They entered the clinic. A blond young woman who was apparently a nurse stood waiting for them. She wore a crisp white skirt, and nothing else, and she was gorgeous.

She and Chang gave their patient an examination which for thoroughness surpassed anything in his time. He didn’t pretend to understand the machines that buzzed and clicked and glowed around him, the serological tests and the curious symbolic notation. But he hadn’t expected to—naturally, medicine would be far advanced, and he hadn’t troubled himself to learn the details even of the past techniques.

“Very good,” said the doctor at last. “Satisfactry reactions tuw virus Beta, good Delta coefficient—yes, we skood suwn have du well, Tov Hart.”

“What’s the cure?” he asked idly. “In my time they were beginning to think there’d never be a specific for cancer.”

“Dere aren’t, but dere are specifics for de difrent kinds. Artficial diseases have bee-an developed which attack uwnly de disorganized cancer cells. Frinstance, for cancer of de liver we inject a disease of de liver, but one which healthy tissue can resist. De sick cells are eaten away sluwly enough so dat normal tissue grows back to replace dem as dey disappear. It are more complex dan dat, of cuwrse, but dat give du de genral idea-a.” He smiled. “A mont or su in hospital skood suffice for du, and we ran give du de oder tests in de mea-anwhile.”

“The…other—?” It sounded faintly ominous.

“Classficating and su on. Worry du not abuwt it no.”

“Come du,” said the nurse. “I will taak du to ruwm duurs.”

Hart followed her to an elevator. It went up with a pleasingly low acceleration, but his pulse went a little fast just the same. She was exciting!

“What’s your name, please?” he asked. He put on the smile which had usually worked in the past. “We’ll be seeing a lot of each other, I hope.”

The girl frowned, then seemed to make an allowance for him. “Mara Sorens Haalwor.”

“This is a pleasure…you’re not married?” Hart edged closer.

“Mayried? Oh, de uwld style. Nuw, but—” She backed away. Her face bore an expression of distaste, barely covered by politeness. “Please du, Tov Hart—”

“Oh. Sorry.” Hart moved from her, a little chapfallen. Oh, well.

He had a room to himself—he found out later that all hospital patients did—which delighted him. It was large and sunny, more like a living room than anything else. The furniture was curious, rather hard and low-legged—Asiatic influence during the Dark Ages?—but he could get used to that. There was a set of buttons on the wall which he learned how to use when he wanted to read. Central “libraries” had all the books and music in existence, no one owned volumes or records privately anymore. To read anything in existence, one simply called the nearest “library” and asked for it; automatically, the books—actually, record tapes—were flashed onto a screen, the speed being regulated by the reader. Likewise, any music was played directly into the citizen’s own room. There were enough copies of all record tapes to take care of any reasonable number of simultaneous requests, and if a local “library” didn’t happen to have a certain item, it would be relayed from one which did.