The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide Part 78

He unpacked his towel and another few odd bits and pieces from the plastic bag he had acquired at the Port Brasta Mega-Market. The slogan on the side was a clever and elaborate pun in Lingua Centauri which was completely incomprehensible in any other language and therefore entirely pointless for a Duty Free Shop at a s.p.a.ceport. The bag also had a hole in it so he threw it away.

He realized with a sudden twinge that something else must have dropped out in the small s.p.a.cecraft that had brought him to Earth, kindly going out of its way to drop him right beside the A303. He had lost his battered and s.p.a.ceworn copy of the thing which had helped him find his way across the unbelievable wastes of s.p.a.ce he had traversed. He had lost the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Well, he told himself, this time I really won't be needing it again.

He had some calls to make.

He had decided how to deal with the ma.s.s of contradictions his return journey precipitated, which was that he would simply brazen it out.

He phoned the BBC and asked to be put through to his department head.

"Oh, h.e.l.lo, Arthur Dent here. Look, sorry I haven't been in for six months but I've gone mad."

"Oh, not to worry. Thought it was probably something like that. Happens here all the time. How soon can we expect you?"

"When do hedgehogs stop hibernating?"

"Sometime in spring I think."

"I'll be in shortly after that."

"Rightyho."

He flipped through the Yellow Pages and made a short list of numbers to try.

"Oh h.e.l.lo, is that the Old Elms Hospital? Yes, I was just phoning to see if I could have a word with Fenella, er... Fenella-Good Lord, silly me, I'll forget my own name next, er, Fenella-isn't this ridiculous? Patient of yours, dark haired girl, came in last night..."

"I'm afraid we don't have any patients called Fenella."

"Oh, don't you? I mean Fiona of course, we just call her Fen..."

"I'm sorry, goodbye."

Click.

Six conversations along these lines began to take their toll on his mood of vigorous, dynamic optimism, and he decided that before it deserted him entirely he would take it down to the pub and parade it a little.

He had had the perfect idea for explaining away every inexplicable weirdness about himself at a stroke, and he whistled to himself as he pushed open the door which had so daunted him last night.

"Arthur!!!!"

He grinned cheerfully at the boggling eyes that stared at him from all corners of the pub, and told them all what a wonderful time he'd had in Southern California.

Chapter 9.

He accepted another pint and took a pull at it.

"Of course, I had my own personal alchemist too."

"You what?"

He was getting silly and he knew it. Exuberance and Hall and Woodhouse best bitter was a mixture to be wary of, but one of the first effects it had is to stop you being wary of things, and the point at which Arthur should have stopped and explained no more was the point at which he started instead to get inventive.

"Oh yes," he insisted with a happy glazed smile. "It's why I've lost so much weight."

"What?" said his audience.

"Oh yes," he said again. "The Californians have rediscovered alchemy. Oh yes."

He smiled again.

"Only," he said, "it's in a much more useful form than that which in..." He paused thoughtfully to let a little grammar a.s.semble in his head. "In which the ancients used to practise it. Or at least," he added, "failed to practise it. They couldn't get it to work you know. Nostradamus and that lot. Couldn't cut it."

"Nostradamus?" said one of his audience.

"I didn't think he was an alchemist," said another.

"I thought," said a third, "he was a seer."

"He became a seer," said Arthur to his audience, the component parts of which were beginning to bob and blur a little, "because he was such a lousy alchemist. You should know that."

He took another pull at his beer. It was something he had not tasted for eight years. He tasted it and tasted it.

"What has alchemy got to do," asked a bit of the audience, "with losing weight?"

"I'm glad you asked that," said Arthur. "Very glad. And I will now tell you what the connection is between..." He paused. "Between those two things. The things you mentioned. I'll tell you."

He paused and manoeuvred his thoughts. It was like watching oil tankers doing three-point turns in the English Channel.

"They've discovered how to turn excess body fat into gold," he said, in a sudden blur of coherence.

"You're kidding."

"Oh yes," he said, "no," he corrected himself, "they have."

He rounded on the doubting part of his audience, which was all of it, and so it took a little while to round on it completely.

"Have you been to California?" he demanded. "Do you know the sort of stuff they do there?"

Three members of his audience said they had and that he was talking nonsense.

"You haven't seen anything," insisted Arthur. "Oh yes," he added, because someone was offering to buy another round.

"The evidence," he said, pointing at himself, and not missing by more than a couple of inches, "is before your eyes. Fourteen hours in a trance," he said, "in a tank. In a trance. I was in a tank. I think," he added after a thoughtful pause, "I already said that."

He waited patiently while the next round was duly distributed. He composed the next bit of his story in his mind, which was going to be something about the tank needing to be orientated along a line dropped perpendicularly from the Pole Star to a baseline drawn between Mars and Venus, and was about to start trying to say it when he decided to give it a miss.

"Long time," he said instead, "in a tank. In a trance." He looked round severely at his audience, to make sure it was all following attentively.

He resumed.

"Where was I?" he said.

"In a trance," said one.

"In a tank," said another.

"Oh yes," said Arthur. "Thank you. And slowly," he said pressing onwards, "slowly, slowly, all your excess body fat... turns... to..." he paused for effect, "subcoo... subyoo... subtoocay..."-he paused for breath-"subcutaneous gold, which you can have surgically removed. Getting out of the tank is h.e.l.l. What did you say?"

"I was just clearing my throat."

"I think you doubt me."

"I was clearing my throat."

"She was clearing her throat," confirmed a significant part of the audience in a low rumble.

"Oh yes," said Arthur, "all right. And you then split the proceeds..." he paused again for a maths break, "fifty-fifty with the alchemist. Make a lot of money!"

He looked swayingly around at his audience, and could not help but be aware of an air of scepticism about their jumbled faces.

He felt very affronted by this.

"How else," he demanded, "could I afford to have my face dropped?"

Friendly arms began to help him home. "Listen," he protested, as the cold February breeze brushed his face, "looking lived-in is all the rage in California at the moment. You've got to look as if you've seen the Galaxy. Life, I mean. You've got to look as if you've seen life. That's what I got. A face drop. Give me eight years, I said. I hope being thirty doesn't come back into fas.h.i.+on or I've wasted a lot of money."

He lapsed into silence for a while as the friendly arms continued to help him along the lane to his house.

"Got in yesterday," he mumbled. "I'm very happy to be home. Or somewhere very like it..."

"Jet lag," muttered one of his friends. "Long trip from California. Really mucks you up for a couple of days."

"I don't think he's been there at all," muttered another. "I wonder where he has been. And what's happened to him."

After a little sleep Arthur got up and pottered round the house a bit. He felt woozy and a little low, still disoriented by the journey. He wondered how he was going to find Fenny.

He sat and looked at the fish bowl. He tapped it again, and despite being full of water and a small yellow Babel fish which was gulping its way around rather dejectedly, it still chimed its deep and resonant chime as clearly and mesmerically as before.

Someone is trying to thank me, he thought to himself. He wondered who, and for what.

Chapter 10.

"At the third stroke it will be one... thirty-two... and twenty seconds.

"Beep... beep... beep."

Ford Prefect suppressed a little giggle of evil satisfaction, realized that he had no reason to suppress it, and laughed out loud, a wicked laugh.

He switched the incoming signal through from the Sub-Etha Net to the s.h.i.+p's hi-fi system, and the odd, rather stilted, sing-song voice spoke out with remarkable clarity round the cabin.

"At the third stroke it will be one... thirty-two... and thirty seconds.

"Beep... beep... beep."

He tweaked the volume up just a little while keeping a careful eye on a rapidly changing table of figures on the s.h.i.+p's computer display. For the length of time he had in mind, the question of power consumption became significant. He didn't want a murder on his conscience.

"At the third stroke it will be one... thirty-two... and forty seconds.

"Beep... beep... beep."

He checked around the small s.h.i.+p. He walked down the short corridor. "At the third stroke..."

He stuck his head into the small, functional, gleaming steel bathroom.

"it will be..."

It sounded fine in there.

He looked into the tiny sleeping quarters.

"... one... thirty-two..."

It sounded a bit m.u.f.fled. There was a towel hanging over one of the speakers. He took down the towel.

"... and fifty seconds."

Fine.

He checked out the packed cargo hold, and wasn't at all satisfied with the sound. There was altogether too much crated junk in the way. He stepped back out and waited for the door to seal. He broke open a closed control panel and pushed the jettison b.u.t.ton. He didn't know why he hadn't thought of that before. A whoos.h.i.+ng rumbling noise died away quickly into silence. After a pause a slight hiss could be heard again.

It stopped.

He waited for the green light to show and then opened the door again on the now empty cargo hold.

"... one... thirty-three... and fifty seconds."