Mostly Harmless [54]
He had never been there again since he had been pulled out of the wreckage.
Wouldn't.
Couldn't bear it.
In fact he had gone some of the way back to it the very next day, while he was still numb and spinning with shock. He had a broken leg, a couple of broken ribs, some bad burns and was not really thinking coherently but had insisted that the villagers take him, which, uneasily, they had. He had not managed to get right to the actual spot where the ground had bubbled and melted, however, and had at last hobbled away from the horror for ever.
Soon, word had got around that the whole area was haunted and no one had ventured back there ever since. The land was full of beautiful, verdant and delightful valleys — no point in going to a highly worrying one. Let the past hold on to itself and let the present move forward into the future.
Random cradled the watch in her hands, slowly turning it to let the long light of the evening sun shine warmly in the scratches and scuffs of the thick glass. It fascinated her watching the spidery little second hand ticking its way round. Every time it completed a full circle, the longer of the two main hands had moved on exactly to the next of the sixty small divisions round the dial. And when the long hand had made its own full circle. the smaller hand had moved on to the next of the main digits.
"You've been watching it for over an hour.' said Arthur, quietly.
"I know, she said. "An hour is when the big hand has gone all the way round, yes?"
"That's right.'
"Then I've been watching it for an hour and seventeen... minutes.'
She smiled with a deep and mysterious pleasure and moved very slightly so that she was resting just a little. against his arm. Arthur felt a small sigh escape from him that had been pent up inside his chest for weeks. He wanted to put his arm around his daughter's shoulders, but felt it was too early yet and that she would shy away from him. But something was working. Something was easing inside her. The watch meant something to her that nothing in her life had so far managed to do. Arthur was not sure that he had really understood what it was yet, but he was profoundly pleased and relieved that something had reached her.
"Explain to me again," said Random.
"There's nothing really to it,' said Arthur. "Clockwork was something that developed over hundreds of years..."
"Earth years."
"Yes. It became finer and finer and more and more intricate. It was highly skilled and delicate work. It had to be made very small, and it had to carry on working accurately however much you waved it around or dropped it."
"But only on one planet?"
"Well, that was where it was made, you see. It was never expected to go anywhere else and deal with different suns and moons and magnetic fields and things. I mean the thing still goes perfectly well, but it doesn't really mean much this far from Switzerland.'
"From where?"
"Switzerland. That's where these were made. Small hilly country. Tiresomely neat. The people who made them didn't really know there were other worlds.'
"Quite a big thing not to know."
"Well, yes."
"So where did they come from?"
"They, that is we... we just sort of grew there. We evolved on the Earth. From, I don't know, some kind of sludge or something.'
"Like this watch."
"Um. I don't think the watch grew out of sludge.'
"You don't understand!'
Random suddenly leaped to her feet, shouting.
"You don't understand! You don't understand me, you don't understand anything! I hate you for being so stupid!'
She started to run hectically down the hill, still clutching the watch and shouting that she hated him.
Arthur jumped up, startled and at a loss. He started to run after her through the stringy and clumpy grass. It was hard and painful for him. When he had broken his leg in the crash, it had not been a clean break, and it had not healed cleanly. He was stumbling and