This Perfect Day Part 23

But it wasn't, he thought; it was a bad thing. What if the haze remained for days, for nights, blocking them at the very brink of freedom? Was it possible that Uni had created it, intentionally, for just that purpose? He smiled at himself. He was tres fou, exactly as Lilac had said.

They walked until they guessed themselves to be midway between '082 and the next city to the west, and then they put down the carton and the bundle and searched the cliff face for a usable cave. They found one within minutes; a low-roofed sand-floored burrow littered with cake wrappers and, intriguingly, two pieces-a green "Egypt," a pink "Ethiop"-torn from a pre-U map. They brought the carton and the bundle into the cave, spread their blankets, ate, and lay down together.

"Can you?" Lilac said. "After this morning and last night?"

"Without treatments," Chip said, "all things are possible."

"It's fantastic," Lilac said.

Later Chip said, "Even if we don't get any farther than this, even if we're caught and treated five minutes from now, it'll have been worth it. We've been ourselves, alive, for a few hours at least."

"I want all of my life, not just a little of it," Lilac said.

"You'll have it," Chip said. "I promise you." He kissed her lips, caressing her cheek in the darkness. "Will you stay with me?" he asked. "On Majorca?"

"Of course," she said. "Why shouldn't I?"

"You weren't going to," he said. "Remember? You weren't even going to come this far with me."

"Christ and Wei, that was last night," she said, and kissed him. "Of course I'm going to stay," she said. "You woke me up and now you're stuck with me."

They lay holding each other and kissing each other.

"Chip!" she cried-in reality, not in his dream.

She wasn't beside him. He sat up and banged his head on stone, groped for the knife he had left stuck in the sand. "Chip! Look!"-as he found it and threw himself over onto knees and one hand. She was a dark shape crouched at the cave's blinding blue opening. He raised the knife, ready to slash whoever was coming.

"No, no," she said, laughing. "Come look! Come on! You won't believe it!"

Squinting at the brilliance of sky and sea, he crawled over to her. "Look," she said happily, pointing up the beach.

A boat sat on the sand about fifty meters away, a small two-rotor launch, old, with a white hull and a red skirting. It sat just clear of the water, tipped slightly forward. There were white splatters on the skirting and the windscreen, part of which seemed to be missing.

"Let's see if it's good!" Lilac said. With her hand on Chip's shoulder she started to rise from the cave; he dropped the knife, caught her arm, and pulled her back. "Wait a minute," he said.

"What for?" She looked at him.

He rubbed his head where he had b.u.mped it, and frowned at the boat-so white and red and empty and convenient in the bright morning haze-free sun. "It's a trick of some kind," he said. "A trap. It's too convenient. We go to sleep and wake up and a boat's been delivered for us. You're right, I don't believe it."

"It wasn't 'delivered' for us," she said. "It's been here for weeks. Look at the bird stuff on it, and how deep in the sand the front of it is."

"Where did it come from?" he asked. "There are no islands nearby."

"Maybe traders brought it from Majorca and got caught on sh.o.r.e," she said. "Or maybe they left it behind on purpose, for members like us. You said there might be a rescue operation."

"And n.o.body's seen it and reported it in the time it's been here?"

"Uni hasn't let anyone onto this part of the beach."

"Let's wait," he said. "Let's just watch and wait a while."

Reluctantly she said, "All right."

"It's too convenient," he said.

"Why must everything be inconvenient?"

They stayed in the cave. They ate and rebundled the blankets, always watching the boat. They took turns crawling to the back of the cave, and buried their wastes in sand.

Wave edges slipped under the back of the boat's skirting, then fell away toward low tide. Birds circled and landed on the windscreen and handrail, four that were sea gulls and two smaller brown ones.

"It's getting filthier every minute," Lilac said. "And what if it's been reported and today's the day it's going to be taken away?"

"Whisper, will you?" Chip said. "Christ and Wei, I wish I'd brought a telescope."

He tried to improvise one from the compa.s.s lens, a flashlight lens, and a rolled flap of the food carton, but he couldn't make it work.

"How long are we going to wait?" she asked.

"Till after dark," he said.

No one pa.s.sed on the beach, and the only sounds were the waves' lapping and the wingbeats and cries of the birds.

He went to the boat alone, slowly and cautiously. It was older than it had looked from the cave; the hull's flaking white paint showed repair scars, and the skirting was dented and cracked. He walked around it without touching it, looking with his flashlight for signs-he didn't know what form they would take-of deception, of danger. He didn't see any; he saw only an old boat that had been inexplicably abandoned, its center seats gone, a third of its windscreen broken away, and all of it spattered with dried white birdwaste. He switched his light off and looked at the cliff-touched the boat's handrail and waited for an alarm. The cliff stayed dark and deserted in pale moonlight He stepped onto the skirting, climbed into the boat, and shone his light on its controls. They seemed simple enough: on-off switches for the propulsion rotors and the lift rotor, a speed-control k.n.o.b calibrated to 100 KPH, a steering lever, a few gauges and indicators, and a switch marked Controlled and Independent that was set in the independent position. He found the battery housing on the floor between the front seats and unlatched its cover; the battery's fade-out date was April 171, a year away.

He shone his light at the rotor housings. Twigs were piled in one of them. He brushed them out, picked them all out, and shone the light on the rotor within; it was new, s.h.i.+ny. The other rotor was old, its blades nicked and one missing.

He sat down at the controls and found the switch that lighted them. A miniature clock said 5:11 Fri 27 Aug 169. He switched on one propulsion rotor and then the other; they sc.r.a.ped but then hummed smoothly. He switched them off, looked at the gauges and indicators, and switched the control lights off.

The cliff was the same as before. No members had sprung from hiding. He turned to the sea behind him; it was empty and flat, silvered in a narrowing path that ended under the nearly full moon. No boats were flying toward him.

He sat in the boat for a few minutes, and then he climbed out of it and walked back to the cave.

Lilac was standing outside it. "Is it all right?" she asked.

"No, it's not," he said. "It wasn't left by traders because there's no message or anything in it. The clock stopped last year but it has a new rotor. I didn't try the lift rotor because of the sand, but even if it works, the skirting is cracked in two places and it may just wallow and get nowhere. On the other hand it may take us directly into '082-to a little seaside medicenter-even though it's supposed to be off telecontrol."

Lilac stood looking at him.

"We might as well try it though," he said. "If traders didn't leave it, they're not going to come ash.o.r.e while it's sitting here. Maybe we're just two very lucky members." He gave the flashlight to her.

He got the carton and the blanket-bundle from the cave and held one under each arm. They started walking toward the boat. "What about the things to trade?" she said.

"We'll have it," he said. "A boat must be worth a hundred times more than cameras and first-aid kits." He looked toward the cliff. "All right, doctors!" he called. "You can come out now!"

"Shh, don't!" she said.

"We forgot the sandals," he said.

"They're in the carton."

He put the carton and the bundle into the boat and they sc.r.a.ped the birdwaste from the broken windscreen with pieces of sh.e.l.l. They lifted the front of the boat and hauled it around toward the sea, then lifted the back and hauled again.

They kept lifting and hauling at either end and finally they had the boat down in the surf, bobbing and veering clumsily. Chip held it while Lilac climbed aboard, and then he pushed it farther out and climbed in with her.

He sat down at the controls and switched on their lights. She sat in the seat beside him, watching. He glanced at her- she looked anxiously at him-and he switched on the propulsion rotors and then the lift rotor. The boat shook violently, flinging them from side to side. Loud clankings banged from beneath it. He caught the steering lever, held it, and turned the speed-control k.n.o.b. The boat splashed forward and the shaking and clanging lessened. He turned the speed higher, to twenty, twenty-five. The clanking stopped and the shaking subsided to a steady vibration. The boat scuffed along on the water's surface.

"It's not lifting," he said.

"But it's moving," she said.

"For how long though? It's not built to hit the water this way and the skirting's cracked already." He turned the speed higher and the boat splashed through the crests of swells. He tried the steering lever; the boat responded. He steered north, got out his compa.s.s, and compared its reading with the direction indicator's. "It's not taking us into '082," he said. "At least not yet."

She looked behind them, and up at the sky. "No one's coming," she said.

He turned the speed higher and got a little more lift, but the impact when they sc.r.a.ped the swells was greater. He turned the speed back down. The k.n.o.b was at fifty-six. "I don't think we're doing more than forty," he said. "It'll be light when we get there, if we get there. It's just as well, I suppose; I won't get us onto the wrong island. I don't know how much this is throwing us off course."

Two other islands were near Majorca: EUR91766, forty kilometers to the northeast, the site of a copper-production complex; and EUR91603, eighty-five kilometers to the southwest, where there was an algae-processing complex and a climatonomy sub-center.

Lilac leaned close to Chip, avoiding the wind and spray from the broken part of the windscreen. Chip held the steering lever. He watched the direction indicator and the moonlit sea ahead and the stars that shone above the horizon.

The stars dissolved, the sky began to lighten, and there was no Majorca. There was only the sea, placid and endless all around them.

"If we're doing forty," Lilac said, "it should have taken seven hours. It's been more than that, hasn't it?"

"Maybe we haven't been doing forty," Chip said.

Or maybe he had compensated too much or too little for the eastward drift of the sea. Maybe they had pa.s.sed Majorca and were heading toward Eur. Or maybe Majorca didn't exist- had been blanked from pre-U maps because pre-U members had "bombed" it to nothing and why should the Family be reminded again of folly and barbarism?

He kept the boat headed a hairline west of north, but slowed it down a little.

The sky grew lighter and still there was no island, no Majorca. They scanned the horizon silently, avoiding each other's eyes.

One final star glimmered above the water in the northeast. No, glimmered on the water. No-"There's a light over there," he said.

She looked where he pointed, held his arm.

The light moved in an arc from side to side, then up and down as if beckoning. It was a kilometer or so away.

"Christ and Wei," Chip said softly, and steered toward it.

"Be careful," Lilac said. "Maybe it's-"

He changed hands on the steering lever and got the knife from his pocket, laid it in his lap.

The light went out and a small boat was there. Someone sat waving in it, waving a pale thing that he put on his head-a hat-and then waving his empty hand and arm.

"One member," Lilac said.

"One person," Chip said. He kept steering toward the boat -a rowboat, it looked like-with one hand on the lever and the other on the speed-control k.n.o.b.

"Look at him!" Lilac said.

The waving man was small and white-bearded, with a ruddy face below his broad-brimmed yellow hat. He was wearing a blue-topped white-legged garment.

Chip slowed the boat, steered it near the rowboat, and switched all three rotors off.

The man-old past sixty-two and blue-eyed, fantastically blue-eyed-smiled with brown teeth and gaps where teeth were missing and said, "Running from the dummies, are you? Looking for liberty?" His boat bobbed in their sidewaves. Poles and nets s.h.i.+fted in it-fish-catching equipment.

"Yes," Chip said. "Yes, we are! We're trying to find Majorca."

"Majorca?" the man said. He laughed and scratched his beard. "Myorca," he said. "Not Majorca, Myorca! But Liberty is what it's called now. It hasn't been called Myorca for- G.o.d knows, a hundred years, I guess! Liberty, it is."

"Are we near it?" Lilac asked, and Chip said, "We're friends. We haven't come to-interfere in any way, to try to 'cure' you or anything."

"We're incurables ourselves," Lilac said.

"You wouldn't be coming this way if you wasn't," the man said. "That's what I'm here for, to watch for folks like you and help them into port. Yes, you're near it. That's it over there." He pointed to the north.

And now on the horizon a dark green bar lay low and clear. Pink streaks glowed above its western half-mountains lit by the sun's first rays.

Chip and Lilac looked at it, and looked at each other, and looked again at Majorca-Myorca-Liberty.

"Hold fast," the man said, "and I'll tie onto your stern and come aboard."

They turned in their seats and faced each other. Chip took the knife from his lap, smiled, and tossed it to the floor. He took Lilac's hands.

They smiled at each other.

"I thought we'd gone past it," she said.

"So did I," he said. "Or that it didn't even exist any more."

They smiled at each other, and leaned forward and kissed each other.

"Hey, give me a hand here, will you?" the man said, looking at them over the back of the boat, clinging with dirty-nailed fingers.

They got up quickly and went to him. Chip kneeled on the back seat and helped him over.

His clothes were made of cloth, his hat woven of flat strips of yellow fiber. He was half a head shorter than they and smelled strangely and strongly. Chip grasped his hard-skinned hand and shook it. "I'm Chip," he said, "and this is Lilac."

"Glad to meet you," the bearded blue-eyed old man said, smiling his ugly-toothed smile. "I'm Darren Costanza." He shook Lilac's hand.

"Darren Costanza?" Chip said.

"That's the name."

"It's beautiful!" Lilac said.