This Perfect Day (8 page)

“And a sexual depressant,” Snowflake said.

“That too,” King said. “Ten minutes of automatic sex once a week is barely a fraction of what’s possible.”

“I don’t believe it,” Chip said. “Any of it.”

They told him it was true. “It’s true, Chip.” “Really, it’s the truth.” “It’s true!”

“You’re in genetics,” King said; “isn’t that what genetic engineering is working toward?—removing aggressiveness, controlling the sex drive, building in helpfulness and docility and gratitude? Treatments are doing the job in the meantime, while genetic engineering gets past size and skin color.”

“Treatments help us,” Chip said.

“They help Uni,” the woman across the table said.

“And the Wei-worshippers who programmed Uni,” King said. “But they don’t help
us
, at least not as much as they hurt us. They make us into machines.”

Chip shook his head, and shook it again.

“Snowflake told us”—it was Hush, speaking in a dry quiet voice that accounted for her name—“that you have abnormal tendencies. Haven’t you ever noticed that they’re stronger just before a treatment and weaker just after one?”

Snowflake said, “I’ll bet you made that picture frame a day or two
before
a treatment, not a day or two after one.”

He thought for a moment. “I don’t remember,” he said, “but when I was a boy and thought about classifying myself, after treatments it seemed stupid and pre-U, and before treatments it was—exciting.”

“There you are,” King said.

“But it was
sick
excitement!”

“It was healthy,” King said, and the woman across the table said, “You were alive, you were feeling something. Any feeling is healthier than no feeling at all.”

He thought about the guilt he had kept secret from his advisers since Karl and the Academy. He nodded. “Yes,” he said, “yes, that could be.” He turned his face toward King, toward the woman, toward Leopard and Snowflake, wishing he could open his eyes and see them. “But I don’t understand this,” he said. “
You
get treatments, don’t you? Then aren’t
you—”

“Reduced ones,” Snowflake said.

“Yes, we get treatments,” King said, “but we’ve managed to have them reduced, to have certain components of them reduced, so that we’re a little more than the machines Uni thinks we are.”

“And that’s what we’re offering
you
,” Snowflake said; “a way to see more and feel more and do more and enjoy more.”

“And to be more unhappy; tell him that too.” It was a new voice, soft but clear, the other young woman. She was across the table and to Chip’s left, close to where King was.

“That isn’t so,” Snowflake said.

“Yes it is,” the clear voice said—a girl’s voice almost; she was no more than twenty, Chip guessed. “There’ll be days when you’ll
hate
Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei,” she said, “and want to take a torch to Uni. There’ll be days when you’ll want to tear off your bracelet and run to a mountaintop like the old incurables, just to be able to do what you want to do and make your own choices and live your own life.”

“Lilac,” Snowflake said.

“There’ll be days when you’ll hate
us
,” she said, “for waking you up and making you
not
a machine. Machines are at home in the universe; people are aliens.”

“Lilac,” Snowflake said, “we’re trying to get Chip to join us; we’re not trying to scare him away.” To Chip she said, “Lilac is
really
abnormal.”

“There’s truth in what Lilac says,” King said. “I think we all have moments when we wish there were someplace we could go, some settlement or colony where we could be our own masters—”

“Not me,” Snowflake said.

“And since there isn’t such a place,” King said, “yes, we’re sometimes unhappy. Not you, Snowflake; I know. With rare exceptions like Snowflake, being able to feel happiness seems to mean being able to feel
un
happiness as well. But as Sparrow said, any feeling is better and healthier than none at all; and the unhappy moments aren’t that frequent, really.”

“They are,” Lilac said.

“Oh, cloth,” Snowflake said. “Let’s
stop
all this talk about unhappiness.”

“Don’t worry, Snowflake,” the woman across the table, Sparrow, said; “if he gets up and runs you can trip him.”

“Ha, ha, hate, hate,” Snowflake said.

“Snowflake, Sparrow,” King said. “Well, Chip, what’s your answer? Do you want to get your treatments reduced? It’s done by steps; the first one is easy, and if you don’t like the way you feel a month from now, you can go to your adviser and tell him you were infected by a group of very sick members whom you unfortunately can’t identify.”

After a moment Chip said, “All right. What do I do?” His arm was squeezed by Snowflake. “Good,” Hush whispered.

“Just a moment, I’m lighting my pipe,” King said.

“Are you all smoking?” Chip asked. The burning smell was intense, drying and stinging his nostrils.

“Not right now,” Hush said. “Only King, Lilac, and Leopard.”

“We’ve all
been
doing it though,” Snowflake said. “It’s not a continuous thing; you do it awhile and then stop awhile.”

“Where do you get the tobacco?”

“We grow it,” Leopard said, sounding pleased. “Hush and I. In parkland.”

“In
parkland?”

“That’s right,” Leopard said.

“We have two patches,” Hush said, “and last Sunday we found a place for a third.”

“Chip?” King said, and Chip turned toward him and listened. “Basically, step one is just a matter of acting as if you’re being
over
treated,” King said; “slowing down at work, at games, at everything—slowing down
slightly,
not conspicuously. Make a small mistake at your work, and another one a few days later. And don’t do well at sex. The thing to do there is masturbate before you meet your girlfriend; that way you’ll be able to fail convincingly.”

“Masturbate?”

“Oh, fully treated, fully satisfied member,” Snowflake said.

“Bring yourself to an orgasm with your hand,” King said. “And then don’t be too concerned when you don’t have one later. Let your girlfriend tell
her
adviser; don’t you tell yours. Don’t be too concerned about anything, the mistakes you make, lateness for appointments or whatever; let others do the noticing and reporting.”

“Pretend to doze off during TV,” Sparrow said.

“You’re ten days from your next treatment,” King said. “At your next week’s adviser meeting, if you’ve done what I’ve told you, your adviser will sound you out about your general torpor. Again, no concern on your part. Apathy. If you do the whole thing well, the depressants in your treatment will be slightly reduced, enough so that a month from now you’ll be anxious to hear about step two.”

“It sounds easy enough,” Chip said.

“It is,” Snowflake said, and Leopard said, “We’ve all done it; you can too.”

“There’s one danger,” King said. “Even though your treatment may be slightly weaker than usual, its effects in the first few days will still be strong. You’ll feel a revulsion against what you’ve done and an urge to confess to your adviser and get stronger treatments than ever. There’s no way of telling whether or not you’ll be able to resist the urge. We did, but others haven’t. In the past year we’ve given this talk to two other members; they did the slowdown but then confessed within a day or two after being treated.”

“Then won’t my adviser be suspicious when I do the slowdown? He must have heard about those others.”

“Yes,” King said, “but there are legitimate slowdowns, when a member’s need for depressants has lessened, so if you do the job convincingly you’ll get away with it. It’s the urge to confess that you have to worry about.”

“Keep telling yourself”—it was Lilac speaking—“that it’s a chemical that’s making you think you’re sick and in need of help, a chemical that was infused into you without your consent.”

“My consent?” Chip said.

“Yes,” she said. “Your body is yours, not Uni’s.”

“Whether you’ll confess or hold out,” King said, “depends on how strong your mind’s resistance is to chemical alteration, and there’s not much you can do about it one way or the other. On the basis of what we know of you, I’d say you have a good chance.”

They gave him some more pointers on slowdown technique —to skip his midday cake once or twice, to go to bed before the last chime—and then King suggested that Snowflake take him back to where they had met. “I hope we’ll be seeing you again, Chip,” he said. “Without the bandage.”

“I hope so,” Chip said. He stood and pushed back his chair. “Good luck,” Hush said; Sparrow and Leopard said it too. Lilac said it last: “Good luck, Chip.”

“What happens,” he asked, “if I resist the urge to confess?”

“We’ll know,” King said, “and one of us will get in touch with you about ten days after the treatment.”

“How will you know?”

“We’ll know.”

His arm was taken by Snowflake’s hand. “All right,” he said. “Thank you, all of you.”

They said “Don’t mention it,” and “You’re welcome, Chip,” and “Glad to be of help.” Something sounded strange, and then—as Snowflake led him from the room—he realized what it was: the not-being-said of “Thank Uni.”

They walked slowly, Snowflake holding his arm not like a nurse but like a girl walking with her first boyfriend.

“It’s hard to believe,” he said, “that what I can feel now and see now—isn’t all there is.”

“It isn’t,” she said. “Not even half. You’ll find out.”

“I hope so.”

“You will. I’m sure of it.”

He smiled and said, “Were you sure about those two who tried and didn’t make it?”

“No,” she said. Then, “Yes, I was sure of one, but not of the other.”

“What’s step two?” he asked.

“First get through step one.”

“Are there more than two?”

“No. Two, if it works, gets you a major reduction. That’s when you
really
come alive. And speaking of steps, there are three right ahead of us, going up.”

They went up the three steps and walked on. They were back in the plaza. It was perfectly silent, with even the breeze gone.

“The fucking’s the best part,” Snowflake said. “It gets much better, much more intense and exciting, and you’ll be able to do it almost every night.”

“It’s incredible.”

“And please remember,” she said, “that I’m the one who found you. If I catch you even
looking
at Sparrow I’ll kill you.”

Chip started, and told himself not to be foolish.

“Excuse me,” she said; “I’ll act aggressively toward you. Maxi-aggressively.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “I’m not shocked.”

“Not much.”

“What about Lilac?” he said. “May I look at her?”

“All you want; she loves King.”

“Oh?”

“With a pre-U passion. He’s the one who started the group; first her, then Leopard and Hush, then me, then Sparrow.”

Their footsteps became louder and resonant. She stopped him. “We’re here,” she said. He felt her fingers picking at the side of the bandage; he lowered his head. She began unwinding, peeling bandage from margins of skin that turned instantly cool. She unwound more and more and finally took the cotton from his eyes. He blinked them and stretched them wide.

She was close to him and moonlit, looking at him in a way that seemed challenging while she thrust bandage into her medicenter coveralls. Somehow she had got her pale mask back on—but it wasn’t a mask, he saw with a shock; it was her face. She was light. Lighter than any member he had ever seen, except a few near-sixty ones. She was almost white. Almost as white as snow.

“Mask neatly in place,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“That’s all right,” she said, and smiled. “We’re all odd in one way or another. Look at that eye.” She was thirty-five or so, sharp-featured and intelligent-looking, her hair freshly clipped.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“I said it’s all right.”

“Are you supposed to let me see what you look like?”

“I’ll tell you something,” she said. “If you don’t come through I don’t give a fight if the whole bunch of us get normalized. In fact, I think I’d prefer it.” She took his head in both hands and kissed him, her tongue prying at his lips. It slid in and flickered in his mouth. She held his head tight, pushed her groin against his, and rubbed circularly. He felt a responsive stiffening and put his hands to her back. He worked his tongue tentatively against hers.

She withdrew her mouth. “Considering that it’s the middle of the week,” she said, “I’m encouraged.”

“Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei,” he said. “Is that how you
all
kiss?”

“Only me, brother,” she said, “only me.”

They did it again.

“Go on home now,” she said. “Don’t touch scanners.”

He backed away from her. “I’ll see you next month,” he said.

“You fighting well better had,” she said. “Good luck.”

He went out into the plaza and headed toward the Institute. He looked back once. There was only empty passageway between the blank moon-white buildings.

B
OB
R
O
, seated behind his desk, looked up and smiled. “You’re late,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Chip said. He sat down.

Bob closed a white folder with a red file tab on it. “How are you?” he asked.

“Fine,” Chip said.

“Have a good week?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Bob studied him for a moment, his elbow on his chair arm, his fingers rubbing the side of his nose. “Anything in particular you want to talk about?” he asked.

Chip was silent, and then shook his head. “No,” he said.

“I hear you spent half of yesterday afternoon doing somebody else’s work.”

Chip nodded. “I took a sample from the wrong section of the IC box,” he said.

“I see,” Bob said, and smiled and grunted.

Chip looked questioningly at him.

“Joke,” Bob said. “IC, I see.”

“Oh,” Chip said, and smiled.

Bob propped his jaw on his hand, the side of a finger lying against his lips. “What happened Friday?” he asked.

“Friday?”

“Something about using the wrong microscope.”