This Perfect Day

"Please, Li—" she said.

"Chip" he said. "My name is Chip. Come on." He jerked his head and they started through the trees.

Toward the end of the week she took his pen and the book he wasn't reading and drew pictures on the inside of the book's cover—near-likenesses of Christ and Wei, groups of buildings, her left hand, and a row of shaded crosses and sickles. He looked to make sure she wasn't writing messages that she would try to give to someone on Sunday.

Later he drew a building and showed it to her.

"What is it?" she asked.

"A building," he said.

"No it isn't."

"It is," he said. "They don't all have to be blank and rectangular."

"What are the ovals?"

"Windows."

"I've never seen a building like this one," she said. "Not even in the Pre-U. Where is it?"

"Nowhere," he said. "I made it up."

"Oh," she said. "Then it isn't a building, not really. How can you draw things that aren't real?"

"I'm sick, remember?" he said.

She gave the book back to him, not looking at his eyes. "Don't joke about it," she said.

He hoped—well, didn't hope, but thought it might possibly happen—that Saturday night, out of custom or desire or even only memberlike kindness, she would show a willingness for him to come close to her. She didn't, though. She was the same as she had been every other night, sitting silently in the dusk with her arms around her knees, watching the band of purpling sky between the shifting black treetops and the black rock ledge overhead.

"It's Saturday night," he said.

"I know," she said.

They were silent for a few moments, and then she said, "I'm not going to be able to have my treatment, am I?"

"No," he said.

"Then I might get pregnant," she said. "I'm not supposed to have children and neither are you."

He wanted to tell her that they were going someplace where Uni's decisions were meaningless, but it was too soon; she might become frightened and unmanageable. "Yes, I suppose you're right," he said.

When he had tied her and covered her, he kissed her cheek. She lay in the darkness and said nothing, and he got up from his knees and went to his own blankets.

Sunday's ride went well. Early in the day a group of young members stopped them, but it was only to ask their help in repairing a broken drive chain, and Lilac sat on the grass away from the group while Chip did the job. By sundown they were in the parkland north of '14266. They had gone about seventy-five kilometers.

Again it was hard to find a hiding place, but the one Chip finally found—the broken walls of a pre-U or early-U building, roofed with a sagging mass of vines and creepers—was larger and more comfortable than the one they had used the week before. That same night, despite the day's riding, he went into '266 and brought back a three-day supply of cakes and drinks.

Lilac grew irritable that week. "I want to clean my teeth" she said, "and I want to take a shower. How long are we going to go on this way? Forever? You may enjoy living like an animal but I don't; I'm a human being. And I can't sleep with my hands and feet tied."

"You slept all right last week," he said.

"Well I can't now!"

"Then lie quietly and let me sleep," he said.

When she looked at him it was with annoyance, not with pity. She made disapproving sounds when he shaved and when he read; answered curtly or not at all when he spoke. She balked at doing calisthenics, and he had to take out the gun and threaten her.

It was getting close to Marx eighth, her treatment day, he told himself, and this irritability, a natural resentment of captivity and discomfort, was a sign of the healthy Lilac who was buried in Anna SG. It ought to have pleased him, and when he thought about it, it did. But it was much harder to live with than the previous week's sympathy and memberlike docility.

She complained about insects and boredom. There was a rain night and she complained about the rain. One night Chip woke and heard her moving. He shone his flashlight at her. She had untied her wrists and was untying her ankles. He retied her and struck her. That Saturday night they didn't speak to each other.

On Sunday they rode again. Chip stayed close to her side and watched her carefully when members came toward them. He reminded her to smile, to nod, to answer greetings, to act as if nothing was wrong. She rode in grim silence, and he was afraid that despite the threat of the gun she might call out for help at any moment or stop and refuse to go on. "Not just you," he said; "everyone in sight. I'll kill them all, I swear I will." She kept riding. She smiled and nodded resentfully. Chip's gearshift jammed and they went only forty kilometers. Toward the end of the third week her irritation subsided.