This Perfect Day Read Online Free Page A

their sandals—were the only sounds there were, edged with echoes.
    “Well?” Papa Jan said, looking at Chip.
    Chip hugged his blanket more tightly around him. “It’s not as nice as upstairs,” he said.
    “No,” Papa Jan said. “No pretty young members with pens and clipboards down here. No warm lights and friendly pink machines. It’s empty down here from one year to the next. Empty and cold and lifeless. Ugly.”
    They stood at the intersection of two aisles, crevasses of steel stretching away in one direction and another, in a third direction and a fourth. Papa Jan shook his head and scowled. “It’s wrong,” he said. “I don’t know why or how, but it’s wrong. Dead plans of dead members. Dead ideas, dead decisions.”
    “Why is it so cold?” Chip asked, watching his breath.
    “Because it’s dead,” Papa Jan said, then shook his head. “No, I don’t know,” he said. “They don’t work if they’re not freezing cold; I don’t know; all I knew was getting the things where they were supposed to be without smashing them.”
    They walked side by side along another aisle: R20, R22, R24. “How many are there?” Chip asked.
    “Twelve hundred and forty on this level, twelve hundred and forty on the level below. And that’s only for now; there’s twice as much space cut out and waiting behind that east wall, for when the Family gets bigger. Other shafts, another ventilating system already in place . . .”
    They went down to the next lower level. It was the same as the one above except that there were steel pillars at two of the intersections and red figures on the memory banks instead of black ones. They walked past J65, J65, J61. “The biggest excavation there ever was,” Papa Jan said. “The biggest job there ever was, making one computer to obsolete the old five. There was news about it every night when I was your age. I figured out that it wouldn’t be too late to help when I was twenty, provided I got the right classification. So I asked for it.”
    “You asked for it?”
    “That’s what I said,” Papa Jan said, smiling and nodding. “It wasn’t unheard of in those days. I asked my adviser to ask Uni—well, it wasn’t Uni, it was EuroComp—anyway I asked her to ask, and she did, and Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei, I got it—042C; construction worker, third class. First assignment, here.” He looked about, still smiling, his eyes vivid. “They were going to lower these hulks down the shafts one at a time,” he said, and laughed. “I sat up all one night and figured out that the job could be done eight months earlier if we tunneled in from the other side of Mount Love”—he thumbed over his shoulder—“and rolled them in on wheels. EuroComp hadn’t thought of that simple idea. Or maybe it was in no big rush to have its memory siphoned away!” He laughed again.
    He stopped laughing; and Chip, watching him, noticed for the first time that his hair was all gray now. The reddish patches that he’d had a few years earlier were completely gone.
    “And here they are,” he said, “all in their places, rolled down my tunnel and working eight months longer than they would have been otherwise.” He looked at the banks he was passing as if he disliked them.
    Chip said, “Don’t you—like UniComp?”
    Papa Jan was silent for a moment. “No, I don’t,” he said, and cleared his throat. “You can’t argue with it, you can’t explain things to it . . .”
    “But it knows everything,” Chip said. “What’s there to explain or argue about?”
    They separated to pass a square steel pillar and came together again. “I don’t know,” Papa Jan said. “I don’t know.” He walked along, his head lowered, frowning, his blanket wrapped around him. “Listen,” he said, “is there any classification that you want more than any other? Any assignment that you’re especially hoping for?”
    Chip looked uncertainly at Papa Jan and shrugged. “No,” he said. “I want the