This Perfect Day

The bombs came: bundles of thin brown cylinders taped around a central black one. They were stored in a shed behind the factory. Each had a small metal handle, blue or yellow, lying taped against its side. The blue handles were thirty-second fuses; the yellow, four-minute ones.

They tried one in a marble quarry at night; wedged it in a cleft and pulled its fuse handle, blue, with fifty meters of wire from behind a pile of cut blocks. The explosion when it came was thunderous, and where the cleft had been they found a hole the size of a doorway, running with rubble, churning with dust.

They hiked in the mountains—all except Buzz—wearing kits weighted with stones. Captain Gold showed them how to load a bullet-gun and focus an L-beam; how to draw, aim, and shoot—at planks propped against the factory's rear wall. "Are you giving another dinner?" Chip asked Julia. "In a week or two," she said.

But she didn't. She didn't mention money again, and neither did he.

He spent some time with Karl, and satisfied himself that he wasn't an "espion." Buzz's leg healed almost completely, and he insisted he would be able to go.

The gas masks came, and the remaining guns, and the tools and the shoes and the razors; and the plastic sheeting, the re made kits, the watches, the coils of strong wire, the inflatable raft, the shovel, the compasses, the binoculars. "Try to hit me," Captain Gold said, and Chip hit him and split his lip.

It took till November to get everything done, almost a year, and then Chip decided to wait and go at Christmas, to make the move to '001 on the holiday, when bike paths and walkways, carports and airports, would be at their busiest; when members would move a little less slowly than normal and even a "healthy" one might miss the plate of a scanner.

On the Sunday before they were to go, they brought everything from the shed into the loft and packed the kits and the secondary kits they would unpack when they landed. Julia was there, and Lars Newman's son John, who was going to bring back the I A. boat, and Dover's girlfriend Nella—twenty-two and yellow-haired as he, excited by it all. Ashi looked in and so did Captain Gold. "You're nuts, you're all nuts," Captain Gold said, and Buzz said, "Scram, you lunky." When they were done, when all the kits were plastic-wrapped and tied, Chip asked everyone not in the group to go outside. He gathered the group in a circle on the mats.

"I've been thinking a lot about what happens if one of us gets caught," he said, "and this is what I've decided. If anyone, even one, gets caught—the rest of us will turn around and go back."

They looked at him. Buzz said, "After all this?"

"Yes," he said. "We won't have a chance, once anyone's treated and telling a doctor that we're going in through the tunnel. So we'll go back, quickly and quietly, and find one of the boats. In fact, I want to try to spot one when we land, before we start traveling."

"Christ and Wei!" Jack said. "Sure, if three or four get caught, but one?"

"That's the decision," Chip said. "It's the right one."

Ria said, "What if you get caught?"

"Then Buzz is in charge," Chip said, "and it's up to him. But meanwhile that's the way it's going to be: if anyone gets caught we all turn back."

Karl said, "So let's nobody get caught."

"Right," Chip said. He stood up. "That's all,' he said. "Get plenty of sleep. Wednesday at seven."

"Woodsday," Dover said.

"Woodsday, Woodsday, Woodsday," Chip said. "Woodsday at seven."

He kissed Lilac as if he were going out to see someone about something and would be back in a few hours. " 'By, love," he said.

She held him and kept her cheek against his and didn't say anything.

He kissed her again, took her arms from around him, and went to the cradle. Jan was busy reaching for an empty cigarette box hanging on a string. Chip kissed his cheek and said good-by to him.

Lilac came to him and he kissed her. They held each other and kissed, and then he went out, not looking back at her. Ashi was waiting downstairs on his motorbike. He drove Chip to Pollensa and the pier.

They were all in the LA. office by a quarter of seven, and while they were clipping one another's hair the truck came. John Newman and Ashi and a man from the factory loaded the kits and the raft onto the boat, and Julia unpacked sandwiches and coffee. The men clipped their beards and shaved their faces bare.

They put bracelets on and closed links that looked like ordinary ones. Chip's bracelet said Jesus AY31G6912. He said good-by to Ashi, and kissed Julia. "Pack your kit and get ready to see the world," he said. "Be careful," she said. "And try praying."

He got on the boat, sat on the deck in front of the kits with John Newman and the others—Buzz and Karl, Jack and Ria; strange-looking and Family-like with their clipped hair, their beardless similar faces.

Dover started the boat and steered it out of the harbor, then turned it toward the faint orange glow that came from '91766.

Chapter 2