This, said Fenny.
Arthur whirled round in his seat and stared into her suddenly open but utterly vacant eyes. Whatever she was looking at wasn’t in the car. Her eyes fluttered, her head jerked once, and then she was sleeping peacefully.
What did she say? he asked anxiously.
She said “this”.
This what?
This what? How the heck should I know? This hedgehog, that chimney pot, the other pair of Don Alfonso’s tweezers. She’s barking mad, I thought I’d mentioned that.
You don’t seem to care very much. Arthur tried to say it as matter-of-factly as possible but it didn’t seem to work.
Look, buster…
OK, I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. I didn’t mean it to sound like that, said Arthur. I know you care a lot, obviously, he added, lying. I know that you have to deal with it somehow. You’ll have to excuse me. I just hitched from the other side of the Horsehead Nebula.
He stared furiously out of the window.
He was astonished that of all the sensations fighting for room in his head on this night as he returned to the home that he had thought had vanished into oblivion for ever, the one that was compelling him was an obsession with this bizarre girl of whom he knew nothing other than that she had said “this” to him, and that he wouldn’t wish her brother on a Vogon.
So, er, what were the jumps, these jumps you mentioned? he went on to say as quickly as he could.
Look, this is my sister, I don’t even know why I’m talking to you about…
OK, I’m sorry. Perhaps you’d better let me out. This is…
At the moment he said it, it became impossible, because the storm which had passed them by suddenly erupted again. Lightning belted through the sky, and someone seemed to be pouring something which closely resembled the Atlantic Ocean over them through a sieve. Russell swore and steered intently for a few seconds as the sky blattered at them. He worked out his anger by rashly accelerating to pass a lorry marked “McKeena’s All-Weather Haulage”. The tension eased as the rain subsided.
It started with all that business of the CIA agent they found in the reservoir, when everybody had all the hallucinations and everything, you remember?
Arthur wondered for a moment whether to mention again that he had just hitch-hiked back from the other side of the Horsehead Nebula and was for this and various other related and astounding reasons a little out of touch with recent events, but he decided it would only confuse matters further.
No, he said.