This Perfect Day Part 13

The following night Chip was sitting in the storeroom reading and smoking when "h.e.l.lo, Chip," Lilac said, and was standing in the doorway with a flashlight at her side.

Chip stood up, looking at her.

"Do you mind my interrupting you?" she asked.

"Of course not, I'm glad to see you," he said. "Is King here?"

"No," she said.

"Come on in," he said.

She stayed in the doorway. "I want you to teach me that language," she said.

"I'd like to," he said. "I was going to ask you if you wanted the lists. Come on in."

He watched her come in, then found his pipe in his hand, put it down, and went to the ma.s.s of relics. Catching the legs of one of the chairs they used, he tossed it right side up and brought it back to the table. She had pocketed her flashlight and was looking at the open pages of the book he had been reading. He put the chair down, moved his chair to the side, and put the second chair next to it.

She turned up the front part of the book and looked at its cover.

"It means A Motive for Pa.s.sion," he said. "Which is fairly obvious. Most of it isn't."

She looked at the open pages again. "Some of it looks like Italiano," she said.

"That's how I got onto it," he said. He held the back of the chair he had brought for her.

"I've been sitting all day," she said. "You sit down. Go ahead."

He sat and got his folded lists out from under the stacked Francais books. "You can keep these as long as you want," he said, opening them and spreading them out on the table. "I know it all pretty well by heart now."

He showed her the way the verbs fell into groups, following different patterns of change to express time and subject, and the way the adjectives took one form or another depending on the nouns they were applied to. "It's complicated," he said, "but once you get the hang of it, translation's fairly easy." He translated a page of A Motive for Pa.s.sion for her. Victor, a trader in shares of various industrial companies-the member who had had the artificial heart put into him-was rebuking his wife, Caroline, for having been unfriendly to an influential lawmaker.

"It's fascinating," Lilac said.

"What amazes me," Chip said, "is how many non-productive members there were. These share-traders and lawmakers; the soldiers and policemen, bankers, tax-gatherers . . ."

"They weren't non-productive," she said. "They didn't produce things but they made it possible for members to live the way they did. They produced the freedom, or at least they maintained it."

"Yes," he said. "I suppose you're right."

"I am," she said, and moved restlessly from the table.

He thought for a moment. "Pre-U members," he said, "gave up efficiency-in exchange for freedom. And we've done the reverse."

"We haven't done it," Lilac said. "It was done for us." She turned and faced him, and said, "Do you think it's possible that the incurables are still alive?"

He looked at her.

"That their descendants have survived somehow," she said, "and have a-a society somewhere? On an island or in some area that the Family isn't using?"

"Wow," he said, and rubbed his forehead. "Sure it's possible," he said. "Members survived on islands before the Unification; why not after?"

"That's what I think," she said, coming back to him. "There have been five generations since the last ones-"

"Battered by disease and hards.h.i.+p-"

"But reproducing at will!"

"I don't know about a society," he said, "but there might be a colony-"

"A city," she said. "They were the smart ones, the strong ones."

"What an idea," he said.

"It's possible, isn't it?" She was leaning toward him, hands on the table, her large eyes questioning, her cheeks flushed to a rosier darkness.

He looked at her. "What does King think?" he asked. She drew back a bit and he said, "As if I can't guess."

She was angry suddenly, fierce-eyed. "You were terrible to him last night!" she said.

"Terrible? I was? To him?"

"Yes!" She whirled from the table. "You questioned him as if you were- How could you even think he would know about Uni killing us and not tell us?"

"I still think he knew."

She faced him angrily. "He didn't!" she said. "He doesn't keep secrets from me!"

"What are you, his adviser?"

"Yes!" she said. "That's exactly what I am, in case you want to know."

"You're not," he said.

"I am."

"Christ and Wei," he said. "You really are? You're an adviser? That's the last cla.s.sification I would have thought of. How old are you?"

"Twenty-four."

"And you're his?"

She nodded.

He laughed. "I decided that you worked in the gardens," he said. "You smell of flowers, do you know that? You really do."

"I wear perfume," she said.

"You wear it?"

"The perfume of flowers, in a liquid. King made it for me."

He stared at her. "Parfum!" he said, slapping the open book before him. "I thought it was some kind of germicide; she put it in her bath. Of course!" He groped among the lists, took up his pen, crossed out and wrote. "Stupid," he said. "Parfum equals perfume. Flowers in a liquid. How did he do that?"

"Don't accuse him of deceiving us."

"All right, I won't." He put the pen down.

"Everything we've got," she said, "we owe to him."

"What is it though?" he said. "Nothing-unless we use it to try for more. And he doesn't seem to want us to."

"He's more sensible than we are."

He looked at her, standing a few meters away from him before the ma.s.s of relics. "What would you do," he asked, "if we somehow found that there is a city of incurables?"

Her eyes stayed on his. "Get to it," she said.

"And live on plants and animals?"

"If necessary." She glanced at the book, moved her head toward it. "Victor and Caroline seem to have enjoyed their dinner."

He smiled and said, "You really are a pre-U woman, aren't you?"

She said nothing.

"Would you let me see your b.r.e.a.s.t.s?" he asked.

"What for?" she said.

"I'm curious, that's all."

She pulled open the top of her coveralls and held the two sides apart. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were rose-brown soft-looking cones that stirred with her breathing, taut on their upper surfaces and rounded below. Their tips, blunt and pink, seemed to contract and grow darker as he looked at them. He felt oddly aroused, as if he were being caressed.

"They're nice," he said.

"I know they are," she said, closing her coveralls and pressing the closure. "That's something else I owe King. I used to think I was the ugliest member in the entire Family."

"You?"

"Until he convinced me I wasn't."

"All right," he said, "you owe King very much. We all do. What have you come to me for?"

"I told you," she said. "To learn that language."

"Cloth," he said, getting up. "You want me to start looking for places the Family isn't using, for signs that your 'city' exists. Because I'll do it and he won't; because I'm not 'sensible,' or old, or content to make fun of TV."

She started for the door but he caught her by the shoulder and pushed her around. "Stay here!" he said. She looked frightenedly at him and he took hold of her jaw and kissed her mouth; clamped her head in both his hands and pushed his tongue against her shut teeth. She pressed at his chest and wrenched her head. He thought she would stop, give in and take the kiss, but she didn't; she kept struggling with increasing vigor, and finally he let go and she pushed away from him.

"That's-that's terrible!" she said. "Forcing me! That's- I've never been held that way!"

"I love you," he said.

"Look at me, I'm shaking," she said. "Wei Li Chun, is that how you love, by becoming an animal? That's awful!"

"A human," he said, "like you."

"No," she said. "I wouldn't hurt anyone, hold anyone that way!" She held her jaw and moved it.

"How do you think incurables kiss?" he said.

"Like humans, not like animals."

"I'm sorry," he said. "I love you."

"Good," she said. "I love you too-the way I love Leopard and Snowflake and Sparrow."

"That's not what I mean," he said.

"But it's what I mean," she said, looking at him. She went sideways to the doorway and said, "Don't do that again. That's terrible!"

"Do you want the lists?" he asked.

She looked as if she was going to say no, hesitated, and then said, "Yes. That's what I came for."

He turned and gathered the lists on the table, folded them together, and took Pere Goriot from the stack of books. She came over and he gave them to her.

"I didn't mean to hurt you," he said.

"All right," she said. "Just don't do it again."

"I'll look for places the Family isn't using," he said. "I'll go over the maps at the MFA and see if-"

"I've done that," she said.

"Carefully?"

"As carefully as I could."

"I'll do it again," he said. "It's the only way to begin. Millimeter by millimeter."

"All right," she said.

"Wait a second, I'm going now too."

She waited while he put away his smoking things and got the room back the way it belonged, and then they went out together through the exhibit hall and down the escalator.

"A city of incurables," he said.