Then another failure and then, miraculously, the perfect carrier had come at last. The perfect carrier had already proved that it would have no compunction in doing what would have to be done.
Damply, clogged in mist, the moon struggled in a corner of the sky to rise. At the window, a shadow moved.
CHAPTER 30
From the window overlooking Second Court Dirk watched the moon. “We shall not,” he said, “have long to wait.”
“To wait for what?” said Richard.
Dirk turned.
“For the ghost,” he said, “to return to us. Professor —” he added to Reg, who was sitting anxiously by the fire, “do you have any brandy, French cigarettes or worry beads in your rooms?”
“No,” said Reg.
“Then I shall have to fret unaided,” said Dirk and returned to staring out of the window.
“I have yet to be convinced,” said Richard, “that there is not some other explanation than that of… ghosts to —”
“Just as you required actually to see a time machine in operation before you could accept it,” returned Dirk. “Richard, I commend you on your scepticism, but even the sceptical mind must be prepared to accept the unacceptable when there is no alternative. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidæ on our hands.”
“Then what is a ghost?”
“I think that a ghost…” said Dirk, “is someone who died either violently or unexpectedly with unfinished business on his, her — or its — hands. Who cannot rest until it has been finished, or put right.”
He turned to face them again.
“Which is why,” he said, “a time machine would have such a fascination for a ghost once it knew of its existence. A time machine provides the means to put right what, in the ghost's opinion, went wrong in the past. To free it.
“Which is why it will be back. It tried first to take possession of Reg himself, but he resisted. Then came the incident with the conjuring trick, the face powder and the horse in the bathroom which I —” he paused — “which even I do not understand, though I intend to if it kills me. And then you, Richard, appear on the scene. The ghost deserts Reg and concentrates instead on you. Almost immediately there occurs an odd but significant incident. You do something that you then wish you hadn't done.
“I refer, of course, to the phone call you made to Susan and left on her answering machine.
“The ghost seizes its chance and tries to induce you to undo it. To, as it were, go back into the past and erase that message — to change the mistake you had made. Just to see if you would do it. Just to see if it was in your character.
“If it had been, you would now be totally under its control. But at the very last second your nature rebelled and you would not do it. And so the ghost gives you up as a bad job and deserts you in turn. It must find someone else.
“How long has it been doing this? I do not know. Does this now make sense to you? Do you recognise the truth of what I am saying?”
Richard turned cold.
“Yes,” he said, “I think you must be absolutely right.”
“And at what moment, then,” said Dirk, “did the ghost leave you?”
Richard swallowed.
“When Michael Wenton-Weakes walked out of the room,” he said.
“So I wonder,” said Dirk quietly, “what possibilities the ghost saw in him. I wonder whether this time it found what it wanted. I believe we shall not have long to wait.”
There was a knock on the door.
When it opened, there stood Michael Wenton-Weakes.
He said simply, “Please, I need your help.”
Reg and Richard stared at Dirk, and then at Michael.
“Do you mind if I put this down somewhere?” said Michael. “It's rather heavy. Full of scuba-diving equipment.”
“Oh, I see,” said Susan, “oh well, thanks, Nicola, I'll try that fingering. I'm sure he only put the E flat in there just to annoy people. Yes, I've been at it solidly all afternoon. Some of those semiquaver runs in the second movement are absolute bastards. Well, yes, it helped take my mind off it all. No, no news. It's all just mystifying and absolutely horrible. I don't want even to — look, maybe I'll give you a call again later and see how you're feeling. I know, yes, you never know which is worse, do you, the illness, the antibiotics, or the doctor's bedside manner. Look after yourself, or at least, make sure Simon does. Tell him to bring you gallons of hot lemon. OK. Well, I'll talk to you later. Keep warm. Bye now.”
She put the phone down and returned to her cello. She had hardly started to reconsider the problem of the irritating E flat when the phone went again. She had simply left it off the hook for the afternoon, but had forgotten to do so again after making her own call.
With a sigh she propped up the cello, put down the bow, and went to the phone again.
“Hello?” she demanded.
Again, there was nothing, just a distant cry of wind. Irritably, she slammed the receiver back down once more.
She waited a few seconds for the line to clear, and then was about to take the phone off the hook once more when she realised that perhaps Richard might need her.
She hesitated.
She admitted to herself that she hadn't been using the answering machine, because she usually just put it on for Gordon's convenience, and that was something of which she did not currently wish to be reminded.
Still, she put the answering machine on, turned the volume right down, and returned again to the E flat that Mozart had put in only to annoy cellists.
In the darkness of the offices of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Gordon Way clumsily fumbled the telephone receiver back on to its rest and sat slumped in the deepest dejection. He didn't even stop himself slumping all the way through the seat until he rested lightly on the floor.
Miss Pearce had fled the office the first time the telephone had started actually using itself, her patience with all this sort of thing finally exhausted again, since which time Gordon had had the office to himself. However, his attempts to contact anybody had failed completely.
Or rather, his attempts to contact Susan, which was all he cared about. It was Susan he had been speaking to when he died and he knew he had somehow to speak to her again. But she had left her phone off the hook most of the afternoon and even when she had answered she could not hear him.
He gave up. He roused himself from the floor, stood up, and slipped out and down into the darkening streets. He drifted aimlessly for a while, went for a walk on the canal, which was a trick that palled very quickly, and then wandered back up to the street again.
The houses with light and life streaming from them upset him most particularly since the welcome they seemed to extend would not be extended to him. He wondered if anyone would mind if he simply slipped into their house and watched television for the evening. He wouldn't be any trouble.
Or a cinema.
That would be better, he could go to the cinema.
He turned with more positive, if still insubstantial, footsteps into Noel Road and started to walk up it.
Noel Road, he thought. It rang a vague bell. He had a feeling that he had recently had some dealings with someone in Noel Road. Who was it?
His thoughts were interrupted by a terrible scream of horror that rang through the street. He stood stock still. A few seconds later a door flew open a few yards from him and a woman ran out of it, wild-eyed and howling.
CHAPTER 31
Richard had never liked Michael Wenton-Weakes and he liked him even less with a ghost in him. He couldn't say why, he had nothing against ghosts personally, didn't think a person should be judged adversely simply for being dead, but — he didn't like it.
Nevertheless, it was hard not to feel a little sorry for him.
Michael sat forlornly on a stool with his elbow resting on the large table and his head resting on his fingers. He looked ill and hagg
ard. He looked deeply tired. He looked pathetic. His story had been a harrowing one, and concluded with his attempts to possess first Reg and then Richard.
“You were,” he concluded, “right. Entirely.”
He said this last to Dirk, and Dirk grimaced as if trying not to beam with triumph too many times in a day.
The voice was Michael's and yet it was not Michael's. Whatever timbre a voice acquires through a billion or so years of dread and isolation, this voice had acquired it, and it filled those who heard it with a dizzying chill akin to that which clutches the mind and stomach when standing on a cliff at night.
He turned his eyes on Reg and on Richard, and the effect of the eyes, too, was one that provoked pity and terror. Richard had to look away.
“I owe you both an apology,” said the ghost within Michael “which I offer you from the depths of my heart, and only hope that as you come to understand the desperation of my predicament, and the hope which this machine offers me, you will understand why I have acted as I have, and that you will find it within yourselves to forgive me. And to help me. I beg you.”
“Give the man a whisky,” said Dirk gruffly.
“Haven't got any whisky,” said Reg. “Er, port? There's a bottle or so of Margaux I could open. Very fine one. Should be chambréd for an hour, but I can do that of course, it's very easy, I —”
“Will you help me?” interrupted the ghost.
Reg bustled to fetch some port and some glasses.
“Why have you taken over the body of this man?” said Dirk.
“I need to have a voice with which to speak and a body with which to act. No harm will come to him, no harm —”
“Let me ask the question again. Why have you taken over the body of this man?” insisted Dirk.
The ghost made Michael's body shrug.
“He was willing. Both of these two gentlemen quite understandably resisted being… well, hypnotised — your analogy is fair. This one? Well, I think his sense of self is at a low ebb, and he has acquiesced. I am very grateful to him and will not do him any harm.”
“His sense of self,” repeated Dirk thoughtfully, “is at a low ebb.”
“I suppose that is probably true,” said Richard quietly to Dirk. “He seemed very depressed last night. The one thing that was important to him had been taken away because he, well, he wasn't really very good at it. Although he's proud I expect he was probably quite receptive to the idea of actually being wanted for something.”
“Hmmm,” said Dirk, and said it again. He said it a third time with feeling. Then he whirled round and barked at the figure on the stool.
“Michael Wenton-Weakes!”
Michael's head jolted back and he blinked.
“Yes?” he said, in his normal lugubrious voice. His eyes followed Dirk as he moved.
“You can hear me,” said Dirk, “and you can answer for yourself?”
“Oh, yes,” said Michael, “most certainly I can.”
“This… being, this spirit. You know he is in you? You accept his presence? You are a willing party to what he wishes to do?”
“That is correct. I was much moved by his account of himself, and am very willing to help him. In fact I think it is right for me to do so.”
“All right,” said Dirk with a snap of his fingers, “you can go.”
Michael's head slumped forward suddenly, and then after a second or so it slowly rose again, as if being pumped up from inside like a tyre. The ghost was back in possession.
Dirk took hold of a chair, spun it round and sat astride it facing the ghost in Michael, peering intently into its eyes.
“Again,” he said, “tell me again. A quick snap account.”
Michael's body tensed slightly. It reached out to Dirk's arm.
“Don't — touch me!” snapped Dirk. “Just tell me the facts. The first time you try and make me feel sorry for you I'll poke you in the eye. Or at least, the one you've borrowed. So leave out all the stuff that sounded like… er —”
“Coleridge,” said Richard suddenly, “it sounded exactly like Coleridge. It was like ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. Well bits of it were.”
Dirk frowned.
“Coleridge?” he said.
“I tried to tell him my story,” admitted the ghost, “I —”
“Sorry,” said Dirk, “you'll have to excuse me — I've never crossexamined a four-billion-year-old ghost before. Are we talking Samuel Taylor here? Are you saying you told your story to Samuel Taylor Coleridge?”
“I was able to enter his mind at… certain times. When he was in an impressionable state.”
“You mean when he was on laudanum?” said Richard.
“That is correct. He was more relaxed then.”
“I'll say,” snorted Reg, “I sometimes encountered him when he was quite astoundingly relaxed. Look, I'll make some coffee.” He disappeared into the kitchen, where he could be heard laughing to himself.
“It's another world,” muttered Richard to himself, sitting down and shaking his head.
“But unfortunately when he was fully in possession of himself I, so to speak, was not,” said the ghost, “and so that failed. And what he wrote was very garbled.”
“Discuss,” said Richard, to himself, raising his eyebrows.
“Professor,” called out Dirk, “this may sound absurd. Did — Coleridge ever try to… er… use your time machine? Feel free to discuss the question in any way which appeals to you.”
“Well, do you know,” said Reg, looking round the door, “he did come in prying around on one occasion, but I think he was in a great deal too relaxed a state to do anything.”
“I see,” said Dirk. “But why,” he added turning back to the strange figure of Michael slumped on its stool, “why has it taken you so long to find someone?”
“For long, long periods I am very weak, almost totally non-existent, and unable to influence anything at all. And then, of course, before that time there was no time machine here, and… no hope for me at all —”
“Perhaps ghosts exist like wave patterns,” suggested Richard, “like interference patterns between the actual with the possible. There would be irregular peaks and troughs, like in a musical waveform.”
The ghost snapped Michael's eyes around to Richard.
“You…” he said, “you wrote that article…”
“Er, yes —”
“It moved me very greatly,” said the ghost, with a sudden remorseful longing in his voice which seemed to catch itself almost as much by surprise as it did its listeners.
“Oh. I see,” said Richard, “Well, thank you. You didn't like it so much last time you mentioned it. Well, I know that wasn't you as such —”
Richard sat back frowning to himself.
“So,” said Dirk, “to return to the beginning —”
The ghost gathered Michael's breath for him and started again. “We were on a ship —” it said.
“A spaceship.”
“Yes. Out from Salaxala, a world in… well, very far from here. A violent and troubled place. We — a party of some nine dozen of us — set out, as people frequently did, to find a new world for ourselves. All the planets in this system were completely unsuitable for our purpose, but we stopped on this world to replenish some necessary mineral supplies. Unfortunately our landing ship was damaged on its way into the atmosphere. Damaged quite badly, but still quite reparable.
“I was the engineer on board and it fell to me to supervise the task of repairing the ship and preparing it to return to our main ship. Now, in order to understand what happened next you must know something of the nature of a highly-automated society. There is no task that cannot be done more easily with the aid of advanced computerisation. And there were some very specific problems associated with a trip with an aim such as ours —”
“Which was?” said Dirk sharply.
The ghost in Michael blinked as if the answer was obvious. “Well, to find a new and better world on which we could all l
ive in freedom, peace and harmony forever, of course,” he said.
Dirk raised his eyebrows.
“Oh, that,” he said. “You'd thought this all out carefully, I assume.”
“We'd had it thought out for us. We had with us some very specialised devices for helping us to continue to believe in the purpose of the trip even when things got difficult. They generally worked very well, but I think we probably came to rely on them too much.”
“What on earth were they?” said Dirk.
“It's probably hard for you to understand how reassuring they were. And that was why I made my fatal mistake. When I wanted to know whether or not it was safe to take off, I didn't want to know that it might /not/ be safe. I just wanted to be reassured that it was. So instead of checking it myself, you see, I sent out one of the Electric Monks.”
CHAPTER 32
The brass plaque on the red door in Peckender Street glittered as it reflected the yellow light of a street lamp. It glared for a moment as it reflected the violent flashing light of a passing police car sweeping by.
It dimmed slightly as a pale, pale wraith slipped silently through it. It glimmered as it dimmed, because the wraith was trembling with such terrible agitation.
In the dark hallway the ghost of Gordon Way paused. He needed something to lean on for support, and of course there was nothing. He tried to get a grip on himself, but there was nothing to get a grip on. He retched at the horror of what he had seen, but there was, of course, nothing in his stomach. He half stumbled, half swam up the stairs, like a drowning man trying to grapple for a grip on the water.
He staggered through the wall, through the desk, through the door, and tried to compose and settle himself in front of the desk in Dirk's office.
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