Page 29 of Mostly Harmless (Book 5)

'I didn't know,' said Ford, 'that you had a daughter.'

'Well, there's probably a lot you don't know about me, said Arthur. 'Come to mention it, there's probably a lot I don't know about me either.'

'Well, well, well. When did this happen then?'

'I'm not quite sure.'

'That sounds like more familiar territory,' said Ford. 'Is there a mother involved?'

'Trillian'

'Trillian? I didn't think that . . .

'No. Look, it's a bit embarrassing.

'I remember she told me once she had a kid but only, sort of, in passing. I'm in touch with her from time to time. Never seen her with the kid.'

Arthur said nothing.

Ford started to feel the side of his head again in some bemusement.

'Are you sure this was your daughter?' he said.

'Tell me what happened.'

'Phroo. Long story. I was coming to pick up this parcel I'd sent to myself here care of you . . .

'Well, what was that all about?'

'I think it may be something unimaginably dangerous.

'And you sent it to me?' protested Arthur.

'Safest place I could think of. I thought I could rely on you to be absolutely boring and not open it. Anyway, coming in at night I couldn't find this village place. I was going by pretty basic information. I couldn't find any signal of any kind. I guess you don't have signals and stuff here.'

'That's what I like about it.'

'Then I did pick up a faint signal from your old copy of the Guide, so I homed in on that, thinking that would take me to you. I found I'd landed in some kind of wood. Couldn't figure out what was going on. I get out, and then see this woman standing there. I go up to say hello, then suddenly I see that she's got this thing!'

'What thing?'

'The thing I sent you! The new Guide! The bird thing! You were meant to keep it safe, you idiot, but this woman had the thing right there by her shoulder. I ran forward and she hit me with a rock.'

'I see,' said Arthur. 'What did you do?'

'Well, I fell over of course. I was very badly hurt. She and the bird started to make off towards my ship. And when I say my ship, I mean an RW6.'

'A what?'

'An RW6 for Zark's sake. I've got this great relationship going now between my credit card and the Guide's central computer. You would not believe that ship, Arthur, it's . . .

'So an RW6 is a spaceship, then?'

'Yes! It's - oh never mind. Look, just get some kind of grip will you, Arthur? Or at least get some kind of catalogue. At this point I was very worried. And, I think, semi-concussed. I was down on my knees and bleeding profusely, so I did the only thing I could think of, which was to beg. I said, please, for Zark's sake don't take my ship. And don't leave me stranded in the middle of some primitive zarking forest with no medical help and a head injury. I could be in serious trouble and so could she.'

'What did she say?'

'She hit me on the head with the rock again.'

'I think I can confirm that that was my daughter.'

'Sweet kid.'

'You have to get to know her,' said Arthur.

'She eases up does she?'

'No,' said Arthur, 'but you get a better sense of when to duck.' Ford held his head and tried to see straight.

The sky was beginning to lighten in the west, which was where the sun rose. Arthur didn't particularly want to see it. The last thing he wanted after a hellish night like this one was some blasted day coming along and barging about the place.

'What are you doing in a place like this, Arthur?' demanded Ford.

'Well,' said Arthur, 'making sandwiches mostly.'

'What?'

'I am, probably was, the sandwich maker for a small tribe. It was a bit embarrassing really. When I first arrived, that is, when they rescued me from the wreckage of this super high-technology spacecraft which had crashed on their planet, they were very nice to me and I thought I should help them out a bit. You know, I'm an educated chap from a high-technology culture, I could show them a thing or two. And of course I couldn't. I haven't got the faintest idea, when it comes down to it, of how anything actually works. I don't mean like video-recorders, nobody knows how to work those. I mean just something like a pen or an artesian well or something. Not the foggiest. I couldn't help at all. One day I got glum and made myself a sandwich. That suddenly got them all excited. They'd never seen one before. It was just an idea that had never occurred to them, and I happen to quite like making sandwiches, so it all sort of developed from there.'

'And you enjoyed that?'

'Well, yes, I think I sort of did, really. Getting a good set of knives, that sort of thing.'

'You didn't, for instance, find it mind-witheringly, explosively, astoundingly, blisteringly dull?'

'Well, er, no. Not as such. Not actually blisteringly.'

'Odd. I would.'

'Well, I suppose we have a different outlook.'

'Yes.'

'Like the pikka birds.' Ford had no idea what he was talking about and couldn't be bothered to ask. Instead he said, 'So how the hell do we get out of this place?'

'Well I think the simplest way from here is just to follow the way down the valley to the plains, probably take an hour, and then walk round from there. I don't think I could face going back up and over the way I came.'

'Walk round where from there?'

'Well, back to the village. I suppose.' Arthur sighed a little forlornly.

'I don't want to go to any blasted village!' snapped Ford. 'We've got to get out of here!'

'Where? How?'

'I don't know, you tell me. You live here! There must be some way off this zarking planet.'

'I don't kn

ow. What do you usually do? Sit around and wait for a passing spacecraft, I suppose.'

'Oh yes? And how many spacecraft have visited this zark-forsaken little fleapit recently?'

'Well, a few years ago there was mine that crashed here by mistake. Then there was, er, Trillian, then the parcel delivery, and now you, and . . .'

'Yes, but apart from the usual suspects?'

'Well, er, I think pretty much none, so far as I know. Pretty quiet round here.'

As if deliberately to prove him wrong, there was a long, low distant roll of thunder.

Ford leapt to his feet fretfully and started pacing backwards and forwards in the feeble, painful light of the early dawn which lay streaked against the sky as if someone had dragged a piece of liver across it.

'You don't understand how important this is,' he said.

'What? You mean my daughter out there all alone in the Galaxy? You think I don't . . .'

'Can we feel sorry for the Galaxy later?' said Ford. 'This is very, very serious indeed. The Guide has been taken over. It's been bought out.'

Arthur leapt up. 'Oh very serious,' he shouted. 'Please fill me in straight away on some corporate publishing politics! I can't tell you how much it's been on my mind of late!'

'You don't understand! There's a whole new Guide!'

'Oh!' shouted Arthur again. 'Oh! Oh! Oh! I'm incoherent with excitement! I can hardly wait for it to come out to find out which are the most exciting spaceports to get bored hanging about in in some globular cluster I've never heard of. Please, can we rush to a store that's got it right this very instant?'

Ford narrowed his eyes.

'This is that thing you call sarcasm, isn't it?'

'Do you know,' bellowed Arthur, 'I think it is? I really think it might just be a crazy little thing called sarcasm seeping in at the edges of my manner of speech! Ford, I have had a fucking bad night! Will you please try and take that into account while you consider what fascinating bits of badger-sputumly inconsequential trivia to assail me with next?'

'Try to rest,' said Ford. 'I need to think.'

'Why do you need to think? Can't we just sit and go budum-budumbudum with our lips for a bit? Couldn't we just dribble gently and loll a little bit to the left for a few minutes? I can't stand it, Ford! I can't stand all this thinking and trying to work things out any more. You may think that I am just standing here barking . . .'

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