This Perfect Day

by Ira Levin

  The door was unlocked and opened, and Karl—a thirty-five-year-old bearded Karl with the long-ago Karl’s sharp-focused eyes—grinned and grabbed Chip’s hand and said, “Li! I thought you weren’t coming!”

  “We ran into some good-natured lunkies,” Chip said.

  “Oh Christ,” Karl said, and let them in.

  He locked the door and Chip introduced Lilac. She said, “Hello, Mr. Newgate,” and Karl, taking her held-out hand and looking at her face, said, “It’s Ashi. Hello, Lilac.”

  “Hello, Ashi,” she said.

  To Chip, Karl said, “Did they hurt you?”

  “No,” Chip said. “Just ‘recite the Vow’ and that kind of cloth.”

  “Bastards,” Karl said. “Come on, I’ll give you a drink and you’ll forget about it.” He took their elbows and led them into a narrow passage walled with frame-to-frame paintings. “You look great, Chip,” he said.

  “So do you,” Chip said. “Ashi.”

  They smiled at each other.

  “Seventeen years, brother,” Karl-Ashi said.

  Men and women were sitting in a smoky brown-walled room, ten or twelve of them, talking and holding cigarettes and glasses. They stopped talking and turned expectantly.

  “This is Chip and this is Lilac,” Karl said to them. “Chip and I were at academy together; the Family’s two worst genetics students.”

  The men and women smiled, and Karl began pointing to them in turn and saying their names. “Vito, Sunny, Ria, Lars . . .” Most of them were immigrants, bearded men and long-haired women with the Family’s eyes and coloring. Two were natives: a pale erect beak-nosed woman of fifty or so, with a gold cross hanging against her black empty-looking dress (“Julia,” Karl said, and she smiled with closed lips); and an overweight red-haired younger woman in a tight dress glazed with silvery beads. A few of the people could have been either immigrants or natives: a gray-eyed beardless man named Bob, a blond woman, a young blue-eyed man.

  “Whiskey or wine?” Karl asked. “Lilac?”

  “Wine, please,” Lilac said.

  They followed him to a small table set out with bottles and glasses, plates holding a slice or two of cheese and meat, and packets of cigarettes and matches. A souvenir paperweight sat on a pile of napkins. Chip picked it up and looked at it; it was from AUS21989. “Make you homesick?” Karl asked, pouring wine.

  Chip showed it to Lilac and she smiled. “Not very,” he said, and put it down.

  “Chip?”

  “Whiskey.”

  The red-haired native woman in the silvery dress came over, smiling and holding an empty glass in a ring-fingered hand. To Lilac she said, “You’re absolutely beautiful. Really,” and to Chip, “I think all you people are beautiful. The Family may not have any freedom but it’s way ahead of us in physical appearance. I’d give anything to be lean and tan and slant-eyed.” She talked on—about the Family’s sensible attitude toward sex—and Chip found himself with a glass in his hand and Karl and Lilac talking to other people and the woman talking to him. Lines of black paint edged and extended her brown eyes. “You people are so much more open than we are,” she said. “Sexually, I mean. You enjoy it more.”

  An immigrant woman came over and said, “Isn’t Heinz coming, Marge?”

  “He’s in Palma,” the woman said, turning. “A wing of the hotel collapsed.”

  “Would you excuse me, please?” Chip said, and sidestepped away. He went to the other end of the room, nodded at people sitting there, and drank some of his whiskey, looking at a painting on the wall—slabs of brown and red on a white background. The whiskey tasted better than Hassan’s. It was less bitter and searing; lighter and more pleasant to drink. The painting with its brown and red slabs was only a flat design, interesting to look at for a moment but with nothing in it connected to life. Karl’s (no, Ashi’s!) A-in-a-circle was in one of its bottom corners. Chip wondered whether it was one of the bad paintings he sold or, since it was hanging there in his living room, part of his “own work” that he had spoken of with satisfaction. Wasn’t he still doing the beautiful unbraceleted men and women he had drawn back at the Academy?

  He drank some more of the whiskey and turned to the people sitting near him: three men and a woman, all immigrants. They were talking about furniture. He listened for a few minutes, drinking, and moved away.

  Lilac was sitting next to the beak-nosed native woman—Julia. They were smoking and talking, or rather Julia was talking and Lilac was listening.

  He went to the table and poured more whiskey into his glass. He lit a cigarette.

  A man named Lars introduced himself. He ran a school for immigrant children there in New Madrid. He had been brought to Liberty as a child, and had been there for forty-two years.

  Ashi came, holding Lilac by the hand. “Chip, come see my studio,” he said.

  He led them from the room into the passage walled with paintings. “Do you know who you were speaking to?” he asked Lilac.

  “Julia?” she said.

  “Julia Costanza,” he said. “She’s the General’s cousin. Despises him. She was one of the founders of Immigrants’ Assistance.”

  His studio was large and brilliantly lighted. A half-finished painting of a native woman holding a kitten stood on an easel; on another easel stood a canvas painted with slabs of blue and green. Other paintings stood against the walls: slabs of brown and orange, blue and purple, purple and black, orange and red.

  He explained what he was trying to do, pointing out balances, and opposing thrusts, and subtle shadings of color.

  Chip looked away and drank his whiskey.

  “Listen, you steelies!” he said, loudly enough so they all could hear him. “Stop talking about furniture for a minute and listen! You know what we’ve got to do? Fight Uni! I’m not being rude, I mean it literally. Fight Uni! Because it’s Uni who’s to blame—for everything! For lunkies, who’re what they are because they don’t have enough food, or space, or connection with any outside world; and for dummies, who’re what they are because they’re LPK’ed that way and tranquilized that way; and for us, who’re what we are because Uni put us here to get rid of us! It’s Uni who’s to blame—it’s frozen the world so there’s no more change—and we’ve got to fight it! We’ve got to get up off our stupid beaten behinds and FIGHT IT!”

  Ashi, smiling, slapped at his cheek. “Hey, brother,” he said, “you’ve had a little too much, you know that? Hey, Chip, you hear me?”

  Of course he’d had too much; of course, of course, of course. But it hadn’t dulled him, it had freed him. It had opened up everything that had been closed inside him for months and months. Whiskey was good! Whiskey was marvelous!

  He stopped Ashi’s slapping hand and held it. “I’m okay, Ashi,” he said. “I know what I’m talking about.” To the others, sitting and swaying and smiling, he said, “We can’t just give up and accept things, adjust ourselves to this prison! Ashi, you used to draw members without bracelets, and they were so beautiful! And now you’re painting color, slabs of color!”

  They were trying to get him to sit down, Ashi on one side of him and Lilac on the other, Lilac looking anxious and embarrassed. “You too, love,” he said. “You’re accepting, adjusting.” He let them seat him, because standing hadn’t been easy and sitting was better, more comfortable and sprawly. “We’ve got to fight, not adjust,” he said. “Fight, fight, fight. We’ve got to fight,” he said to the gray-eyed beardless man sitting next to him.

  “By God, you’re right!” the man said. “I’m with you all the way! Fight Uni! What’ll we do? Go over in boats and take the Army along for good measure? But maybe the sea is monitored by satellite and doctors’ll be waiting with clouds of LPK. I’ve got a better idea; we’ll get a plane—I hear there’s one on the island that actually flies—and we’ll—”

  “Don’t tease him, Bob,” someone said. “He just came over.”

  “That’s obvious,” the man said, getting up.

  “There’s a
way to do it,” Chip said. “There has to be. There’s a way to do it.” He thought about the sea and the island in the middle of it, but he couldn’t think as clearly as he wanted. Lilac sat where the man had been and took his hand. “We’ve got to fight,” he said to her.

  “I know, I know,” she said, looking at him sadly.

  Ashi came and put a warm cup to his lips. “It’s coffee,” he said. “Drink it.”

  It was very hot and strong; he swallowed a mouthful, then pushed the cup away. “The copper complex,” he said. “On ’91766. The copper must get ashore. There must be boats or barges; we could—”

  “It’s been done before,” Ashi said.

  Chip looked at him, thinking he was tricking him, making fun of him in some way, like the gray-eyed beardless man.

  “Everything you’re saying,” Ashi said, “everything you’re thinking—‘fight Uni’—it’s been said before and thought before. And tried before. A dozen times.” He put the cup to Chip’s lips. “Take some more,” he said.

  Chip pushed the cup away, staring at him, and shook his head. “It’s not true,” he said.

  “It is, brother. Come on, take a—”

  “It isn’t!” he said.

  “It is,” a woman said across the room. “It’s true.”

  Julia. It was Julia, General’s-cousin-Julia, sitting erect and alone in her black dress with her little gold cross.

  “Every five or six years,” she said, “a group of people like you—sometimes only two or three, sometimes as many as ten —sets out to destroy UniComp. They go in boats, in submarines that they spend years building; they go on board the barges you just mentioned. They take guns, explosives, gas masks, gas bombs, gadgets; they have plans that they’re sure will work. They never come back. I financed the last two parties and am supporting the families of men who were in them, so I speak with authority. I hope you’re sober enough to understand, and to spare yourself useless anguish. Accepting and adjusting is all that’s possible. Be grateful for what you have: a lovely wife, a child on the way, and a small amount of freedom that we hope in time will grow larger. I might add that in no circumstances whatsoever will I finance another such party. I am not as rich as certain people think I am.”

  Chip sat looking at her. She looked back at him with small black eyes above her pale beak of nose.

  “They never come back, Chip,” Ashi said.

  Chip looked at him.

  “Maybe they get to shore,” Ashi said; “maybe they get to ’001. Maybe they even get into the dome. But that’s as far as they get, because they’re gone, every one of them. And Uni is still working.”

  Chip looked at Julia. She said, “Men and women exactly like you. As far back as I can remember.”

  He looked at Lilac, holding his hand. She squeezed it, looking compassionately at him.

  He looked at Ashi, who held the cup of coffee toward him.

  He blocked the cup and shook his head. “No, I don’t want coffee,” he said.

  He sat motionless, with sudden sweat on his forehead, and then he leaned forward and began vomiting.

  He was in bed, and Lilac was lying beside him sleeping. Hassan was snoring on the other side of the curtain. A sour taste was in his mouth, and he remembered vomiting. Christ and Wei! And on carpet—the first he’d seen in half a year!

  Then he remembered what had been said to him by that woman, Julia, and by Karl—by Ashi.

  He lay still for a while, and then he got up and tiptoed around the curtain and past the sleeping Newmans to the sink. He got a drink of water, and because he didn’t want to go all the way down the hall, urined quietly in the sink and rinsed it out thoroughly.

  He got back down beside Lilac and drew the blanket over him. He felt a little drunk again and his head hurt, but he lay on his back with his eyes closed, breathing lightly and slowly, and after a while he felt better.

  He kept his eyes closed and thought about things.

  After half an hour or so Hassan’s alarm clock jangled. Lilac turned. He stroked her head and she sat up. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Yes, sort of,” he said.

  The light went on and they winced. They heard Hassan grunting and getting up, yawning, farting. “Get up, Ria,” he said. “Gigi? It’s time to get up.”

  Chip stayed on his back with his hand on Lilac’s cheek. “I’m sorry, darling,” he said. “I’ll call him today and apologize.”

  She took his hand and turned her lips to it. “You couldn’t help it,” she said. “He understood.”

  “I’m going to ask him to help me find a better job,” Chip said.

  Lilac looked at him questioningly.

  “It’s all out of me,” he said. “Like the whiskey. All out. I’m going to be an industrious, optimistic steely. I’m going to accept and adjust. We’re going to have a bigger apartment than Ashi some day.”

  “I don’t want that,” she said. “I would love to have two rooms, though.”

  “We will,” he said. “In two years. Two rooms in two years; that’s a promise.”

  She smiled at him.

  He said, “I think we ought to think about moving to New Madrid where our rich friends are. That man Lars runs a school, did you know that? Maybe you could teach there. And the baby could go there when it’s old enough.”

  “What could I teach?” she said.

  “Something,” he said. “I don’t know.” He lowered his hand and stroked her breasts. “How to have beautiful breasts, maybe,” he said.

  Smiling, she said, “We’ve got to get dressed.”

  “Let’s skip breakfast,” he said, drawing her down. He rolled onto her and they embraced and kissed.

  “Lilac?” Ria called. “How was it?”

  Lilac freed her mouth. “Tell you later!” she called.

  While he was walking down the tunnel into the mine he remembered the tunnel into Uni, Papa Jan’s tunnel down which the memory banks had been rolled.

  He stopped still.

  Down which the real memory banks had been rolled. And above them were the false ones, the pink and orange toys that were reached through the dome and the elevators, and which everyone thought was Uni itself; everyone including—it had to be!—all those men and women who had gone out to fight it in the past. But Uni, the real Uni, was on the levels below, and could be reached through the tunnel, through Papa Jan’s tunnel from behind Mount Love.

  It would still be there—closed at its mouth probably, maybe even sealed with a meter of concrete—but it would still be there; because nobody fills in all of a long tunnel, especially not an efficient computer. And there was space cut out below for more memory banks—Papa Jan had said so—so the tunnel would be needed again some day.

  It was there, behind Mount Love.

  A tunnel into Uni.

  With the right maps and charts, someone who knew what he was doing could probably work out its exact location, or very nearly.

  “You there! Get moving!” someone shouted.

  He walked ahead quickly, thinking about it, thinking about it.

  It was there. The tunnel.

  6

  “IF IT’S MONEY, the answer is no,” Julia Costanza said, walking briskly past clattering looms and immigrant women glancing at her. “If it’s a job,” she said, “I might be able to help you.”

  Chip, walking along beside her, said, “Ashi’s already got me a job.”

  “Then it’s money,” she said.

  “Information first,” Chip said, “then maybe money.” He pushed open a door.

  “No,” Julia said, going through. “Why don’t you go to I. A.? That’s what it’s there for. What information? About what?” She glanced at him as they started up a spiral stairway that shifted with their weight.

  Chip said, “Can we sit down somewhere for five minutes?”

  “If I sit down,” Julia said, “half this island will be naked tomorrow. That’s probably acceptable to you, but it isn’t to me. What information?”
<
br />   He held in his resentment. Looking at her beak-nosed profile, he said, “Those two attacks on Uni you—”

  “No,” she said. She stopped and faced him, one hand holding the stairway’s centerpost. “If it’s about that I really won’t listen,” she said. “I knew it the minute you walked into that living room, the disapproving air you had. No. I’m not interested in any more plans and schemes. Go talk to somebody else.” She went up the stairs.

  He went quickly and caught up with her. “Were they planning to use a tunnel?” he asked. “Just tell me that; were they going in through a tunnel from behind Mount Love?”

  She pushed open the door at the head of the stairway; he held it and went through after her, into a large loft where a few machine parts lay. Birds rose fluttering to holes in the peaked roof and flew out.

  “They were going in with the other people,” she said, walking straight through the loft toward a door at its far end. “The sightseers. At least that was the plan. They were going to go down in the elevators.”

  “And then?”

  “There’s no point in—”

  “Just answer me, will you, please?” he said.

  She glanced at him, angrily, and looked ahead. “There’s supposed to be a large observation window,” she said. “They were going to smash it and throw in explosives.”

  “Both groups?”

  “Yes.”

  “They may have succeeded,” he said.

  She stopped with her hand on the door and looked at him, puzzled.

  “That’s not really Uni,” he said. “It’s a display for the sightseers. And maybe it’s also meant as a false target for attackers. They could have blown it up and nothing would have happened —except that they would have been grabbed and treated.”

  She kept looking at him.

  “The real thing is farther down,” he said. “On three levels. I was in it once when I was ten or eleven years old.”

  She said, “Digging a tunnel is the most ri—”

  “It’s there already,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be dug.”

  She closed her mouth, looked at him, and turned quickly away and pushed open the door. It led to another loft, brightly lit, where a row of presses stood motionless with layers of cloth on their beds. Water was on the floor, and two men were trying to lift the end of a long pipe that had apparently fallen from the wall and lay across a stopped conveyor belt piled with cut cloth pieces. The wall end of the pipe was still anchored, and the men were trying to lift its other end and get it off the belt and back up against the wall. Another man, an immigrant, waited on a ladder to receive it.