Douglas Adams. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
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...en what is a ghost?""I think that a ghost... " said Dirk, "is someone who died
either violently or unexpectedly with unfinished business on
his, her = or its - hands. Who cannot rest until it has been
finished, or put right."
He tumed to face them again.
"Which is why," he said, "a time machine would have such a
fascination for a ghost once it knew of its existence. A time
machine provides the means to put right what, in the ghost's
opinion, went wrong in the past. To free it.
"Which is why it will be back. It tried first to take
possession of Reg himself, but he resisted. Then came the
incident with the conjuring trick, the face powder and the
horse in the bathroom which I-" he paused - "which even I do
not understand, though I intend to if it kills me. And then
you, Richard, appear on the scene. The ghost deserts Reg and
concentrates instead on you. Almost immediately there occurs an
odd but significant incident. You do something that you then
wish you hadn't done.
"I refer, of course, to the phone call you made to Susan
and left on her answerrng machine.
"The ghost seizes its chance and tries to induce you to
undo it. To, as it were, go back into the past and erase that
message - to change the mistake you had made. Just to see if
you would do it. Just to see if it was in your character.
"If it had been, you would now be totally under its
control. But at the very last second your nature rebelled and
you would not do it. And so the ghost gives you up as a bad job
and deserts you in turn. It must find someone else.
"How long has it been doing this? I do not know. Does this
now make sense to you? Do you recognise the truth of what I am
saying?"
Richard turned cold.
"Yes," he said, "I think you must be absolutely right."
"And at what moment, then," said Dirk, "did the ghost
leave you?"
Richard swallowed.
"When Michael Wenton-Weakes walked out of the room," he
said.
"So I wonder," said Dirk quietly, "what possibilities the
ghost saw in him. I wonder whether this time it found what it
wanted. I believe we shall not have long to wait."
There was a knock on the door.
When it opened, there stood Michael Wenton-Weakes.
He said simply, "Please, I need your help."
Reg and Richard stared at Dirk, and then at Michael.
"Do you mind if I put this down somewhere?" said Michael.
"It's rather heavy. Full of scuba-diving equipment."
"Oh, I see," said Susan, "oh well, thanks, Nicola, I'll
try that fingering. I'm sure he only put the E flat in there
just to annoy people. Yes, I've been at it solidly all
afternoon. Some of those semiquaver runs in the second movement
are absolute bastards. Well, yes, it helped take my mind off it
all. No, no news. It's all just mystifying and absolutely
horrible. I don't want even to = look, maybe I'll give you a
call again later and see how you're feeling. I know, yes, you
never know which is worse, do you, the illness, the
antibiotics, or the doctor's bedside manner. Look after
yourself, or at least, make sure Simon does. Tell him to bring
you gallons of hot lemon. OK. Well, I'll talk to you later.
Keep warm. Bye now."
She put the phone down and returned to her cello. She had
hardly started to reconsider the problem of the irritating E
flat when the phone went again. She had simply left it off the
hook for the afternoon, but had forgotten to do so again after
making her own call.
With a sigh she propped up the cello, put down the bow,
and went to the phone again.
"Hello?" she demanded.
Again, there was nothing, just a distant cry of wind.
Irritably, she slammed the receiver back down once more.
She waited a few seconds for the line to clear, and then
was about to take the phone off the hook once more when she
realised that perhaps Richard might need her.
She hesitated.
She admitted to herself that she hadn't been using the
answering machine, because she usually just put it on for
Gordon's convenience, and that was something of which she did
not currently wish to be reminded.
Still, she put the answering machine on, turned the volume
right down, and returned again to the E flat that Mozart had
put in only to annoy cellists.
In the darkness of the offices of Dirk Gently's Holistic
Detective Agency, Gordon Way clumsily fumbled the telephone
receiver back on to its rest and sat slumped in the deepest
dejection. He didn't even stop himself slumping all the way
through the seat until he rested lightly on the floor.
Miss Pearce had fled the office the first time the
telephone had started actually using itself, her patience with
all this sort of thing finally exhausted again, since which
time Gordon had had the office to himself. However, his
attempts to contact anybody had failed completely.
Or rather, his attempts to contact Susan, which was all he
cared about. It was Susan he had been speaking to when he died
and he knew he had somehow to speak to her again. But she had
left her phone off the hook most of the afternoon and even when
she had answered she could not hear him.
He gave up. He roused himself from the floor, stood up,
and slipped out and down into the darkening streets. He drifted
aimlessly for a while, went for a walk on the canal, which was
a trick that palled very quickly, and then wandered back up to
the street again.
The houses with light and life streaming from them upset
him most particularly since the welcome they seemed to extend
would not be extended to him. He wondered if anyone would mind
if he simply slipped into their house and watched television
for the evening. He wouldn't be any trouble.
Or a cinema.
That would be better, he could go to the cinema.
He turned with more positive, if still insubstantial,
footsteps into Noel Road and started to walk up it.
Noel Road, he thought. It rang a vague bell. He had a
feeling that he had recently had some dealings with someone in
Noel Road. Who was it?
His thoughts were interrupted by a terrible scream of
horror that rang through the street. He stood stock still. A
few seconds later a door flew open a few yards from him and a
woman ran out of it, wild-eyed and howling.
Chapter Thirty-one...
Richard had never liked Michael Wenton-Weakes and he liked
him even less with a ghost in him. He couldn't say why, he had
nothing against ghosts personally, didn't think a person should
be judged adversely simply for being dead, but - he didn't like
it.
Nevertheless, it was hard not to feel a little sorry for
him.
Michael sat forlornly on a stool with his elbow resting on
the large table and his head resting on his fingers. He looked
ill and haggard. He looked deeply tired. He looked pathetic.
His story had been a harrowing one, and concluded with his
attempts to possess first Reg and then Richard.
"You were," he concluded, "right. Entirely."
He said this last to Dirk, and Dirk grimaced as if trying
not to beam with triumph too many times in a day.
The voice was Michael's and yet it was not Michael's.
Whatever timbre a voice acquires through a billion or so years
of dread and isolation, this voice had acquired it, and it
filled those who heard it with a dizzying chill akin to that
which clutches the mind and stomach when standing on a cliff at
night.
He turned his eyes on Reg and on Richard, and the effect
of the eyes, too, was one that provoked pity and terror.
Richard had to look away.
"I owe you both an apology," said the ghost within Michael
"which I offer you from the depths of my heart, and only hope
that as you come to understand the desperation of my
predicament, and the hope which this machine offers me, you
will understand why I have acted as I have, and that you will
find it within yourselves to forgive me. And to help me. I beg
you."
"Give the man a whisky," said Dirk gruffly.
"Haven't got any whisky," said Reg. "Er, port? There's a
bottle or so of Margaux I could open. Very fine one. Should be
chambrиd for an hour, but I can do that of course, it's very
easy, I -"
"Will you help me?" interrupted the ghost.
Reg bustled to fetch some port and some glasses.
"Why have you taken over the body of this man?" said Dirk.
"I need to have a voice with which to speak and a body
with which to act. No harm will come to him, no harm -"
"Let me ask the question again. Why have you taken over
the body of this man?" insisted Dirk.
The ghost made Michael's body shrug.
"He was willing. Both of these two gentlemen quite
understandably resisted being. . . well, hypnotised - your
analogy is fair. This one? Well, I think his sense of self is
at a low ebb, and he has acquiesced. I am very grateful to him
and will not do him any harm."
"His sense of self," repeated Dirk thoughtfully, "is at a
low ebb."
"I suppose that is probably true," said Richard quietly to
Dirk. "He seemed very depressed last night. The one thing that
was important to him had been taken away because he, well, he
wasn't really very good at it. Although he's proud I expect he
was probably quite receptive to the idea of actually being
wanted for something."
"Hmmm," said Dirk, and said it again. He said it a third
time with feeling. Then he whirled round and barked at the
figure on the stool.
"Michael Wenton-Weakes!"
Michael's head jolted back and he blinked.
"Yes?" he said, in his normal lugubrious voice. His eyes
followed Dirk as he moved.
"You can hear me," said Dirk, "and you can answer for
yourself?"
"Oh, yes," said Michael, "most certainly I can."
"This... being, this spirit. You know he is in you? You
accept his presence? You are a willing party to what he wishes
to do?"
"That is correct. I was much moved by his account of
himself, and am very willing to help him. In fact I think it is
right for me to do so."
"All right," said Dirk with a snap of his fingers, "you
can go."
Michael's head slumped forward suddenly, and then after a
second or so it slowly rose again, as if being pumped up from
inside like a tyre.
The ghost was back in possession.
Dirk took hold of a chair, spun it round and sat astride
it facing the ghost in Michael, peering intently into its eyes.
"Again," he said, "tell me again. A quick snap account."
Michael's body tensed slightly. It reached out to Dirk's
arm.
"Don't - touch me!" snapped Dirk. "Just tell me the facts.
The first time you try and make me feel sorry for you I'll poke
you in the eye. Or at least, the one you've borrowed. So leave
out all the stuff that sounded like... er -"
"Coleridge," said Richard suddenly, "it sounded exactly
like Coleridge. It was like `The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'.
Well bits of it were."
Dirk frowned. "Coleridge?" he said.
"I tried to tell him my story," admitted the ghost, "I -"
"Sorry," said Dirk, "you'll have to excuse me - I've never
cross-examined a four-billion-year-old ghost before. Are we
talking Samuel Taylor here? Are you saying you told your story
to Samuel Taylor Coleridge?"
"I was able to enter his mind at... certain times. When he
was in an impressionable state."
"You mean when he was on laudanum?" said Richard.
"That is correct. He was more relaxed then."
"I'll say," snorted Reg, "I sometimes encountered him when
he was quite astoundingly relaxed. Look, I'll make some
coffee."
He disappeared into the kitchen, where he could be heard
laughing to himself.
"It's another world," muttered Richard to himself, sitting
down ad shaking his head.
"But unfortunately when he was fully in possession of
himself I, so to speak, was not," said the ghost, "and so that
failed. And what he wrote was very garbled."
"Discuss," said Richard, to himself, raising his eyebrows.
"Professor," called out Dirk, "this may sound absurd. Did=
Coleridge ever try to... er... use your time machine? Feel free
ta discuss the question in any way which appeals to you."
"Well, do you know," said Reg, looking round the door, "he
did come in prying around on one occasion, but I think he was
in a great deal too relaxed a state to do anything."
"I see," said Dirk. "But why," he added turning back to
the strange figure of Michael slumped on its stool, "why has it
taken you so long to find someone?"
"For long, long periods I am very weak, almost totally
non= existent, and unable to influence anything at all. And
then, of course, before that time there was no time machine
here, and... no hope for me at all -"
"Perhaps ghosts exist like wave patterns," suggested
Richard, "like interference patterns between the actual with
the possible. There would be irregular peaks and troughs, like
in a musical waveform."
The ghost snapped Michael's eyes around to Richard.
"You..." he said, "you wrote that article..."
"Er, yes -"
"It moved me very greatly," said the ghost, with a sudden
remorseful longing in his voice which seemed to catch itself
almost as much by surprise as it did its listeners.
"Oh. I see," said Richard, "Well, thank you. You didn't
like it so much last time you mentioned it. Well, I know that
wasn't you as such -"
Richard sat back frowning to himself.
"So," said Dirk, "to return to the beginning -"
The ghost gathered Michael's breath for him and started
again. "We were on a ship -" it said.
"A spaceship."
"Yes. Out from Salaxala, a world in... well, very far from
here. A violent and troubled place. We - a party of some nine
dozen of us - set out, as people frequently did, to find a new
world for ourselves. All the planets in this system were
completely unsuitable for our purpose, but we stopped on this
world to replenish some necessary mineral supplies.
"Unfortunately our landing ship was damaged on its way
into the atmosphere. Damaged quite badly, but still quite
reparable.
"I was the engineer on board and it fell to me to
supervise the task of repairing the ship and preparing it to
return to our main ship. Now, in order to understand what
happened next you must know something of the nature of a
highly-automated society. There is no task that cannot be done
more easily with the aid of advanced computerisation. And there
were some very specific problems associated with a trip with an
aim such as ours -"
"Which was?" said Dirk sharply.
The ghost in Michael blinked as if the answer was obvious.
"Well, to find a new and better world on which we could
aIl live in freedom, peace and harmony forever, of course," he
said.
Dirk raised his eyebrows.
"Oh, that," he said. "You'd thought this all out
carefully, I assume."
"We'd had it thought out for us. We had with us some very
specialised devices for helping us to continue to believe in
the purpose of the trip even when things got difficult. They
generally worked very well, but I think we probably came to
rely on them too much."
"What on earth were they?" said Dirk.
"It's probably hard for you to understand how reassuring
they were. And that was why I made my fatal mistake. When I
wanted to know whether or not it was safe to take off, I didn't
want to know that it might not be safe. I just wanted to
be reassured that it was. So instead of checking it
myself, you see, I sent out one of the Electric Monks."
Chapter Thirty-two...
The brass piaque on the red door in Peckender Street
glittered as it reflected the yellow light of a street lamp. It
glared for a moment as it reflected the violent flashing light
of a passing police car sweeping by.
It dimmed slightly as a pale, pale wraith slipped silently
through it. It glimmered as it dimmed, because the wraith was
trembling with such ten-ible agitation.
In the dark hallway the ghost of Gordon Way paused. He
needed something to lean on for support, and of course there
was nothing. He tried to get a grip on himself, but there was
nothing to get a grip on. He retched at the horror of what he
had seen, but there was, of course, nothing in his stomach. He
half stumbled, half swam up the stairs, like a drowning man
trying to grapple for a grip on the water.
He staggered through the wall, through the desk, through
the door, and tried to compose and settle himself in front of
the desk in Dirk's office.
If anyone had happened into the office a few minutes later
- a night cleaner perhaps, if Dirk Gently had ever employed
one, which he didn't on the grounds that they wished to be paid
and he did not wish to pay them, or a burglar, perhaps, if
there had been anything in the office worth burgling, which
there wasn't - they would have seen the following sight and
been amazed by it.
The receiver of the large red telephone on the desk
suddenly rocked and tumbled off its rest on to the desk top.
A dialling tone started to burr. Then, one by one, seven
of the large, easily pushed buttons depressed themselves, and
after the very long pause which the British telephone system
allows you within which to gather your thoughts and forget who
it is you're phoning, the sound of a phone ringing at the other
end of the line eould be heard.
After a couple of rings there was a click, a whirr, and a
sound as of a machine dravring breath. Then a voice started to
say, "Hello, this is Susan. I can't come to the phone right at
the moment because I'm trying to get an E flat right, but if
you'd like to leave your name..."
"So then, on the say so of an - I can hardly bring myself
to utter the words - Electric Monk," said Dirk in a voice
ringing with derision, "you attempt to launch the ship and to
your utter astonishment it explodes. Since when -?"
"Since when," said the ghost, abjectly, "I have been alone
on this planet. Alone with the knowledge of what I had done to
my fellows on the ship. All, all alone..."
"Yes, skip that, I said," snapped Dirk angrily. "What
about the main ship? That presumably went on and continued its
search for -"
"No."
"Then what happened to it?"
"Nothing. It's still there."
"Still there?"
Dirk leapt to his feet and whirled off to pace the room,
his brow furiously furrowed.
"Yes." Michael's head drooped a little, but he looked up
pitieously at Reg and at Richard. "All of us were aboard the
landing craft. At first I felt myself to be haunted by the
ghosts of the rest, but it was only in my imagination. For
millions of years, and then billions, I stalked the mud utterly
alone. It is impossible for you to conceive of even the tiniest
part of the torment of such eternity. Then," he added, "just
recently life arose on the planet. Life. Vegetation, things in
the sea, then, at last, you. Intelligent life. I turn to you to
release me from the torment I have endured."
Michael's head sank abjectly on to his chest for some few
seconds. Then slowly, wobblingly, it rose and stared at them
again, with yet darker fires in his eyes.
"Take me back," he said, "I beg you, take me back to the
landing craft. Let me undo what was done. A word from me, and
it can be undone, the repairs properly made, the landing craft
can then return to the main ship, we can be on our way, my
torment will be extinguished, and I will cease to be a burden
to you. I beg you."
There was a short silence while his plea hung in the air.
"But that can't work, can it?" said Richard. "If we do
that, then this won't have happened. Don't we generate all
sorts of paradoxes?"
Reg stirred himself from thought. "No worse than many that
exist already," he said. "If the Universe came to an end every
time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it,
it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many
of course don't. It's like a human body, you see. A few cuts
and bruises here and there don't hurt it. Not even major
surgery if it's done properly. Paradoxes are just the scar
tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and
people simply remember a version of events which makes as much
sense as they require it to make.
"That isn't to say that if you get involved in a paradox a
few things won't strike you as being very odd, but if you've
got through life without that already happening to you, then I
don't know which Universe you've been living in, but it isn't
this one."
"Well, if that's the case," said Richard, "why were you so
fierce about not doing anything to save the dodo?"
Reg sighed. "You don't understand at all. The dodo
wouldn't have died if I hadn't worked so hard to save the
coelacanth."
"The coelacanth? The prehistoric fish? But how could one
possibly affect the other?"
"Ah. Now there you're asking. The complexities of cause
and effect defy analysis. Not only is the continuum like a
human body, it is also very like a piece of badly put up
wallpaper. Push down a bubble somewhere, another one pops up
somewhere else. There are no more dodos because of my
interference. In the end I imposed the rule on myself because I
simply couldn't bear it any more. The only thing that really
gets hurt when you try and change time is yourself." He smiled
bleakly, and looked away.
Then he added, after a long moment's reflection, "No, it
can be done. I'm just cynical because it's gone wrong so many
times. This poor fellow's story is a very pathetic one, and it
can do no harm to put an end to his misery. It happened so
very, very long ago on a dead planet. If we do this we will
each remember whatever it is that has happened to us
individually. Too bad if the rest of the world doesn't quite
agree. It will hardly be the first time."
Michael's head bowed.
"You're very silent, Dirk," said Richard.
Dirk glared arigrily at him. "I want to see this ship," he
demanded.
In the darkness, the red telephone receiver slipped and
slid fitfully back across the desk. If anybody had been there
to see it they might just have discerned a shape that moved it.
It shone only very faintly, less than would the hands of a
luminous watch. It seemed more as if the darkness around it was
just that much darker and the ghostly shape sat within it like
thickened scar tissue beneath the surface of the night.
Gordon grappled one last time wьth the recalcitrant
receьver. At length he got a final grip and slipped it up on to
the top of the instrument.
From there it fell back on to its rest and disconnected
the call. At the same moment the ghost of Gordon Way, his last
call finally completed, fell back to his own rest and vanished.
Chapter Thirty-three...
Swinging slowly round in the shadow of the Earth, just one
more piece of debris among that which Hoated now forever in
high orbit, was one dark shape that was larger and mЇre
regularly formed than the rest. And far, far older.
For four billion years it had continued to absorb data
from the world below it, scanning, analysing, processing.
Occasionally it sent pieces back if it thought they would help,
if it thought they might be received. But otherwise, it
watched, it listened, it recorded. Not the lapping of a wave
nor the beating of a heart escaped its attention.
Otherwise, nothing inside it had moved for four billion
years, except for the air which circulated still, and the motes
of dust within the air that danced and danced and danced and
danced... and danced.
It was only a very slight disturbance that occurred now.
Quietly, without fuss, like a dew drop precipitating from the
air on to a leaf, there appeared in a wall which had stood
blank and grey for four billion years, a door. A plain,
ordinary white= panelled door with a small dented brass handle.
This quiet event, too, was recorded and incorporated in
the continual stream of data processing that the ship
ceaselessly performed. Not only the arrival of the door, but
the arrival of those behind the door, the way they looked, the
way they moved, the way they felt about being there. All
processed, all recorded, all transformed.
After a moment or two had passed, the door opened.
Within it could be seen a room unlike any on the ship. A
room of wooden floors, of shabby upholstery, a room in which a
fire danced. And as the fire danced, its data danced within the
ship's computers, and the motes of dust in the air also danced
with it.
A figure stood in the doorway - a large lugubrious figure
with a strange light that danced now in its eyes. It stepped
forward across the threshold into the ship, and its face was
suddenly suffused with a calm for which it had longed but had
thought never again to experience.
Following him stepped out a smaller, older man with hair
that was white and wayward. He stopped and blinked with wonder
as he passed from out of the realm of his room and into the
realm of the ship. Following him came a third man, impatient
and tense, with a large leather overcoat that flapped about
him. He, too, stopped and was momentarily bewildered by
something he didn't understa±d. With a look of deepest
puzzlement on his face he walked forward and looked around at
the grey and dusty walls of the ancient ship.
At last came a fourth man, tall and thin. He stooped as he
walked out of the door, and then instantly stopped as if he had
walked into a wall.
He had walked into a wall, of a kind.
He stood transfixed. If anyone had been looking at his
face at that moment, it would have been abundantly clear to
them that the single most astonishing event of this man's
entire existence was currently happening to him.
When slowly he began to move it was with a curious gait,
as if he was swimming very slowly. Each tiniest movement of his
head seemed to bring fresh floods of awe and astonishment into
his face. Tears welled in his eyes, and he became breathless
with gasping wonder.
Dirk turned to look at him, to hurry him along.
"What's the matter?" he called above the noise.
"The... music..." whispered Richard.
The air was full of music. So full it seemed there was
room for nothing else. And each particle of air seemed to have
its own music, so that as Richard moved his head he heard a new
and different music, though the new and different music fitted
quite perfectly with the music that lay beside it in the air.
The modulations from one to another were perfectly
accomplished - astonishing leaps to distant keys made
effortlessly in the mere shifting of the head. New themes, new
strands of melody, all perfectly and astoundingly proportioned,
constantly involved themselves into the continuing web. Huge
slow waves of movement, faster dances that thrilled through
them, tiny scintillating scampers that danced on the dances,
long tangled tunes whose ends were so like their beginnings
that they twisted around upon themselves, turned inside out,
upside down, and then rushed off again on the back of yet
another dancing melody in a distant part of the ship.
Richard staggered against the wall.
Dirk hurried to grab him.
"Come on," he said, brusquely, "what's the matter? Can't
you stand the music? It's a bit loud, isn't it? For God's sake,
pull yourself together. There's something here I still don't
understand. It's not right. Come on -"
He tugged Richard after him, and then had to support him
as Richard's mind sank further and further under the
overwhelming weight of music. The visions that were woven in
his mind by the million thrilling threads of music as they were
pulled through it, were increasingly a welter of chaos, but the
more the chaos burgeoned the more it fitted with the other
chaos, and the next greater chaos, until it all became a vast
exploding ball of harmony expanding in his mind faster than any
mind could deal with.
And then it was all much simpler.
A single tune danced through his mind and all his
attention rested upon it. It was a tune that seethed through
the magical flood, shaped it, formed it, lived through it
hugely, lived through it minutely, was its very essence. It
bounced and trilled along, at first a little tripping tune,
then it slowed, then it danced again but with more difficulty,
seemed to founder in eddies of doubt and confusion, and then
suddenly revealed that the eddies were just the first ripples
of a huge new wave of energy surging up joyfully from beneath.
Richard began very, very slowly to faint.
He lay very still.
He felt he was an old sponge steeped in paraffin and left
in the sun to dry.
He felt like the body of an old horse burning hazily in
the sun. He dreamed of oil, thin and fragrant, of dark heaving
seas. He was on a white beach, drunk with fish, stupefied with
sand, bleached, drowsing, pummelled with light, sinking,
estimating the density of vapour clouds in distant nebulae,
spinning with dead delight. He was a pump spouting fresh water
in the springtime, gushing into a mound of reeking newmown
grass. Sounds, almost unheard, burned away like distant sleep.
He ran and was falling. The lights of a harbour spun into
night. The sea like a dark spirit slapped infinitesimally at
the sand, glimmering, unconscious. Out where it was deeper and
colder he sank easily with the heavy sea swelling like oil
around his ears, and was disturbed only by a distant burr burr
as of the phoae ringing.
He knew he had been listening to the music of life itself.
The music of light dancing on water that rippled with the wind
and the tides, of the life that moved through the water, of the
life that moved on the land, warmed by the light.
He continued to lie very still. He continued to be
disturbed by a distant burr burr as of a phone ringing.
Gradually he became aware that the distant burr burr as of
a phone ringing was a phone ringing.
He sat up sharply.
He was lying on a small crumpled bed in a small untidy
panelled room that he knew he recognised but couldn't place. It
was cluttered with books and shoes. He blinked at it and was
blank.
The phone by the bed was ringing. He picked it up.
"Hello?" he said.
"Richard!" It was Susan's voice, utterly distraught. He
shook his head and had no recollection of anything useful.
"Hello?" he said again.
"Richard, is that you? Where are you?"
"Er, hold on, I'll go and look."
He put the receiver down on the crumpled sheets, where it
lay squawking, climbed shakily off the bed, staggered to the
door and opened it.
Here was a bathroom. He peered at it suspiciously. Again,
he recognised it but felt that there was something missing. Oh
yes. There should be a horse in it. Or at least, there had been
a horse in it the last time he had seen it. He crossed the
bathroom tloor and went out of the other door. He found his way
shakily down the stairs and into Reg's main room.
He was surprised by what he saw when he got there.
Chapter Thirty-four...
The storms of the day before, and of the day before that,
and the floods of the previous week, had now abated. The skies
still bulged with rain, but all that actually fell in the
gathering evening gloom was a dreary kind of prickle.
Some wind whipped across the darkening plain, blundered
through the low hills and gusted across a shallow valley where
stood a structure, a kind of tower, alone in a nightmare of
mud, and leaning.
It was a blackened stump of a tower. It stood like an
extrusion of magma from one of the more pestilential pits of
hell, and it leaned at a peculiar angle, as if oppressed by
something altogether more temble than its own considerable
weight. It seemed a dead thing, long ages dead.
The only movement was that of a river of mud that moved
sluggishly along the bottom of the valley past the tower. A
mile or so further on, the river ran down a ravine and
disappeared underground.
But as the evening darkenedit became apparent that
the tower was not entirely without life. There was a single dim
red light guttering deep within it.
It was this scene that Richard was surprised to see from a
small white doorway set in the side of the valley wall, a few
hundred yards from the tower.
"Don't step out!" said Dirk, putting up an arm, "The
atmosphere is poisonous.1'm not sure what's in it but it would
certainly get your carpets nice and clean."
Dirk was standing in the doorway watching the valley with
deep mistrust.
"Where are we?" asked Richard.
"Bermuda," said Dirk. "It's a bit complicated."
"Thank you," said Richard and walked groggily back across
the room.
"Excuse me," he said to Reg, who was busy fussing round
Michael Wenton-Weakes, making sure that the scuba diving suit
he was wearing fitted snuggly everywhere, that the mask was
secure and that the regulator for the air supply was working
properly.
"Sorry, can I just get past?" said Richard. "Thanks."
He climbed back up the stairs, went back into Reg's
bedroom, sat shakily on the edge of the bed and picked up the
phone again.
"Bermuda " he said, "it's a bit complicated."
Downstairs, Reg finished smearing Vaseline on all the
joins of the suit and the few pieces of exposed skin around the
mask, and then announced that all was ready.
Dirk swung himself away from the door and stood aside with
the utmost bad grace.
"Well then," he said, "be off with you. Good riddance. I
wash my hands of the whole affair. I suppose we will have to
wait here for you to send back the empty, for what it's worth."
He stalked round the sofa with an angry gesture. He didn't like
this. He didn't like any of it. He particularly didn't like Reg
knowing more about space/time than he did. It made him angry
that he didn't know why he didn't like it.
"My dear fellow," said Reg in a conciliatory tone,
"consider what a very small effort it is for us to help the
poor soul. I'm sorry if it seems to you an anti-climax after
all your extraordinary feats of deduction. I know you feel that
a mere errand of mercy seems not enough for you, but you should
be more charitable."
"Charitable, ha!" said Dirk. "I pay my taxes, what more do
you want?"
He threw himself on to the sofa, ran his hands through his
hair and sulked.
The possessed figure of Michael shook hands with Reg and
said a few words of thanks. Then he walked stiffly to the door,
turned and bowed to them both.
Dirk flung his head round and glared at him, his eyes
flashing behind their spectacles and his hair flying wildly.
The ghost looked at Dirk, and for a moment shivered inside with
apprehension. A superstitious instinct suddenly made the ghost
wave. He waved Michael's hand round in a circle, three times,
and then said a single word.
"Goodbye," he said.
With that he turned again, gripped the sides of the
doorway and stepped resolutely out into the mud, and into the
foul and poisonous wind.
He paused for a moment to be sure that his footing was
solid, that he had his balance, and then without another look
back he walked away from them, out of the reach of the slimy
things with legs, towards his ship.
"Now, what on earth did that mean?" said Dirk,
irritably mimicking the odd triple wave.
Richard came thundering down the stairs, threw open the
door and plunged into the room, wild-eyed.
"Ross has been murdered!" he shouted.
"Who the hell's Ross?" shouted Dirk back at him.
"Whatsisname Ross, for God's sake," exclaimed Richard,
"the new editor of Fathom."
"What's Fathom?" shouted Dirk again.
"Michael's bloody magazine, Dirk! Remember? Gordon chucked
Michael off the magazine and gave it to this Ross guy to fun
instead. Michael hated him for that. Well, last night Michael
went and bloody murdered him!"
He paused, panting. "At least," he said, "he was murdered.
And Michael was the only one with any reason to."
He ran to the door, looked out at the retreating figure
disappearing into the gloom, and spun round again.
"Is he coming back?" said Richard.
Dirk leapt to his feet and stood blinking for a moment.
"That's it..." he said, "that's why Michael was the
perfect subject. That's what I should have been Iooking
for. The thing the ghost made him do in order to establish his
hold, the thing he had to be fundamentally willing to
do, the thing that would match the ghost's own purpose. Oh my
dear God. He thinks we've supplanted them and that's what he
wants to reverse.
"He thinks this is their world not ours. This was
where they were going to settle and buiId their blasted
paradise. It matches every step of the way.
"You see," he said, turning on Reg, "what we have done? I
would not be surprised to discover that the accident your poor
tormented soul out there is trying to reverse is the very thing
which started life on this planet!"
He turned his eyes suddenly from Reg, who was white and
trembling, back to Richard.
"When did you hear this?" he said, puzzled.
"Er, just now," said Richard; "on... on the phone.
Upstairs."
"What?"
"It was Susan, I don't know how - said she had a message
on her answering machine telling her about it. She said the
message ... was from - she said it was from Gordon, but I think
she was hysterical. Dirk, what the hell is happening? Where are
we?"
"We are four bilIion years in the past," said Reg in a
shaking voice, "please don't ask me why it is that the phone
works when we are anywhere in the Universe other than where
it's actually connected, that's a matter you will have to take
up with British Telecom, but -"
"Damn and blast British Telecom," shouted Dirk, the words
coming easily from force of habit. He ran to the door and
peered again at the dim shadowy figure trudging through the mud
towards the Salaxalan ship, completely beyond their reach.
"How long," said Dirk, quite calmly, "would you guess that
it's going to take that fat self deluding bastard to reach his
ship? Because that is how long we have.
"Come. Let us sit down. Let us think. We have two minutes
in which to decide what we are going to do. After that, I very
much suspect that the three of us, and everything we have ever
known, including the coelacanth and the dodo, dear Professor,
will cease ever to have existed."
He sat heavily on the sofa, then stood up again and
removed MichaeI's discarded jacket from under him. As he did
so, a book fell out of the pocket.
Chapter Thirty-five...
"l think it's an appalling act of desecration," said
Richard to Reg, as they sat hiding behind a hedge.
The night was full of summer smells from the cottage
garden, and the occasional whiff of sea air which came in on
the light breezes that were entertaining themselves on the
coast of the Bristol Channel.
There was a bright moon playing over the sea off in the
distance, and by its light it was also possible to see some
distance over Exmoor stretching away to the south of them.
Reg sighed.
"Yes, maybe," he said, "but I'm afraid he's right, you
know, lt must be done. It was the only sure way. All the
instructions were clearly contained in the piece once you knew
what you were looking for. It has to be suppressed. The ghost
will always be around. In fact two of him now. That is,
assuming this works. Poor devil. Still, I suppose he brought it
on himself."
Richard fretfully pulled up some blades of grass and
twisted them between his fingers.
He held them up to the moonlight, turned them to different
angles, and watched the way light played on them.
"Such music," he said. "I'm not religious, but if I were I
would say it was like a glimpse into the mind of God. Perhaps
it was and I ought to be religious. l have to keep reminding
myself that they didn't create the music, they only created the
instrument which could read the score. And the score was life
itself. And it's all up there."
He glanced into the sky. Unconsciously he started to
quote:
"Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome, those caves of ice!"
"Hmmm," said Reg to himself, "I wonder if he arrived early
enough."
"What did you say?"
"Oh, nothing. Just a thought."
"Good God, he can talk, can't he?" Richard exclaimed
suddenly. "He's been in there over an hour now. I wonder what's
going on."
He got up and looked over the hedge at the small farm
cottage basking in the moonlight behind them. About an hour
earlier Dirk had walked boldly up to the front door and rapped
on it.
When the door had opened, somewhat reluctantly, and a
slightly dazed face had looked out, Dirk had doffed his absurd
hat and said in a loud voice, "Mr Samuel Coleridge?
"I was just passing by, on my way from Porlock, you
understand, and I was wondering if I might trouble you to
vouchsafe me an interview? It's just for a little parish
broadsheet I edit. Won't take much of your time I promise, I
know you must be busy, famous poet like you, but I do so admire
your work, and... "
The rest was lost, because by that time Dirk had effected
his entry and closed the door behind him.
"Would you excuse me a moment?" said Reg.
"What? Oh sure," said Richard, "I'm just going to have a
look and see what's happening."
While Reg wandered off behind a tree Richard pushed open
the little gate and was just about to make his way up the path
when he heard the sound of voices approaching the front door
from within.
He hurriedly darted back, as the front door started to
open.
"Well, thank you very much indeed, Mr Coleridge," said
Dirk, as he emerged, fiddling with his hat and bowing, "you
have been most kind and generous with your time, and I do
appreciate it very much, as I'm sure will my readers. I'm sure
it will work up into a very nice little article, a copy of
which you may rest assured I will send you for you to peruse at
your leisure. I will most certainly welcome your comments if
you have any, any points of style, you know, hints, tips,
things of that nature. Well, thank you again, so much, for your
time, I do hope I haven't kept you from anything important -"
The door slammed violently behind him.
Dirk turned with another in a long succession of
triumphant beams and hurried down the path to Richard.
"Well, that's put a stop to that," he said, patting his
hands together, "I think he'd made a start on writing it down,
but he won't remember another word, that's for certain. Where's
the egregious Professor? Ah, there you are. Good heavens, I'd
no idea I'd been that long. A most fascinating and entertaining
fellow, our Mr Coleridge, or at least I'm sure he would have
been if I'd given him the chance, but I was rather too busy
being fascinating myself.
"Oh, but I did do as you asked, Richard, I asked him at
the end about the albatross and he said what albatross? So I
said, oh it wasn't important, the albatross did not signify. He
said what albatross didn't signify, and I said never mind the
albatross, it didn't matter, and he said it did matter -
someone comes to his house in the middle of the night raving
about albatrosses, he wanted to know why. I said blast the
bloody albatross and he said he had a good mind to and he
wasn't certain that that didn't give him an idea for a poem he
was working on. Much better, he said, than being hit by an
asteroid, which he thought was stretching credulity a bit. And
so I came away.
"Now. Having saved the entire human race from extinction I
could do with a pizza. What say you to such a proposal?"
Richard didn't offer an opinion. He was staring instead
with some puzzlement at Reg.
"Something troubling you?" said Reg, taken aback.
"That's a good trick," said Richard, "I could have sworn
you didn't have a beard before you went behind the tree."
"Oh -" Reg fingered the luxuriant three-inch growth -
"yes," he said, "just carelessness," he said, "carelessness."
"What have you been up to?"
"Oh, just a few adjustments. A little surgery, you
understand. Nothing drastic."
A few minutes later as he ushered them into the extra door
that a nearby cowshed had mysteriously acquired, he looked back
up into the sky behind them, just in time to see a small light
flare up and disappear.
"Sorry, Richard," he muttered, and followed them in.
Chapter Thirty Six...
"Thank you, no," said Richard firmly, "much as I would
love the opportunity to buy you a pizza and watch you eat it,
Dirk, I want to go straight home. I have to see Susan. Is that
possible, Reg? Just straight to my flat? I'll come up to
Cambridge next week and collect my car."
"We are already there," said Reg, "simply step out of the
door, and you are home in your own flat. It is early on Friday
evening and the weekend lies before you."
"Thanks. Er, look, Dirk, I'll see you around, OK? Do I owe
you something`? I don't know."
Dirk waved the matter aside airily. "You will hear from my
Miss Pearce in due course," he said.
"Fine, OK, well I'll see you when I've had some rest. It's
been, well, unexpected."
He walked to the door and opened it. Stepping outside he
found himself halfway up his own staircase, in the wall of
which the door had materialised.
He was about to start up the stairs when he turned again
as a thought struck him. He stepped back in, closing the door
behind him.
"Reg, could we make one tiny detour?" he said. "I think it
would be a good move if I took Susan out for a meal tonight,
only the place I have in mind you have to book in advance.
Could you manage three weeks for me?"
"Nothing could be easier," said Reg, and made a subtle
adjustment to the disposition of the beads on the abacus.
"There," he said, "We have travelled backwards in time three
weeks. You know where the phone is."
Richard hurried up the internal staircase to Reg's bedroom
and phoned L'Esprit d'Escalier. The mai^tre d' was charmed and
delighted to take his reservation, and looked forward to seeing
him in three weeks' time. Richard went back downstairs shaking
his head in wonder.
"I need a weekend of solid reality," he said. "Who was
that just going out of the door?"
"That," said Dirk, "was your sofa being delivered. The man
asked if we minded him opening the door so they could manoeuvre
it round and I said we would be delighted."
It was only a few minutes later that Richard found himself
hunying up the stairs to Susan's flat. As he amved at her front
door he was pleased, as he always was, to hear the deep tones
of her cello coming faintly from within. He quietly let himself
in and then as he walked to the door of her music room he
suddenly froze in astonishment. The tune she was playing was
one he had heard before. A little tripping tune, that slowed,
then danced again but with more difficulty...
His face was so amazed that she stopped playing the
instant she saw him.
"What's wrong?" she said, alarmed.
"Where did you get that music?" said Richard in a whisper.
She shrugged. "Well, from the music shop," she said,
puzzled. She wasn't being facetious, she simply didn't
understand the question.
"What is it?"
"It's from a cantata I'm playing in in a couple of weeks,"
she said, "Bach, number six."
"Who wrote it?"
"Well, Bach I expect. If you think about it."
"Who?"
"Watch my lips. Bach. B-A-C-H. Johannes Sebastian.
Remember?"
"No, never heard of him. Who is he? Did he write anything
else?"
Susan put down her bow, propped up her cello, stood up and
came over to him.
"Are you all right?" she said.
"Er, it's rather hard to tell. What's..."
He caught sight of a pile of music books sitting in a
corner of the room with the same name on the top one. BACH. He
threw himself at the pile and started to scrabble through it.
Book after book - J. S. BACH. Cello sonatas. Brandenburg
Concertos. A Mass in B Minor.
He looked up at her in blank incomprehension.
"I've never seen any of this before," he said.
"Richard my darling," she said, putting her hand to his
cheek, "what on earth's the matter? It's just Bach sheet
music."
"But don't you understand?" he said, shaking a handful of
the stuff. "I've never, ever seen any of this before!"
"Well," she said with mock gravity, "perhaps if you didn't
spend all your time playing with computer music..."
He looked at her with wild surprise, then slowly he sat
back against the wall and began to laugh hysterically.
On Monday aftemoon Richard phoned Reg.
"Reg!" he said. "Your phone is working. Congratulations."
"Oh yes, my dear fellow," said Reg, "how delightful to
hear from you. Yes. A very capable young man arrived and fixed
the phone a little earlier. I don't think it will go wrong
again now. Good news, don't you think?"
"Very good. You got back safely then."
"Oh yes, thank you. Oh, we had high excitement here when
we returned from dropping you off. Remember the horse? Well he
turned up again with his owner. They'd had some unfortunate
encounter with the constabulary and wished to be taken home.
Just as well. Dangerous sort of chap to have on the loose I
think. So. How are you then?
