Mostly Harmless - Douglas Adams [55]
“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 leapt 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 wincing as he ran.
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