This Perfect Day

Lilac said, "Thank you, Mr. Corsham. We'll be grateful if you can get a room for us."

They caught "colds" and "the flu." Lilac lost her job at the clothing factory but found a better one in the kitchen of a native restaurant within walking distance of the house. Two policemen came to the room one evening, checking identity-cards and looking for weapons. Hassan muttered something as he showed his card and they clubbed him to the floor. They stuck knives into the mattresses and broke some of the dishes.

Lilac didn't have her "period," her monthly few days of vaginal bleeding, and that meant she was pregnant.

One night on the roof Chip stood smoking and looking at the sky to the northeast, where there was a dull orange glow from the copper-production complex on EUR91766. Lilac, who had been taking washed clothes from a line where she had hung them to dry, came over to him and put her arm around him. She kissed his cheek and leaned against him.

"It's not so bad," she said. "We've got twelve dollars saved, we'll have a room of our own any day now, and before you know it we'll have a baby."

"A steely," Chip said. "No," Lilac said. "A baby."

"It stinks," Chip said. "It's rotten. It's inhuman."

"It's all there is,"

Lilac said. "We'd better get used to it." Chip said nothing. He kept looking at the orange glow in the sky.

The Liberty Immigrant carried weekly articles about immigrant singers and athletes, and occasionally scientists, who earned forty or fifty dollars a week and lived in good apartments, who mixed with influential and enlightened natives, and who were hopeful about the chances of a more equitable relationship developing between the two groups. Chip read these articles with scorn—they were meant by the newspaper's native owners to lull and pacify immigrants, he felt—but Lilac accepted them at face value, as evidence that their own lot would ultimately improve.

One week in October, when they had been on Liberty for a little over six months, there was an article about an artist named Morgan Newgate, who had come from Eur eight years before and who lived in a four-room apartment in New Madrid. His paintings, one of which, a scene of the Crucifixion, had just been presented to Pope Clement, brought him as much as a hundred dollars each. He signed them with an A, the article explained, because his nickname was Ashi.

"Christ and Wei," Chip said.

Lilac said, "What is it?"

"I was at academy with this 'Morgan Newgate,'" Chip said, showing her the article. "We were good friends. His name was Karl. You remember that picture of the horse I had back in Ind?"

"No," she said, reading.

"Well, he drew it," Chip said. "He used to sign everything with an A in a circle." And yes, he thought, "Ashi" seemed like the name Karl had mentioned. Christ and Wei, so he had got away too!—had "got away," if you could call it that, to Liberty, to Uni's isolation ward. At least he was doing what he'd always wanted; for him Liberty really was liberty.

"You ought to call him," Lilac said, still reading.

"I will," Chip said.

But maybe he wouldn't. Was there any point, really, in calling "Morgan Newgate," who painted Crucifixions for the Pope and assured his fellow immigrants that conditions were getting better every day? But maybe Karl hadn't said that; maybe the Immigrant had lied.

"Don't just say it," Lilac said. "He could probably help you get a better job."

"Yes," Chip said, "he probably could."

She looked at him. "What's the matter?" she said. "Don't you want a better job?"

"I'll call him tomorrow, on the way to work," he said.

But he didn't. He swung his shovel into ore and lifted and heaved, swung and lifted and heaved. Fight them all, he thought: the steelies who drink, the steelies who think things are getting better; the lunkies, the dummies; fight Uni.

On the following Sunday morning Lilac went with him to a building two blocks from theirs where there was a working telephone in the lobby, and she waited while he paged through the tattered directory. Morgan and Newgate were names commonly given to immigrants, but few immigrants had phones; there was only one Newgate, Morgan listed, and that one in New Madrid.

Chip put three tokens into the phone and spoke the number. The screen was broken, but it didn't make any difference since Liberty phones no longer transmitted pictures anyway.

A woman answered, and when Chip asked if Morgan Newgate was there, said he was, and then nothing more. The silence lengthened, and Lilac, a few meters away beside a Sani-Spray poster, waited and then came close. "Isn't he there?" she asked in a whisper. "Hello?" a man's voice said. "Is this Morgan Newgate?" Chip asked. "Yes. Who's this?"

"It's Chip," Chip said. "Li RM, from the Academy of the Genetic Sciences." There was silence, and then, "My God," the voice said, "Li! You got pads and charcoal for me!"

"Yes," Chip said. "And I told my adviser you were sick and needed help." Karl laughed. "That's right, you did, you bastard!" he said. "This is great! When did you get over?"