ADAMS, Douglas - Mostly Harmless Read online

  the situation was becoming a little urgent.

  He suddenly remembered the floor display panel in the eleva-

  tor. It hadn't had a thirteenth floor. He'd thought no more about

  it because, having spent fifteen years on the rather backward

  planet Earth where they were superstitious about the number

  thirteen, he was used to being in buildings that numbered their

  floors without it. No reason for that here, though.

  The windows of the thirteenth floor, he could not help noticing

  as he flashed swiftly by them, were darkened.

  What was going on in there? He started to remember all

  the stuff that Harl had been talking about. One, new, multi-

  dimensional Guide spread across an infinite number of universes.

  It had sounded, the way Harl had put it, like wild meaninglessness

  dreamed up by the marketing department with the backing of the

  accountants. If it was any more real than that then it was a very

  weird and dangerous idea. Was it real? What was going on behind

  the darkened windows of the sealed-off thirteenth floor?

  Ford felt a rising sense of curiosity, and then a rising sense

  of panic. That was the complete list of rising feelings he had. In

  every other respect he was falling very rapidly. He really ought

  to turn his mind to wondering how he was going to get out of

  this situation alive.

  He glanced down. A hundred feet or so below him people

  were milling around, some of them beginning to look up expect-

  antly. Clearing a space for him. Even temporarily calling off the

  wonderful and completely fatuous hunt for wockets.

  He would hate to disappoint them, but about two feet below

  him, he hadn't realised before, was Colin. Colin had obviously

  been happily dancing attendance and waiting for him to decide

  what he wanted to do.

  `Colin!' Ford bawled.

  Colin didn't respond. Ford went cold. Then he suddenly

  realised that he hadn't told Colin his name was Colin.

  `Come up here!' Ford bawled.

  Colin bobbed up beside him. Colin was enjoying the ride

  down immensely and hoped that Ford was, too.

  Colin's world went unexpectedly dark as Ford's towel suddenly

  enveloped him. Colin immediately felt himself get much, much

  heavier. He was thrilled and delighted by the challenge that Ford

  had presented him with. Just not sure if he could handle it, that

  was all.

  The towel was slung over Colin. Ford was hanging from the

  towel, gripping to its seams. Other hitch hikers had seen fit to

  modify their towels in exotic ways, weaving all kinds of esoteric

  tools and utilities and even computer equipment into their fabric.

  Ford was a purist. He liked to keep things simple. He carried

  a regular towel from a regular domestic soft furnishings shop.

  It even had a kind of blue and pink floral pattern despite his

  repeated attempts to bleach and stone wash it. It had a couple

  of pieces of wire threaded into it, a bit of flexible writing stick,

  and also some nutrients soaked into one of the corners of the

  fabric so he could suck it in an emergency, but otherwise it was

  a simple towel you could dry your face on.

  The only actual modification he had been persuaded by a

  friend to make to it was to reinforce the seams.

  Ford gripped the seams like a maniac.

  They were still descending, but the rate had slowed.

  `Up, Colin!' he shouted.

  Nothing.

  `Your name,' shouted Ford, `is Colin. So when I shout ``Up,

  Colin!'' I want you, Colin, to go up. OK? Up, Colin!'

  Nothing. Or rather a sort of muffled groaning sound from

  Colin. Ford was very anxious. They were descending very slow-

  ly now, but Ford was very anxious about the sort of people he

  could see assembling on the ground beneath him. Friendly,

  local, wocket-hunting types were dispersing, and thick, heavy,

  bull-necked, slug-like creatures with rocket launchers were, it

  seemed, sliding out of what was usually called thin air. Thin

  air, as all experienced Galactic travellers well know, is, in fact,

  extremely thick with multi-dimensional complexities.

  `Up,' bellowed Ford again. `Up! Colin, go up!'

  Colin was straining and groaning. They were now more or

  less stationary in the air. Ford felt as if his fingers were breaking.

  `Up!'

  They stayed put.

  `Up, up, up!'

  A slug was preparing to launch a rocket at him. Ford couldn't

  believe it. He was hanging from a towel in mid-air and a slug

  was preparing to fire rockets at him. He was running out of

  anything he could think of doing and was beginning to get

  seriously alarmed.

  This was the sort of predicament that he usually relied on

  having the Guide available for to give advice, however infuriating

  or glib, but this was not a moment for reaching into his pocket.

  And the Guide seemed to be no longer a friend and ally but was

  now itself a source of danger. These were the Guide offices he

  was hanging outside, for Zark's sake, in danger of his life from

  the people who now appeared to own the thing. What had become

  of all the dreams he vaguely remembered having on the Bwenelli

  Atoll? They should have let it all be. They should have stayed

  there. Stayed on the beach. Loved good women. Lived on fish.

  He should have known it was all wrong the moment they started

  hanging grand pianos over the sea-monster pool in the atrium.

  He began to feel thoroughly wasted and miserable. His fingers

  were on fire with clenched pain. And his ankle was still hurting.

  Oh thank you, ankle, he thought to himself bitterly. Thank

  you for bringing up your problems at this time. I expect you'd

  like a nice warm footbath to make you feel better, wouldn't you?

  Or at least you'd like me to...

  He had an idea.

  The armoured slug had hoisted the rocket launcher up on to

  its shoulder. The rocket was presumably designed to hit anything

  in its path that moved.

  Ford tried not to sweat because he could feel his grip on

  the seams of his towel slipping.

  With the toe of his good foot he nudged and prised at

  the heel of the shoe on his hurting foot.

  `Go up, damn you!' Ford muttered hopelessly to Colin, who

  was cheerily straining away but unable to rise. Ford worked away

  at the heel of his shoe.

  He was trying to judge the timing, but there was no point.

  Just go for it. He only had one shot and that was it. He had

  now eased the back of his shoe down off his heel. His twisted

  ankle felt a little better. Well that was good, wasn't it?

  With his other foot he kicked at the heel of the shoe. It slipped

  off his foot and fell through the air. About half a second later a

  rocket erupted up from the muzzle of its launcher, encountered

  the shoe falling through its path, went straight for it, hit it, and

  exploded with a great sense of satisfaction and achievement.

  This happened about fifteen feet from the ground.

  The main force of the explosion was directed downwards.

  Where, a second earlier, there had
been a squad of InfiniDim

  Enterprises executives with a rocket launcher standing on an

  elegant terraced plaza paved with large slabs of lustrous stone

  cut from the ancient alabastrum quarries of Zentalquabula there

  was now, instead, a bit of a pit with nasty bits in it.

  A great wump of hot air welled up from the explosion throwing

  Ford and Colin violently up into the sky. Ford fought desperately

  and blindly to hold on and failed. He turned helplessly upwards

  through the sky, reached the peak of a parabola, paused and

  then started to fall again. He fell and fell and fell and suddenly

  winded himself badly on Colin, who was still rising.

  He clasped himself desperately on to the small spherical

  robot. Colin slewed wildly through the air towards the tower of

  the Guide offices, trying delightedly to control himself and slow

  down.

  The world span sickeningly round Ford's head as they span

  and twisted round each other and then, equally sickeningly,

  everything suddenly stopped.

  Ford found himself deposited dizzily on a window ledge.

  His towel fell past and he grabbed at it and caught it.

  Colin bobbed in the air inches away from him.

  Ford looked around himself in a bruised, bleeding and breath-

  less daze. The ledge was only about a foot wide and he was

  perched precariously on it, thirteen stories up.

  Thirteen.

  He knew they were thirteen stories up because the windows

  were dark. He was bitterly upset. He had bought those shoes

  for some absurd price in a store on the Lower East Side in New

  York. He had, as a result, written an entire essay on the joys of

  great footwear, all of which had been jettisoned in the `Mostly

  harmless' debacle. Damn everything.

  And now one of the shoes was gone. He threw his head

  back and stared at the sky.

  It wouldn't be such a grim tragedy if the planet in question

  hadn't been demolished, which meant that he wouldn't even be

  able to get another pair.

  Yes, given the infinite sideways extension of probability there

  was, of course, an almost infinite multiplicity of planets Earth,

  but, when you came down to it, a major pair of shoes wasn't

  something you could just replace by mucking about in multi-

  dimensional space/time.

  He sighed.

  Oh well, he'd better make the best of it. At least it had

  saved his life. For the time being.

  He was perched on a foot-wide ledge thirteen stories up the

  side of a building and he wasn't at all sure that that was worth

  a good shoe.

  He stared in woozily through the darkened glass.

  It was as dark and silent as the tomb.

  No. That was a ridiculous thing to think. He'd been to

  some great parties in tombs.

  Could he detect some movement? He wasn't quite sure. It

  seemed that he could see some kind of weird, flapping shad-

  ow. Perhaps it was just blood dribbling over his eyelashes . He

  wiped it away. Boy, he'd love to have a farm somewhere, keep

  some sheep. He peered into the window again, trying to make

  out what the shape was, but he had the feeling, so common in

  today's universe, that he was looking into some kind of optical

  illusion and that his eyes were just playing silly buggers with him.

  Was there a bird of some kind in there? Was that what

  they had hidden away up here on a concealed floor behind

  darkened, rocket-proof glass? Someone's aviary? There was

  certainly something flapping about in there, but it seemed like

  not so much a bird, more a kind of bird-shaped hole in space.

  He closed his eyes, which he'd been wanting to do for a bit

  anyway. He wondered what the hell to do next. Jump? Climb?

  He didn't think there was going to be any way of breaking in. OK,

  the supposedly rocket-proof glass hadn't stood up, when it came

  to it, to an actual rocket, but then that had been a rocket that

  had been fired at very short range from inside, which probably

  wasn't what the engineers who designed it had had in mind. It

  didn't mean he was going to be able to break the window here

  by wrapping his fist in his towel and punching. What the hell, he

  tried it anyway and hurt his fist. It was just as well he couldn't

  get a good swing from where he was sitting or he might have

  hurt it quite badly. The building had been sturdily reinforced

  when it was completely rebuilt after the Frogstar attack, and

  was probably the most heavily armoured publishing company in

  the business, but there was always, he thought, some weakness

  in any system designed by a corporate committee. He had already

  found one of them. The engineers who designed the windows had

  not expected them to be hit by a rocket from short range from

  the inside, so the window had failed.

  So, what would the engineers not be expecting someone

  sitting on the ledge outside the window to do?

  He wracked his brains for a moment or so before he got it.

  The thing they wouldn't be expecting him to do was to be

  there in the first place. Only an absolute idiot would be sitting

  where he was, so he was winning already. A common mistake

  that people make when trying to design something completely

  foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

  He pulled his newly acquired credit card from his pocket,

  slid it into a crack where the window met its surrounding frame,

  and did something a rocket would not have been able to do. He

  wiggled it around a bit. He felt a catch slip. He slid the window

  open and almost fell backwards off the ledge laughing, giving

  thanks as he did so for the Great Ventilation and Telephone

  Riots of SrDt 3454.

  The Great Ventilation and Telephone Riots of SrDt 3454 had

  started off as just a lot of hot air. Hot air was, of course, the

  problem that ventilation was supposed to solve and generally it

  had solved the problem reasonably well up to the point when

  someone invented air-conditioning, which solved the problem

  far more throbbingly.

  And that was all well and good provided you could stand

  the noise and the dribbling until someone else came up with

  something even sexier and smarter than air-conditioning which

  was called in-building climate control.

  Now this was quite something.

  The major differences from just ordinary air-conditioning were

  that it was thrillingly more expensive, involved a huge amount of

  sophisticated measuring and regulating equipment which was far

  better at knowing, moment by moment, what kind of air people

  wanted to breathe than mere people did.

  It also meant that, to be sure that mere people didn't muck

  up the sophisticated calculations which the system was making

  on their behalf, all the windows in the buildings were built sealed

  shut. This is true.

  While the systems were being installed, a number of people

  who were going to work in the buildings found themselves having

  conversations with Breathe-o-Smart systems fitters which went

  something like this:


  `But what if we want to have the windows open?'

  `You won't want to have the windows open with new Breathe-

  o-Smart.'

  `Yes but supposing we just wanted to have them open for

  a little bit?'

  `You won't want to have them open even for a little bit.

  The new Breathe-o-Smart system will see to that.'

  `Hmmm.'

  `Enjoy Breathe-o-Smart!'

  `OK, so what if the Breathe-o-Smart breaks down or goes

  wrong or something?'

  `Ah! One of the smartest features of the Breathe-o-Smart is

  that it cannot possibly go wrong. So. No worries on that score.

  Enjoy your breathing now, and have a nice day.'

  (It was, of course, as a result of the Great Ventilation and

  Telephone Riots of SrDt 3454, that all mechanical or electri-

  cal or quantum-mechanical or hydraulic or even wind, steam

  or piston-driven devices, are now requited to have a certain

  legend emblazoned on them somewhere. It doesn't matter how

  small the object is, the designers of the object have got to find

  a way of squeezing the legend in somewhere, because it is their

  attention which is being drawn to it rather than necessarily that

  of the user's.

  The legend is this:

  `The major difference between a thing that might go wrong

  and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing

  that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to

  be impossible to get at or repair.')