Her brow contracted uneasily for an instant. “Oh yes, of course,” she said, and smiled. “Of course I remember. How are you, Li?”
“Very well,” he said. “How are you?”
“Fine,” she said, and stopped smiling.
“Married?”
“No,” she said. “I’m glad you called, Li. I want to thank you. You know, for helping me.”
“Thank Uni,” he said.
“No, no,” she said. “Thank you. Belatedly.” She smiled again.
“I’m sorry to call at this hour,” he said. “I’m passing through Afr on a transfer.”
“That’s all right,” she said. “I’m glad you did.”
“Where are you?” he asked.
“In ’14509.”
“That’s where my sister lives.”
“Really?” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “Which building are you in?”
“P51.”
“She’s in A-something.”
The member behind her sat up and she turned and said something to him. He smiled at Chip. She turned and said, “This is Li XE.”
“Hello,” Chip said, thinking ’14509, P51; ’14509, P51.
“Hello, brother,” Li XE’s lips said; his voice didn’t reach the phone.
“Is something wrong with your arm?” Lilac asked.
He was still holding it. He let it go. “No,” he said. “I fell getting off the plane.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. She glanced beyond him. “There’s a member waiting,” she said. “We’d better say good-by now.”
“Yes,” he said. “Good-by. It was nice seeing you. You haven’t changed at all.”
“Neither have you,” she said. “Good-by, Li.” She rose and reached forward and was gone.
He tapped off and gave way to the member behind him.
She was dead; a normal healthy member lying down now beside her boyfriend in ’14509, P51. How could he risk talking to her of anything that wasn’t as normal and healthy as she was? He should spend the day with his parents and fly back to Usa; go bicycling next Sunday and this time not turn back.
He walked around the waiting room. There was an outline map of Afr on one wall, with lights at the major cities and thin orange lines connecting them. Near the north was ’14510, near where she was. Half the continent from ’71330, where he was. An orange line connected the two lights.
He watched the flight-schedule signboard flashing and blinking, revising the Sunday 18 Feb schedule. A plane for ’14510 was leaving at 8:20 in the evening, forty minutes before his own flight for USA33100.
He went to the glass that faced the field and watched members single-filing onto the escalator of the plane he had left. An orange-coveralled member came and waited by the scanner.
He turned back to the waiting room. It was nearly empty. Two members who had been on the plane with him, a woman holding a sleeping infant and a man carrying two kits, put their wrists and the infant’s wrist to the scanner at the door to the carport—yes, it greened three times—and went out. An orange-coveralled member, on his knees by a water fountain, unscrewed a plate at its base; another pushed a floor polisher to the side of the waiting room, touched a scanner—yes—and pushed the polisher out through a swing-door.
He thought for a moment, watching the member working at the fountain, and then he crossed the waiting room, touched the carport-door scanner—yes—and went out. A car for ’71334 was waiting, three members in it. He touched the scanner—yes—and got into the car, apologizing to the members for having kept them waiting. The door closed and the car started. He sat with his kit in his lap, thinking.
When he got to his parents’ apartment he went in quietly, shaved, and then woke them. They were pleased, even happy, to see him.
The three of them talked and ate breakfast and talked more. They claimed a call to Peace, in Eur, and it was granted; they talked with her and her Karl, her ten-year-old Bob and her eight-year-old Yin. Then, at his suggestion, they went to the Museum of the Family’s Achievements.
After lunch he slept for three hours and then they railed to the Amusement Gardens. His father joined a volleyball game, and he and his mother sat on a bench and watched. “Are you sick again?” she asked him.
He looked at her. “No,” he said. “Of course not. I’m fine.”
She looked closely at him. She was fifty-seven now, gray-haired, her tan skin wrinkled. “You’ve been thinking about something,” she said. “All day.”
“I’m well,” he said. “Please. You’re my mother; believe me.”
She looked into his eyes with concern.
“I’m well,” he said.
After a moment she said, “All right, Chip.”
Love for her suddenly filled him; love, and gratitude, and a boylike feeling of oneness with her. He clasped her shoulder and kissed her cheek. “I love you, Suzu,” he said.
She laughed. “Christ and Wei,” she said, “what a memory you have!”
“That’s because I’m healthy,” he said. “Remember that, will you? I’m healthy and happy. I want you to remember that.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he said.
He told them that his plane left at eight. “We’ll say good-by at the carport,” he said. “The airport will be too crowded.”
His father wanted to come along anyway, but his mother said no, they would stay in ’334; she was tired.
At seven-thirty he kissed them good-by—his father and then his mother, saying in her ear, “Remember”—and got on line for a car to the ’71330 airport. The scanner, when he touched it, said yes.
The waiting room was even more crowded than he had hoped it would be. Members in white and yellow and pale blue walked and stood and sat and waited in line, some with kits and some without. A few members in orange moved among them.
He looked at the signboard; the 8:20 flight for ’14510 would load from lane two. Members were in line there, and beyond the glass, a plane was swinging into place against a rising escalator. Its door opened and a member came out, another behind him.
Chip made his way through the crowd to the swing-door at the side of the room, false-touched its scanner, and pushed through: into a depot area where crates and cartons stood ranked under white light, like Uni’s memory banks. He un-slung his kit and jammed it between a carton and the wall.
He walked ahead normally. A cart of steel containers crossed his path, pushed by an orange-coveralled member who glanced at him and nodded.
He nodded back, kept walking, and watched the member push the cart out through a large open portal onto the floodlit field.
He went in the direction from which the member had come, into an area where members in orange were putting steel containers on the conveyor of a washing machine and filling other containers with coke and steaming tea from the taps of giant drums. He kept walking.
He false-touched a scanner and went into a room where coveralls, ordinary ones, hung on hooks, and two members were taking off orange ones. “Hello,” he said.
“Hello,” they both said.
He went to a closet door and slid it open; a floor polisher and bottles of green liquid were inside. “Where are the cuvs?” he asked.
“In there,” one of the members said, nodding at another closet.
He went to it and opened it. Orange coveralls were on shelves; orange toeguards, pairs of heavy orange gloves.
“Where did you come from?” the member asked.
“RUS50937,” he said, taking a pair of coveralls and a pair of toeguards. “We kept the cuvs in there.”
“They’re supposed to be in there,” the member said, closing white coveralls.