This Perfect Day

"You won't want to," Wei said. "You'll come to recognize that we're right and your responsibility lies here." He sipped wine and pressed his napkin to his lips. "If we're wrong on minor points you can sit on the High Council some day and correct us," he said. "Are you interested in architecture or city planning, by any chance?" Chip looked at him and, after a moment, said, "I've thought once or twice about designing buildings."

"Uni thinks you should be on the Architectural Council at present," Wei said. "Look in on it. Meet Madhir, the head of it." He put onions into his mouth. Chip said, "I really don't know anything..."

"You can learn if you're interested," Wei said, cutting steak. "There's plenty of time." Chip looked at him. "Yes," he said. "Programmers seem to live past sixty-two. Even past sixty-three."

"Exceptional members have to be preserved as long as possible," Wei said. "For the Family's sake." He put steak into his mouth and chewed, looking at Chip with his slit-eyes. "Would you like to hear something incredible?" he said. "Your generation of programmers is almost certain to live indefinitely. Isn't that fantastic? We old ones are going to die sooner or later—the doctors say maybe not, but Uni says we will. You younger ones though, in all probability you won't die. Ever." Chip put a piece of steak into his mouth and chewed it slowly. Wei said, "I suppose it's an unsettling thought. It'll grow more attractive as you get older."

Chip swallowed what was in his mouth. He looked at Wei, glanced at his gray-silk chest, and looked at his face again. "That member," he said. "The decathlon winner. Did he die naturally or was he killed?"

"He was killed," Wei said. "With his permission, given freely, even eagerly."

"Of course," Chip said. "He was treated."

"An athlete?" Wei said. "They take very little. No, he was proud that he was going to become—allied to me. His only concern was whether I would keep him 'in condition'—a concern that I'm afraid was justified. You'll find that the children, the ordinary members here, vie with one another to give parts of themselves for transplant. If you wanted to replace that eye, for instance, they'd be slipping into your room and begging you for the honor." He put squash into his mouth. Chip shifted in his seat. "My eye doesn't bother me," he said. "I like it."

"You shouldn't," Wei said. "If nothing could be done about it, then you would be justified in accepting it. But an imperfection that can be remedied? That we must never accept." He cut steak. "'One goal, one goal only, for all of us—perfection,'" he said. "We're not there yet, but some day we will be: a Family improved genetically so that treatments no longer are needed; a corps of ever-living programmers so that the islands too can be unified; perfection, on Earth and moving 'outward, outward, outward to the stars/" His fork, with steak on it, stopped before his lips. He looked ahead of him and said, "I dreamed of it when I was young: a universe of the gentle, the helpful, the loving, the unselfish. I'll live to see it. I shall live to see it."

Dover led Chip and Karl through the complex that afternoon—showed them the library, the gym, the pool, and the garden ("Christ and Wei."

"Wait till you see the sunsets and the stars"); the music room, the theater, the lounges; the dining room and the kitchen ("I don't know, from somewhere," a member said, watching other members taking bundles of lettuce and lemons from a steel carrier. "Whatever we need comes in," she said, smiling. "Ask Uni"). There were four levels, passed through by small elevators and narrow escalators. The medicenter was on the bottom level. Doctors named Boroviev and Rosen, young-moving men with shrunken faces as old-looking as Wei's, welcomed them and examined them and gave them infusions. "We can replace that eye one-two-three, you know," Rosen said to Chip, and Chip said, "I know. Thanks, but it doesn't bother me."

They swam in the pool. Dover went to swim with a tall and beautiful woman Chip had noticed applauding the night before, and he and Karl sat on the edge of the pool and watched them. "How do you feel?" Chip asked. "I don't know," Karl said. "I'm pleased, of course, and Dover says it's all necessary and it's our duty to help, but—I don't know. Even if they're running Uni, it's Uni anyway, isn't it?"

"Yes," Chip said. "That's how I feel."

"There would have been a mess up above if we'd done what we planned," Karl said, "but it would have been straightened out eventually, more or less." He shook his head. "I honestly don't know, Chip," he said. "Any system the Family set up on its own would certainly be a lot less efficient than Uni is, than these people are; you can't deny that."

"No, you can't," Chip said.

"Isn't it fantastic how long they live?" Karl said. "I still can't get over the fact that—look at those breasts, will you? Christ and Wei."