EPILOGUE

Fenchurch woke up. She was back on her beach on the planet Screeeee. It was about sunset... at least at this latitude. The kawlbah trees swayed slightly in the gentle breeze. She relaxed today. But over the last few days she had been busy looking for her clam. Of course she also took plenty of naps, ate a food which was very much like pizza that Blodgey had delivered for her, and she took more naps. As she wandered up and down the beaches, she came across many clams in the sand or in tide pools. But none of them were Sparky. At least none of them claimed to be Sparky. At first she felt a bit silly insisting that the clams talk to her. Sometimes the dolphins even looked at her oddly as they poked their heads above the water just off the coast. But she didn't mind if dolphins thought she was behaving oddly. There were more important things to worry about.

Eventually she did find a clam that she enjoyed talking to. It had no wisdom to offer her. No words of advise. But for some reason, she just liked talking to the thing. And soon she realized that she actually enjoyed talking to this clam more than she had to old Sparky... because it didn't talk back, and it didn't offer opinions. It just sat there in her hand as it seemed to listen to everything she said with a sort of calm acceptance. It reminded her of a dog she had had when she was a little girl. The dog was named Polly, and Polly was a very lazy old dog. Even when she was a puppy, she was lazy and seemed to be old. She never barked. Didn't like to chase balls. She just loved to sleep or to follow Fenchurch around loyally wherever she went. And she always waited patiently by the door whenever Fenchurch had to go out. This clam, like Polly the dog, just loved her for who she was.

One day while sitting on the beach, Fenchurch felt slightly worried about something. It clearly wasn't anything important. But it was just a nagging little worry on the periphery of her mind. And she eventually realised that she was worrying that she ought to worry about being some sort of zoo animal.

She remembered something she had thought when visiting London Zoo many years ago. All the animals in the zoo's enclosures looked bored, and some of them even looked as though they might be ill, just sitting there day after day waiting to be fed. So she determined that that wouldn't be her. She would keep her body and her mind stimulated. So she began swimming every day. Sometimes several times a day. And to stimulate her mind, she decided to make a cello. She asked Blodgey for some tools and a small amount of building materials. And over the next month, she made for herself a sort of a cello. Then she set about trying to write from memory the Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello by Bach. And she would then play them there on the beach. The dolphins seemed to quite like it. They would stick their heads out of the water whenever she would play, and they would listen attentively. And they squealed with delight when she finished.

And overall her life became very tolerable. Almost idyllic. The only really annoying part was when one day a documentary crew landed nearby and then followed her around with their cameras. Apparently they were doing a documentary on endangered species. The worst part of the experience was their insistence on being able to catch her defecating on camera. Fenchurch toyed with the idea of defecating onto their camera. But instead she ended up sneaking off into the ocean to do it secretly in the water.

#

And then one afternoon a space craft landed near the lagoon where she was soaking her feet at the water's edge, her towel wrapped about her. It was a familiar space craft. It was about five stories tall. It was that old man from the Campaign for Real Time. And he was probably about to give her some load of nonsense about another predestination paradox thing! Well, she had had just about enough of that. Even if he was a sweet old man. He had interfered with her life once too often!

She marched up to the enormous space ship just as the hatch slid open and the ramp extended down to the sand. But instead of Slartibartfast, Fenchurch was greeted with by a sight she had almost resigned herself to never seeing again.

"Arthur!" she gaped. "Is it you!"

Arthur blinked in confusion as he walked nervously down the ramp. "I'm sorry. Do I know you?"

"Of course you know me, you complete nitwit!" She grinned from ear to ear. She ran up to him and hugged him so hard that Arthur began to worry that he might lose circulation in his arms.

"I really am terribly sorry," Arthur went on, returning the hug only half-heartedly. "But I really should tell you that I honestly can't remember you. I wish I could, actually. You're certainly very, er, affectionate and all that. But could you remind me who you are and, er, where we are exactly?"

Fenchurch finally let him go. She stepped back. "You really don't remember me, do you?"

"No, I'm afraid not. I'm sorry. I'm not even sure what I'm doing here. That old man in the sort of spaceship thing back there said something about saving my life and returning a favour to a young lady, presumably you, at the same time. Didn't understand much of it to be honest."

She looked around for Slartibartfast at that point, only to find that his ship had already slid silently back up into the sky, and was now only a disappearing light in the vast orange sunset sky.

She looked back at Arthur. "Okay, just supposing that there was some extraordinary way in which you were very important to me, and that, though you didn't know it, I was very important to you?"

"Well... if you say so."

"But it will take a while to explain."

She took him gently by the arm and together they walked down the beach.