This Perfect Day Part 24

"You've got a good boat here," Darren Costanza said, looking about.

"It doesn't lift," Chip said, and Lilac said, "But it got us here. We were lucky to find it."

Darren Costanza smiled at them. "And your pockets are filled with cameras and things?" he said.

"No," Chip said, "we decided not to take anything. The tide was in and-"

"Oh, that was a mistake," Darren Costanza said. "Didn't you take anything?"

"A gun without a generator," Chip said, taking it from his pocket. "And a few books and a razor in the bundle there."

"Well, this is worth something," Darren Costanza said, taking the gun and looking at it, thumbing its handle.

"We'll have the boat to trade," Lilac said.

"You should have taken more," Darren Costanza said, turning from them and moving away. They glanced at each other and looked at him again, about to follow, but he turned, holding a different gun. He pointed it at them and put Chip's gun into his pocket. "This old thing shoots bullets," he said, backing farther away to the front seats. "Doesn't need a generator," he said. "Bang, bang. Into the water now, real quick. Go on. Into the water."

They looked at him.

"Get in the water, you dumb steelies!" he shouted. "You want a bullet in your head?" He moved something at the back of the gun and pointed it at Lilac.

Chip pushed her to the side of the boat. She clambered over the rail and onto the skirting-saying "What is he doing this for?"-and slipped down into the water. Chip jumped in after her.

"Away from the boat!" Darren Costanza shouted. "Clear away! Swim!"

They swam a few meters, their coveralls ballooning around them, then turned, treading water.

"What are you doing this for?" Lilac asked.

"Figure it out for yourself, steely!" Darren Costanza said, sitting at the boat's controls.

"We'll drown if you leave us!" Chip cried. "We can't swim that far!"

"Who told you to come here?" Darren Costanza said, and the boat rushed splas.h.i.+ng away, the rowboat dragging from its back carving up fins of foam.

"You fighting brother-hater!" Chip shouted. The boat turned toward the eastern tip of the far-off island.

"He's taking it himself!" Lilac said. "He's going to trade it!"

"The sick selfish pre-U-" Chip said. "Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei, I had the knife in my hand and I threw it on the floor! 'Waiting to help us into port'! He's a pirate, that's what he is, the fighting-"

"Stop! Don't!" Lilac said, and looked at him despairingly.

"Oh Christ and Wei," he said.

They pulled open their coveralls and squirmed themselves out of them. "Keep them!" Chip said. "They'll hold air if we tie the openings!"

"Another boat!" Lilac said.

A speck of white was speeding from west to east, midway between them and the island.

She waved her coveralls.

"Too far!" Chip said. "We've got to start swimming!"

They tied the sleeves of their coveralls around their necks and swam against the chilly water. The island was impossibly far away-twenty or more kilometers.

If they could take short rests against the inflated coveralls, Chip thought, they could get far enough in so that another boat might see them. But who would be on it? Members like Darren Costanza? Foul-smelling pirates and murderers? Had King been right? "I hope you get there," King said, lying in his bed with his eyes closed. "The two of you. You deserve it." Fight that brother-hater!

The second boat had got near their pirated one, which was heading farther east as if to avoid it.

Chip swam steadily, glimpsing Lilac swimming beside him. Would they get enough rest to go on, to make it? Or would they drown, choke, slide languidly downward through darkening water... He drove the image from his mind; swam and kept swimming.

The second boat had stopped; their own was farther from it than before. But the second boat seemed bigger now, and bigger still.

He stopped and caught Lilac's kicking leg. She looked around, gasping, and he pointed.

The boat hadn't stopped; it had turned and was coming toward them.

They tugged at the coverall sleeves at their throats, loosed them and waved the light blue, the bright yellow.

The boat turned slightly away, then back, then away in the other direction.

"Here!" they cried, "Help! Here! Help!"-waving the coveralls, straining high in the water.

The boat turned back and away again, then sharply back. It stayed pointed at them, enlarging, and a horn sounded-loud, loud, loud, loud, loud.

Lilac sank against Chip, coughing water. He ducked his shoulder under her arm and supported her.

The boat came skimming to full-size white closeness-I.A. was painted large and green on its hull; it had one rotor-and splatted to a stop with a wave that washed over them. "Hang on!" a member cried, and something flew in the air and splashed beside them: a floating white ring with a rope. Chip grabbed it and the rope sprang taut, pulled by a member, young, yellow-haired. He drew them through the water. "I'm all right," Lilac said in Chip's arm. "I'm all right."

The side of the boat had rungs going up it. Chip pulled Lilac's coveralls from her hand, bent her fingers around a rung, and put her other hand to the rung above. She climbed. The member, leaning over and stretching, caught her hand and helped her. Chip guided her feet and climbed up after her.

They lay on their backs on warm firm floor under scratchy blankets, hand in hand, panting. Their heads were lifted in turn and a small metal container was pressed to their lips. The liquid in it smelled like Darren Costanza. It burned in their throats, but once it was down it warmed their stomachs surprisingly.

"Alcohol?" Chip said.

"Don't worry," the young yellow-haired man said, smiling down at them with normal teeth as he screwed the container onto a flask, "one sip won't rot your brain." He was about twenty-five, with a short beard that was yellow too, and normal eyes and skin. A brown belt at his hips held a gun in a brown pocket; he wore a white cloth s.h.i.+rt without sleeves and tan cloth trousers patched with blue that ended at his knees. Putting the flask on a seat, he unfastened the front of his belt. "I'll get your coveralls," he said. "Catch your breath." He put the gun-belt with the flask and climbed over the side of the boat. A splash sounded and the boat swayed.

"At least they're not all like that other one," Chip said.

"He has a gun," Lilac said.

"But he left it here," Chip said. "If he were-sick, he would have been afraid to."

They lay silently hand in hand under the scratchy blankets, breathing deeply, looking at the clear blue sky.

The boat tilted and the young man climbed back aboard with their dripping coveralls. His hair, which hadn't been clipped in a long time, clung to his head in wet rings. "Feeling better?" he asked, smiling at them.

"Yes," they both said.

He shook the coveralls over the side of the boat. "I'm sorry I wasn't here in time to keep that lunky away from you," he said. "Most immigrants come from Eur, so I generally stay to the north. What we need are two boats, not one. Or a longer-range spotter."

"Are you a-policeman?" Chip asked.

"Me?" The young man smiled. "No," he said, "I'm with Immigrants' a.s.sistance. That's an agency we've been generously allowed to set up, to help new immigrants get oriented. And get ash.o.r.e without being drowned." He hung the coveralls over the boat's railing and pulled apart their clinging folds.

Chip raised himself on his elbows. "Does this happen often?" he asked.

"Stealing immigrants' boats is a popular local pastime," the young man said. "There are others that are even more fun."

Chip sat up, and Lilac sat up beside him. The young man faced them, pink sunlight gleaming on his side.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you," he said, "but you haven't come to any paradise. Four fifths of the island's population is descended from the families who were here before the Unification or who came here right after; they're inbred, ignorant, mean, self-satisfied-and they despise immigrants. 'Steelies,' they call us. Because of the bracelets. Even after we take them off."

He took his gun-belt from the seat and put it around his hips. "We call them 'lunkies,'" he said, fastening the belt's buckle. "Only don't ever say it out loud or you'll find five or six of them stamping on your ribs. That's another of their pastimes."

He looked at them again. "The island is run by a General Costanza," he said, "with the-"

"That's who took the boat!" they said. "Darren Costanza!"

"I doubt it," the young man said, smiling. "The General doesn't get up this early. Your lunky must have been pulling your leg."

Chip said, "The brother-hater!"

"General Costanza," the young man said, "has the Church and the Army behind him. There's very little freedom even for lunkies, and for us there's virtually none. We have to live in specified areas, 'Steelytowns,' and we can't step outside them without a good reason. We have to show ident.i.ty cards to every lunky cop, and the only jobs we can get are the lowest, most back-breaking ones." He took up the flask. "Do you want some more of this?" he asked. "It's called 'whiskey.'"

Chip and Lilac shook their heads.

The young man unscrewed the container and poured amber liquid into it. "Let's see, what have I left out?" he said. "We're not allowed to own land or weapons. I turn in my gun when I set foot on sh.o.r.e." He raised the container and looked at them. "Welcome to Liberty," he said, and drank.

They looked disheartenedly at each other, and at the young man.

"That's what they call it," he said. "Liberty "

"We thought they would welcome newcomers," Chip said. "To help keep the Family away."

The young man, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the container back onto the flask, said, "n.o.body comes here except two or three immigrants a month. The last time the Family tried to treat the lunkies was back when there were five computers. Since Uni went into operation not one attempt has been made."

"Why not?" Lilac asked.

The young man looked at them. "n.o.body knows," he said. "There are different theories. The lunkies think that either 'G.o.d' is protecting them or the Family is afraid of the Army, a bunch of drunken incapable louts. Immigrants think-well, some of them think that the island is so depleted that treating everyone on it simply isn't worth Uni's while."

"And others think-" Chip said.

The young man turned away and put the flask on a shelf below the boat's controls. He sat down on the seat and turned to face them. "Others," he said, "and I'm one of them, think that Uni is using the island, and the lunkies, and all the hidden islands all over the world."

"Using them?" Chip said, and Lilac said, "How?"

"As prisons for us," the young man said.

They looked at him.

"Why is there always a boat on the beach?" he asked. "Always, in Eur and in Afr-an old boat that's still good enough to get here. And why are there those handy patched-up maps in museums? Wouldn't it be easier to make fake ones with the islands really omitted?"

They stared at him.

"What do you do," he said, looking at them intently, "when you're programming a computer to maintain a perfectly efficient, perfectly stable, perfectly cooperative society? How do you allow for biological freaks, 'incurables,' possible troublemakers?"

They said nothing, staring at him.

He leaned closer to them. "You leave a few 'un-unified' islands all around the world," he said. "You leave maps in museums and boats on beaches. The computer doesn't have to weed out your bad ones; they do the weeding themselves. They wiggle their way happily into the nearest isolation ward, and lunkies are waiting, with a General Costanza in charge, to take their boats, jam them into Steelytowns, and keep them helpless and harmless-in ways that high-minded disciples of Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei would never dream of stooping to."

"It can't be," Lilac said.

"A lot of us think it can," the young man said.

Chip said, "Uni let us come here?"

"No," Lilac said. "It's too-twisted."

The young man looked at her, looked at Chip.

Chip said, "I thought I was being so fighting clever!"

"So did I," the young man said, sitting back. "I know just how you feel."

"No, it can't be," Lilac said.

There was silence for a moment, and then the young man said, "I'll take you in now. I.A. will take off your bracelets and get your registered and lend you twenty-five bucks to get started." He smiled. "As bad as it is," he said, "it's better than being with the Family. Cloth is more comfortable than paplon -really-and even a rotten fig tastes better than totalcakes. You can have children, a drink, a cigarette-a couple of rooms if you work hard. Some steelies even get rich-entertainers, mostly. If you 'sir' the lunkies and stay in Steelytown, it's all right. No scanners, no advisers, and not one 'Life of Marx' in a whole year's TV."

Lilac smiled. Chip smiled too.

"Put the coveralls on," the young man said. "Lunkies are horrified by nakedness. It's 'unG.o.dly.'" He turned to the boat's controls.

They put aside the blankets and got into their moist coveralls, then stood behind the young man as he drove the boat toward the island. It spread out green and gold in the radiance of the just-risen sun, crested with mountains and dotted with bits of white, yellow, pink, pale blue.

"It's beautiful," Lilac said determinedly.

Chip, with his arm about her shoulders, looked ahead with narrowed eyes and said nothing.

5.