This Perfect Day

Awareness came, more of it each day. Memory came, in sharper, more anguishing detail.

Feeling came. Resentment of Uni grew into hatred; desire for Lilac grew into hopeless hunger.

Again he played the old deceptions; was normal at his assignment, normal with his adviser; normal with his girlfriend.

But day by day the deceptions grew more irritating to maintain, more infuriating.

On his next treatment day he made another bandage of cake wrapper, cotton, and tape; and squeezed from it another trickle of waterlike liquid.

Black specks appeared on his chin and cheeks and upper lip—the beginnings of hair. He took apart his clippers, wired the cutter blade to one of the handles, and before the first chime each morning, rubbed soap on his face and shaved the specks away.

He dreamed every night. Sometimes the dreams brought orgasms.

More and more maddening it became, to pretend relaxation and contentment, humility, goodness. On Marxmas Day, at a beach, he trotted along the shore and then ran, ran from the members trotting with him, ran from the sunbathing, cake-eating Family. He ran till the beach narrowed into tumbled stone, and ran on through surf and over slippery ancient abutments. Then he stopped, and alone and naked between ocean and soaring cliffs, clenched his hands into fists and hit at the cliffs; cried "Fight it!" at the clear blue sky and wrenched and tore at the untearable chain of his bracelet.

It was 169, the fifth of May. Six and a half years he had lost. Six and a half years! He was thirty-four. He was in USA90058.

And where was she? Still in Ind, or was she somewhere else? Was she on Earth or on a starship?

And was she alive, as he was, or was she dead, like everyone else in the Family?

Chapter 2

It was easier now, now that he had bruised his hands and shouted; easier to walk slowly with a contented smile, to watch TV and the screen of his microscope, to sit with his girlfriend at amphitheater concerts. Thinking all the while of what to do...

"Any friction?" his adviser asked.

"Well, a little," he said.

"I thought you didn't look right. What is it?"

"Well, you know, I was pretty sick a few years ago—"

"I know."

"And now one of the members I was sick with, the one who got me sick, in fact, is right here in the building. Could I possibly be moved somewhere else?"

His adviser looked doubtfully at him. "I'm a little surprised," he said, "that UniComp's put the two of you together again."

"So am I," Chip said. "But she's here. I saw her in the dining hall last night and again this morning."

"Did you speak to her?"

"No."

"I'll look into it," his adviser said. "If she is here and it makes you uncomfortable, of course we'll get you moved. Or get her moved. What's her nameber?"

"I don't remember all of it," Chip said. "Anna ST38P."

His adviser called him early the next morning. "You were mistaken, Li," he said. "It wasn't that member you saw. And by the way, she's Anna SG, not ST."

"Are you sure she's not here?"

"Positive. She's in Afr."

"That's a relief," Chip said.

"And Li, instead of having your treatment Thursday, you're going to have it today."

"I am?"

"Yes. At one-thirty."

"All right," he said. "Thank you, Jesus."

"Thank Uni."

He had three cake wrappers folded and hidden in the back of his desk drawer. He took one out, went into the bathroom, and began making a bandage.

She was in Afr. It was nearer than Ind but still an ocean away. And the width of Usa besides.

His parents were there, in '71334; he would wait a few weeks and then claim a visit. It was a little under two years since he had seen them last; there was a fair chance that the claim would be granted. Once in Afr he could call her—pretend to have an injured arm, get a child to touch the plate of an outdoor phone for him—and find out her exact location.

Hello, finna SG. I hope you're as well as I am. What city are you in?

And then what? Walk there? Claim a car ride to someplace near, an installation involved with genetics in one way or another? Would Uni realize what he was up to?

But even if it all happened, even if he got to her, what would he do then? It was too much to hope that she too had lifted a leaf from a wet stone one day. No, fight it, she would be a normal member, as normal as he himself had been until a few months ago. And at his first abnormal word she would have backing was intact, unopened. He wrote on it, Yes, there are islands where members are free. Fight Uni!

Early one Sunday morning he set out for Cuba, with the compass and a map he had drawn in one of his pockets. In the bike's basket, Wei's Living Wisdom lay on a folded blanket along with a container of coke and a cake; within the blanket was his take-along kit, and in that were his razor and its sharpening stone, a bar of soap, his clippers, two cakes, the knife, a flashlight, cotton, a cartridge of tape, a snapshot of his parents and Papa Jan, and an extra set of coveralls.