Read Online This Perfect Day by Ira Levin - Free Book Online Page B

others seemed aware of it. “Something’s burning,” he said.
    “Tobacco,” the old woman, Hush, said on his left.
    “Tobacco?” he said.
    “We smoke it,” Snowflake said. “Would you like to try some?”
    “No,” he said.
    Some of them laughed. “It’s not really deadly,” King said, farther away on his left. “In fact, I suspect it may have some beneficial effects.”
    “It’s very pleasing,” one of the young women said, across the table from him.
    “No, thanks,” he said.
    They laughed again, made comments to one another, and one by one grew silent. His right hand on the tabletop was covered by Snowflake’s hand; he wanted to draw it away but restrained himself. He had been stupid to come. What was he doing, sitting there sightless among those sick false-named members? His own abnormality was nothing next to theirs. Tobacco! The stuff had been extincted a hundred years ago; where the hate had they got it?
    “We’re sorry about the bandage, Chip,” King said. “I assume Snowflake’s explained why it’s necessary.”
    “She has,” Chip said, and Snowflake said, “I did.” Her hand left Chip’s; he drew his from the tabletop and took hold of his other in his lap.
    “We’re abnormal members, which is fairly obvious,” King said. “We do a great many things that are generally considered sick. We think they’re not. We know they’re not.” His voice was strong and deep and authoritative; Chip visualized him as large and powerful, about forty. “I’m not going to go into too many details,” he said, “because in your present condition you would be shocked and upset, just as you’re obviously shocked and upset by the fact that we smoke tobacco. You’ll learn the details for yourself in the future, if there is a future as far as you and we are concerned.”
    “What do you mean,” Chip said, “’in my present condition?”
    There was silence for a moment. A woman coughed. “While you’re dulled and normalized by your most recent treatment,” King said.
    Chip sat still, facing in King’s direction, stopped by the irrationality of what he had said. He went over the words and answered them: “I’m not dulled and normalized.”
    “But you are,” King said.
    “The whole Family is,” Snowflake said, and from beyond her came “Everyone, not just you”—in the old man’s voice of Leopard.
    “What do you think a treatment consists of?” King asked.
    Chip said, “Vaccines, enzymes, the contraceptive, sometimes a tranquilizer—”
    “Always a tranquilizer,” King said. “And LPK, which minimizes aggressiveness and also minimizes joy and perception and every other fighting thing the brain is capable of.”
    “And a sexual depressant,” Snowflake said.
    “That too,” King said. “Ten minutes of automatic sex once a week is barely a fraction of what’s possible.”
    “I don’t believe it,” Chip said. “Any of it.”
    They told him it was true. “It’s true, Chip.” “Really, it’s the truth.” “It’s true!”
    “You’re in genetics,” King said; “isn’t that what genetic engineering is working toward?—removing aggressiveness, controlling the sex drive, building in helpfulness and docility and gratitude? Treatments are doing the job in the meantime, while genetic engineering gets past size and skin color.”
    “Treatments help us,” Chip said.
    “They help Uni,” the woman across the table said.
    “And the Wei-worshippers who programmed Uni,” King said. “But they don’t help us , at least not as much as they hurt us. They make us into machines.”
    Chip shook his head, and shook it again.
    “Snowflake told us”—it was Hush, speaking in a dry quiet voice that accounted for her name—“that you have abnormal tendencies. Haven’t you ever noticed that they’re stronger just before a treatment and weaker just after one?”
    Snowflake said, “I’ll bet you made that picture frame a day or two before a treatment, not a day or two after