This Perfect Day Part 36

"Here he is!" Madhir shouted. "Chip! He's the one! He's the one who did it! Here he is! Here! He's the one who did it"

Chip moved forward with the crowd, looking at the steel door ahead, holding the gun in his pocket. ("You brother-fighter, are you crazy?" "He's mad, he's mad!") They walked up the tunnel, quickly at first, then slowly, an endless straggle of dark laden figures. Lamps shone here and there along the line, each lamp drawing with it a section of s.h.i.+ning plastic roundness.

Chip saw Deirdre sitting at the side of the runnel. She looked at him stonily. He kept walking, the gun at his side.

Outside the tunnel they sat and lay in the clearing, smoked and ate and talked in huddles, rummaged in their bundles, traded forks for cigarettes.

Chip saw stretchers on the ground, four or five of them, a member holding a lamp beside them, other members kneeling.

He put the gun in his pocket and went over. The boy and the woman lay on two of the stretchers, their heads bandaged, their eyes closed, their sheeted chests moving. Members were on two other stretchers, and Barlow, the head of the Nutritional Council, was on another, dead-looking, his eyes closed. Rosen kneeled beside him, taping something to his chest through cut-open coveralls.

"Are they all right?" Chip asked.

"The others are," Rosen said. "Barlow's had a heart attack." He looked up at Chip. "They're saying that Wei was in there," he said.

"He was," Chip said.

"You're sure?"

"Yes," Chip said. "He's dead."

"It's hard to believe," Rosen said. He shook his head and took a small something from a member's hand and screwed it onto what he had taped to Barlow's chest.

Chip watched for a moment, then went over to the entrance of the clearing and sat down against stone and lit a cigarette. He toed his sandals off and smoked, watching members and programmers come out of the tunnel and walk around and find places to sit. Karl came out with a painting and a bundle.

A member came toward him. Chip took the gun out of his pocket and held it in his lap.

"Are you Chip?" the member asked. He was the older of the two men who had come in that evening.

"Yes," Chip said.

The man sat down next to him. He was about fifty, very dark, with a jutting chin. "Some of them are talking about rus.h.i.+ng you," he said.

"I figured they would be," Chip said. "I'm leaving in a second."

"My name's Luis," the man said.

"h.e.l.lo," Chip said.

They shook hands.

"Where are you going?" Luis asked.

"Back to the island I came from," Chip said. "Liberty. Majorca. Myorca. You don't know how to fly a copter by any chance, do you?"

"No," Luis said, "but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out."

"It's the landing that worries me," Chip said.

"Land in the water."

"I wouldn't want to lose the copter, though. a.s.suming I can find one. You want a cigarette?"

"No, thanks," Luis said.

They sat silently for a moment. Chip drew on his cigarette and looked up. "Christ and Wei, real stars," he said. "They had fake ones down there."

"Really?" Luis said.

"Really."

Luis looked over at the programmers. He shook his head. "They're talking as if the Family's going to die in the morning," he said. "It isn't. It's going to be born."

"Born to a lot of trouble, though," Chip said. "It's started already. Planes have crashed . . ."

Luis looked at him and said, "Members haven't died who were supposed to die . . ."

After a moment Chip said, "Yes. Thanks for reminding me."

Luis said. "Sure, there's going to be trouble. But there are members in every city-the undertreated, the ones who write 'Fight Uni'-who'll keep things going in the beginning. And in the end it's going to be better. Living people!"

"It's going to be more interesting, that's for sure," Chip said, putting his sandals on.

"You aren't going to stay on your island, are you?" Luis asked.

"I don't know," Chip said. "I haven't thought beyond getting there."

"You come back," Luis said. "The Family needs members like you."

"Does it?" Chip said. "I had an eye changed down there, and I'm not sure I only did it to fool Wei." He crushed his cigarette out and stood up. Programmers were looking around at him; he pointed the gun at them and they turned quickly away.

Luis stood up too. "I'm glad the bombs worked," he said, smiling. "I'm the one who made them."

"They worked beautifully," Chip said. "Throw and boom."

"Good," Luis said. "Listen, I don't know about any eye; you land on land and come back in a few weeks."

"I'll see," Chip said. "Good-by."

"Good-by, brother," Luis said.

Chip turned and went out of the clearing and started down rocky slope toward parkland.

He flew over roadways where occasional moving cars zigzagged slowly past series of stopped ones; along the River of Freedom, where barges b.u.mped blindly against the banks; past cities where monorail cars clung motionless to the rail, copters hovering over some of them.

As he grew more sure of his handling of the copter he flew lower; looked into plazas where members milled and gathered; skimmed over factories with stopped feed-in and feed-out lines; over construction sites where nothing moved except a member or two; and over the river again, pa.s.sing a group of members tying a barge to the sh.o.r.e, climbing onto it, looking up at him.

He followed the river to the sea and started across it, flying low. He thought of Lilac and Jan, Lilac turning startled from the sink (he should have taken the bedcover, why hadn't he?). But would they still be in the room? Could Lilac, thinking him caught and treated and never coming back, have-married someone else? No, never. (Why not? Almost nine months he'd been gone.) No. She wouldn't. She- Drops of clear liquid hit the copter's plastic front and streaked back along its sides. Something was leaking from above, he thought, but then he saw that the sky had gone gray, gray on both sides and darker gray ahead, like the skies in some pre-U paintings. It was rain that was. .h.i.tting the copter.

Rain! In the daytime! He flew with one hand, and with a fingertip of the other, followed on the inside of the plastic the paths of the streaking raindrops outside it.

Rain in the daytime! Christ and Wei, how strange! And how inconvenient!

But there was something pleasing about it too. Something natural.

He brought his hand back to its lever-Let's not get overconfident, brother-and smiling, flew ahead.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

Acclaimed novelist and playwright Ira Levin (1929-2007) was a native New Yorker whose books include A Kiss Before Dying, Rosemary's Baby, This Perfect Day, The Stepford Wives, The Boys from Brazil, Sliver, and Son of Rosemary. His plays include No Time for Sergeants, Critic's Choice, and Deathtrap (the longest-running thriller in Broadway history). Levin also wrote the lyrics of the Streisand cla.s.sic He Touched Me, and was the recipient of three Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Awards. For more information, please visit www.iralevin.org COMPLETED IN JUNE, 1969,.

IN NEW YORK CITY,.

AND DEDICATED TO ADAM LEVIN,.

JED LEVIN, AND NICHOLAS LEVIN.

By Ira Levin:.

Novels.

SON OF ROSEMARY.

SLIVER.

THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL.

THE STEPFORD WIVES.

THIS PERFECT DAY.

ROSEMARY'S BABY.

A KISS BEFORE DYING.

Plays.

CANTORIAL.

BREAK A LEG.

DEATHTRAP.

VERONICA'S ROOM DR. COOK'S GARDEN DRAT! THE CAT!.

(Music by Milton Schafer).

GENERAL SEEGER.

CRITIC'S CHOICE INTERLOCK.

NO TIME FOR SERGEANTS.

(From the novel by Mac Hyman).