Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams [68]
Chapter 33
he sun was shining calmly on a scene of complete havoc.
Smoke was still billowing across the burnt grass in the wake of the theft of the Ashes by the Krikkit robots. Through the smoke people were running panic-stricken, colliding with each other, tripping over stretchers, being arrested.
One policeman was attempting to arrest Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged for insulting behavior, but was unable to prevent the tall gray green alien from returning to his ship and arrogantly flying away, thus causing even more panic and pandemonium.
In the middle of this suddenly materialized for the second time that afternoon the figures of Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect, who had teleported down out of the Heart of Gold which was now in parking orbit round the planet.
“I can explain,” shouted Arthur. “I have the Ashes! They’re in this bag.”
“I don’t think you have their attention,” said Ford.
“I have also helped save the Universe,” called Arthur to anyone who was prepared to listen, in other words no one.
“That should have been a crowd stopper,” said Arthur to Ford.
“It wasn’t,” said Ford.
Arthur accosted a policeman who was running past.
“Excuse me,” he said, “the Ashes. I’ve got them. They were stolen by those white robots a moment ago. I’ve got them in this bag. They were part of the Key to the Slo-Time envelope, you see, and well, anyway, you can guess the rest, the point is I’ve got them and what should I do with them?”
The policeman told him, but Arthur could only assume that he was speaking metaphorically.
He wandered about disconsolately.
“Is no one interested?” he shouted out. A man rushed past him and jogged his elbow; he dropped the paper bag and it spilled its contents all over the ground. Arthur stared down at it with a tight-set mouth.
Ford looked at him.
“Wanna go now?” he said.
Arthur heaved a heavy sigh. He looked around at the planet Earth, for what he was now certain would be the last time.
“Okay,” he said.
At that moment, he caught sight, through the clearing smoke, of one of the wickets, still standing in spite of everything.
“Hold on a moment,” he said to Ford, “when I was a boy …”
“Can you tell me later?”
“I had a passion for cricket, you know, but I wasn’t very good at it.”
“Or not at all if you prefer.”
“And I always dreamed, rather stupidly, that one day I would bowl at Lord’s.”
He looked around him at the panic-stricken throng. No one was going to mind very much.
“Okay,” said Ford wearily, “get it over with. I shall be over there,” he added, “being bored.” He went and sat down on a patch of smoking grass.
Arthur remembered that on their first visit there that afternoon, the cricket ball had actually landed in his bag, and he looked through the bag.
He had already found the ball in it before he remembered that it wasn’t the same bag that he’d had at the time. Still, there it was among the souvenirs of Greece.
He took it out and polished it against his hip, spat on it and polished it again. He put the bag down. He was going to do this properly.
He tossed the small hard red ball from hand to hand, feeling its weight.
With a wonderful feeling of lightness and unconcern, he trotted off away from the wicket. A medium-fast pace, he decided, and measured a good long run up.
He looked up into the sky. The birds were wheeling about it, a few white clouds scudded across it. The air was disturbed with the sound of police and ambulance sirens, and people screaming and yelling, but he felt curiously happy and untouched by it all. He was going to bowl a ball at Lord’s.
He turned, and pawed a couple of times at the ground with his bedroom slippers. He squared his shoulders, tossed the ball in the air and caught it again.
He started to run.
As he ran, he suddenly saw that standing at the wicket was a batsman.
“Oh, good,” he thought, “that should add a little …”
Then, as his running feet took him nearer he saw more clearly. The batsman standing ready at the wicket was