This Perfect Day

Chip stood up, passed the gun between his hands, and holding it by its taped barrel, stepped astride the woman. He raised the gun and quickly swung its butt down hard on the boy's close-clipped head. The blow drove the boy to his knees. He fell forward against the wall and then sideways, his head stopping against wall and toilet pipe, red gleaming in its short black hair.

Chip looked away and at the gun. He passed it back to a shooting grip, thumbed its safety catch aside, and turned it toward the bathroom's back wall: a red thread, gone, shattered a tile and drilled dust from behind it. Chip put the gun into his pocket, and holding it, stepped over the woman and moved to the door.

He went into the corridor, pulled the door tightly closed, and walked quickly, holding the gun in his pocket. He came to the end of the corridor and followed its left turn.

A member coming toward him smiled and said, "Hello, Father."

Chip nodded, passing him. "Son," he said.

A door was ahead in the right-hand wall. He went to it, opened it, and went through. He closed the door behind him and stood in dark hallway. He took out the gun.

Opposite, under a ceiling that barely glowed, were the pink, brown, and orange memory-banks-for-visitors, the gold cross and sickle, the clock on the wall—9:33 Thu 10 Sep 172 Y.U.

He went to the left, past the other displays, unlighted, dormant, increasingly visible in the light from an open door to the lobby.

He went to the open door.

On the floor in the center of the lobby lay three kits, a gun, and two knives. Another kit lay near the elevator doors.

Wei leaned back, smiling, and drew on his cigarette "Believe me," he said, "that's how everybody feels at this point.

But even the most stubbornly disapproving come to see that we're wise and we're right." He looked at the programmers standing around the group of chairs. "Isn't that so, Chip?" he said. "Tell them." He looked about, smiling.

"Chip went out," Deirdre said, and someone else said, "After Anna." Another programmer said, "Too bad, Deirdre," and Deirdre, turning, said, "He didn't go out after Anna, he went out; he'll be right back."

"A little tired, of course?" someone said.

Wei looked at his cigarette and leaned forward and pressed it out. "Everyone here will confirm what I'm saying," he said to the newcomers, and smiled. "Excuse me, will you?" he said. "I'll be back in a little while. Don't get up." He rose, and the programmers parted for him.

Straw filled half the kit, held in place by a wood divider; on the other side, wires, tools, papers, cakes, whatnot. He brushed straw away—from more dividers that formed square straw-filled compartments. He fingered in one and found only straw and hollowness; in another, though, there was something soft-surfaced but firm. He pulled away straw and lifted out a heavy whitish ball, a claylike handful with straw sticking to it. He put it on the floor and took out two more—another compartment was empty—and a fourth one. He ripped the wood framework from the kit, put it aside, and dumped out straw, tools, everything; put the four bombs close together in the kit, opened the other two kits and took out their bombs and put them in with the four—five from one kit, six from the other. Room for three more remained.

He got up and went for the fourth kit by the elevators. A sound in the hallway spun him around—he had left the gun by the bombs—but the doorway was empty-dark and the sound (whisper of silk?) was no more. If it had been at all. His own sound, it might have been, reflected back at him.

Watching the doorway, he backed to the kit, caught up its strap, and brought it quickly to the other kits; kneeled again and brought the gun close to his side. He opened the kit, pulled out straw, and lifted out three bombs and fitted them in with the others. Three rows of six. He covered them and pressed the kit closed, then put his arm through the strap and lodged it on his shoulder. He raised the kit carefully against his hip. The bombs in it shifted heavily.

The gun with the kits was an L-beam too, newer-looking than the one he had. He picked it up and opened it. A stone was in the generator's place. He put the gun down, took one of the knives—black-handled, pre-U, its blade worn thin but sharp—and slipped it into his right-hand pocket. Taking the working gun and holding the kit with his fingers under its bottom, he got up from his knees, stepped over an empty kit, and went quietly to the doorway. Darkness and silence were outside it. He waited till he could see more clearly, then walked to the left. A giant telecomp clung to the display wall (it had been broken, hadn't it, when he had been there before?); he passed it and stopped. Someone lay near the wall ahead, motionless.

But no, it was a stretcher, two stretchers, with pillows and blankets. The blankets Papa Jan and he had wrapped around them. The very same two, conceivably. He stood for a moment, remembering.