Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [33]
They sat in silence until Lanark stood up and put the white coat on. Munro smiled and produced a hospital radio saying, “This is yours. You know how to make contact through it, so I’ll show how it contacts you.”
He flicked the switch and said to the mesh, “Send a signal to Dr. Lanark in ten seconds, please. There’s no message, so don’t repeat it.”
He dropped the radio into Lanark’s pocket. A moment later two resonant chords from there said plin-plong.
“When you hear that, your patient is near a crisis or a colleague needs help. If you need help yourself, or lose your way in the corridors, or want a lullaby to soothe you to sleep, speak to the operator and you’ll be connected to someone suitable. Now get your books and we’ll go to your new apartment.” Lanark hesitated. He said, “Has it a window?”
“As far as I know this is the only room with a viewing screen of that kind.”
“I prefer to sleep here, Dr. Munro.”
Munro sighed slightly. “Doctors don’t usually sleep in a patients’ ward, but certainly this is the smallest and least required. All right, leave the books. I’ll show you something of the institute’s scope then we’ll visit Ozenfant, your head of department.”
They went through an arch to one of the circular doorways. The curtain of red pleated plastic slid apart for them and closed behind.
The corridors of the institute were very different from the rooms they connected. Lanark followed Munro down a low curving tunnel with hot gusts of wind shoving at his back, his ears numbed by a clamour of voices, footsteps, bells going plin-plong and a dull rhythmic roaring. The tunnel was six feet high and circular in section with a flat track at the bottom just wide enough for the wheels of a stretcher. The light kept brightening and dulling in a way that hurt the eyes; dazzling golden brightness slid along the walls with each warm blast and was followed by fading orange dimness in the ensuing cold. The tunnel slanted into another tunnel and grew twice as large, then into another and grew twice as large again. The noise, brightness and windpower increased. Lanark and Munro travelled swiftly but doctors and nurses with trolleys and stretchers kept overtaking and whizzing past them on either side. Nobody was moving against the wind. With an effort Lanark came beside Munro and asked about this, but though he yelled aloud his voice reached his ears as a remote squeaking and the reply was inaudible; yet amid the roaring and gongings he could hear distinct fragments of speech spoken by nobody in the vicinity:
“… is the pie that bakes and eats itself …”
“….. is that which has no dimensions…..”
“… is the study of the best …”
“….. an exacting game and requires patience…..”
They entered a great hall where the voices were drowned in a roaring which swelled and ebbed like waves of cheering in a football stadium. Crowds poured over the circular floor from tunnels on every side and disappeared through square doors between the tunnel entrances. Among white-coated nurses and doctors Lanark saw people in green dustcoats, brown overalls, blue uniforms and charcoal-grey business suits. He looked upward and staggered giddily. He was staring up a vast perpendicular shaft with gold and orange light flowing continually up the walls in diminishing rings like the rings of a target. Munro gripped his arm and led him to a door which opened, then slid shut behind them.
They were in a lift with the still air of a small ward. Munro looked up at a circular mesh in the middle of the ceiling and said, “The sink, please. Any entrance.”
There was a faint hum but no sense of movement. Munro said,
“Our corridors have confusing acoustics. Did you ask something?”
“Why do people only walk in one direction?”
“Each ward has two corridors, one leading in and the other out. This allows the air to circulate, and nobody goes against the current.”
“Who were the people in the big hall?”
“Doctors, like you and me.”
“But doctors were a tiny minority.”
“Do you think so? I suppose it’s possible. We need engineers and clerks and chemists