Mostly Harmless

  '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 continued, '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 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.

  Chapter 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 sometimes 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.

  Chapter 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 pounding 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 pounding 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. Ma
ke 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 anybody'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.