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 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 pit 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, urgently, "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.
A Mars bar wrapper fluttered down the alleyway.
After a seeming moment of doubt and indecision it eventually
