Douglas Adams. So long, and thanks for all the fish
For Jane
with thanks
to Rick and Heidi for the loan of their stable event
to Mogens and Andy and all at Huntsham Court for a number of
unstable events
and especially to Sonny Metha for being stable through all
events.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of
the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded
yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles
is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-
descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still
think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most
of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time.
Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these
were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces
of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small
green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and
most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big
mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And
some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no
one should ever have left the oceans.
And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man
had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be
nice to people for a change, one girl sitting on her own in a
small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that
had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the
world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was
right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to
anything.
Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone
about it, a terribly stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea
was lost forever.
This is her story.
Chapter 1
That evening it was dark early, which was normal for the time of
year. It was cold and windy, which was normal.
It started to rain, which was particularly normal.
A spacecraft landed, which was not.
There was nobody around to see it except some spectacularly
stupid quadrupeds who hadn't the faintest idea what to make of
it, or whether they were meant to make anything of it, or eat it,
or what. So they did what they did to everything which was to run
away from it and try to hide under each other, which never
worked.
It slipped down out of the clouds, seemingly balanced on a single
beam of light.
From a distance you would scarcely have noticed it through the
lightning and the storm clouds, but seen from close to it was
strangely beautiful - a grey craft of elegantly sculpted form:
quite small.
Of course, one never has the slightest notion what size or shape
different species are going to turn out to be, but if you were to
take the findings of the latest Mid-Galactic Census report as any
kind of accurate guide to statistical averages you would probably
guess that the craft would hold about six people, and you would
be right.
You'd probably guessed that anyway. The Census report, like most
such surveys, had cost an awful lot of money and didn't tell
anybody anything they didn't already know - except that every
single person in the Galaxy had 2.4 legs and owned a hyena. Since
this was clearly not true the whole thing had eventually to be
scrapped.
The craft slid quietly down through the rain, its dim operating
lights wrapping it in tasteful rainbows. It hummed very quietly,
a hum which became gradually louder and deeper as it approached
the ground, and which at an altitude of six inches became a heavy
throb.
At last it dropped and was quiet.
A hatchway opened. A short flight of steps unfolded itself.
A light appeared in the opening, a bright light streaming out
into the wet night, and shadows moved within.
A tall figure appeared in the light, looked around, flinched, and
hurried down the steps, carrying a large shopping bag under its
arm.
It turned and gave a single abrupt wave back at the ship. Already
the rain was streaming through its hair.
"Thank you," he called out, "thank you very ..."
He was interrupted by a sharp crack of thunder. He glanced up
apprehensively, and in response to a sudden thought quickly
started to rummage through the large plastic shopping bag, which
he now discovered had a hole in the bottom.
It had large characters printed on the side which read (to anyone
who could decipher the Centaurian alphabet) Duty free Mega-
Market, Port Brasta, Alpha Centauri. Be Like the Twenty-Second
Elephant with Heated Value in Space - Bark!
"Hold on!" the figure called, waving at the ship.
The steps, which had started to fold themselves back through the
hatchway, stopped, re-unfolded, and allowed him back in.
He emerged again a few seconds later carrying a battered and
threadbare towel which he shoved into the bag.
He waved again, hoisted the bag under his arm, and started to run
for the shelter of some trees as, behind him, the spacecraft had
already begun its ascent.
Lightning flitted through the sky and made the figure pause for a
moment, and then hurry onwards, revising his path to give the
trees a wide berth. He moved swiftly across the ground, slipping
here and there, hunching himself against the rain which was
falling now with ever-increasing concentration, as if being
pulled from the sky.
His feet sloshed through the mud. Thunder grumbled over the
hills. He pointlessly wiped the rain off his face and stumbled
on.
More lights.
Not lightning this time, but more diffused and dimmer lights
which played slowly over the horizon and faded.
The figure paused again on seeing them, and then redoubled his
steps, making directly towards the point on the horizon at which
they had appeared.
And now the ground was becoming steeper, sloping upwards, and
after another two or three hundred yards it led at last to an
obstacle. The figure paused to examine the barrier and then
dropped the bag he was carrying over it before climbing over
himself.
Hardly had the figure touched the ground on the other side when
there came sweeping out of the rain towards him a machine, lights
streaming through the wall of water. The figure pressed back as
the machine streaked towards him. it was a low bulbous shape,
like a small whale surfing - sleek, grey and rounded and moving
at terrifying speed.
The figure instinctively threw up his hands to protect himself,
but was hit only by a sluice of water as the machine swept past
and off into the night.
It was illuminated briefly by another flicker of lightning
crossing the sky, which allowed the soaked figure by the roadside
a split-second to read a small sign at the back of the machine
before it disappeared.
To the figure's apparent incredulous astonishment the sign read,
"My other car is also a Porsche."
=================================================================
Rob McKeena was a miserable bastard and he knew it because he'd
had a lot of people point it out to him over the years and he saw
no reason to disagree with them except the obvious one which was
that he liked disagreeing with people, particularly people he
disliked, which included, at the last count, everyone.
He heaved a sigh and shoved down a gear.
The hill was beginning to steepen and his lorry was heavy with
Danish thermostatic radiator controls.
It wasn't that he was naturally predisposed to be so surly, at
least he hoped not. It was just the rain which got him down,
always the rain.
It was raining now, just for a change.
It was a particular type of rain he particularly disliked,
particularly when he was driving. He had a number for it. It was
rain type 17.
He had read somewhere that the Eskimos had over two hundred
different words for snow, without which their conversation would
probably have got very monotonous. So they would distinguish
between thin snow and thick snow, light snow and heavy snow,
sludgy snow, brittle snow, snow that came in flurries, snow that
came in drifts, snow that came in on the bottom of your
neighbour's boots all over your nice clean igloo floor, the snows
of winter, the snows of spring, the snows you remember from your
childhood that were so much better than any of your modern snow,
fine snow, feathery snow, hill snow, valley snow, snow that falls
in the morning, snow that falls at night, snow that falls all of
a sudden just when you were going out fishing, and snow that
despite all your efforts to train them, the huskies have pissed
on.
Rob McKeena had two hundred and thirty-one different types of
rain entered in his little book, and he didn't like any of them.
He shifted down another gear and the lorry heaved its revs up. It
grumbled in a comfortable sort of way about all the Danish
thermostatic radiator controls it was carrying.
Since he had left Denmark the previous afternoon, he had been
through types 33 (light pricking drizzle which made the roads
slippery), 39 ( heavy spotting), 47 to 51 (vertical light drizzle
through to sharply slanting light to moderate drizzle
freshening), 87 and 88 (two finely distinguished varieties of
vertical torrential downpour), 100 (post-downpour squalling,
cold), all the seastorm types between 192 and 213 at once, 123,
124, 126, 127 (mild and intermediate cold gusting, regular and
syncopated cab-drumming), 11 (breezy droplets), and now his least
favourite of all, 17.
Rain type 17 was a dirty blatter battering against his windscreen
so hard that it didn't make much odds whether he had his wipers
on or off.
He tested this theory by turning them off briefly, but as it
turned out the visibility did get quite a lot worse. It just
failed to get better again when he turned them back on.
In fact one of the wiper blades began to flap off.
Swish swish swish flop swish flop swish swish flop swish flop
swish flop flop flop scrape.
He pounded his steering wheel, kicked the floor, thumped his
cassette player till it suddenly started playing Barry Manilow,
thumped it again till it stopped, and swore and swore and swore
and swore and swore.
It was at the very moment that his fury was peaking that there
loomed swimmingly in his headlights, hardly visible through the
blatter, a figure by the roadside.
A poor bedraggled figure, strangely attired, wetter than an otter
in a washing machine, and hitching.
"Poor miserable sod," thought Rob McKeena to himself, realizing
that here was somebody with a better right to feel hard done by
than himself, "must be chilled to the bone. Stupid to be out
hitching on a filthy night like this. All you get is cold, wet,
and lorries driving through puddles at you."
turn and hit a large sheet of water square on.
"See what I mean?" he thought to himself as he ploughed swiftly
through it. "You get some right bastards on the road."
Splattered in his rear mirror a couple of seconds later was the
reflection of the hitch-hiker, drenched by the roadside.
For a moment he felt good about this. A moment or two later he
felt bad about feeling good about it. Then he felt good about
feeling bad about feeling good about it and, satisfied, drove on
into the night.
At least it made up for having been finally overtaken by that
Porsche he had been diligently blocking for the last twenty
miles.
And as he drove on, the rainclouds dragged down the sky after
him, for, though he did not know it, Rob McKeena was a Rain God.
All he knew was that his working days were miserable and he had a
succession of lousy holidays. All the clouds knew was that they
loved him and wanted to be near him, to cherish him, and to water
him.
=================================================================
Chapter 3
The next two lorries were not driven by Rain Gods, but they did
exactly the same thing.
The figure trudged, or rather sloshed, onwards till the hill
resumed and the treacherous sheet of water was left behind.
After a while the rain began to ease and the moon put in a brief
appearance from behind the clouds.
A Renault drove by, and its driver made frantic and complex
signals to the trudging figure to indicate that he would have
been delighted to give the figure a lift, only he couldn't this
time because he wasn't going in the direction that the figure
wanted to go, whatever direction that might be, and he was sure
the figure would understand. He concluded the signalling with a
cheery thumbs-up sign, as if to say that he hoped the figure felt
really fine about being cold and almost terminally wet, and he
would catch him the next time around.
The figure trudged on. A Fiat passed and did exactly the same as
the Renault.
A Maxi passed on the other side of the road and flashed its
lights at the slowly plodding figure, though whether this was
meant to convey a "Hello" or a "Sorry we're going the other way"
or a "Hey look, there's someone in the rain, what a jerk" was
entirely unclear. A green strip across the top of the windscreen
indicated that whatever the message was, it came from Steve and
Carola.
The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was
now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying "And
another thing ..." twenty minutes after admitting he's lost the
argument.
The air was clearer now, the night cold. Sound travelled rather
well. The lost figure, shivering desperately, presently reached a
junction, where a side road turned off to the left. Opposite the
turning stood a signpost which the figure suddenly hurried to and
studied with feverish curiosity, only twisting away from it as
another car passed suddenly.
And another.
The first whisked by with complete disregard, the second flashed
meaninglessly. A Ford Cortina passed and put on its brakes.
Lurching with surprise, the figure bundled his bag to his chest
and hurried forward towards the car, but at the last moment the
Cortina span its wheels in the wet and carreered off up the road
rather amusingly.
The figure slowed to a stop and stood there, lost and dejected.
As it chanced, the following day the driver of the Cortina went
into hospital to have his appendix out, only due to a rather