This Perfect Day

That first day, though, in the parkland north of '14509, he changed his mind. Finding a hiding place was harder than he expected; not until long after sunrise—around eight o'clock, he guessed—were they settled under a rock-ledge canopy fronted by a thicket of saplings whose gaps he had filled with cut branches. Soon after, they heard a copter's hum; it passed and repassed above them while he pointed the gun at Lilac and she sat motionless, watching him, a half-eaten cake in her hands. At midday they heard branches cracking, leaves slashing, and a voice no more than twenty meters away. It spoke unintelligibly, in the slow flat way one addressed a telephone or a voice-input telecomp.

Either Lilac's desk-drawer message had been found or, more likely, Uni had put together his disappearance, her disappearance, and two missing bicycles. So he changed his mind and decided that having been looked for and missed, they would stay where they were all week and ride on Sunday. They would make a sixty- or seventy-kilometer hop— not directly to the north but to the northeast—then settle and hide for another week. Four or five Sundays would bring them in a curving path to '12082, and each Sunday Lilac would be more herself and less Anna SG, more helpful or at least less anxious to see him "helped."

Now, though, she was Anna SG. He tied and gagged her with blanket strips and slept with the gun at his hand till the sun went down. In the middle of the night he tied and gagged her again, and carried away his bike. He came back in a few hours with cakes and drinks and two more blankets, towels and toilet paper, a "wristwatch" that had already stopped ticking, and two Francais books. She was lying awake where he had left her, her eyes anxious and pitying.

Held captive by a sick member, she suffered his abuses forgivingly. She was sorry for him.

But in daylight she looked at him with revulsion. He touched his cheek and felt two days' stubble. Smiling, slightly embarrassed, he said, "I haven't had a treatment in almost a year."

She lowered her head and put a hand over her eyes. "You've made yourself into an animal," she said.

"That's what we are, really," he said. "Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei made us into something dead and unnatural."

She turned away when he began to shave, but she glanced over her shoulder, glanced again, and then turned and watched distastefully. "Don't you cut your skin?" she asked.

"I did in the beginning," he said, pressing taut his cheek and working the razor easily, watching it in the side of his flashlight propped on a stone. "I had to keep my hand at my face for days."

"Do you always use tea?" she asked.

He laughed. "No," he said. "It's a substitute for water. Tonight I'm going to go looking for a pond or a stream."

"How often do you—do that?" she asked.

"Every day," he said. "I missed yesterday. It's a nuisance, but it's only for a few more weeks. At least I hope so."

"What do you mean?" she said.

He said nothing, kept shaving.

She turned away.

He read one of the Francais books, about the causes of a war that had lasted thirty years. Lilac slept, and then she sat on a blanket and looked at him and at the trees and at the sky.

"Do you want me to teach you this language?" he asked.

"What for?" she said.

"Once you wanted to learn it," he said. "Do you remember? I gave you lists of words."

"Yes," she said, "I remember. I learned them, but I've forgotten them. I'm well now; what would I want to learn it now for?"

He did calisthenics and made her do them too, so that they would be ready for Sunday's long ride. She followed his directions unprotestingly.

That night he found, not a stream, but a concrete-banked irrigation channel about two meters wide. He bathed in its slow-flowing water, then brought filled drink containers back to the hiding place and woke Lilac and untied her. He led her through the trees and stood and watched while she bathed. Her wet body glistened in the faint light of the quarter moon.

He helped her up onto the bank, handed her a towel, and stayed close to her while she dried herself. "Do you know why I'm doing this?" he asked her.

She looked at him.

"Because I love you," he said.

"Then let me go," she said.

He shook his head.

"Then how can you say you love me?"

"I do," he said.

She bent over and dried her legs. "Do you want me to get sick again?" she asked.

"Yes," he said.

"Then you hate me," she said, "you don't love me." She stood up straight.

He took her arm, cool and moist, smooth. "Lilac," he said.

"Anna."

He tried to kiss her lips but she turned her head and drew away. He kissed her cheek.

"Now point your gun at me and 'rape' me," she said.

"I won't do that," he said. He let go of her arm.

"I don't know why not," she said, getting into her coveralls. She closed them fumblingly. "Please, Li," she said, "let's go back to the city. I'm sure you can be cured, because if you were really sick, incurably sick, you would 'rape' me. You'd be much less kind than you are."

"Come on," he said, "let's get back to the place."