which made it home of some kind, and a person likes to keep track
of his homes. Arthur Dent was such a person and so he went to
Exeter to buy a computer.
That was what he really wanted, of course, a computer. But he
felt he ought to have some serious purpose in mind before he
simply went and lashed out a lot of readies on what people might
otherwise mistake as being just a thing to play with. So that was
his serious purpose. To pinpoint the exact location of a cave on
prehistoric Earth. He explained this to the man in the shop.
"Why?" said the man in the shop.
This was a tricky one.
"OK, skip that," said the man in the shop. "How?"
"Well, I was hoping you could help me with that."
The man sighed and his shoulders dropped.
"Have you much experience of computers?"
Arthur wondered whether to mention Eddie the shipboard computer
on the Heart of Gold, who could have done the job in a second, or
Deep Thought, or - but decided he wouldn't.
"No," he said.
"Looks like a fun afternoon," said the man in the shop, but he
said it only to himself.
Arthur bought the Apple anyway. Over a few days he also acquired
some astronomical software, plotted the movements of stars, drew
rough little diagrams of how he seemed to remember the stars to
have been in the sky when he looked up out of his cave at night,
and worked away busily at it for weeks, cheerfully putting off
the conclusion he knew he would inevitably have to come to, which
was that the whole project was completely ludicrous.
Rough drawings from memory were futile. He didn't even know how
long it had been, beyond Ford Prefect's rough guess at the time
that it was "a couple of million years" and he simply didn't have
the maths.
Still, in the end he worked out a method which would at least
produce a result. He decided not to mind the fact that with the
extraordinary jumble of rules of thumb, wild approximations and
arcane guesswork he was using he would be lucky to hit the right
galaxy, he just went ahead and got a result.
He would call it the right result. Who would know?
As it happened, through the myriad and unfathomable chances of
fate, he got it exactly right, though he of course would never
know that. He just went up to London and knocked on the
appropriate door.
"Oh. I thought you were going to phone me first."
Arthur gaped in astonishment.
"You can only come in for a few minutes," said Fenchurch. "I'm
just going out."
=================================================================
Chapter 18
A summer's day in Islington, full of the mournful wail of
antique-restoring machinery.
Fenchurch was unavoidably busy for the afternoon, so Arthur
wandered in a blissed-out haze and looked at all the shops which,
in Islington, are quite an useful bunch, as anyone who regularly
needs old woodworking tools, Boer War helmets, drag, office
furniture or fish will readily confirm.
The sun beat down over the roofgardens. It beat on architects and
plumbers. It beat on barristers and burglars. It beat on pizzas.
It beat on estate agent's particulars.
It beat on Arthur as he went into a restored furniture shop.
"It's an interesting building," said the proprietor, cheerfully.
"There's a cellar with a secret passage which connects with a
nearby pub. It was built for the Prince Regent apparently, so he
could make his escape when he needed to."
"You mean, in case anybody might catch him buying stripped pine
furniture," said Arthur
"No," said the proprietor, "not for that reason."
"You'll have to excuse me," said Arthur. "I'm terribly happy."
"I see."
He wandered hazily on and found himself outside the offices of
Greenpeace. he remembered the contents of his file marked "Things
to do - urgent!", which he hadn't opened again in the meantime.
He marched in with a cheery smile and said he'd come to give them
some money to help free the dolphins.
"Very funny," they told him, "go away."
This wasn't quite the response he had expected, so he tried
again. This time they got quite angry with him, so he just left
some money anyway and went back out into the sunshine.
Just after six he returned to Fenchurch's house in the alleyway,
clutching a bottle of champagne.
"Hold this," she said, shoved a stout rope in his hand and
disappeared inside through the large white wooden doors from
which dangled a fat padlock off a black iron bar.
The house was a small converted stable in a light industrial
alleyway behind the derelict Royal Agricultural Hall of
Islington. As well as its large stable doors it also had a
normal-looking front door of smartly glazed panelled wood with a
black dolphin door knocker. The one odd thing about this door was
its doorstep, which was nine feet high, since the door was set
into the upper of the two floors and presumably had been
originally used to haul in hay for hungry horses.
An old pulley jutted out of the brickwork above the doorway and
it was over this that the rope Arthur was holding was slung. The
other end of the rope held a suspended 'cello.
The door opened above his head.
"OK," said Fenchurch, "pull on the rope, steady the 'cello. Pass
it up to me."
He pulled on the rope, he steadied the 'cello.
"I can't pull on the rope again," he said, "without letting go of
the 'cello."
Fenchurch leant down.
"I'm steadying the 'cello," she said. "You pull on the rope."
The 'cello eased up level with the doorway, swinging slightly,
and Fenchurch manoeuvred it inside.
"Come on up yourself," she called down.
Arthur picked up his bag of goodies and went in through the
stable doors, tingling.
The bottom room, which he had seen briefly before, was pretty
rough and full of junk. A large old cast-iron mangle stood there,
a surprising number of kitchen sinks were piled in a corner.
There was also, Arthur was momentarily alarmed to see, a pram,
but it was very old and uncomplicatedly full of books.
The floor was old stained concrete, excitingly cracked. And this
was the measure of Arthur's mood as he stared up the rickety
wooden steps in the far corner. Even a cracked concrete floor
seemed to him an almost unbearably sensual thing.
"An architect friend of mine keeps on telling me how he can do
wonderful things with this place," said Fenchurch chattily as
Arthur emerged through the floor. "He keeps on coming round,
standing in stunned amazement muttering about space and objects
and events and marvellous qualities of light, then says he needs
a pencil and disappears for weeks. Wonderful things have,
therefore, so far failed to happen to it."
In fact, thought Arthur as he looked about, the upper room was at
least reasonably wonderful anyway. It was simply decorated,
furnished with things made out of cushions and also a stereo set
with speakers which would have impressed the guys who put up
Stonehenge.
There were flowers which were pale and pictures which were
interesting.
There was a sort of gallery structure in the roof space which
held a bed and also a bathroom which, Fenchurch explained, you
could actually swing a cat in. "But," she added, "only if it was
a reasonably patient cat and didn't mind a few nasty cracks about
the head. So. here you are."
"Yes."
They looked at each other for a moment.
The moment became a longer moment, and suddenly it was a very
long moment, so long one could hardly tell where all the time was
coming from.
For Arthur, who could usually contrive to feel self-conscious if
left alone for long enough with a Swiss Cheese plant, the moment
was one of sustained revelation. He felt on the sudden like a
cramped and zoo-born animal who awakes one morning to find the
door to his cage hanging quietly open and the savannah stretching
grey and pink to the distant rising sun, while all around new
sounds are waking.
He wondered what the new sounds were as he gazed at her openly
wondering face and her eyes that smiled with a shared surprise.
He hadn't realized that life speaks with a voice to you, a voice
that brings you answers to the questions you continually ask of
it, had never consciously detected it or recognized its tones
till it now said something it had never said to him before, which
was "Yes".
Fenchurch dropped her eyes away at last, with a tiny shake of her
head.
"I know," she said. "I shall have to remember," she added, "that
you are the sort of person who cannot hold on to a simple piece
of paper for two minutes without winning a raffle with it."
She turned away.
"Let's go for a walk," she said quickly. "Hyde Park. I'll change
into something less suitable."
She was dressed in a rather severe dark dress, not a particularly
shapely one, and it didn't really suit her.
"I wear it specially for my 'cello teacher," she said. "He's a
nice boy, but I sometimes think all that bowing gets him a bit
excited. I'll be down in a moment."
She ran lightly up the steps to the gallery above, and called
down, "Put the bottle in the fridge for later."
He noticed as he slipped the champagne bottle into the door that
it had an identical twin to sit next to.
He walked over to the window and looked out. He turned and
started to look at her records. From above he heard the rustle of
her dress fall to the ground. He talked to himself about the sort
of person he was. He told himself very firmly that for this
moment at least he would keep his eyes very firmly and
steadfastly locked on to the spines of her records, read the
titles, nod appreciatively, count the blasted things if he had
to. He would keep his head down.
This he completely, utterly and abjectly failed to do.
She was staring down at him with such intensity that she seemed
hardly to notice that he was looking up at her. Then suddenly she
shook her head, dropped the light sundress over herself and
disappeared quickly into the bathroom.
She emerged a moment later, all smiles and with a sunhat and came
tripping down the steps with extraordinary lightness. It was a
strange kind of dancing motion she had. She saw that he noticed
it and put her head slightly on one side.
"Like it?" she said.
"You look gorgeous," he said simply, because she did.
"Hmmmm," she said, as if he hadn't really answered her question.
She closed the upstairs front door which had stood open all this
time, and looked around the little room to see that it was all in
a fit state to be left on its own for a while. Arthur's eyes
followed hers around, and while he was looking in the other
direction she slipped something out of a drawer and into the
canvas bag she was carrying.
Arthur looked back at her.
"Ready?"
"Did you know," she said with a slightly puzzled smile, "that
there's something wrong with me?"
Her directness caught Arthur unprepared.
"Well," he said, "I'd heard some vague sort of ..."
"I wonder how much you do know about me," she said. "I you heard
it from where I think you heard then that's not it. Russell just
sort of makes stuff up, because he can't deal with what it really
is."
A pang of worry went through Arthur.
"Then what is it?" he said. "Can you tell me?"
"Don't worry," she said, "it's nothing bad at all. Just unusual.
Very very unusual."
She touched his hand, and then leant forward and kissed him
briefly.
"I shall be very interested to know," she said, "if you manage to
work out what it is this evening."
Arthur felt that if someone tapped him at that point he would
have chimed, like the deep sustained rolling chime his grey
fishbowl made when he flicked it with his thumbnail.
=================================================================
Chapter 19
Ford Prefect was irritated to be continually wakened by the sound
of gunfire.
He slid himself out of the maintenance hatchway which he had
fashioned into a bunk for himself by disabling some of the
noisier machinery in his vicinity and padding it with towels. He
slung himself down the access ladder and prowled the corridors
moodily.
They were claustrophobic and ill-lit, and what light there was
was continually flickering and dimming as power surged this way
and that through the ship, causing heavy vibrations and rasping
humming noises.
That wasn't it, though.
He paused and leaned back against the wall as something that
looked like a small silver power drill flew past him down the dim
corridor with a nasty searing screech.
That wasn't it either.
He clambered listlessly through a bulkhead door and found himself
in a larger corridor, though still ill-lit.
The ship lurched. It had been doing this a fair bit, but this was
heavier. A small platoon of robots weent by making a terrible
clattering.
Still not it, though.
Acrid smoke was drifting up from one end of the corridor, so he
walked along it in the other direction.
He passed a series of observation monitors let into the walls
behind plates of toughened but still badly scratched perspex.
