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Once Richard had withdrawn to a respectful distance, it stretched its neck up, closed its large yellow eyes and seemed to gargle gracelessly as it shook the nut down its neck into its maw.
It appeared then to be at least partially satisfied. Whereas before it had been a cross dodo, it was at least now a cross, fed dodo, which was probably about as much as it could hope for in this life.
It made a slow, waddling, on-the-spot turn and padded back into the forest whence it had come, as if defying Richard to find the little tuft of curly feathers stuck up on top of its backside even remotely funny.
"I only come to look," said Reg in a small voice, and glancing at him Dirk was discomfited to see that the old man's eyes were brimming with tears which he quickly brushed away. "Really, it is not for me to interfere--"
Richard came scurrying breathlessly up to them.
"Was that a dodo?" he exclaimed.
"Yes," said Reg, "one of only three left at this time. The year is 1676. They will all be dead within four years, and after that no one will ever see them again. Come," he said, "let us go."
Behind the stoutly locked outer door in the corner staircase in the Second Court of St Cedd's College, where only a millisecond earlier there had been a slight flicker as the inner door departed, there was another slight flicker as the inner door now returned.
Walking through the dark evening towards it the large figure of Michael Wenton-Weakes looked up at the corner windows. If any slight flicker had been visible, it would have gone unnoticed in the dim dancing firelight that spilled from the window.
The figure then looked up into the darkness of the sky, looking for what it knew to be there though there was not the slightest chance of seeing it, even on a clear night which this was not. The orbits of Earth were now so cluttered with pieces of junk and debris that one more item among them--even such a large one as this was--would pass perpetually unnoticed. Indeed, it had done so, though its influence had from time to time exerted itself. From time to time. When the waves had been strong. Not for nearly two hundred years had they been so strong as now they were again.
And all at last was now in place. The perfect carrier had been found.
The perfect carrier moved his footsteps onwards through the court.
The Professor himself had seemed the perfect choice at first, but that attempt had ended in frustration, fury, and then--inspiration! Bring a Monk to Earth! They were designed to believe anything, to be completely malleable. It could be suborned to undertake the task with the greatest of ease.
Unfortunately, however, this one had proved to be completely hopeless. Getting it to believe something was very easy. Getting it to continue to believe the same thing for more than five minutes at a time had proved to be an even more impossible task than that of getting the Professor to do what he fundamentally wanted to do but wouldn't allow himself.
Then another failure and then, miraculously, the perfect carrier had come at last.
The perfect carrier had already proved that it would have no compunction in doing what would have to be done.
Damply, clogged in mist, the moon struggled in a corner of the sky to rise. At the window, a shadow moved.
CHAPTER
30
From the window overlooking Second Court Dirk watched the moon. "We shall not," he said, "have long to wait."
"To wait for what?" said Richard.
Dirk turned.
"For the ghost," he said, "to return to us. Professor--" he added to Reg, who was sitting anxiously by the fire, "do you have any brandy, French cigarettes or worry beads in your rooms?"
"No," said Reg.
"Then I shall have to fret unaided," said Dirk and returned to staring out of the window.
"I have yet to be convinced," said Richard, "that there is not some other explanation than that of... ghosts to--"
"Just as you required actually to see a time machine in operation before you could accept it," returned Dirk. "Richard, I commend you on your scepticism, but even the sceptical mind must be prepared to accept the unacceptable when there is no alternative. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands."
"Then what is a ghost?"
"I think that a ghost," said Dirk, "is someone who died either violently or unexpectedly with unfinished business on his, her--or its--hands. Who cannot rest until it has been finished, or put right."
He turned to face them again.
"Which is why," he said, "a time machine would have such a fascination for a ghost once it knew of its existence. A time machine provides the means to put right what, in the ghost's opinion, went wrong in the past. To free it.
"Which is why it will be back. It tried first to take possession of Reg himself, but he resisted. Then came the incident with the conjuring trick, the face powder and the horse in the bathroom which I--" he paused--"which even I do not understand, though I intend to if it kills me. And then you, Richard, appear on the scene. The ghost deserts Reg and concentrates instead on you. Almost immediately there occurs an odd but significant incident. You do something that you then wish you hadn't done.
"I refer, of course, to the phone call you made to Susan and left on her answering machine.
"The ghost seizes its chance and tries to induce you to undo it. To, as it were, go back into the past and erase that message--to change the mistake you had made. Just to see if you would do it. Just to see if it was in your character.
"If it had been, you would now be totally under its control. But at the very last second your nature rebelled and you would not do it. And so the ghost gives you up as a bad job and deserts you in turn. It must find someone else.
"How long has it been doing this? I do not know. Does this now make sense to you? Do you recognise the truth of what I am saying?"
Richard turned cold.
"Yes," he said, "I think you must be absolutely right."
"And at what moment, then," said Dirk, "did the ghost leave you?"
Richard swallowed.
"When Michael Wenton-Weakes walked out of the room," he said.
"So I wonder," said Dirk quietly, "what possibilities the ghost saw in him. I wonder whether this time it found what it wanted. I believe we shall not have long to wait."
There was a knock on the door.
When it opened, there stood Michael Wenton-Weakes.
He said simply, "Please, I need your help."
Reg and Richard sta
red at Dirk, and then at Michael.
"Do you mind if I put this down somewhere?" said Michael. "It's rather heavy. Full of scuba-diving equipment."
"Oh, I see," said Susan, "oh well, thanks, Nicola, I'll try that fingering. I'm sure he only put the E flat in there just to annoy people. Yes, I've been at it solidly all afternoon. Some of those semiquaver runs in the second movement are absolute bastards. Well, yes, it helped take my mind off it all. No, no news. It's all just mystifying and absolutely horrible. I don't want even to--look, maybe I'll give you a call again later and see how you're feeling. I know, yes, you never know which is worse, do you, the illness, the antibiotics, or the doctor's bedside manner. Look after yourself, or at least, make sure Simon does. Tell him to bring you gallons of hot lemon. OK. Well, I'll talk to you later. Keep warm. Bye now."
She put the phone down and returned to her cello. She had hardly started to reconsider the problem of the irritating E flat when the phone went again. She had simply left it off the hook for the afternoon, but had forgotten to do so again after making her own call.
With a sigh she propped up the cello, put down the bow, and went to the phone again.
"Hello?" she demanded.
Again, there was nothing, just a distant cry of wind. Irritably, she slammed the receiver back down once more.
She waited a few seconds for the line to clear, and then was about to take the phone off the hook once more when she realised that perhaps Richard might need her.
She hesitated.
She admitted to herself that she hadn't been using the answering machine, because she usually just put it on for Gordon's convenience, and that was something of which she did not currently wish to be reminded.
Still, she put the answering machine on, turned the volume right down, and returned again to the E flat that Mozart had put in only to annoy cellists.
In the darkness of the offices of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Gordon Way clumsily fumbled the telephone receiver back on to its rest and sat slumped in the deepest dejection. He didn't even stop himself slumping all the way through the seat until he rested lightly on the floor.
