This Perfect Day

by Ira Levin

  Karl looked at him, his anger retreated, and he stood up straight. “No,” he said. “No, I—I just lost my temper, that’s all. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, brother. Forget it.” He clapped Chip’s shoulder. “I’m okay now,” he said. “I’ll claim again in a week or so. Been doing too much drawing anyway, I suppose. Uni knows best.” He went off down the aisle toward the bathroom.

  Chip turned back to the desk and leaned on his elbows and held his head, shaking.

  That was Tuesday. Chip’s weekly adviser meetings were on Woodsday mornings at 10:40, and this time he would tell Li YB about Karl’s sickness. There was no longer any question of being an alarmist; there was faulted responsibility, in fact, in having waited as long as he had. He ought to have said something at the first clear sign, Karl’s slipping out of TV (to draw, of course), or even when he had noticed the unusual look in Karl’s eyes. Why in hate had he waited? He could hear Li YB gently reproaching him: “You haven’t been a very good brother’s keeper, Li.”

  Early on Woodsday morning, though, he decided to pick up some coveralls and the new Geneticist. He went down to the supply center and walked through the aisles. He took a Geneticist and a pack of coveralls and walked some more and came to the art-supplies section. He saw the pile of green-covered sketch pads; there weren’t five hundred of them, but there were seventy or eighty and no one seemed in a rush to claim them.

  He walked away, thinking that he must be going out of his mind. Yet if Karl were to promise not to draw when he wasn’t supposed to . . .

  He walked back again—“Anyone can try a little sketching in his spare time, right?”—and took a pad and a packet of charcoal. He went to the shortest check-out line, his heart pounding in his chest, his arms trembling. He drew a deep-as-possible breath; another, and another.

  He put his bracelet to the scanner, and the stickers of the coveralls, the Geneticist, the pad, and the charcoal. Everything was yes. He gave way to the next member.

  He went back up to the dorm. Karl’s cubicle was empty, the bed unmade. He went into his own cubicle and put the coveralls on the shelf and the Geneticist on the desk. On the top page of the pad he wrote, his hand still trembling, Free time only. I want your promise. Then he put the pad and the charcoal on his bed and sat at the desk and looked at the Geneticist.

  Karl came, and went into his cubicle and began making his bed. “Are those yours?” Chip asked.

  Karl looked at the pad and charcoal on Chip’s bed. Chip said, “They’re not mine.”

  “Oh, yes. Thanks,” Karl said, and came over and took them. “Thanks a lot,” he said.

  “You ought to put your nameber on the first page,” Chip said, “if you’re going to leave it all over like that.”

  Karl went into his cubicle, opened the pad, and looked at the first page. He looked at Chip, nodded, raised his right hand, and mouthed, “Love of Family.”

  They rode down to the classrooms together. “What did you have to waste a page for?” Karl said.

  Chip smiled.

  “I’m not joking,” Karl said. “Didn’t you ever hear of writing a note on a piece of scrap paper?”

  “Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei,” Chip said.

  In December of that year, 152, came the appalling news of the Gray Death, sweeping through all the Mars colonies except one and completely wiping them out in nine short days. In the Academy of the Genetic Sciences, as in all the Family’s establishments, there was helpless silence, then mourning, and then a massive determination to help the Family overcome the staggering setback it had suffered. Everyone worked harder and longer. Free time was halved; there were classes on Sundays and only a half-day Christmas holiday. Genetics alone could breed new strengths in the coming generations; everyone was in a hurry to finish his training and get on to his first real assignment. On every wall were the white-on-black posters: MARS AGAIN!

  The new spirit lasted several months. Not until Marxmas was there a full day’s holiday, and then no one quite knew what to do with it. Chip and Karl and their girlfriends rowed out to one of the islands in the Amusement Gardens lake and sunbathed on a large flat rock. Karl drew his girlfriend’s picture. It was the first time, as far as Chip knew, that he had drawn a living human being.

  In June, Chip claimed another pad for Karl.

  Their training ended, five weeks early, and they received their assignments: Chip to a viral genetics research laboratory in USA90058; Karl to the Institute of Enzymology in JAP50319.

  On the evening before they were to leave the Academy they packed their take-along kits. Karl pulled green-covered pads from his desk drawers—a dozen from one drawer, half a dozen from another, more pads from other drawers; he threw them into a pile on his bed. “You’re never going to get those all into your kit,” Chip said.

  “I’m not planning to,” Karl said. “They’re done; I don’t need them.” He sat on the bed and leafed through one of the pads, tore out one drawing and another.

  “May I have some?” Chip asked.

  “Sure,” Karl said, and tossed a pad over to him.

  It was mostly Pre-U Museum sketches. Chip took out one of a man in chain mail holding a crossbow to his shoulder, and another of an ape scratching himself.

  Karl gathered most of the pads and went off down the aisle toward the chute. Chip put the pad on Karl’s bed and picked up another one.

  In it were a nude man and woman standing in parkland outside a blank-slabbed city. They were taller than normal, beautiful and strangely dignified. The woman was quite different from the man, not only genitally but also in her longer hair, protrusive breasts, and overall softer convexity. It was a great drawing, but something about it disturbed Chip, he didn’t know what.

  He turned to other pages, other men and women; the pictures grew surer and stronger, done with fewer and bolder lines. They were the best drawings Karl had ever made, but in each there was that disturbing something, a lack, an imbalance that Chip was at a loss to define.

  It hit him with a chill.

  They had no bracelets.

  He looked through to check, his stomach knotting sick-tight. No bracelets. No bracelets on any of them. And there was no chance of the drawings being unfinished; in the corner of each of them was an A with a circle around it.

  He put down the pad and went and sat on his bed; watched as Karl came back and gathered the rest of the pads and, with a smile, carried them off.

  There was a dance in the lounge but it was brief and subdued because of Mars. Later Chip went with his girlfriend into her cubicle. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  Karl asked him too, in the morning while they were folding their blankets. “What’s the matter, Li?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Sorry to be leaving?”

  “A little.”

  “Me too. Here, give me your sheets and I’ll chute them.”

  “What’s his nameber?” Li YB asked.

  “Karl WL35S7497,” Chip said.

  Li YB jotted it down. “And what specifically seems to be the trouble?” he asked.

  Chip wiped his palms on his thighs. “He’s drawn some pictures of members,” he said.

  “Acting aggressively?”

  “No, no,” Chip said. “Just standing and sitting, fucking, playing with children.”

  “Well?”

  Chip looked at the desktop. “They don’t have bracelets,” he said.

  Li YB didn’t speak. Chip looked at him; he was looking at Chip. After a moment Li YB said, “Several pictures?”

  “A whole padful.”

  “And no bracelets at all.”

  “None.”

  Li YB breathed in, and then pushed out the breath between his teeth in a series of rapid hisses. He looked at his note pad. “KWL35S7497,” he said.

  Chip nodded.

  He tore up the picture of the man with the crossbow, which was aggressive, and tore up the one of the ape too. He took the pieces to the chute and dropped
them down.

  He put the last few things into his take-along kit—his clippers and mouthpiece and a framed snapshot of his parents and Papa Jan—and pressed it closed.

  Karl’s girlfriend came by with her kit slung on her shoulder. “Where’s Karl?” she asked.

  “At the medicenter.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Tell him I said good-by, will you?”

  “Sure.”

  They kissed cheeks. “Good-by,” she said.

  “Good-by.”

  She went away down the aisle. Some other students, no longer students, went past. They smiled at Chip and said good-by to him.

  He looked around the barren cubicle. The picture of the horse was still on the bulletin board. He went to it and looked at it; saw again the rearing stallion, so alive and wild. Why hadn’t Karl stayed with the animals in the zoo? Why had he begun to draw living humans?

  A feeling formed in Chip, formed and grew; a feeling that he had been wrong to tell Li YB about Karl’s drawings, although he knew of course that he had been right. How could it be wrong to help a sick brother? Not to tell would have been wrong, to keep quiet as he had done before, letting Karl go on drawing members without bracelets and getting sicker and sicker. Eventually he might even have been drawing members acting aggressively. Fighting.

  Of course he had been right.

  Yet the feeling that he had been wrong stayed and kept growing, grew into guilt, irrationally.

  Someone came near, and he whirled, thinking it was Karl coming to thank him. It wasn’t; it was someone passing the cubicle, leaving.

  But that was what was going to happen: Karl was going to come back from the medicenter and say, “Thanks for helping me, Li. I was really sick but I’m a whole lot better now,” and he was going to say, “Don’t thank me, brother; thank Uni,” and Karl was going to say, “No, no,” and insist and shake his hand.

  Suddenly he wanted not to be there, not to get Karl’s thanks for having helped him; he grabbed his kit and hurried to the aisle—stopped short, uncertainly, and hurried back. He took the picture of the horse from the board, opened his kit on the desk, pushed the drawing in among the pages of a notebook, closed the kit, and went.

  He jogged down the downgoing escalators, excusing himself past other members, afraid that Karl might come after him; jogged all the way down to the lowest level, where the rail station was, and got on the long airport line. He stood with his head held still, not looking back.

  Finally he came to the scanner. He faced it for a moment, and touched it with his bracelet. Yes, it green-winked.

  He hurried through the gate.

  PART TWO

  COMING ALIVE

  1

  BETWEEN JULY OF 153 and Marx of 162, Chip had four assignments: two at research laboratories in Usa; a brief one at the Institute of Genetic Engineering in Ind, where he attended a series of lectures on recent advances in mutation induction; and a five-year assignment at a chemo-synthetics plant in Chi. He was upgraded twice in his classification and by 162 was a genetic taxonomist, second class.

  During those years he was outwardly a normal and contented member of the Family. He did his work well, took part in house athletic and recreational programs, had weekly sexual activity, made monthly phone calls and bi-yearly visits to his parents, was in place and on time for TV and treatments and adviser meetings. He had no discomfort to report, either physical or mental.

  Inwardly, however, he was far from normal. The feeling of guilt with which he had left the Academy had led him to withhold himself from his next adviser, for he wanted to retain that feeling, which, though unpleasant, was the strongest feeling he had ever had and an enlargement, strangely, of his sense of being; and withholding himself from his adviser—reporting no discomfort, playing the part of a relaxed, contented member—had led over the years to a withholding of himself from everyone around him, a general attitude of guarded watchfulness. Everything came to seem questionable to him: totalcakes, coveralls, the sameness of members’ rooms and thoughts, and especially the work he was doing, whose end, he saw, would only be to solidify the universal sameness. There were no alternatives, of course, no imaginable alternatives to anything, but still he withheld himself, and questioned. Only in the first few days after treatments was he really the member he pretended to be.

  One thing alone in the world was indisputably right: Karl’s drawing of the horse. He framed it—not in a supply-center frame but in one he made himself, out of wood strips ripped from the back of a drawer and scraped smooth—and hung it in his rooms in Usa, his room in Ind, his room in Chi. It was a lot better to look at than Wei Addressing the Chemotherapists or Marx Writing or Christ Expelling the Money Changers.

  In Chi he thought of getting married, but he was told that he wasn’t to reproduce and so there didn’t seem much point in it.

  In mid-Marx of 162, shortly before his twenty-seventh birthday, he was transferred back to the Institute of Genetic Engineering in IND26110 and assigned to a newly established Genie Subclassification Center. New microscopes had found distinctions between genes that until then had appeared identical, and he was one of forty 663B’s and C’s put to defining subclassifications. His room was four buildings away from the Center, giving him a short walk twice a day, and he soon found a girlfriend whose room was on the floor below his. His adviser was a year younger than he, Bob RO. Life apparently was going to continue as before.

  One night in April, though, as he made ready to clean his teeth before going to bed, he found a small white something lodged in his mouthpiece. Perplexed, he picked it out. It was a triple bend of tightly rolled paper. He put down the mouthpiece and unrolled a thin rectangle filled with typing. You seem to be a fairly unusual member, it said. Wondering about which classification you would choose, for instance. Would you like to meet some other unusual members? Think about it. You are only partly alive. We can help you more than you can imagine.

  The note surprised him with its knowledge of his past and disturbed him with its secrecy and its “You are only partly alive.” What did it mean—that strange statement and the whole strange message? And who had put it in his mouthpiece, of all places? But there was no better place, it struck him, for making certain that he and he alone should find it. Who then, not so foolishly, had put it there? Anyone at all could have come into the room earlier in the evening or during the day. At least two other members had done so; there had been notes on his desk from Peace SK, his girlfriend, and from the secretary of the house photography club.

  He cleaned his teeth and got into bed and reread the note. Its writer or one of the other “unusual members” must have had access to UniComp’s memory of his boyhood self-classification thoughts, and that seemed to be enough to make the group think he might be sympathetic to them. Was he? They were abnormal; that was certain. Yet what was he? Wasn’t he abnormal too? We can help you more than you can imagine. What did that mean? Help him how? Help him do what? And what if he decided he wanted to meet them; what was he supposed to do? Wait, apparently, for another note, for a contact of some kind. Think about it, the note said.

  The last chime sounded, and he rolled the piece of paper back up and tucked it down into the spine of his night-table Wei’s Living Wisdom. He tapped off the light and lay and thought about it. It was disturbing, but it was different too, and interesting. Would you like to meet some other unusual members?

  He didn’t say anything about it to Bob RO. He looked for another note in his mouthpiece each time he came back to his room, but didn’t find one. Walking to and from work, taking a seat in the lounge for TV, standing on line in the dining hall or the supply center, he searched the eyes of the members around him, alert for a meaningful remark or perhaps only a look and a head movement inviting him to follow. None came.

  Four days went by and he began to think that the note had been a sick member’s joke, or worse, a test of some kind. Had Bob RO himself written it, to see if he would mention it? No, that was ridiculous; he was really
getting sick.

  He had been interested—excited even, and hopeful, though he hadn’t known of what—but now, as more days went by with no note, no contact, he became disappointed and irritable.

  And then, a week after the first note, it was there: the same triple bend of rolled paper in the mouthpiece. He picked it out, excitement and hope coming back instantaneously. He unrolled the paper and read it: If you want to meet us and hear how we can help you, be between buildings J16 and J18 on Lower Christ Plaza tomorrow night at 11:15. Do not touch any scanners on the way. If members are in sight of one you have to pass, take another route. I’ll wait until 11:30. Beneath was typed, as a signature, Snowflake.

  Few members were on the walkways, and those hurrying to their beds with their eyes set straight ahead of them. He had to change his course only once, walked faster, and reached Lower Christ Plaza exactly at 11:15. He crossed the moonlit white expanse, with its turned-off fountain mirroring the moon, and found J16 and the dark channel that divided it from J18.

  No one was there—but then, meters back in shadow, he saw white coveralls marked with what looked like a medicenter red cross. He went into the darkness and approached the member, who stood by J16’s wall and stayed silent.

  “Snowflake?” he said.

  “Yes.” The voice was a woman’s. “Did you touch any scanners?”

  “No.”

  “Funny feeling, isn’t it?” She was wearing a pale mask of some kind, thin and close-fitting.

  “I’ve done it before,” he said.

  “Good for you.”

  “Only once, and somebody pushed me,” he said. She seemed older than he, how much he couldn’t tell.

  “We’re going to a place that’s a five-minute walk from here,” she said. “It’s where we get together regularly, six of us, four women and two men—a terrible ratio that I’m counting on you to improve. We’re going to make a certain suggestion to you; if you decide to follow it you might eventually become one of us; if you don’t, you won’t, and tonight will be our last contact. In that case, though, we can’t have you knowing what we look like or where we meet.” Her hand came out of her pocket with whiteness in it. “I’ll have to bandage your eyes,” she said. “That’s why I’m wearing these medicenter cuvs, so it’ll look all right for me to be leading you.”