Lanark

by Alasdair Gray

  “Has complaint done any good?”

  “Some, perhaps. The creature still puts time and energy into vast weapons and sells them to the council, but recent wars have been fought with smaller weapons and kept to the less industrial continents. Meanwhile the creature has invented peaceful ways of taking our time and energy. It employs us to make essential things badly, so they decay fast and have to be replaced. It bribes the council to destroy cheap things which don’t bring it a profit and replaces them with new expensive things which do. It pays us to make useless things and employs scientists, doctors and artists to persuade us that these are essential.” “Can you give me examples?”

  “Yes, but our provost wants to speak to you.”

  Lanark stood up. A lean, well-dressed man with bushy grey hair came through the crowd and shook his hand, saying briskly, “Sorry I missed you upstairs, Lanark—you were too quick for me. Don’t worry—she’s all right.” The voice was familiar. Lanark stared into the strange, haggard, bright-eyed face. The provost said reassuringly, “It’s all right—she’s in excellent spirits. I’m glad there was someone dependable like you with her. Frankie will tell us when the contractions start.”

  Lanark said, “Sludden.”

  “You didn’t recognize me?” asked the provost, chuckling. “Well, none of us are the men we were.”

  Lanark said harshly, “How’s your fiancée?”

  “Gay?” said Sludden ruefully. “I hoped you could tell me about Gay. The marriage didn’t work. My fault, I’m afraid; politics puts strain on a marriage. She joined the institute. The last I heard of her was that she had gone to work for the council. If you didn’t see her in the corridors she’s probably with a foundation group, Cortexin perhaps. She had a talent for communications.”

  Lanark felt baffled and feeble. He wanted to hate Sludden but couldn’t think of a reason for doing it. He said accusingly, “I saw Nan and her baby.”

  “Rima told me. I’m glad they’re well,” said Sludden, smiling and nodding.

  “The committee is convened,” said Ritchie-Smollet. “Please be seated.”

  People moved to the walls and sat down. Sludden took a chair with a high carved back and armrests; Ritchie-Smollet led Lanark to a seat on Sludden’s right and himself sat on his left. Grant sat beside Lanark. Ritchie-Smollet said, “Silence, please. The internal secretary has failed to make an appearance, so once again we must take the minutes of the last meeting as read. Never mind. The reason for the present meeting is …. but I call on our chairman, provost Sludden, to explain that.”

  “We are privileged to have among us,” said Sludden, “a former citizen of Unthank who till recently worked for the institute under the famous—perhaps I should say infamous—Ozenfant. Lanark—here he is beside me—has elected to return here of his own free will, which is no doubt a testimonial to the charm and friendliness of Unthank but proves also the strength of his own patriotic spirit.”

  Sludden paused. Ritchie-Smollet cried, “Oh, jolly good!” and clapped his hands. Sludden said, “I understand he has had personal consultations with Monboddo.”

  A voice behind the pillar shouted, “Shame!”

  “Monboddo certainly has no friends here, but information about where Unthank stands in the council is hard to obtain, so we welcome any source of light on the subject. Also with me is Grant, sufficiently known to us all.”

  A voice behind the pillar shouted, “Up the makers, Poly!” “Grant feels he has important news for us. I don’t know what it is, but I suppose it will keep till we have heard our guest speaker?”

  Sludden looked at Grant, who shrugged.

  “So I will call on Lanark to take the floor.”

  Lanark rose confusedly to his feet. He said, “I’m not sure what to say. I’m not patriotic. I don’t like Unthank, I like sunshine. I came here because I was told Unthank would be scrapped and swallowed in a few days, and anybody here with a council passport would be transferred to a sunnier city.” He sat down. There was silence, then Ritchie-Smollet said,

  “Monboddo told you this?”

  “No, one of his secretaries did. A man called Wilkins.”

  “I strongly object to the tone of the last speaker’s remarks,” cried a bulky, thick-necked man in a voice twice as penetrating as Grant’s.

  “Though he openly boasts of being no friend to Unthank, our provost has introduced him as if he was some sort of ambassador, and what news does the ambassador bring? Gossip. Nothing but gossip. The mountain has laboured and given birth to a small obnoxious rodent. But what is the tendency of the speech by this self-proclaimed enemy of the city which nurtured him? He tells us that after some vague but imminent doomsday those who carry a council passport will be transferred to a happier land while the majority are swallowed, whatever that means. I will, however, say this. I have a council passport, like several others on the committee, and like the speaker himself. His statements are clearly devised to spread distrust among our brothers and dismay and dissension in our rank and file. Let me assure this messianic double agent that he will not succeed. Nobody is better able to fight the council than men like Scougal and me. We love our people. We will sink or swim with Unthank. Meanwhile I propose that the committee combat the demoralizing tendency of the guest speaker’s tirade by pretending we never heard it.”

  “Oh, not a tirade, Gow!” said Ritchie-Smollet mildly. “Lanark spoke four short sentences. I counted them. We ought to hear a little more before dismissing him totally. Wilkins said Unthank would be scrapped and swallowed. Did he indicate why?”

  “Yes,” said Lanark. “He said you were no longer profitable, and scrapping you would bring some kind of energy gain. He said his people were used to eating towns and villages, but Unthank would be their first city since Carthage.”

  A howl of laughter went up from different parts of the room. A voice behind the pillar cried, “Carthage? What about Coventry?” and others shouted “Leningrad!” “Berlin!” “Warsaw!” “Dresden!” “Hiroshima!”

  “I would like also to menshun,” said a slow-voiced, white-haired lady, “Münster in 1535, Gonstantinoble in 1453 and 1204, ant Hierusalem more vrequently than vun cares to rememper.”

  “Please, please! A little more moderation!” cried Ritchie-Smollet. “These unhappy rationalizations took place when the council was split in two or menaced by sectarian extremists. I am sure Lanark is not lying when he tells us what he heard. I do suggest his informant misled him.”

  “The peaceful destruction of a modern city would be something new,” said Sludden thoughtfully. “It would have to be a city with no effective government. And the creature would have to provide a lot of powerful new machinery. And the destruction would have to be approved by a full meeting of the council, a meeting where Unthank was represented.”

  “Wilkins said a meeting of council delegates would approve the action in eight days,” said Lanark. “That was a while ago. The creature has delivered large suction delvers to something called the expansion project. I saw one. As for your government, you know it better than I do.”

  “Utter nonsense!” cried Gow. “The council has no heartier opponent in Unthank than myself. As the oldest and most active member of the committee I have wrestled with it since the last world war, and never till recently have we obtained from it such enormous concessions. A short while ago our roads and buildings were a century out of date. Now look at them! Modern motorways. High-rise housing. A city centre full of towering office blocks. We could have done none of this without council aid. Yet you suggest the council plans to smash us!” “These new developments do not greatly veigh with me,” said the slow-voiced lady. “The profits of this building vork haf gone to the creature. A city lives by its industry ant ours still declines. But ve cannot, on the vort of von man, assume the vorst. Ve neet documentary corroboration.”

  Gow said, “I have no wish to stoop to personal invective but—” “Excuse me, Gow, Jack would like a chance to speak,” said Sludden, indicating Ritchie
-Smollet’s helper who was waving from a corner.

  “I was cleaning the guest speaker’s suit,” said Jack, “and I noticed a council paper in the pocket. Maybe that could tell us something.”

  Lanark pulled out the newspaper he had lifted in the council café. Sludden took it and started reading. Gow said, “I don’t like using insulting language, but the welfare of the community drives me to it. This guest speaker of ours, this would-be plenipotentiary, is no stranger to me. On a recent delegation to the council I saw this so-called Lanark sniffing around Monboddo’s throne with his long-haired girlfriend and his shabby little rucksack. He made no very creditable impression on the powers that be, I don’t mind telling you. Is it likely, if there was a plot to dismantle this city, that they would trust the details to someone like this?”

  “Give him laldy, Gow!” yelled a voice behind the pillar. Lanark gaped and stood up. He heard Grant at his side murmuring, “Careful now!” but a growing unease in his stomach had nothing to do with the debate. He said sharply, “Nobody trusted me with details. Wilkins would have told anybody these plans; he said only a revolution could change them. I don’t care if you believe me or not.”

  He walked toward the door he had entered by.

  Before he reached it Sludden cried, “Wait, everyone should hear this!” so he paused by the pillar. Sludden said, “This is from the chronology section of the Western Lobby:

  Nobody but a fanatic would suggest that the material of time is moral, but on occasions like the present, when the boundaries of the most stable continents seem melting into intercalendrical mist, it appears probable that a working timescale needs a higher proportion of common decency than the science of chronology has hitherto assumed. Decency is a vague term, and at present we suggest no more by it than a little more brotherhood between colleagues of equal or nearly equal standing.

  The authority of the council has always depended on the support of the creature, and until recently it was widely felt that Monboddo’s connections with the Algolagnics-Cortexin group merely ratified his standing as a strong president. Recent disclosures, however, by the fiery energy chief Ozenfant show that recent loans of creature energy have been absorbed by the lord president’s office to the almost total exclusion of the normal power corridor network.

  Although respect for the president director and respect for the decimal hour are not connected in logic, they seem to feed irrationally on each other in a state of collapsing confidence. There is deep alarm in council corridors that speculation against the new timescale has now exceeded the boundaries of reason and may no longer be susceptible to rational remedy. Only one thing is certain. The swift dismantling of a certain darkened district, which once seemed a daring and debatable act of rationalization, has become a matter of urgent necessity.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Gow. “There are hundreds of darkened districts. What conceivable reason have you for thinking they’ve chosen Unthank?”

  “I came here to tell you that,” said Grant. “Nearly two days ago a Cortexin tanker and an Algolagnics transporter collided at the intersection. All incoming traffic is diverted to Imber. We have food supplies for three more days. By ‘day’ I mean the old fashioned solar day of twenty-four hours, with roughly seventeen hundred heartbeats an hour.”

  “Pull yourself together, Grant!” said Ritchie-Smollet. “Do you suggest these vehicles were smashed in a criminal plot between Algolagnics and the council? That is pure paranoia. The council is sending experts to deal with the damage.”

  “You don’t need a plot to cause crashes on a motorway,” said Grant. “They happen all the time. When they happen on the council’s doorstep they’re cleared at once. Why the delay with us?”

  “Because we are not on the council’s doorstep. From the council’s viewpoint we are a remote and unimportant province, but that does not mean they are out for our blood. The council traffic commissioner has talked to me on the phone. His clearance teams are fighting an imbalance at the Cortexin cloning plant. Half West Atlantis will sink if that isn’t stabilized first. But he’s moving heaven and earth to get the right men quickly here too. He said so. I know him. He is an honest man.”

  “Haven’t you seen how the council works in peacetime?” asked Grant. “It never behaves badly. It never destroys a country of peasant villages, for example, but it lets the creature turn whole forests into paper so there are no roots to hold the water back. And when an accidental storm arises (as they always will), half a million people drown or die in the following famine, and the council helps the survivors, and the helpers organize the country’s industry in ways the creature finds profitable. I’m sure your traffic commissioner honestly wants to clear the intersection. I’m sure his honest experts have more urgent work to do. And I’m sure that three days from now, when our administration crumbles and the city is a horde of starving rioters, the council will introduce an honest emergency-aid programme and honestly evacuate Unthank down whatever gullet the creature offers.”

  There was a long silence.

  “It is true,” said the slow-voiced lady softly, “that with efery passing moment a broken nerf circuit of the new Algolagnics model becomes a more dangerous object. Virst ve haf only the fibrations, but after two days, on the old timescale, sublimation produces radioactive fumes of an unusually lethal ant vide-spreading type.”

  “Why not clear up the mess yourselves?” said Lanark impatiently.

  “We lack protective clothing. Vithout it nothing is able to lif vithin sixty metres of these objects.”

  “Are they heavy?” asked Lanark. “Could you flood the road and float them off it?”

  “Powerhoses,” said Grant to Sludden. “Open a storm drain and order the fire brigade to flush the mess down it with power-hoses.”

  “Impossible!” bellowed Gow. “Even if Unthank is menaced in the way you suggest, which I do not for one moment admit, the forcing of unqualified firemen to do the dangerous work of trained nerve-circuit experts is in flagrant defiance of all normal and democratic procedure. I am sure our provost is not going to be led astray by the jeremiads of the guest speaker and the rantings of brother Grant. Once again we see extremists of the right and left combining in an unholy alliance against all that is most stable in—”

  “Blood will have to flow,” said a loud dull voice behind the pillar. “I’m sorry, I see no other way.”

  “Whose blood will have to flow, Scougal?” asked Ritchie-Smollet gently, “and when, and where, and why will it flow, Scougal?”

  “I’m sorry if my remarks upset people” said the dull voice, “I apologize. But blood will have to flow, I see no other way.” Lanark walked over to the little door, opened it, ducked under the lintel and closed it behind him.

  CHAPTER 37.

  Alexander Comes

  Finding no light-switch he climbed the narrow steep spiral in blackness, patting the wall as he neared the level of the attic. At last his hand touched a clumsy wooden bolt. He slid it back, shoved hard and stepped out into fresh air with a few stars overhead. Either he had left the chapterhouse by the wrong stairs or the stairs by the wrong door for he now stood in a gutter between two dim slopes of roof. He could hear muffled kitchen noises of water and clinking dishes, so the attic was nearby. The gutter was clearly a walkway too, so he moved along it toward the noise and came to a stone parapet overlooking a city square. It was a quiet square with a couple of tiny figures walking across. The houses on the far side were the old tenement kind with shops on the ground floor and some upper windows curtained and lit from inside. These seemed so pleasantly familiar that he stared, perplexed. Unthank was the only city he remembered, but he had always wanted a brighter place: why should he like the look of it now? The yattering noise from the intersection was very audible. So were yattering noise from the intersection was very audible. So were him. He knocked on this, and a moment later Frankie opened it. He was so delighted that he seized her waist and kissed her surprised mouth. She pushed him away
after a while, laughing and saying, “Passionate, eh?”

  “How is she?”

  “She was sleeping when I left, but I sent for the nurse to be on the safe side.”

  “Thanks Frankie, you’re a good girl.”

  He walked beside the arches along the attic and softly entered the bright little cubicle. Rima smiled at him softly from her pillow. He said “Hullo” and squatted on a cushion by the bed. She whispered, “The contractions have begun.”

  “Good. A nurse is coming.”

  He held her hand under the bedclothes. A stout lady came busily in and frowned at him, then bent over Rima with a very wide smile.

  “So you’re going to have a wee baby!” she said in the loud slow voice some people use when speaking to idiots. “A wee baby just like your mummy had when you were born! Isn’t that nice?”

  “I’m not going to speak to her,” said Rima to Lanark, then drew a sharp breath and seemed to concentrate on something. “That’s right!” said the nurse consolingly. “It doesn’t really hurt now, does it?”

  “Tell her my back’s sore!” said Rima sharply.

  “Her back’s sore,” said Lanark.

  “And do you really want your husband to stay here? Some men find it very, very difficult to take.”

  “Tell her to shut up!” said Rima and a moment later added bitterly, “Tell her I’ve wet the bed.”

  “It isn’t what you think,” said the nurse. “It’s perfectly natural.” She turned the mattress and changed the sheets while Rima sat on a cushion wrapped in a blanket. Rima said, “I’m having a girl.”

  “Oh,” said Lanark.

  “I don’t want a boy.”

  “Then I do.”

  “Why?”

  “So that one of us will welcome it, whoever comes.”

  “You must always put me in the wrong, mustn’t you?”

  “Sorry.”