This journey of discovery begins upon a circular city in space - serviced by on Earth a couple of Clark towers (a third failed) - and goes on to incorporate the Jerusalem disc, a sailship called The Scandalous Sandal, and a cold war bunker in what was Sweden.
First however the focus is on the sexual longings of a lackadaisical City student focussed obsessively on promiscuous Alvina, who only occasionally entertains him. His primary desire thwarted he comforts himself with his tutor's daughter, Occam Jnr. His studies suffer and he develops an ulcer on the side of his leg. The accompanying stench of necrosis has him avoid even Jnr, who nevertheless swears her devotion.
The tutor is Occam Snr XVII. That his daughter has become our hero's now rejected stand-by lover worsens their pupil-tutor relationship. To rid himself of this smelly and bothersome youth, Occam Snr dispatches him, via the Clark tower at Kankan, to post-pestilential, post-inundated Earth....