Mostly Harmless

'And you enjoyed that?'

'Well, yes, I think I sort of did, really. Getting a good set of knives, that sort of thing.'

'You didn't, for instance, find it mind-witheringly, explosively, astoundingly, blisteringly dull?'

'Well, er, no. Not as such. Not actually blisteringly.'

'Odd. I would.'

'Well, I suppose we have a different outlook.'

'Yes.'

'Like the pikka birds.' Ford had no idea what he was talking about and couldn't be bothered to ask. Instead he said, 'So how the hell do we get out of this place?'

'Well I think the simplest way from here is just to follow the way down the valley to the plains, probably take an hour, and then walk round from there. I don't think I could face going back up and over the way I came.'

'Walk round where from there?'

'Well, back to the village. I suppose.' Arthur sighed a little forlornly.

'I don't want to go to any blasted village!' snapped Ford. 'We've got to get out of here!'

'Where? How?'

'I don't know, you tell me. You live here! There must be some way off this zarking planet.'

'I don't know. What do you usually do? Sit around and wait for a passing spacecraft, I suppose.'

'Oh yes? And how many spacecraft have visited this zark– forsaken little fleapit recently?'

'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 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? '