from the secretary of the house photography club.

He cleaned his teeth and got into bed and reread the note. Its writer or one of the other “unusual members” must have had access to UniComp’s memory of his boyhood self-classification thoughts, and that seemed to be enough to make the group think he might be sympathetic to them. Was he? They were abnormal; that was certain. Yet what was
he?
Wasn’t he abnormal too?
We can help you more than you can imagine.
What did
that
mean? Help him how? Help him do what? And what if he decided he wanted to meet them; what was he supposed to do? Wait, apparently, for another note, for a contact of some kind.
Think about it,
the note said.

The last chime sounded, and he rolled the piece of paper back up and tucked it down into the spine of his night-table
Wei’s Living Wisdom.
He tapped off the light and lay and thought about it. It was disturbing, but it was different too, and interesting.
Would you like to meet some other unusual members?

He didn’t say anything about it to Bob RO. He looked for another note in his mouthpiece each time he came back to his room, but didn’t find one. Walking to and from work, taking a seat in the lounge for TV, standing on line in the dining hall or the supply center, he searched the eyes of the members around him, alert for a meaningful remark or perhaps only a look and a head movement inviting him to follow. None came.

Four days went by and he began to think that the note had been a sick member’s joke, or worse, a test of some kind. Had Bob RO himself written it, to see if he would mention it? No, that was ridiculous; he was
really
getting sick.

He had been interested—excited even, and hopeful, though he hadn’t known of what—but now, as more days went by with no note, no contact, he became disappointed and irritable.

And then, a week after the first note, it was there: the same triple bend of rolled paper in the mouthpiece. He picked it out, excitement and hope coming back instantaneously. He unrolled the paper and read it:
If you want to meet us and hear how we can help you, be between buildings J16 and J18 on Lower Christ Plaza tomorrow night at
11:15.
Do not touch any scanners on the way. If members are in sight of one you have to pass, take another route. I’ll wait until 11:30.
Beneath was typed, as a signature,
Snowflake.

Few members were on the walkways, and those hurrying to their beds with their eyes set straight ahead of them. He had to change his course only once, walked faster, and reached Lower Christ Plaza exactly at 11:15. He crossed the moonlit white expanse, with its turned-off fountain mirroring the moon, and found J16 and the dark channel that divided it from J18.

No one was there—but then, meters back in shadow, he saw white coveralls marked with what looked like a medicenter red cross. He went into the darkness and approached the member, who stood by J16’s wall and stayed silent.

“Snowflake?” he said.

“Yes.” The voice was a woman’s. “Did you touch any scanners?”

“No.”

“Funny feeling, isn’t it?” She was wearing a pale mask of some kind, thin and close-fitting.

“I’ve done it before,” he said.

“Good for you.”

“Only once, and somebody pushed me,” he said. She seemed older than he, how much he couldn’t tell.

“We’re going to a place that’s a five-minute walk from here,” she said. “It’s where we get together regularly, six of us, four women and two men—a terrible ratio that I’m counting on you to improve. We’re going to make a certain suggestion to you; if you decide to follow it you might eventually become one of us; if you don’t, you won’t, and tonight will be our last contact. In that case, though, we can’t have you knowing what we look like or where we meet.” Her hand came out of her pocket with whiteness in it. “I’ll have to bandage your eyes,” she said. “That’s why I’m wearing these medicenter cuvs, so it’ll look all right for me to be leading you.”

“At this hour?”

“We’ve done it before and had no trouble,” she said. “You don’t mind?”

He shrugged. “I guess not,” he said.

“Hold these over your eyes.” She gave him two wads of cotton. He closed his eyes and put the wads in place, holding them with a finger each. She began winding bandage around his head and over the wads; he withdrew his fingers, bent his head to help her. She kept winding bandage, around and around, up onto his forehead, down onto his cheeks.

“Are you sure you’re really not medicenter?” he said.

She chuckled and said, “Positive.” She pressed the end of the bandage, sticking it tight; pressed all over it and over his eyes, then took his arm. She turned him—toward the plaza, he knew —and started him walking.

“Don’t forget your mask,” he said.

She stopped short. “Thanks for reminding me,” she said. Her hand left his arm, and after a moment, came back. They walked on.

Their footsteps changed, became muted by space, and a breeze cooled his face below the bandage; they were in the plaza. “Snowflake’s” hand on his arm drew him in a diagonal leftward course, away from the direction of the Institute.

“When we get where we’re going,” she said, “I’m going to put a piece of tape over your bracelet; over mine too. We avoid knowing one another’s namebers as much as possible. I know yours—I’m the one who spotted you—but the others don’t; all they know is that I’m bringing a promising member. Later on, one or two of them may have to know it.”

“Do you check the history of everyone who’s assigned here?”

“No. Why?”

“Isn’t that how you ‘spotted’ me, by finding out that I used to think about classifying myself?”

“Three steps down here,” she said. “No, that was only confirmation. And two and three. What I spotted was a look you have, the look of a member who isn’t one-hundred-per-cent in the bosom of the Family. You’ll learn to recognize it too, if you join us. I found out who you were, and then I went to your room and saw that picture on the wall.”

“The horse?”

“No,
Marx Writing,”
she said. “Of course the horse. You draw the way no normal member would even think of drawing. I checked your history
then,
after I’d seen the picture.”

They had left the plaza and were on one of the walkways west of it—K or L, he wasn’t sure which.

“You’ve made a mistake,” he said. “Someone else drew that picture.”

“You drew it,” she said; “you’ve claimed charcoal and sketch pads.”

“For the member who drew it. A friend of mine at academy.”

“Well
that’s
interesting,” she said. “Cheating on claims is a better sign than anything. Anyway, you liked the picture well enough to keep it and frame it. Or did your friend make the frame too?”

He smiled. “No, I did,” he said. “You didn’t miss a thing.”

“We turn here, to the right.”

“Are you an adviser?”

“Me? Hate, no.”

“But you can pull histories?”

“Sometimes.”

“Are you at the Institute?”

“Don’t ask so many questions,” she said. “Listen, what do you want us to call you? Instead of Li RM.”

“Oh,” he said. “Chip.”

“ ‘Chip’? No,” she said, “don’t just say the first thing that comes into your mind. You ought to be something like ‘Pirate’ or ‘Tiger.’ The others are King and Lilac and Leopard and Hush and Sparrow.”

“Chip’s what I was called when I was a boy,” he said. “I’m used to it.”

“All right,” she said, “but it’s not what
I
would have chosen. Do you know where we are?”

“No.”

“Fine. Left now.”

They went through a door, up steps, through another door, and into an echoing hall of some kind, where they walked and turned, walked and turned, as if by-passing a number of irregularly placed objects. They walked up a stopped escalator and along a corridor that curved toward the right.

She stopped him and asked for his bracelet. He raised his wrist, and his bracelet was pressed tight and rubbed. He touched it; there was smoothness instead of his nameber. That and his sightlessness made him suddenly feel disembodied; as if he were about to drift from the floor, drift right out through whatever walls were around him and up into space, dissolve there and become nothing.

She took his arm again. They walked farther and stopped. He heard a knock and two more knocks, a door opening, voices stilling. “Hi,” she said, leading him forward. “This is Chip. He insists on it.”

Chairs scuffed against the floor, voices gave greetings. A hand took his and shook it. “I’m King,” a member said, a man. “I’m glad you decided to come.”

“Thanks,” he said.

Another hand gripped his harder. “Snowflake says you’re quite an artist”—an older man than King. “I’m Leopard.”

Other hands came quickly, women: “Hello, Chip; I’m Lilac.” “And I’m Sparrow. I hope you’ll become a regular.” “I’m Hush, Leopard’s wife. Hello.” The last one’s hand and voice were old; the other two were young.

He was led to a chair and sat in it. His hands found tabletop before him, smooth and bare, its edge slightly curving; an oval table or a large round one. The others were sitting down; Snowflake on his right, talking; someone else on his left. He smelled something burning, sniffed to make sure. None of the others seemed aware of it. “Something’s burning,” he said.

“Tobacco,” the old woman, Hush, said on his left.

“Tobacco?” he said.

“We smoke it,” Snowflake said. “Would you like to try some?”

“No,” he said.

Some of them laughed. “It’s not really deadly,” King said, farther away on his left. “In fact, I suspect it may have some beneficial effects.”

“It’s very pleasing,” one of the young women said, across the table from him.

“No, thanks,” he said.

They laughed again, made comments to one another, and one by one grew silent. His right hand on the tabletop was covered by Snowflake’s hand; he wanted to draw it away but restrained himself. He had been stupid to come. What was he doing, sitting there sightless among those sick false-named members? His own abnormality was nothing next to theirs. Tobacco! The stuff had been extincted a hundred years ago; where the hate had they got it?

“We’re sorry about the bandage, Chip,” King said. “I assume Snowflake’s explained why it’s necessary.”

“She has,” Chip said, and Snowflake said, “I did.” Her hand left Chip’s; he drew his from the tabletop and took hold of his other in his lap.

“We’re abnormal members, which is fairly obvious,” King said. “We do a great many things that are generally considered sick. We think they’re not. We
know
they’re not.” His voice was strong and deep and authoritative; Chip visualized him as large and powerful, about forty. “I’m not going to go into too many details,” he said, “because in your present condition you would be shocked and upset, just as you’re obviously shocked and upset by the fact that we smoke tobacco. You’ll learn the details for yourself in the future, if there
is
a future as far as you and we are concerned.”

“What do you mean,” Chip said, “’in my present condition?”

There was silence for a moment. A woman coughed. “While you’re dulled and normalized by your most recent treatment,” King said.

Chip sat still, facing in King’s direction, stopped by the irrationality of what he had said. He went over the words and answered them: “I’m not dulled and normalized.”

“But you are,” King said.

“The whole Family is,” Snowflake said, and from beyond her came “Everyone, not just you”—in the old man’s voice of Leopard.

“What do you think a treatment consists of?” King asked.

Chip said, “Vaccines, enzymes, the contraceptive, sometimes a tranquilizer—”

“Always
a tranquilizer,” King said. “And LPK, which minimizes aggressiveness and also minimizes joy and perception and every other fighting thing the brain is capable of.”