This Perfect Day

Below, they looked into a rock-walled half bowl whose floor was a semicircular plaza where the bike path branched; it came down from the north around the power station, and half of it turned, passed over the car-rushing road, and bridged to the city, while the other half went on across the plaza and followed the river's curving eastern bank with the road coming up to rejoin it. Before it branched, barriers channeled the oncoming cyclists into three lines, each of them passing before a group of red-cross-coveralled members standing beside a short unusual-looking scanner. Three members in antigrav gear hovered face-down in the air, one over each group. Two cars and a copter were in the nearer part of the plaza, and more members in red-crossed coveralls stood by the line of cyclists who were leaving the city, hurrying them along when they slowed to look at the ones who were touching the scanners. "Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei," Buzz said.

Chip, while he looked, pulled his kit open at his side. "They must be in the line somewhere," he said. He found his binoculars and put them to his eyes and focused them. "They are," Dover said. "See the kits in the baskets?"

Chip swept the line and found Jack and Ria; they were pedaling slowly, side by side in wood-barriered lanes. Jack was looking ahead and his lips were moving. Ria nodded. They were steering with their left hands only; their right hands were in their pockets.

Chip passed the binoculars to Dover and turned to his kit. "We've got to help them get through," he said. "If they make it over the bridge they may be able to lose themselves in the city."

"They're going to shoot when they get to the scanners," Dover said.

Chip gave Buzz a blue-handled bomb and said, "Take off the tape and pull when I tell you. Try to get it near the copter; two birds with one net."

"Do it before they start shooting," Dover said.

Chip took the binoculars back from him and looked through them and found Jack and Ria again. He scanned the lines ahead of them; about fifteen bikes were between them and the groups at the scanners. "Do they have bullets or L-beams?" Dover asked.

"Bullets," Chip said. "Don't worry, I'll time it right." He watched the lines of slow-moving bikes, gauging their speed. "They'll probably shoot anyway," Buzz said. "Just for fun. Did you see that look in Ria's eyes?"

"Get ready," Chip said. He watched until Jack and Ria were five bikes from the scanners. "Pull," he said. Buzz pulled the handle and threw the bomb underhanded to the side. It hit stone, tumbled downward, bounded off a projection, and landed near the side of the copter. "Get back," Chip said. He took another look through the binoculars, at Jack and Ria two bikes from the scanners looking tense but confident, and slipped back between Buzz and Dover. "They look as if they're going to a party," he said.

They waited, their cheeks on stone, and the explosion roared and the incline shuddered. Metal crashed and grated below. There was silence, and the bomb's bitter smell; and then voices, murmuring and rising louder. "Those two!" someone shouted. They edged forward to the rim.

Two bikes were racing onto the bridge. All the others had stopped, their riders standing one-footed, facing toward the copter—tipped to its side below and smoking—and turning now toward the two bikes speeding and the red-cross-coveralled members running after them. The three members in the air veered and flew toward the bridge. Chip raised the binoculars—to Ria's bent back and Jack's ahead of her. They pedaled rapidly in depthless flatness, seeming to get no farther away. A glittering mist appeared, partly obscuring them. Above, a hovering member downpointed a cylinder gushing thick white gas. "He's got them!" Dover said.

Ria stood astride her bike; Jack looked over his shoulder at her. "Ria, not Jack," Chip said.

Jack stopped and turned with his gun aimed upward. It jerked, and jerked again.

The member in the air went limp (crack and crack, the shots sounded), the white-gushing cylinder falling from his hand. Members fleeing the bridge bicycled in both directions, ran wide-eyed on the flanking walkways. Ria sat by her bike. She turned her head, and her face was moist and glittering. She looked troubled. Red-crossed coveralls blurred over her.

Jack stared, holding his gun, and his mouth opened big and round, closed and opened again in glittering mist. ("Ria!" Chip heard, small and far away.) Jack raised his gun ("Ria!") and fired, fired, fired.

Another member in the air (crack, crack, crack) went limp and dropped his cylinder. Red spattered on the walkway below him, and more red. Chip lowered the binoculars. "Your gas mask!" Buzz said. He had binoculars too. Dover was lying with his face in his arms.