This Perfect Day

King's eyes narrowed coldly. "What's so magnificent about living," he said, "that it has to be prolonged indefinitely?

What's so fantastically beautiful about life here or life there that makes sixty-two not enough of it instead of too fighting much? Yes, they live past sixty-two. One of them claimed to be eighty, and looking at him, I believed it. But they die younger too, in their thirties, even in their twenties—from work and filth and defending their 'money.'"

"That's only one group of islands,'

' Chip said. "There are seven others."

"They'll all be the same," King said. "They'll all be the same."

"How do you know?"

"How can they not be?" King asked. "Christ and Wei, if I'd thought a halfway-human life was possible I'd have said something!"

"You should have said something anyway," Chip said. "There are islands right here in Stability Bay. Leopard and Hush might have got to them and still be living."

"They'd be dead."

"Then you should have let them choose where they died," Chip said. "You're not Uni."

He got up and put the chair back by the desk. He looked at the phone screen, reached over the desk, and took the adviser's-nameber card from under the rim of it: Anna SG38P2823.

"You mean you don't know her nameber?" King said. "What do you do, meet in the dark? Or haven't you worked your way out to her extremities yet?"

Chip put the card into his pocket. "We don't meet at all," he said.

"Oh come on," King said, "I know what's been going on. What do you think I am, a dead body?"

"Nothing's been going on," Chip said. "She came to the museum once and I gave her the word lists for Francais, that's all."

"I can just imagine," King said. "Get out of here, will you? I need my sleep." He lay back on the bed, put his legs in under the blanket, and spread the blanket up over his chest.

"Nothing's been going on," Chip said. "She feels that she owes you too much."

With his eyes closed, King said, "But we'll soon take care of that, won't we?"

Chip said nothing for a moment, and then he said, "You should have told us. About Americanova."

"Americanueva," King said, and then said nothing more. He lay with his eyes closed, his blanketed chest rising and falling rapidly.

Chip went to the door and tapped off the light. "I'll see you tomorrow night," he said.

"I hope you get there," King said. "The two of you. To Americanueva. You deserve it."

Chip opened the door and went out.

King's bitterness depressed him, but after he had been walking for fifteen minutes or so he began to feel cheerful and optimistic, and elated with the results of his night of extra clarity. His right-hand pocket was crisp with a map of Stability Bay and the Andaman Islands, the names and locations of the other incurable strongholds, and Lilac's red-printed nameber card. Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei, what would he be capable of with no treatments at all? He took the card out and read it as he walked. Anna SG38P2823. He would call her after the first chime and arrange to meet her—during the free hour that evening. Anna SG. Not she, not an "Anna"; a Lilac she was, fragrant, delicate, beautiful. (Who had picked the name, she or King? Incredible. The hater thought they had been meeting and fucking. If only!) Thirty-eight P, twenty-eight twenty-three. He walked to the swing of the nameber for a while, then realized he was walking too briskly and slowed himself, pocketing the card again.

He would be back in his building before the first chime, would shower, change, call Lilac, eat (he was starving), then get his treatment at 8:05 and keep his 8:15 dental appointment ("It feels much better today, sister. The throbbing's almost completely gone"). The treatment would dull him, fight it, but not so much that he wouldn't be able to tell Lilac about the Andaman Islands and start planning with her—and with Snowflake and Sparrow if they were interested—how they would try to get there. Snowflake would probably choose to stay. He hoped so; it would simplify things tremendously. Yes, Snowflake would stay with King, laugh and smoke and fuck with him, and play that mechanical paddle-ball game. And he and Lilac would go. Anna SG, thirty-eight P, twenty-eight twenty-three...

He got to the building at 6:22. Two up-early members were coming down his hallway, one naked, one dressed. He smiled and said, "Good morning, sisters."

"Good morning," they said, smiling back.

He went into his room, tapped on the light, and Bob was on the bed, lifting himself up on his elbows and blinking at him. His telecomp lay open on the floor, its blue and amber lights gleaming.

Chapter 6

He closed the door behind him.

Bob swung his legs off the bed and sat up, looking at him anxiously. His coveralls were partway open. "Where've you been, Li?" he asked.