ADAMS, Douglas - So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

by So Long

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  Chapter 17

  Misery, dejection. More misery and more dejection. He needed a

  project and he gave himself one.

  He would find where his cave had been.

  On prehistoric Earth he had lived in a cave, not a nice cave, a

  lousy cave, but ... There was no but. It had been a totally lousy

  cave and he had hated it. But he had lived in it for five years

  which made it home of some kind, and a person likes to keep track

  of his homes. Arthur Dent was such a person and so he went to

  Exeter to buy a computer.

  That was what he really wanted, of course, a computer. But he

  felt he ought to have some serious purpose in mind before he

  simply went and lashed out a lot of readies on what people might

  otherwise mistake as being just a thing to play with. So that was

  his serious purpose. To pinpoint the exact location of a cave on

  prehistoric Earth. He explained this to the man in the shop.

  "Why?" said the man in the shop.

  This was a tricky one.

  "OK, skip that," said the man in the shop. "How?"

  "Well, I was hoping you could help me with that."

  The man sighed and his shoulders dropped.

  "Have you much experience of computers?"

  Arthur wondered whether to mention Eddie the shipboard computer

  on the Heart of Gold, who could have done the job in a second, or

  Deep Thought, or - but decided he wouldn't.

  "No," he said.

  "Looks like a fun afternoon," said the man in the shop, but he

  said it only to himself.

  Arthur bought the Apple anyway. Over a few days he also acquired

  some astronomical software, plotted the movements of stars, drew

  rough little diagrams of how he seemed to remember the stars to

  have been in the sky when he looked up out of his cave at night,

  and worked away busily at it for weeks, cheerfully putting off

  the conclusion he knew he would inevitably have to come to, which

  was that the whole project was completely ludicrous.

  Rough drawings from memory were futile. He didn't even know how

  long it had been, beyond Ford Prefect's rough guess at the time

  that it was "a couple of million years" and he simply didn't have

  the maths.

  Still, in the end he worked out a method which would at least

  produce a result. He decided not to mind the fact that with the

  extraordinary jumble of rules of thumb, wild approximations and

  arcane guesswork he was using he would be lucky to hit the right

  galaxy, he just went ahead and got a result.

  He would call it the right result. Who would know?

  As it happened, through the myriad and unfathomable chances of

  fate, he got it exactly right, though he of course would never

  know that. He just went up to London and knocked on the

  appropriate door.

  "Oh. I thought you were going to phone me first."

  Arthur gaped in astonishment.

  "You can only come in for a few minutes," said Fenchurch. "I'm

  just going out."

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  Chapter 18

  A summer's day in Islington, full of the mournful wail of

  antique-restoring machinery.

  Fenchurch was unavoidably busy for the afternoon, so Arthur

  wandered in a blissed-out haze and looked at all the shops which,

  in Islington, are quite an useful bunch, as anyone who regularly

  needs old woodworking tools, Boer War helmets, drag, office

  furniture or fish will readily confirm.

  The sun beat down over the roofgardens. It beat on architects and

  plumbers. It beat on barristers and burglars. It beat on pizzas.

  It beat on estate agent's particulars.

  It beat on Arthur as he went into a restored furniture shop.

  "It's an interesting building," said the proprietor, cheerfully.

  "There's a cellar with a secret passage which connects with a

  nearby pub. It was built for the Prince Regent apparently, so he

  could make his escape when he needed to."

  "You mean, in case anybody might catch him buying stripped pine

  furniture," said Arthur

  "No," said the proprietor, "not for that reason."

  "You'll have to excuse me," said Arthur. "I'm terribly happy."

  "I see."

  He wandered hazily on and found himself outside the offices of

  Greenpeace. he remembered the contents of his file marked "Things

  to do - urgent!", which he hadn't opened again in the meantime.

  He marched in with a cheery smile and said he'd come to give them

  some money to help free the dolphins.

  "Very funny," they told him, "go away."

  This wasn't quite the response he had expected, so he tried

  again. This time they got quite angry with him, so he just left

  some money anyway and went back out into the sunshine.

  Just after six he returned to Fenchurch's house in the alleyway,

  clutching a bottle of champagne.

  "Hold this," she said, shoved a stout rope in his hand and

  disappeared inside through the large white wooden doors from

  which dangled a fat padlock off a black iron bar.

  The house was a small converted stable in a light industrial

  alleyway behind the derelict Royal Agricultural Hall of

  Islington. As well as its large stable doors it also had a

  normal-looking front door of smartly glazed panelled wood with a

  black dolphin door knocker. The one odd thing about this door was

  its doorstep, which was nine feet high, since the door was set

  into the upper of the two floors and presumably had been

  originally used to haul in hay for hungry horses.

  An old pulley jutted out of the brickwork above the doorway and

  it was over this that the rope Arthur was holding was slung. The

  other end of the rope held a suspended 'cello.

  The door opened above his head.

  "OK," said Fenchurch, "pull on the rope, steady the 'cello. Pass

  it up to me."

  He pulled on the rope, he steadied the 'cello.

  "I can't pull on the rope again," he said, "without letting go of

  the 'cello."

  Fenchurch leant down.

  "I'm steadying the 'cello," she said. "You pull on the rope."

  The 'cello eased up level with the doorway, swinging slightly,

  and Fenchurch manoeuvred it inside.

  "Come on up yourself," she called down.

  Arthur picked up his bag of goodies and went in through the

  stable doors, tingling.

  The bottom room, which he had seen briefly before, was pretty

  rough and full of junk. A large old cast-iron mangle stood there,

  a surprising number of kitchen sinks were piled in a corner.

  There was also, Arthur was momentarily alarmed to see, a pram,

  but it was very old and uncomplicatedly full of books.

  The floor was old stained concrete, excitingly cracked. And this

  was the measure of Arthur's mood as he stared up the rickety

  wooden steps in the far corner. Even a cracked concrete floor

  seemed to him an almost unbearably sensual thing.

  "An architect friend of mine keeps on telling me how he can do

  wonderful things with this place," said Fenchurch chattily as

  Arthur emerged through the floo
r. "He keeps on coming round,

  standing in stunned amazement muttering about space and objects

  and events and marvellous qualities of light, then says he needs

  a pencil and disappears for weeks. Wonderful things have,

  therefore, so far failed to happen to it."

  In fact, thought Arthur as he looked about, the upper room was at

  least reasonably wonderful anyway. It was simply decorated,

  furnished with things made out of cushions and also a stereo set

  with speakers which would have impressed the guys who put up

  Stonehenge.

  There were flowers which were pale and pictures which were

  interesting.

  There was a sort of gallery structure in the roof space which

  held a bed and also a bathroom which, Fenchurch explained, you

  could actually swing a cat in. "But," she added, "only if it was

  a reasonably patient cat and didn't mind a few nasty cracks about

  the head. So. here you are."

  "Yes."

  They looked at each other for a moment.

  The moment became a longer moment, and suddenly it was a very

  long moment, so long one could hardly tell where all the time was

  coming from.

  For Arthur, who could usually contrive to feel self-conscious if

  left alone for long enough with a Swiss Cheese plant, the moment

  was one of sustained revelation. He felt on the sudden like a

  cramped and zoo-born animal who awakes one morning to find the

  door to his cage hanging quietly open and the savannah stretching

  grey and pink to the distant rising sun, while all around new

  sounds are waking.

  He wondered what the new sounds were as he gazed at her openly

  wondering face and her eyes that smiled with a shared surprise.

  He hadn't realized that life speaks with a voice to you, a voice

  that brings you answers to the questions you continually ask of

  it, had never consciously detected it or recognized its tones

  till it now said something it had never said to him before, which

  was "Yes".

  Fenchurch dropped her eyes away at last, with a tiny shake of her

  head.

  "I know," she said. "I shall have to remember," she added, "that

  you are the sort of person who cannot hold on to a simple piece

  of paper for two minutes without winning a raffle with it."

  She turned away.

  "Let's go for a walk," she said quickly. "Hyde Park. I'll change

  into something less suitable."

  She was dressed in a rather severe dark dress, not a particularly

  shapely one, and it didn't really suit her.

  "I wear it specially for my 'cello teacher," she said. "He's a

  nice boy, but I sometimes think all that bowing gets him a bit

  excited. I'll be down in a moment."

  She ran lightly up the steps to the gallery above, and called

  down, "Put the bottle in the fridge for later."

  He noticed as he slipped the champagne bottle into the door that

  it had an identical twin to sit next to.

  He walked over to the window and looked out. He turned and

  started to look at her records. From above he heard the rustle of

  her dress fall to the ground. He talked to himself about the sort

  of person he was. He told himself very firmly that for this

  moment at least he would keep his eyes very firmly and

  steadfastly locked on to the spines of her records, read the

  titles, nod appreciatively, count the blasted things if he had

  to. He would keep his head down.

  This he completely, utterly and abjectly failed to do.

  She was staring down at him with such intensity that she seemed

  hardly to notice that he was looking up at her. Then suddenly she

  shook her head, dropped the light sundress over herself and

  disappeared quickly into the bathroom.

  She emerged a moment later, all smiles and with a sunhat and came

  tripping down the steps with extraordinary lightness. It was a

  strange kind of dancing motion she had. She saw that he noticed

  it and put her head slightly on one side.

  "Like it?" she said.

  "You look gorgeous," he said simply, because she did.

  "Hmmmm," she said, as if he hadn't really answered her question.

  She closed the upstairs front door which had stood open all this

  time, and looked around the little room to see that it was all in

  a fit state to be left on its own for a while. Arthur's eyes

  followed hers around, and while he was looking in the other

  direction she slipped something out of a drawer and into the

  canvas bag she was carrying.

  Arthur looked back at her.

  "Ready?"

  "Did you know," she said with a slightly puzzled smile, "that

  there's something wrong with me?"

  Her directness caught Arthur unprepared.

  "Well," he said, "I'd heard some vague sort of ..."

  "I wonder how much you do know about me," she said. "I you heard

  it from where I think you heard then that's not it. Russell just

  sort of makes stuff up, because he can't deal with what it really

  is."

  A pang of worry went through Arthur.

  "Then what is it?" he said. "Can you tell me?"

  "Don't worry," she said, "it's nothing bad at all. Just unusual.

  Very very unusual."

  She touched his hand, and then leant forward and kissed him

  briefly.

  "I shall be very interested to know," she said, "if you manage to

  work out what it is this evening."

  Arthur felt that if someone tapped him at that point he would

  have chimed, like the deep sustained rolling chime his grey

  fishbowl made when he flicked it with his thumbnail.

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  Chapter 19

  Ford Prefect was irritated to be continually wakened by the sound

  of gunfire.

  He slid himself out of the maintenance hatchway which he had

  fashioned into a bunk for himself by disabling some of the

  noisier machinery in his vicinity and padding it with towels. He

  slung himself down the access ladder and prowled the corridors

  moodily.

  They were claustrophobic and ill-lit, and what light there was

  was continually flickering and dimming as power surged this way

  and that through the ship, causing heavy vibrations and rasping

  humming noises.

  That wasn't it, though.

  He paused and leaned back against the wall as something that

  looked like a small silver power drill flew past him down the dim

  corridor with a nasty searing screech.

  That wasn't it either.

  He clambered listlessly through a bulkhead door and found himself

  in a larger corridor, though still ill-lit.

  The ship lurched. It had been doing this a fair bit, but this was

  heavier. A small platoon of robots weent by making a terrible

  clattering.

  Still not it, though.

  Acrid smoke was drifting up from one end of the corridor, so he

  walked along it in the other direction.

  He passed a series of observation monitors let into the walls

  behind plates of toughened but still badly scratched perspex.

  One of them showed some horrible green scaly reptilian figure

  ranting and raving abou
t the Single Transferable Vote system. It

  was hard to tell whether he was for or against it, but he clearly

  felt very strongly about it. Ford turned the sound down.

  That wasn't it, though.

  He passed another monitor. It was showing a commercial for some

  brand of toothpaste that would apparently make you feel free if

  you used it. There was nasty blaring music with it too, but that

  wasn't it.

  He came upon another, much larger three-dimensional screen that

  was monitoring the outside of the vast silver Xaxisian ship.

  As he watched, a thousand horribly beweaponed Zirzla robot

  starcruisers came searing round the dark shadow of a moon,

  silhouetted against the blinding disc of the star Xaxis, and the

  ship simultaneously unleashed a vicious blaze of hideously

  incomprehensible forces from all its orifices against them.

  That was it.

  Ford shook his head irritably and rubbed his eyes. He slumped on

  the wrecked body of a dull silver robot which clearly had been

  burning earlier on, but had now cooled down enough to sit on.