This Perfect Day

They rode slowly. There were no scanners in the path. No medical team stopped them. All the bicycles in the area were new ones, but nobody remarked on their old ones.

By late afternoon they were in '12082. They rode to the west of the city, smelling the sea, watching the path ahead carefully.

They left their bikes in parkland and walked back to a canteen where there were steps leading down to the beach. The sea was far below them, spreading away smooth and blue, away and away into greenish-gray haze. "Those members didn't touch," a child said.

Lilac's hand tightened on Chip's. "Keep going," he said. They walked down concrete steps jutting from rough cliff-face. "Say, you there!" a member called, a man. "You two members!"

Chip squeezed Lilac's hand and they turned around. The member was standing behind the scanner at the top of the steps, holding the hand of a naked girl of five or six. She scratched her head with a red shovel, looking at them. "Did you touch just now?" the member asked.

They looked at each other and at the member. "Of course we did," Chip said. "Yes, of course," Lilac said. "It didn't say yes," the girl said.

"It did, sister," Chip said gravely. "If it hadn't we wouldn't have gone on, would we?" He looked at the member and let a smile show. The member bent and said something to the girl. "No I didn't," she said.

"Come on," Chip said to Lilac, and they turned and walked downward again. "Little hater," Lilac said, and Chip said, "Just keep going."

They went all the way down and stopped at the bottom to take off their sandals. Chip, bending, looked up: the member and the girl were gone; other members were coming down.

The beach was half empty under the strange hazy sky. Members sat and lay on blankets, many of them in their coveralls. They were silent or talked softly, and the music of the speakers—"Sunday, Fun Day"—sounded loud and unnatural. A group of children jumped rope by the water's edge: "Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei, led us to this perfect day; Marx, Wood, Wei, and Christ-"

They walked westward, holding hands and holding their sandals. The narrow beach grew narrower, emptier. Ahead a scanner stood flanked by cliff and sea. Chip said, "I've never seen one on a beach before."

"Neither have I," Lilac said.

They looked at each other.

"This is the way we'll go," he said. "Later."

She nodded and they walked closer to the scanner.

"I've got a fou impulse to touch it," he said. "'Fight you, Uni; here I am.'"

"Don't you dare," she said.

"Don't worry," he said, "I won't."

They turned around and walked back to the center of the beach. They took their coveralls off, went into the water, and swam far out. Treading with their backs to the sea, they studied the shore beyond the scanner, the gray cliffs lessening away into greenish-gray haze. A bird flew from the cliffs, circled, and flew back. It disappeared, gone in a hairline cranny.

"There are probably caves where we can stay," Chip said.

A lifeguard whistled and waved at them. They swam back to the beach.

"It's five of five, members," the speakers said. "Litter and towels in the baskets, please. Be mindful of the members around you when you shake out your blankets."

They dressed, went back up the steps, and walked to the grove of trees where they had left their bikes. They carried them farther in and sat down to wait. Chip cleaned the compass and the flashlights and the knife, and Lilac packed the other things they had into a single bundle.

An hour or so after dark they went to the canteen and gathered a carton of cakes and drinks and went down to the beach again. They walked to the scanner and beyond it. The night was moonless and starless; the haze of the day was still above. In the water's lapping edge phosphorescent sparks glittered now and then; otherwise there was only darkness. Chip held the carton of cakes and drinks under his arm and shone his flashlight ahead of them every few moments. Lilac carried the blanket-bundle. "Traders won't come ashore on a night like this," she said.

"Nobody else will be on the beach either," Chip said. "No sex-wild twelve-year-olds. It's a good thing." But it wasn't, he thought; it was a bad thing. What if the haze remained for days, for nights, blocking them at the very brink of freedom? Was it possible that Uni had created it, intentionally, for just that purpose? He smiled at himself. He was tres fou, exactly as Lilac had said.

They walked until they guessed themselves to be midway between '082 and the next city to the west, and then they put down the carton and the bundle and searched the cliff face for a usable cave. They found one within minutes; a low-roofed sand-floored burrow littered with cake wrappers and, intriguingly, two pieces—a green "Egypt," a pink "Ethiop"—torn from a pre-U map. They brought the carton and the bundle into the cave, spread their blankets, ate, and lay down together.

"Can you?" Lilac said. "After this morning and last night?"

"Without treatments," Chip said, "all things are possible."