Mostly Harmless [55]
Suddenly she turned and faced him, her face dark with anger.
She brandished the watch at him. "You don't understand that there's somewhere this belongs? Somewhere it works? Somewhere that it fits?'
She turned and ran again. She was fit and fleet-footed and Arthur could not remotely keep up with her.
It wasn't that he had not expected being a father to be this difficult, it was that he hadn't expected to be a father at all, particularly not suddenly and unexpectedly on an alien planet.
Random turned to shout at him again. For some reason he stopped each time she did.
"Who do you think I am?" she demanded angrily. "Your upgrade? Who do you think Mum thought I was? Some sort of ticket to the life she didn't have?'
"I don't know what you mean by that,' said Arthur, panting and hurting.
"You don't know what anybody means by anything!'
"What do you mean?"
"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"
"Tell me! Please tell me! What does she mean by saying the life she didn't have?'
"She wished she'd stayed on Earth! She wished she hadn't gone off with that stupid brain-dead fruit gum, Zaphod! She thinks she would have had a different life!'
"But," said Arthur, "she would have been killed! She would have been killed when the world was destroyed!"
"That's a different life isn't it?'
"That's...'
"She wouldn't have had to have me! She hates me!'
"You can't mean that! How could anyone possibly, er, I mean...'
"She had me because I was meant to make things fit for her. That was my job. But I fitted even worse than she did! So she just shut me off and carried on with her stupid life."
"What's stupid about her life? She's fantastically successful, isn't she? She's all over time and space, all over the Sub-Etha TV networks...'
"Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!"
Random turned and ran off again. Arthur couldn't keep up with her and at last he had to sit down for a bit and let the pain in his leg subside. The turmoil in his head he didn't know what to do with at all.
He hobbled into the village an hour later. It was getting dark. The villagers he passed said hello, but there was a sense of nervousness and of not quite knowing what was going on or what to do about it in the air. Old Thrashbarg had been seen pulling on his beard a fair bit and looking at the moon, and that was not a good sign either.
Arthur went into his hut.
Random was sitting hunched quietly over the table.
"I'm sorry,' she said. "I'm so sorry.'
"That's all right,' said Arthur as gently as he knew how. "It's good to, well, to have a little chat. There's so much we have to learn and understand about each other, and life isn't, well it isn't all just tea and sandwiches...'
"I'm so sorry,' she said again, sobbing.
Arthur went up to her and put his arm round her shoulder. She didn't resist or pull away. Then Arthur saw what it was she was so sorry about.
In the pool of light thrown by a Lamuellan lantern lay Arthur's watch. Random had forced the back off it with the back edge of the butter spreading knife, and all of the minute cogs and springs and levers were lying in a tiny cock-eyed mess where she'd been fiddling with them.
"I just wanted to see how it worked," said Random, "how it all fitted together. I'm so sorry! I can't get it back together. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I don't know what to do. I'll get it repaired! Really! I'll get it repaired!'
The following day Thrashbarg came round and said all sorts of Bob stuff. He tried to exert a calming influence by inviting Random to let her mind dwell on the ineffable mystery of the giant earwig, and Random said there was no giant earwig and Thrashbarg went very cold and silent and said she would be cast into outer darkness. Random said good, she'd been born there, and the next day the parcel arrived.
This was all getting a bit eventful.
In fact, when the parcel arrived, delivered by a kind of robot drone that dropped out of the sky making droning robot noises, it brought with it a sense which gradually began to permeate through the whole village, that it was almost one event too many.
It