It was her normal expectation that she was supposed to be somewhere else. It was normal for her to feel that she was in the wrong place.

Then, constant time travel had only compounded this problem, and had led to the feeling that she was not only always in the wrong place, but she was also almost always there at the wrong time.

She didn't notice that she felt this, because it was the only way she ever felt, just as it never seemed odd to her that nearly everywhere she went she needed either to wear weights or anti-gravity suits and usually special apparatus for breathing as well. The only places you could ever feel right were worlds you designed for yourself to inhabit – virtual realities in the electric clubs. It had never occurred to her that the real Universe was something you could actually fit into.

And that included this Lamuella place her mother had dumped her in. And it also included this person who had bestowed on her this precious and magical gift of life in return for a seat upgrade. It was just as well he had turned out to be rather kind and friendly or there would have been trouble. Really. She'd got a specially sharpened stone in her pocket she could cause a lot of trouble with.

It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else's point of view without the proper training.

They sat on the spot that Arthur particularly liked, on the side of a hill overlooking the valley. The sun was going down over the village.

The only thing that Arthur wasn't quite so fond of was being able to see a little way into the next valley, where a deep dark mangled furrow in the forest marked the spot where his ship had crashed. But maybe that was what kept bringing him back here. There were plenty of spots from which you could survey the lush rolling countryside of Lamuella, but this was the one he was drawn to, with its nagging dark spot of fear and pain nestling just on the edge of his vision.

He had never been there again since he had been pulled out of the wreckage.

Wouldn't.

Couldn't bear it.

In fact he had gone some of the way back to it the very next day, while he was still numb and spinning with shock. He had a broken leg, a couple of broken ribs, some bad burns and was not really thinking coherently but had insisted that the villagers take him, which, uneasily, they had. He had not managed to get right to the actual spot where the ground had bubbled and melted, however, and had at last hobbled away from the horror for ever.

Soon, word had got around that the whole area was haunted and no one had ventured back there ever since. The land was full of beautiful, verdant and delightful valleys – no point in going to a highly worrying one. Let the past hold on to itself and let the Present move forward into the future.

Random cradled the watch in her hands, slowly turning it to let the long light of the evening sun shine warmly in the scratches and scuffs of the thick glass. It fascinated her watching the spidery little second hand ticking its way round. Every time it completed a full circle, the longer of the two main hands had moved on exactly to the next of the sixty small divisions round the dial. And when the long hand had made its own full circle the smaller hand had moved on to the next of the main digits.

'You've been watching it for over an hour,' said Arthur. quietly.

'I know,' she said. 'An hour is when the big hand has gone all the way round, yes?'

'That's right.'

'Then I've been watching it for an hour and seventeen minutes.'

She smiled with a deep and mysterious pleasure and moved very slightly so that she was resting just a little against his arm. Arthur felt a small sigh escape from him that had been pent up inside his chest for weeks. He wanted to put his arm around his daughter's shoulders, but felt it was too early yet and that she would shy away from him. But something was working. Some– thing was easing inside her. The watch meant something to her that nothing in her life had so far managed to do. Arthur was not sure that he had really understood what it was yet, but he was profoundly pleased and relieved that something had reached her.

'Explain to me again,' said Random.

'There's nothing really to it,' said Arthur. 'Clockwork was something that developed over hundreds of years . . .'

'Earth years.'

'Yes. It became finer and finer and more and more intricate. It was highly skilled and delicate work. It had to be made very small, and it had to carry on working accurately however much you waved it around or dropped it.'

'But only on one planet?'

'Well, that was where it was made, you see. It was never expected to go anywhere else and deal with different suns and moons and magnetic fields and things. I mean the thing still goes perfectly well, but it doesn't really mean much this far from Switzerland.'

'From where?'

'Switzerland. That's where these were made. Small hilly coun– try. Tiresomely neat. The people who made them didn't really know there were other worlds.'

'Quite a big thing not to know.'

'Well, yes.'

'So where did they come from?'

'They, that is we . . . we just sort of grew there. We evolv– ed on the Earth. From, I don't know, some kind of sludge or something.'

'Like this watch.'

'Um. I don't think the watch grew out of sludge.'

'You don't understand!'

Random suddenly leaped to her feet, shouting.

'You don't understand! You don't understand me, you don't understand anything! I hate you for being so stupid!'

She started to run hectically down the hill, still clutching the watch and shouting that she hated him.

Arthur jumped up, startled and at a loss. He started to run after her through the stringy and clumpy grass. It was hard and painful for him. When he had broken his leg in the crash, it had not been a clean break, and it had not healed cleanly. He was stumbling and wincing as he ran.

Suddenly she turned and faced him, her face dark with anger.

She brandished the watch at him. 'You don't understand that there's somewhere this belongs? Somewhere it works? Somewhere that it fits?'

She turned and ran again. She was fit and fleet-footed and Arthur could not remotely keep up with her.

It wasn't that he had not expected being a father to be this difficult, it was that he hadn't expected to be a father at all, particularly not suddenly and unexpectedly on an alien planet.

Random turned to shout at him again. For some reason he stopped each time she did.

'Who do you think I am?' she demanded angrily. 'Your upgrade? Who do you think Mum thought I was? Some sort of ticket to the life she didn't have?'

'I don't know what you mean by that,' said Arthur, panting and hurting.

'You don't know what anybody means by anything!'

'What do you mean?'

'Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!'

'Tell me ! Please tell me ! What does she mean by saying the life she didn't have?'

'She wished she'd stayed on Earth! She wished she hadn't gone off with that stupid brain-dead fruit gum, Zaphod! She thinks she would have had a different life!'

'But,' said Arthur, 'she would have been killed! She would have been killed when the world was destroyed!'

'That's a different life isn't it?'

'That's . . .

'She wouldn't have had to have me! She hates me!'

'You can't mean that! How could anyone possibly, er, I mean . . .

'She had me because I was meant to make things not for her. That was my job. But I fitted even worse than she did! So she just shut me off and carried on with her stupid life.'

'What's stupid about her life? She's fantastically successful, isn't she? She's all over time and space, all over the Sub-Etha TV networks . . .

'Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!'

Random turned and ran off again. Arthur couldn't keep up with her and at last he had to sit down for a bit and let the pain in his leg subside. The turmoil in his head he didn't know what to do with at all.