corpus6.txt

`Your name,' shouted Ford, `is Colin. So when I shout ``Up,
Colin!'' I want you, Colin, to go up. OK? Up, Colin!'
  
Nothing. Or rather a sort of muffled groaning sound from
Colin. Ford was very anxious. They were descending very slow-
ly now, but Ford was very anxious about the sort of people he
could see assembling on the ground beneath him. Friendly,
local, wocket-hunting types were dispersing, and thick, heavy,
bull-necked, slug-like creatures with rocket launchers were, it
seemed, sliding out of what was usually called thin air. Thin
air, as all experienced Galactic travellers well know, is, in fact,
extremely thick with multi-dimensional complexities.
  
`Up,' bellowed Ford again. `Up! Colin, go up!'
  
Colin was straining and groaning. They were now more or
less stationary in the air. Ford felt as if his fingers were breaking.
  
`Up!'
 
They stayed put.
  
`Up, up, up!'
  
A slug was preparing to launch a rocket at him. Ford couldn't
believe it. He was hanging from a towel in mid-air and a slug
was preparing to fire rockets at him. He was running out of
anything he could think of doing and was beginning to get
seriously alarmed.
  
This was the sort of predicament that he usually relied on
having the Guide available for to give advice, however infuriating
or glib, but this was not a moment for reaching into his pocket.
And the Guide seemed to be no longer a friend and ally but was
now itself a source of danger. These were the Guide offices he
was hanging outside, for Zark's sake, in danger of his life from
the people who now appeared to own the thing. What had become
of all the dreams he vaguely remembered having on the Bwenelli
Atoll? They should have let it all be. They should have stayed
there. Stayed on the beach. Loved good women. Lived on fish.
He should have known it was all wrong the moment they started
hanging grand pianos over the sea-monster pool in the atrium.
He began to feel thoroughly wasted and miserable. His fingers
were on fire with clenched pain. And his ankle was still hurting.
  
Oh thank you, ankle, he thought to himself bitterly. Thank
you for bringing up your problems at this time. I expect you'd
like a nice warm footbath to make you feel better, wouldn't you?
Or at least you'd like me to...
  
He had an idea.
  
The armoured slug had hoisted the rocket launcher up on to
its shoulder. The rocket was presumably designed to hit anything
in its path that moved.
  
Ford tried not to sweat because he could feel his grip on
the seams of his towel slipping.
  
With the toe of his good foot he nudged and prised at
the heel of the shoe on his hurting foot.
  
`Go up, damn you!' Ford muttered hopelessly to Colin, who
was cheerily straining away but unable to rise. Ford worked away
at the heel of his shoe.
  
He was trying to judge the timing, but there was no point.
Just go for it. He only had one shot and that was it. He had
now eased the back of his shoe down off his heel. His twisted
ankle felt a little better. Well that was good, wasn't it?
  
With his other foot he kicked at the heel of the shoe. It slipped
off his foot and fell through the air. About half a second later a
rocket erupted up from the muzzle of its launcher, encountered
the shoe falling through its path, went straight for it, hit it, and
exploded with a great sense of satisfaction and achievement.
  
This happened about fifteen feet from the ground.
  
The main force of the explosion was directed downwards.
Where, a second earlier, there had been a squad of InfiniDim
Enterprises executives with a rocket launcher standing on an
elegant terraced plaza paved with large slabs of lustrous stone
cut from the ancient alabastrum quarries of Zentalquabula there
was now, instead, a bit of a pit with nasty bits in it.
  
A great wump of hot air welled up from the explosion throwing
Ford and Colin violently up into the sky. Ford fought desperately
and blindly to hold on and failed. He turned helplessly upwards
through the sky, reached the peak of a parabola, paused and
then started to fall again. He fell and fell and fell and suddenly
winded himself badly on Colin, who was still rising.
  
He clasped himself desperately on to the small spherical
robot. Colin slewed wildly through the air towards the tower of
the Guide offices, trying delightedly to control himself and slow
down.
  
The world span sickeningly round Ford's head as they span
and twisted round each other and then, equally sickeningly,
everything suddenly stopped.
  
Ford found himself deposited dizzily on a window ledge.
  
His towel fell past and he grabbed at it and caught it.
  
Colin bobbed in the air inches away from him.
  
Ford looked around himself in a bruised, bleeding and breath-
less daze. The ledge was only about a foot wide and he was
perched precariously on it, thirteen stories up.
  
Thirteen.
  
He knew they were thirteen stories up because the windows
were dark. He was bitterly upset. He had bought those shoes
for some absurd price in a store on the Lower East Side in New
York. He had, as a result, written an entire essay on the joys of
great footwear, all of which had been jettisoned in the `Mostly
harmless' debacle. Damn everything.
  
And now one of the shoes was gone. He threw his head
back and stared at the sky.
  
It wouldn't be such a grim tragedy if the planet in question
hadn't been demolished, which meant that he wouldn't even be
able to get another pair.
  
Yes, given the infinite sideways extension of probability there
was, of course, an almost infinite multiplicity of planets Earth,
but, when you came down to it, a major pair of shoes wasn't
something you could just replace by mucking about in multi-
dimensional space/time.
  
He sighed.
  
Oh well, he'd better make the best of it. At least it had
saved his life. For the time being.
  
He was perched on a foot-wide ledge thirteen stories up the
side of a building and he wasn't at all sure that that was worth
a good shoe.
  
He stared in woozily through the darkened glass.
  
It was as dark and silent as the tomb.
  
No. That was a ridiculous thing to think. He'd been to
some great parties in tombs.
  
Could he detect some movement? He wasn't quite sure. It
seemed that he could see some kind of weird, flapping shad-
ow. Perhaps it was just blood dribbling over his eyelashes . He
wiped it away. Boy, he'd love to have a farm somewhere, keep
some sheep. He peered into the window again, trying to make
out what the shape was, but he had the feeling, so common in
today's universe, that he was looking into some kind of optical
illusion and that his eyes were just playing silly buggers with him.
  
Was there a bird of some kind in there? Was that what
they had hidden away up here on a concealed floor behind
darkened, rocket-proof glass? Someone's aviary? There was
certainly something flapping about in there, but it seemed like
not so much a bird, more a kind of bird-shaped hole in space.
  
He closed his eyes, which he'd been wanting to do for a bit
anyway. He wondered what the hell to do next. Jump? Climb?
He didn't think there was going to be any way of breaking in. OK,
the supposedly rocket-proof glass hadn't stood up, when it came
to it, to an actual rocket, but then that had been a rocket that
had been fired at very short range from inside, which probably
wasn't what the engineers who designed it had had in mind. It
didn't mean he was going to be able to break the window here
by wrapping his fist in his towel and punching. What the hell, he
tried it anyway and hurt his fist. It was just as well he couldn't
get a good swing from where he was sitting or he might have
hurt it quite badly. The building had been sturdily reinforced
when it was completely rebuilt after the Frogstar attack, and
was probably the most heavily armoured publishing company in
the business, but there was always, he thought, some weakness
in any system designed by a corporate committee. He had already
found one of them. The engineers who designed the windows had
not expected them to be hit by a rocket from short range from
the inside, so the window had failed.
  
So, what would the engineers not be expecting someone
sitting on the ledge outside the window to do?
  
He wracked his brains for a moment or so before he got it.
  
The thing they wouldn't be expecting him to do was to be
there in the first place. Only an absolute idiot would be sitting
where he was, so he was winning already. A common mistake
that people make when trying to design something completely
foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
  
He pulled his newly acquired credit card from his pocket,
slid it into a crack where the window met its surrounding frame,
and did something a rocket would not have been able to do. He
wiggled it around a bit. He felt a catch slip. He slid the window
open and almost fell backwards off the ledge laughing, giving
thanks as he did so for the Great Ventilation and Telephone
Riots of SrDt 3454.
 The Great Ventilation and Telephone Riots of SrDt 3454 had
started off as just a lot of hot air. Hot air was, of course, the
problem that ventilation was supposed to solve and generally it
had solved the problem reasonably well up to the point when
someone invented air-conditioning, which solved the problem
far more throbbingly.
  
And that was all well and good provided you could stand
the noise and the dribbling until someone else came up with
something even sexier and smarter than air-conditioning which
was called in-building climate control.
  
Now this was quite something.
 
The major differences from just ordinary air-conditioning were
that it was thrillingly more expensive, involved a huge amount of
sophisticated measuring and regulating equipment which was far
better at knowing, moment by moment, what kind of air people
wanted to breathe than mere people did.
  
It also meant that, to be sure that mere people didn't muck
up the sophisticated calculations which the system was making
on their behalf, all the windows in the buildings were built sealed
shut. This is true.
  
While the systems were being installed, a number of people
who were going to work in the buildings found themselves having
conversations with Breathe-o-Smart systems fitters which went
something like this:
  
`But what if we want to have the windows open?'
  
`You won't want to have the windows open with new Breathe-
o-Smart.'
  
`Yes but supposing we just wanted to have them open for
a little bit?'
  
`You won't want to have them open even for a little bit.
The new Breathe-o-Smart system will see to that.'
  
`Hmmm.'
  
`Enjoy Breathe-o-Smart!'
  
`OK, so what if the Breathe-o-Smart breaks down or goes
wrong or something?'
  
`Ah! One of the smartest features of the Breathe-o-Smart is
that it cannot possibly go wrong. So. No worries on that score.
Enjoy your breathing now, and have a nice day.'
  
(It was, of course, as a result of the Great Ventilation and
Telephone Riots of SrDt 3454, that all mechanical or electri-
cal or quantum-mechanical or hydraulic or even wind, steam
or piston-driven devices, are now requited to have a certain
legend emblazoned on them somewhere. It doesn't matter how
small the object is, the designers of the object have got to find
a way of squeezing the legend in somewhere, because it is their
attention which is being drawn to it rather than necessarily that
of the user's.
  
The legend is this:
  
`The major difference between a thing that might go wrong
and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing
that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to
be impossible to get at or repair.')
  
Major heat waves started to coincide, with almost magical
precision, with major failures of the Breathe-o-Smart systems.
To begin with this merely caused simmering resentment and only
a few deaths from asphyxiation.
  
The real horror erupted on the day that three events happened
simultaneously. The first event was that Breathe-o-Smart Inc.
issued a statement to the effect that best results were achieved
by using their systems in temperate climates.
  
The second event was the breakdown of a Breathe-o-Smart
system on a particularly hot and humid day with the resulting
evacuation of many hundreds of office staff into the street where
they met the third event, which was a rampaging mob of long-
distance telephone operators who had got so twisted with having
to say, all day and every day, `Thank you for using BS\&S' to
every single idiot who picked up a phone that they had finally
taken to the streets with trash cans, megaphones and rifles.
  
In the ensuing days of carnage every single window in the city,
rocket-proof or not, was smashed, usually to accompanying cries
of `Get off the line, asshole! I don't care what number you want,
what extension you're calling from. Go and stick a firework up
your bottom! Yeeehaah! Hoo Hoo Hoo! Velooooom! Squawk!'
and a variety of other animal noises that they didn't get a chance
to practise in the normal line of their work.
  
As a result of this, all telephone operators were granted a
constitutional right to say `Use BS\&S and die!' at least once
an hour when answering the phone and all office buildings were
required to have windows that opened, even if only a little bit.
  
Another, unexpected result was a dramatic lowering of the
suicide rate. All sorts of stressed and rising executives who had
been forced, during the dark days of the Breathe-o-Smart tyr-
anny, to jump in front of trains or stab themselves, could now
just clamber out on to their own window ledges and leap off at
their leisure. What frequently happened, though, was that in the
moment or two they had to look around and gather their thoughts
they would suddenly discover that all they had really needed was
a breath of air and a fresh perspective on things, and maybe also
a farm on which they could keep a few sheep.
  
Another completely unlooked for result was that Ford Prefect,
stranded thirteen stories up a heavily armoured building armed
with nothing but a towel and a credit card was nevertheless able
to clamber through a supposedly rocket-proof window to safety.
  
He closed the window neatly after him, having first allowed
Colin to follow him through, and then started to look around
for this bird thing.
  
The thing he realised about the windows was this: because
they had been converted into openable windows after they had
first been designed to be impregnable, they were, in fact, much
less secure than if they had been designed as openable windows
in the first place.
  
Hey ho, it's a funny old life, he was just thinking to himself,
when he suddenly realised that the room he had gone to all this
trouble to break into was not a very interesting one.
  
He stopped in surprise.
  
Where was the strange flapping shape? Where was anything
that was worth all this palaver - the extraordinary veil of secrecy
that seemed to lie over this room and the equally extraordinary
sequence of events that had seemed to conspire to get him into
it?
  
The room, like every other room in this building now, was
done out in some appallingly tasteful grey. There were a few
charts and drawings on the wall. Most of them were meaningless
to Ford, but then he came across something that was obviously
a mock-up for a poster of some kind.
  
There was a kind of bird-like logo on it, and a slogan which said
`The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Mk II: the single most
astounding thing of any kind ever. Coming soon to a dimension
near you.' No more information than that.
  
Ford looked around again. Then his attention was gradually
drawn to Colin, the absurdly over-happy security robot, who was
cowering in a corner of the room gibbering with what seemed
strangely like fear.
  
Odd, thought Ford. He looked around to see what it was that
Colin might have been reacting to. Then he saw something that
he hadn't noticed before, lying quietly on top of a work bench.
  
It was circular and black and about the size of a small side
plate. Its top and its bottom were smoothly convex so that it
resembled a small lightweight throwing discus.
  
Its surfaces seemed to be completely smooth, unbroken and
featureless.
  
It was doing nothing.

Then Ford noticed that there was something written on it.
Strange. There hadn't been anything written on it a moment
ago and now suddenly there was. There just didn't seem to have
been any observable transition between the two states.
  
All it said, in small, alarming letters was a single word:

\begin{center}
                             PANIC

\end{center}
A moment ago there hadn't been any marks or cracks in
its surface. Now there were. They were growing.
  
Panic, the Guide Mk II said. Ford begin to do as he was
told. He had just remembered why the slug-like creatures looked
familiar. Their colour scheme was a kind of corporate grey, but
in all other respects they looked exactly like Vogons.


                          % 13

The ship dropped quietly to land on the edge of the wide
clearing, a hundred yards or so from the village.
  
It arrived suddenly and unexpectedly but with a minimum of
fuss. One moment it was a perfectly ordinary late afternoon in
the early autumn - the leaves were just beginning to turn red and
gold, the river was beginning to swell again with the rains from the
mountains in the north, the plumage of the pikka birds was begin-
ning to thicken in anticipation of the coming winter frosts, any day
now the Perfectly Normal Beasts would start their thunderous
migration across the plains, and Old Thrashbarg was beginning
to mutter to himself as he hobbled his way around the village,
a muttering which meant that he was rehearsing and elaborating
the stories that he would tell of the past year once the evenings
had drawn in and people had no choice but to gather round the
fire and listen to him and grumble and say that that wasn't how
they remembered it - and the next moment there was a spaceship
sitting there, gleaming in the warm autumn sun.
  
It hummed for a bit and then stopped.
  
It wasn't a big spaceship. If the villagers had been experts
on spaceships they would have known at once that it was a
pretty nifty one, a small sleek Hrundi four-berth runabout
with just about every optional extra in the brochure except
Advanced Vectoid Stabilisis, which only wimps went for. You
can't get a good tight, sharp curve round a tri-lateral time axis
with Advanced Vectoid Stabilisis. All right, it's a bit safer, but
it makes the handling go all soggy.
  
The villagers didn't know all that, of course. Most of them here
on the remote planet of Lamuella had never seen a spaceship,
certainly not one that was all in one piece, and as it shone warmly
in the evening light it was just the most extraordinary thing they
had come across since the day Kirp caught a fish with a head at
both ends.
  
Everybody had fallen silent.
  
Whereas a moment before two or three dozen people had
been wandering about, chattering, chopping wood, carrying
water, teasing the pikka birds, or just amiably trying to stay
out of Old Thrashbarg's way, suddenly all activity died away
and everybody turned to look at the strange object in amazement.
  
Or, not quite everybody. The pikka birds tended to be amazed
by completely different things. A perfectly ordinary leaf lying
unexpectedly on a stone would cause them to skitter off in par-
oxysms of confusion; sunrise took them completely by surprise
every morning, but the arrival of an alien craft from another
world simply failed to engage any part of their attention. They
continued to kar and rit and huk as they pecked for seeds on the
ground; the river continued with its quiet, spacious burbling.
  
Also, the noise of loud and tuneless singing from the last
hut on the left continued unabated.
  
Suddenly, with a slight click and a hum, a door folded itself
outwards and downwards from the spaceship. Then, for a minute
or two, nothing further seemed to happen, other than the loud
singing from the last hut on the left, and the thing just sat there.
  
Some of the villagers, particularly the boys, began to edge
forward a little bit to have a closer look. Old Thrashbarg tried
to shoo them back. This was exactly the sort of thing that Old
Thrashbarg didn't like to have happening. He hadn't foretold it,
not even slightly, and even though he would be able to wrestle
the whole thing into his continuing story somehow or other, it
really was all getting a bit much to deal with.
  
He strode forward, pushed the boys back, and raised his arms
and his ancient knobbly staff into the air. The long warm light
of the evening sun caught him nicely. He prepared to welcome
whatever gods these were as if he had been expecting them all
along.
  
Still nothing happened.
  
Gradually it became clear that there was some kind of argument
going on inside the craft. Time went by and Old Thrashbarg's
arms were beginning to ache.
  
Suddenly the ramp folded itself back up again.
That made it easy for Thrashbarg. They were demons and
he had repulsed them. The reason he hadn't foretold it was that
prudence and modesty forbade.
  
Almost immediately a different ramp folded itself out on the
other side of the craft from where Thrashbarg was standing, and
two figures at last emerged on it, still arguing with each other
and ignoring everybody, even Thrashbarg, whom they wouldn't
even have noticed from where they were standing.
  
Old Thrashbarg chewed angrily on his beard.
  
To continue to stand there with his arms upraised? To kneel
with his head bowed forward and his staff held out pointing at
them? To fall backwards as if overcome in some titanic inner
struggle? Perhaps just to go off to the woods and live in a tree
for a year without speaking to anyone?
  
He opted just to drop his arms smartly as if he had done
what he meant to do. They were really hurting so he didn't
have much choice. He made a small, secret sign he had just
invented towards the ramp which had closed and then made
three and a half steps backwards, so he could at least get a
good look at whoever these people were and then decide what
to do next.
  
The taller one was a very good looking woman wearing
soft and crumply clothes. Old Thrashbarg didn't know this, but
they were made of Rymplon TM, a new synthetic fabric which was
terrific for space travel because it looked its absolute best when
it was all creased and sweaty.
  
The shorter one was a girl. She was awkward and sullen
looking, and was wearing clothes which looked their absolute
worst when they were all creased and sweaty, and what was
more she almost certainly knew it.
  
All eyes watched them, except for the pikka birds, which
had their own things to watch.
  
The woman stood and looked around her. She had a purposeful
air about her. There was obviously something in particular she
wanted, but she didn't know exactly where to find it. She glanced
from face to face among the villagers assembled curiously around
her without apparently seeing what she was looking for.
  
Thrashbarg had no idea how to play this at all, and decided
to resort to chanting. He threw back his head and began to
wail, but was instantly interrupted by a fresh outbreak of song
from the hut of the Sandwich Maker: the last one on the left.
The woman looked round sharply, and gradually a smile came
over her face. Without so much as a glance at Old Thrashbarg
she started to walk towards the hut.
 There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which
it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth.
It is a simple task, but the opportunities for satisfaction are
many and profound: choosing the right bread for instance. The
Sandwich Maker had spent many months in daily consultation
and experiment with Grarp the baker and eventually they had
between them created a loaf of exactly the consistency that was
dense enough to slice thinly and neatly, while still being light,
moist and having that fine nutty flavour which best enhanced
the savour of roast Perfectly Normal Beast flesh.
  
There was also the geometry of the slice to be refined: the
precise relationships between the width and height of the slice
and also its thickness which would give the proper sense of bulk
and weight to the finished sandwich: here again, lightness was
a virtue, but so too were firmness, generosity and that promise
of succulence and savour that is the hallmark of a truly intense
sandwich experience.
  
The proper tools, of course, were crucial, and many were
the days that the Sandwich Maker, when not engaged with the
Baker at his oven, would spend with Strinder the Tool Maker,
weighing and balancing knives, taking them to the forge and
back again. Suppleness, strength, keenness of edge, length and
balance were all enthusiastically debated, theories put forward,
tested, refined, and many was the evening when the Sandwich
Maker and the Tool Maker could be seen silhouetted against
the light of the setting sun and the Tool Maker's forge making
slow sweeping movements through the air trying one knife after
another, comparing the weight of this one with the balance of
another, the suppleness of a third and the handle binding of a
fourth.
  
Three knives altogether were required. First there was the
knife for the slicing of the bread: a firm, authoritative blade
which imposed a clear and defining will on a loaf. Then there
was the butter-spreading knife, which was a whippy little number
but still with a firm backbone to it. Early versions had been a little
too whippy, but now the combination of flexibility with a core of
strength was exactly right to achieve the maximum smoothness
and grace of spread.
  
The chief amongst the knives, of course, was the carving
knife. This was the knife that would not merely impose its will
on the medium through which it moved, as did the bread knife;
it must work with it, be guided by the grain of the meat, to
achieve slices of the most exquisite consistency and translucency,
that would slide away in filmy folds from the main hunk of meat.
The Sandwich Maker would then flip each sheet with a smooth
flick of the wrist on to the beautifully proportioned lower bread
slice, trim it with four deft strokes and then at last perform the
magic that the children of the village so longed to gather round
and watch with rapt attention and wonder. With just four more
dexterous flips of the knife he would assemble the trimmings
into a perfectly fitting jigsaw of pieces on top of the primary
slice. For every sandwich the size and shape of the trimmings
were different, but the Sandwich Maker would always effortlessly
and without hesitation assemble them into a pattern which fitted
perfectly. A second layer of meat and a second layer of trimmings,
and the main act of creation would be accomplished.
  
The Sandwich Maker would pass what he had made to his
assistant who would then add a few slices of newcumber and
fladish and a touch of splagberry sauce, and then apply the
topmost layer of bread and cut the sandwich with a fourth
and altogether plainer knife. It was not that these were not also
skilful operations, but they were lesser skills to be performed by
a dedicated apprentice who would one day, when the Sandwich
Maker finally laid down his tools, take over from him. It was
an exalted position and that apprentice, Drimple, was the envy
of his fellows. There were those in the village who were happy
chopping wood, those who were content carrying water, but to
be the Sandwich Maker was very heaven.
  
And so the Sandwich Maker sang as he worked.
  
He was using the last of the year's salted meat. It was a little
past its best now, but still the rich savour of Perfectly Normal
Beast meat was something unsurpassed in any of the Sandwich
Maker's previous experience. Next week it was anticipated that
the Perfectly Normal Beasts would appear again for their regu-
lar migration, whereupon the whole village would once again be
plunged into frenetic action: hunting the Beasts, killing perhaps
six, maybe even seven dozen of the thousands that thundered
past. Then the Beasts must be rapidly butchered and cleaned,
with most of the meat salted to keep it through the winter months
until the return migration in the spring, which would replenish
their supplies.
  
The very best of the meat would be roasted straight away
for the feast that marked the Autumn Passage. The celebrations
would last for three days of sheer exuberance, dancing and stories
that Old Thrashbarg would tell of how the hunt had gone, stories
that he would have been busy sitting making up in his hut while
the rest of the village was out doing the actual hunting.
  
And then the very, very best of the meat would be saved
from the feast and delivered cold to the Sandwich Maker. And
the Sandwich Maker would exercise on it the skills that he
had brought to them from the gods, and make the exquisite
Sandwiches of the Third Season, of which the whole village would
partake before beginning, the next day, to prepare themselves for
the rigours of the coming winter.
  
Today he was just making ordinary sandwiches, if such deli-
cacies, so lovingly crafted, could ever be called ordinary. Today
his assistant was away so the Sandwich Maker was applying his
own garnish, which he was happy to do. He was happy with just
about everything in fact.
  
He sliced, he sang. He flipped each slice of meat neatly on to
a slice of bread, trimmed it and assembled all the trimmings into
their jigsaw. A little salad, a little sauce, another slice of bread,
another sandwich, another verse of Yellow Submarine.
  
`Hello , Arthur.'
  
The Sandwich Maker almost sliced his thumb off.
 The villagers had watched in consternation as the woman had
marched boldly to the hut of the Sandwich Maker. The Sandwich
Maker had been sent to them by Almighty Bob in a burning fiery
chariot. This, at least, was what Thrashbarg said, and Thrashbarg
was the authority on these things. So, at least, Thrashbarg
claimed, and Thrashbarg was... and so on and so on. It
was hardly worth arguing about.
  
A few villagers wondered why Almighty Bob would send
his onlie begotten Sandwich Maker in a burning fiery chariot
rather than perhaps in one that might have landed quietly
without destroying half the forest, filling it with ghosts and also
injuring the Sandwich Maker quite badly. Old Thrashbarg said
that it was the ineffable will of Bob, and when they asked him
what ineffable meant he said look it up.
  
This was a problem because Old Thrashbarg had the only
dictionary and he wouldn't let them borrow it. They asked him
why not and he said that it was not for them to know the will
of Almighty Bob, and when they asked him why not again he
said because he said so. Anyway, somebody sneaked into Old
Thrashbarg's hut one day while he was out having a swim and
looked up `ineffable'. `Ineffable' apparently meant `unknowable,
indescribable, unutterable, not to be known or spoken about'. So
that cleared that up.
  
At least they had got the sandwiches.
  
One day Old Thrashbarg said that Almighty Bob had decreed
that he, Thrashbarg, was to have first pick of the sandwiches.
The villagers asked him when this had happened, exactly, and
Thrashbarg said it had happened yesterday, when they weren't
looking. `Have faith,' Old Thrashbarg said, `or burn!'
They let him have first pick of the sandwiches. It seemed
easiest.
 And now this woman had just arrived out of nowhere, and gone
straight for the Sandwich Maker's hut. His fame had obviously
spread, though it was hard to know where to since, according to
Old Thrashbarg, there wasn't anywhere else. Anyway, wherever
it was she had come from, presumably somewhere ineffable, she
was here now and was in the Sandwich Maker's hut. Who was
she? And who was the strange girl who was hanging around
outside the hut moodily and kicking at stones and showing every
sign of not wanting to be there? It seemed odd that someone
should come all the way from somewhere ineffable in a chariot
that was obviously a vast improvement on the burning fiery one
which had brought them the Sandwich Maker, if she didn't even
want to be here?
  
They all looked to Thrashbarg, but he was on his knees
mumbling and looking very firmly up into the sky and not
catching anybody else's eye until he'd thought of something.
 `Trillian!' said the Sandwich Maker, sucking his bleeding thumb.
`What...? Who...? When...? Where...?'
  
`Exactly the questions I was going to ask you,' said Trillian,
looking around Arthur's hut. It was neatly laid out with his
kitchen utensils. There were some fairly basic cupboards and
shelves, and a basic bed in the corner. A door at the back of
the room led to something Trillian couldn't see because the door
was closed. `Nice,' she said, but in an enquiring tone of voice. She
couldn't quite make out what the set-up was.
  
`Very nice,' said Arthur. `Wonderfully nice. I don't know
when I've ever been anywhere nicer. I'm happy here. They
like me, I make sandwiches for them, and... er, well that's
it really. They like me and I make sandwiches for them.'
  
`Sounds, er...'
  
`Idyllic,' said Arthur, firmly. `It is. It really is. I don't expect
you'd like it very much, but for me it's, well, it's perfect. Look, sit
down, please, make yourself comfortable. Can I get you anything,
er, a sandwich?'
  
Trillian picked up a sandwich and looked at it. She sniffed
it carefully.
  
`Try it,' said Arthur, `it's good.'
  
Trillian took a nibble, then a bite and munched on it thought-
fully.
  
`It is good,' she said, looking at it.
  
`My life's work,' said Arthur, trying to sound proud and
hoping he didn't sound like a complete idiot. He was used
to being revered a bit, and was having to go through some
unexpected mental gear changes.
  
`What's the meat in it?' asked Trillian.
  
`Ah yes, that's, um, that's Perfectly Normal Beast.'
  
`It's what?'
  
`Perfectly Normal Beast. It's a bit like a cow, or rather
a bull. Kind of like a buffalo in fact. Large, charging sort
of animal.'
  
`So what's odd about it?'
  
`Nothing, it's Perfectly Normal.'
  
`I see.'
  
`It's just a bit odd where it comes from.'
  
Tricia frowned, and stopped chewing.
  
`Where does it come from?' she asked with her mouth full.
She wasn't going to swallow until she knew.
  
`Well it's not just a matter of where it comes from, it's also
where it goes to. It's all right, it's perfectly safe to swallow. I've
eaten tons of it. It's great. Very succulent. Very tender. Slightly
sweet flavour with a long dark finish.'
  
Trillian still hadn't swallowed.
  
`Where,' she said, `does it come from, and where does it go to?'
  
`They come from a point just slightly to the east of the
Hondo Mountains. They're the big ones behind us here, you
must have seen them as you came in, and then they sweep in
their thousands across the great Anhondo plains and, er, well
that's it really. That's where they come from. That's where they
go.'
  
Trillian frowned. There was something she wasn't quite getting
about this.
  
`I probably haven't made it quite clear,' said Arthur. `When
I say they come from a point to the east of the Hondo Moun-
tains, I mean that that's where they suddenly appear. Then they
sweep across the Anhondo plains and, well, vanish really. We
have about six days to catch as many of them as we can before
they disappear. In the spring they do it again only the other way
round, you see.'
  
Reluctantly, Trillian swallowed. It was either that or spit
it out, and it did in fact taste pretty good.
  
`I see,' she said, once she had reassured herself that she
didn't seem to be suffering any ill effects. `And why are they
called Perfectly Normal Beasts?'
  
`Well, I think because otherwise people might think it was
a bit odd. I think Old Thrashbarg called them that. He says
that they come from where they come from and they go to
where they go to and that it's Bob's will and that's all there is
to it.'
  
`Who...'
  
`Just don't even ask.'
  
`Well, you look well on it.'
  
`I feel well. You look well.'
  
`I'm well. I'm very well.'
  
`Well, that's good.'
  
`Yes.'
  
`Good.'
  
`Good.'
  
`Nice of you to drop in.'
  
`Thanks.'
  
`Well,' said Arthur, casting around himself. Astounding how
hard it was to think of anything to say to someone after all this
time.
 
`I expect you're wondering how I found you,' said Trillian.
  
`Yes!' said Arthur. `I was wondering exactly that. How did
you find me?'
  
`Well, as you may or may not know, I now work for one
of the big Sub-Etha broadcasting networks that -'
  
`I did know that,' said Arthur, suddenly remembering. `Yes,
you've done very well. That's terrific. Very exciting. Well done.
Must be a lot of fun.'
  
`Exhausting.'
  
`All that rushing around. I expect it must be, yes.'
 
`We have access to virtually every kind of information. I
found your name on the passenger list of the ship that crashed.'
  
Arthur was astonished.
  
`You mean they knew about the crash?'
 
`Well, of course they knew. You don't have a whole spaceliner
disappear without someone knowing about it.'
  
`But you mean, they knew where it had happened? They
knew I'd survived?'
 
`Yes.'
  
`But nobody's ever been to look or search or rescue. There's
been absolutely nothing.'
  
`Well there wouldn't be. It's a whole complicated insurance
thing. They just bury the whole thing. Pretend it never happened.
The insurance business is completely screwy now. You know
they've reintroduced the death penalty for insurance company
directors?'
  
`Really?' said Arthur. `No I didn't. For what offence?'
  
Trillian frowned.
  
`What do you mean, offence?'
  
`I see.'
  
Trillian gave Arthur a long look, and then, in a new tone
of voice, said, `It's time for you to take responsibility, Arthur.'
  
Arthur tried to understand this remark. He found it often
took a moment or so before he saw exactly what it was that
people were driving at, so he let a moment or two pass at a
leisurely rate. Life was so pleasant and relaxed these days, there
was time to let things sink in. He let it sink in.
  
He still didn't quite understand what she meant, though,
so in the end he had to say so.
  
Trillian gave him a cool smile and then turned back to
the door of the hut.
  
`Random?' she called. `Come in. Come and meet your father.'


                          % 14

As the Guide folded itself back into a smooth, dark disk, Ford
realised some pretty hectic stuff. Or at least he tried to realise
it, but it was too hectic to take in all in one go. His head was
hammering, his ankle was hurting, and though he didn't like to
be a wimp about his ankle, he always found that intense multi-
dimensional logic was something he understood best in the bath.
He needed time to think about this. Time, a tall drink, and some
kind of rich, foamy oil.
  
He had to get out of here. He had to get the Guide out
of here. He didn't think they'd make it together.
  
He glanced wildly round the room.
  
Think, think, think. It had to be something simple and obvious.
If he was right in his nasty lurking suspicion that he was dealing
with nasty, lurking Vogons, then the more simple and obvious
the better.
  
Suddenly he saw what he needed.
  
He wouldn't try to beat the system, he would just use it. The
frightening thing about the Vogons was their absolute mindless
determination to do whatever mindless thing it was they were
determined to do. There was never any point in trying to appeal
to their reason because they didn't have any. However, if you
kept your nerve you could sometimes exploit their blinkered,
bludgeoning insistence on being bludgeoning and blinkered. It
wasn't merely that their left hand didn't always know what their
right hand was doing, so to speak; quite often their right hand
had a pretty hazy notion as well.
  
Did he dare just post the thing to himself?
  
Did he dare just put it in the system and let the Vogons
work out how to get the thing to him while at the same time
they were busy, as they probably would be, tearing the building
apart to find out where he'd hidden it?
  
Yes.
  
Feverishly, he packed it. He wrapped it. He labelled it.
With a moment's pause to wonder if he was really doing the
right thing, he committed the package to the building's internal
mail chute.
  
`Colin,' he said, turning to the little, hovering ball. `I am
going to abandon you to your fate.'
  
`I'm so happy,' said Colin.
  
`Make the most of it,' said Ford. `Because what I want you
to do is to nursemaid that package out of the building. They'll
probably incinerate you when they find you, and I won't be here
to help. It will be very, very nasty for you, and that's just too
bad. Got it?'
  
`I gurgle with pleasure,' said Colin.
  
`Go!' said Ford.
  
Colin obediently dived down the mail chute in pursuit of his
charge. Now Ford had only himself to worry about, but that was
still quite a substantial worry. There were noises of heavy running
footsteps outside the door, which he had taken the precaution of
locking and shifting a large filing cabinet in front of.
  
He was worried that everything had gone so smoothly. Every-
thing had fitted terribly well. He had hurtled through the day
with reckless abandon and yet everything had worked out with
uncanny neatness. Except for his shoe. He was bitter about his
shoe. That was an account that was going to have to be settled.
  
With a deafening roar the door exploded inwards. In the
turmoil of smoke and dust he could see large, slug-like creatures
hurrying through.
  
So everything was going well was it? Everything was working
out as if the most extraordinary luck was on his side? Well, he'd
see about that.
  
In a spirit of scientific enquiry he hurled himself out of
the window again.


                          % 15

The first month, getting to know each other, was a little difficult.
  
The second month, trying to come to terms with what they'd
got to know about each other in the first month, was much easier.
  
The third month, when the box arrived, was very tricky indeed.
 
At the beginning, it was a problem even trying to explain
what a month was. This had been a pleasantly simple matter
for Arthur, here on Lamuella. The days were just a little over
twenty-five hours long, which basically meant an extra hour in
bed every single day and, of course, having regularly to reset his
watch, which Arthur rather enjoyed doing.
  
He also felt at home with the number of suns and moons
which Lamuella had - one of each - as opposed to some of
the planets he'd fetched up on from time to time which had
had ridiculous numbers of them.
  
The planet orbited its single sun every three hundred days,
which was a good number because it meant the year didn't drag
by. The moon orbited Lamuella just over nine times a year,
which meant that a month was a little over thirty days, which
was absolutely perfect because it gave you a little more time to
get things done in. It was not merely reassuringly like Earth, it
was actually rather an improvement.
  
Random, on the other hand, thought she was trapped in a
recurring nightmare. She would have crying fits and think the
moon was out to get her. Every night it was there, and then,
when it went, the sun came out and followed her. Over and over
again.
  
Trillian had warned Arthur that Random might have some
difficulty in adjusting to a more regular lifestyle than she had
been used to up till now, but Arthur hadn't been ready for
actual howling at the moon.
  
He hadn't been ready for any of this of course.
  
His daughter?
  
His daughter? He and Trillian had never even - had they?
He was absolutely convinced he would have remembered. What
about Zaphod?
  
`Not the same species, Arthur,' Trillian had answered. `When
I decided I wanted a child they ran all sorts of genetic tests on
me and could find only one match anywhere. It was only later
that it dawned on me. I double checked and I was right. They
don't usually like to tell you, but I insisted.'
  
`You mean you went to a DNA bank?' Arthur had asked,
pop-eyed.
  
`Yes. But she wasn't quite as random as her name suggests,
because, of course, you were the only homo sapiens donor. I
must say, though, it seems you were quite a frequent flyer.'
  
Arthur had stared wide-eyed at the unhappy looking girl who
was slouching awkwardly in the door-frame looking at him.
  
`But when... how long...?'
  
`You mean, what age is she?'
  
`Yes.'
  
`The wrong one.'
  
`What do you mean?'
  
`I mean that I haven't any idea.'
 
`What?'
  
`Well, in my time line I think it's about ten years since I had
her, but she's obviously quite a lot older than that. I spend my
life going backwards and forwards in time, you see. The job. I
used to take her with me when I could, but it just wasn't always
possible. Then I used to put her into day care time zones, but
you just can't get reliable time tracking now. You leave them
there in the morning, you've simply no idea how old they'll be
in the evening. You complain till you're blue in the face but it
doesn't get you anywhere. I left her at one of the places for a
few hours once, and when I came back she'd passed puberty.
I've done all I can, Arthur, it's over to you. I've got a war to
cover.'
The ten seconds that passed after Trillian left were about the
longest of Arthur Dent's life. Time, we know, is relative. You
can travel light years through the stars and back, and if you do it
at the speed of light then, when you return, you may have aged
mere seconds while your twin brother or sister will have aged
twenty, thirty, forty or however many years it is, depending on
how far you travelled.
  
This will come to you as a profound personal shock, particularly
if you didn't know you had a twin brother or sister. The seconds
that you have been absent for will not have been sufficient time to
prepare you for the shock of new and strangely distended family
relationships when you return.
  
Ten seconds' silence was not enough time for Arthur to
reassemble his whole view of himself and his life in a way that
suddenly included an entire new daughter of whose merest exist-
ence he had had not the slightest inkling of a suspicion when he
had woken that morning. Deep, emotional family ties cannot be
constructed in ten seconds, however far and fast you travel away
from them, and Arthur could only feel helpless, bewildered and
numb as he looked at the girl standing in his doorway, staring at
his floor.
  
He supposed that there was no point in pretending not to
be hopeless.
  
He walked over and he hugged her.
  
`I don't love you,' he said. `I'm sorry. I don't even know
you yet. But give me a few minutes.'
{\it 
  We live in strange times.
    We also live in strange places: each in a universe of our
  own. The people with whom we populate our universes are
  the shadows of whole other universes intersecting with our
  own. Being able to glance out into this bewildering complexity
  of infinite recursion and say things like, `Oh, hi Ed! Nice tan.
  How's Carol?' involves a great deal of filtering skill for which
  all conscious entities have eventually to develop a capacity in
  order to protect themselves from the contemplation of the
  chaos through which they seethe and tumble. So give your
  kid a break, OK? \begin{flushright}
                Extract from Practical Parenting in a Fractally\end{flushright} \begin{flushright}
                                              Demented Universe\end{flushright} }

`What's this?'
  
Arthur had almost given up. That is to say, he was not
going to give up. He was absolutely not going to give up.
Not now. Not ever. But if he had been the sort of person who
was going to give up, this was probably the time he would have
done it.
  
Not content with being surly, bad-tempered, wanting to go
and play in the paleozoic era, not seeing why they had to have
the gravity on the whole time and shouting at the sun to stop
following her, Random had also used his carving knife to dig up
stones to throw at the pikka birds for looking at her like that.
  
Arthur didn't even know if Lamuella had had a paleozoic
era. According to Old Thrashbarg the planet had been found
fully-formed in the navel of a giant earwig at four-thirty one
Vroonday afternoon, and although Arthur, as a seasoned galactic
traveller with good `O' level passes in Physics and Geography,
had fairly serious doubts about this, it was rather a waste of time
trying to argue with Old Thrashbarg and there had never been
much point before.
  
He sighed as he sat nursing the chipped and bent knife. He
was going to love her if it killed him, or her, or both. It wasn't
easy being a father. He knew that no one had ever said it was
going to be easy, but that wasn't the point because he'd never
asked about being one in the first place.
  
He was doing his best. Every moment that he could wrest
away from making sandwiches he was spending with her, talking
to her, walking with her, sitting on the hill with her watching the
sun go down over he valley in which the village nestled, trying
to find out about her life, trying to explain to her about his. It
was a tricky business. The common ground between them, apart
from the fact that they had almost identical genes, was about the
size of a pebble. Or rather, it was about the size of Trillian and
of her they had slightly differing views.
  
`What's this?'
  
He suddenly realised she had been talking to him and he
hadn't noticed. Or rather he had not recognized her voice.
  
Instead of the usual tone of voice in which she spoke to him,
which was bitter and truculent, she was just asking him a simple
question.
  
He looked round in surprise.
  
She was sitting there on a stool in the corner of the hut in
that rather hunched way she had, knees together, feet splayed
out, with her dark hair hanging down over her face as she looked
at something she had cradled in her hands.
  
Arthur went over to her, a little nervously.
  
Her mood swings were very unpredictable but so far they'd
all been between different types of bad ones. Outbreaks of bitter
recrimination would give way without warning to abject self-pity
and then long bouts of sullen despair which were punctuated with
sudden acts of mindless violence against inanimate objects and
demands to go to electric clubs.
  
Not only were there no electric clubs on Lamuella, there
were no clubs at all and, in fact, no electricity. There was a
forge and a bakery, a few carts and a well, but those were the
high water mark of Lamuellan technology, and a fair number of
Random's unquenchable rages were directed against the sheer
incomprehensible backwardness of the place.
  
She could pick up Sub-Etha TV on a small Flex-O-Panel
which had been surgically implanted in her wrist, but that didn't
cheer her up at all because it was full of news of insanely exciting
things happening in every other part of the Galaxy than here.
It would also give her frequent news of her mother, who had
dumped her to go off and cover some war which now seemed
not to have happened, or at least to have gone all wrong in some
way because of the absence of any proper intelligence gathering.
It also gave her access to lots of great adventure shows featuring
all sorts of fantastically expensive spaceships crashing into each
other.
  
The villagers were absolutely hypnotised by all these wonderful
magic images flashing over her wrist. They had only ever seen
one spaceship crash, and it had been so frightening, violent and
shocking and had caused so much horrible devastation, fire and
death that, stupidly, they had never realised it was entertainment.
  
Old Thrashbarg had been so astonished by it that he had
instantly seen Random as an emissary from Bob, but had fairly
soon afterwards decided that in fact she had been sent as a test
of his faith, if not of his patience. He was also alarmed at the
number of spaceship crashes he had to start incorporating into
his holy stories if he was to hold the attention of the villagers,
and not have them rushing off to peer at Random's wrist all the
time.
  
At the moment she was not peering at her wrist. Her wrist
was turned off. Arthur squatted down quietly beside her to see
what she was looking at.
  
It was his watch. He had taken it off when he'd gone to
shower under the local waterfall, and Random had found it
and was trying to work it out.
  
`It's just a watch,' he said. `It's to tell the time.'
  
`I know that,' she said. `But you keep on fiddling with it,
and it still doesn't tell the right time. Or even anything like
it.'
  
She brought up the display on her wrist panel, which auto-
matically produced a readout of local time. Her wrist panel had
quietly got on with the business of measuring the local gravity
and orbital momentum, and had noticed where the sun was and
tracked its movement in the sky, all within the first few minutes
of Random's arrival. It had then quickly picked up clues from its
environment as to what the local unit conventions were and reset
itself appropriately. It did this sort of thing continually, which was
particularly valuable if you did a lot of travelling in time as well
as space.
  
Random frowned at her father's watch, which didn't do any
of this.
  
Arthur was very fond of it. It was a better one than he
would ever have afforded himself. He had been given it on
his twenty-second birthday by a rich and guilt-ridden godfather
who had forgotten every single birthday he had had up till then,
and also his name. It had the day, the date, the phases of the
moon; it had `To Albert on his twenty-first birthday' and the
wrong date engraved on the battered and scratched surface of
its back in letters that were still just about visible.
  
The watch had been through a considerahle amount of stuff
in the last few years, most of which would fall well outside the
warranty. He didn't suppose, of course, that the warranty had
especially mentioned that the watch was guaranteed to be accu-
rate only within the very particular gravitational and magnetic
fields of the Earth, and so long as the day was twenty-four hours
long and the planet didn't explode and so on. These were such
basic assumptions that even the lawyers would have missed them.
  
Luckily his watch was a wind-up one, or at least, a self-winder.
Nowhere else in the Galaxy would he have found batteries of pre-
cisely the dimensions and power specifications that were perfectly
standard on Earth.
  
`So what are all these numbers?' asked Random.
  
Arthur took it from her.
  
`These numbers round the edge mark the hours. In the little
window on the right it says THU, which means Thursday, and
the number is 14, which means it's the fourteenth day of the
month of MAY which is what it says in this window over here.
  
`And this sort of crescent-shaped window at the top tells you
about the phases of the moon. In other words it tells you how
much of the moon is lit up at night by the sun, which depends
on the relative positions of the Sun and the Moon and, well...
the Earth.'
  
`The Earth,' said Random.
  
`Yes.'
  
`And that's where you came from, and where Mum came from.'
  
`Yes.'
  
Random took the watch back from him and looked at it
again, clearly baffled by something. Then she held it up to
her ear and listened in puzzlement.
  
`What's that noise?'
  
`It's ticking. That's the mechanism that drives the watch. It's
called clockwork. It's all kind of interlocking cogs and springs
that work to turn the hands round at exactly the right speed to
mark the hours and minutes and days and so on.'
  
Random carried on peering at it.
  
`There's something puzzling you,' said Arthur. `What is it?'
  
`Yes,' said Random, at last. `Why's it all in hardware?'
Arthur suggested they went for a walk. He felt there were
things they should discuss, and for once Random seemed, if
not precisely amenable and willing, then at least not growling.
  
>From Random's point of view this was also all very weird. It
wasn't that she wanted to be difficult, as such, it was just that
she didn't know how or what else to be.
  
Who was this guy? What was this life she was supposed to
lead? What was this world she was supposed to lead it in? And
what was this universe that kept coming at her through her eyes
and ears? What was it for? What did it want?
  
She'd been born in a spaceship that had been going from
somewhere to somewhere else, and when it had got to some-
where else, somewhere else had only turned out to be another
somewhere that you had to get to somewhere else again from,
and so on.
  
It was her normal expectation that she was supposed to be
somewhere else. It was normal for her to feel that she was in
the wrong place.
  
Then, constant time travel had only compounded this problem,
and had led to the feeling that she was not only always in the
wrong place, but she was also almost always there at the wrong
time.
  
She didn't notice that she felt this, because it was the only
way she ever felt, just as it never seemed odd to her that
nearly everywhere she went she needed either to wear weights
or anti-gravity suits and usually special apparatus for breathing
as well. The only places you could ever feel right were worlds you
designed for yourself to inhabit - virtual realities in the electric
clubs. It had never occurred to her that the real Universe was
something you could actually fit into.
  
And that included this Lamuella place her mother had dumped
her in. And it also included this person who had bestowed on her
this precious and magical gift of life in return for a seat upgrade.
It was just as well he had turned out to be rather kind and friendly
or there would have been trouble. Really. She'd got a specially
sharpened stone in her pocket she could cause a lot of trouble
with.
  
It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else's
point of view without the proper training.
They sat on the spot that Arthur particularly liked, on the side
of a hill overlooking the valley. The sun was going down over
the village.
  
The only thing that Arthur wasn't quite so fond of was being
able to see a little way into the next valley, where a deep dark
mangled furrow in the forest marked the spot where his ship
had crashed. But maybe that was what kept bringing him back
here. There were plenty of spots from which you could survey
the lush rolling countryside of Lamuella, but this was the one
he was drawn to, with its nagging dark spot of fear and pain
nestling just on the edge of his vision.
  
He had never been there again since he had been pulled
out of the wreckage.
  
Wouldn't.
  
Couldn't bear it.
  
In fact he had gone some of the way back to it the very next
day, while he was still numb and spinning with shock. He had
a broken leg, a couple of broken ribs, some bad burns and was
not really thinking coherently but had insisted that the villagers
take him, which, uneasily, they had. He had not managed to
get right to the actual spot where the ground had bubbled and
melted, however, and had at last hobbled away from the horror
for ever.
  
Soon, word had got around that the whole area was haunted
and no one had ventured back there ever since. The land was full
of beautiful, verdant and delightful valleys - no point in going to
a highly worrying one. Let the past hold on to itself and let the
present move forward into the future.
Random cradled the watch in her hands, slowly turning it
to let the long light of the evening sun shine warmly in the
scratches and scuffs of the thick glass. It fascinated her watching
the spidery little second hand ticking its way round. Every time
it completed a full circle, the longer of the two main hands had
moved on exactly to the next of the sixty small divisions round
the dial. And when the long hand had made its own full circle.
the smaller hand had moved on to the next of the main digits.
  
`You've been watching it for over an hour.' said Arthur,
quietly.
  
`I know, she said. `An hour is when the big hand has gone
all the way round, yes?'
  
`That's right.'
  
`Then I've been watching it for an hour and seventeen...
minutes.'
  
She smiled with a deep and mysterious pleasure and moved
very slightly so that she was resting just a little. against his arm.
Arthur felt a small sigh escape from him that had been pent up
inside his chest for weeks. He wanted to put his arm around his
daughter's shoulders, but felt it was too early yet and that she
would shy away from him. But something was working. Some-
thing was easing inside her. The watch meant something to her
that nothing in her life had so far managed to do. Arthur was
not sure that he had really understood what it was yet, but he
was profoundly pleased and relieved that something had reached
her.
  
`Explain to me again,' said Random.
  
`There's nothing really to it,' said Arthur. `Clockwork was
something that developed over hundreds of years...'
  
`Earth years.'
  
`Yes. It became finer and finer and more and more intricate.
It was highly skilled and delicate work. It had to be made very
small, and it had to carry on working accurately however much
you waved it around or dropped it.'
  
`But only on one planet?'
  
`Well, that was where it was made, you see. It was never
expected to go anywhere else and deal with different suns and
moons and magnetic fields and things. I mean the thing still
goes perfectly well, but it doesn't really mean much this far
from Switzerland.'
  
`From where?'
  
`Switzerland. That's where these were made. Small hilly coun-
try. Tiresomely neat. The people who made them didn't really
know there were other worlds.'
  
`Quite a big thing not to know.'
  
`Well, yes.'
  
`So where did they come from?'
  
`They, that is we... we just sort of grew there. We evolv-
ed on the Earth. From, I don't know, some kind of sludge or
something.'
  
`Like this watch.'
  
`Um. I don't think the watch grew out of sludge.'
  
`You don't understand!'
  
Random suddenly leaped to her feet, shouting.
  
`You don't understand! You don't understand me, you don't
understand anything! I hate you for being so stupid!'
  
She started to run hectically down the hill, still clutching
the watch and shouting that she hated him.
  
Arthur jumped up, startled and at a loss. He started to run
after her through the stringy and clumpy grass. It was hard and
painful for him. When he had broken his leg in the crash, it had
not been a clean break, and it had not healed cleanly. He was
stumbling and wincing as he ran.
  
Suddenly she turned and faced him, her face dark with anger.
  
She brandished the watch at him. `You don't understand
that there's somewhere this belongs? Somewhere it works?
Somewhere that it fits?'
  
She turned and ran again. She was fit and fleet-footed and
Arthur could not remotely keep up with her.
 
It wasn't that he had not expected being a father to be
this difficult, it was that he hadn't expected to be a father
at all, particularly not suddenly and unexpectedly on an alien
planet.
  
Random turned to shout at him again. For some reason
he stopped each time she did.
  
`Who do you think I am?' she demanded angrily. `Your
upgrade? Who do you think Mum thought I was? Some sort
of ticket to the life she didn't have?'
  
`I don't know what you mean by that,' said Arthur, panting
and hurting.
  
`You don't know what anybody means by anything!'
  
`What do you mean?'
  
`Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!'
  
`Tell me! Please tell me! What does she mean by saying
the life she didn't have?'
  
`She wished she'd stayed on Earth! She wished she hadn't
gone off with that stupid brain-dead fruit gum, Zaphod! She
thinks she would have had a different life!'
  
`But,' said Arthur, `she would have been killed! She would
have been killed when the world was destroyed!'
  
`That's a different life isn't it?'
  
`That's...'
  
`She wouldn't have had to have me! She hates me!'
  
`You can't mean that! How could anyone possibly, er, I
mean...'
  
`She had me because I was meant to make things fit for her.
That was my job. But I fitted even worse than she did! So she
just shut me off and carried on with her stupid life.'
  
`What's stupid about her life? She's fantastically successful,
isn't she? She's all over time and space, all over the Sub-Etha
TV networks...'
  
`Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!'
  
Random turned and ran off again. Arthur couldn't keep up
with her and at last he had to sit down for a bit and let the pain
in his leg subside. The turmoil in his head he didn't know what
to do with at all.
He hobbled into the village an hour later. It was getting dark. The
villagers he passed said hello, but there was a sense of nervousness
and of not quite knowing what was going on or what to do about
it in the air. Old Thrashbarg had been seen pulling on his beard
a fair bit and looking at the moon, and that was not a good sign
either.
  
Arthur went into his hut.
  
Random was sitting hunched quietly over the table.
  
`I'm sorry,' she said. `I'm so sorry.'
  
`That's all right,' said Arthur as gently as he knew how. `It's
good to, well, to have a little chat. There's so much we have to
learn and understand about each other, and life isn't, well it isn't
all just tea and sandwiches...'
  
`I'm so sorry,' she said again, sobbing.
  
Arthur went up to her and put his arm round her shoulder.
She didn't resist or pull away. Then Arthur saw what it was she
was so sorry about.
  
In the pool of light thrown by a Lamuellan lantern lay
Arthur's watch. Random had forced the back off it with the
back edge of the butter spreading knife, and all of the minute
cogs and springs and levers were lying in a tiny cock-eyed mess
where she'd been fiddling with them.
  
`I just wanted to see how it worked,' said Random, `how it
all fitted together. I'm so sorry! I can't get it back together. I'm
sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I don't know what to do. I'll get it
repaired! Really! I'll get it repaired!'
The following day Thrashbarg came round and said all sorts
of Bob stuff. He tried to exert a calming influence by inviting
Random to let her mind dwell on the ineffable mystery of the
giant earwig, and Random said there was no giant earwig and
Thrashbarg went very cold and silent and said she would be cast
into outer darkness. Random said good, she'd been born there,
and the next day the parcel arrived.
This was all getting a bit eventful.
  
In fact, when the parcel arrived, delivered by a kind of robot
drone that dropped out of the sky making droning robot noises,
it brought with it a sense which gradually began to permeate
through the whole village, that it was almost one event too many.
  
It wasn't the robot drone's fault. All it required was Arthur
Dent's signature or thumb print, or just a few scrapings of skin
cells from the nape of his neck and it would be on its way again.
It hung around waiting, not quite sure what all this resentment
was about. Meanwhile, Kirp had caught another fish with a head
at both ends, but on closer inspection it turned out that it was in
fact two fish cut in half and sewn together rather badly, so not
only had Kirp failed to rekindle any great interest in two-headed
fish but he had seriously cast doubt on the authenticity of the
first one. Only the pikka birds seemed to feel that everything
was exactly normal.
  
The robot drone got Arthur's signature and made its escape.
Arthur bore the parcel back to his hut and sat and looked at
it.
  
`Let's open it!' said Random, who was feeling much more
cheerful this morning now that everything around her had got
thoroughly weird, but Arthur said no.
  
`Why not?'
  
`It's not addressed to me.'
  
`Yes, it is.'
  
`No, it isn't. It's addressed to... well, it's addressed to
Ford Prefect, in care of me.'
  
`Ford Prefect? Is he the one who...'
  
`Yes,' said Arthur tartly.
  
`I've heard about him.'
  
`I expect you have.'
  
`Let' s open it anyway. What else are we going to do?'
  
`I don't know,' said Arthur, who really wasn't sure.
He had taken his damaged knives over to the forge bright
and early that morning and Strinder had had a look at them
and said that he would see what he could do.
  
They had tried the usual business of waving the knives through
the air, feeling for the point of balance and the point of flex and
so on, but the joy was gone from it, and Arthur had a sad feeling
that his sandwich making days were probably numbered.
  
He hung his head.
  
The next appearance of the Perfectly Normal Beasts was
imminent, but Arthur felt that the usual festivities of hunting
and feasting were going to be rather muted and uncertain.
Something had happened here on Lamuella, and Arthur had
a horrible feeling that it was him.
  
`What do you think it is?' urged Random, turning the parcel
over in her hands.
  
`I don't know, said Arthur. `Something bad and worrying,
though.'
  
`How do you know?' Random protested.
  
`Because anything to do with Ford Prefect is bound to be
worse and more worrying than something that isn't,' said Arthur.
`Believe me.'
  
`You're upset about something, aren't you?' said Random.
  
Arthur sighed.
  
`I'm just feeling a little jumpy and unsettled, I think,' said
Arthur.
  
`I'm sorry,' said Random, and put the package down again.
She could see that it really would upset him if she opened it.
She would just have to do it when he wasn't looking.


                          % 16

Arthur wasn't quite certain which he noticed as being missing
first. When he noticed that the one wasn't there his mind instantly
leapt to the other and he knew immediately that they were both
gone and that something insanely bad and difficult to deal with
would happen as a result.
  
Random was not there. And neither was the parcel.
  
He had left it up on a shelf all day, in plain view. It was
an exercise in trust.
  
He knew that one of the things he was supposed to do as a
parent was to show trust in his child, to build a sense of trust
and confidence into the bedrock of relationship between them.
He had had a nasty feeling that that might be an idiotic thing to
do, but he did it anyway, and sure enough it had turned out to
be an idiotic thing to do. You live and learn. At any rate, you
live.
  
You also panic.
  
Arthur ran out of the hut. It was the middle of the evening.
The light was getting dim and a storm was brewing. He could
not see her anywhere, nor any sign of her. He asked. No one
had seen her. He asked again. No one else had seen her. They
were going home for the night . A little wind was whipping round
the edge of the village, picking things up and tossing them around
in a dangerously casual manner.
  
He found Old Thrashbarg and asked him. Thrashbarg looked
at him stonily, and then pointed in the one direction that Arthur
had dreaded, and had therefore instinctively known was the way
she would have gone.
  
So now he knew the worst.
  
She had gone where she thought he would not follow her.
  
He looked up at the sky, which was sullen, streaked and livid,
and reflected that it was the sort of sky that the Four Horsemen
of the Apocalypse wouldn't feel like a bunch of complete idiots
riding out of.
  
With a heavy sense of the utmost foreboding he set off
on the track that led to the forest in the next valley. The first
heavy blobs of rain began to hit the ground as Arthur tried to
drag himself to some sort of run.
Random reached the crest of the hill and looked down into the
next valley. It had been a longer and harder climb than she had
anticipated. She was a little worried that doing the trip at night
was not that great an idea, but her father had been mooching
around near the hut all day trying to pretend to either her or
himself that he wasn't guarding the parcel. At last he'd had to
go over to the forge to talk with Strinder about the knives, and
Random had seized her opportunity and done a runner with the
parcel.
  
It was perfectly clear that she couldn't just open the thing
there, in the hut, or even in the village. He might have come
across her at any moment. Which meant that she had to go
where she wouldn't be followed.
  
She could stop where she was now. She had gone this way
in the hope that he wouldn't follow her. and even if he did he
would never find her up in the wooded parts of the hill with
night drawing in and the rain starting.
  
All the way up, the parcel had been jiggling under her arm.
It was a satisfyingly hunky sort of thing: a box with a square top
about the length of her forearm on each side, and about the length
of her hand deep, wrapped up in brown plasper with an ingenious
new form of self-knotting string. It didn't rattle as she shook it,
but she sensed that its weight was concentrated excitingly at the
centre.
  
Having come so far, though, there was a certain satisfaction
in not stopping here, but carrying on down into what seemed to
be almost a forbidden area - where her father's ship had come
down. She wasn't exactly certain what the word `haunted' meant,
but it might be fun to find out. She would keep going and save
the parcel up for when she got there.
  
It was getting darker, though. She hadn't used her tiny electric
torch yet, because she didn't want to be visible from a distance.
She would have to use it now, but it probably didn't matter since
she would be on the other side of the hill which divided the valleys
from each other.
  
She turned her torch on. Almost at the same moment a fork
of lightning ripped across the valley into which she was heading
and startled her considerably. As the darkness shuddered back
around her and a clap of thunder rolled out across the land she
felt suddenly rather small and lost with just a feeble pencil of
light bobbing in her hand. Perhaps she should stop after all
and open the parcel here. Or maybe she should go back and
come out again tomorrow. It was only a momentary hesitation,
though. She knew there was no going back tonight, and sensed
that there was no going back ever.
  
She headed on down the side of the hill. The rain was
beginning to pick up now. Where a short while ago it had
been a few heavy blobs it was settling in for a good pour now,
hissing in the trees, and the ground was getting slippery under
her feet.
  
At least, she thought it was the rain hissing in the trees.
Shadows were leaping and leering at her as her light bobbed
through the trees. Onwards and downwards.
  
She hurried on for another ten or fifteen minutes, soaked to the
skin now and shivering, and gradually became aware that there
seemed to be some other light somewhere ahead of her. It was
very faint and she wasn't certain if she was imagining it or not.
She turned off her torch to see. There did seem to be some sort
of dim glow ahead. She couldn't tell what it was. She turned her
torch back on and continued down the hill, towards whatever it
was.
  
There was something wrong with the woods though.
  
She couldn't immediately say what it was, but they didn't
seem like sprightly healthy woods looking forward to a good
spring. The trees were lolling at sickly angles and had a sort of
pallid, blighted look about them. Random more than once had
the worrying sensation that they were trying to reach towards
her as she passed them, but it was just a trick of the way that
her light caused their shadows to flicker and lurch.
  
Suddenly, something fell out of a tree in front of her. She
leapt backwards with alarm, dropping both the torch and the
box as she did so. She went down into a crouch, pulling the
specially sharpened rock out of her pocket.
  
The thing that had fallen out of the tree was moving. The
torch was lying on the ground and pointing towards it, and a
vast, grotesque shadow was slowly lurching through the light
towards her. She could hear faint rustling and screeching noises
over the steady hiss of the rain. She scrabbled on the ground for
the torch, found it, and shone it directly at the creature.
 
At the same moment another dropped from a tree just a few
feet away. She swung the torch wildly from one to another. She
held her rock up, ready to throw.
  
They were quite small in fact. It was the angle of the light that
had made them loom so large. Not only small. but small, furry
and cuddly. And there was another, dropping from the trees. It
fell through the beam of light, so she saw it quite clearly.
  
It fell neatly and precisely, turned, and then, like the other
two, started slowly and purposefully to advance on Random.
  
She stayed rooted to the spot. She still had her rock. poised
and ready to throw, but was increasingly conscious of the fact
that the things she had it poised and ready to throw at were
squirrels. Or at least, squirrel-like things. Soft, warm, cuddly
squirrel-like things advancing on her in a way she wasn't at all
certain she liked.
  
She shone her torch directly on the first of them. It was
making aggressive, hectoring, screeching noises, and carrying
in one of its little fists a small tattered piece of wet, pink rag.
Random hefted her rock menacingly in her hand, but it made
no impression at all on the squirrel advancing on her with its
wet piece of rag.
  
She backed away. She didn't know at all how to deal with this.
If they had been vicious snarling slavering beasts with glistening
fangs she would have pitched into them with a will, but squirrels
behaving like this she couldn't quite handle.
  
She backed away again. The second squirrel was starting
to make a flanking manoeuvre round to her right. Carrying a
cup. Some kind of acorn thing. The third was right behind it
and making its own advance. What was it carrying? Some little
scrap of soggy paper, Random thought.
  
She stepped back again, caught her ankle against the root
of a tree and fell over backwards.
  
Instantly the first squirrel darted forward and was on top of
her, advancing along her stomach with cold purpose. in its eyes,
and a piece of wet rag in its fist.
  
Random tried to jump up, but only managed to jump about
an inch. The startled movement of the squirrel on her stomach
startled her in return. The squirrel froze, gripping her skin
through her soaking shirt with its tiny claws. Then slowly, inch
by inch, it made its way up her, stopped, and proffered her the
rag.
  
She felt almost hypnotised by the strangeness of the thing and
its tiny glinting eyes. It proffered her the rag again. It pushed it
at her repeatedly, screeching insistently, till at last, nervously,
hesitantly, she took the thing from it. It continued to watch her
intently, its eyes darting all over her face . She had no idea what
to do. Rain and mud were streaming down her face and she had
a squirrel sitting on her. She wiped some mud out of her eyes
with the rag.
  
The squirrel shrieked triumphantly, grabbed the rag hack,
leapt off her, ran scampering into the dark, enclosing night,
darted up into a tree, dived into a hole in the trunk, settled
back and lit a cigarette.
 
Meanwhile Random was trying to fend off the squirrel with
the acorn cup full of rain and the one with the paper. She
shuffled backwards on her bottom.
  
`No!' she shouted. `Go away!'
  
They darted back, in fright, and then darted right forward
again with their gifts. She brandished her rock at them. `Go!'
she yelled.
  
The squirrels scampered round in consternation. Then one
darted straight at her, dropped the acorn cup in her lap, turned
and ran off into the night. The other stood quivering for a
moment, then put its scrap of paper neatly down in front of
her and disappeared as well.
  
She was alone again, but trembling with confusion. She got
unsteadily to her feet, picked up her rock and her parcel, then
paused and picked up the scrap of paper as well. It was so soggy
and dilapidated it was hard to make out what it was. It seemed
just to be a fragment of an in-flight magazine.
  
Just as Random was trying to understand exactly what it was
that this all meant, a man walked out into the clearing in which
she was standing, raised a vicious-looking gun and shot her.
Arthur was thrashing around hopelessly two or three miles
behind her, on the upward side of the hill.
  
Within minutes of setting out he had gone back again and
equipped himself with a lamp. Not an electric one. The only
electric light in the place was the one that Random had brought
with her. This was a kind of dim hurricane lamp: a perforated
metal canister from Strinder's forge, which contained a reservoir
of inflammable fish oil, a wick of knotted dried grass and was
wrapped in a translucent film made from dried membranes from
the gut of a Perfectly Normal Beast.
  
It had now gone out.
  
Arthur jiggled around with it in a thoroughly pointless kind
of a way for a few seconds. There was clearly no way he was
going to get the thing suddenly to burst into flame again in the
middle of a rainstorm, but it's impossible not to make a token
effort. Reluctantly he threw the thing aside.
  
What to do? This was hopeless. He was absolutely sodden,
his clothes heavy and billowing with the rain, and now he was
lost in the dark as well.
 
For a brief second he was lost in the blinding light, and
then he was lost in the dark again.
  
The sheet of lightning had at least shown him that he was
very close to the brow of the hill. Once he had breasted that
he would... well, he wasn't certain what he would do. He'd
have to work that out when he got there.
  
He limped forward and upwards.
  
A few minutes later he knew that he was standing panting at
the top. There was some kind of dim glow in the distance below
him. He had no idea what it was, and indeed he hardly liked to
think. It was the only thing he had to make towards, though,
so he started to make his way, stumbling, lost and frightened
towards it.
The flash of lethal light passed straight through Random and,
about two seconds later, so did the man who had shot it. Other
than that he paid her no attention whatsoever. He had shot
someone standing behind her, and when she turned to look,
he was kneeling over the body and going through its pockets.
  
The tableau froze and vanished. It was replaced a second
later by a giant pair of teeth framed by immense and perfectly
glossed red lips. A huge blue brush appeared out of nowhere
and started foamily to scrub at the teeth, which continued to
hang there gleaming in the shimmering curtain of rain.
  
Random blinked at it twice before she got it.
  
It was a commercial. The guy who had shot her was part
of a holographic in-flight movie. She must now be very close to
where the ship had crashed. Obviously some of its systems were
more indestructible than others.
  
The next half-mile of the journey was particularly trouble-
some. Not only did she have the cold and the rain and the night
to contend with, but also the fractured and thrashing remains of
the ship's on-board entertainment system. Spaceships and jetcars
and helipods crashed and exploded continuously around her,
illuminating the night, villainous people in strange hats smug-
gled dangerous drugs through her, and the combined orchestra
and chorus of the Hallapolis State Opera performed the closing
March of the AnjaQantine Star Guard from Act IV of Rizgar's
Blamwellamum of Woont in a little glade somewhere off to her
left.
  
And then she was standing on the lip of a very nasty looking and
bubbly-edged crater. There was still a faint warm glow coming
from what would otherwise have looked like an enormous piece
of caramelised chewing gum in the centre of the pit: the melted
remains of a great spaceship.
  
She stood looking at it for a longish while, and then at
last started to walk along and around the edge of the crater.
She was no longer certain what she was looking for, but kept
moving anyway, keeping the horror of the pit to her left.
  
The rain was beginning to ease off a little, but it was still
extremely wet, and since she didn't know what it was that was
in the box, whether it was perhaps something delicate or dam-
ageable, she thought she ought to find somewhere reasonably dry
to open it. She hoped she hadn't already damaged it by dropping
it.
  
She played her torch around the surrounding trees, which were
thin on the ground here, and mostly charred and broken. In the
middle distance she thought she could see a jumbled outcrop of
rock which might provide some shelter, and she started to pick
her way towards it. All around she found the detritus that had
been ejected from the ship as it broke up, before the final fireball.
  
After she had moved two or three hundred yards from the
edge of the crater she came across the tattered fragments of some
fluffy pink material, sodden, muddied and drooping amongst the
broken trees. She guessed, correctly, that this must be the remains
of the escape cocoon that had saved her father's life. She went and
looked at it more closely, and then noticed something close to it
on the ground, half covered in mud.
  
She picked it up and wiped the mud off it. It was some kind of
electronic device the size of a small book. Feebly glowing on its
cover, in response to her touch, were some large friendly letters.
They said DON'T PANIC. She knew what this was. It was her
father's copy of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
  
She felt instantly reassured by it, turned her head up to the
thundery sky and let some. rain wash over her face and into her
mouth.
  
She shook her head and hurried on towards the rocks. Clamber-
ing up and over them she almost immediately found the perfect
thing. The mouth of a cave. She played her torch into its inte-
rior. It seemed to be dry and safe. Picking her way carefully,
she walked in. It was quite spacious, but didn't go that deep.
Exhausted and relieved she sat on a convenient rock, put the
box down in front of her and started immediately to open it.


                          % 17

For a long period of time there was much speculation and
controversy about where the so-called `missing matter' of the
Universe had got to. All over the Galaxy the science depart-
ments of all the major universities were acquiring more and
more elaborate equipment to probe and search the hearts of
distant galaxies, and then the very centre and the very edges of
the whole Universe, but when eventually it was tracked down it
turned out in fact to he all the stuff which the equipment had
been packed in.
  
There was quite a large quantity of missing matter in the
box, little soft round white pellets of missing matter, which
Random discarded for future generations of physicists to track
down and discover all over again once the findings of the
current generation of physicists had been lost and forgotten
about.
  
Out of the pellets of missing matter she lifted the featureless
black disk. She put it down on a rock beside her and sifted
amongst all the missing matter to see if there was anything
else, a manual or some attachments or something, but there
was nothing else at all. Just the black disk.
  
She shone the torch on it.
  
As she did so, cracks began to appear along its apparently
featureless surface. Random backed away nervously, but then
saw that the thing, whatever it was, was merely unfolding itself.
  
The process was wonderfully beautiful. It was extraordinarily
elaborate but also simple and elegant. It was like a piece of
self-opening origami, or a rosebud blooming into a rose in just
a few seconds.
  
Where just a few moments earlier there had been a smoothly
curved black disk there was now a bird. A bird, hovering there.
  
Random continued to back away from it, carefully and watch-
fully.
  
It was a little like a pikka bird, only rather smaller. That is
to say, in fact it was larger, or to be more exact, precisely the
same size or, at least, not less than twice the size. It was also
both a lot bluer and a lot pinker than pikka birds, while at the
same time being perfectly black.
  
There was also something very odd about it, which Random
couldn't immediately make out.
  
It certainly shared with pikka birds the impression it gave
that it was watching something that you couldn't see.
  
Suddenly it vanished.
  
Then, just as suddenly everything went black. Random drop-
ped into a tense crouch, feeling for the specially sharpened rock
in her pocket again. Then the blackness receded and rolled itself
up into a ball and then the blackness was the bird again. It hung
in the air in front of her, beating its wings slowly and staring at
her.
  
`Excuse me,' it said suddenly, `I just have to calibrate myself.
Can you hear me when I say this?'
  
`When you say what?' demanded Random.
  
`Good,' said the bird. `And can you hear me when I say
this?' It spoke this time at a much higher pitch.
  
`Yes, of course I can!' said Random.
  
`And can you hear me when I say this?' it said, this time
in a sepulchrally deep voice.
  
`Yes!'
 
There was then a pause.
  
`No obviously not,' said the bird after a few seconds. `Good,
well your hearing range is obviously between 20 and 16 KHz. So.
Is this comfortable for you?' it said in a pleasant light tenor. `No
uncomfortable harmonics screeching away in the upper register?
Obviously not. Good. I can use those as data channels. Now.
How many of me can you see?'
  
Suddenly the air was full of nothing but interlocking birds.
Random was well used to spending time in virtual realities, but
this was something far weirder than anything she had previously
encountered. It was as if the whole geometry of space was
redefined in seamless bird shapes.
  
Random gasped and flung her arms round her face, her
arms moving through bird-shaped space.
  
`Hmmm, obviously way too many,' said the bird. `How about
now?'
  
It concertina-ed into a tunnel of birds, as if it was a bird
caught between parallel mirrors, reflecting infinitely into the
distance.
  
`What are you?' shouted Random.
  
`We'll come to that in a minute,' said the bird. `Just how
many, please?'
  
`Well, you're sort of...' Random gestured helplessly off
into the distance.
  
`I see, still infinite in extent, but at least we're homing in
on the right dimensional matrix. Good. No, the answer is an
orange and two lemons.'
  
`Lemons?'
  
`If I have three lemons and three oranges and I lose two
oranges and a lemon what do I have left?'
  
`Huh?'
  
`OK, so you think that time flows that way, do you? Interesting.
Am I still infinite?' it asked, ballooning this way and that in space.
`Am I infinite now? How yellow am I?'
  
Moment by moment the bird was going through mind-mangling
transformations of shape and extent.
  
`I can't...' said Random bewildered.
  
`You don't have to answer, I can tell from watching you
now. So. Am I your mother? Am I a rock? Do I seem huge,
squishy and sinuously intertwined? No? How about now? Am
I going backwards?'
  
For once the bird was perfectly still and steady.
  
`No,' Said Random.
  
`Well I was in fact, I was moving backwards in time. Hmmm.
Well I think we've sorted all that out now. If you'd like to know,
I can tell you that in your universe you move freely in three
dimensions that you call space. You move in a straight line in
a fourth, which you call time, and stay rooted to one place in a
fifth, which is the first fundamental of probability. After that it
gets a hit complicated, and there's all sorts of stuff going on in
dimensions 13 to 22 that you really wouldn't want to know about.
All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe
is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start
from a position of thinking it's pretty damn complicated in the
first place. I can easily not say words like ``damn'' if it offends
you.'
  
`Say what you damn well like.'
  
`I will.'
  
`What the hell are you?' demanded Random.
  
`I am The Guide. In your universe I am your Guide. In fact I
inhabit what is technically known as the Whole Sort of General
Mish Mash which means... well, let me show you.'
  
It turned in mid-air and swooped out of the cave, and then
perched on a rock, just beneath an overhang, out of the rain,
which was getting heavier again.
  
`Come on,' it said, `watch this.'
  
Random didn't like being bossed around by a bird, but she
followed it to the mouth of the cave anyway, still fingering the
rock in her pocket.
  
`Rain,' said the bird. `You see? Just rain.'
  
`I know what rain is.'
  
Sheets of the stuff were sweeping through the night, moonlight
sifting through it.
  
`So what is it?'
  
`What do you mean, what is it? Look, who are you? What
were you doing in that box? Why have I spent a night running
through the forest fending off demented squirrels to find that
all I've got at the end of it is a bird asking me what rain
is. It's just water falling through the bloody air, that's what
it is. Anything else you want to know or can we go home
now?'
  
There was a long pause before the bird answered, `You
want to go home?'
  
`I haven't got a home!' Random almost shocked herself,
she screamed the words so loudly.
  
`Look into the rain...' said the bird Guide.
  
`I'm looking into the rain! What else is there to look at?'
  
`What do you see?'
  
`What do you mean, you stupid bird? I just see a load
of rain. It's just water, falling.'
  
`What shapes do you see in the water?'
  
`Shapes? There aren't any shapes. It's just, just...'
  
`Just a mish mash,' said the bird Guide.
  
`Yes...'
  
`Now what do you see?'
  
Just on the very edge of visibility a thin faint beam fanned out
of the bird's eyes. In the dry air beneath the overhang there was
nothing to see. Where the beam hit the drops of rain as they fell
through it, there was a flat sheet of light, so bright and vivid it
seemed solid.
  
`Oh great. A laser show,' said Random fractiously. `Never
seen one of those before, of course, except at about five million
rock concerts.'
  
`Tell me what you see!'
  
`Just a flat sheet! Stupid bird.'
  
`There's nothing there that wasn't there before. I'm just using
light to draw your attention to certain drops at certain moments.
Now what do you see?'
  
The light shut off.
  
`Nothing.'
  
`I'm doing exactly the same thing, but with ultra-violet light.
You can't see it.'
  
`So what's the point of showing me something I can't see?'
  
`So that you understand that just because you see something,
it doesn't mean to say it's there. And if you don't see something
it doesn't mean to say it's not there, it's only what your senses
bring to your attention.'
  
`I'm bored with this,' said Random, and then gasped.
  
Hanging in the rain was a giant and very vivid three-dimen-
sional image of her father looking startled about something.
About two miles away behind Random, her father, struggling
his way through the woods suddenly stopped. He was startled to
see an image of himself looking startled about something hanging
brightly in the rain-filled air about two miles away. About two
miles away some distance to the right of the direction in which
he was heading.
  
He was almost completely lost, convinced he was going to die
of cold and wet and exhaustion and beginning to wish he could
just get on with it. He had just been brought an entire golfing
magazine by a squirrel, as well, and his brain. was beginning to
howl and gibber.
  
Seeing a huge bright image of himself light up in the sky told
him that, on balance, he was probably right to howl and gibber
but probably wrong as far as the direction he was heading was
concerned.
  
Taking a deep breath, he turned and headed off towards
the inexplicable light show.
`OK, so what's that supposed to prove?' demanded Random. It
was the fact that the image was her father that had startled her
rather than the appearance of the image itself. She had seen her
first hologram when she was two months old and had been put in
it to play. She had seen her most recent one about half an hour
ago playing the March of the AnjaQantine Star Guard.
  
`Only that it's no more there or not there than the sheet
was,' said the bird. `It's just the interaction of water from the
sky moving in one direction, with light at frequencies your senses
can detect moving in another. It makes an apparently solid image
in your mind. But it's all just images in the Mish Mash. Here's
another one for you.'
  
`My mother!' said Random.
  
`No,' said the bird.
  
`I know my mother when I see her!'
  
The image was of a woman emerging from a spacecraft
inside a large, grey hangar-like building. She was being escorted
by a group of tall, thin purplish-green creatures. It was definite-
ly Random's mother. Well, almost definitely. Trillian wouldn't
have been walking quite so uncertainly in low gravity, or looking
around her at a boring old life-support environment with quite
such a disbelieving look on her face, or carrying such a quaint
old camera.
  
`So who is it?' demanded Random.
  
`She is part of the extent of your mother on the probability
axis,' said the bird Guide.
  
`I haven't the faintest idea what you mean.'
  
`Space, time and probability all have axes along which it
is possible to move.'
  
`Still dunno. Though I think... No. Explain.'
  
`I thought you wanted to go home.'
  
`Explain!'
  
`Would you like to see your home?'
  
`See it? It was destroyed!'
  
`It is discontinuous along the probability axis. Look!'
 
Something very strange and wonderful now swam into view
in the rain. It was a huge, bluish-greenish globe, misty and
cloud-covered, turning with. majestic slowness against a black,
starry background.
  
`Now you see it,' said the bird. `Now you don't.'
A little less than two miles away, now, Arthur Dent stood still
in his tracks. He could not believe what he could see, hanging
there, shrouded in rain, but brilliant and vividly real against the
night sky - the Earth. He gasped at the sight of it. Then, at the
moment he gasped, it disappeared again. Then it appeared again.
Then, and this was the bit that made him give up and stick straws
in his hair, it turned into a sausage.
Random was also startled by the sight of this huge, blue and
green and watery and misty sausage hanging above her. And
now it was a string of sausages, or rather it was a string of
sausages in which many of the sausages were missing. The whole
brilliant string turned and span in a bewildering dance in the
air and then gradually slowed, grew insubstantial and faded into
the glistening darkness of the night.
  
`What was that?' asked Random, in a small voice.
  
`A glimpse along the probability axis of a discontinuously
probable object.'
  
`I see.'
  
`Most objects mutate and change along their axis of prob-
ability, but the world of your origin does something slightly
different. It lies on what you might call a fault line in the
landscape of probability which means that at many probability
co-ordinates, the whole of it simply ceases to exist. It has an
inherent instability, which is typical of anything that lies within
what are usually designated the Plural sectors. Make sense?'
  
`No.'
  
`Want to go and see for yourself?'
  
`To... Earth?'
  
`Yes.'
  
`Is that possible?'
  
The bird Guide did not answer at once. It spread its wings
and, with an easy grace, ascended into the air and flew out into
the rain which, once again, was beginning to lighten.
 
It soared ecstatically up into the night sky, lights flashed
around it, dimensions dithered in its wake. It swooped and
turned and looped and turned again and came at last to rest
two feet in front of Random's face, its wings beating slowly and
silently.
  
It spoke to her again.
  
`Your universe is vast to you. Vast in time, vast in space.
That's because of the filters through which you perceive it. But
I was built with no filters at all, which means I perceive the mish
mash which contains all possible universes but which has, itself,
no size at all. For me, anything is possible. I am omniscient
and omnipotent, extremely vain, and, what is more, I come in
a handy self-carrying package. You have to work out how much
of the above is true.'
  
A slow smile spread over Random's face.
  
`You bloody little thing. You've been winding me up!'
  
`As I said, anything is possible.'
  
Random laughed. `OK,' she said. `Let's try and go to Earth.
Let's go to Earth at some point on its, er...'
  
`Probability axis?'
  
`Yes. Where it hasn't been blown up. OK. So you're the
Guide. How do we get a lift?'
  
`Reverse engineering.'
  
`What?'
  
`Reverse engineering. To me the flow of time is irrelevant.
You decide what you want. I then merely make sure that it has
already happened.'
  
`You're joking.'
  
`Anything is possible.'
  
Random frowned. `You are joking aren't you?'
  
`Let me put it another way,' said the bird. `Reverse engineering
enables us to shortcut all the business of waiting for one of the
horribly few spaceships that passes through your galactic sector
every year or so to make up its mind about whether or not it
feels like giving you a lift. You want a lift a ship arrives and
gives you one. The pilot may think he has any one of a million
reasons why he has decided to stop and pick you up. The real
reason is that I have determined that he will.'
  
`This is you being extremely vain isn't it, little bird?'
  
The bird was silent.
  
`OK,' said Random. `I want a ship to take me to Earth.'
  
`Will this one do?'
  
It was so silent that Random had not noticed the descending
spaceship until it was nearly on top of her.
Arthur had noticed it. He was a mile away now and closing. Just
after the illuminated sausage display had drawn to its conclusion
he had noticed the faint glimmerings of further lights coming
down out of the clouds and had, to begin with, assumed it to
be another piece of flashy son et lumiere.
  
It took a moment or so for it to dawn on him that it was
an actual spaceship, and a moment or two longer for him to
realise that it was dropping directly down to where he assumed
his daughter to be. That was when, rain or no rain, leg injury
or no leg injury, darkness or no darkness, he suddenly started
really to run.
  
He fell almost immediately, slid and hurt his knee quite badly
on a rock. He slithered back up to his feet and tried again. He
had a horrible cold feeling that he was about to lose Random
for ever. Limping and cursing, he ran. He didn't know what it
was that had been in the box, but the name on it had been Ford
Prefect, and that was the name he cursed as he ran.
The ship was one of the sexiest and most beautiful ones that
Random had ever seen.
  
It was astounding. Silver, sleek, ineffable.
  
If she didn't know better she would have said it was an RW6.
As it settled silently beside her she realised that it actually was
an RW6 and she could scarcely breathe for excitement. An RW6
was the sort of thing you only saw in the sort of magazines that
were designed to provoke civil unrest.
  
She was also extremely nervous. The manner and timing of
its arrival was deeply unsettling. Either it was the most bizarre
coincidence or something very peculiar and worrying was going
on. She waited a little tensely for the ship's hatch to open. Her
Guide - she thought of it as hers now - was hovering lightly over
her right shoulder, its wings barely fluttering.
  
The hatch opened. Just a little dim light escaped. A moment
or two passed and a figure emerged. He stood still for a moment
or so, obviously trying to accustom his eyes to the darkness.
Then he caught sight of Random standing there, and seemed a
little surprised. He started to walk towards her. Then suddenly
he shouted in surprise and started to run at her.
  
Random was not a good person to take a run at on a
dark night when she was feeling a little strung out. She had
unconsciously been fingering the rock in her pocket from the
moment she saw the craft coming down.
Still running, slithering, hurtling, bumping into trees, Arthur
saw at last that he was too late. The ship had only been on the
ground for about three minutes, and now, silently, gracefully it
was rising up above the trees again, turning smoothly in the fine
speckle of rain to which the storm had now abated, climbing,
climbing, tipping up its nose and, suddenly, effortlessly, hurtling
up through the clouds.
  
Gone. Random was in it. It was impossible for Arthur to
know this, but he just went ahead and knew it anyway. She was
gone. He had had his stint at being a parent and could scarcely
believe how badly he had done at it. He tried to continue run-
ning, but his feet were dragging, his knee was hurting like fury
and he knew that he was too late.
  
He could not conceive that he could feel more wretched
and awful than this, but he was wrong.
  
He limped his way at last to the cave where Random had
sheltered and opened the box. The ground bore the indentations
of the spacecraft that had landed there only minutes before, but
of Random there was no sign. He wandered disconsolately into
the cave, found the empty box and piles of missing matter pellets
strewn around the place. He felt a little cross about that. He'd
tried to teach her about cleaning up after herself. Feeling a bit
cross with her about something like that helped him feel less
desolate about her leaving. He knew he had no means of finding
her.
  
His foot knocked against something unexpected. He bent
down to pick it up, and was thoroughly surprised to discover
what it was. It was his old Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
How did that come to be in the cave? He had never returned
to collect it from the scene of the crash. He had not wanted to
revisit the crash and he had not wanted the Guide again. He had
reckoned he was here on Lamuella, making sandwiches for good.
How did it come to be in the cave? It was active. The words on
the cover flashed DON'T PANIC at him.
  
He went out of the cave again into the dim and damp
moonlight. He sat on a rock to have a look through the old
Guide, and then discovered it wasn't a rock, it was a person.


                          % 18

Arthur leapt to his feet with a start of fear. It would be
hard to say which he was more frightened of: that he. might
have hurt the person he had inadvertently sat on or that the
person he had inadvertently sat on would hurt him back.
  
There seemed, on inspection, to be little immediate cause for
alarm on the second count. Whoever it was he had sat on was
unconscious. That would probably go a great deal of the way
towards explaining what he was doing lying there. He seemed to
be breathing OK, though. Arthur felt his pulse. That was OK as
well.
  
He was lying on his side, half curled up. It was so long ago
and far away when Arthur had last done First Aid that he really
couldn't remember what it was he was supposed to do. The first
thing he was supposed to do, he remembered, was to have a First
Aid kit about his person. Damn.
  
Should he roll him on to his back or not? Suppose he had
any broken bones? Suppose he swallowed his tongue? Suppose
he sued him? Who, apart from anything else, was he?
  
At that moment the unconscious man groaned loudly and
rolled himself over.
 
Arthur wondered if he should -
  
He looked at him.
  
He looked at him again.
  
He looked at him again, just to make absolutely sure.
  
Despite the fact that he had been thinking he was feeling
about as low as he possibly could, he experienced a terrible
sinking feeling.
  
The figure groaned again and slowly opened his eyes. It
took him a while to focus, then he blinked and stiffened.
  
`You!' said Ford Prefect.
  
`You!' said Arthur Dent.
  
Ford groaned again.
  
`What do you need to have explained this time?' he said,
and closed his eyes in some kind of despair. Five minutes later he was sitting up and rubbing the side
of his head, where he had quite a large swelling.
  
`Who the hell was that woman?' he said. `Why are we sur-
rounded by squirrels, and what do they want?'
  
`I've been pestered by squirrels all night,' said Arthur. `They
keep on trying to give me magazines and stuff.'
  
Ford frowned. `Really?' he said.
  
`And bits of rag.'
  
Ford thought.
  
`Oh,' he said. `Is this near where your ship crashed?'
  
`Yes,' said Arthur. He said it a little tightly.
  
`That's probably it. Can happen. Ship's cabin robots get
destroyed. The cyberminds that control them survive and start
infesting the local wildlife. Can turn a whole ecosystem into some
kind of helpless thrashing service industry, handing out hot towels
and drinks to passers-by. Should be a law against it. Probably is.
Probably also a law against there being a law against it so every-
body can get nice and worked up. Hey ho. What did you say?'
  
`I said, and the woman is my daughter.'
  
Ford stopped rubbing his head.
  
`Say that one more time.'
  
`I said,' said Arthur huffily, `the woman is my daughter.'
  
`I didn't know,' said Ford, `that you had a daughter.'
  
`Well, there's probably a lot you don't know about me,'
said Arthur. `Come to mention it, there's probably a lot I
don't know about me either.'
  
`Well, well, well. When did this happen then?'
  
`I'm not quite sure.'
  
`That sounds like more familiar territory,' said Ford. `Is there
a mother involved?'
  
`Trillian.'
  
`Trillian? I didn't think that...'
  
`No. Look, it's a bit embarrassing.'
  
`I remember she told me once she had a kid but only, sort
of, in passing. I'm in touch with her from time to time. Never
seen her with the kid.'
  
Arthur said nothing.
  
Ford started to feel the side of his head again in some
bemusement.
  
`Are you sure this was your daughter?' he said.
  
`Tell me what happened.'
  
`Phroo. Long story. I was coming to pick up this parcel
I'd sent to myself here care of you...'
  
`Well, what was that all about?'
  
`I think it may be something unimaginably dangerous.'
  
`And you sent it to me?' protested Arthur.
  
`Safest place I could think of. I thought I could rely on you
to be absolutely boring and not open it. Anyway, coming in at
night I couldn't find this village place. I was going by pretty basic
information. I couldn't find any signal of any kind. I guess you
don't have signals and stuff here.'
  
`That's what I like about it.'
  
`Then I did pick up a faint signal from your old copy of the
Guide, so I homed in on that, thinking that would take me to
you. I found I'd landed in some kind of wood. Couldn't figure
out what was going on. I get out, and then see this woman
standing there. I go up to say hello, then suddenly I see that
she's got this thing!'
  
`What thing?'
  
`The thing I sent you! The new Guide! The bird thing! You
were meant to keep it safe, you idiot, but this woman had the
thing right there by her shoulder. I ran forward and she hit me
with a rock.'
  
`I see,' said Arthur. `What did you do?'
  
`Well, I fell over of course. I was very badly hurt. She and
the bird started to make off towards my ship. And when I say
my ship, I mean an RW6.'
  
`A what?'
  
`An RW6 for Zark's sake. I've got this great relationship
going now between my credit card and the Guide's central
computer. You would not believe that ship, Arthur, it's...'
  
`So an RW6 is a spaceship, then?'
  
`Yes! It's - oh never mind. Look, just get some kind of
grip will you, Arthur? Or at least get some kind of catalogue.
At this point I was very worried. And, I think, semi-concussed.
I was down on my knees and bleeding profusely, so I did the
only thing I could think of, which was to beg. I said, please for
Zark's sake don't take my ship. And don't leave me stranded in
the middle of some primitive zarking forest with no medical help
and a head injury. I could be in serious trouble and so could she.'
  
`What did she say?'
  
`She hit me on the head with the rock again.'
  
`I think I can confirm that that was my daughter.'
  
`Sweet kid.'
  
`You have to get to know her,' said Arthur.
  
`She eases up does she?'
  
`No,' said Arthur, `but you get a better sense of when to duck.'
  
Ford held his head and tried to see straight.
  
The sky was beginning to lighten in the west, which was
where the sun rose. Arthur didn't particularly want to see
it. The last thing he wanted after a hellish night like this
one was some blasted day coming along and barging about the
place.
  
`What are you doing in a place like this, Arthur?' demanded
Ford.
  
`Well,' said Arthur, `making sandwiches mostly.'
  
`What?'
  
`I am, probably was, the sandwich maker for a small tribe. It
was a bit embarrassing really. When I first arrived, that is, when
they rescued me from the wreckage of this super high-technology
spacecraft which had crashed on their planet, they were very nice
to me and I thought I should help them out a bit. You know, I'm
an educated chap from a high-technology culture, I could show
them a thing or two. And of course I couldn't. I haven't got the
faintest idea, when it comes down to it, of how anything actually
works. I don't mean like video-recorders, nobody knows how to
work those. I mean just something like a pen or an artesian well
or something. Not the foggiest. I couldn't help at all. One day
I got glum and made myself a sandwich. That suddenly got
them all excited. They'd never seen one before. It was just
an idea that had never occurred to them, and I happen to
quite like making sandwiches, so it all sort of developed from
there.'
  
`And you enjoyed that?'
  
`Well, yes, I think I sort of did, really. Getting a good
set of knives, that sort of thing.'
  
`You didn't, for instance, find it mind-witheringly, explosively,
astoundingly, blisteringly dull?'
  
`Well, er, no. Not as such. Not actually blisteringly.'
  
`Odd. I would.'
  
`Well, I suppose we have a different outlook.'
  
`Yes.'
  
`Like the pikka birds.'
  
Ford had no idea what he was talking about and couldn't
be bothered to ask. Instead he said, `So how the hell do we
get out of this place?'
  
`Well I think the simplest way from here is just to follow the
way down the valley to the plains, probably take an hour, and
then walk round from there. I don't think I could face going
back up and over the way I came.'
  
`Walk round where from there?'
  
`Well, back to the village. I suppose.' Arthur sighed a little
forlornly.
  
`I don't want to go to any blasted village!' snapped Ford.
  
`We've got to get out of here!'
  
`Where? How?'
  
`I don't know, you tell me. You live here! There must be
some way off this zarking planet.'
  
`I don't know. What do you usually do? Sit around and
wait for a passing spacecraft, I suppose.'
  
`Oh yes? And how many spacecraft have visited this zark-
forsaken little fleapit recently?'
  
`Well, a few years ago there was mine that crashed here by
mistake. Then there was, er, Trillian, then the parcel delivery,
and now you, and...'
  
`Yes, but apart from the usual suspects?'
  
`Well, er, I think pretty much none, so far as I know. Pretty
quiet round here.'
  
As if deliberately to prove him wrong, there was a long,
low distant roll of thunder.
  
Ford leapt to his feet fretfully and started pacing backwards
and forwards in the feeble, painful light of the early dawn which
lay streaked against the sky as if someone had dragged a piece
of liver across it.
  
`You don't understand how important this is,' he said.
  
`What? You mean my daughter out there all alone in the
Galaxy? You think I don't...'
  
`Can we feel sorry for the Galaxy later?' said Ford. `This is
very, very serious indeed. The Guide has been taken over. It's
been bought out.'
  
Arthur leapt up. `Oh very serious,' he shouted. `Please fill
me in straight away on some corporate publishing politics! I
can't tell you how much it's been on my mind of late!'
  
`You don't understand! There's a whole new Guide!'
  
`Oh!' shouted Arthur again. `Oh! Oh! Oh! I'm incoherent
with excitement! I can hardly wait for it to come out to find
out which are the most exciting spaceports to get bored hanging
about in in some globular cluster I've never heard of. Please,
can we rush to a store that's got it right this very instant?'
  
Ford narrowed his eyes.
  
`This is that thing you call sarcasm, isn't it?'
  
`Do you know,' bellowed Arthur, `I think it is? I really think
it might just be a crazy little thing called sarcasm seeping in at
the edges of my manner of speech! Ford, I have had a fucking
bad night! Will you please try and take that into account while you
consider what fascinating bits of badger-sputumly inconsequential
trivia to assail me with next?'
  
`Try to rest,' said Ford. `I need to think.'
  
`Why do you need to think? Can't we just sit and go budum-
budumbudum with our lips for a bit? Couldn't we just dribble
gently and loll a little bit to the left for a few minutes? I can't
stand it, Ford! I can't stand all this thinking and trying to work
things out any more. You may think that I am just standing here
barking...'
  
`Hadn't occurred to me in fact.'
  
`...but I mean it! What is the point? We assume that
every time we do anything we know what the consequences
will be, i.e., more or less what we intend them to be. This
is not only not always correct. It is wildly, crazily, stupidly
cross-eyed-blithering-insectly wrong!'
  
`Which is exactly my point.'
  
`Thank you,' said Arthur, sitting down again. `What?'
  
`Temporal reverse engineering.'
  
Arthur put his head in his hands and shook it gently from
side to side.
  
`Is there any humane way,' he moaned, `in which I can prevent
you from telling me what temporary reverse bloody-whatsiting is?'
  
`No,' said Ford, `because your daughter is caught up in the
middle of it and it is deadly, deadly serious.'
  
Thunder rolled in the pause.
  
`All right,' said Arthur. `Tell me.'
  
`I leaped out of a high-rise office window.'
  
This cheered Arthur up.
  
`Oh!' he said. `Why don't you do it again?'
  
`I did.'
  
`Hmmm,' said Arthur, disappointed. `Obviously no good came
of it.'
  
`The first time I managed to save myself by the most astonish-
ing and - I say this in all modesty - fabulous piece of ingenious
quick-thinking, agility, fancy footwork and self-sacrifice.'
  
`What was the self-sacrifice?'
  
`I jettisoned half of a much loved and I think irreplaceable
pair of shoes.'
  
`Why was that self-sacrifice?'
  
`Because they were mine!' said Ford crossly.
  
`I think we have different value systems.'
  
`Well mine's better.'
  
`That's according to your... oh never mind. So having saved
yourself very cleverly once you very sensibly went and jumped
again. Please don't tell me why. Just tell me what happened if
you must.'
  
`I fell straight into the open cockpit of a passing jet towncar
whose pilot had just accidentally pushed the eject button when he
meant only to change tracks on the stereo. Now, even I couldn't
think that that was particularly clever of me.'
  
`Oh, I don't know,' said Arthur wearily. `I expect you probably
sneaked into his jetcar the previous night and set the pilot's least
favourite track to play or something.'
  
`No, I didn't,' said Ford.
  
`Just checking.'
  
`Though oddly enough, somebody else did. And this is the
nub. You could trace the chain and branches of crucial events
and coincidences back and back. Turned out the new Guide had
done it. That bird.'
  
`What bird?'
  
`You haven't seen it?'
  
`No.'
  
`Oh. It's a lethal little thing. Looks pretty, talks big, collapses
waveforms selectively at will.'
  
`What does that mean?'
  
`Temporal reverse engineering.'
  
`Oh,' said Arthur. `Oh yes.'
  
`The question is, who is it really doing it for?'
  
`I've actually got a sandwich in my pocket,' said Arthur,
delving. `Would you like a bit?'
  
`Yeah, OK.'
  
`It's a bit squished and sodden, I'm afraid.'
  
`Never mind.'
  
They munched for a bit.
  
`It's quite good in fact,' said Ford. `What's the meat in it?'
  
`Perfectly Normal Beast.'
  
`Not come across that one. So, the question is,' Ford con-
tinued, `who is the bird really doing it for? What's the real game
here?'
  
`Mmm,' ate Arthur.
  
`When I found the bird,' continued Ford, `which I did by a
series of coincidences that are interesting in themselves, it put
on the most fantastic multi-dimensional display of pyrotechnics
I've ever seen. It then said that it would put its services at my
disposal in my universe. I said, thanks but no thanks. It said that
it would anyway, whether I liked it or not. I said just try it, and
it said it would and, indeed, already had done. I said we'd see
about that and it said that we would. That's when I decided to
pack the thing up and get it out of there. So I sent it to you for
safety.'
  
`Oh yes? Whose?'
  
`Never you mind. Then, what with one thing and another,
I thought it prudent to jump out of the window again, being
fresh out of other options at the time. Luckily for me the jetcar
was there otherwise I would have had to fall back on ingenious
quick-thinking, agility, maybe another shoe or, failing all else,
the ground. But it meant that, whether I liked it or not, the
Guide was, well, working for me, and that was deeply worrying.'
  
`Why?'
  
`Because if you've got the Guide you think that you are the
one it's working for. Everything went swimmingly smoothly for
me from then on, up to the very moment that I come up against
the totty with the rock, then, bang, I'm history. I'm out of the
loop.'
  
`Are you referring to my daughter?'
  
`As politely as I can. She's the next one in the chain who will
think that everything is going fabulously for her. She can beat
whoever she likes around the head with bits of the landscape,
everything will just swim for her until she's done whatever she's
supposed to do and then it will be all up for her too. It's reverse
temporal engineering, and clearly nobody understood what was
being unleashed!'
  
`Like me for instance.'
  
`What? Oh, wake up, Arthur. Look, let me try it again.
The new Guide came out of the research labs. It made use
of this new technology of Unfiltered Perception. Do you know
what that means?'
  
`Look, I've been making sandwiches for Bob's sake!'
  
`Who's Bob?'
  
`Never mind. Just carry on.'
  
`Unfiltered Perception means it perceives everything. Got
that? I don't perceive everything. You don't perceive everything.
We have filters. The new Guide doesn't have any sense filters. It
perceives everything. It wasn't a complicated technological idea.
It was just a question of leaving a bit out. Got it?'
  
`Why don't I just say that I've got it, and then you can
carry on regardless.'
  
`Right. Now because the bird can perceive every possible
Universe. it is present in every possible universe. Yes?'
  
`Y... e... e... s. Ish.'
  
`So what happens is, the bozos in the marketing and account-
ing departments say, oh that sounds good, doesn't that mean
we only have to make one of them and then sell it an infinite
number of times? Don't squint at me like that, Arthur, this is
how accountants think!'
  
`That's quite clever, isn't it?'
  
`No! It is fantastically stupid. Look. The machine's only a
little Guide. It's got some quite clever cybertechnology in it,
but because it has Unfiltered Perception, any smallest move it
makes has the power of a virus. It can propagate throughout
space, time and a million other dimensions. Anything can be
focused anywhere in any of the universes that you and I move in.
Its power is recursive. Think of a computer program. Somewhere,
there is one key instruction, and everything else is just functions
calling themselves, or brackets billowing out endlessly through an
infinite address space. What happens when the brackets collapse?
Where's the final ``end if''? Is any of this making sense? Arthur?'
  
`Sorry, I was nodding off for a moment. Something about
the Universe, yes?'
  
`Something about the Universe, yes,' said Ford, wearily. He
sat down again.
  
`All right,' he said. `Think about this. You know who I think
I saw at the Guide offices? Vogons. Ah. I see I've said a word
you understand at last.'
  
Arthur leapt to his feet.
  
`That noise,' he said.
  
`What noise?'
  
`The thunder.'
  
`what about it?'
  
`It isn't thunder. It's the spring migration of the Perfectly
Normal Beasts. It's started.'
  
`What are these animals you keep on about?'
  
`I don't keep on about them. I just put bits of them in
sandwiches.'
  
`Why are they called Perfectly Normal Beasts?'
  
Arthur told him.
  
It wasn't often that Arthur had the pleasure of seeing Ford's
eyes open wide with astonishment.


                          % 19

It was a sight that Arthur never quite got used to, or tired of.
He and Ford had tracked their way swiftly along the side of the
small river that flowed down along the bed of the valley, and
when at last they reached the margin of the plains they pulled
themselves up into the branches of a large tree to get a better
view of one of the stranger and more wonderful visions that the
Galaxy has to offer.
  
The great thunderous herd of thousand upon thousand of
Perfectly Normal Beasts was sweeping in magnificent array across
the Anhondo Plain. In the early pale light of the morning, as the
great animals charged through the fine steam of the sweat of
their bodies mingled with the muddy mist churned up by their
pounding hooves, their appearance seemed a little unreal and
ghostly anyway, but what was heart-stopping about them was
where they came from and where they went to, which appeared
to be, simply, nowhere.
  
They formed a solid, charging phalanx roughly a hundred yards
wide and half a mile long. The phalanx never moved, except that
it exhibited a slight gradual drift sideways and backwards for the
eight or nine days that it regularly appeared for. But though the
phalanx stayed more or less constant, the great beasts of which
it was composed charged steadily at upwards of twenty miles an
hour, appearing suddenly from thin air at one end of the plain,
and disappearing equally abruptly at the other end.
  
No one knew where they came from, no one knew where they
went. They were so important to the lives of the Lamuellans, it
was almost as if nobody liked to ask. Old Thrashbarg had said
on one occasion that some times if you received an answer, the
question might be taken away. Some of the villagers had privately
said that this was the only properly wise thing they'd ever heard
Thrashbarg say, and after a short debate on the matter, had put
it down to chance.
  
The noise of the pounding of the hooves was so intense
that it was hard to hear anything else above it.
  
`What did you say?' shouted Arthur.
  
`I said,' shouted Ford, `this looks like it might be some
kind of evidence of dimensional drift.'
  
`Which is what?' shouted Arthur back.
  
`Well, a lot of people are beginning to worry that space/time
is showing signs of cracking up with everything that's happening
to it. There are quite a lot of worlds where you can see how the
landmasses have cracked up and moved around just from the
weirdly long or meandering routes that migrating animals take.
This might be something like that. We live in twisted times. Still,
in the absence of a decent spaceport...'
  
Arthur looked at him in a kind of frozen way.
  
`What do you mean?' he said.
  
`What do you mean, what do I mean?' shouted Ford. `You
know perfectly well what I mean. We're going to ride our way
out of here.'
  
`Are you seriously suggesting we try to ride a Perfectly Normal
Beast?'
  
`Yeah. See where it goes to.'
  
`We'll be killed! No,' said Arthur, suddenly. `We won't be
killed. At least I won't. Ford, have you ever heard of a planet
called Stavromula Beta?'
  
Ford frowned. `Don't think so,' he said. He pulled out his
own battered old copy of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
and accessed it. `Any funny spelling?' he said.
  
`Don't know. I've only ever heard it said, and that was
by someone who had a mouthful of other people's teeth. You
remember I told you about Agrajag?'
  
Ford thought for a moment. `You mean the guy who was
convinced you were getting him killed over and over again?'
  
`Yes. One of the places he claimed I'd got him killed was
Stavromula Beta. Someone tries to shoot me, it seems. I duck
and Agrajag, or at least, one of his many reincarnations, gets hit.
It seems that this has definitely happened at some point in time
so, I suppose, I can't get killed at least until after I've ducked
on Stavromula Beta. Only no one's ever heard of it.'
  
`Hmm.' Ford tried a few other searches of the Hitch Hiker's
Guide, but drew a blank.
  
`Nothing,' he said.
  
`I was just... no, I've never heard of it,' said Ford finally.
He wondered why it was ringing a very, very faint bell, though.
  
`OK,' said Arthur. `I've seen the way the Lamuellan hunters
trap Perfectly Normal Beasts. If you spear one in the herd it just
gets trampled, so they have to lure them out one at a time for
the kill. It's very like the way a matador works, you know, with
a brightly coloured cape. You get one to charge at you and then
step aside and execute a rather elegant swing through with the
cape. Have you got anything like a brightly coloured cape about
you?'
  
`This do?' said Ford, handing him his towel.


                          % 20

Leaping on to the back of a one-and-a-half-ton Perfectly Normal
Beast migrating through your world at a thundering thirty miles
an hour is not as easy as it might at first seem. Certainly it is
not as easy as the Lamuellan hunters made it seem, and Arthur
Dent was prepared to discover that this might turn out to be the
difficult bit.
  
What he hadn't been prepared to discover, however, was
how difficult it was even getting to the difficult bit. It was the
bit that was supposed to be the easy bit which turned out to be
practically impossible.
  
They couldn't even catch the attention of a single animal.
The Perfectly Normal Beasts were so intent on working up a
good thunder with their hooves, heads down shoulders forward,
back legs pounding the ground into porridge that it would have
taken something not merely startling but actually geological to
disturb them.
  
The sheer amount of thundering and pending was, in the
end, more than Arthur and Ford could deal with. After they had
spent nearly two hours prancing about doing increasingly foolish
things with a medium-sized floral patterned bath towel, they had
not managed to get even one of the great beasts thundering and
pounding past them to do so much as glance casually in their
direction.
  
They were within three feet of the horizontal avalanche of
sweating bodies. To have been much nearer would have been
to risk instant death, chrono-logic or no chrono-logic. Arthur
had seen what remained of any Perfectly Normal Beast which,
as the result of a clumsy mis-throw by a young and inexperienced
Lamuellan hunter, got speared while still thundering and pound-
ing with the herd.
  
One stumble was all it took. No prior appointment with death
on Stavromula Beta, wherever the hell Stavromula Beta was,
would save you or anybody else from the thunderous, mangling
pounding of those hooves.
  
At last, Arthur and Ford staggered back. They sat down,
exhausted and defeated, and started to criticise each other's
technique with the towel.
  
`You've got to flick it more,' complained Ford. `You need
more follow-through from the elbow if you're going to get those
blasted creatures to notice anything at all.'
  
`Follow-through?' protested Arthur. `You need more supple-
ness in the wrist.'
  
`You need more after-flourish,' countered Ford.
  
`You need a bigger towel.'
  
`You need,' said another voice, `a pikka bird.'
  
`You what?'
  
The voice had come from behind them. They turned, and
there, standing behind them in the early morning sun, was Old
Thrashbarg.
  
`To attract the attention of a Perfectly Normal Beast,' he
said, as he walked forward towards them, `you need a pikka
bird. Like this.'
  
>From under the rough, cassocky robe-like thing he wore he
drew a small pikka bird. It sat restlessly on Old Thrashbarg's
hand and peered intently at Bob knows what darting around
about three feet six inches in front of it.
  
Ford instantly went into the sort of alert crouch he liked to
do when he wasn't quite sure what was going on or what he
ought to do about it. He waved his arms around very slowly
in what he hoped was an ominous manner.
  
`Who is this?' he hissed.
  
`It's just Old Thrashbarg,' said Arthur quietly. `And I wouldn't
bother with all the fancy movements. He's just as experienced a
bluffer as you are. You could end up dancing around each other
all day.'
  
`The bird,' hissed Ford again. `What's the bird?'
  
`It's just a bird!' said Arthur impatiently. `It's like any other
bird. It lays eggs and goes ark at things you can't see. Or kar
or rit or something.'
  
`Have you seen one lay eggs?' said Ford, suspiciously.
  
`For heaven's sake of course I have,' said Arthur. `And
I've eaten hundreds of them. Make rather a good omelette.
The secret is little cubes of cold butter and then whipping it
lightly with...'
  
`I don't want a zarking recipe,' said Ford. `I just want to
be sure it's a real bird and not some kind of multi-dimensional
cybernightmare.'
  
He slowly stood up from his crouched position and started
to brush himself down. He was still watching the bird, though.
  
`So,' said Old Thrashbarg to Arthur. `Is it written that Bob
shall once more take back unto himself the benediction of his
once-given sandwich maker?'
  
Ford almost went back into his crouch.
  
`It's all right,' muttered Arthur, `he always talks like that.'
Aloud, he said, `Ah, venerable Thrashbarg. Um, yes. I'm afraid
I think I'm going to have to be popping off now. But young
Drimple, my apprentice, will be a fine sandwich maker in my
stead. He has the aptitude, a deep love of sandwiches, and the
skills he has acquired so far, though rudimentary as yet, will, in
time mature and, er, well, I think he'll work out OK is what I'm
trying to say.'
  
Old Thrashbarg regarded him gravely. His old grey eyes
moved sadly. He held his arms aloft, one still carrying a bobbing
pikka bird, the other his staff.
  
`O Sandwich Maker from Bob!' he pronounced. He paused,
furrowed his brow, and sighed as he closed his eyes in pious
contemplation. `Life,' he said, `will be a very great deal less
weird without you!'
  
Arthur was stunned.
  
`Do you know,' he said, `I think that's the nicest thing any-
body's ever said to me?'
  
`Can we get on, please?' said Ford.
  
Something was already happening. The presence of the pikka
bird at the end of Thrashbarg's outstretched arm was sending
tremors of interest through the thundering herd. The odd head
flicked momentarily in their direction. Arthur began to remem-
ber some of the Perfectly Normal Beast hunts he had witnessed.
He recalled that as well as the hunter-matadors brandishing their
capes there were always others standing behind them holding
pikka birds. He had always assumed that, like him, they had
just come along to watch.
  
Old Thrashbarg moved forward, a little closer to the rolling
herd. Some of the Beasts were now tossing their heads back
with interest at the sight of the pikka bird.
  
Old Thrashbarg's outstretched arms were trembling.
  
Only the pikka bird itself seemed to show no interest in
what was going on. A few anonymous molecules of air nowhere
in particular engaged all of its perky attention.
  
`Now!' exclaimed Old Thrashbarg at last. `Now you may
work them with the towel!'
  
Arthur advanced with Ford's towel, moving the way the
hunter-matadors did, with a kind of elegant strut that did not
come at all naturally to him. But now he knew what to do and
that it was right. He brandished and flicked the towel a few
times, to be ready for the moment, and then he watched.
  
Some distance away he spotted the Beast he wanted. Head
down, it was galloping towards him, right on the very edge of
the herd. Old Thrashbarg switched the bird, the Beast looked
up, tossed its head, and then, just as its head was coming down
again, Arthur flourished the towel in the Beast's line of sight. It
tossed its head again in bemusement, and its eyes followed the
movement of the towel.
  
He had got the Beast's attention.
  
>From that moment on, it seemed the most natural thing
to coax and draw the animal towards him. Its head was up,
cocked slightly to one side. It was slowing to a canter and
then a trot. A few seconds later the huge thing was standing
there amongst them, snorting, panting, sweating, and sniffing
excitedly at the pikka bird, which appeared not to have noticed
its arrival at all. With strange sort of sweeping movements of his
arms Old Thrashbarg kept the pikka bird in front of the Beast,
but always out of its reach and always downwards. With strange
sort of sweeping movements of the towel, Arthur kept drawing
the Beast's attention this way and that - always downwards.
  
`I don't think I've ever seen anything quite so stupid in
my life,' muttered Ford to himself.
  
At last, the Beast dropped, bemused but docile, to its knees.
  
`Go!' whispered Old Thrashbarg urgently, to Ford. `Go! Go
now!'
  
Ford leapt up on to the great creature's back, scrabbling
amongst its thick knotty fur for purchase, grasping great handfuls
of the stuff to hold him steady once he was in position.
  
`Now, Sandwich Maker! Go!' He performed some elaborate
sign and ritual handshake which Arthur couldn't quite get the
hang of because Old Thrashbarg had obviously made it up
on the spur of the moment, then he pushed Arthur forward.
Taking a deep breath, he clambered up behind Ford on to
the great, hot, heaving back of the beast and held on tight.
Huge muscles the size of sea lions rippled and flexed beneath
him.
  
Old Thrashbarg held the bird suddenly aloft. The Beast's
head swivelled up to follow it. Thrashbarg pushed upwards
and upwards repeatedly with his arms and with the pikka bird;
and slowly, heavily the Perfectly Normal Beast lurched up off
its knees and stood, at last, swaying slightly. Its two riders held
on fiercely and nervously.
  
Arthur gazed out over the sea of hurtling animals, straining
in an attempt to see where it was they were going, but there
was nothing but heat haze.
  
`Can you see anything?' he said to Ford.
  
`No.' Ford twisted round to glance back, trying to see if
there was any clue as to where they had come from. Still,
nothing.
  
Arthur shouted down at Thrashbarg.
  
`Do you know where they come from?' he called. `Or where
they're going?'
  
`The domain of the King!' shouted Old Thrashbarg back.
  
`King?' shouted Arthur in surprise. `What King?' The Per-
fectly Normal Beast was swaying and rocking restlessly under
him.
  
`What do you mean, what King?' shouted Old Thrashbarg.
`The King.'
  
`It's just that you never mentioned a King,' shouted Arthur
back, in some consternation.
  
`What?' shouted Old Thrashbarg. The thrumming of a thou-
sand hooves was very hard to hear over, and the old man was
concentrating on what he was doing.
  
Still holding the bird aloft, he led the Beast slowly round till
it was once more parallel with the motion of its great herd. He
moved forward. The Beast followed. He moved forward again.
The Beast followed again. At last, the Beast was lumbering for-
ward with a little momentum.
  
`I said you never mentioned a King!' shouted Arthur again.
  
`I didn't say a King,' shouted Old Thrashbarg, `I said the King.'
  
He drew back his arm and then hurled it forward with all his
strength, casting the pikka bird up into the air above the herd.
This seemed to catch the pikka bird completely by surprise as it
had obviously not been paying any attention at all to what was
going on. It took it a moment or two to work out what was
happening, then it unfurled its little wings, spread them out,
and flew.
  
`Go!' shouted Thrashbarg. `Go and meet your destiny, Sand-
wich Maker!'
  
Arthur wasn't so sure about wanting to meet his destiny
as such. He just wanted to get to wherever it was they were
going so he could get back off this creature again. He didn't
feel at all safe up there. The Beast was gathering speed as it
followed in the wake of the pikka bird. And then it was in at
the fringes of the great tide of animals, and in a moment or two,
with its head down, the pikka bird forgotten, it was running with
the herd again and rapidly approaching the point at which the
herd was vanishing into thin air. Arthur and Ford held on to the
great monster for dear life, surrounded on all sides by hurtling
mountains of bodies.
  
`Go! Ride that Beast!' shouted Thrashbarg. His distant voice
reverberated faintly in their ears. `Ride that Perfectly Normal
Beast! Ride it, ride it!'
  
Ford shouted in Arthur's ear, `Where did he say we were
going?'
  
`He said something about a King,' shouted Arthur in return,
holding on desperately.
  
`What King?'
  
`That's what I said. He just said the King.'
  
`I didn't know there was a the King,' shouted Ford.
  
`Nor did I,' shouted Arthur back.
  
`Except of course for the King,' shouted Ford. `And I don't
suppose he meant him.'
  
`What King?' shouted Arthur.
  
The point of exit was almost upon them. Just ahead of
them, Perfectly Normal Beasts were galloping into nothingness
and vanishing.
  
`What do you mean, what King?' shouted Ford. `I don't
know what King. I'm only saying that he couldn't possibly
mean the King, so I don't know what he means.'
  
`Ford, I don't know what you're talking about.'
  
`So?' said Ford. Then with a sudden rush, the stars came
on, turned and twisted around their heads, and then, just as
suddenly, turned off again.


                          % 21

Misty grey buildings loomed and flickered. They bounced up
and down in a highly embarrassing way.
  
What sort of buildings were they?
  
What were they for? What did they remind her of?
  
It's so difficult to know what things are supposed to be when
you suddenly turn up unexpectedly on a different world which has
a different culture, a different set of the most basic assumptions
about life, and also incredibly dull and meaningless architecture.
  
The sky above the buildings was a cold and hostile black.
The stars, which should have been blindingly brilliant points
of light this far from the sun were blurred and dulled by the
thickness of the huge shielding bubble. Perspex or something
like it. Something dull and heavy anyway.
  
Tricia wound the tape back again to the beginning.
  
She knew there was something slightly odd about it.
  
Well, in fact, there were about a million things that were
slightly odd about it, but there was one that was nagging at
her and she hadn't quite got it.
  
She sighed and yawned.
  
As she waited for the tape to rewind she cleared away some
of the dirty polystyrene coffee cups that had accumulated on the
editing desk and tipped them into the bin.
  
She was sitting in a small editing suite at a video production
company in Soho. She had `Do not disturb' notices plastered all
over the door, and a block on all incoming calls at the switch-
board. This was originally to protect her astonishing scoop, but
now it was to protect her from embarrassment.
  
She would watch the tape all the way through again from
the beginning. If she could bear to. She might do some fast
forwarding here and there.
  
It was about four o'clock on Monday afternoon, and she
had a kind of sick feeling. She was trying to work out what the
cause of this slightly sick feeling was, and there was no shortage
of candidates.
  
First of all, it had all come on top of the overnight flight
from New York. The red eye. Always a killer, that.
  
Then, being accosted by aliens on her lawn and flown to
the planet Rupert. She was not sufficiently experienced in that
sort of thing to be able to say for sure that that was always a
killer, but she would be prepared to bet that those who went
through it regularly cursed it. There were always stress charts
being published in magazines. Fifty stress points for losing your
job. Seventy-five points for a divorce or changing your hairstyle
and so on. None of them ever mentioned being accosted on your
lawn by aliens and then being flown to the planet Rupert, but she
was sure it was worth a few dozen points.
  
It wasn't that the journey had been particularly stressful. It
had been extremely dull in fact. Certainly it had been no more
stressful than the trip she had just taken across the Atlantic and
it had taken roughly the same time, about seven hours.
  
Well that was pretty astounding wasn't it? Flying to the outer
limits of the solar system in the same time that it took to fly to
New York meant they must have some fantastic unheard-of form
of propulsion in the ship. She quizzed her hosts about it and they
agreed that it was pretty good.
  
`But how does it work?' she had demanded excitedly. She
was still quite excited at the beginning of the trip.
  
She found that part of the tape and played it through to
herself. The Grebulons, which is what they called themselves,
were politely showing her which buttons they pressed to make
the ship go.
  
`Yes, but what principle does it work on?' she heard herself
demand, from behind the camera.
  
`Oh, you mean is it something like a warp drive or something
like that?' they said.
  
`Yes,' persisted Tricia. `What is it?'
  
`It probably is something of the kind,' they said.
  
`Like what?'
  
`Warp drive, photon drive, something like that. You'd have
to ask the Flight Engineer.'
  
`Which one is he?'
  
`We don't know. We have all lost our minds, you see.'
  
`Oh yes,' said Tricia, a little faintly. `So you said. Um,
how did you lose your minds, exactly , then?.'
  
`We don't know,' they said, patiently.
  
`Because you've lost your minds,' echoed Tricia, glumly.
  
`Would you like to watch television? It is a long flight.
We watch television. It is something we enjoy.'
  
All of this riveting stuff was on the tape, and fine. viewing
it made. First of all the picture quality was extremely poor.
Tricia didn't know why this was, exactly. She had a feeling
that the Grebulons responded to a slightly different range of
light frequencies, and that there had been a lot of ultra-violet
around which was mucking up the video camera. There were
a lot of interference patterns and video snow as well. Probably
something to do with the warp drive that none of them knew
the first thing about.
  
So what she had on tape, essentially, was a bunch of slightly
thin and discoloured people sitting around watching televisions
that were showing network broadcasts. She had also pointed the
camera out of the very tiny viewport near her seat and got a nice,
slightly streaky effect of stars. She knew it was real, but it would
have taken a good three or four minutes to fake.
  
In the end she had decided to save her precious videotape
for Rupert itself and had simply sat back and watched television
with them. She had even dozed off for a while.
  
So part of her sick feeling came from the sense that she
had had all that time in an alien spacecraft of astounding
technological design, and had spent most of it dozing in front of
reruns of M*A*S*H and Cagney and Lacey. But what else was
there to do? She had taken some photos as well, of course, all
of which had subsequently turned out to be badly fogged when
she got them back from the chemist.
  
Another part of her sick feeling probably came from the landing
on Rupert. This at least had been dramatic and hair-raising. The
ship had come sweeping in over a dark and sombre landscape, a
terrain so desperately far removed from the heat and light of its
parent sun that it seemed like a map of the psychological scars
on the mind of an abandoned child.
  
Lights blazed through the frozen darkness and guided the
ship into the mouth of some kind of cave that seemed to bend
itself open to accept the small craft.
  
Unfortunately, because of the angle of their approach, and
the depth at which the small thick viewport was set into the
craft's skin, it hadn't been possible to get the. video camera to
point directly at any of it. She ran through that bit of the tape.
  
The camera was pointing directly at the sun.
  
This is normally very bad for a video camera. But when
the sun is roughly a third of a billion miles away it doesn't
do any harm. In fact it hardly makes any impression at all.
You just get a small point of light right in the middle of the
frame, which could be just about anything. It was just one star
in a multitude.
  
Tricia fast-forwarded.
  
Ah. Now, the next bit had been quite promising. They had
emerged out of the ship into a vast, grey, hangar-like structure.
This was clearly alien technology on a dramatic scale. Huge grey
buildings under the dark canopy of the Perspex bubble. These
were the same buildings that she had been looking at at the end
of the tape. She had taken more footage of them while leaving
Rupert a few hours later, just as she was about to reboard the
spacecraft for the journey home. What did they remind her of?
  
Well, as much as anything else they reminded her of a
film set from just about any low-budget science-fiction movie of
the last twenty years. A lot larger, of course, but it all looked
thoroughly tawdry and unconvincing on the video screen. Apart
from the dreadful picture quality she had been struggling with the
unexpected effects of gravity that was appreciably lower than that
on Earth, and she had found it very hard to keep the camera from
bouncing around in an embarrassingly unprofessional way. It was
therefore impossible to make out any detail.
  
And now here was the Leader coming forward to greet
her, smiling and sticking his hand out.
  
That was all he was called. The Leader.
  
None of the Grebulons had names, largely because they
couldn't think of any. Tricia discovered that some of them had
thought of calling themselves after characters from television
programmes they had picked up from Earth, but hard as they
had tried to call each other Wayne and Bobby and Chuck, some
remnant of something lurking deep in the cultural subconscious
they had brought with them from the distant stars which were
their homes must have told them that this really wasn't right and
wouldn't do.
  
The Leader had looked pretty much like all the others.
Possibly a bit less thin. He said how much he enjoyed her shows
on TV, that he was her greatest fan, how glad he was that she
had been able to come along and visit them on Rupert and how
much everybody had been looking forward to her coming, how
he hoped the flight had been comfortable and so on. There was
no particular sense she could detect of being any kind of emissary
from the stars or anything.
  
Certainly, watching it now on videotape, he just looked like
some guy in costume and make-up, standing in front of a set
that wouldn't hold up too well if you leant against it.
  
She sat staring at the screen with her face cradled in her
hands, and shaking her head in slow bewilderment.
  
This was awful.
  
Not only was this bit awful but she knew what was coming
next. It was the bit where the Leader asked if she was hungry
after the flight, and would she perhaps like to come and have
something to eat? They could discuss things over a little dinner.
  
She could remember what she was thinking at this point.
  
Alien food.
  
How was she going to deal with it?
  
Would she actually have to eat it? Would she have access to
some sort of paper napkin she could spit stuff out into? Wouldn't
there be all sorts of differential immunity problems?
  
It turned out to be hamburgers.
  
Not only did it turn out to be hamburgers, but the hamburgers
it turned out to be were very clearly and obviously McDonald's
hamburgers which had been reheated in a microwave. It wasn't
just the look of them. It wasn't just the smell. It was the poly-
styrene clamshell packages they came in which had `McDonald's'
printed all over them.
  
`Eat! Enjoy!' said the Leader. `Nothing is too good for our
honoured guest!'
  
This was in his private apartment. Tricia had looked around it
in bewilderment that had bordered on fear but had nevertheless
got it all on videotape.
  
The apartment had a waterbed in it. And a Midi hi-fi. And
one of those tall electrically illuminated glass things which sit on
table tops and appear to have large globules of sperm floating
about in them. The walls were covered in velvet.
  
The leader lounged against a brown corduroy bean bag and
squirted breath-freshener into his mouth.
 
Tricia began to feel very scared, suddenly. She was further from
Earth than any human being, to her knowledge, had ever been,
and she was with an alien creature, who was lounging against a
brown corduroy bean bag and squirting breath-freshener into his
mouth.
  
She didn't want to make any false moves. She didn't want
to alarm him. But there were things she had to know.
  
`How did you... where did you get... this?' she asked,
gesturing around the room, nervously.
  
`The decor?' asked the Leader. `Do you like it? It is very
sophisticated. We are a sophisticated people, we Grebulons.
We buy sophisticated consumer durables... by mail order.'
  
Tricia had nodded tremendously slowly at this point.
  
`Mail order...' she had said.
  
The Leader chuckled. It was one of those dark chocolate
reassuring silky chuckles.
  
`I think you think they ship it here. No! Ha Ha! We have
arranged a special box number in New Hampshire. We make
regular pick-up visits. Ha Ha!' He lounged back in a relaxed
fashion on his bean bag, reached for a reheated french fry
and nibbled the end of it, an amused smile playing across. his
lips.
  
Tricia could feel her brain beginning to bubble very slightly.
She kept the video camera going.
  
`How do you, well, er, how do you pay for these wonderful
...things?'
  
The Leader chuckled again.
  
`American Express,' he said with a nonchalant shrug.
 
Tricia nodded slowly again. She knew that they gave cards
exclusively to just about anybody.
  
`And these?' she said, holding up the hamburger he had
presented her with.
 
`It is very easy,' said the Leader. `We stand in line.'
  
Again, Tricia realised with a cold, trickling feeling going
down her spine, that explained an awful lot.She hit the fast forward button again. There was nothing of any
use here at all. It was all nightmarish madness. She could have
faked something that would have looked more convincing.
  
Another sick feeling began to creep over her as she watched
this hopeless awful tape, and she began, with slow horror, to
realise that it must be the answer.
  
She must be...
  
She shook her head and tried to get a grip.
  
An overnight flight going East... The sleeping pills she
had taken to get her through it. The vodka she'd had to set
the sleeping pills going.
  
What else? Well. There was seventeen years of obsession that
a glamorous man with two heads, one of which was disguised as
a parrot in a cage, had tried to pick her up at a party but had
then impatiently flown off to another planet in a flying saucer.
There suddenly seemed to be all sorts of bothersome aspects to
that idea that had never really occurred to her. Never occurred
to her. In seventeen years.
  
She stuffed her fist into her mouth.
  
She must get help.
  
Then there had been Eric Bartlett banging on about alien
spacecraft landing on her lawn. And before that... New York
had been, well, very hot and stressful. The high hopes and the
bitter disappointment. The astrology stuff.
  
She must have had a nervous breakdown.
  
That was it. She was exhausted and she had had a nervous
breakdown and had started hallucinating some time after she got
home. She had dreamt the whole story. An alien race of people
dispossessed of their own lives and histories, stuck on a remote
outpost of our solar system and filling their cultural vacuum with
our cultural junk. Ha! It was nature's way of telling her to check
into an expensive medical establishment very quickly.
  
She was very, very sick. She looked at how many large
coffees she'd got through as well, and realised how heavily
she was breathing and how fast.
  
Part of solving any problem, she told herself, was realising that
you had it. She started to bring her breathing under control. She
had caught herself in time. She had seen where she was. She was
on the way back from whatever psychological precipice she had
been on the brink of. She started to calm down, to calm down,
to calm down. She sat back in the chair and closed her eyes.
  
After a while, now that she was breathing normally again,
she opened them again.
  
So where had she got this tape from then?
  
It was still running.
  
All right. It was a fake.
  
She had faked it herself, that was it.
  
It must have been her who had faked it because her voice
was all over the soundtrack, asking questions. Every now and
then the camera would swing down at the end of a shot and she
would see her own feet in her own shoes. She had faked it and
she had no recollection of faking it or any idea of why she had
done it.
  
Her breathing was getting hectic again as she watched the
snowy, flickering screen.
  
She must still be hallucinating.
  
She shook her head, trying to make it go away. She had no
memory of faking any of this very obviously fake stuff. On the
other hand she did seem to have memories that were very like
the faked stuff. She continued to watch in a bewildered trance.
  
The person she imagined to be called the Leader was ques-
tioning her about astrology and she was answering smoothly and
calmly. Only she could detect the well-disguised rising panic in
her own voice.
  
The Leader pushed a button, and a maroon velvet wall
slid aside, revealing a large bank of flat TV monitors.
  
Each of the monitors was showing a kaleidoscope of different
images: a few seconds from a game show, a few seconds from a
cop show, a few seconds from a supermarket warehouse security
system, a few seconds from somebody's holiday movies, a few
seconds of sex, a few seconds of news, a few seconds of comedy.
It was clear that the Leader was very proud of all this stuff and
he was waving his hands like a conductor while continuing at the
same time to talk complete gibberish.
  
Another wave of his hands, and all the screens cleared to
form one giant computer screen showing in diagrammatic form
all the planets of the solar system and mapped out against a
background of the stars in their constellations. The display was
completely static.
  
`We have great skills,' the Leader was saying. `Great skills in
computation, in cosmological trigonometry, in three-dimensional
navigational calculus. Great skills. Great, great skills. Only we
have lost them. It is too bad. We like to have skills only they
have gone. They are in space somewhere, hurtling. With our
names and the details of our homes and loved ones. Please,' he
said, gesturing her forward to sit at the computer's console, `be
skilful for us.'
  
Obviously what happened next was that Tricia quickly set
the video camera up on its tripod to capture the whole scene.
She then walked into shot herself and sat down calmly in front
of the giant computer display, spent a few moments familiarising
herself with the interface and then started smoothly and com-
petently to pretend that she had the faintest idea what she was
doing.
 
It hadn't been that difficult, in fact.
  
She was, after all, a mathematician and astrophysicist by
training and a television presenter by experience, and what
science she had forgotten over the years she was more than
capable of making up by bluffing.
  
The computer she was working on was clear evidence that
the Grebulons came from a far more advanced and sophisticated
culture than their current vacuous state suggested, and with its
aid she was able, within about half an hour, to cobble together
a rough working model of the solar system.
  
It wasn't particularly accurate or anything, but it looked
good. The planets were whizzing around in reasonably good
simulations of their orbits, and you could watch the movement
of the whole piece of virtual cosmological clockwork from any
point within the system - very roughly. You could watch from
Earth, you could watch from Mars, etc. You could watch from
the surface of the planet Rupert. Tricia had been quite impressed
with herself, but also very impressed with the computer system
she was working on. Using a computer workstation on Earth the
task would probably have taken a year or so of programming.
  
When she was finished, the Leader came up behind her and
watched. He was very pleased and delighted with what she had
achieved.
  
`Good,' he said. `And now, please, I would like you to
demonstrate how to use the system you have just designed
to translate the information in this book for me.'
  
Quietly he put a book down in front of her.
  
It was You and Your Planets by Gail Andrews.Tricia stopped the tape again.
  
She was definitely feeling very wobbly indeed. The feeling
that she was hallucinating had now receded, but had not left
anything any easier or clearer in her head.
  
She pushed her seat back from the editing desk and wondered
what to do. Years ago she had left the field of astronomical
research because she knew, without any doubt whatsoever,
that she had met a being from another planet. At a par-
ty. And she had also known, without any doubt whatsoever,
that she would have made herself a laughing stock if she had
ever said so. But how could she study cosmology and not
say anything about the single most important thing she knew
about it? She had done the only thing she could do. She had
left.
  
Now she worked in television and the same thing had happened
again.
  
She had videotape, actual videotape of the most astounding
story in the history of, well anything: a forgotten outpost of an
alien civilisation marooned on the outermost planet of our own
solar system.
  
She had the story.
  
She had been there.
  
She had seen it.
  
She had the videotape for God's sake.
  
And if she ever showed it to anybody, she would be a
laughing stock.How could she prove any of this? It wasn't even worth thinking
about. The whole thing was a nightmare from virtually any angle
she cared to look at it from. Her head was beginning to throb.
  
She had some aspirin in her bag. She went out of the little
editing suite to the water dispenser down the corridor. She took
the aspirin and drank several cups of water.
  
The place seemed to be very quiet. Usually there were more
people bustling about the place, or at least some people bustling
around the place. She popped her head round the door of the
editing suite next to hers but there was no one there.
  
She had gone rather overboard keeping people out of her
own suite. `DO NOT DISTURB,' the notice read. `DO NOT
EVEN THINK OF ENTERING. I DON'T CARE WHAT IT
IS. GO AWAY. I'M BUSY!'
  
When she went back in she noticed that the message light
on her phone extension was winking, and wondered how long
it had been on.
  
`Hello?' she said to the receptionist.
  
`Oh, Miss McMillan, I'm so glad you called. Everybody's
been trying to reach you. Your TV company. They're desperate
to reach you. Can you call them?'
  
`Why didn't you put them through?' said Tricia.
  
`You said I wasn't to put anybody through for anything. You
said I was to deny that you were even here. I didn't know what
to do. I came up to give you a message, but...'
  
`OK,' said Tricia, cursing herself. She phoned her office.
  
`Tricia! Where the haemorrhaging fuck are you?'
  
`At the editing...'
  
`They said...'
  
`I know. What's up?'
  
`What's up? Only a bloody alien spaceship!'
  
`What? Where?'
  
`Regent's Park. Big silver job. Some girl with a bird. She
speaks English and throws rocks at people and wants someone
to repair her watch. Just get there.'Tricia stared at it.
  
It wasn't a Grebulon ship. Not that she was suddenly an
expert on extraterrestrial craft, but this was a sleek and beautiful
silver and white thing about the size of a large ocean-going yacht,
which is what it most resembled. Next to this, the structures of the
huge half-dismantled Grebulon ship looked like gun turrets on a
battleship. Gun turrets. That's what those blank grey buildings
had looked like. And what was odd about them was that by the
time she passed them again on her way to reboarding the small
Grebulon craft, they had moved. These things flitted briefly
through her head as she ran from the taxi to meet her camera
crew.
  
`Where's the girl?' she shouted above the noise of helicopters
and police sirens.
  
`There!' shouted the producer while the sound engineer hurried
to clip a radio mike to her. `She says her mother and father came
from here in some parallel dimension or something like that, and
she's got her father's watch, and... I don't know. What can I
tell you? Busk it. Ask her what it feels like to be from outer
space.'
  
`Thanks a lot, Ted,' muttered Tricia, checked that her mike
was securely clipped, gave the engineer some level, took a deep
breath, tossed her hair back and switched into her role of pro-
fessional reporter, on home ground, ready for anything.
  
At least, nearly anything.
  
She turned to look for the girl. That must be her, with
the wild hair and wild eyes. The girl turned towards her. And
stared.
  
`Mother!' she screamed, and started to hurl rocks at Tricia.


                          % 22

Daylight exploded around them. Hot, heavy sun. A desert plain
stretched out ahead in a haze of heat. They thundered out into
it.
  
`Jump!' shouted Ford Prefect.
  
`What?' shouted Arthur Dent, holding on for dear life.
  
There was no reply.
  
`What did you say?' shouted Arthur again, and then realised
that Ford Prefect was no longer there. He looked around in panic
and started to slip. Realising he couldn't hold on any longer he
pushed himself sideways as hard as he could and rolled into a
ball as he hit the ground, rolling, rolling away from the pounding
hooves.
  
What a day, he thought, as he started furiously coughing
dust up out of his lungs. He hadn't had a day as bad as this
since the Earth had been blown up. He staggered up to his
knees , and then up to his feet and started to run away. He
didn't know what from or what to, but running away seemed a
prudent move.
  
He ran straight into Ford Prefect who was standing there
surveying the scene.
  
`Look,' said Ford. `That is precisely what we need.'
  
Arthur coughed up some more dust, and wiped some other
dust out of his hair and eyes. He turned, panting, to look at
what Ford was looking at.
  
It didn't look much like the domain of a King, or the King,
or any kind of King. It looked quite inviting though.
  
First, the context. This was a desert world. The dusty earth
was packed hard and had neatly bruised every last bit of Arthur
that hadn't already been bruised by the festivities of the previous
night. Some way ahead of them were great cliffs that looked like
sandstone, eroded by the wind and what little rain presumably
fell in those parts into wild and fantastic shapes, which matched
the fantastic shapes of the giant cacti that sprouted here and there
from the arid, orange landscape.
  
For a moment Arthur dared to hope they had unexpectedly
arrived in Arizona or New Mexico or maybe South Dakota, but
there was plenty of evidence that this was not the case.
  
The Perfectly Normal Beasts, for a start, still thundering,
still pounding. They swept up in their tens of thousands from
the far horizon, disappeared completely for about half a mile,
then swept off, thundering and pounding to the distant horizon
opposite.
  
Then there were the spaceships parked in front of the Bar
\& Grill. Ah. The Domain of the King Bar \& Grill. Bit of an
anti-climax, thought Arthur to himself.
  
In fact only one of the spaceships was parked in front of
the Domain of the King Bar \& Grill. The other three were in
a parking lot by the side of the Bar and Grill. It was the one in
front that caught the eye, though. Wonderful looking thing. Wild
fins all over it, far, far too much chrome all over the fins and most
of the actual  bodywork painted in a shocking pink. It crouched
there like an immense brooding insect and looked as if it was at
any moment about to jump on something about a mile away.
  
The Domain of the King Bar \& Grill was slap bang in
the middle of where the Perfectly Normal Beasts would be
charging if they didn't take a minor transdimensional diversion
on the way. It stood on its own, undisturbed. An ordinary Bar
\& Grill. A truckstop diner. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
Quiet. The Domain of the King.
  
`Gonna buy that spaceship,' said Ford quietly.
  
`Buy it?' said Arthur. `That's not like you. I thought you
usually pinched them.'
  
`Sometimes you have to show a little respect,' said Ford.
  
`Probably have to show a little cash as well,' said Arthur.
`How the hell much is that thing worth?'
  
With a tiny movement, Ford brought his Dine-O-Charge
credit card up out of his pocket. Arthur noticed that the hand
holding it was trembling very slightly.
  
`I'll teach them to make me the restaurant critic...' breathed
Ford.
  
`What do you mean?' asked Arthur.
  
`I'll show you,' said Ford with a nasty glint in his eye.
  
`Let's go and run up a few expenses shall we?'`Couple beers,' said Ford, `and, I dunno, a couple bacon rolls,
whatever you got, oh and that pink thing outside.'
  
He flipped his card on the top of the bar and looked around
casually.
  
There was a kind of silence.
 
There hadn't been a lot of noise before, but there was defi-
nitely a kind of silence now. Even the distant thunder of the
Perfectly Normal Beasts carefully avoiding the Domain of the
King seemed suddenly a little muted.
  
`Just rode into town,' said Ford as if nothing was odd about
that or about anything else. He was leaning against the bar at
an extravagantly relaxed angle.
  
There were about three other customers in the place, sitting
at tables, nursing beers. About three. Some people would say
there were exactly three, but it wasn't that kind of a place, not
the kind of a place that you felt like being that specific in. There
was some big guy setting up some stuff on the little stage as well.
Old drum kit. Couple guitars. Country and Western kind of stuff.
  
The barman was not moving very swiftly to get in Ford's
order. In fact he wasn't moving at all.
  
`Not sure that the pink thing's for sale,' he said at last
in the kind of accent that went on for quite a long time.
  
`Sure it is,' said Ford. `How much you want?'
  
`Well...'
  
`Think of a number, I'll double it.'
  
`T'ain't mine to sell,' said the barman.
  
`So, whose?'
  
The barman nodded at the big guy setting up on the stage.
Big fat guy, moving slow, balding.
  
Ford nodded. He grinned.
  
`OK,' he said. `Get the beers, get the rolls. Keep the tab open.'Arthur sat at the bar and rested. He was used to not knowing
what was going on. He felt comfortable with it. The beer was
pretty good and made him a little sleepy which he didn't mind
at all. The bacon rolls were not bacon rolls. They were Perfectly
Normal Beast rolls. He exchanged a few professional roll-making
remarks with the barman and just let Ford get on with whatever
Ford wanted to do.
  
`OK,' said Ford, returning to his stool. `It's cool. We got
the pink thing.'
  
The barman was very surprised. `He's selling it to you?'
  
`He's giving it to us for free,' said Ford, taking a gnaw at his
roll. `Hey, no, keep the tab open though. We have some items
to add to it. Good roll.'
  
He took a deep pull of beer.
  
`Good beer,' he added. `Good ship too,' he said, eying
the big pink and chrome insect-like thing, bits of which could
be seen through the windows of the bar. `Good everything,
pretty much. You know, he said, sitting back, reflectively, `it's
at times like this that you kind of wonder if it's worth worrying
about the fabric of space/time and the causal integrity of the
multi-dimensional probability matrix and the potential collapse
of all wave forms in the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash and
all that sort of stuff that's been bugging me. Maybe I feel that
what the big guy says is right. Just let it all go. What does it
matter? Let it go.'
  
`Which big guy?' said Arthur.
  
Ford just nodded towards the stage. The big guy was saying
`one two' into the mike a couple of times. Couple other guys
were on the stage now. Drums. Guitar.
  
The barman, who had been silent for a moment or two,
said, `You say he's letting you have his ship?'
  
`Yeah,' said Ford. `Let it all go is what he said. Take the
ship. Take it with my blessing. Be good to her. I will he good
to her.'
  
He took a pull at his beer again.
  
`Like I was saying,' he went on. `It's at times like this that
you kind of think, let it all go. But then you think of guys like
InfiniDim Enterprises and you think, they are not going to get
away with it. They are going to suffer. It is my sacred and holy
duty to see those guys suffer. Here, let me put something on the
tab for the singer. I asked for a special request and we agreed.
It's to go on the tab. OK?'
  
`OK,' said the barman, cautiously. Then he shrugged. `OK,
however you want to do it. How much?'
  
Ford named a figure. The barman fell over amongst the
bottles and glasses. Ford vaulted quickly over the bar to check
that he was all right and help him back up to his feet. He'd cut
his finger and his elbow a bit and was feeling a little woozy but
was otherwise fine. The big guy started to sing. The barman
hobbled off with Ford's credit card to get authorisation.
  
`Is there stuff going on here that I don't know about?' said
Arthur to Ford.
  
`Isn't there usually?' said Ford.
  
`No need to be like that,' said Arthur. He began to wake up.
`Shouldn't we be going?' he said suddenly. `Will that ship get us
to Earth?'
  
`Sure will,' said Ford.
  
`That's where Random will be going!' said Arthur with a
start. `We can follow her! But... er...'
  
Ford let Arthur get on with thinking things out for himself
while he got out his old edition of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to
the Galaxy.
  
`But where are we on the probability axis thing?' said Arthur.
`Will the Earth be there or not there? I spent so much time look-
ing for it. All I found was planets that were a bit like it or not
at all like it, though it was clearly the right place because of the
continents. The worst version was called NowWhat where I got
bitten by some wretched little animal. That's how they commu-
nicated, you know, by biting each other. Bloody painful. Then
half the time, of course, the Earth isn't even there because it's
been blown up by the bloody Vogons. How much sense am I
making?'
  
Ford didn't comment. He was listening to something. He
passed the Guide over to Arthur and pointed at the screen.
The active entry read `Earth. Mostly harmless.'
  
`You mean it's there!' said Arthur excitedly. `The Earth
is there! That's where Random will be going! The bird was
showing her the Earth in the rainstorm!'
  
Ford motioned Arthur to shout a little less loudly. He was
listening.
  
Arthur was growing impatient. He'd heard bar singers sing
`Love Me Tender' before. He was a bit surprised to hear it
here, right in the middle of wherever the hell this was, certainly
not Earth, but then things tended not to surprise him these days
as much as formerly. The singer was quite good, as bar singers
went, if you liked that sort of thing, but Arthur was getting fretful.
  
He glanced at his watch. This only served to remind. him that
he didn't have his watch any more. Random had it, or at least
the remains of it.
  
`Don't you think we should be going?' he said, insistently.
  
`Shhh!' said Ford. `I paid to hear this song.' He seemed
to have tears in his eyes, which Arthur found a bit disturbing.
He'd never seen Ford moved by anything other than very, very
strong drink. Probably the dust. He waited, tapping his fingers
irritably, out of time with the music.
  
The song ended. The singer went on to do `Heartbreak Hotel'.
  
`Anyway,' Ford whispered, `I've got to review the restaurant.'
  
`What?'
  
`I have to write a review.'
  
`Write a review? Of this place?'
  
`Filing the review validates the expenses claim. I've fixed it so
that it happens completely automatically and untraceably. This
bill is going to need some validation,' he added quietly, staring
into his beer with a nasty smirk.
  
`For a couple of beers and a roll?'
  
`And a tip for the singer.'
  
`Why, how much did you tip him?'
  
Ford named a figure again.
  
`I don't know how much that is,' said Arthur. `What's it
worth in pounds sterling? What would it buy you?'
  
`It would probably buy you, roughly... er...' Ford screwed
his eyes up as he did some calculations in his head. `Switzerland,'
he said at last. He picked up his Hitch Hiker's Guide and started
to type.
  
Arthur nodded intelligently. There were times when he wished
he understood what on earth Ford was talking about, and other
times, like now, when he felt it was probably safer not even to
try. He looked over Ford's shoulder. `This isn't going to take
long, is it?' he said.
  
`Nah,' said Ford. `Piece of piss. Just mention that the rolls
were quite good, the beer good and cold, local wildlife nicely
eccentric, the bar singer the best in the known universe, and
that's about it. Doesn't need much. Just a validation.'
  
He touched an area on the screen marked ENTER and
the message vanished into the Sub-Etha.
  
`You thought the singer was pretty good then?'
  
`Yeah,' said Ford. The barman was returning with a piece
of paper, which seemed to be trembling in his hand.
  
He pushed it over to Ford with a kind of nervous, reverential
twitch.
  
`Funny thing,' said the barman. `The system rejected it first
couple times. Can't say it surprised me.' Beads of sweat were
standing on his brow. `Then suddenly it's, oh yeah, that's OK,
and the system... er, validates it. Just like that. You wanna
...sign it?'
  
Ford scanned the form quickly. He sucked his teeth. `This
is going to hurt InfiniDim a lot,' he said, with an appearance
of concern. `Oh well,' he added softly, `screw 'em.'
  
He signed with a flourish and handed it back to the barman.
  
`More money,' he said, `than the Colonel made for him
in an entire career of doing crap movies and casino gigs. Just
for doing what he does best. Standing up and singing in a bar.
And he negotiated it himself. I think this is a good moment for
him. Tell him I said thanks and buy him a drink.' He tossed a
few coins on the bar. The barman pushed them away.
  
`I don't think that's necessary,' he said, slightly hoarsely.
  
`Tis to me,' said Ford. `OK, we are outa here.'They stood out in the heat and the dust and looked at the big
pink and chrome thing with amazement and admiration. Or at
least, Ford looked at it with amazement and admiration.
  
Arthur just looked at it. `You don't think it's a bit overdone,
do you?'
  
He said it again when they climbed inside it. The seats
and quite a lot of the controls were covered in fine fur skin
or suede. There was a big gold monogram on the main control
panel which just read `EP'.
  
`You know,' said Ford as he fired up the ship's engines, `I
asked him if it was true that he had been abducted by aliens,
and you know what he said?'
  
`Who?' said Arthur.
  
`The King.'
  
`Which King? Oh, we've had this conversation, haven't we?'
  
`Never mind,' said Ford. `For what it's worth, he said, no.
He went of his own accord.'
  
`I'm still not sure who we're talking about,' said Arthur.
Ford shook his head. `Look,' he said, `there are some tapes
over in the compartment to your left. Why don't you choose
some music and put it on?'
  
`OK,' said Arthur, and flipped through the cartons. `Do
you like Elvis Presley?' he said.
  
`Yeah I do as a matter of fact,' said Ford. `Now. I hope this
machine can leap like it looks Like it can.' He engaged the main
drive.
  
`Yeeehaah!' shouted Ford as they shot upwards at face-tearing
speed.
  
It could.


                          % 23

The news networks don't like this kind of thing. They regard it
as a waste. An incontrovertible spaceship arrives out of nowhere
in the middle of London and it is sensational news of the highest
magnitude. Another completely different one arrives three and
a half hours later and somehow it isn't.
  
`ANOTHER SPACECRAFT!' said the headlines and news
stand billboards. `THIS ONE'S PINK.' A couple of months later
they could have made a lot more of it. The third spacecraft, half
an hour after that, the little four berth Hrundi runabout, only
made it on to the local news.
  
Ford and Arthur had come screaming down out of the strato-
sphere and parked neatly on Portland Place. It was just after
six-thirty in the evening and there were spaces free. They min-
gled briefly with the crowd that gathered round to ogle, then said
loudly that if no one else was going to call the police they would,
and made good their escape.
  
`Home...' said Arthur, a husky tone creeping into his
voice as he gazed, misty-eyed around him.
  
`Oh don't get all maudlin on me,' snapped Ford. `We have
to find your daughter and we have to find that bird thing.'
  
`How?' said Arthur. `This is a planet of five and a half
billion people, and...'
  
`Yes,' said Ford. `But only one of them has just arrived
from outer space in a large silver spaceship accompanied by a
mechanical bird. I suggest we just find a television and some-
thing to drink while we watch it. We need some serious room
service.'They checked into a large two-bedroomed suite at the Langham.
Mysteriously, Ford's Dine-O-Charge card, issued on a planet over
five thousand light years away, seemed to present the hotel's
computer with no problems.
  
Ford hit the phones straight away while Arthur attempted
to locate the television.
  
`OK,' said Ford. `I want to order up some margaritas please.
Couple of pitchers. Couple of Chef's Salads. And as much foie
gras as you've got. And also London Zoo.'
  
`She's on the news!' shouted Arthur from the next room.
  
`That's what I said,' said Ford into the phone. `London
Zoo. Just charge it to the room.'
  
`She's... Good God!' shouted Arthur. `Do you know who
she's being interviewed by?'
  
`Are you having difficulty understanding the English lan-
guage?' continued Ford. `It's the zoo just up the road from
here. I don't care if it's closed this evening. I don't want
to buy a ticket, I just want to buy the zoo. I don't care
if you're busy. This is room service, I'm in a room and I
want some service. Got a piece of paper? OK. Here's what
I want you to do. All the animals that can be safely returned
to the wild, return them. Set up some good teams of people
to monitor their progress in the wild, see that they're doing
OK.'
  
`It's Trillian!' shouted Arthur. `Or is it... er... God, I can't
stand all this parallel universe stuff. It's so bloody confusing. It
seems to be a different Trillian. It's Tricia McMillan which is
what Trillian used to be called before... er... Why don't
you come and watch, see if you can figure it out?'
  
`Just a second,' Ford shouted, and returned to his negotia-
tions with room service. `Then we'll need some natural reserves
for the animals that can't hack it in the wild,' he said. `Set up a
team to work out the best places to do that. We might need to
buy somewhere like Zaire and maybe some islands. Madagascar.
Baffin. Sumatra. Those kind of places. We'll need a wide variety
of habitats. Look, l don't see why you're seeing this as a problem.
Learn to delegate. Hire whoever you want. Get on to it. I think
you'll find my credit is good. And blue cheese dressing on the
salad. Thank you.'
  
He put the phone down and went through to Arthur, who
was sitting on the edge of his bed watching television.
  
`I ordered us some foie gras,' said Ford.
  
`What?' said Arthur, whose attention was entirely focused
on the television.
  
`I said I ordered us some foie gras.'
  
`Oh,' said Arthur, vaguely. `Um, I always feel a hit bad
about foie gras. Bit cruel to the geese, isn't it?'
  
`Fuck 'em,' said Ford, slumping on the bed. `You can't care
about every damn thing.'
  
`Well, that's all very well for you to say, but...'
  
`Drop it!' said Ford. `If you don't like it I'll have yours.
What's happening?'
  
`Chaos!' said Arthur. `Complete chaos! Random keeps on
screaming at Trillian, or Tricia or whoever it is, that she aban-
doned her and then demanding to go to a good night club. Tricia's
broken down in tears and says she's never even met Random
let alone given birth to her. Then she suddenly started howling
about someone called Rupert and said that he had lost his mind
or something. I didn't quite follow that bit, to be honest. Then
Random started throwing stuff and they've cut to a commercial
break while they try and sort it all out. Oh! They've just cut back
to the studio! Shut up and watch.'
  
A rather shaken anchorman appeared on the screen and
apologised to viewers for the disruption of the previous item.
He said he didn't have any very clear news to report, only that
the mysterious girl, who called herself Random Frequent Flyer
Dent had left the studio to, er, rest. Tricia McMillan would be,
he hoped, back tomorrow. Meanwhile, fresh reports of UFO
activity were coming in...
  
Ford leaped up off the bed, grabbed the nearest phone and
jabbed at a number.
  
`Concierge? You want to own the hotel? It's yours if you
can find out for me in five minutes which clubs Tricia McMillan
belongs to. Just charge the whole thing to this room.'


                          % 24

Away in the inky depths of space invisible movements were
being made.
  
Invisible to any of the inhabitants of the strange and tem-
peramental Plural zone at the focus of which lay the infinitely
multitudinous possibilities of the planet called Earth, but not
inconsequential to them.
  
At the very edge of the solar system, hunkered down on a
green leatherette sofa, staring fretfully at a range of TV and
computer screens sat a very worried Grebulon leader. He was
fiddling with stuff. Fiddling with his book on astrology. Fiddling
with the console of his computer. Fiddling with the displays
being fed through to him constantly from all of the Grebulons'
monitoring devices, all of them focused on the planet Earth.
  
He was distressed. Their mission was to monitor. But to
monitor secretly. He was a bit fed up with his mission, to be
honest. He was fairly certain that his mission must have been
to do more than sit around watching TV for years on end. They
certainly had a lot of other equipment with them that must have
had some purpose if only they hadn't accidentally lost all trace
of their purpose. He needed a sense of purpose in life, which
was why he had turned to astrology to fill the yawning gulf that
existed in the middle of his mind and soul. That would tell him
something, surely.
  
Well, it was telling him something.
  
It was telling him, as far as he could make out, that he
was about to have a very bad month, that things were going to
go from bad to worse if he didn't get a grip on things and start
making some positive moves and thinking things out for himself.
  
It was true. It was very clear from his star chart which
he had worked out using his astrology book and the computer
program which that nice Tricia McMillan had designed for him to
re-triangulate all the appropriate astronomical data. Earth-based
astrology had to be entirely recalculated to yield results that were
meaningful to the Grebulons here on the tenth planet out on the
frozen edges of the solar system.
  
The recalculations showed absolutely clearly and unamhigu-
ously that he was going to have a very bad month indeed,
starting with today. Because today Earth was starting to rise
into Capricorn, and that, for the Grebulon leader, who showed
all the character signs of being a classic Taurus, was very bad
indeed.
  
Now was the time, his horoscope said, for taking positive
actions, making tough decisions, seeing what needed to be done
and doing it. This was all very difficult for him, but he knew that
nobody ever said that doing tough stuff wasn't tough. The com-
puter was already tracking and predicting the second-by-second
location of the planet Earth. He ordered the great grey turrets
to swivel.Because all of the Grebulon surveillance equipment was focused
on the planet Earth, it failed to spot that there was now another
source of data in the solar system.
  
Its chances of spotting this other source of data - a massive
yellow constructor ship - accidentally were practically nil. It was
as far from the sun as Rupert was, but almost diametrically
opposite, almost hidden by the sun.
  
Almost.
  
The massive yellow constructor ship wanted to be able to
monitor events on Planet Ten without being spotted itself. It
had managed this very successfully.
  
There were all sorts of other ways in which this ship was
diametrically opposite to the Grebulons.
  
Its leader, its Captain, had a very clear idea of what his
purpose was. It was a very simple and plain one and he had been
pursuing it in his simple, plain way for a considerable period of
time now.
  
Anyone who knew of his purpose might have said that it was
a pointless and ugly one, that it wasn't the sort of purpose that
enhanced a life, put a spring in a person's step, made birds sing
and flowers bloom. Rather the reverse in fact. Absolutely the
reverse.
  
It wasn't his job to worry about that, though. It was his job
to do his job, which was to do his job. If that led to a certain
narrowness of vision and circularity of thought then it wasn't his
job to worry about such things. Any such things that came his
way were referred to others who had, in turn, other people to
refer such things to.
  
Many, many light years from here, indeed from anywhere,
lies the grim and long abandoned planet, Vogsphere. Some-
where on a fetid, fog-bound mud bank on this planet there
stands, surrounded by the dirty, broken and empty carapaces
of the last few jeweled scuttling crabs, a small stone monument
which marks the place, where it is thought, the species Vogon
Vogonblurtus first arose. On the monument there is carved an
arrow which points away into the fog, under which are inscribed
in plain, simple letters the words `The buck stops there.'
  
Deep in the bowels of his unsightly yellow ship, the Vogon
Captain grunted as he reached for a slightly faded and dog-eared
piece of paper that lay in front of him. A demolition order.
  
If you were to unravel exactly where the Captain's job, which
was to do his job which was to do his job, actually began, then it
all came down at last to this piece of paper that had been issued
to him by his immediate superior long ago. The piece of paper
had an instruction on it, and his purpose was to carry out that
instruction and put a little tick mark in the adjacent box when
he had carried it out.
  
He had carried out the instruction once before, but a number
of troublesome circumstances had prevented him from being able
to put the tick in the little box.
  
One of the troublesome circumstances was the Plural nature of
this Galactic sector, where the possible continually interfered with
the probable. Simple demolition didn't get you any further than
pushing down a bubble under a badly hung strip of wallpaper.
Anything you demolished kept on popping up again. That would
soon be taken care of.
  
Another was a small bunch of people who continually refused
to be where they were supposed to be when they were supposed
to be there. That, also, would soon be taken care of.
  
The third was an irritating and anarchic little device called
the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That was now well and
truly taken care of and, in fact, through the phenomenal power
of temporal reverse engineering, it was now itself the agency
through which everything else would be taken care of. The
Captain had merely come to watch the final act of this drama.
He himself did not have to lift a finger.
  
`Show me,' he said.
  
The shadowy shape of a bird spread its wings and rose
into the air near him. Darkness engulfed the bridge. Dim
lights danced briefly in the black eyes of the bird as, deep in
its instructional address space, bracket after bracket was final-
ly closing, if clauses were finally ending, repeat loops halting,
recursive functions calling themselves for the last few times.
  
A brilliant vision lit up in the darkness, a watery blue and
green vision, a tube flowing through the air, shaped like a
chopped up string of sausages.
  
With a flatulent noise of satisfaction, the Vogon Captain
sat back to watch.


                          % 25

`Just there, number forty-two,' shouted Ford Prefect to the
taxi-driver. `Right here!'
  
The taxi lurched to a halt, and Ford and Arthur jumped out.
They had stopped at quite a number of cash-dispensers on the
way, and Ford chucked a fistful of money through the window
at the driver.
  
The entrance to the club was dark, smart and severe. Only
the smallest little plaque bore its name. Members knew where
it was, and if you weren't a member then knowing where it was
wasn't any help to you.
  
Ford Prefect was not a member of Stavro's though he had
once been to Stavro's other club in New York. He had a very
simple method of dealing with establishments of which he was not
a member. He simply swept in as soon as the door was opened,
pointed back at Arthur and said, `It's OK, he's with me.'
  He bounded down the dark glossy stairs, feeling very froody
in his new shoes. They were suede and they were blue, and he
was very pleased that in spite of everything else going on he had
been sharp-eyed enough to spot them in a shop window from the
back of a speeding taxi.
  
`I thought I told you not to come here.'
  
`What?' said Ford.
  
A thin, ill-looking man wearing something baggy and Italian
was walking up the stairs past them, lighting a cigarette, and had
stopped, suddenly.
  
`Not you,' he said. `Him.'
  
He looked straight at Arthur, then seemed to become a
little confused.
  
`Excuse me,' he said. `I think I must have mistaken you
for someone else.' He started on up the stairs again , but almost
immediately turned round once more, even more puzzled. He
stared at Arthur.
  
`Now what?' said Ford.
  
`What did you say?'
  
`I said, now what?' repeated Ford irritably.
  
`Yes, I think so,' said the man and swayed slightly and
dropped the book of matches he'd been carrying. His mouth
moved weakly. Then he put his hand to his forehead.
  
`Excuse me,' he said, `I'm trying desperately to remember
which drug I've just taken, but it must be one of those ones
which mean you can't remember.'
  
He shook his head and turned away again, and went up
towards the men's room.
  
`Come on,' said Ford. He hurried on downstairs, with Arthur
following nervously in his wake. The encounter had shaken him
badly and he didn't know why.
  
He didn't like places like this. For all of the dreams of Earth
and home he had had for years, he now badly missed his hut on
Lamuella with his knives and his sandwiches. He even missed
Old Thrashbarg.
  
`Arthur!'
  
It was the most astounding effect. His name was being shouted
in stereo.
  
He twisted to look one way. Up the stairs behind him he saw
Trillian hurrying down towards him in her wonderfully rumpled
Rymplon TM. She was looking suddenly aghast.
  
He twisted the other way to see what she was looking suddenly
aghast at.
  
At the bottom of the stairs was Trillian, wearing... No
- this was Tricia. Tricia that he had just seen, hysterical with
confusion, on television. And behind her was Random, looking
more wild-eyed than ever. Behind her in the recesses of the
smart, dimly lit club, the other clientele of the evening formed a
frozen tableau, staring anxiously up at the confrontation on the
stairs.
  
For a few seconds everyone stood stock still. Only the music
from behind the bar didn't know to stop throbbing.
  
`The gun she is holding,' said Ford quietly, nodding slightly
towards Random, `is a Wabanatta 3. It was in the ship she stole
from me. It's quite dangerous in fact. Just don't move for a
moment. Let's just everybody stay calm and find out what's
upsetting her.'
  
`Where do I fit?' screamed Random suddenly. The hand
holding the gun was trembling fiercely. Her other hand delved
into her pocket and pulled out the remains of Arthur's watch.
She shook it at them.
  
`I thought I would fit here,' she cried, `on the world that
made me! But it turns out that even my mother doesn't know
who I am!' She flung the watch violently aside, and it smashed
into the glasses behind the bar, scattering its innards.
  
Everyone was very quiet for a moment or two longer.
  
`Random,' said Trillian quietly from up on the stairs.
  
`Shut up!' shouted Random. `You abandoned me!'
  
`Random, it is very important that you listen to me and
understand,' persisted Trillian quietly. `There isn't very much
time. We must leave. We must all leave.'
  
`What are you talking about? We're always leaving!' She had
both hands on the gun now, and both were shaking. There was
no one in particular she was pointing it at. She was just pointing
it at the world in general.
  
`Listen,' said Trillian again. `I left you because I went to cover
a war for the network. It was extremely dangerous . At least, I
thought it was going to be. I arrived and the war had suddenly
ceased to happen. There was a time anomaly and... listen!
Please listen! A reconnaissance battleship had failed to turn up,
the rest of the fleet was scattered in some farcical disarray. It's
happening all the time now.'
  
`I don't care! I don't want to hear about your bloody job!'
shouted Random. `I want a home! I want to fit somewhere!'
  
`This is not your home,' said Trillian, still keeping her voice
calm. `You don't have one. We none of us have one. Hardly
anybody has one any more. The missing ship I was just talking
about. The people of that ship don't have a home. They don't
know where they are from. They don't even have any memory
of who they are or what they are for. They are very lost and
very confused and very frightened. They are here in this solar
system, and they are about to do something very... misguided
because they are so lost and confused. We... must... leave
... now. I can't tell you where there is to go to. Perhaps there
isn't anywhere. But here is not the place to be. Please. One more
time. Can we go?'
  
Random was wavering in panic and confusion.
  
`It's all right,' said Arthur gently. `If I'm here, we're safe.
Don't ask me to explain just now, but I am safe, so you are
safe. OK?'
  
`What are you saying?' said Trillian.
  
`Let's all just relax,' said Arthur. He was feeling very tranquil.
His life was charmed and none of this seemed real.
  
Slowly, gradually, Random began to relax, and to let the
gun down, inch by inch.
  
Two things happened simultaneously.
  
The door to the men's room at the top of the stairs opened,
and the man who had accosted Arthur came out, sniffing.
  
Startled at the sudden movement, Random lifted the gun
again just as a man standing behind her made a grab for it.
  
Arthur threw himself forward. There was a deafening explo-
sion. He fell awkwardly as Trillian threw herself down over him.
The noise died away. Arthur looked up to see the man at the top
of the stairs gazing down at him with a look of utter stupefaction.
  
`You...' he said. Then slowly, horribly, he fell apart.
  
Random threw the gun down and fell to her knees, sobbing.
I'm sorry!' she said. `I'm so sorry! I'm so, so sorry...'
  
Tricia went to her. Trillian went to her.
  
Arthur sat on the stairs with his head between his hands and
had not the faintest idea what to do. Ford was sitting on the stair
beneath him. He picked something up, looked at it with interest,
and passed it up to Arthur.
  
`This mean anything to you? he said.
  
Arthur took it. It was the book of matches which the dead
man had dropped. It had the name of the club on it. It had the
name of the proprietor of the club on it. It looked like this:

He stared at it for some time as things began slowly to reassemble
themselves in his mind. He wondered what he should do, but
he only wondered it idly. Around him people were beginning
to rush and shout a lot, but it was suddenly very clear to him
that there was nothing to be done, not now or ever. Through
the new strangeness of noise and light he could just make out
the shape of Ford Prefect sitting back and laughing wildly.
  
A tremendous feeling of peace came over him. He knew
that at last, for once and for ever, it was now all, finally, over.

In the darkness of the bridge at the heart of the Vogon ship,
Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz sat alone. Lights flared briefly across the
external vision screens that lined one wall. In the air above him
the discontinuities in the blue and green watery sausage shape
resolved themselves. Options collapsed, possibilities folded into
each other, and the whole at last resolved itself out of existence.
  
A very deep darkness descended. The Vogon captain sat
immersed in it for a few seconds.
  
`Light' he said.
  
There was no response. The bird, too, had crumpled out
of all possibility.
  
The Vogon turned on the light himself. He picked up the
piece of paper again and placed a little tick in the little box.
Well, that was done. His ship slunk off into the inky void.In spite of having taken what he regarded as an extremely
positive piece of action, the Grebulon Leader ended up having
a very bad month after all. It was pretty much the same as all
the previous months except that there was now nothing on the
television any more. He put on a little light music instead.