This Perfect Day

In the dining hall he looked, and ran to the side, through a swing-door to the behind-the-dispensers section. He slowed, walked quickly, trying to still his breathing, past members loading stacks of cakes between vertical tracks, members looking down at him while dumping tea powder into steel drums. A cart filled with boxes marked Napkins; he took the handle of it, swung it around, and pushed it before him, past two members standing eating, two more gathering cakes from a broken carton.

Ahead was a. door marked Exit, the door to one of the corner stairways. He pushed the cart toward it, hearing raised voices behind him. He rammed the cart against the door, butted it open, and went with the cart out onto the landing; closed the door and brought the cart handle back against it. He backed down two steps and pulled the cart sideways to him, wedged it tight between the door and the stair-rail post with one black wheel turning in air.

He hurried down the stairs.

He had to get out, out of the building and onto the walk ways and plazas. He would walk to the museum—it wouldn't be open yet—and hide in the storeroom or behind the hot-water tank until tomorrow night, when Lilac and the others would be there. He should have grabbed some cakes just now. Why hadn't he thought of it? Hate!

He left the stairway at the ground floor and walked quickly along the hallway, nodded at an approaching member. She looked at his legs and bit her lip worriedly. He looked down and stopped. His coveralls were torn at the knees and his right knee was bruised, with blood in small beads on the surface.

"Can I do anything?" the member asked.

"I'm on my way to the medicenter now," he said. "Thanks, sister." He went on. There was nothing he could do about it; he would have to take his chances. When he got outside, away from the building, he would tie a tissue around the knee and fix the coveralls as best he could. The knee began to sting, now that he knew about it. He walked faster.

He turned into the back of the lobby and paused, looked at the escalators planing down on either side of him and, up ahead, the four glass scanner-posted doors with the sunny walkway beyond them. Members were talking and going out, a few coming in. Everything looked ordinary; the murmur of voices was low, unalarmed.

He started toward the doors, walking normally, looking straight ahead. He would do his scanner trick—the knee would be an excuse for the stumbling if anyone noticed—and once he was out on—The music stopped, and "Excuse me," a woman's voice loudspeakered, "would everyone please stay exactly where he is for a moment? Would everyone please stop moving?"

He stopped, in the middle of the lobby.

Everyone stopped, looked around questioningly and waited. Only the members on the escalators kept moving, and then they stopped too and looked down at their feet. One member walked down steps. "Don't move!" several members called to her, and she stopped and blushed.

He stood motionless, looking at the huge stained-glass faces above the doors: bearded Christ and Marx, hairless Wood, smiling slit-eyed Wei. Something slipped down his shin: a drop of blood.

"Brothers, sisters," the woman's voice said, "an emergency has arisen. There's a member in the building who's sick, very sick. He's acted aggressively and run away from his adviser"—members drew breath—"and he needs every one of us to help find him and get him to the treatment room as quickly as possible."

"Yes!" a member behind Chip said, and another said, "What do we do?"

"He's believed to be somewhere below the fourth floor," the woman said; "a twenty-seven-year-old—" A second voice spoke to her, a man's voice, quick and unintelligible. A member about to step on the nearest escalator was looking at Chip's knees. Chip looked at the picture of Wood. "He'll probably try to leave the building," the woman said, "so the two members nearest each exit will move to it and block it, please. No one else move; only the two members nearest each exit."

The members near the doors looked at one another, and two moved to each door and put themselves uneasily side by side in line with the scanners. "It's awfull" someone said. The member who had been looking at Chip's knees was looking now at his face. Chip looked back at him, a man of forty or so; he looked away.

"The member we're looking for," a man's voice on the speaker said, "is a twenty-seven-year-old male, nameber Li RM35M4419. That's Li, RM, 35M, 4419. First we'll check among ourselves and then we'll search the floors we're on.

Just a minute, just a minute, please. UniComp says the member is the only Li RM in the building, so we can forget the rest of his nameber. All we have to look for is Li RM. Li RM. Look at the bracelets of the members around you. We're looking for Li RM. Be sure that every member within your sight is checked by at least one other member. Members who are in their rooms will come out now into the hallways. Li RM. We're looking for Li RM."