This Perfect Day

by Ira Levin

  “King and Lilac,” King said.

  “What happened this morning?” Lilac asked, somewhere over by the desk. “Why did you go to your adviser?”

  “To tell,” he said.

  “But you didn’t.”

  “I should have,” he said. “Get out of here, please.”

  “You see?” King said.

  “We have to try,” Lilac said.

  “Please go,” Chip said. “I don’t want to get involved with you again, with any of you. I don’t know what’s right or wrong any more. I don’t even know who I am.”

  “You’ve got about ten hours to find out,” King said. “Your adviser’s coming here in the morning to take you to Medicenter Main. You’re going to be examined there. It wasn’t supposed to happen for three weeks or so, after some more slowing down. It would have been step two. But it’s happening tomorrow, and it’ll probably be step minus-one.”

  “It doesn’t have to be, though,” Lilac said. “You can still make it step two if you do what we tell you.”

  “I don’t want to hear,” he said. “Just go, please.”

  They didn’t say anything. He heard King make a movement.

  “Don’t you understand?” Lilac said. “If you do what we tell you, your treatments will be reduced as much as ours are. If you don’t, they’ll be put back to where they were. In fact, they’ll probably be increased beyond that, won’t they, King?”

  “Yes,” King said.

  “To ‘protect’ you,” Lilac said. “So that you’ll never again even try to get out from under. Don’t you see, Chip?” Her voice came closer. “It’s the only chance you’ll ever have. For the rest of your life you’ll be a machine.”

  “No, not a machine, a member,” he said. “A healthy member doing his assignment; helping the Family, not cheating it.”

  “You’re wasting your breath, Lilac,” King said. “If it were a few days later you might be able to get through, but it’s too soon.”

  “Why didn’t you tell this morning?” Lilac asked him. “You went to your adviser; why didn’t you tell? Others have.”

  “I was going to,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  He turned away from her voice. “He called me Li,” he said. “And I thought I was Chip. Everything got—unsettled.”

  “But you are Chip,” she said, coming still closer. “Someone with a name different from the nameber Uni gave him. Someone who thought of picking his own classification instead of letting Uni do it.”

  He moved away, perturbed, then turned and faced their dim coverall shapes—Lilac, small, opposite him and a couple of meters away; King to his right against the light-outlined door. “How can you speak against Uni?” he asked. “It’s granted us everything!”

  “Only what we’ve given it to grant us,” Lilac said. “It’s denied us a hundred times more.”

  “It let us be born!”

  “How many,” she said, “will it not let be born? Like your children. Like mine.”

  “What do you mean?” he said. “That anyone who wants children—should be allowed to have them?”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s what I mean.”

  Shaking his head, he backed to his bed and sat down. She came to him; crouched and put her hands on his knees. “Please, Chip,” she said, “I shouldn’t say such things when you’re still the way you are, but please, please, believe me. Believe us. We are not sick, we are healthy. It’s the world that’s sick—with chemistry, and efficiency, and humility, and helpfulness. Do what we tell you. Become healthy. Please, Chip.”

  Her earnestness held him. He tried to see her face. “Why do you care so much?” he asked. Her hands on his knees were small and warm, and he felt an impulse to touch them, to cover them with his own. Faintly he found her eyes, large and less slanted than normal, unusual and lovely.

  “There are so few of us,” she said, “and I think that maybe, if there were more, we could do something; get away somehow and make a place for ourselves.”

  “Like the incurables,” he said.

  “That’s what we learn to call them,” she said. “Maybe they were really the unbeatables, the undruggables.”

  He looked at her, trying to see more of her face.

  “We have some capsules,” she said, “that will slow down your reflexes and lower your blood pressure, put things in your blood that will make it look as if your treatments are too strong. If you take them tomorrow morning, before your adviser comes, and if you behave at the medicenter as we tell you and answer certain questions as we tell you—then tomorrow will be step two, and you’ll take it and be healthy.”

  “And unhappy,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, a smile coming into her voice, “unhappy too, though not as much as I said. I sometimes get carried away.”

  “About every five minutes,” King said.

  She took her hands from Chip’s knees and stood up. “Will you?” she asked.

  He wanted to say yes to her, but he wanted to say no too. He said, “Let me see the capsules.”

  King, coming forward, said, “You’ll see them after we leave. They’re in here.” He put into Chip’s hand a small smooth box. “The red one has to be taken tonight and the other two as soon as you get up.”

  “Where did you get them?”

  “One of the group works in a medicenter.”

  “Decide,” Lilac said. “Do you want to hear what to say and do?”

  He shook the box but it made no sound. He looked at the two dim figures waiting before him. He nodded. “All right,” he said.

  They sat and spoke to him, Lilac on the bed beside him, King on the drawn-over desk chair. They told him about a trick of tensing his muscles before the metabolic examination and one of looking above the objective during the depth-perception test. They told him what to say to the doctor who had charge of him and the senior adviser who interviewed him. They told him about tricks that might be played on him: sudden sounds behind his back; being left all alone, but not really, with the doctor’s report form conveniently at hand. Lilac did most of the talking. Twice she touched him, once on his leg and once on his forearm; and once, when her hand lay by his side, he brushed it with his own. Hers moved away in a movement that might have begun before the contact.

  “That’s terrifically important,” King said.

  “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  “Don’t ignore it completely,” King said. “The report form.”

  “Notice it,” Lilac said. “Glance at it and then act as if it really isn’t worth the bother of picking up and reading. As if you don’t care much one way or the other.”

  It was late when they finished; the last chime had sounded half an hour before. “We’d better go separately,” King said. “You go first. Wait by the side of the building.”

  Lilac stood up and Chip stood too. Her hand found his. “I know you’re going to make it, Chip,” she said.

  “I’ll try,” he said. “Thanks for coming.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said, and went to the door. He thought he would see her by the light in the hallway as she went out, but King got up and was in the way and the door closed.

  They stood silently for a moment, he and King, facing each other.

  “Don’t forget,” King said. “The red capsule now and the other two when you get up.”

  “Right,” Chip said, feeling for the box in his pocket.

  “You shouldn’t have any trouble.”

  “I don’t know; there’s so much to remember.”

  They were silent again.

  “Thank you very much, King,” Chip said, holding out his hand in the darkness.

  “You’re a lucky man,” King said. “Snowflake is a very passionate woman. You and she are going to have a lot of good times together.”

  Chip didn’t understand why he had said that. “I hope so,” he said. “It’s hard to believe it’s possible to have more than one orgasm a week.”

  “What we
have to do now,” King said, “is find a man for Sparrow. Then everyone will have someone. It’s better that way. Four couples. No friction.”

  Chip lowered his hand. He suddenly felt that King was telling him to stay away from Lilac, was defining who belonged with whom and telling him to obey the definition. Had King somehow seen him touching Lilac’s hand?

  “I’m going now,” King said. “Turn around, please.”

  Chip turned around and heard King moving away. The room appeared dimly as the door was opened, a shadow swept across it, and it disappeared again with the door’s closing.

  Chip turned. How strange it was to think of someone loving one member in particular so much as to want no one else to touch her! Would he be that way too if his treatments were reduced? It was—like so many other things—hard to believe.

  He went to the light button and felt what was covering it: tape, with something square and flat underneath. He picked at the tape, peeled it away, and tapped the button. He shut his eyes against the ceiling’s glare.

  When he could see he looked at the tape; it was skin-colored, with a square of blue cardboard stuck to it. He dropped it down the chute and took the box from his pocket. It was white plastic with a hinged lid. He opened it. A red capsule, a white one, and one that was half white and half yellow lay bedded on a cotton filling.

  He took the box into the bathroom and tapped on the light. Setting the open box on the edge of the sink, he turned on the water and pulled a cup from the slot and filled it. He turned the water off.

  He started to think, but before he could think too much he picked up the red capsule, put it far back on his tongue, and drank the water.

  Two doctors, not one, had charge of him. They led him in a pale blue smock from examination room to examination room, conferred with the examining doctors, conferred with each other, and made checks and notations on a clipboarded report form that they handed back and forth between them. One was a woman in her forties, the other a man in his thirties. The woman sometimes walked with her arm around Chip’s shoulders, smiling and calling him “young brother.” The man watched him impassively, with eyes that were smaller and set closer together than normal. He had a fresh scar on his cheek, running from the temple to the corner of his mouth, and dark bruises on his cheek and forehead. He never took his eyes off Chip except to look at the report form. Even when conferring with doctors he kept watching him. When the three of them walked to the next examination room he usually dropped behind Chip and the smiling woman doctor. Chip expected him to make a sudden sound, but he didn’t.

  The interview with the senior adviser, a young woman, went well, Chip thought, but nothing else did. He was afraid to tense his muscles before the metabolic examination because of the doctor watching him, and he forgot about looking above the objective in the depth-perception test until it was too late.

  “Too bad you’re missing a day’s work,” the watching doctor said.

  “I’ll make it up,” he said, and realized as he said it that it was a mistake. He should have said It’s all for the best or Will I be here all day? or simply a dull overtreated Yes.

  At midday he was given a glass of bitter white liquid to drink instead of a totalcake and then there were more tests and examinations. The woman doctor went away for half an hour but not the man.

  Around three o’clock they seemed to be finished and went into a small office. The man sat down behind the desk and Chip sat opposite him. The woman said, “Excuse me, I’ll be back in two seconds.” She smiled at Chip and went out.

  The man studied the report form for a minute or two, running a fingertip back and forth along his scar, and then he looked at the clock and put down the clipboard. “I’ll go get her,” he said, and got up and went out, closing the door partway.

  Chip sat still and sniffed and looked at the clipboard. He leaned over, twisted his head, read on the report form the words cholinesterase absorption factor, unamplified, and sat back in his chair again. Had he looked too long?—he wasn’t sure. He rubbed his thumb and examined it, then looked at the room’s pictures, Marx Writing and Wood Presenting the Unification Treaty.

  They came back in. The woman doctor sat down behind the desk and the man sat in a chair near her side. The woman looked at Chip. She wasn’t smiling. She looked worried.

  “Young brother,” she said, “I’m worried about you. I think you’ve been trying to fool us.”

  Chip looked at her. “Fool you?” he said.

  “There are sick members in this town,” she said; “do you know that?”

  He shook his head.

  “Yes,” she said. “As sick as can be. They cover members’ eyes and take them someplace, and tell them to slow down and make mistakes and pretend they’ve lost their interest in sex. They try to make other members as sick as they are. Do you know any such members?”

  “No,” Chip said.

  “Anna,” the man said, “I’ve watched him. There’s no reason to think there’s anything wrong beyond what showed on the tests.” He turned to Chip and said, “Very easily corrected; nothing for you to think about.”

  The woman shook her head. “No,” she said. “No, it doesn’t feel right. Please, young brother, you want us to help you, don’t you?”

  “Nobody told me to make mistakes,” Chip said. “Why? Why should I?”

  The man tapped the report form. “Look at the enzymological rundown,” he said to the woman.

  “I’ve looked at it, I’ve looked at it.”

  “He’s been badly OT’ed there, there, there, and there. Let’s give the data to Uni and get him fixed up again.”

  “I want Jesus HL to see him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m worried.”

  “I don’t know any sick members,” Chip said. “If I did I would tell my adviser.”

  “Yes,” the woman said, “and why did you want to see him yesterday morning?”

  “Yesterday?” Chip said. “I thought it was my day. I got mixed up.”

  “Please, let’s go,” the woman said, standing up holding the clipboard.

  They left the office and walked down the hallway outside it. The woman put her arm around Chip’s shoulders but she didn’t smile. The man dropped behind.

  They came to the end of the hallway, where there was a door marked 600A with a brown white-lettered plaque on it: Chief, Chemotherapeutics Division. They went in, to an anteroom where a member sat behind a desk. The woman doctor told her that they wanted to consult Jesus HL about a diagnostic problem, and the member got up and went out through another door.

  “A waste of time all around,” the man said.

  The woman said, “Believe me, I hope so.”

  There were two chairs in the anteroom, a bare low table, and Wei Addressing the Chemotherapists. Chip decided that if they made him tell he would try not to mention Snowflake’s light skin and Lilac’s less-slanted-than-normal eyes.

  The member came back and held the door open.

  They went into a large office. A gaunt gray-haired member in his fifties—Jesus HL—was seated behind a large untidy desk. He nodded to the doctors as they approached, and looked absently at Chip. He waved a hand toward a chair facing the desk. Chip sat down in it.

  The woman doctor handed Jesus HL the clipboard. “This doesn’t feel right to me,” she said. “I’m afraid he’s malingering.”

  “Contrary to the enzymological evidence,” the other doctor said.

  Jesus HL leaned back in his chair and studied the report form. The doctors stood by the side of the desk, watching him. Chip tried to look curious but not concerned. He watched Jesus HL for a moment, and then looked at the desk. Papers of all sorts were piled and scattered on it and lay drifted over an old-style telecomp in a scuffed case. A drink container jammed with pens and rulers stood beside a framed snapshot of Jesus HL, younger, smiling in front of Uni’s dome. There were two souvenir paperweights, an unusual square one from CHI61332 and a round one from ARG20400, neither of them o
n paper.

  Jesus HL turned the clipboard end for end and peeled the form down and read the back of it.

  “What I would like to do, Jesus,” the woman doctor said, “is keep him here overnight and run some of the tests again tomorrow.”

  “Wasting—” the man said.

  “Or better still,” the woman said, louder, “question him now under TP.”

  “Wasting time and supplies,” the man said.

  “What are we, doctors or efficiency analyzers?” the woman asked him sharply.

  Jesus HL put down the clipboard and looked at Chip. He got up from his chair and came around the side of the desk, the doctors stepping back quickly to let him pass. He came and stood directly in front of Chip’s chair, tall and thin, his red-crossed coveralls stained with yellow spots.

  He took Chip’s hands from the chair arms, turned them over, and looked at the palms, which glistened with sweat.

  He let one hand go and held the wrist of the other, his fingers at the pulse. Chip made himself look up, unconcernedly. Jesus HL looked quizzically at him for a moment and then suspected—no, knew—and smiled his knowledge contemptuously. Chip felt hollow, beaten.

  Jesus HL took hold of Chip’s chin, bent over, and looked closely at his eyes. “Open your eyes as wide as you can,” he said. His voice was King’s. Chip stared at him.

  “That’s right,” he said. “Stare at me as if I’ve said something shocking.” It was King’s voice, unmistakable. Chip’s mouth opened. “Don’t speak, please,” King-Jesus HL said, squeezing Chip’s jaw painfully. He stared into Chip’s eyes, turned his head to one side and then the other, and then released it and stepped back. He went back around the desk and sat down again. He picked up the clipboard, glanced at it, and handed it to the woman doctor, smiling. “You’re mistaken, Anna,” he said. “You can put your mind at rest. I’ve seen many members who were malingering; this one isn’t. I commend you on your concern, though.” To the man he said, “She’s right, you know, Jesus; we mustn’t be efficiency analyzers. The Family can afford a little waste where a member’s health is involved. What is the Family, after all, except the sum of its members?”