This Perfect Day

IN PALLID PRE-DAWN LIGHT they slipped from the barge and pushed the kit-loaded raft away from it. Three of them pushed and three swam along beside, watching the black high-cliffed shore. They moved slowly, keeping about fifty meters out. Every ten minutes or so they changed places; the ones who had been swimming pushed, the ones who had been pushing swam.

When they were well below '91772 they turned and pushed the raft in. They beached it in a small sandy cove with towering rock walls, and unloaded the kits and unwrapped them. They opened the secondary kits and put on coveralls; pocketed guns, watches, compasses, maps; then dug a hole and packed into it the two emptied kits and all the plastic wrappings, the deflated raft, their Liberty clothing, and the shovel they had used for digging. They filled the hole and stamped it level, and with kits slung on their shoulders and sandals in their hands, began walking in single file down the narrow strip of beach. The sky lightened and their shadows appeared before them, sliding in and out over rocky cliff-base. Near the back of the line Karl started whistling "One Mighty Family." The others smiled, and Chip, at the front, joined it. Some of the others did too.

Soon they came to a boat—an old blue boat lying on its side, waiting for incurables who would think themselves lucky. Chip turned, and walking backward, said, "Here it is, if we need it,'

' and Dover said, "We won't," and Jack, after Chip had turned and they had passed it, picked up a stone, turned, threw it at the boat, and missed. They switched their kits from one shoulder to the other as they walked. In a little less than an hour they came to a scanner with its back to them. "Home again," Dover said, and Ria groaned, and Buzz said, "Hi, Uni, how are you?"—patting the scanner's top as he passed it. He was walking without limping; Chip had looked around a few times to check.

The strip of beach began to widen, and they came to a litter basket and more of them, and then lifeguard platforms, speakers and a clock—6:54 Thu 25 Dec 171 Y.U.—and a stairway zigzagging up the cliff with red and green bunting wound around some of its railing supports.

They put their kits down, and their sandals, and took their coveralls off and spread them out. They lay down on them and rested under the sun's growing warmth. Chip mentioned things that he thought they should say when they spoke to the Family—afterwards—and they talked about that and about the extent to which Uni's stopping would block TV and how long the restoring of it would take. Karl and Dover fell asleep.

Chip lay with his eyes closed and thought about some of the problems the Family would face as it awakened, and different ways of dealing with them.

"Christ, Who Taught Us" began on the speakers at eight o'clock, and two red-capped lifeguards in sunglasses came walking down the zigzag stairs. One of them came to a platform near the group. "Merry Christmas," he said. "Merry Christmas," they said to him. "You can go in now if you want," he said, climbing up onto the platform. Chip and Jack and Dover got up and went into the water. They swam around for a while, watching members come down the stairs, and then they went out and lay down again. When there were thirty-five or forty members on the beach, at 8:22, the six got up and began putting on their coveralls and shouldering their kits. Chip and Dover went up the stairs first. They smiled and said "Merry Christmas" to members coming down, and easily false-touched the scanner at the top. The only members nearby were at the canteen with their backs turned. They waited by a water fountain, and Jack and Ria came up, and then Buzz and Karl.

They went to the bike racks, where twenty or twenty-five bikes were lined up in the nearest slots. They took the last six, put their kits in the baskets, mounted, and rode to the entrance of the bike path. They waited there, smiling and talking, until no cyclists and no cars were going by, and then they passed the scanner in a group, touching their bracelets to the side of it in case someone could see them from a distance.

They rode toward EUR91770 singly and in twos, spaced out widely along the path. Chip went first, with Dover behind him. He watched the cyclists who approached them and the occasional cars that rushed past. We're going to do it, he thought. We're going to do it.

"We'll get there a lot sooner if we wait," Karl said. "This isn't such a bad hiding place."

"No," Chip said, looking at the signboard, "let's go—on the 10:06 to '00020. That's the soonest we can manage it, and it's only about fifty kilometers from '001. Come on, the door's over that way."

They made their way through the crowd to the swing-door at the side of the room and clustered around its scanner. The door opened and a member in orange came out. Excusing himself, he reached between Chip and Dover to touch the scanner—yes, it winked—and went on.