'This is the way we'll go,' he said. 'Later.'
She nodded and they walked closer to the scanner.
'I've got a fou impulse to touch it,' he said. ''Fight you, Uni; here I am.''
'Don't you dare,' she said.
'Don't worry,' he said, 'I won't.'
They turned around and walked back to the center of the beach. They took their coveralls off, went into the water, and swam far out. Treading with their backs to the sea, they studied the shore beyond the scanner, the gray cliffs lessening away into greenish-gray haze. A bird flew from the cliffs, circled, and flew back. It disappeared, gone in a hairline cranny.
'There are probably caves where we can stay,' Chip said.
A lifeguard whistled and waved at them. They swam back to the beach.
'It's five of five, members,' the speakers said. 'Litter and towels in the baskets, please. Be mindful of the members around you when you shake out your blankets.'
They dressed, went back up the steps, and walked to the grove of trees where they had left their bikes. They carried them farther in and sat down to wait. Chip cleaned the compass and the flashlights and the knife, and Lilac packed the other things they had into a single bundle.
An hour or so after dark they went to the canteen and gathered a carton of cakes and drinks and went down to the beach again. They walked to the scanner and beyond it. The night was moonless and starless; the haze of the day was still above. In the water's lapping edge phosphorescent sparks glittered now and then; otherwise there was only darkness. Chip held the carton of cakes and drinks under his arm and shone his flashlight ahead of them every few moments. Lilac carried the blanket-bundle. 'Traders won't come ashore on a night like this,' she said.
'Nobody else will be on the beach either,' Chip said. 'No sex-wild twelve-year-olds. It's a good thing.' But it wasn't, he thought; it was a bad thing. What if the haze remained for days, for nights, blocking them at the very brink of freedom? Was it possible that Uni had created it, intentionally, for just that purpose? He smiled at himself. He was tres fou, exactly as Lilac had said.
They walked until they guessed themselves to be midway between '082 and the next city to the west, and then they put down the carton and the bundle and searched the cliff face for a usable cave. They found one within minutes; a low-roofed sand-floored burrow littered with cake wrappers and, intriguingly, two pieces—a green 'Egypt,' a pink 'Ethiop'—torn from a pre-U map. They brought the carton and the bundle into the cave, spread their blankets, ate, and lay down together.
'Can you?' Lilac said. 'After this morning and last night?'
'Without treatments,' Chip said, 'all things are possible.'
'It's fantastic,' Lilac said.
Later Chip said, 'Even if we don't get any farther than this, even if we're caught and treated five minutes from now, it'll have been worth it. We've been ourselves, alive, for a few hours at least.'
'I want all of my life, not just a little of it,' Lilac said.
'You'll have it,' Chip said. 'I promise you.' He kissed her lips, caressing her cheek in the darkness. 'Will you stay with me?' he asked. 'On Majorca?'
'Of course,' she said. 'Why shouldn't I?'
'You weren't going to,' he said. 'Remember? You weren't even going to come this far with me.'
'Christ and Wei, that was last night' she said, and kissed him. 'Of course I'm going to stay,' she said. 'You woke me up and now you're stuck with me.' They lay holding each other and kissing each other.
'Chip!' she cried—in reality, not in his dream.
She wasn't beside him. He sat up and banged his head on stone, groped for the knife he had left stuck in the sand.
'Chip! Look!'—as he found it and threw himself over onto knees and one hand. She was a dark shape crouched at the cave's blinding blue opening. He raised the knife, ready to slash whoever was coming.
'No, no,' she said, laughing. 'Come look! Come on! You won't believe it!'
Squinting at the brilliance of sky and sea, he crawled over to her. 'Look,' she said happily, pointing up the beach.
A boat sat on the sand about fifty meters away, a small two-rotor launch, old, with a white hull and a red skirting. It sat just clear of the water, tipped slightly forward. There were white splatters on the skirting and the windscreen, part of which seemed to be missing.
'Let's see if it's good!' Lilac said. With her hand on Chip's shoulder she started to rise from the cave; he dropped the knife, caught her arm, and pulled her back. 'Wait a minute,' he said.
'What for?' She looked at him.
He rubbed his head where he had bumped it, and frowned at the boat—so white and red and empty and convenient in the bright morning haze-free sun. 'It's a trick of some kind,' he said. 'A trap. It's too convenient. We go to sleep and wake up and a boat's been delivered for us. You're right, I don't believe it.'
'It wasn't 'delivered' for us,' she said. 'It's been here for weeks. Look at the bird stuff on it, and how deep in the sand the front of it is.'
'Where did it come from?' he asked. 'There are no islands nearby.'
'Maybe traders brought it from Majorca and got caught on shore,' she said. 'Or maybe they left it behind on purpose, for members like us. You said there might be a rescue operation.'
'And nobody's seen it and reported it in the time it's been here?'
'Uni hasn't let anyone onto this part of the beach.'
'Let's wait,' he said. 'Let's just watch and wait a while.'
Reluctantly she said, 'All right.'
'It's too convenient,' he said.
'Why must everything be inconvenient?'
They stayed in the cave. They ate and rebundled the blankets, always watching the boat. They took turns crawling to the back of the cave, and buried their wastes in sand.
Wave edges slipped under the back of the boat's skirting, then fell away toward low tide. Birds circled and landed on the windscreen and handrail, four that were sea gulls and two smaller brown ones.
'It's getting filthier every minute,' Lilac said. 'And what if it's been reported and today's the day it's going to be taken away?'
'Whisper, will you?' Chip said. 'Christ and Wei, I wish I'd brought a telescope.'
He tried to improvise one from the compass lens, a flashlight lens, and a rolled flap of the food carton, but he couldn't make it work.
'How long are we going to wait?' she asked.
'Till after dark,' he said.
No one passed on the beach, and the only sounds were the waves' lapping and the wingbeats and cries of the birds.
He went to the boat alone, slowly and cautiously. It was older than it had looked from the cave; the hull's flaking white paint showed repair scars, and the skirting was dented and cracked. He walked around it without touching it, looking with his flashlight for signs—he didn't know what form they would take—of deception, of danger. He didn't see any; he saw only an old boat that had been inexplicably abandoned, its center seats gone, a third of its windscreen broken away, and all of it spattered with dried white birdwaste. He switched his light off and looked at the cliff—touched the boat's handrail and waited for an alarm. The cliff stayed dark and deserted in pale moonlight.
He stepped onto the skirting, climbed into the boat, and shone his light on its controls. They seemed simple enough: on-off switches for the propulsion rotors and the lift rotor, a speed-control knob calibrated to 100 KPH, a steering lever, a few gauges and indicators, and a switch marked Controlled and Independent that was set in the independent position. He found the battery housing on the floor between the front seats and unlatched its cover; the battery's fade-out date was April 171, a year away.
He shone his light at the rotor housings. Twigs were piled in one of them. He brushed them out, picked them all out, and shone the light on the rotor within; it was new, shiny. The other rotor was old, its blades nicked and one missing. He sat down at the controls and found the switch that lighted them. A miniature clock said 5:21 Fri 27
