And it was equally clear that this person was, however unfairly, extremely upset and annoyed.

In fact it would be fair to say that he had reached a level of annoyance the like of which had never been seen in the Universe. It was an annoyance of epic proportions, a burning searing flame of annoyance, an annoyance which now spanned the whole of time and space in its infinite umbrage.

And this annoyance had been given its fullest expression in the Statue in the centre of all this monstrosity, which was a statue of Arthur Dent, and an unflattering one. Fifty feet tall if it was an inch, there was not an inch of it which wasn’t crammed with insult to its subject matter, and fifty feet of that sort of thing would be enough to make any subject feel bad. From the small pimple on the side of his nose to the poorish cut of his dressing gown, there was no aspect of Arthur Dent which wasn’t lambasted and vilified by the sculptor.

Arthur appeared as a gorgon, an evil, rapacious, ravening, bloodied ogre, slaughtering his way through an innocent one-man Universe.

With each of the thirty arms which the sculptor in a fit of artistic fervour had decided to give him, he was either braining a rabbit, swatting a fly, pulling a wishbone, picking a flea out of his hair, or doing something which Arthur at first looking couldn’t quite identify.

His many feet were mostly stamping on ants.

Arthur put his hands over his eyes, hung his head and shook it slowly from side to side in sadness and horror at the craziness of things.

And when he opened his eyes again, there in front of him stood the figure of the man or creature, or whatever it was, that he had supposedly been persecuting all this time.

– HhhhhhrrrrrraaaaaaHHHHHH! - said Agrajag.

He, or it, or whatever, looked like a mad fat bat. He waddled slowly around Arthur, and poked at him with bent claws.

– Look!… - protested Arthur.

– HhhhhhrrrrrraaaaaaHHHHHH!!! - explained Agrajag, and Arthur reluctantly accepted this on the grounds that he was rather frightened by this hideous and strangely wrecked apparition.

Agrajag was black, bloated, wrinkled and leathery.

His batwings were somehow more frightening for being the pathetic broken floundering things they were that if they had been strong, muscular beaters of the air. The frightening thing was probably the tenacity of his continued existence against all the physical odds.

He had the most astounding collection of teeth.

They looked as if they each came from a completely different animal, and they were ranged around his mouth at such bizarre angles it seemed that if he ever actually tried to chew anything he’d lacerate half his own face along with it, and possibly put an eye out as well.

Each of his three eyes was small and intense and looked about as sane as a fish in a privet bush.

– I was at a cricket match, - he rasped.

This seemed on the face of it such a preposterous notion that Arthur practically choked.

– Not in this body, - screeched the creature, - not in this body! This is my last body. My last life. This is my revenge body. My kill-Arthur-Dent body. My last chance. I had to fight to get it, too.

– But…

– I was at, - roared Agrajag, - a cricket match! I had a weak heart condition, but what, I said to my wife, can happen to me at a cricket match? As I’m watching, what happens?

– Two people quite maliciously appear out of thin air just in front of me. The last thing I can’t help but notice before my poor heart gives out in shock is that one of them is Arthur Dent wearing a rabbit bone in his beard. Coincidence?

– Yes, - said Arthur.

– Coincidence? - screamed the creature, painfully thrashing its broken wings, and opening a short gash on its right cheek with a particularly nasty tooth. On closer examination, such as he’d been hoping to avoid, Arthur noticed that much of Agrajag’s face was covered with ragged strips of black sticky plasters.

He backed away nervously. He tugged at his beard. He was appalled to discover that in fact he still had the rabbit bone in it. He pulled it out and threw it away.

– Look, - he said, - it’s just fate playing silly buggers with you. With me. With us. It’s a complete coincidence.

– What have you got against me, Dent? - snarled the creature, advancing on him in a painful waddle.

– Nothing, - insisted Arthur, - honestly, nothing.

Agrajag fixed him with a beady stare.

– Seems a strange way to relate to somebody you’ve got nothing against, killing them all the time. Very curious piece of social interaction, I would call that. I’d also call it a lie!

– But look, - said Arthur, - I’m very sorry. There’s been a terrible misunderstanding. I’ve got to go. Have you got a clock? I’m meant to be helping save the Universe. - He backed away still further.

Agrajag advanced still further.

– At one point, - he hissed, - at one point, I decided to give up. Yes, I would not come back. I would stay in the netherworld. And what happened?

Arthur indicated with random shakes of his head that he had no idea and didn’t want to have one either. He found he had backed up against the cold dark stone that had been carved by who knew what Herculean effort into a monstrous travesty of his bedroom slippers. He glanced up at his own horrendously parodied image towering above him. He was still puzzled as to what one of his hands was meant to be doing.

– I got yanked involuntarily back into the physical world, - pursued Agrajag, - as a bunch of petunias. In, I might add, a bowl. This particularly happy little lifetime started off with me, in my bowl, unsupported, three hundred miles above the surface of a particularly grim planet. Not a naturally tenable position for a bowl of petunias, you might think. And you’d be right. That life ended a very short while later, three hundred miles lower. In, I might add, the fresh wreckage of a whale. My spirit brother.

He leered at Arthur with renewed hatred.

– On the way down, - he snarled, - I couldn’t help noticing a flashy-looking white spaceship. And looking out of a port on this flashy-looking spaceship was a smug-looking Arthur Dent. Coincidence?!!

– Yes! - yelped Arthur. He glanced up again, and realized that the arm that had puzzled him was represented as wantonly calling into existence a bowl of doomed petunias. This was not a concept which leapt easily to the eye.

– I must go, - insisted Arthur.

– You may go, - said Agrajag, - after I have killed you.

– No, that won’t be any use, - explained Arthur, beginning to climb up the hard stone incline of his carved slipper, - because I have to save the Universe, you see. I have to find a Silver Bail, that’s the point. Tricky thing to do dead.

– Save the Universe! - spat Agrajag with contempt. - You should have thought of that before you started your vendetta against me! What about the time you were on Stavromula Beta and someone…

– I’ve never been there, - said Arthur.

–…tried to assassinate you and you ducked. Who do you think the bullet hit? What did you say?

– Never been there, - repeated Arthur. - What are you talking about? I have to go.

Agrajag stopped in his tracks.

– You must have been there. You were responsible for my death there, as everywhere else. An innocent bystander! - He quivered.

– I’ve never heard of the place, - insisted Arthur. - I’ve certainly never had anyone try to assassinate me. Other than you. Perhaps I go there later, do you think?

Agrajag blinked slowly in a kind of frozen logical horror.

– You haven’t been to Stavromula Beta… yet? - he whispered.

– No, - said Arthur, - I don’t know anything about the place. Certainly never been to it, and don’t have any plans to go.

– Oh, you go there all right, - muttered Agrajag in a broken voice, - you go there all right. Oh zark! - he tottered, and stared wildly about him at his huge Cathedral of Hate. - I’ve brought you here too soon!