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By Root 1069 0

there to protect me. I began on the work of dragging away the dead animals as far as I could. As I did this, both races of animals came to these piles, and carried their dead right away, probably to the chasm where the river plunged in, or perhaps for a final cannibal feast—though it seemed as if they had lost their taste for flesh again and were tasting and trying the fruits as if these were a new sensation and not their proper food. But I had too much to do, and could not watch them any longer. When the square was clear of the dead animals, I again tore off branches and swept it. Then I had to clear water channels that were choked up with leaves and dirt and dung. And finally I again carried water in the hollow stone that once had been a mortar and I poured water everywhere, and swept that away with sweet-smelling branches. All that night I worked under the blazing white moon, and all the following day under a hot dry sun. There sat the companionable bird, white and glossy, its golden eyes watchful, its severe yellow beak kept in my direction. At the start, some animals came near in a decision to reclaim the square, but when they saw the bird they went away again. At last I realized that they were not in sight at all. Then, that I could not hear them. They had gone from the city’s centre altogether. Perhaps they had even left the city. By the end of that day the square and the beautifully patterned and coloured circle it enclosed were clean and fresh, the air smelled of aromatic leaves and water, and as I stood quietly in the dusk I could hear the water running beneath my feet in its stonelined channels. The air was full of the scent of flowers. A last bird sang from a tree near the square.

Full Moon came straight up from the sea and laid silver light over Earth from the sea’s edge to the towering mountains. The moon rose up through the stars and the white bird lifted its wings and soared up and up and up and away, back into the moon.

I walked in now from the edge of the square, and took up a waiting position at the outer edge of the circle, looking in towards the centre.

I hope it may now be conceded that this drug is contraindicated in this case. After an absence of five days I was shocked at the deterioration in the patient. When I saw him this morning it was clear that he has less grasp of reality than when he was admitted. From what nurse says I should diagnose that he is in coma a good part of the time.

DOCTOR Y.

This case was thoroughly discussed at the conference Thursday at which you were not present. This drug’s effects are often not fully developed for three weeks, as I have already tried to explain. Patient has been on it for twelve days.

DOCTOR X.

There was a pressure of silence, which swirled me into a singing calm. I was inside the Crystal, whose vortex had gathered in all sensation as a dust devil gathers in dust and leaves from yards around, or as bath water spiralling its way down a hole exerts its pull on every part of the water in the bath. Looking outwards from it nothing that had been there remained—or so it seemed at first, for the beginning of my being absorbed into the Crystal was a darkness of mind coupled with a vividness of sense that only slowly I was able to balance. It seemed that the Crystal was having difficulty in absorbing my comparative crudeness. This fighting went on in me as well as in it, during the few moments of the beginning. I say “a few moments.” But the very thing I became aware of first was that time had shifted gear and was vibrating differently, and it was this that was the first assault on my own habitual pattern of substance. To my eyes it seemed as if I was in a world of lucid glass, or perhaps better, of crystalline mist. My body felt a nausea which I became properly aware of as it began to abate, for it had been gripping me in a totality that was a basic—of which one is unaware. For instance, as we breathe ordinary air, our lungs are adapted to absorb a poisonous gas (poisonous to other visiting creatures, or to ourselves perhaps, once) called air.