by Ira Levin
A member came toward him. Chip took the gun out of his pocket and held it in his lap.
“Are you Chip?” the member asked. He was the older of the two men who had come in that evening.
“Yes,” Chip said.
The man sat down next to him. He was about fifty, very dark, with a jutting chin. “Some of them are talking about rushing you,” he said.
“I figured they would be,” Chip said. “I’m leaving in a second.”
“My name’s Luis,” the man said.
“Hello,” Chip said.
They shook hands.
“Where are you going?” Luis asked.
“Back to the island I came from,” Chip said. “Liberty. Majorca. Myorca. You don’t know how to fly a copter by any chance, do you?”
“No,” Luis said, “but it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.”
“It’s the landing that worries me,” Chip said.
“Land in the water.”
“I wouldn’t want to lose the copter, though. Assuming I can find one. You want a cigarette?”
“No, thanks,” Luis said.
They sat silently for a moment. Chip drew on his cigarette and looked up. “Christ and Wei, real stars,” he said. “They had fake ones down there.”
“Really?” Luis said.
“Really.”
Luis looked over at the programmers. He shook his head. “They’re talking as if the Family’s going to die in the morning,” he said. “It isn’t. It’s going to be born.”
“Born to a lot of trouble, though,” Chip said. “It’s started already. Planes have crashed . . .”
Luis looked at him and said, “Members haven’t died who were supposed to die . . .”
After a moment Chip said, “Yes. Thanks for reminding me.”
Luis said. “Sure, there’s going to be trouble. But there are members in every city—the undertreated, the ones who write ‘Fight Uni’—who’ll keep things going in the beginning. And in the end it’s going to be better. Living people!”
“It’s going to be more interesting, that’s for sure,” Chip said, putting his sandals on.
“You aren’t going to stay on your island, are you?” Luis asked.
“I don’t know,” Chip said. “I haven’t thought beyond getting there.”
“You come back,” Luis said. “The Family needs members like you.”
“Does it?” Chip said. “I had an eye changed down there, and I’m not sure I only did it to fool Wei.” He crushed his cigarette out and stood up. Programmers were looking around at him; he pointed the gun at them and they turned quickly away.
Luis stood up too. “I’m glad the bombs worked,” he said, smiling. “I’m the one who made them.”
“They worked beautifully,” Chip said. “Throw and boom.”
“Good,” Luis said. “Listen, I don’t know about any eye; you land on land and come back in a few weeks.”
“I’ll see,” Chip said. “Good-by.”
“Good-by, brother,” Luis said.
Chip turned and went out of the clearing and started down rocky slope toward parkland.
He flew over roadways where occasional moving cars zigzagged slowly past series of stopped ones; along the River of Freedom, where barges bumped blindly against the banks; past cities where monorail cars clung motionless to the rail, copters hovering over some of them.
As he grew more sure of his handling of the copter he flew lower; looked into plazas where members milled and gathered; skimmed over factories with stopped feed-in and feed-out lines; over construction sites where nothing moved except a member or two; and over the river again, passing a group of members tying a barge to the shore, climbing onto it, looking up at him.
He followed the river to the sea and started across it, flying low. He thought of Lilac and Jan, Lilac turning startled from the sink (he should have taken the bedcover, why hadn’t he?). But would they still be in the room? Could Lilac, thinking him caught and treated and never coming back, have—married someone else? No, never. (Why not? Almost nine months he’d been gone.) No. She wouldn’t. She—
Drops of clear liquid hit the copter’s plastic front and streaked back along its sides. Something was leaking from above, he thought, but then he saw that the sky had gone gray, gray on both sides and darker gray ahead, like the skies in some pre-U paintings. It was rain that was hitting the copter.
Rain! In the daytime! He flew with one hand, and with a fingertip of the other, followed on the inside of the plastic the paths of the streaking raindrops outside it.
Rain in the daytime! Christ and Wei, how strange! And how inconvenient!
But there was something pleasing about it too. Something natural.
He brought his hand back to its lever—Let’s not get overconfident, brother—and smiling, flew ahead.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Acclaimed novelist and playwright Ira Levin (1929-2007) was a native New Yorker whose books include A Kiss Before Dying, Rosemary's Baby, This Perfect Day, The Stepford Wives, The Boys from Brazil, Sliver, and Son of Rosemary. His plays include No Time for Sergeants, Critic's Choice, and Deathtrap (the longest-running thriller in Broadway history). Levin also wrote the lyrics of the Streisand classic He Touched Me, and was the recipient of three Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Awards. For more information, please visit www.iralevin.org
COMPLETED IN JUNE, 1969,
IN NEW YORK CITY,
AND DEDICATED TO ADAM LEVIN,
JED LEVIN, AND NICHOLAS LEVIN
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1970 by Ira Levin
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