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By Root 1407 0

arose and dressed in all but the coat. He found shoes of suède-like stuff below the bed. He put them on, entered the corridor, lifted the blind and saw a white flagpole in the middle of a warm, sunlit terrace of level grass. Children ran about playing anarchic ballgames and on the far edge two older boys sat on a bench gazing across a great valley, the valley-floor covered by roofs made prickly by smokestacks. On the right a river meandered among fields and slag bings, then the city hid it though the course was marked by skeletal cranes marching to the left. Beyond the city was a bleak ridge of land, heather-green and creased by watercourses, and the summits of mountains appeared behind that like a line of broken teeth. This view filled Lanark with such unexpected delight that his eyes moistened. He returned and lay down on the bed, wondering why.

“Anyway,” he told himself, “I’ll go there.”

Munro came through an arch and Lanark sat up to face him saying, “Before you speak, I want to assure you I will not be a doctor.”

“I see. How do you intend to pass the time while you stay here?”

“I don’t want to stay. I want to leave.”

Munro flushed suddenly red and pointed to the window. Outside it grey waves were rising and falling against a great cliff with mist on the summit.

“Yes, leave! Leave!” he said in a controlled voice, “I’ll take you to an emergency exit. It will let you out at the mountain foot, and after that you can find your own way through the world. Men used to find homes like that, leaving the safe oasis or familiar cave and crossing wildernesses to make houses in unknown lands. Of course these men knew things you don’t. They could plant crops, kill animals, endure pains that would deprive you of your wits. But you can read and write and argue, and if you go far enough you may find people who appreciate that, if they talk the same language.”

“But a minute ago I saw a habitable city out there!”

“And have you never heard how fast and far light travels? And how masses warp it and surfaces reflect it and atmospheres refract it? You have seen a city and think it in the future, a place to reach by travelling an hour or day or year, but existence is helical and that city could be centuries ahead. And what if it lies in the past? History is full of men who saw cities, and went to them, and found them shrunk to villages or destroyed centuries before or not built yet. And the last sort were the luckiest.”

“But I recognized this city! I’ve been there!”

“Ah, then it lies in the past. You’ll never find it now.”

Lanark looked miserably at the floor. The view had given him dreams of a gracious, sunlit life. He said, “Are there no civilized places I can reach from here?”

Munro had regained his mandarin calm and sat down beside the bed. “Yes, several. But they won’t take you without a companion.”

“Why?”

“Health regulations. When people leave without a companion their diseases return after a while.”

“Am I the only healthy individual who wants to leave this place?”

“One woman doctor hates her work so much that she’ll leave with anyone, but take care. Entering another world with someone is a form of wedding, and this woman will hate any world she lands in.”

Lanark groaned and said, “What can I do, Dr. Munro?”

Munro said cheerfully, “That is your first sensible question Lanark, so stop worrying and listen. You can look for a companion among three classes of people: the doctors, the nurses and the patients. Not many doctors want to leave, but when they do, it is with a colleague. Nurses leave more often, with men they thoroughly trust, and doctors have proverbial advantages where they are concerned. But the biggest class are the patients, and you can only know them by working on them.”

“I’m not qualified to work on anybody.”

“And were you not nearly a dragon? And are you not cured? The only qualification for treating a disease is to survive it, and right now seventeen patients are crushing themselves under belligerent armour without one reasonable soul to care for them. Don’t be afraid! You need see nobody whose problem