9

Fenchurch started as Slartibartfast took the wires from her. "That was extraordinary."

"Indeed." Slartibartfast carefully placed the wires on a hook on the wall, which promptly slipped off and vanished into the mounds of paper. "I've heard that Exper-I-Disk is better quality, but I think I'll stick with Sens-O-Tape. I have neither the time nor the inclination to fuss over some newfangled contraption. Then of course, I'll need to replace all my recordings, and I have rather a nice collection that I don't relish parting with."

"No," said Fenchurch, "I meant the story. This Chronological Correcting Fluid."

Slartibartfast shuffled over to his desk again. "Oh, yes. I had heard of it prior to my association with Camtim, but always assumed it was a bit of a fairy tale. But apparently you and the Earthman are in danger of locating it, which is something that the Campaign for Real Time simply would not stand for. I could understand their determination to eliminate you, but I would have attempted to ask you nicely not to pursue it rather than resorting to weaponry."

"I'm sorry," said Arthur, "but I'm afraid I'm still confused. We've never even heard of this Fluid, much less planned on trying to find it."

Slartibartfast waved him off. "Oh, it's all cause and effect, Earthman. All cause and effect. Camtim is responding to something that you plan to do in the future. You will eventually seek the Fluid."

"But why?" Fenchurch asked, growing a little more animated. Arthur could tell Slartibartfast's combination of infinite wisdom and constant bewilderment was wearing on her. "Why will we be looking for it if we never heard of it until now?"

Slartibartfast was sifting through the stacks of paper again, but turned to look at her with amusement. "Why, because you will be looking for it. Earthwoman, you and your companion are caught in what we involved with time-travel call a temporal causality loop."

He brushed aside a wobbly pile to expose a blackboard. Slartibartfast muttered to himself as he picked up a piece of chalk, "I daresay I wish I had a Sens-O-Tape to explain this, but I'll do my best."

He drew a circle on the blackboard with an arrow on each side pointing in opposite directions, conveying the sense that the circle was rotating. Then Slartibartfast scrawled a dot onto one end of the circle, and tapped it. "This dot is you, Earthpeople. Obviously not literally you. It's nowhere near large enough. And it has no arms and legs. I cannot draw, so I've learned over the years not to even bother trying. Anyway, imagine that this dot is you at the point at which you decide to pursue the Chronological Correction Fluid."

Slartibartfast drew another dot on the opposing end of the circle. "And this is you when you actually find the Fluid. Now, you may be wondering where this circle begins, and that is not because I cannot draw it. I can draw a circle. That's about all I can draw. My point is to show that it is a loop. Your decision to pursue the Fluid is triggered by the fact that you eventually do pursue it. It's a cycle with no end."

Slartibartfast tossed the chalk onto the blackboard, where it bounced off and broke into pieces on the floor. He stood there looking at the fragments, woefully. "I understand how temporal anomalies can be frightfully confusing. Never made any sense to me, but there you are. I remember the instance where a herring sandwich appeared out of nowhere in my living room. Seems I sent the sandwich to myself from an hour into the future. Why on Magrathea would I send myself a sandwich from the future? No reason that I could see, especially since I had a nice roast beef sandwich in the refrigerator. Don't even like herrings. And if I sent that same sandwich back, when did I make it in the first place? Not a clue. But I did not want to cause a temporal paradox over a herring sandwich, so an hour later I had to send the same sandwich to myself into the past. Tried to have someone explain it to me, and all that taught me was to stop asking questions."

Fenchurch looked at Arthur with a helpless expression. Arthur decided to wrap things up. It seemed that Slartibartfast had been as helpful as he could be, which wasn't very helpful at all.

"So, er, if I understand what you're saying," Arthur said, "then the reason we will be trying to find the Chronological Correcting Fluid is that we will be trying to find the Fluid."

Slartibartfast raised his eyebrows. "Well said, Earthman. Certainly better than what I could have done." He waved listlessly at his blackboard.

"Fine. Well, thank you, Slartibartfast. We'd best be going now." Arthur turned for the door, then turned back. "Oh, uh, one more question, actually. You remember the Earth? The one destroyed by the Vogons? Well, it's back, and I was just wondering if you knew why."

A look of infinite sadness came over Slartibartfast as he looked away from them. "Patience, Earthman. The answer will come to you with time."

"Does it have anything to do with the Fluid?"

Slartibartfast picked up the scroll of his design and waved it like a shepherd's rod to shoo them towards the door. "More than this I cannot say without causing severe structural damage to the space-time continuum. I'm sorry, Earthman and Earthwoman. From this point on, the journey is yours and yours alone."

Arthur and Fenchurch stood outside the office in the freezing winds blowing in from the ocean's edge. As Slartibartfast moved to close his office door, he paused.

"But," Slartibartfast added, "if you should ever come into an extraordinarily large amount of money and find yourself in need of a quality custom-built continent, feel free to give me a call."

He slammed the door. The sound of crashing and banging followed shortly thereafter.

Fenchurch hugged herself and bounced up and down a little in the bitter cold. "Now what, Arthur?"

Arthur gave her his towel to wrap herself in, then dug his Electronic Thumb out of his bag. "Now we get off this planet. I could use a really hot cup of tea right now"
"And then?"

Arthur pushed the button on the Thumb that sent out a Sub-Etha signal to flag down the nearest starship for a ride. "And then we try to find this Chronological Correcting Fluid."

Fenchurch gaped at him. "You can't be serious. Why should we go after that rubbish? You heard him say people were trying to kill us for going after it. The only good reason he could give was that nonsense about temporal whatever, and don't you dare pretend you understood what he was on about."

Arthur shaded his eyes against the clouds of dust blotting the sun. "Yes, er, well, time travel is often confusing. A few years ago, I met a creature that called itself Agrajag who claimed that I kept killing him in different lives. At one point, he said that someone would try to shoot me on Stavromula Beta. Never heard of the place, never been there, so it must lie in my future. I determined that I cannot die until I get to Stavromula Beta, so as long as I stay away from there, I'm immortal."

Fenchurch shook her head. "You're right. That is confusing."

A light on the Thumb began to blink to indicate it had a signal.

"The point is," said Arthur as he activated the Thumb, "that we will eventually seek the Fluid, and I think putting it off will just delay the inevitable. And from the way Slartibartfast reacted to my question about the Earth, I think it might be related to its return, a mystery that has always puzzled me. I have this unsettling feeling that if I don't find out why the Earth was restored, it could vanish again."

Fenchurch placed her hand on Arthur's arm. "Do you really think that? Can a whole planet just vanish?"

A huge blocky shape dropped out of the skies, lights blinking on its surface. Arthur waved his towel at it until it landed nearby. A doorway began to grind open on one side.

Arthur took Fenchurch's hand and ran with her to the starship. "Well, it did the first time."

To be continued...