'UniComp, Mary,' Chip said. 'I know that. I didn't really want to do it myself; I was just—just thinking what if, that's all.'
Mary finished tapping and pressed the answer button. Green symbols appeared on the screen. Mary said, 'Go to the treatment room.'
Chip jumped to his feet. 'Thank you,' he said.
'Thank Uni,' Mary said, switching off the telecomp. She closed its cover and snapped the catches. Chip hesitated. 'I'll be all right?' he asked. 'Perfect,' Mary said. She smiled reassuringly. 'I'm sorry I made you come in on a Sunday,' Chip said.
'Don't be,' Mary said. 'For once in my life I'm going to have my Christmas decorations up before December twenty-fourth.'
Chip went out of the advisory offices and into the treatment room. Only one unit was working, but there were only three members in line. When his turn came, he plunged his arm as deep as he could into the rubber- rimmed opening, and gratefully felt the scanner's contact and the infusion disc's warm nuzzle. He wanted the tickle-buzz-sting to last a long time, curing him completely and forever, but it was even shorter than usual, and he worried that there might have been a break in communication between the unit and Uni or a shortage of chemicals inside the unit itself. On a quiet Sunday morning mightn't it be carelessly serviced?
He stopped worrying, though, and riding up the escalators he felt a lot better about everything—himself, Uni, the Family, the world, the universe.
The first thing he did when he got into the apartment was call Anna VF and thank her.
At fifteen he was classified 663D—genetic taxonomist, fourth class—and was transferred to RUS41500 and the Academy of the Genetic Sciences. He learned elementary genetics and lab techniques and modulation and transplant theory; he skated and played soccer and went to the Pre-U Museum and the Museum of the Family's Achievements; he had a girlfriend named Anna from Jap and then another named Peace from Aus. On Thursday, 18 October 151, he and everyone else in the Academy sat up until four in the morning watching the launching of the Altaira, then slept and loafed through a half-day holiday.
One night his parents called unexpectedly. 'We have bad news,' his mother said. 'Papa Jan died this morning.' A sadness gripped him and must have shown on his face. 'He was sixty-two, Chip,' his mother said. 'He had his life.'
'Nobody lives forever,' Chip's father said.
'Yes,' Chip said. 'I'd forgot how old he was. How are you? Has Peace been classified yet?' When they were done talking he went out for a walk, even though it was a rain night and almost ten. He went into the park. Everyone was coming out. 'Six minutes,' a member said, smiling at him. He didn't care. He wanted to be rained on, to be drenched. He didn't know why but he wanted to. He sat on a bench and waited. The park was empty; everyone else was gone. He thought of Papa Jan saying things that were the opposite of what he meant, and then saying what he really meant down in the inside of Uni, with a blue blanket wrapped around him.
On the back of the bench across the walk someone had red-chalked a jagged FIGHT UNI. Someone else—or maybe the same sick member, ashamed—had crossed it out with white. The rain began, and started washing it away; white chalk, red chalk, smearing pinkly down the benchback. Chip turned his face to the sky and held it steady under the rain, trying to feel as if he were so sad he was crying.
Chapter 4
Early in his third and final year at the Academy, Chip took part in a complicated exchange of dormitory cubicles worked out to put everyone involved closer to his or her girlfriend or boyfriend. In his new location he was two cubicles away from one Yin DW; and across the aisle from him was a shorter-than-normal member named Karl WL, who frequently carried a green-covered sketch pad and who, though he replied to comments readily enough, rarely started a conversation on his own.
This Karl WL had a look of unusual concentration in his eyes, as if he were close on the track of answers to difficult questions. Once Chip noticed him slip out of the lounge after the beginning of the first TV hour and not slip in again till before the end of the second; and one night in the dorm, after the lights had gone out, he saw a dim glow filtering through the blanket of Karl's bed.
One Saturday night—early Sunday morning, really—as Chip was coming back quietly from Yin DW's cubicle to his own, he saw Karl sitting in his. He was on the side of the bed in pajamas, holding his pad tilted toward a flashlight on the corner of the desk and working at it with brisk chopping hand movements. The flashlight's lens was masked in some way so that only a small beam of light shone out. Chip went closer and said, 'No girl this week?' Karl started, and closed the pad. A stick of charcoal was in his hand. 'I'm sorry I surprised you/' Chip said.
'That's all right,' Karl said, his face only faint glints at chin and cheekbones. 'I finished early. Peace KG. Aren't you staying all night with Yin?'
'She's snoring,' Chip said.
Karl made an amused sound. 'I'm turning in now,' he said. 'What are you doing?'
'just some gene diagrams,' Karl said. He turned back the cover of the pad and showed the top page. Chip went close and bent and looked—at cross sections of genes in the B3 locus, carefully drawn and shaded, done with a pen. 'I was trying some with charcoal,' Karl said, 'but it's no good.' He closed the pad and put the charcoal on the desk and switched off the flashlight. 'Sleep well,' he said. 'Thanks,' Chip said. 'You too.'
He went into his own cubicle and groped his way into bed, wondering whether Karl had in fact been drawing gene diagrams, for which charcoal hardly even seemed worth a trial. Probably he should speak to his adviser, Li YB, about Karl's secretiveness and occasional unmemberlike behavior, but he decided to wait awhile, until he was sure that Karl needed help and that he wouldn't be wasting Li YB's time and Karl's and his own. There was no point in being an alarmist.
Wei's Birthday came a few weeks later, and after the parade Chip and a dozen or so other students railed out to the Amusement Gardens for the afternoon. They rowed boats for a while and then strolled through the zoo. While they were gathered at a water fountain, Chip saw Karl WL sitting on the railing in front of the horse compound, holding his pad on his knees and drawing. Chip excused himself from the group and went over. Karl saw him coming and smiled at him, closing his pad. 'Wasn't that a great parade?' he said. 'It was really top speed,' Chip said. 'Are you drawing the horses?'
'Trying to.'
'May I see?'
Karl looked him in the eye for a moment and then said, 'Sure, why not?' He riffled the bottom of the pad and, opening it partway through, turned back the upper section and let Chip look at a rearing stallion that crammed the page, charcoaled darkly and vigorously. Muscles bulked under its gleaming hide; its eye was wild and rolling; its forelegs quivered. The drawing surprised Chip with its vitality and power. He had never seen a picture of a horse that came anywhere near it. He sought words, and could only come up with, 'This is—great, Karl! Top speed!'
'It's not accurate,' Karl said. 'It is!'
'No it isn't,' Karl said. 'If it were accurate I'd be at the Academy of Art.'
Chip looked at the real horses in the compound and at Karl's drawing again; at the horses again, and saw the greater thickness of their legs, the lesser width of their chests.
'You're right,' he said, looking at the drawing again. 'It's not accurate. But it's—it's somehow better than accurate.'
'Thanks,' Karl said. 'That's what I'd like it to be. I'm not finished yet.' Looking at him, Chip said, 'Have you done others?'
Karl turned down the preceding page and showed him a seated lion, proud and watchful. In the lower right- hand corner of the page there was an A with a circle around it. 'Marvelous!' Chip said. Karl turned down other pages; there were two deer, a monkey, a soaring eagle, two dogs sniffing each other, a crouching leopard.
Chip laughed. 'You've got the whole fighting zoo!' he said.
