—her lips were warm and soft, her mouth opening—and he awoke to darkness and disappointment; it was a dream, it had only been a dream.
But strangely, frighteningly, everything was in him: the smell of her perfume (parfum) and the taste of tobacco and the sound of Sparrow's songs, and desire for Lilac and anger at King and resentment of Uni and sorrow for the Family and happiness in feeling, in being alive and awake.
And in the morning he would have a treatment and it would all be gone. At eight o'clock. He tapped on the light, squinted at the clock: 4:54. In a little more than three hours...
He tapped the light off again and lay open-eyed in the dark. He didn't want to lose it. Sick or not, he wanted to keep his memories and the capacity to explore and enjoy them. He didn't want to think about the islands—no, never; that was real sickness—but he wanted to think about Lilac, and the meetings of the group in the relic-filled storeroom, and once in a while, maybe, to have another dream.
But the treatment would come in three hours and everything would be gone. There was nothing he could do—except hope for another earthquake, and what chance was there of that? The seismovalves had worked perfectly in the years since and they would go on working perfectly in the years ahead. And what short of an earthquake could postpone his treatment? Nothing. Nothing at all. Not with Uni knowing that he had lied for a postponement once before.
A dry leaf shape on stone came into his mind but he chased it away to think of Lilac, to see her as he had seen her in the dream, not to waste his three short hours of aliveness. He had forgotten how large her eyes were, how lovely her smile and her rose-brown skin, how moving her earnestness. He had forgotten so fighting much: the pleasure of smoking, the excitement of deciphering Francais...
The dry leaf shape came back, and he thought about it, irritated, to find out why his mind hung on to it, to get rid of it once and for all. He thought back to the ridiculously meaningless moment; saw again the leaf, with the drops of coke shining on it; saw his fingers lifting it by its stem, and his other hand holding the folded foil cake wrapper, and the dry gray oval on the black coke-wet stone. He had spilled the coke, and the leaf had been lying there, and the stone underneath it had— He sat up in bed and clasped his hand to his pajamaed right arm. 'Christ and Wei,' he said, frightened.
He got up before the first chime and dressed and made the bed.
He was the first one in the dining room; ate and drank, and went back to his room with a cake wrapper folded loosely in his pocket.
He opened the wrapper, put it on the desk, and smoothed it down flat with his hand. He folded the square of foil neatly in half, and the half into thirds. He pressed the packet flat and held it; it was thin despite its six layers. Too thin? He put it down again.
He went into the bathroom and, from the cabinet's first-aid kit, got cotton and the cartridge of tape. He brought them back to the desk.
He put a layer of cotton on the foil packet—a layer smaller than the packet itself—and began covering the cotton and the packet with long overlapping strips of skin-colored tape. He stuck the tape ends lightly to the desktop. The door opened and he turned, hiding what he was doing and putting the tape cartridge into his pocket. It was Karl TK from next door. 'Ready to eat?' he asked. 'I already have,' he said. 'Oh,' Karl said. 'See you later.'
'Right,' he said, and smiled. Karl closed the door.
He finished the taping and then peeled the tape ends from the desk and carried the bandage he had made into the bathroom. He laid it foil-side up on the edge of the sink and pushed up his sleeve.
He took the bandage and put the foil carefully against the inner surface of his arm, where the infusion disc would touch him. He clasped the bandage and pressed its tape border tightly to his skin. A leaf. A shield. Would it work?
If it did, he would think only of Lilac, not of the islands. If he found himself thinking of the islands, he would tell his adviser.
He drew down his sleeve.
At eight o'clock he joined the line in the treatment room. He stood with his arms folded and his hand over the sleeve-covered bandage—to warm it in case the infusion disc was temperature-sensitive.
I'm sick, he thought. Til get all the diseases: cancer, smallpox, cholera, everything. Hair will grow on my face! He would do it just this once. At the first sign of anything wrong he would tell his adviser. Maybe it wouldn't work.
His turn came. He pushed his sleeve to his elbow, put his hand wrist-deep into the unit's rubber-rimmed opening, and then pushed his sleeve to his shoulder and in the same moment slid his arm all the way in. He felt the scanner finding his bracelet, and the infusion disc's slight pressure against the cotton-packed bandage... Nothing happened.
'You're done,' a member said behind him. The unit's blue light was on.
'Oh,' he said, and pushed down his sleeve as he drew out his arm. He had to go right to his assignment.
After lunch he went back to his room and, in the bathroom, pushed up his sleeve and pulled the bandage from his arm. The foil was unbroken, but so was skin after a treatment. He tore the foil packet from the tape. The cotton was grayish and matted. He squeezed the bandage over the sink, and a trickle of waterlike liquid ran from it.
Awareness came, more of it each day. Memory came, in sharper, more anguishing detail.
Feeling came. Resentment of Uni grew into hatred; desire for Lilac grew into hopeless hunger.
Again he played the old deceptions; was normal at his assignment, normal with his adviser; normal with his girlfriend.
But day by day the deceptions grew more irritating to maintain, more infuriating.
On his next treatment day he made another bandage of cake wrapper, cotton, and tape; and squeezed from it another trickle of waterlike liquid.
Black specks appeared on his chin and cheeks and upper lip—the beginnings of hair. He took apart his clippers, wired the cutter blade to one of the handles, and before the first chime each morning, rubbed soap on his face and shaved the specks away.
He dreamed every night. Sometimes the dreams brought orgasms.
More and more maddening it became, to pretend relaxation and contentment, humility, goodness. On Marxmas Day, at a beach, he trotted along the shore and then ran, ran from the members trotting with him, ran from the sunbathing, cake-eating Family. He ran till the beach narrowed into tumbled stone, and ran on through surf and over slippery ancient abutments. Then he stopped, and alone and naked between ocean and soaring cliffs, clenched his hands into fists and hit at the cliffs; cried 'Fight it!' at the clear blue sky and wrenched and tore at the untearable chain of his bracelet.
It was 169, the fifth of May. Six and a half years he had lost. Six and a half years! He was thirty-four. He was in USA90058.
And where was she? Still in Ind, or was she somewhere else? Was she on Earth or on a starship?
And was she alive, as he was, or was she dead, like everyone else in the Family?
Chapter 2
It was easier now, now that he had bruised his hands and shouted; easier to walk slowly with a contented smile, to watch TV and the screen of his microscope, to sit with his girlfriend at amphitheater concerts. Thinking all the while of what to do...
'Any friction?' his adviser asked.
'Well, a little,' he said.
'I thought you didn't look right. What is it?'
'Well, you know, I was pretty sick a few years ago—'
'I know.'
'And now one of the members I was sick with, the one who got me sick, in fact, is right here in the building. Could I possibly be moved somewhere else?'
