This Perfect Day

"How many," she said, "will it not let be bom? 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?"

"Don't ignore it completely," King said. "The report form."

"Notice it," Lilac said. "Glance at it and then act as if it really isn't worth the bother of picking up and reading. As if you don't care much one way or the other."

It was late when they finished; the last chime had sounded half an hour before. "We'd better go separately," King said. "You go first. Wait by the side of the building."

Lilac stood up and Chip stood too. Her hand found his. "I know you're going to make it, Chip," she said. "I'll try," he said. "Thanks for coming."

"You're welcome," she said, and went to the door. He thought he would see her by the light in the hallway as she went out, but King got up and was in the way and the door closed. They stood silently for a moment, he and King, facing each other. "Don't forget," King said. "The red capsule now and the other two when you get up."

"Right," Chip said, feeling for the box in his pocket. "You shouldn't have any trouble."

"I don't know; there's so much to remember." They were silent again.

"Thank you very much, King," Chip said, holding out his hand in the darkness.

"You're a lucky man," King said. "Snowflake is a very passionate woman. You and she are going to have a lot of good times together."

Chip didn't understand why he had said that. "I hope so," he said. "It's hard to believe it's possible to have more than one orgasm a week."

"What we have to do now," King said, "is find a man for Sparrow. Then everyone will have someone. It's better that way. Four couples. No friction."