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ADAMS, Douglas - Mostly Harmless

Page 20

by Mostly Harmless (lit)


  `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 t
otty 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

 

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