This Perfect Day Part 8

The member looked embarra.s.sed. "No, of course not," he said. "But thanks, you're very kind."

"No I'm not," Chip said, but he was glad the member had said he was.

He hurried to the Center and got there eight minutes early. He drew a sample from his own section of the IC box, not somebody else's, and took it into his own microscope; put on his gla.s.ses the right way and followed the OMP to the letter. He drew data from Uni respectfully (Forgive my offenses, Uni who knows everything) and fed it new data humbly (Here is exact and truthful information about gene sample NF5049).

The section head looked in. "How's it going?" he asked.

"Very well, Bob."

"Good."

At midday he felt worse, though. What about them, those sick ones? Was he to leave them to their sickness, their tobacco, their reduced treatments, their pre-U thoughts? He had no choice. They had bandaged his eyes. There was no way of finding them.

But that wasn't so; there was a way. Snowflake had shown him her face. How many almost-white members, women of her age, could there be in the city? Three? Four? Five? Uni, if Bob RO asked it, could output their namebers in an instant. And when she was found and properly treated, she would give the namebers of some of the others; and they, the namebers of the ones remaining. The whole group could be found and helped within a day or two.

The way he had helped Karl.

That stopped him. He had helped Karl and felt guilt-guilt he had clung to for years and years, and now it persisted, a part of him. Oh Jesus Christ and Wei Li Chun, how sick beyond imagining he was!

"Are you all right, brother?"

It was the member across the table, an elderly woman.

"Yes," he said, "I'm fine," and smiled and put his cake to his lips.

"You looked so troubled for a second," she said.

"I'm fine," he said. "I thought of something I forgot to do."

"Ah," she said.

To help them or not to help them? Which was wrong, which was right? He knew which was wrong: not to help them, to abandon them as if he weren't his brother's keeper at all.

But he wasn't sure that helping them wasn't wrong too, and how could both be wrong?

He worked less zealously in the afternoon, but well and without mistakes, everything done properly. At the end of the day he went back to his room and lay on his back on his bed, the heels of his hands pressing into his shut eyes and making pulsing auroras there. He heard the voices of the sick ones, saw himself taking the sample from the wrong section of the box and cheating the Family of time and energy and equipment. The supper chime sounded but he stayed as he was, too tangled in himself for eating.

Later Peace SK called. "I'm in the lounge," she said. "It's ten of eight. I've been waiting twenty minutes."

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'll be right down."

They went to a concert and then to her room.

"What's the matter?" she said.

"I don't know," he said. "I've been-upset the last few days."

She shook her head and plied his slack p.e.n.i.s more briskly. "It doesn't make sense," she said. "Didn't you tell your adviser? I told mine."

"Yes, I did. Look"-he took her hand away-"a whole group of new members came in on sixteen the other day. Why don't you go to the lounge and find somebody else?"

She looked unhappy. "Well I think I ought to," she said.

"I do too," he said. "Go ahead."

"It just doesn't make any sense," she said, getting up from the bed.

He dressed and went back to his room and undressed again. He thought he would have trouble falling asleep but he didn't.

On Sunday he felt even worse. He began to hope that Bob would call, would see that he wasn't well and draw the truth out of him. That way there would be no guilt or responsibility, only relief. He stayed in his room, watching the phone screen. Someone on the soccer team called; he said he wasn't feeling well.

At noon he went to the dining hall, ate a cake quickly, and returned to his room. Someone from the Center called, to find out if he knew someone else's nameber.

Hadn't Bob been told by now that he wasn't acting normally? Hadn't Peace said anything? Or the caller from the soccer team? And that member across the table at lunch yesterday, hadn't she been smart enough to see through his excuse and get his nameber? (Look at him, expecting others to help him; who in the Family was he helping?) Where was Bob? What kind of adviser was he?

There were no more calls, not in the afternoon, not in the evening. The music stopped once for a stars.h.i.+p bulletin.

Monday morning, after breakfast, he went down to the medicenter. The scanner said no, but he told the attendant that he wanted to see his adviser; the attendant telecomped, and then the scanners said yes, yes, yes, all the way into the advisory offices, which were half empty. It was only 7:50.

He went into Bob's empty cubicle and sat down and waited for him, his hands on his knees. He went over in his mind the order in which he would tell: first about the intentional slowdown; then about the group, what they said and did and the way they could all be found through Snowflake's lightness; and finally about the sick and irrational guilt-feeling he had concealed all the years since he had helped Karl. One, two, three. He would get an extra treatment to make up for anything he mightn't have got on Friday, and he would leave the medicenter sound in mind and sound in body, a healthy contented member.

Your body is yours, not Uni's.

Sick, pre-U. Uni was the will and wisdom of the entire Family. It had made him; had granted him his food, his clothing, his housing, his training. It had granted even the permission for his very conception. Yes, it had made him, and from now on he would be- Bob came in swinging his telecomp and stopped short. "Li," he said. "h.e.l.lo. Is anything wrong?"

He looked at Bob. The name was wrong. He was Chip, not Li. He looked down at his bracelet: Li RM35M4419. He had expected it to say Chip. When had he had one that said Chip? In a dream, a strange happy dream, a girl beckoning . . .

"Li?" Bob said, putting his telecomp on the floor.

Uni had made him Li. For Wei. But he was Chip, chip off the old block. Which one was he? Li? Chip? Li?

"What is it, brother?" Bob asked, leaning close, taking his shoulder.

"I wanted to see you," he said.

"About what?"

He didn't know what to say. "You said I shouldn't be late," he said. He looked at Bob anxiously. "Am I on time?"

"On time?" Bob stepped back and squinted at him. "Brother, you're a day early," he said. "Tuesday's your day, not Monday."

He stood up. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'd better get over to the Center"-and started to go.

Bob caught his arm. "Hold on," he said, his telecomp falling on its side, slamming the floor.

"I'm all right," Chip said. "I got mixed up. I'll come tomorrow." He went from Bob's hand, out of the cubicle.

"Li," Bob called.

He kept going.

He watched TV attentively that evening-a track meet in Arg, a relay from Venus, the news, a dance program, and Wei's Living Wisdom-and then he went to his room. He tapped the light b.u.t.ton but something was covering it and it didn't work. The door closed sharply, had been closed by someone who was near him in the dark, breathing. "Who is it?" he asked.

"King and Lilac," King said.

"What happened this morning?" Lilac asked, somewhere over by the desk. "Why did you go to your adviser?"

"To tell," he said.

"But you didn't."

"I should have," he said. "Get out of here, please."

"You see?" King said.

"We have to try," Lilac said.

"Please go," Chip said. "I don't want to get involved with you again, with any of you. I don't know what's right or wrong any more. I don't even know who I am."

"You've got about ten hours to find out," King said. "Your adviser's coming here in the morning to take you to Medicenter Main. You're going to be examined there. It wasn't supposed to happen for three weeks or so, after some more slowing down. It would have been step two. But it's happening tomorrow, and it'll probably be step minus-one."

"It doesn't have to be, though," Lilac said. "You can still make it step two if you do what we tell you."

"I don't want to hear," he said. "Just go, please."

They didn't say anything. He heard King make a movement.

"Don't you understand?" Lilac said. "If you do what we tell you, your treatments will be reduced as much as ours are. If you don't, they'll be put back to where they were. In fact, they'll probably be increased beyond that, won't they, King?"

"Yes," King said.

"To 'protect' you," Lilac said. "So that you'll never again even try to get out from under. Don't you see, Chip?" Her voice came closer. "It's the only chance you'll ever have. For the rest of your life you'll be a machine."

"No, not a machine, a member," he said. "A healthy member doing his a.s.signment; helping the Family, not cheating it."

"You're wasting your breath, Lilac," King said. "If it were a few days later you might be able to get through, but it's too soon."

"Why didn't you tell this morning?" Lilac asked him. "You went to your adviser; why didn't you tell? Others have."

"I was going to," he said.

"Why didn't you?"

He turned away from her voice. "He called me Li," he said. "And I thought I was Chip. Everything got-unsettled."

"But you are Chip," she said, coming still closer. "Someone with a name different from the nameber Uni gave him. Someone who thought of picking his own cla.s.sification instead of letting Uni do it."

He moved away, perturbed, then turned and faced their dim coverall shapes-Lilac, small, opposite him and a couple of meters away; King to his right against the light-outlined door. "How can you speak against Uni?" he asked. "It's granted us everything!"

"Only what we've given it to grant us," Lilac said. "It's denied us a hundred times more."

"It let us be born!"

"How many," she said, "will it not let be born? Like your children. Like mine."

"What do you mean?" he said. "That anyone who wants children-should be allowed to have them?"

"Yes," she said. "That's what I mean."

Shaking his head, he backed to his bed and sat down. She came to him; crouched and put her hands on his knees. "Please, Chip," she said, "I shouldn't say such things when you're still the way you are, but please, please, believe me. Believe us. We are not sick, we are healthy. It's the world that's sick-with chemistry, and efficiency, and humility, and helpfulness. Do what we tell you. Become healthy. Please, Chip."

Her earnestness held him. He tried to see her face. "Why do you care so much?" he asked. Her hands on his knees were small and warm, and he felt an impulse to touch them, to cover them with his own. Faintly he found her eyes, large and less slanted than normal, unusual and lovely.

"There are so few of us," she said, "and I think that maybe, if there were more, we could do something; get away somehow and make a place for ourselves."

"Like the incurables," he said.

"That's what we learn to call them," she said. "Maybe they were really the unbeatables, the undruggables."

He looked at her, trying to see more of her face.

"We have some capsules," she said, "that will slow down your reflexes and lower your blood pressure, put things in your blood that will make it look as if your treatments are too strong. If you take them tomorrow morning, before your adviser comes, and if you behave at the medicenter as we tell you and answer certain questions as we tell you-then tomorrow will be step two, and you'll take it and be healthy."

"And unhappy," he said.

"Yes," she said, a smile coming into her voice, "unhappy too, though not as much as I said. I sometimes get carried away."

"About every five minutes," King said.

She took her hands from Chip's knees and stood up. "Will you?" she asked.

He wanted to say yes to her, but he wanted to say no too. He said, "Let me see the capsules."

King, coming forward, said, "You'll see them after we leave. They're in here." He put into Chip's hand a small smooth box. "The red one has to be taken tonight and the other two as soon as you get up."

"Where did you get them?"

"One of the group works in a medicenter."

"Decide," Lilac said. "Do you want to hear what to say and do?"

He shook the box but it made no sound. He looked at the two dim figures waiting before him. He nodded. "All right," he said.

They sat and spoke to him, Lilac on the bed beside him, King on the drawn-over desk chair. They told him about a trick of tensing his muscles before the metabolic examination and one of looking above the objective during the depth-perception test. They told him what to say to the doctor who had charge of him and the senior adviser who interviewed him. They told him about tricks that might be played on him: sudden sounds behind his back; being left all alone, but not really, with the doctor's report form conveniently at hand. Lilac did most of the talking. Twice she touched him, once on his leg and once on his forearm; and once, when her hand lay by his side, he brushed it with his own. Hers moved away in a movement that might have begun before the contact.

"That's terrifically important," King said.

"I'm sorry, what was that?"