This Perfect Day

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. "Hello. 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 button 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 Medicen-ter 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 assignment; 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 classification 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 againt 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!"