Mostly Harmless - Douglas Adams [61]
Chapter 17
For a long period of time there was much speculation and controversy about where the so-called “missing matter” of the Universe had got to. All over the Galaxy the science departments of all the major universities were acquiring more and more elaborate equipment to probe and search the hearts of distant galaxies, and then the very center and the very edges of the whole Universe, but when eventually it was tracked down it turned out in fact to be all the stuff which the equipment had been packed in.
There was quite a large quantity of missing matter in the box, little soft round white pellets of missing matter, which Random discarded for future generations of physicists to track down and discover all over again once the findings of the current generation of physicists had been lost and forgotten about.
Out of the pellets of missing matter she lifted the featureless black disk. She put it down on a rock beside her and sifted among all the missing matter to see if there was anything else, a manual or some attachments or something, but there was nothing else at all. Just the black disk.
She shone the torch on it.
As she did so, cracks began to appear along its apparently featureless surface. Random backed away nervously, but then saw that the thing, whatever it was, was merely unfolding itself.
The process was wonderfully beautiful. It was extraordinarily elaborate, but also simple and elegant. It was like a piece of self-opening origami, or a rosebud blooming into a rose in just a few seconds.
Where just a few moments earlier there had been a smoothly curved black disk, there was now a bird. A bird, hovering there.
Random continued to back away from it, carefully and watchfully.
It was a little like a pikka bird, only rather smaller. That is to say, in fact it was larger, or to be more exact, precisely the same size or, at least, not less than twice the size. It was also both a lot bluer and a lot pinker than pikka birds, while at the same time being perfectly black.
There was also something very odd about it, which Random couldn’t immediately make out.
It certainly shared with pikka birds the impression it gave that it was watching something that you couldn’t see.
Suddenly it vanished.
Then, just as suddenly, everything went black. Random dropped into a tense crouch, feeling for the specially sharpened rock in her pocket again. Then the blackness receded and rolled itself up into a ball, and then the blackness was the bird again. It hung in the air in front of her, beating its wings slowly and staring at her.
“Excuse me,” it said suddenly, “I just have to calibrate myself. Can you hear me when I say this?”
“When you say what?” demanded Random.
“Good,” said the bird. “And can you hear me when I say this?” It spoke this time at a much higher pitch.
“Yes, of course I can!” said Random.
“And can you hear me when I say this?” it said, this time in a sepulchrally deep voice.
“Yes!”
There was then a pause.
“No, obviously not,” said the bird after a few seconds. “Good, well, your hearing range is obviously between sixteen and twenty KHz. So. Is this comfortable for you?” it said in a pleasant light tenor. “No uncomfortable harmonics screeching away in the upper register? Obviously not. Good. I can use those as data channels. Now. How many of me can you see?”
Suddenly the air was full of nothing but interlocking birds. Random was well used to spending time in virtual realities, but this was something far weirder than anything she had previously encountered. It was as if the whole geometry of space was redefined in seamless bird shapes.
Random gasped and flung her arms around her face, her arms moving through bird-shaped space.
“Hmmm, obviously way too many,” said the bird. “How about now?”
It concertinaed into a tunnel of birds, as if it was a bird caught between parallel minors, reflecting infinitely into the distance.
“What are you?” shouted