ADAMS, Douglas - Mostly Harmless
Page 16
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 di
d.
`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 sh
elf 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