So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish, Page 9

  "I'm just trying to get this entirely clear in my mind," said Arthur, "you say you felt as if the Earth actually... exploded ..."

  "Yes. More than felt."

  "Which is what everybody else says," he said hesitantly, "is hallucinations?"

  "Yes, but Arthur that's ridiculous. People think that if you just say 'hallucinations' it explains anything you want it to explain and eventually whatever it is you can't understand will just go away. It's just a word, it doesn't explain anything. It doesn't explain why the dolphins disappeared."

  "No," said Arthur. "No," he added thoughtfully. "No," he added again, even more thoughtfully. "What?" he said at last.

  "Doesn't explain the dolphins disappearing."

  "No," said Arthur, "I see that. Which dolphins do you mean?"

  "What do you mean which dolphins? I'm talking about when all the dolphins disappeared."

  She put her hand on his knee, which made him realize that the tingling going up and down his spine was not her gently stroking his back, and must instead be one of the nasty creepy feelings he so often got when people were trying to explain things to him.

  "The dolphins?"

  "Yes."

  "All the dolphins," said Arthur, "disappeared?"

  "Yes."

  "The dolphins? You're saying the dolphins all disappeared? Is this," said Arthur, trying to be absolutely clear on this point, "what you're saying?"

  "Arthur where have you been for heaven's sake? The dolphins all disappeared on the same day I..."

  She stared him intently in his startled eyes.

  "What...?"

  "No dolphins. All gone. Vanished."

  She searched his face.

  "Did you really not know that?"

  It was clear from his startled expression that he did not.

  "Where did they go?" he asked.

  "No one knows. That's what vanished means." She paused. "Well, there is one man who says he knows about it, but everyone says he lives in California," she said, "and is mad. I was thinking of going to see him because it seems the only lead I've got on what happened to me."

  She shrugged, and then looked at him long and quietly. She lay her hand on the side of his face.

  "I really would like to know where you've been," she said. "I think something terrible happened to you then as well. And that's why we recognized each other."

  She glanced around the park, which was now being gathered into the clutches of dusk.

  "Well," she said, "now you've got someone you can tell."

  Arthur slowly let out a long year of a sigh.

  "It is," he said, "a very long story."

  Fenchurch leaned across him and drew over her canvas bag.

  "Is it anything to do with this?" she said. The thing she took out of her bag was battered and travelworn as it had been hurled into prehistoric rivers, baked under the sun that shines so redly on the deserts of Kakrafoon, half-buried in the marbled sands that fringe the heady vapoured oceans of Santraginus V, frozen on the glaciers of the moon of Jaglan Beta, sat on, kicked around spaceships, scuffed and generally abused, and since its makers had thought that these were exactly the sorts of things that might happen to it, they had thoughtfully encased it in a sturdy plastic cover and written on it, in large friendly letters, the words "Don't Panic".

  "Where did you get this?" said Arthur, startled, taking it from her.

  "Ah," she said, "I thought it was yours. In Russell's car that night. You dropped it. Have you been to many of these places?"

  Arthur drew The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from its cover. It was like a small, thin, flexible lap computer. He tapped some buttons till the screen flared with text.

  "A few," he said.

  "Can we go to them?"

  "What? No," said Arthur abruptly, then relented, but relented warily. "Do you want to?" he said, hoping for the answer no. It was an act of great generosity on his part not to say, "You don't want to, do you?" which expects it.

  "Yes," she said. "I want to know what the message was that I lost, and where it came from. Because I don't think," she added, standing up and looking round the increasing gloom of the park, "that it came from here."

  "I'm not even sure," she further added, slipping her arm around Arthur's waist, "that I know where here is."

  Chapter 21

  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is, as has been remarked before often and accurately, a pretty startling kind of a thing. It is, essentially, as the title implies, a guide book. The problem is, or rather one of the problems, for there are many, a sizeable portion of which are continually clogging up the civil, commercial and criminal courts in all areas of the Galaxy, and especially, where possible, the more corrupt ones, this.

  The previous sentence makes sense. That is not the problem.

  This is:

  Change.

  Read it through again and you'll get it.

  The Galaxy is a rapidly changing place. There is, frankly, so much of it, every bit of which is continually on the move, continually changing. A bit of a nightmare, you might think, for a scrupulous and conscientious editor diligently striving to keep this massively detailed and complex electronic tome abreast of all the changing circumstances and conditions that the Galaxy throws up every minute of every hour of every day, and you would be wrong. Where you would be wrong would be in failing to realize that the editor, like all the editors of the Guide has ever had, has no real grasp of the meanings of the words "scrupulous", "conscientious" or "diligent", and tends to get his nightmares through a straw.

  Entries tend to get updated or not across the Sub-Etha Net according to if they read good.

  Take for example, the case of Brequinda on the Foth of Avalars, famed in myth, legend and stultifyingly dull tri-D mini-series as home of the magnificent and magical Fuolornis Fire Dragon.

  In Ancient days, when Fragilis sang and Saxaquine of the Quenelux held sway, when the air was sweet and the nights fragrant, but everyone somehow managed to be, or so they claimed, though how on earth they could have thought that anyone was even remotely likely to believe such a preposterous claim what with all the sweet air and fragrant nights and whatnot is anyone's guess, virgins, it was not possible to heave a brick on Brequinda in the Foth of Avalars without hitting at least half a dozen Fuolornis Fire Dragons.

  Whether you would want to do that is another matter.

  Not that Fire Dragons weren't an essentially peace-loving species, because they were. They adored it to bits, and this wholesale adoring of things to bits was often in itself the problem: one so often hurts the one loves, especially if one is a Fuolornis Fire Dragon with breath like a rocket booster and teeth like a park fence. Another problem was that once they were in the mood they often went on to hurt quite a lot of the ones that other people loved as well. Add to all that the relatively small number of madmen who actually went around the place heaving bricks, and you end up with a lot of people on Brequinda in the Foth of Avalars getting seriously hurt by dragons.

  But did they mind? They did not.

  Were they heard to bemoan their fate? No.

  The Fuolornis Fire Dragons were revered throughout the lands of Brequinda in the Foth of valors for their savage beauty, their noble ways and their habit of biting people who didn't revere them.

  Why was this?

  The answer was simple.

  Sex.

  There is, for some unfathomed reason, something almost unbearably sexy about having huge fire-breathing magical dragons flying low about the sky on moonlit nights which were already dangerously on the sweet and fragrant side.

  Why this should be so, the romance-besotted people of Brequinda in the Foth of Avalars could not have told you, and would not have stopped to discuss the matter once the effect was up and going, for no sooner would a flock of half a dozen silk-winged leather-bodied Fuolornis Fire Dragons heave into sight across the evening horizon than half the people of Brequinda are scurrying off into the woods with the other half, there to spend
a busy breathless night together and emerge with the first rays of dawn all smiling and happy and still claiming, rather endearingly, to be virgins, if rather flushed and sticky virgins.

  Pheromones, some researchers said.

  Something sonic, others claimed.

  The place was always stiff with researchers trying to get to the bottom of it all and taking a very long time about it.

  Not surprisingly, the Guide's graphically enticing description of the general state of affairs on this planet has proved to be astonishingly popular amongst hitch-hikers who allow themselves to be guided by it, and so it has simply never been taken out, and it is therefore left to latter-day travellers to find out for themselves that today's modern Brequinda in the City State of Avalars is now little more than concrete, strip joints and Dragon Burger Bars.

  Chapter 22

  The night in Islington was sweet and fragrant.

  There were, of course, no Fuolornis Fire Dragons about in the alley, but if any had chanced by they might just as well have sloped off across the road for a pizza, for they were not going to be needed.

  Had an emergency cropped up while they were still in the middle of their American Hots with extra anchovy they could always have sent across a message to put Dire Straits on the stereo, which is now known to have much the same effect.

  "No," said Fenchurch, "not yet."

  Arthur put Dire Straits on the stereo. Fenchurch pushed ajar the upstairs front door to let in a little more of the sweet fragrant night air. They both sat on some of the furniture made out of cushions, very close to the open bottle of champagne.

  "No," said Fenchurch, "not till you've found out what's wrong with me, which bit. But I suppose," she added very, very, very quietly, "that we may as well start with where your hand is now."

  Arthur said, "So which way do I go?"

  "Down," said Fenchurch, "on this occasion."

  He moved his hand.

  "Down," she said, "is in fact the other way."

  "Oh yes."

  Mark Knopfler has an extraordinary ability to make a Schecter Custom Stratocaster hoot and sing like angels on a Saturday night, exhausted from being good all week and needing a stiff beer - which is not strictly relevant at this point since the record hadn't yet got to that bit, but there will be too much else going on when it does, and furthermore the chronicler does not intend to sit here with a track list and a stopwatch, so it seems best to mention it now while things are still moving slowly.

  "And so we come," said Arthur, "to your knee. There is something terribly and tragically wrong with your left knee."

  "My left knee," said Fenchurch, "is absolutely fine."

  "Do it is."

  "Did you know that..."

  "What?"

  "Ahm, it's all right. I can tell you do. No, keep going."

  "So it has to be something to do with your feet..."

  She smiled in the dim light, and wriggled her shoulders noncommittally against the cushions. Since there are cushions in the Universe, on Squornshellous Beta to be exact, two worlds in from the swampland of the mattresses, that actively enjoy being wriggled against, particularly if it's noncommittally because of the syncopated way in which the shoulders move, it's a pity they weren't there. They weren't, but such is life.

  Arthur held her left foot in his lap and looked it over carefully. All kinds of stuff about the way her dress fell away from her legs was making it difficult for him to think particularly clearly at this point.

  "I have to admit," he said, "that I really don't know what I'm looking for."

  "You'll know when you find it," she said. "Really you will." There was a slight catch in her voice. "It's not that one."

  Feeling increasingly puzzled, Arthur let her left foot down on the floor and moved himself around so that he could take her right foot. She moved forward, put her arms round and kissed him, because the record had got to that bit which, if you knew the record, you would know made it impossible not to do this.

  Then she gave him her right foot.

  He stroked it, ran his fingers round her ankle, under her toes, along her instep, could find nothing wrong with it.

  She watched him with great amusement, laughed and shook her head.

  "No, don't stop," she said, "but it's not that one now."

  Arthur stopped, and frowned at her left foot on the floor.

  "Don't stop."

  He stroked her right foot, ran his fingers around her ankle, under her toes, along her instep and said, "You mean it's something to do with which leg I'm holding...?"

  She did another of the shrugs which would have brought such joy into the life of a simple cushion from Squornshellous Beta.

  He frowned.

  "Pick me up," she said quietly.

  He let her right foot down to the floor and stood up. So did she. He picked her up in his arms and they kissed again. This went on for a while, then she said, "Now put me down again."

  Still puzzled, he did so.

  "Well?"

  She looked at him almost challengingly.

  "So what's wrong with my feet?" she said.

  Arthur still did not understand. He sat on the floor, then got down on his hands and knees to look at her feet, in situ, as it were, in their normal habitat. And as he looked closely, something odd struck him. He put his head right down to the ground and peered. There was a long pause. He sat back heavily.

  "Yes," he said, "I see what's wrong with your feet. They don't touch the ground."

  "So... so what do you think...?"

  Arthur looked up at her quickly and saw the deep apprehension making her eyes suddenly dark. She bit her lip and was trembling.

  "What do..." she stammered. "Are you...?" She shook the hair forwards over her eyes that were filling with dark fearful tears.

  He stood up quickly, put his arms around her and gave her a single kiss.

  "Perhaps you can do what I can do," he said, and walked straight out of her upstairs front door.

  The record got to the good bit.

  Chapter 23

  The battle raged on about the star of Xaxis. Hundreds of the fierce and horribly beweaponed Zirzla ships had now been smashed and wrenched to atoms by the withering forces the huge silver Xaxisian ship was able to deploy.

  Part of the moon had gone too, blasted away by those same blazing forceguns that ripped the very fabric of space as they passed through it.

  The Zirzla ships that remained, horribly beweaponed though they were, were now hopelessly outclassed by the devastating power of the Xaxisian ship, and were fleeing for cover behind the rapidly disintegrating moon, when the Xaxisian ship, in hurtling pursuit behind them, suddenly announced that it needed a holiday and left the field of battle.

  All was redoubled fear and consternation for a moment, but the ship was gone.

  With the stupendous powers at its command it flitted across vast tracts of irrationally shaped space, quickly, effortlessly, and above all, quietly.

  Deep in his greasy, smelly bunk, fashioned out of a maintenance hatchway, Ford Prefect slept among his towels, dreaming of old haunts. He dreamed at one point in his slumbers of New York.

  In his dream he was walking late at night along the East Side, beside the river which had become so extravagantly polluted that new lifeforms were now emerging from it spontaneously, demanding welfare and voting rights.

  One of those now floated past, waving. Ford waved back.

  The thing thrashed to the shore and struggled up the bank.

  "Hi," it said, "I've just been created. I'm completely new to the Universe in all respects. Is there anything you can tell me?"

  "Phew," said Ford, a little nonplussed, "I can tell you where some bars are, I guess."

  "What about love and happiness. I sense deep needs for things like that," it said, waving its tentacles. "Got any leads there?"

  "You can get some like what you require," said Ford, "on Seventh Avenue."

  "I instinctively feel," said the creature, urgent
ly, "that I need to be beautiful. Am I?"

  "You're pretty direct, aren't you?"

  "No point in mucking about. Am I?"

  "To me?" said Ford. "No. But listen," he added after a moment, "most people make out, you know. Are there and like you down there?"

  "Search me, buster," said the creature, "as I said, I'm new here. Life is entirely strange to me. What's it like?"

  Here was something that Ford felt he could speak about with authority.

  "Life," he said, "is like a grapefruit."

  "Er, how so?"

  "Well, it's sort of orangey-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It's got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast."

  "Is there anyone else out there I can talk to?"

  "I expect so," said Ford. "Ask a policeman."

  Deep in his bunk, Ford Prefect wriggled and turned on to his other side. It wasn't his favourite type of dream because it didn't have Eccentrica Gallumbits, the Triple-Breasted Whore of Eroticon VI in it, whom many of his dreams did feature. But at least it was a dream. At least he was asleep.

  Chapter 24

  Luckily there was a strong updraft in the alley because Arthur hadn't done this sort of thing for a while, at least, not deliberately, and deliberately is exactly the way you are not meant to do it.

  He swung down sharply, nearly catching himself a nasty crack on the jaw with the doorstep and tumbled through the air, so suddenly stunned with what a profoundly stupid thing he had just done that he completely forgot the bit about hitting the ground and didn't.

  A nice trick, he thought to himself, if you can do it.

  The ground was hanging menacingly above his head.

  He tried not to think about the ground, what an extraordinarily big thing it was and how much it would hurt him if it decided to stop hanging there and suddenly fell on him. He tried to think nice thoughts about lemurs instead, which was exactly the right thing to do because he couldn't at that moment remember precisely what a lemur was, if it was one of those things that sweep in great majestic herds across the plains of wherever it was or if that was wildebeests, so it was a tricky kind of thing to think nice thoughts about without simply resorting to an icky sort of general well-disposedness towards things, and all this kept his mind well occupied while his body tried to adjust to the fact that it wasn't touching anything.