This Perfect Day

Lilac had been right. An espion in the group. But Dover? It was impossible. It couldn't be. "Hands on your head, Karl," Dover said. "Now turn around, both of you, and face the wall."

"You brother-fighter," Karl said.

They turned around and faced the steel wall with their hands on their heads. "Dover," Chip said. "Christ and Wei-"

"You little bastard," Karl said.

"You're not going to be hurt," Dover said. The wall slid upward—and a long concrete-walled room extended before them, with the tracks going halfway into it and ending. A pair of steel doors were at the room's far end. "Six steps forward and stop," Dover said. "Go on. Six steps." They walked six steps forward and stopped.

Kit-strap fittings clinked behind them. "The gun is still on you," Dover said—from lower down; he was crouching. They glanced at each other. Karl's eyes questioned; Chip shook his head.

"All right," Dover said, his voice coming from his standing height again. "Straight ahead." They walked through the concrete-walled room, and the steel doors at the end of it slid apart. White-tiled wall stood beyond. "Through and to the right," Dover said. They went through the doorway and turned to the right. A long white-tiled corridor stretched before them, ending at a single steel door with a scanner beside it. The right-hand wall of the corridor was solid tile; the left was broken by evenly spaced steel doors, ten or twelve of them, each with its scanner, about ten meters apart.

Chip and Karl walked side by side down the corridor with their hands on their heads. Dover! Chip thought. The first person he had gone to! And why not? So bitterly anti-Uni he had sounded, that day on the I. A. boat! It was Dover who had told him and Lilac that Liberty was a prison, that Uni had let them get to it! "Dover!" he said. "How the hate can you—"

"Just keep walking," Dover said. "You're not dulled, you're not treated!"

"No."

'Then-how? Why?"

"You'll see in a minute," Dover said.

They neared the door at the end of the corridor and it slid abruptly open. Another corridor stretched beyond it: wider, less brightly lit, dark-walled, not tiled. "Keep going," Dover said.

They went through the doorway and stopped, staring. "Go ahead," Dover said. They walked on.

What kind of corridor was this? The floor was carpeted, with a gold-colored carpet thicker and softer than any Chip had ever seen or walked on. The walls were lustrous polished wood, with numbered gold-knobbed doors (12, 11) on both sides. Paintings hung between the doors, beautiful paintings that were surely pre-U: a woman sitting with folded hands, smiling knowingly; a hillside city of windowed buildings under a strange black-clouded sky; a garden; a woman reclining; a man in armor. A pleasant odor spiced the air; tangy, dry, impossible to name. "Where are we?" Karl asked. "In Uni," Dover said.

Ahead of them double doors stood open; a red-draped room lay beyond.

"Keep going," Dover said.

They went through the doorway and into the red-draped room; it spread away on both sides, and members, people, were sitting and smiling and starting to laugh, were laughing and rising and some were applauding; young people, old people, were rising from chairs and sofas, laughing and applauding; applauding, applauding, they all were applauding!; and Chip's arm was pulled down—by Dover, laughing—and he looked at Karl, who looked at him, stupefied; and still they were applauding, men and women, fifty, sixty of them, alert- and alive-looking, in coveralls of silk not paplon, green-gold-blue-white-purple; a tall and beautiful woman, a black-skinned man, a woman who looked like Lilac, a man with white hair who must have been over ninety; applauding, applauding, laughing, applauding...

Chip turned, and Dover, grinning, said, "You're awake," and to Karl, "It's real, it's happening."

"What is?" Chip said. "What the hate is this? Who are they?"

Laughing, Dover said, "They're the programmers, Chip! And that's what you're going to be! Oh if you could only see your faces!"

Chip stared at Karl, and at Dover again. "Christ and Wei, what are you talking about?" he said. "The programmers are dead! Uni's—it goes on by itself, it doesn't have—"

Dover was looking past him, smiling. Silence had spread through the room. Chip turned around.

A man in a smiling mask that looked like Wei (Was this really happening?) was coming to him, moving springily in red silk high-collared coveralls. "Nothing goes on by itself," he said in a voice that was high-pitched but forceful, his smiling mask-lips moving like real ones. (But was it a mask—the yellow skin shrunken tight over the sharp cheekbones, the glinting slit-eyes, the wisps of white hair on the shining yellow head?) "You must be 'Chip' with the one green eye," the man said, smiling and holding out his hand. "You'll have to tell me what was wrong with the name 'Li' that inspired you to change it." Laughter lifted around them.