ADAMS, Douglas - Mostly Harmless Read online

  she would have gone.

  So now he knew the worst.

  She had gone where she thought he would not follow her.

  He looked up at the sky, which was sullen, streaked and livid,

  and reflected that it was the sort of sky that the Four Horsemen

  of the Apocalypse wouldn't feel like a bunch of complete idiots

  riding out of.

  With a heavy sense of the utmost foreboding he set off

  on the track that led to the forest in the next valley. The first

  heavy blobs of rain began to hit the ground as Arthur tried to

  drag himself to some sort of run.

  Random reached the crest of the hill and looked down into the

  next valley. It had been a longer and harder climb than she had

  anticipated. She was a little worried that doing the trip at night

  was not that great an idea, but her father had been mooching

  around near the hut all day trying to pretend to either her or

  himself that he wasn't guarding the parcel. At last he'd had to

  go over to the forge to talk with Strinder about the knives, and

  Random had seized her opportunity and done a runner with the

  parcel.

  It was perfectly clear that she couldn't just open the thing

  there, in the hut, or even in the village. He might have come

  across her at any moment. Which meant that she had to go

  where she wouldn't be followed.

  She could stop where she was now. She had gone this way

  in the hope that he wouldn't follow her. and even if he did he

  would never find her up in the wooded parts of the hill with

  night drawing in and the rain starting.

  All the way up, the parcel had been jiggling under her arm.

  It was a satisfyingly hunky sort of thing: a box with a square top

  about the length of her forearm on each side, and about the length

  of her hand deep, wrapped up in brown plasper with an ingenious

  new form of self-knotting string. It didn't rattle as she shook it,

  but she sensed that its weight was concentrated excitingly at the

  centre.

  Having come so far, though, there was a certain satisfaction

  in not stopping here, but carrying on down into what seemed to

  be almost a forbidden area - where her father's ship had come

  down. She wasn't exactly certain what the word `haunted' meant,

  but it might be fun to find out. She would keep going and save

  the parcel up for when she got there.

  It was getting darker, though. She hadn't used her tiny electric

  torch yet, because she didn't want to be visible from a distance.

  She would have to use it now, but it probably didn't matter since

  she would be on the other side of the hill which divided the valleys

  from each other.

  She turned her torch on. Almost at the same moment a fork

  of lightning ripped across the valley into which she was heading

  and startled her considerably. As the darkness shuddered back

  around her and a clap of thunder rolled out across the land she

  felt suddenly rather small and lost with just a feeble pencil of

  light bobbing in her hand. Perhaps she should stop after all

  and open the parcel here. Or maybe she should go back and

  come out again tomorrow. It was only a momentary hesitation,

  though. She knew there was no going back tonight, and sensed

  that there was no going back ever.

  She headed on down the side of the hill. The rain was

  beginning to pick up now. Where a short while ago it had

  been a few heavy blobs it was settling in for a good pour now,

  hissing in the trees, and the ground was getting slippery under

  her feet.

  At least, she thought it was the rain hissing in the trees.

  Shadows were leaping and leering at her as her light bobbed

  through the trees. Onwards and downwards.

  She hurried on for another ten or fifteen minutes, soaked to the

  skin now and shivering, and gradually became aware that there

  seemed to be some other light somewhere ahead of her. It was

  very faint and she wasn't certain if she was imagining it or not.

  She turned off her torch to see. There did seem to be some sort

  of dim glow ahead. She couldn't tell what it was. She turned her

  torch back on and continued down the hill, towards whatever it

  was.

  There was something wrong with the woods though.

  She couldn't immediately say what it was, but they didn't

  seem like sprightly healthy woods looking forward to a good

  spring. The trees were lolling at sickly angles and had a sort of

  pallid, blighted look about them. Random more than once had

  the worrying sensation that they were trying to reach towards

  her as she passed them, but it was just a trick of the way that

  her light caused their shadows to flicker and lurch.

  Suddenly, something fell out of a tree in front of her. She

  leapt backwards with alarm, dropping both the torch and the

  box as she did so. She went down into a crouch, pulling the

  specially sharpened rock out of her pocket.

  The thing that had fallen out of the tree was moving. The

  torch was lying on the ground and pointing towards it, and a

  vast, grotesque shadow was slowly lurching through the light

  towards her. She could hear faint rustling and screeching noises

  over the steady hiss of the rain. She scrabbled on the ground for

  the torch, found it, and shone it directly at the creature.

  At the same moment another dropped from a tree just a few

  feet away. She swung the torch wildly from one to another. She

  held her rock up, ready to throw.

  They were quite small in fact. It was the angle of the light that

  had made them loom so large. Not only small. but small, furry

  and cuddly. And there was another, dropping from the trees. It

  fell through the beam of light, so she saw it quite clearly.

  It fell neatly and precisely, turned, and then, like the other

  two, started slowly and purposefully to advance on Random.

  She stayed rooted to the spot. She still had her rock. poised

  and ready to throw, but was increasingly conscious of the fact

  that the things she had it poised and ready to throw at were

  squirrels. Or at least, squirrel-like things. Soft, warm, cuddly

  squirrel-like things advancing on her in a way she wasn't at all

  certain she liked.

  She shone her torch directly on the first of them. It was

  making aggressive, hectoring, screeching noises, and carrying

  in one of its little fists a small tattered piece of wet, pink rag.

  Random hefted her rock menacingly in her hand, but it made

  no impression at all on the squirrel advancing on her with its

  wet piece of rag.

  She backed away. She didn't know at all how to deal with this.

  If they had been vicious snarling slavering beasts with glistening

  fangs she would have pitched into them with a will, but squirrels

  behaving like this she couldn't quite handle.

  She backed away again. The second squirrel was starting

  to make a flanking manoeuvre round to her right. Carrying a

  cup. Some kind of acorn thing. The third was right behind it

  and making its own advance. What was it carrying? Some little

  scrap of soggy pape
r, Random thought.

  She stepped back again, caught her ankle against the root

  of a tree and fell over backwards.

  Instantly the first squirrel darted forward and was on top of

  her, advancing along her stomach with cold purpose. in its eyes,

  and a piece of wet rag in its fist.

  Random tried to jump up, but only managed to jump about

  an inch. The startled movement of the squirrel on her stomach

  startled her in return. The squirrel froze, gripping her skin

  through her soaking shirt with its tiny claws. Then slowly, inch

  by inch, it made its way up her, stopped, and proffered her the

  rag.

  She felt almost hypnotised by the strangeness of the thing and

  its tiny glinting eyes. It proffered her the rag again. It pushed it

  at her repeatedly, screeching insistently, till at last, nervously,

  hesitantly, she took the thing from it. It continued to watch her

  intently, its eyes darting all over her face . She had no idea what

  to do. Rain and mud were streaming down her face and she had

  a squirrel sitting on her. She wiped some mud out of her eyes

  with the rag.

  The squirrel shrieked triumphantly, grabbed the rag hack,

  leapt off her, ran scampering into the dark, enclosing night,

  darted up into a tree, dived into a hole in the trunk, settled

  back and lit a cigarette.

  Meanwhile Random was trying to fend off the squirrel with

  the acorn cup full of rain and the one with the paper. She

  shuffled backwards on her bottom.

  `No!' she shouted. `Go away!'

  They darted back, in fright, and then darted right forward

  again with their gifts. She brandished her rock at them. `Go!'

  she yelled.

  The squirrels scampered round in consternation. Then one

  darted straight at her, dropped the acorn cup in her lap, turned

  and ran off into the night. The other stood quivering for a

  moment, then put its scrap of paper neatly down in front of

  her and disappeared as well.

  She was alone again, but trembling with confusion. She got

  unsteadily to her feet, picked up her rock and her parcel, then

  paused and picked up the scrap of paper as well. It was so soggy

  and dilapidated it was hard to make out what it was. It seemed

  just to be a fragment of an in-flight magazine.

  Just as Random was trying to understand exactly what it was

  that this all meant, a man walked out into the clearing in which

  she was standing, raised a vicious-looking gun and shot her.

  Arthur was thrashing around hopelessly two or three miles

  behind her, on the upward side of the hill.

  Within minutes of setting out he had gone back again and

  equipped himself with a lamp. Not an electric one. The only

  electric light in the place was the one that Random had brought

  with her. This was a kind of dim hurricane lamp: a perforated

  metal canister from Strinder's forge, which contained a reservoir

  of inflammable fish oil, a wick of knotted dried grass and was

  wrapped in a translucent film made from dried membranes from

  the gut of a Perfectly Normal Beast.

  It had now gone out.

  Arthur jiggled around with it in a thoroughly pointless kind

  of a way for a few seconds. There was clearly no way he was

  going to get the thing suddenly to burst into flame again in the

  middle of a rainstorm, but it's impossible not to make a token

  effort. Reluctantly he threw the thing aside.

  What to do? This was hopeless. He was absolutely sodden,

  his clothes heavy and billowing with the rain, and now he was

  lost in the dark as well.

  For a brief second he was lost in the blinding light, and

  then he was lost in the dark again.

  The sheet of lightning had at least shown him that he was

  very close to the brow of the hill. Once he had breasted that

  he would... well, he wasn't certain what he would do. He'd

  have to work that out when he got there.

  He limped forward and upwards.

  A few minutes later he knew that he was standing panting at

  the top. There was some kind of dim glow in the distance below

  him. He had no idea what it was, and indeed he hardly liked to

  think. It was the only thing he had to make towards, though,

  so he started to make his way, stumbling, lost and frightened

  towards it.

  The flash of lethal light passed straight through Random and,

  about two seconds later, so did the man who had shot it. Other

  than that he paid her no attention whatsoever. He had shot

  someone standing behind her, and when she turned to look,

  he was kneeling over the body and going through its pockets.

  The tableau froze and vanished. It was replaced a second

  later by a giant pair of teeth framed by immense and perfectly

  glossed red lips. A huge blue brush appeared out of nowhere

  and started foamily to scrub at the teeth, which continued to

  hang there gleaming in the shimmering curtain of rain.

  Random blinked at it twice before she got it.

  It was a commercial. The guy who had shot her was part

  of a holographic in-flight movie. She must now be very close to

  where the ship had crashed. Obviously some of its systems were

  more indestructible than others.

  The next half-mile of the journey was particularly trouble-

  some. Not only did she have the cold and the rain and the night

  to contend with, but also the fractured and thrashing remains of

  the ship's on-board entertainment system. Spaceships and jetcars

  and helipods crashed and exploded continuously around her,

  illuminating the night, villainous people in strange hats smug-

  gled dangerous drugs through her, and the combined orchestra

  and chorus of the Hallapolis State Opera performed the closing

  March of the AnjaQantine Star Guard from Act IV of Rizgar's

  Blamwellamum of Woont in a little glade somewhere off to her

  left.

  And then she was standing on the lip of a very nasty looking and

  bubbly-edged crater. There was still a faint warm glow coming

  from what would otherwise have looked like an enormous piece

  of caramelised chewing gum in the centre of the pit: the melted

  remains of a great spaceship.

  She stood looking at it for a longish while, and then at

  last started to walk along and around the edge of the crater.

  She was no longer certain what she was looking for, but kept

  moving anyway, keeping the horror of the pit to her left.

  The rain was beginning to ease off a little, but it was still

  extremely wet, and since she didn't know what it was that was

  in the box, whether it was perhaps something delicate or dam-

  ageable, she thought she ought to find somewhere reasonably dry

  to open it. She hoped she hadn't already damaged it by dropping

  it.

  She played her torch around the surrounding trees, which were

  thin on the ground here, and mostly charred and broken. In the

  middle distance she thought she could see a jumbled outcrop of

  rock which might provide some shelter, and she started to pick

  her way towards it. All around she found the detritus that had

  be
en ejected from the ship as it broke up, before the final fireball.

  After she had moved two or three hundred yards from the

  edge of the crater she came across the tattered fragments of some

  fluffy pink material, sodden, muddied and drooping amongst the

  broken trees. She guessed, correctly, that this must be the remains

  of the escape cocoon that had saved her father's life. She went and

  looked at it more closely, and then noticed something close to it

  on the ground, half covered in mud.

  She picked it up and wiped the mud off it. It was some kind of

  electronic device the size of a small book. Feebly glowing on its

  cover, in response to her touch, were some large friendly letters.

  They said DON'T PANIC. She knew what this was. It was her

  father's copy of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

  She felt instantly reassured by it, turned her head up to the

  thundery sky and let some. rain wash over her face and into her

  mouth.

  She shook her head and hurried on towards the rocks. Clamber-

  ing up and over them she almost immediately found the perfect

  thing. The mouth of a cave. She played her torch into its inte-

  rior. It seemed to be dry and safe. Picking her way carefully,

  she walked in. It was quite spacious, but didn't go that deep.

  Exhausted and relieved she sat on a convenient rock, put the

  box down in front of her and started immediately to open it.

  17

  For a long period of time there was much speculation and

  controversy about where the so-called `missing matter' of the

  Universe had got to. All over the Galaxy the science depart-