Standard Disclaimers Apply: Will Stanton, Merriman Lyon, and the Dark is Rising universe belong to Susan Cooper. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Arthur Dent, Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, and the concept of Infinite Improbability belong to the estate of the late Douglas Adams. I should also credit Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail for it's wonderful take on bunnies. And I don't know who or what owns Duncan McCloud, but I send all proper apologies to poor Adrian Paul.
Clarissa Amelia Swindon is my own.
A/N: This is, by far, the stupidest, most indulgent thing I've ever written . . . I hope you enjoy it as much as I have!And ifIget nice reviews, I might just consider a second episode . . .
And, um, consider this as happening on the shadow-Earth from So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!
An Immortal Encounter
"The kilt is an unrivaled garment for fornication and diarrhea."
- John Masters
At the time this story occurs, it was centuries after the Great Age of (Wo)man, and the Earth was scarcely populated. Oddly enough, what few people remained had decided to restrict themselves almost exclusively to the dilapidated ruins of Florida condominiums. As final representatives of the great experiment known as the human race (or Golgafrinchans, if you are feeling particularly misanthropic today), they were content to occupy their days by listening to old jazz records and learning the cha-cha. According to all reputable accounts, it was quite a dreary place.
Seeing that this was the state of things, Will Stanton had long considered himself to be unofficially retired.
Really, he had had no other choice. The Dark no longer felt the burning urgency to return and wreak fiery havoc upon the world. After all, the boom days of the Florida real estate market were clearly a thing of the past, and who could be bothered to turn endless sunny stretches of pastel ranch houses into a doomed wasteland of death and despair?
So Will Stanton felt he was justified in kicking back and putting his feet up for awhile. He had done his job and done it well: the Dark had been thwarted in all attempts to return and gain mastery over the planet. He now considered his duties as Watchman officially fulfilled. Consequently, he spent much of his time simply walking and thinking. As he had lived through several millennia, there was much for him to ponder. He wasn't bored very often.
But then, on the day this story begins, a Very Odd Thing happened.
On this unusual day, Will was cheerfully battling his way through the magnificent hoary forests covering the island that had used to be Britain. Because this story occurs well after the ultimate revelation of the "Big Board" and the Reality Wars of the 33 1/3 century (in which various supporters of reality program contestants decimated humanity several times over after one group of supporters called the other groups favorite contestant a "self-serving, egotistical douche bag"), jungle had reconquered that which used to be precisely plowed fields and primly fenced-in backyards.
Will enjoyed the trees. They were large and moss-covered, and tiny starbursts of flowers erupted forth from among dark green leaves. He walked through them with happy eyes and an appreciative smile upon his lips. Evolution had also amply stocked the forest with a vast sampling of new and amazing species, providing him with plenty of moments of delight, fascination, and horror.
Which is perhaps why he was somewhat concerned when he heard a loud rustling from a nearby cluster of rhododendron and azalea bushes. Who knew whether it was some unknown creature with talons and poisonous fangs, or a hideously mutated version of the common household fly, grown to distinctly unpleasant proportions?
Unfortunately, it was neither.
Rather, a large man with a torrent of dark hair and an upraised sword screamed maniacally and launched himself from the bushes.
"Yah!" The wild man landed directly in Will's path.
"Goodness!" Will exclaimed, rather flummoxed. It had been centuries since he had last seen a person. Florida and the cha-cha were not two things he was particularly fond of.
Incredibly, the man was dressed in full Scottish costume, kilt and all. Will only hoped he departed from certain traditions concerning undergarments - or the lack thereof. Looking closer, he saw that the man's face was rugged and handsome, his eyes dark and tortured. A cultivated aura of mystery and secrecy hung about him in the air.
Will raised his eyebrows. He found the whole performance to be somewhat distasteful and decidingly kitsch.
But he was soon forced to put fashion concerns behind. The stranger was advancing upon him in a half-crouched position, sword upraised. He tossed his long black hair aside and watched Will with intense, bloodthirsty eyes.
"Hallo," Will stammered, backing up awkwardly with his hands raised. "It's a dreadful pleasure to meet you. Eh, who are you?"
The man paused, and a look of scorn entered his tragic eyes. He sighed dolorously, "Don't play coy with me, sir. We both know there can be only one."
And he struck.
Poor Will hadn't truly seen the attack coming. Before he could move, the man had let out a banshee scream, leapt forward, and severed Will's startled head from his unfortunate neck.
Now, Will Stanton had seen many a strange thing during his time on Earth. He had seen a man driven mad before his eyes, and bendings of time and space that physics declared impossible. He had walked every continent and seen civilization in all its amazing and terrifying forms. He had eaten flittertigibbets. But nothing had ever quite prepared him for watching his own decapitated body stumble around from the viewpoint of his rolling head.
He found it quite shocking.
"Ouch!" Will's head was brought to an abrupt and bruising stop against a conveniently - or inconveniently, depending on how one looked at it - placed rock. The impact would probably leave a nice lump on his skull, he thought ruefully.
Will rolled his eyes to see what was happening. There was that dreadful man, standing absolutely still, arms upraised and face tilted skyward. He appeared to be spiritually communing with extraterrestrial accomplices. And then there was Will's headless body, hands flailing as they fumbled blindly at the empty air where his head should have been.
"Hey!" Will's disembodied mouth shouted from the ground. "Over here . . . uh, you!"
Miraculously, it appeared that the body retained some residual auditory capabilities, for it stopped stumbling aimlessly and turned in the direction of Will's voice. It took a few clumsy steps forward, bent over, and picked Will's head up by the hair.
"Ow!" Will felt a sudden, painful jolt as his arms swung his head up. He was certain that the dizzying aerial movement would have been nauseating if he had been connected to a stomach capable of feeling nausea. As it was, there were just a few seconds of fumbling, when he couldn't quite see what was going on, and then his head was firmly back in the place where it belonged.
"Hmph!" Will twisted his neck, testing its flexibility. Everything seemed to be in working order. He had always wondered about the extent of his immortality, and what would happen if someone had tried to do what this unknown gentleman had just accomplished. Until today he had assumed that any decapitory attempt would simply have resulted in the blade rebounding from his impervious neck.
Apparently, he had been mistaken.
Satisfied that no permanent damage had been inflicted, he turned his attention to the strange Scot, who remained standing motionless with his eyes closed and the long blade dangling from his right hand. Will approached with cautious steps.
"Um, excuse me?" he asked politely, tapping the man on the shoulder.
The man's eyes flew open and saw Will standing before him. "Gah!"
Once again, Will was simply too slow. The man screamed, the blade flashed, and Will's head rolled once more along the forest floor.
Nothing like this had ever happened before.
The second reattachment process was much smoother. The body gracefully located the head and carefully picked it up with both hands under the chin. Will was grateful for the lack of pain, but wasn't quite sure he approved of his body learning to cope without a head. It had seemed a little too proud of its independent mobility this time around. He didn't want it getting any funny ideas.
The Scot was no longer standing motionless. Rather, his arms and legs were shaking in spasmodic jerks while he was screaming. Will watched him curiously. It appeared to be some dreadful epileptic attack.
He walked forward and grabbed the man by the shoulders, forcing him back against a tree. Will was pleased to see that this caused the shaking to stop.
"I don't understand," the man was muttering, eyes tightly squeezed closed. "This isn't possible . . ."
"Don't understand what?" Will interrupted curiously.
This time, he was prepared and ducked just in time to avoid the slicing blade. Annoyance started to creep in. How extraordinary. He hadn't been annoyed for centuries. This might be fun.
"Hey, Gawain," he laughed, "I'm tired of being the Green Knight. Let's play something else."
Will raised his right hand, five fingers stiffly outstretched. He spoke a single word in a language only he knew. The Scot, who had been about to make a fourth attempt on his head, froze in mid-air. His mouth hung open in shocked outrage. The sword, apparently of its own volition, flew from his grasp and buried itself hilt-deep in the trunk of a nearby tree.
"Now that's better," Will said, standing back, crossing his arms, and surveying the man with the pleased eye of an antiques dealer appraising a priceless Ming vase. "Can you hear me?"
"Aye," the man growled in a dangerous brogue. "Release me and fight like a man!"
Will grinned and poked the man playfully in the chest with a finger. "Well, technically, I can't fight you like a man, since I'm not one. But who - or what - are you? Clearly, you aren't competent enough to be from the Dark." He stalked around the immobile figure, arms crossed, peering at it from every angle.
The stranger tried to contort his frozen features into a look of scorn. The attempt made him look as if he had swallowed raw eels. "You know who I am! My name is Duncan McCloud of the clan McCloud. I am an Immortal, just like you are, and we are bound to do battle until only one of our kind is left to rule the world."
Will furrowed his brow. "Why, that's absolutely absurd. What do you want to rule the world for? There's nothing left but cheap wicker furniture and Miami Vice reruns."
Before the man could answer, a shrill scream pierced the air.
"Noooo!"
Will, startled, whipped about. A buxom woman was sprinting toward them, clad completely in animal skins. Her hair was teased up into some horrendous arrangement of curls and frizz. She hurled herself between Will and the man named McCloud.
"I pray thee, sir, do not kill him," she pleaded. "I love him! I'll grow old and gray and disgustingly wrinkled, but I'll follow him selflessly to the end of my days. I'll do whatever you wish, if only you'll spare him! Kill me instead, even, just know before you do that I can give a wicked foot massage."
"Oh my," Will muttered beneath his breath.
Duncan McCloud closed his tragic eyes in a tragic fashion. "Clarissa, leave this place!" he moaned. "You promised never the interfere. I told you what loving me meant, and I will not have the life of another loved one on my hands!"
Will turned to Clarissa, curious to see how she would respond to her lover's plea.
"Duncan," she whispered. Tears flooded her eyes and dark mascara ran down her cheeks. She flung her arms around McCloud's neck, twining her fingers in his dark hair and gazing soulfully into his raw-eels face. "Duncan, you must go on! You must remain at the end. No one else possesses your goodness and could resist becoming an evil tyrant. Only you have wisdom. Only you have compassion. Only you - "
"Oh, please, I'm not going to kill anyone," Will interrupted impatiently. He twisted his hand, releasing McCloud from the enchantment. The man fell to the ground, and Clarissa hovered over him in anxious relief.
Unfortunately, Clarissa didn't have long to feel either anxious or relieved because at that very moment she was spontaneously transformed into a pair of pink bunny slippers.
Poof she went and fell to the ground in a cloud of pink fuzz.
"Ah," McCloud screamed, his hands clenching his head. The slippers began to hop away, and he scrambled after them. Will watched in astonishment. McCloud finally caught the escaped bunnies and clutched the struggling things firmly against his chest. He turned panicked eyes to Will. "What did you do?" he shouted in a high voice, spitting fuzz. "I insist that you turn her back right now! Otherwise, I'll . . . I'll . . . bite your head off!"
Will's jaw dropped and he held his hands out helplessly. "I - I didn't do anything," he stammered. "What just happened . . . It's impossible!"
"Not impossible, Will Stanton," said an amused and slightly sardonic voice from behind him. "Merely improbable."
Duncan McCloud saw an indescribable look of awe cross Will Stanton's face. Frightened, he moved slowly back toward some camouflaging underbrush, taking care not to crush Clarissa's quivering ears more than was absolutely necessary on the way.
Will was gazing fixedly into the distance, his lips moving soundlessly. He reached up and brushed a strand of brown hair thoughtfully from his eyes. "Merriman?" he asked in wonderment, slowly turning around.
The unknown voice laughed dryly. "Hello again, young Will."
Standing before Will, shrouded by foliage, was a massive space ship in the shape of a running sneaker. Even Will Stanton, who was no expert in interstellar space craft, could tell that this was a fine specimen, an absolute beauty. He whistled in shocked appreciation. The ship was pure white and shone dazzlingly under the dappled sunlight. A shiny silver ladder descended from an open hatchway, the bottom rungs buried in a clump of daisies.
And atop that ladder, standing calmly with his hands folded before him, was Merriman Lyon.
Will felt his own hands begin to flutter helplessly. This must be another one of those things his long life had inexplicably failed to prepare him for. He stared, trying to decide whether he had died and gone to that other place Merriman had once spoken off, or whether he had merely gone insane.
"What are you doing here?" Will blurted out the first thing that came to his mind.
Merriman smiled mildly. "Fetching you, of course."
Will's jaw gaped. "But, uh, er? What about eternal bliss unending? My vacation pay?"
"Boring. You won't be missing anything."
"But the King!"
"Perfectly occupied with an extremely long game of checkers."
"And that man with the three arms and two heads?"
A new figure had stepped out into the light and was now casually leaning next to Merriman in the open hatchway.
Merriman turned to the newcomer and smiled in tolerant affection. "Oh, yes. Will, meet Zaphod Beeblebrox, disgraced former President of the Imperial Galactic Government. This is his ship, whichlanded in Avalon a couple days ago. Said he was on vacation and had been told by some book it was a 'hot place to groove.'"
"Complete lie," Zaphod complained, adjusting a pair of sunglasses on one of his noses. "The most tedious place ever, and no chicks. There's nothing worse than bliss unending. Damn Ford and his idea of a joke."
Merriman looked back to Will and raised his arms in an apologetic shrug. "What can I say, he's right. It was intolerable after a few centuries.So I hitched a ride out. We were just past the Magellanic Cloud when I remembered you still hanging around here with nothing to do anymore. Wondered if you'd like to come along."
"But, but . . ." Will stammered. "What should we do with them!" He pointed helplessly to the unhappy homo sapiens and leporidae huddled together in the undergrowth.
Zaphod scrutinized Duncan and Bunny-Clarissa over the top of his sunglasses, four eyebrows raised. "I'd advise him to let her go. Bunnies are damn dangerous creatures, liable to tear anyone into bloody shreds. Reproduce like crazy, too; soon they'll be swarming. She does look damn cute, though. Nice buns."
Will started to panic. "Help her!"
Merriman flushed and looked somewhat abashed.
"Well, uh, we can't, you see. This ship, the Heart of Gold as my new friend Zaphod tells me it's called, is propelled by something called an Infinite Improbability Drive. Sometimes, apparently, it can have rather nasty side effects, as our friend Clarissa there has discovered. The propability of a successful reversal is almost infinite. She could end up worse than she is now . . . It's best leave things as they are."
The bunny slippers shuddered in silent rage and renewed their efforts to escape.
"Now, are you coming or not, Stanton?" Merriman looked at Will in expectation.
"Before he boards, would you please ask him if he's got any tea?" a plaintive voice drifted through the open hatch of the space ship.
"One of these days, I'm going to drown you in tea, Dent," Zaphod said coolly and with infinite impatience.
"I haven't had tea in years . . ." Will drooled, the dreamy possibility of a hot, steaming cup dispelling his fears somewhat. He closed his eyes and imagined the scalding, aromatic liquid pouring down the back of his throat, pooling in his stomach and warming even his furthest extremities. The possibility was astounding; his eyelids fluttered open in wonder. "Is there tea where you're going?"
"Oh no, not another one," Zaphod despaired, turning around and trudging back into the ship in disgust.
"Oceans of it," Merriman promised, crossing his fingers behind his back.
Will experienced a split-second of indecision, in which he looked about at the trees and the sky and thought about sunsets and rain showers. But then he remembered the giant flies he had happened across the other day, and imagined spending several lifetimes dodging crocodiles in a swampy Florida apartment.
"I'm coming," he said decisively, taking a few steps forward and bounding up the shining steel ladder.
"Excellent!" Merriman placed a hand on the shoulder of his former apprentice and guiding him through the spaceship's door.
And so the Last of the Old Ones departed Earth, never to return . . . perhaps.
But two things still remain to be told.
There is no existing record that tells of the exact fate of Duncan and Clarissa. The account providing the following information is based solely on hearsay. But it is said that mere seconds after the Heart of Gold departed, leaving a gaggle of galoshes in its wake, a second space ship, this one long and silver, glided down from the sky and landed before Duncan and Clarissa with a soft whoosh.
Duncan, still clutching his fuzzy lover in bereaved arms and staring hopelessly into the unformed distance, didn't even see the ramp of the space ship extend to the ground.
But he did manage to notice the tall, slightly gray-green alien in outlandish gold robes descend the ramp and walk toward him silently through the waving grasses, a clipboard held precisely before him in one nine-fingered hand.
Duncan decided it wasn't worth the effort anymore to even bother panicking.
"Yes?" he asked in dull despair.
"Clarissa Amelia Swindon?" the creature asked with brisk, business-like formality, peering over his clipboard.
Eyes glazed, Duncan McCloud wordlessly held out the pink bunny slippers. There are certain unfortunate times when even true love must be sacrificed.
The creature's dim eyes stared blankly for a second, flicked up to study his list one more time, and then returned to the things squirming in Duncan's grasp.
"Is that so? . . . well!" it huffed, and then began to heave violently, arms thrashing about.
McCloud was frightened for several terrible seconds, expecting to be gobbled at any moment, when he suddenly realized that the creature was simply laughing uncontrollably.
"It's not funny!" he cried, astounded and hurt. "And just who are you?" He cradled Clarissa protectively against his chest.
"Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged," the alien barely managed to gasp. "And I don't even need to bother!"
Wowbagger turned about and returned staggering to his ship, wheezing all the way. He grasped the handrail and hauled himself up bodily, too delirious with laughing to walk straight.
And shortly afterwards, the entry for Earth in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy changed from "Mostly Harmless" to the this puzzling account:
The Earth: . . . Oh my - please insert your preferred manifestation of an omnipresent/omniscient being with omnipotent capabilities here - ! I cannot escape, they're everywhere! Voracious, blood-sucking, and fuzzy. I won't be able to hold them off much longer: my ammo's running out and the fire will die soon. Damn Ford for getting me this job! I feel myself growing weaker. Their powers cannot be withstood by one such as I. They've taken a captive, some dude with long dark hair and no underpants. I can hear his screams. They're force-feeding him carrots . . . Ah, the horror! The horror . . .
FINIS OMNIUM