“I’m not even sure,” she further added, slipping her arm around Arthur’s waist, “that I know where here is.”

Chapter 21

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is, as has been remarked before often and accurately, a pretty startling kind of a thing. It is, essentially, as the title implies, a guidebook. The problem is, or rather one of the problems, for there are many, a sizable number of which are continually clogging up the civil, commercial, and criminal courts in all areas of the Galaxy, and especially, where possible, the more corrupt ones, this.

The previous sentence makes sense. That is not the problem.

This is:

Change.

Read it through again and you’ll get it.

The Galaxy is a rapidly changing place. There is, frankly, so much of it, every bit of which is continually on the move, continually changing. A bit of a nightmare, you might think, for a scrupulous and conscientious editor diligently striving to keep this massively detailed and complex electronic tome abreast of all the changing circumstances and conditions that the Galaxy throws up every minute of every hour of every day, and you would be wrong. Where you would be wrong would be in failing to realize that the editor, like all the editors the Guide has ever had, has no real grasp of the meaning of the words “scrupulous,” “conscientious,” and “diligent,” and tends to get his nightmares through a straw.

Entries tend to get updated or not across the Sub-Etha Net according to if they read good.

Take, for example, the case of Brequinda on the Foth of Avalars, famed in myth, legend, and stultifyingly dull tri-d miniseries as home of the magnificent and magical Fuolornis Fire Dragon.

In ancient days, before the advent of the Sorth of Bragadox, when Fragilis sang and Saxaquine of the Quenelux held sway, when the air was sweet and the nights fragrant, but they all somehow managed to be, or so they claimed, though how on earth they could have thought that anyone was even remotely likely to believe such a preposterous claim what with all the sweet air and fragrant nights and whatnot is anyone’s guess, virgins, it was not possible to heave a brick on Brequinda in the Foth of Avalars without hitting at least half a dozen Fuolornis Fire Dragons.

Whether you would want to do that is another matter.

Not that Fire Dragons weren’t an essentially peace-loving species, because they were. They adored it to bits, and this wholesale adoring of things to bits was often in itself the problem: one so often hurts the one one loves, especially if one is a Fuolornis Fire Dragon with breath like a rocket booster and teeth like a park fence. Another problem was that once they were in the mood they often went on to hurt quite a lot of the ones that other people loved as well. Add to all that the relatively small number of madmen who actually went around the place heaving bricks, and you end up with a lot of people on Brequinda in the Foth of Avalars getting seriously hurt by dragons.

But did they mind? They did not.

Were they heard to bemoan their fate? No.

The Fuolornis Fire Dragons were revered throughout the lands of Brequinda in the Foth of Avalars for their savage beauty, their noble ways, and their habit of biting people who didn’t revere them.

Why was this?

The answer was simple.

Sex.

There is, for some unfathomed reason, something almost unbearably sexy about having huge fire-breathing magical dragons flying low about the sky on moonlit nights which were already dangerously on the sweet and fragrant side.

Why this should be so, the romance-besotted people of Brequinda in the Foth of Avalars could not have told you, and would not have stopped to discuss the matter once the effect was up and going, for no sooner would a flock of half a dozen silk-winged leather-bodied Fuolornis Fire Dragons heave into sight across the evening horizon than half the people of Brequinda were scurrying off into the woods with the other half, there to spend a busy breathless night together and emerge with the first rays of dawn all smiling and happy and still claiming, rather endearingly, to be virgins, if rather flushed and sticky virgins.

Pheromones, some researchers said.

Something sonic, others claimed.

The place was always stiff with researchers trying to get to the bottom of it all and taking a very long time about it.

Not surprisingly, the Guide’s graphically enticing description of the general state of affairs on this planet has proved to be astonishingly popular among hitchhikers who allow themselves to be guided by it, and so it has simply never been taken out, and it is therefore left to latter-day travelers to find out for themselves that today’s modern Brequinda in the city-state of Avalars is now little more than concrete, strip joints, and Dragon Burger Bars.

Chapter 22

The night in Islington was sweet and fragrant.

There were, of course, no Fuolornis Fire Dragons about in the alley, but if any had chanced by they might just as well have sloped off across the road for a pizza, for they were not going to be needed.

Had an emergency cropped up while they were still in the middle of their pizza with extra anchovies they could always have sent across a message to put Dire Straits on the stereo, which is now known to have much the same effect.

“No,” said Fenchurch, “not yet.”

Arthur put Dire Straits on the stereo. Fenchurch pushed ajar the upstairs front door to let in a little more of the sweet fragrant night air. They both sat on some of the furniture made out of cushions very close to the open bottle of champagne.

“No,” said Fenchurch, “not till you’ve found out what’s wrong with me, which bit. But I suppose,” she added, very, very, very quietly, “that we may as well start with where your hand is now.”

Arthur said, “So which way do I go?”

“Down,” said Fenchurch, “on this occasion.”

He moved his hand.

“Down,” she said, “is in fact the other way.”

“Oh yes.”

Mark Knopfler has an extraordinary ability to make a Schecter Custom Stratocaster hoot and sing like angels on a Saturday night, exhausted from being good all week and needing a stiff drink — which is not strictly relevant at this point since the record hadn’t yet got to that bit, but there will be too much else going on when it does, and furthermore the chronicler does not intend to sit here with a track list and a stopwatch, so it seems best to mention it now while things are still moving slowly.

“And so we come,” said Arthur, “to your knee. There is something terribly and tragically wrong with your left knee.”

“My left knee,” said Fenchurch, “is absolutely fine.”

“So it is.”

“Did you know that …”

“What?”

“Ah, it’s all right, I can tell you do. No, keep going.”

“So it has to be something to do with your feet.…”

She smiled in the dim light, and wriggled her shoulders noncommittally against the cushions. Since there are cushions in the Universe, on Sqornshellous Beta to be exact, two worlds in from the swampland of the mattresses, that actively enjoy being wriggled against, particularly if it’s noncommittally because of the syncopated way in which the shoulders move, it’s a pity they weren’t there. They weren’t, but such is life.

Arthur held her left foot in his lap and looked it over carefully. All kinds of stuff about the way her dress fell away from her legs was making it difficult for him to think particularly clearly at this point.

“I have to admit,” he said, “that I really don’t know what I’m looking for.”

“You’ll know when you find it,” she said, “really you will.” There was a slight catch in her voice. “It’s not that one.”