This Perfect Day by Ira Levin Page B

those sick ones? Was he to leave them to their sickness, their tobacco, their reduced treatments, their pre-U thoughts? He had no choice. They had bandaged his eyes. There was no way of finding them.
    But that wasn’t so; there was a way. Snowflake had shown him her face. How many almost-white members, women of her age, could there be in the city? Three? Four? Five? Uni, if Bob RO asked it, could output their namebers in an instant. And when she was found and properly treated, she would give the namebers of some of the others; and they, the namebers of the ones remaining. The whole group could be found and helped within a day or two.
    The way he had helped Karl.
    That stopped him. He had helped Karl and felt guilt—guilt he had clung to for years and years, and now it persisted, a part of him. Oh Jesus Christ and Wei Li Chun, how sick beyond imagining he was!
    “Are you all right, brother?”
    It was the member across the table, an elderly woman.
    “Yes,” he said, “I’m fine,” and smiled and put his cake to his lips.
    “You looked so troubled for a second,” she said.
    “I’m fine,” he said. “I thought of something I forgot to do.”
    “Ah,” she said.
    To help them or not to help them? Which was wrong, which was right? He knew which was wrong: not to help them, to abandon them as if he weren’t his brother’s keeper at all.
    But he wasn’t sure that helping them wasn’t wrong too, and how could both be wrong?
    He worked less zealously in the afternoon, but well and without mistakes, everything done properly. At the end of the day he went back to his room and lay on his back on his bed, the heels of his hands pressing into his shut eyes and making pulsing auroras there. He heard the voices of the sick ones, saw himself taking the sample from the wrong section of the box and cheating the Family of time and energy and equipment. The supper chime sounded but he stayed as he was, too tangled in himself for eating.
    Later Peace SK called. “I’m in the lounge,” she said. “It’s ten of eight. I’ve been waiting twenty minutes.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll be right down.”
    They went to a concert and then to her room.
    “What’s the matter?” she said.
    “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve been—upset the last few days.”
    She shook her head and plied his slack penis more briskly. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Didn’t you tell your adviser? I told mine.”
    “Yes, I did. Look”—he took her hand away—“a whole group of new members came in on sixteen the other day. Why don’t you go to the lounge and find somebody else?”
    She looked unhappy. “Well I think I ought to,” she said.
    “I do too,” he said. “Go ahead.”
    “It just doesn’t make any sense,” she said, getting up from the bed.
    He dressed and went back to his room and undressed again. He thought he would have trouble falling asleep but he didn’t.
    On Sunday he felt even worse. He began to hope that Bob would call, would see that he wasn’t well and draw the truth out of him. That way there would be no guilt or responsibility, only relief. He stayed in his room, watching the phone screen. Someone on the soccer team called; he said he wasn’t feeling well.
    At noon he went to the dining hall, ate a cake quickly, and returned to his room. Someone from the Center called, to find out if he knew someone else’s nameber.
    Hadn’t Bob been told by now that he wasn’t acting normally? Hadn’t Peace said anything? Or the caller from the soccer team? And that member across the table at lunch yesterday, hadn’t she been smart enough to see through his excuse and get his nameber? (Look at him, expecting others to help him; who in the Family was he helping?) Where was Bob? What kind of adviser was he?
    There were no more calls, not in the afternoon, not in the evening. The music stopped once for a starship bulletin.
    Monday morning, after breakfast, he went down to the medicenter. The