Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams [6]
“Shape?” asked Ford.
Arthur looked again.
“It is shaped,” he hissed at Ford, with his brow savagely furrowed, “like a policeman.”
They remained crouched there for a few moments, frowning deeply. The blue thing shaped like a policeman tapped them both on the shoulders.
“Come on, you two,” the shape said, “let’s go.”
These words had an electrifying effect on Arthur. He leaped to his feet and shot a series of startled glances at the panorama around him that had suddenly settled down into something of quite terrifying ordinariness.
“Where did you get this from?” he yelled at the policeman shape.
“What did you say?” said the startled shape.
“This is Lord’s Cricket Ground, isn’t it?” snapped Arthur. “Where did you find it, how did you get it here? I think,” he added, clasping his hand to his brow, “that I had better calm down.” He squatted down abruptly in front of Ford.
“It is a policeman,” he said. “What do we do?”
Ford shrugged. “What do you want to do?” he said.
“I want you,” said Arthur, “to tell me that I have been dreaming for the last five years.”
Ford shrugged again, and obliged.
“You’ve been dreaming for the last five years,” he said.
Arthur got to his feet.
“It’s all right, officer,” he said, “I’ve been dreaming for the last five years. Ask him,” he added, pointing at Ford, “he was in it.” Having said this, he sauntered off toward the edge of the pitch, brushing down his dressing gown. He then noticed his dressing gown and stopped. He stared at it. He turned around. He flung himself at the policeman.
“So where did I get these clothes from?” he howled.
He collapsed and lay twitching on the grass.
Ford shook his head.
“He’s had a bad two million years,” he said to the policeman, and together they heaved Arthur onto the sofa and carried him off the pitch and were only briefly hampered by the sudden disappearance of the sofa on the way.
Reactions to all this from the crowd were many and various. Most of them couldn’t cope with watching it, and listened to it on the radio instead.
“Well, this is an interesting incident, Brian,” said one radio commentator to another. “I don’t think there have been any mysterious materializations on the pitch since, oh, since, well, I don’t think there have been any, have there? That I recall?”
“Edgbaston 1932?”
“Ah, now what happened then …?”
“Well, Peter, I think it was Canter facing Willcox coming up to bowl from the pavilion end when a spectator suddenly ran straight across the pitch.”
There was a pause while the first commentator considered this.
“Ye … e … s …” he said, “yes, there’s nothing actually very mysterious about that, is there? He didn’t actually materialize, did he? Just ran on.”
“No, that’s true, but he did claim to have seen something materialize on the pitch.”
“Ah, did he.”
“Yes. An alligator, I think, of some description.”
“And what happened to the man?”
“Well, I think someone offered to take him off and give him some lunch, but he explained that he’d already had a rather good one, so the matter was dropped and Warwickshire went on to win by three wickets.”
“So, not very like this current instance. For those of you who’ve just tuned in, you may be interested to know that, er … two men, two rather scruffily attired men, and indeed a sofa—a Chesterfield I think?”
“Yes, a Chesterfield.”
“Have just materialized here in the middle of Lord’s Cricket Ground. But I don’t think they meant any harm, they’ve been very good-natured about it, and …”
“Sorry, can I interrupt you a moment, Peter, and say that the sofa has just vanished.”
“So it has. Well, that’s one mystery less. Still, it’s definitely one for the record books I think, particularly occurring at this dramatic moment in play, England now needing only twenty-four runs to win the series. The men are leaving the pitch in the company of a police officer, and I think everyone’s settling down now and play is about to resume.”
“Now, sir,” said the policeman after they had made a passage through the curious crowd and laid Arthur’s peacefully inert body on a blanket, “perhaps