“No,” he said.
“Then I might get pregnant,” she said. “I’m not supposed to have children and neither are you.”
He wanted to tell her that they were going someplace where Uni’s decisions were meaningless, but it was too soon; she might become frightened and unmanageable. “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” he said.
When he had tied her and covered her, he kissed her cheek. She lay in the darkness and said nothing, and he got up from his knees and went to his own blankets.
Sunday’s ride went well. Early in the day a group of young members stopped them, but it was only to ask their help in repairing a broken drive chain, and Lilac sat on the grass away from the group while Chip did the job. By sundown they were in the parkland north of ’14266. They had gone about seventy-five kilometers.
Again it was hard to find a hiding place, but the one Chip finally found—the broken walls of a pre-U or early-U building, roofed with a sagging mass of vines and creepers—was larger and more comfortable than the one they had used the week before. That same night, despite the day’s riding, he went into ’266 and brought back a three-day supply of cakes and drinks.
Lilac grew irritable that week. “I want to clean my teeth,” she said, “and I want to take a shower. How long are we going to go on this way? Forever? You may enjoy living like an animal but I don’t; I’m a human being. And I can’t sleep with my hands and feet tied.”
“You slept all right last week,” he said.
“Well I can’t now!”
“Then lie quietly and let me sleep,” he said.
When she looked at him it was with annoyance, not with pity. She made disapproving sounds when he shaved and when he read; answered curtly or not at all when he spoke. She balked at doing calisthenics, and he had to take out the gun and threaten her.
It was getting close to Marx eighth, her treatment day, he told himself, and this irritability, a natural resentment of captivity and discomfort, was a sign of the healthy Lilac who was buried in Anna SG. It ought to have pleased him, and when he thought about it, it did. But it was much harder to live with than the previous week’s sympathy and memberlike docility.
She complained about insects and boredom. There was a rain night and she complained about the rain.
One night Chip woke and heard her moving. He shone his flashlight at her. She had untied her wrists and was untying her ankles. He retied her and struck her.
That Saturday night they didn’t speak to each other.
On Sunday they rode again. Chip stayed close to her side and watched her carefully when members came toward them. He reminded her to smile, to nod, to answer greetings, to act as if nothing was wrong. She rode in grim silence, and he was afraid that despite the threat of the gun she might call out for help at any moment or stop and refuse to go on. “Not just you,” he said; “everyone in sight. I’ll kill them all, I swear I will.” She kept riding. She smiled and nodded resentfully. Chip’s gearshift jammed and they went only forty kilometers.
Toward the end of the third week her irritation subsided. She sat frowning, picking at blades of grass, looking at her fingertips, turning her bracelet around and around her wrist. She looked at Chip curiously, as if he were someone strange whom she hadn’t seen before. She followed his instructions slowly, mechanically.
He worked on his bike, letting her awaken in her own time.
One evening in the fourth week she said, “Where are we going?”
He looked at her for a moment—they were eating the day’s last cake—and said, “To an island called Majorca. In the Sea of Eternal Peace.”
“‘Majorca’?” she said.
“It’s an island of incurables,” he said. “There are seven others all over the world. More than seven, really, because some of them are groups. I found them on a map in the Pre-U, back in Ind. They were covered over and they’re not shown on MFA maps. I was going to tell you about them the day I was—‘cured.’”
She was silent, and then she said, “Did you tell King?”
It was the first time she had mentioned him. Should he tell her that King hadn’t needed to be told, that he had known all along and withheld it from them? What for? King was dead; why diminish her memory of him? “Yes, I did,” he said. “He was amazed, and very excited. I don’t understand why he—did what he did. You know about it, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know,” she said. She took a small bite of cake and ate it, not looking at him. “How do they live on this island?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” he said. “It might be very rough, very primitive. Better than this, though.” He smiled. “Whatever it’s like,” he said, “it’s a free life. It might be highly civilized. The first incurables must have been the most independent and resourceful members.”
“I’m not sure that I want to go there,” she said.
“Just think about it,” he said. “In a few days you’ll be sure. You’re the one who had the idea that incurable colonies might exist, do you remember? You asked me to look for them.”
She nodded. “I remember,” she said.
Later in the week she took a new Français book that he had found and tried to read it. He sat beside her and translated it for her.
That Sunday, while they were riding along, a member pedaled up on Chip’s left and stayed even with them. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” Chip said.
“I thought all the old bikes had been phased out,” he said.
“So did I,” Chip said, “but these are what was there.”
The member’s bike had a thinner frame and a thumb-knob gear control. “Back in ’935?” he asked.
“No, ’939,” Chip said.
“Oh,” the member said. He looked at their baskets, filled with their blanket-wrapped kits.
“We’d better speed up, Li,” Lilac said. “The others are out of sight.”
“They’ll wait for us,” Chip said. “They have to; we have the cakes and blankets.”
The member smiled.
“No, come on, let’s go faster,” Lilac said. “It’s not fair to make them wait around.”
“All right,” Chip said, and to the member, “Have a good day.”
“You too,” he said.
They pedaled faster and pulled ahead.
“Good for you,” Chip said. “He was just going to ask why we’re carrying so much.”
Lilac said nothing.
They went about eighty kilometers that day and reached the parkland northwest of ’12471, within another day’s ride of ’082. They found a fairly good hiding place, a triangular cleft between high rock spurs overhung with trees. Chip cut branches to close off the front of it.
“You don’t have to tie me any more,” Lilac said. “I won’t run away and I won’t try to attract anyone. You can put the gun in your kit.”
“You want to go?” Chip said. “To Majorca?”
“Of course,” she said. “I’m anxious to. It’s what I’ve always wanted—when I’ve been myself, I mean.”
“All right,” he said. He put the gun in his kit and that night he didn’t tie her.
Her casual matter-of-factness didn’t seem right to him. Shouldn’t she have shown more enthusiasm? Yes, and gratitude too; that was what he had expected, he admitted to himself: gratitude, expressions of love. He lay awake listening to her soft slow breathing. Was she really asleep or was she only pretending? Could she be tricking him in some unimaginable way? He shone his flashlight at her. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted, her arms together under the blanket as if she were still tied.
It was only Marx twentieth, he told himself. In another week or two she would show more feeling. He closed his eyes. When he woke she was picking stones and twigs from the ground. “Good morning,” she said pleasantly.