Douglas Adams. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
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... the bed which he knewto be cold though he could not feel it. The moon seemed unable
to leave him alone and shone full on him as he lay there
wide-eyed and empty, unable now to remember what sleep was or
how to do it.
The horror of hollowness lay on him, the horror of lying
ceaselessly and forever awake at four o'clock in the morning.
He had nowhere to go, nothing to do when he got there, and
no one he could go and wake up who wouldn't be utterly
horrified to see him.
The worst moment had been when he had seen Richard on the
road, Richard's face frozen white in the windscreen. He saw
again his face, and that of the pale figure next to him.
That had been the thing which had shaken out of him the
lingering shred of warmth at the back of his mind which said
that this was just a temporary problem. It seemed terrible in
the night hours, but would be all right in the morning when he
could see people and sort things out. He fingered the memory of
the rroment in his mind and could not let it go.
He had seen Richard and Richard, he knew, had seen him.
It was not going to be all right.
Usually when he felt this bad at night he popped
downstairs to see what was in the fridge, so he went now. It
would be more cheerful than this moonlit bedroom. He would hang
around the kitchen going bump in the night.
He slid down - and partially through - the banisters,
wafted through the kitchen door without a second thought and
then devoted all his concentration and energy for about five
minutes to getting the light switch on.
That gave him a real sense of achievement and he
determined to celebrate with a beer.
After a minute or two of repeatedly juggling and dropping
a can of Fosters he gave it up. He had not the slightest
conception of how he could manage to open a ring pull, and
besides the stuff was all shaken up by now - and what was he
going to do with the stuff even if he did get it open?
He didn't have a body to keep it in. He hurled the can
away from him and it scuttled off under a cupboard.
He began to notice something about himself, which was the
way in which his ability to grasp things seemed to grow and
fade in a slow rhythm, as did his visibility.
There was an irregularity in the rhythm, though, or
perhaps it was just that sometimes the efPРcts of it would be
much more pronounced than at others. That, too, seemed to vary
according to a slower rhythm. Just at that moment it seemed to
him that his strength was on the increase.
In a sudden fever of activity he tried to see how many
things in the kitchen he could move or use or somehow get to
work.
He pulled open cupboards, he yanked out drawers,
scattering cutlery on the floor. He got a brief whirr out of
the food processor, he knocked over the electric coffee grinder
without getting it to work, he turned on the gas on the cooker
hob but then couldn't light it, he savaged a loaf of bread with
a carvi±g knife. He tried stuffing lumps of bread into his
mouth, but they simply fell through his mouth to the floor. A
mouse appeared, but scumed from the room, its coat electric
with fear.
Eventually he stopped and sat at the kitchen table,
emotionally exhausted but physically numb.
How, he wondered, would people react to his death?
Who would be most sorry to know that he had gone?
For a while there would be shock, then sadness, then they
would adjust, and he would be a fading memory as people got on
with their own lives without him, thinking that he had gone on
to wherever people go. That was a thought that filled him with
the most icy dread.
He had not gone. He was still here.
He sat facing one cupboard that he hadn't managed to open
yet because its handle was too stiff, and that annoyed him. He
grappled awkwardly with a tin of tomatoes, then went over again
to the large cupboard and attacked the handle with the tin. The
door flew open and his own missing bloodstained body fell
horribly forward out of it.
Gordon hadn't realised up till this point that it was
possible for a ghost to faint.
He realised it now and did it.
He was woken a couple of hours later by the sound of his
gas cooker exploding.
Chapter Sixteen...
The following morning Richard woke up twice.
The first time he assumed he had made a mistake and turned
over for a fitful few minutes more. The second time he sat up
with a jolt as the events of the previous night insisted
themselves upon him.
He went downstairs and had a moody and unsettled
breakfast, during which nothing went right. He burned the
toast, spilled the coffee, and realised that though he'd meant
to buy some mor marmalade yesterday, he hadn't. He
surveyed his feeble attempt at feeding himself and thought that
maybe he could at least allow himself the time to take Susan
out for an amazing meal tonight, to make up for last night.
If he could persuade her to come.
There was a rest.aurant that Gordon had been enthusing
about at gret length and recommending that they try.
Gordon was pretty good on restaurants - he certainly seemed to
spend enough time in them. He sat and tapped his teeth with a
pencil for a couple of minutes, and then went up to his
workroom and lugged a telephone directory out from under a pile
of computer magazines.
L'Esprit d'Escalier.
He phoned the restaurant and tried to book a table, but
when he said when he wanted it for this seemed to cause a
little amusement.
"Ah, non, m'sieur," said the mai^tre d', "I regret that it
is impossible. At this moment it is necessary to make
reservations at least three weeks in advance. Pardon. m'sieur."
Richard marvelled at the idea that there were people who
actually knew what they wanted to do three weeks in advance,
thanked the ma_tre d' and rang off. Well, maybe a pizza again
instead. This thought connected back to the appointment he had
failed to keep last night, and after a moment curiosity
overcame him and he reached for the phone book again.
Gentleman...
Gentles...
Gentry.
There was no Gently at all. Not a single one. He found the
other directories, except for the S-Z book which his cleaning
lady continually threw away for reasons he had never yet
fathomed.
There was certainly no Cjelli, or anything like it. There
was no Jently, no Dgently, no Djently, no Dzently, nor anything
remotely similar. He wondered about Tjently, Tsentli or Tzentli
and tried Directory Enquiries, but they were out. He sat and
tapped his teeth with a pencil again and watched his sofa
slowly revolving on the screen of his computer.
How very peculiar it had been that it had only been hours
earlier that Reg had asked after Dirk with such urgency.
If you really wanted to find someone, how would you set
about it, what would you do?
He tried phoning the police, but they were out too. Well,
that was that. He had done all he could do for the moment short
of hiring a private detective, and he had better ways of
wasting his time and money. He would run into Dirk again, as he
did every few years or so.
He found it hard to believe there were really such people,
anyway, as private detectives.
What sort of people were they? What did they look like,
where did they work?
What sort of tie would you wear if you were a private
detective? Presumably it would have to be exactly the sort of
tie tjat people wouldn't expect private detectives to wear.
lmagine having to sort out a problem like that when you'd just
got up.
Just out of curiosity as much as anything else, and
because the only alternative was settling down to Anthem
coding, he found himself leafing through the Yellow Pages.
Private Detectives - see Detective Agencies.
The words looked almost odd in such a solid and
businesslike context. He flipped back through the book. Dry
Cleaners, Dog Breeders, Dental Technicians, Detective
Agencies...
At that moment the phone rang and he answered it, a little
curtly. He didn't like being interrupted.
"Something wrong, Richard?"
"Oh, hi, Kate, so no. I was. . my mind was elsewhere."
Kate Anselm was another star programmer at WayForward
Technologies. She was working on a long-term Artificial
Intelligence project, the sort of thing that sounded like an
absurd pipe dream until you heard her talking about it. Gordon
needed to hear her talking about it quite regularly, partly
because he was nervous about the money it was costing and
partly because, well, there was little doubt that Gordon liked
to hear Kate talking anyway.
"I didn't want to disturb you," she said. "It's just I was
trying to contact Gordon and can't. There's no reply from
London or the cottage, or his car or his bleeper. It's just
that for someone as obsessively in contact as Gordon it's a bit
odd. You heard he's had a phone put in his isolation tank?
True."
"I haven't spoken to him since yesterday," said Richard.
He suddenly remembered the tape he had taken from Susan's
answering machine, and hoped to God there wasn't anything more
important in Gordon's message than ravings about rabbits. He
said, "I know he was going to the cottage. Er, I don't know
where he is. Have you tried " Richard couldn't think of
anywhere else to try - "...er. Good God."
"Richard?"
"How extraordinary..."
"Richard, what's the matter?"
"Nothing, Kate. Er, I've just nead the most astounding
thing."
"Really, what ane you reading?"
"Well, the telephone directory, in fact. . "
"Really? I must rush out and buy one. Have the film rights
gone?"
"Look, sorry, Kate, can I get back to you? I don't know
where Gordon is at the moment and-"
"Don't worry. I know how it is when you can't wait to turn
the next page. They always keep you guessing till the end,
don't they? It must have been Zbigniew that did it. Have a good
weekend." She hung up.
Richard hung up too, and sat staring at the box
advertisement lying open in front of him in the Yellow Pages.
DIRK GENTLY'S
HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY
We solve the whole crime
We find the whole person
Phone today for the whole solution to your
problem
(Missing cats and messy divorces a speciality)
33a Peckender St., London N1 O1-354 9112
Peckender Street was only a few minutes' walk away.
Richard scribbled down the address, pulled on his coat and
trotted downstairs, stopping to make another quick inspection
of the sofa. There must, he thought, be something terribly
obvious that he was overlooking. The sofa was jammed on a
slight turn in the long narrow stairway. At this point the
stairs were interrupted for a couple of yards of flat landing,
which corresponded with the position of the flat directly
beneath Richard's. However, his inspection produced no new
insights, and he eventually clambered on over it and out of the
front door.
In Islington you can hardly hurl a brick without hitting
three antique shops, an estate agent and a bookshop.
Even if you didn't actually hit them you would certainly
set off their burglar alarms, which wouldn't be turned off
again till after the weekend. A police car played its regular
game of dodgems down Upper Street and squealed to a halt just
past him. Richard crossed the road behind it.
The day was cold and bright, which he liked. He walked
across the top of Islington Green, where winos get beaten up,
past the site of the old Collins Music Hall which had got bumt
down, and through Camden Passage where American tourists get
ripped off. He browsed among the antiques for a while and
looked at a pair of earrings that he thought Susan would like,
but he wasn't sure. Then he wasn't sure that he liked them, got
confused and gave up. He looked in at a bookshop, and on an
impulse bought an anthology of Coleridge's poems since it was
just lying there.
From here he threaded his way through the winding back
streets, over the canal, past the council estates that lined
the canal, through a number of smaller and smaller squares,
till finally he reached Peckender Street, which had turned out
to be a good deal farther than he'd thought.
It was the sort of street where property developers in
large Jaguars drive around at the weekend salivating. It was
full of end= of-lease shops, Victorian industrial architecture
and a short, decaying late-Georgian terrace, all just itching
to be pulled down so that sturdy young concrete boxes could
sprout in their places. Estate agents roamed the area in hungry
packs, eyeing each other warily, their clipboards on a hair
trigger.
Number 33, when he eventually found it neatly sandwiched
between 37 and 45, was in a poorish state of repair, but no
worse than most of the rest.
The ground floor was a dusty travel agent's whose window
was cracked and whose faded BOAC posters were probably now
quite valuable. The doorway next to the shop had been painted
bright red, not well, but at least recently. A push button next
to the door said, in neatly pencilled lettering, "Dominique,
French lessons, 3me Floor".
The most striking feature of the door, however, was the
bold and shiny brass plaque fixed in the dead centre of it, on
which was engraved the legend "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective
Agency".
Nothing else. It looked brand new - even the screws that
held it in place were still shiny.
The door opened to Richard's push and he peered inside.
He saw a short and musty hallway which contained little
but the stairway that led up from it. A door at the back of the
hall showed little sign of having been opened in recent years,
and had stacks of old metal shelving, a fish tank and the
carcass of a bike piled up against it. Everything else, the
walls, the floor, the stairs themselves, and as much of the
rear door as could be got at, had been painted grey in an
attempt to smarten it up cheaply, but it was all now badly
scuffed, and little cups of fungus were peeking from a damp
stain near the ceiling.
The sounds of angry voices reached him, and as he started
up the stairs he was able to disentangle the noises of two
entirely separate but heated arguments that were going on
somewhere above him.
One ended abruptly - or at least half of it did - as an
angry overweight man came clattering down the stairs pulling
his raincoat collar straight. The other half of the argument
continued in a torrent of aggrieved French from high above
them. The man pushed past Richard, said, "Save your money,
mate, it's a complete washout," and disappeared out into the
chilly morning.
The other argument was more muffled. As Richard reached
the first corridor a door slammed somewhere and brought that
too to an end. He looked into the nearest open doorway.
It led into a small ante-office. The other, inner door
leading from it was firmly closed. A youngish plump-faced girl
in a cheap blue coat was pulling sticks of make-up and boxes of
Kleenex out of her desk drawer and thrusting them into her bag.
"Is this the detective agency?" Richard asked her
tentatively.
The girl nodded, biting her lip and keeping her head down.
"And is Mr Gently in?"
"He may be," she said, throwing back her hair, which was
too curly for throwing back properly, "and then again he may
not be. I am not in a position to tell. It is not my busiaess
to know of his whereabouts. His whereabouts are, as of now,
entirely his own business."
She retrieved her last pot of nail varnish and tried to
slam the drawer shut. A fat book sitting upright in the drawer
prevented it from closing. She tried to slam the drawer again,
without success. She picked up the book, ripped out a clump of
pages and replaced it. This time she was able to slam the
drawer with ease.
"Are you his secretary?" asked Richard.
"I am his ex-secretary and I intend to stay that way," she
said, firmly snapping her bag shut. "If he intends to spend his
money on stupid expensive brass plaques rather than on paying
me, then let him. But I won't stay to stand for it, thank you
very much. Good for business, my foot. Answering the phones
properly is good for business and I'd like to see his fancy
brass plaque do that. If you'll excuse me I'd like to storm
out, please."
Richard stood aside, and out she stormed.
"And good riddance!" shouted a voice from the inner
office. A phone rang and was picked up immediately.
"Yes?" answered the voice from the inner office, testly.
The girl popped back for her scarf, but quietly, so her
ex-employer wouldn't hear. Then she was finally gone.
"Yes, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. How can we
be of help to you?"
The torrent of French from upstairs had ceased. A kind of
tense calm descended.
Inside, the voice said, "That's right, Mrs Sunderland,
messy divorces are our particular speciality."
There was a pause.
"Yes, thank you, Mrs Sunderland, not quite that messy."
Down went the phone again, to be replaced instantly by the
ringing of another one.
Richard looked around the grim little office. There was
very little in it. A battered chipboard veneer desk, an old
grey filing cabinet and a dark green tin wastepaper bin. On the
wall was a Duran Duran poster on which someone had scrawled in
fat red felt tip, "Take this down please".
Beneath that another hand had scrawled, "No".
Beneath that again the first hand had written, "l insist
that you take it down".
Beneath that the second hand had written, "Won't!"
Beneath that - "You're fired".
Beneath that - "Good!"
And there the matter appeared to have rested.
He knocked on the inner door, but was not answered.
Instead the voice continued, "I'm very glad you asked me that,
Mrs Rawlinson. The term `holistic' refers to my conviction that
what we are concerned with here is the fundamental
interconnectedness of all things. I do not concern myself with
such petty things as fingerprint powder, telltale pieces of
pocket fluff and inane footprints. I see the solution to each
problem as being detectable in the pattern and web of the
whole. The connections between causes and effects are often
much more subtle and complex than we with our rough and ready
understanding of the physical world might naturally suppose,
Mrs Rawlinson.
"Let me give you an example. If you go to an acupuncturist
with toothache he sticks a needle instead into your thigh. Do
you know why he does that, Mrs Rawlinson?
No, neither do I, Mrs Rawlinson, but we intend to find
out. A pleasure talking to you, Mrs Rawlinson. Goodbye."
Another phone was ringing as he put this one down.
Richard eased the door open and looked in.
It was the same Svlad, or Dirk, Cjelli. Looking a little
rounder about the middle, a little looser and redder about the
eyes and the neck, but it was still essentially the same face
that he remembered most vividly smiling a grim smile as its
owner climbed into the back of one of the Black Marias of the
Cambridgeshire constabulary, eight years previously.
He wore a heavy old light brown suit which looked as if it
has been worn extensively for bramble hacking expeditions in
some distant and better past, a red checked shirt which failed
entirely to harmonise with the suit, and a green striped tie
which refused to speak to either of them. He also wore thick
metal-rimmed spectacles, which probably accounted at least in
part for his dress sense.
"Ah, Mrs Bluthall, how thoroughly uplifting to hear from
you," he was saying. "I was so distressed to learn that Miss
Tiddles has passed over. This is desperate news indeed. And
yet, and yet... Should we allow black despair to hide from us
the fairer light in which your blessed moggy now forever
dwells?
"I think not. Hark. I think I hear Miss Tiddles miaowing
e'en now. She calls to you, Mrs Bluthall. She says she is
content, she is at peace. She says she'll be even more at peace
when you've paid some bill or other. Does that ring a bell with
you at all, Mrs Bluthall? Come to think of it I think I sent
you one myself not three months ago. l wonder if it can be that
which is disturbing her eternal rest."
Dirk beckoned Richard in with a brisk wave and then
motioned him to pass the crumpled pack of French cigarettes
that was sitting just out of his reach.
"Sunday night, then, Mrs Bluthall, Sunday night at eight=
thirty. You know the address. Yes, I'm sure Miss Tiddles will
appear, as I'm sure will your cheque book. Till then, Mrs
Bluthall, till then."
Another phone was already ringing as he got rid of Mrs
Bluthall. He grabbed at it, lighting his crumpled cigarette at
the same time.
"Ah, Mrs Sauskind," he said in answer to the caller, "my
oldest and may I say most valued client. Good day to you, Mrs
Sauskind, good day. Sadly, no sign as yet of young Roderick,
I'm afraid, but the search is intensifying as it moves into
what I am confident are its closing stages, and I am sanguine
that within mere days from today's date we wil1 have the young
rascal permanently restored to your arms and mewing prettily,
ah yes the bill, I was wondering if you had received it."
Dirk's crumpled cigarette turned out to be too crumpled to
smoke, so he hooked the phone on his shoulder and poked around
in the packet for another, but it was empty.
He rummaged on his desk for a piece of paper and a stub of
pencil and wrote a note which he passed to Richard.
"Yes, Mrs Sauskind," he assured the telephone, "I am
listening
with the utmost attention."
The note said "Tell secretary get cigs".
"Yes," continued Dirk into the phone, "but as I have
endeavoured to explain to you, Mrs Sauskind, over the seven
years of our acquaintance, I incline to the quantum mechanical
view in this matter. My theory is that your cat is not lost,
but that his waveform has temporarily collapsed and must be
restored. Schrжdinger. Planck. And so on."
Richard wrote on the note "You haven't got secretary" and
pushed it back.
Dirk considered this for a while, then wrote "Damn and
blast" on the paper and pushed it to Richard again.
"I grant you, Mrs Sauskind," continued Dirk blithely,
"that nineteen years is, shall we say, a distinguished age for
a cat to reach, yet can we allow ourselves to believe that a
cat such as Roderick has not reached it?
"And should we now in the autumn of his years abandon him
to his fate? This surely is the time that he most needs the
support of our continuing investigations. This is the time that
we should redouble our efforts, and with your permission, Mrs
Sauskind, that is what I intend to do. Imagine, Mrs Sauskind,
how you would face him if you had not done this simple thing
for him."
Richard fidgeted with the note, shrugged to himself, and
wrote "I'll get them" on it and passed it back once more.
Dirk shook his head in admonition, then wrote "I couldn't
possibly that would be most kind". As soon as Richard had read
this, Dirk took the note back and added "Get money from
secretary" to it.
Richard looked at the paper thoughtfully, took the pencil
and put a tick next to where he had previously written "You
haven't got secretary". He pushed the paper back across the
table to Dirk, who merely glanced at it and ticked "I couldn't
possibly that would be most kind".
"Well, perhaps," continued Dirk to Mrs Sauskind, "you
could just run over any of the areas in the bill that cause you
difficulty. Just the broader areas."
Richard let himself out.
Running down the stairs, he passed a young hopeful in a
denim jacket and close-cropped hair peering anxiously up the
stairwell.
"Any good, mate?" he said to Richard.
"Amazing," murmured Richard, "just amazing."
He found a nearby newsagent's and picked up a couple of
packets of Disque Bleu for Dirk, and a copy of the new edition
of Personal Computer World, which had a picture of
Gordon Way on the front.
"Pity about him, isn't it?" said the newsagent.
"What? Oh, er... yes," said Richard. He often thought the
same himself, but was surprised to find his feelings so widely
echoed. He picked up a Guardian as well, paid and left.
Dirk was still on the phone with his feet on the table
when Richard returned, and it was clear that he was relaxing
into his negotiations.
Yes, expenses were, well, expensive in the Bahamas, Mrs
Sauskind, it is in the nature of expenses to be so. Hence the
name." He took the proffered packets of cigarettes, seemed
disappointed there were only two, but briefly raised his
eyebrows to Richard in acknowledgment of the favour he had done
him, and then waved him to a chair.
The sounds of an argument conducted partly in French
drifted down from the floor above.
"Of course I will explain to you again why the trip to the
Bahamas was so vitally necessary," said Dirk Gently soothingly.
"Nothing could give me greater pleasure. I believe, as you
know, Mrs Sauskind, in the fundamental interconnectedness of
all things. Furthermore I have plotted and triangulated the
vectors of the interconnectedness of all things and traced them
to a beach in Bermuda which it is therefore necessary for me to
visit from time to time in the course of my investigations. I
wish it were not the case, since, sadly, I am allergic to both
the sun and rum punches, but then we all have our crosses to
bear, do we not, Mrs Sauskind?"
A babble seemed to break out from the telephone.
"You sadden me, Mrs Sauskind. I wish I could find it in my
heart to tell you that I find your scepticism rewarding and
invigorating, but with the best will in the world I cannot. I
am drained by it, Mrs Sauskind, drained. I think you will find
a item in the bill to that effect. Let me see."
He picked up a flimsy carbon copy lying near him.
"`Detecting and triangulating the vectors of
interconnectedness of all things, one hundred and fifty
pounds.' We've dealt with that.
"`Tracing same to beach on Bahamas, fare and accom=
modation'. A mere fifteen hundred. The accommodation was, of
course, distressingly modest.
"Ah yes, here we are, `Struggling on in the face of
draining scepticism from client, drinks - three hundred and
twenty-seven pounds fifty.'
"Would that I did not have to make such charges, my dear
Mrs Sauskind, would that the occasion did not continually
arise. Not bУlieving in my methods only makes my job more
difficult, Mrs Sauskind, and hence, regrettably, more
expensive."
Upstairs, the sounds of argument were becoming more heated
by the moment. The French voice seemed to be verging on
hysteria.
"I do appreciate, Mrs Sauskind," continued Dirk, "that the
cost of the investigation has strayed somewhat from the
original estimate, but I am sure that you will in your turn
appreciate that a job which takes seven years to do must
clearly be more difficult than one that can be pulled off in an
afternoon and must therefore be charged at a higher rate. I
have continually to revise my estimate of how difficult the
task is in the light of how difficult it has so far proved to
be."
The babble from the phone became more frantic.
"My dear Mrs Sauskind - or may I call you Joyce? Very well
then. My dear Mrs Sauskind, let me say this. Do not worry
yourself about this bill, do not let it alarm or discomfit you.
Do not, I beg you, let it become a source of anxiety to you.
Just grit your teeth and pay it."
He pulled his feet down off the table and leaned forward
over the desk, inhing the telephone receiver inexorably
back towards its cradle.
"As always, the very greatest pleasure to speak with you,
Mrs Sauskind. For now, goodbye."
He at last put down the receiver, picked it up again, and
dropped it for the moment into the waste basket.
"My dear Richard MacDuff," he said, producing a large flat
box from under his desk and pushing it across the table at him,
"your pizza."
Richard started back in astonishment.
"Er, no thanks," he said, "I had breakfast. Please. You
have it."
Dirk shrugged. "I told them you'd pop in and settle up
over the weekend," he said. "Welcome, by the way, to my
offices."
He waved a vague hand around the tatty surroundings.
"The light works," he said, indicating the window, "the
gravity works," he said, dropping a pencil on the floor.
"Anything else we have to take our chances with."
Richard cleared his throat. "What," he said, "is this?"
"What is what?"
"This," exclaimed Richard, "all this. You appear to have a
Holistic Detective Agency and I don't even know what one is."
"I provide a service that is unique in this world," said
Dirk. "The term `holistic' refers to my conviction that what we
are concerned with here is the fundamental interconnectedness
of all -"
"Yes, I got that bit earlier," said Richard. "I have to
say that it sounded a bit like an excuse for exploiting
gullible old ladies."
"Exploiting?" asked Dirk. "Well, I suppose it would be if
anybody ever paid me, but I do assure you, my dear Richard,
that there never seems to be the remotest danger of that. I
live in what are known as hopes. I hope for fascinating and
remunerative cases, my secretary hopes that I will pay her, her
landlord hopes that she will produce some rent, the Electricity
Board hopes that he will settle their bill, and so on. I find
it a wonderfully optimistic way of life.
"Meanwhile I give a lot of charming and sill old
ladies something to be happily cross about and virtually
guarantee the freedom of their cats. Is there, you ask - and I
put the question for you because I know you know I hate to be
interrupted - is there a single case that exercises the tiniest
part of my intellect, which, as you hardly need me to tell you,
is prodigious? No. But do 1 despair? Am I downcast? Yes.
Until," he added, "today."
"Oh, well, I'm glad of that," said Richard, "but what was
all that rubbish about cats and quantum mechanics?"
With a sigh Dirk flipped up the lid of the pizza with a
single Hick of practised fingers. He surveyed the cold round
thing with a kind of sadness and then tore off a hunk of it.
Pieces of pepperoni and anchovy scattered over his desk.
"I am sure, Richard," he said, "that you are familiar with
the notion of Schrжdinger's Cat," and he stuffed the larger
part of the hunk into his mouth.
"Ofcourse," said Richard. "Well, reasonably familiar."
"What is it?" said Dirk through a mouthful.
Richard shifted irritably in his seat. "It's an
illustration," he said, "of the principle that at a quantum
level all events are governed by probabilities. . ."
"At a quantum level, and therefore at all levels,"
interrupted Dirk. "Though at any level higher than the
subatomic the cumulative effect of those probabilities is, in
the normal course of events, indistinguishable from the effect
of hard and fast physical laws. Continue."
He put some more cold pizza into his face.
Richard reflected that Dirk's was a face into which too
much had already been put. What with that and the amount he
talked, the traffic through his mouth was almost incessant. His
ears, on the other hand, remained almost totally unused in
normal conversation.
It occurred to Richard that if Lamarck had been right and
you were to take a line through this behaviour for several
generations, the chances were that some radical replumbing of
the interior of the skull would eventually take place.
Richard continued, "Not only are quantum level events
governed by probabilities, but those probabilities aren't even
resolved into actual events until they are measured. Or to use
a phrase that I just heard you use in a rather bizarre context,
the act of measurement collapses the probability waveform. Up
until that point all the possible courses of action open to,
say, an electron, coexist as probability wavefon±s. Nothing is
decided. Until it's measured."
Dirk nodded. "More or less," he said, taking another
mouthful. "But what of the cat?"
Richard decided that there was only one way to avoid
having to watch Dirk eat his way through all the rest of the
pizza, and that was to eat the rest himself. He rolled it up
and took a token nibble off the end. It was rather good. He
took another bite.
Dirk watched this with startled dismay.
"So," said Richard, "the idea behind Schrжdinger's Cat was
to try and imagine a way in which the effects of probabilistic
behaviour at a quantum level could be considered at a
macroscopic level. Or let's say an everyday level."
"Yes, let's," said Dirk, regarding the rest of the pizza
with a stricken look. Richard took another bite and continued
cheerfully.
"So you imagine that you take a cat and put it in a box
that you can seal completely. Also in the box you put a small
lump of radioactive material, and a phial of poison gas. You
arrange it so that within a given period of time there is an
exactly fifty-fifty chance that an atom in the radioactive lump
will decay and emit an electron. If it does decay then it
triggers the release of the gas and kills the cat. If it
doesn't, the cat lives. Fifty-fifty. Depending on the
fifty-fifty chance that a single atom does or does not decay.
"The point as I understand it is this: since the decay of
a single atom is a quantum level event that wouldn't be
resolved either way until it was observed, and since you don't
make the observation until you open the box and see whether the
cat is alive or dead, then there's a rather extraordinary
consequence.
"Until you do open the box the cat itself exists in an
indeterminate state. The possibility that it is alive, and the
possibility that it is dead, are two different waveforms
superimposed on each other inside the box. Schrжdinger put
forward this idea to illustrate what he thought was absurd
about quantum theory."
Dirk got up and padded over to the window, probably not so
much for the meagre view it afforded over an old warehouse on
which an alternative comedian was lavishing his vast lager
commercial fees developing into luxury apartments, as for the
lack of view it afforded of the last piece of pizza
disappearing.
"Exactly," said Dirk, "bravo!"
"But what's all that got to do with this - this Detective
Agency?"
"Oh, that. Well, some researchers were once conducting
such an experiment, but,when they opened up the box, the cat
was neither alive nor dead but was in fact completely missing,
and they called me in to investigate. I was able to deduce that
nothing very dramatic had happened. The cat had merely got fed
up with being repeatedly locked up in a box and occasionally
gassed and had taken the first opportunity to hoof it through
the window. It was for me the work of a moment to set a saucer
of milk by the window and call `Bernice' in an enticing voice -
the cat's name was Bernice, you understand "
"Now, wait a minute - " said Richard.
" - and the cat was soon restored. A simple enough matter,
but it seemed to create quite an impression in certain circles,
and soon one thing led to another as they do and it all
culminated in the thriving career you see before you."
"Wait a minute, wait a minute," insisted Richard, slapping
the table.
"Yes?" enquired Dirk innocently.
"Now, what are you talking about, Dirk?"
"You have a problem with what I have told you?"
"Well, I hardly know where to begin," protested Richard.
"All right. You said that some people were performing the
experiment. That's nonsense. Schrжdinger's Cat isn't a real
experiment. It's just an illustration for arguing about the
idea. It's not something you'd actually do."
Dirk was watching him with odd attention.
"Oh, really?" he said at last. "And why not?"
"Well, there's nothing you can test. The whole point of
the idea is to think about what happens before you make your
observation. You can't know what's going on inside the box
without looking, and the very instant you look the wave packet
collapses and the probabilities resolve. It's self-defeating.
It's completely purposeless."
"You are, of course, perfectly cornect as far as you go,"
replied Dirk, returning to his seat. He drew a cigarette out of
the packet, tapped it several times on the desk, and leant
across the desk and pointed the filter at Richard.
"But think about this," he continued. "Supposing you were
to introduce a psychic, someone with clairvoyant powers, into
the experiment - someone who is able to divine what state of
health the cat is in without opening the box. Someone who has,
perhaps, a certain eerie sympathy with cats. What then? Might
that furnish us with an additional insight into the problem of
quantum physics?"
"Is that what they wanted to do?"
"It's what they did."
"Dirk, this is complete nonsense."
Dirk raised his eyebrows challengingly.
"All right, all right," said Richard, holding up his
palms, "let's just follow it through. Even if I accepted -
which I don't for one second - that there was any basis at all
for clairvoyance, it wouldn't alter the fundamental
undoableness of the experiment. As I said, the whole thing
turns on what happens inside the box before it's observed. It
doesn't matter how you observe it whether you look into the box
with your eyes or - well, with your mind, if you insist. If
clairvoyance works, then it's just another way of looking into
the box, and if it doesn't then of course it's irrelevant."
"It might depend, of course, on the view you take of
clairvoyance. . . "
"Oh yes? And what view do you take of clairvoyance? I
should be very interested to know, given your history."
Dirk tapped the cigarette on the desk again and looked
narrowly at Richard.
There was a deep and prolonged silence, disturbed only by
the sound of distant crying in French.
"I take the view I have always taken," said Dirk
eventually.
"Which is?"
"That I am not clairvoyant."
"Really," said Richard. "Then what about the exam papers?"
The eyes of Dirk Gently darkened at the mention of this
subject.
"A coincidence," he said, in a low, savage voice, "a
strange and chilling coincidence, but none the less a
coincidence. One, I might add, which caused me to spend a
considerable time in prison. Coincidences can be frightening
and dangerous things."
Dirk gave Richard another of his long appraising looks.
"I have been watching you carefully," he said. "You seem
to be extremely relaxed for a man in your position."
This seemed to Richard to be an odd remark, and he tried
to make sense of it for a moment. Then the light dawned, and it
was an aggravating light.
"Good heavens," he said, "he hasn't got to you as well,
has he?"
This remark seemed to puzzle Dirk in return.
"Who hasn't got to me?" he said.
"Gordon. No, obviously not. Gordon Way. He has this habit
of trying to get other people to bring pressure on me to get on
with what he sees as important work. I thought for a moment =
oh, never mind. What did you mean, then?"
"Ah. Gordon Way has this habit, has he?"
"Yes. I don't like it. Why?"
Dirk looked long and hard at Richard, tapping a pencil
lightly on the desk.
Then he leaned back in his chair and said as follows: "The
body of Gordon Way was discovered before dawn this morning. He
had been shot, strangled, and then his house was set on
fir. Police are working on the theory that he was not
actually shot m the house because no shotgun pellets were
discovered there other than those in the body.
"However, pellets were found near to Mr Way's Mercedes 500
SEC, which was found abandoned about three miles from his
house. This suggests that the body was moved after the murder.
Furthermore the doctor who examined the body is of the opmiort
that Mr Way was in fact strangled after he was shot, which
seems to suggest a ertain confusion in the mind of the
killer.
"By a startling coincidence it appears that the police
last night had occasion to interview a very confused-seeming
gentleman who said that he was suffering from some kind of
guilt complex about having just run over his employer.
"That man was a Mr Richard MacDuff, and his employer was
the deceased, Mr Gordon Way. It has further been suggested thnt
Mr Richard MacDuff is one of the two people most likely to
benefit from Mr Way's death, since WayForward Technologies
would almost certainly pass at least partly into his hands. The
other person is his only living relative, Miss Susan Way, into
whose flat Mr Richard MacDuff was observed to break last night.
The olice don't know that bit, of course. Nor, if we can help
it, will they. However, any relationship between the two of
them will naturally come under close scrutiny. The news reports
on the radio say that they are urgently seeking Mr MacDuff, who
they believe will be able to help them with their enquiries,
but the tone of voice says that he's clearly guilty as hell.
"My scale of charges is as follows: two hundred pounds a
day, plus expenses. Expenses are not negotiable and will
sometimes strike those who do not understand these matters as
somewhat tangential. They are all necessary and are, as I say,
not negotiable. Am I hired?"
"Sorry," said Richard, nodding slightly. "Would you start
that again?"
Chapter Seventeen...
The Electric Monk hardly knew what to believe any more.
He had been through a bewildering number of belief systems
in the previous few hours, most of which had failed to provide
him with the long-term spiritual solace that it was his bounden
programming eternally to seek.
He was fed up. Frankly. And tired. And dispirited.
And furthermore, which caught him by surprise, he rather
missed his horse. A dull and menial creature, to be sure, and
as such hardly worthy of the preoccupation of one whose mind
was destined forever to concem itself with higher things beyond
the underst.anding of a simple horse, but nevertheless he
missed it.
He wanted to sit on it. He wanted to pat it. He wanted to
feel that it didn't understand.
He wondered where it was.
He dangled his feet disconsolately from the branch of the
tree in which he had spent the night. He had climbed it in
pursuit of some wild fantastic dream and then had got stuck and
had to stay there till the moming.
Even now, by daylight, he wasn't certain how he was going
to get down. He came for a moment perilously close to believing
that he could fly, but a quick-thinking error-checking protocol
cut in and told him not to be so silly.
It was a problem though.
Whatever burning fire of faith had bome him, inspired on
wings of hope, upwards through the branches,of the tree in the
magic hours of night, had not also provided him with
instructions on how to get back down again when, like
altogether too many of these burning fiery night-time faiths,
it had deserted him in the morning.
And speaking - or rather thinking - of burning fiery
things, there had been a major burning fiery thing a little
distance from here in the early pre-dawn hours.
It lay, he thought, in the direction from which he himself
had come when he had been drawn by a deep spiritual compulsion
towards this inconveniently high but otherwise embarrassingly
ordinary tree. He had longed to go and worship at the fire, to
pledge himself eternally to its holy glare, but while he had
been struggling hopelessly to find a way downwards through the
branches, fire engines had arrived and put the divine radiance
out, and that had been another creed out of the window.
The sun had been up for some hours now, and though he had
occupied the time as best as he could, believing in clouds,
believing in twigs, believing in a peculiar fornt of flying
beetle, he believed now that he was fed up, and was utterlyХ
convinced, furthermore, that he was getting hungry.
He wished he'd taken the precaution of providing himself
with some food from the dwelling place he had visited in the
night, to which he had carried his sacred burden for entombment
in the holy broom cupboard, but he had left in the grip of a
white passion, believing that such mundane matters as food-were
of no consequence, that the tree would provide.
Well, it had provided.
It had provided twigs.
Monks did not eat twigs.
In fact, now he came to think of it, he felt a little
uncomfortable about some of the things he had believed last
night and had found some of the results a little confusing. He
had been quite clearl instructed to "shoot off" and had felt
strangely compelled to obey but perhaps he had made a mistake
in acting so precipitately on an instruction given in a
language he had learned only two minutes before. Certainly the
reaction of the person he had shot off at had seemed a little
extreme.
In his own world when people were shot at like that they
came back next week for another episode, but he didn't think
this person would be doing that.
A gust of wind blew through the tree, making it sway
giddily. He climbed down a little way. The first part was
reasonably easy, since the branches were all fairly close
together. It was the last bit that appeared to be an
insuperable obstacle - a sheer drop which could cause him
severe internal damage or rupture and might in turn cause him
to start believing things that were seriously strange.
The sound of voices over in a distant corner of the field
suddenly caught his attention. A lorry had pulled up by the
side of the road. He watched carefully for a moment, but
couldn't see anything particular to believe in and so returned
to his introspection.
There was, he remembered, an odd function call he had had
last night, which he hadn't encountered before, but he had a
feeling that it might be something he'd heard of called
remorse. He hadn't felt at all comfortable about the way the
person he had shot at had just lain there, and after initially
walking away the Monk had returned to have another look. There
was definitely an expression on the person's face which seemed
to suggest that something was up, that this didn't fit in with
the scheme of things. The Monk worried that he might have badly
spoiled his evening.
Still, he reflected, so long as you did what you believed
to be right, that was the main thing.
The next thing he had believed to be right was that having
spoiled this person's evening he shouId at least convey him to
his home, and a quick search of his pockets had produced an
address, some maps and some keys. The trip had been an arduous
one, but he had been sustained on the way by his faith.
The word "bathroom" floated unexpectedly across the field.
He looked up again at the lorry in the distant comer.
Thene wa a man in a dark blue uniform explaining
something to a man in rough working clothes, who seemed a
little disgruntled about whatever it was. The words "until we
trace the owner" and "completely batty, of course" were gusted
over on the wind. The man in the working clothes clearly agreed
to accept the situation, but with bad grace.
A few moments later, a horse was led out of the back of
the lorry and into the field. The Monk blinked. His circuits
thrilled and surged with astonishment. Now here at last was
something he could believe in, a truly miraculous event, a
reward at last fµr his unstinting if rather promiscuous
devotion.
The horse walked with a patient, uncomplaining gait. It
had tong grown used to being wherever it was put, but for once
it felt it didn't mind this. Here, it thought, was a pleasant
field. Here was grass. Here was a hedge it could look at. There
was enough space that it could go for a trot later on if it
felt the urge. The humans drove off and left it to its own
devices, to which it was quite content to be left. It went for
a little amble, and then, just for the hell of it, stopped
ambling. It could do what it liked.
What pleasure.
What very great and unaccustomed pleasure.
It slowly surveyed the whole field, and then decided to
plan out a nice relaxed day for itself. A little trot later on,
it thought, maybe around threeish. After that a bit of a lie
down over on the east side of the field where the grass was
thicker. It looked like a suitable spot to think about supper
in.
Lunch, it rather fancied, could be taken at the south end
of the field where a small stream ran. Lunch by a stream, for
heaven's sake. This was bliss.
It also quite liked the notion of spending half an hour
walking alternately a little bit to the left and then a little
bit to the right, for no apparent reason. It didn't know
whether the time between two and three would be best spent
swishing its tail or mulling things over.
Of course. it could always do both, if it so wished, and
go for its trot a little later. And it had just spotted what
looked like a fine piece of hedge for watching things over, and
...
