Free This Perfect Day by Ira Levin Page A

grow it,” Leopard said, sounding pleased. “Hush and I. In parkland.”
    “In parkland?”
    “That’s right,” Leopard said.
    “We have two patches,” Hush said, “and last Sunday we found a place for a third.”
    “Chip?” King said, and Chip turned toward him and listened. “Basically, step one is just a matter of acting as if you’re being over treated,” King said; “slowing down at work, at games, at everything—slowing down slightly, not conspicuously. Make a small mistake at your work, and another one a few days later. And don’t do well at sex. The thing to do there is masturbate before you meet your girlfriend; that way you’ll be able to fail convincingly.”
    “Masturbate?”
    “Oh, fully treated, fully satisfied member,” Snowflake said.
    “Bring yourself to an orgasm with your hand,” King said. “And then don’t be too concerned when you don’t have one later. Let your girlfriend tell her adviser; don’t you tell yours. Don’t be too concerned about anything, the mistakes you make, lateness for appointments or whatever; let others do the noticing and reporting.”
    “Pretend to doze off during TV,” Sparrow said.
    “You’re ten days from your next treatment,” King said. “At your next week’s adviser meeting, if you’ve done what I’ve told you, your adviser will sound you out about your general torpor. Again, no concern on your part. Apathy. If you do the whole thing well, the depressants in your treatment will be slightly reduced, enough so that a month from now you’ll be anxious to hear about step two.”
    “It sounds easy enough,” Chip said.
    “It is,” Snowflake said, and Leopard said, “We’ve all done it; you can too.”
    “There’s one danger,” King said. “Even though your treatment may be slightly weaker than usual, its effects in the first few days will still be strong. You’ll feel a revulsion against what you’ve done and an urge to confess to your adviser and get stronger treatments than ever. There’s no way of telling whether or not you’ll be able to resist the urge. We did, but others haven’t. In the past year we’ve given this talk to two other members; they did the slowdown but then confessed within a day or two after being treated.”
    “Then won’t my adviser be suspicious when I do the slowdown? He must have heard about those others.”
    “Yes,” King said, “but there are legitimate slowdowns, when a member’s need for depressants has lessened, so if you do the job convincingly you’ll get away with it. It’s the urge to confess that you have to worry about.”
    “Keep telling yourself”—it was Lilac speaking—“that it’s a chemical that’s making you think you’re sick and in need of help, a chemical that was infused into you without your consent.”
    “My consent?” Chip said.
    “Yes,” she said. “Your body is yours, not Uni’s.”
    “Whether you’ll confess or hold out,” King said, “depends on how strong your mind’s resistance is to chemical alteration, and there’s not much you can do about it one way or the other. On the basis of what we know of you, I’d say you have a good chance.”
    They gave him some more pointers on slowdown technique —to skip his midday cake once or twice, to go to bed before the last chime—and then King suggested that Snowflake take him back to where they had met. “I hope we’ll be seeing you again, Chip,” he said. “Without the bandage.”
    “I hope so,” Chip said. He stood and pushed back his chair. “Good luck,” Hush said; Sparrow and Leopard said it too. Lilac said it last: “Good luck, Chip.”
    “What happens,” he asked, “if I resist the urge to confess?”
    “We’ll know,” King said, “and one of us will get in touch with you about ten days after the treatment.”
    “How will you know?”
    “We’ll know.”
    His arm was taken by Snowflake’s hand. “All right,” he said. “Thank you, all of you.”
    They said “Don’t