Life, the Universe and Everything

– I’ve seen that one before, - he said. His eyes wandered slowly up to the date, which Ford was idly tapping at. His face froze for a second or two and then began to do that terribly slow crashing trick which Arctic ice-floes do so spectacularly in the spring.

– And the other thing, - said Ford, - is that you appear to have a bone in your beard. - He tossed back his tea.

Outside the refreshment tent, the sun was shining on a happy crowd. It shone on white hats and red faces. It shone on ice lollies and melted them. It shone on the tears of small children whose ice lollies had just melted and fallen off the stick. It shone on the trees, it flashed off whirling cricket bats, it gleamed off the utterly extraordinary object which was parked behind the sight-screens and which nobody appeared to have noticed. It beamed on Ford and Arthur as they emerged blinking from the refreshment tent and surveyed the scene around them.

Arthur was shaking.

– Perhaps, - he said, - I should…

– No, - said Ford sharply.

– What? - said Arthur.

– Don’t try and phone yourself up at home.

– How did you know?…

Ford shrugged.

– But why not? - said Arthur.

– People who talk to themselves on the phone, - said Ford, - never learn anything to their advantage.

– But…

– Look, - said Ford. He picked up an imaginary phone and dialled an imaginary dial.

– Hello? - he said into the imaginary mouthpiece. - Is that Arthur Dent? Ah, hello, yes. This is Arthur Dent speaking. Don’t hang up.

He looked at the imaginary mouthpiece in disappointment.

– He hung up, - he said, shrugged, and put the imaginary phone neatly back on its imaginary hook.

– This is not my first temporal anomaly, - he added.

A glummer look replaced the already glum look on Arthur Dent’s face.

– So we’re not home and dry, - he said.

– We could not even be said, - replied Ford, - to be home and vigorously towelling ourselves off.

The game continued. The bowler approached the wicket at a lope, a trot, and then a run. He suddenly exploded in a flurry of arms and legs, out of which flew a ball. The batsman swung and thwacked it behind him over the sight-screens. Ford’s eyes followed the trajectory of the ball and jogged momentarily. He stiffened. He looked along the flight path of the ball again and his eyes twitched again.

– This isn’t my towel, - said Arthur, who was rummaging in his rabbit-skin bag.

– Shhh, - said Ford. He screwed his eyes up in concentration.

– I had a Golgafrinchan jogging towel, - continued Arthur, - it was blue with yellow stars on it. This isn’t it.

– Shhh, - said Ford again. He covered one eye and looked with the other.

– This one’s pink, - said Arthur, - it isn’t yours is it?

– I would like you to shut up about your towel, - said Ford.

– It isn’t my towel, - insisted Arthur, - that is the point I am trying to…

– And the time at which I would like you to shut up about it, continued Ford in a low growl, - is now.

– All right, - said Arthur, starting to stuff it back into the primitively stitched rabbit-skin bag. - I realize that it is probably not important in the cosmic scale of things, it’s just odd, that’s all. A pink towel suddenly, instead of a blue one with yellow stars.

Ford was beginning to behave rather strangely, or rather not actually beginning to behave strangely but beginning to behave in a way which was strangely different from the other strange ways in which he more regularly behaved. What he was doing was this. Regardless of the bemused stares it was provoking from his fellow members of the crowd gathered round the pitch, he was waving his hands in sharp movements across his face, ducking down behind some people, leaping up behind others, then standing still and blinking a lot. After a moment or two of this he started to stalk forward slowly and stealthily wearing a puzzled frown of concentration, like a leopard that’s not sure whether it’s just seen a half-empty tin of cat food half a mile away across a hot and dusty plain.

– This isn’t my bag either, - said Arthur suddenly.

Ford’s spell of concentration was broken. He turned angrily on Arthur.

– I wasn’t talking about my towel, - said Arthur. - We’ve established that that isn’t mine. It’s just that the bag into which I was putting the towel which is not mine is also not mine, though it is extraordinarily similar. Now personally I think that that is extremely odd, especially as the bag was one I made myself on prehistoric Earth. These are also not my stones, - he added, pulling a few flat grey stones out of the bag. - I was making a collection of interesting stones and these are clearly very dull ones.

A roar of excitement thrilled through the crowd and obliterated whatever it was that Ford said in reply to this piece of information. The cricket ball which had excited this reaction fell out of the sky and dropped neatly into Arthur’s mysterious rabbit-skin bag.

– Now I would say that that was also a very curious event, - said Arthur, rapidly closing the bag and pretending to look for the ball on the ground.