Douglas Adams - Dirk Gentry 02 Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Dirk Gently Book 2

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

By Douglas Adams

The big man awoke and tried to look up, but could hardly raisehis head. He tried to sit up but couldnt do that either. He felt asif hed been stuck to the floor with superglue and after a fewseconds he discovered the most astounding reason for this.

He jerked his head up violently, yanking out great tufts ofyellow hair which stayed painfully stuck to the floor, and lookedaround him. He was in what appeared to be a derelictwarehouse, probably an upper floor judging by the wintry sky hecould see creeping past the grimy, shattered windows.

The ceilings were high and hung with cobwebs built byspiders who did not seem to mind that most of what they caughtwas crumbling plaster and dust. They were supported by pillarsmade from upright steel joists on which the dirty old cream paintwas bubbled and flaking, and these in turn stood on a floor ofbattered old oak on to which he had clearly been glued.Extending out for a foot or two in a rough oval all around hisnaked body the floor glistened darkly and dully. Thin,nostril-cleaning fumes rose from it. He could not believe it. Heroared with rage, tried to wriggle and shake himself butsucceeded only in tugging painfully at his skin where it wasstuck fast to the oak planks.

This had to be the old mans doing.

He threw his head back hard against the floor in a blow thatcracked the boards and made his ears sing. He roared again andtook some furious satisfaction in making as much hopeless,stupid noise as he could. He roared until the steel pillars rangand the cracked remains of the windows shattered into finershards. Then, as he threw his head angrily from one side to theother he caught sight of his sledge-hammer leaning against thewall a few feet from him, heaved it up into the air with a word,and sent it hurtling round the great space, beating and clangingon every pillar until the whole building reverberated like a madgong.

Another word and the hammer flew back at him, missed hishead by a hands-width and punched straight down through thefloor, shattering the wood and the plaster below.

In the darker space beneath him the hammer spun, and swunground in a slow heavy parabola as bits of plaster fell about it andrattled on the concrete floor below. Then it gathered a violentmomentum and hurtled back up through the ceiling, smackingup a stack of startled splinters as it punched through another oakfloorboard a hands-width from the soles of the big mans feet.

It soared up into the air, hung there for a moment as if itsweight had suddenly vanished, then, deftly flicking its shorthandle up above its head, it drove hard back down through thetloor again - then up again, then down again, punching holes ina splintered ring around its master until, with a long heavygroan, the whole oval section of punctured floor gave way andplunged, twisting, through the air. It shattered itself against thefloor below amidst a rain of plaster debris, from which the figureof the big man then emerged, staggering, flapping at the dustyair and coughing. His back, his arms and his legs were stillcovered with great splintered hunks of oak flooring, but at leasthe was able to move. He leant the flat of his hands against thewall and violently coughed some of the dast from his lungs.

As he turned back, his hammer danced out of the air towardshim, then suddenly evaded his grasp and skidded joyfully offacross the floor striking sparks from the concrete with its greathead, flipped up and parked itself against a nearby pillar at ajaunty angle.

In front of him the shape of a large Coca-Cola vendingmachine loomed through the settling cloud of dust. He regardedit with the gravest suspicion and worry. It stood there with a sortof glazed, blank look to it, and had a note from his father stuckon the front panel saying whatever he was doing, stop it. It wassigned You-know-who, but this had been crossed out and firstthe word Odin and then in larger letters Your Father hadbeen substituted. Odin never ceased to make absolutely clear hisview of his sons intellectual accomplishments. The big mantore the note off and stared at it in anger. A postscript addeddarkly Remember Wales. You dont want to go through all thatagain. He screwed the note up and hurled it out of the nearestwindow, where the wind whipped it up and away. For a momenthe thought he heard an odd squeaking noise, but it was probablyjust the blustering of the wind as it whistled between the nearbyderelict buildings.

He turned and walked to the window and stared out of it in abelligerent sulk. Glued to the floor. At his age. What the devilwas that supposed to mean? Keep your head down, was whathe guessed. If you dont keep it down, Ill have to keep it downfor you. That was what it meant. Stick to the ground.

He remembered now the old man saying exactly that to himat the time of all the unpleasantness with the Phantom fighter jet.Why cant you just stick to the ground? he had said. He couldimagine the old man in his soft-headed benign malice thinking itvery funny to make the lesson so literal.

Rage began to rumble menacingly inside him but he pushed itdown hard. Very worrying things had recently begun happeningwhen he got angry and he had a bad feeling, looking back at theCoca-Cola vending machine, that another of those veryworrying things must have just happened. He stared at it andfretted.

He felt ill.

He had felt ill a lot of late, and he found it impossible todischarge what were left of his godly duties when he felt he wassuffering from a sort of continual low-grade flu. He experiencedheadaches, dizzy spells, guilt and all the sorts of ailments thatwere featured so often in television advertisements. He evensuffered terrifying blackouts whenever the great rage grippedhim.

He always used to have such a wonderful time getting angry.Great gusts of marvellous anger would hurl him through life. Hefelt huge. He felt flooded with power and light and energy. Hehad always been provided with such wonderful things to getangry about - immense acts of provocation or betrayal, peoplehiding the AtIantic ocean in his helmet, dropping continents onhim or getting drunk and pretending to be trees. Stuff you couldreally work up a rage about and hit things. In short he had feltgood about being a Thunder God. Now suddeniy it washeadaches, nervous tension, nameless anxieties and guilt. Thesewere new experiences for a god, and not pleasant ones.

You look ridiculous!

The voice screeched out and affected Thor like fingernailsscratched across a blackboard lodged in the back of his brain. Itwas a mean voice, a spiteful, jeering voice, a cheap white nylonshirt of a voice, a shiny-trousered pencil moustache of a voice, avoice, in short, which Thor did not like. He reacted very badly toit at the best of times, and was particularly provoked to have tohear it while standing naked in the middle of a decrepitwarehouse with large sections of an oak floor still stuck to hisback.

He spun round angrily. He wanted to be able to turn roundcalmly and with crushing dignity, but no such strategy everworked with this creature, and since he, Thor, would only endup feeling humiliated and ridiculous whatever postune headopted, he might as well go with one he felt comfortable with.

Toe Rag! he roared, yanked his hammer spinning into theair and hurled it with immense, stunning force at the smallcreature who was squatting complacently in the shadows on topof a small heap of rubble, leaning forward a little.

Toe Rag caught the hammer and placed it neatly on top of thepile of Thors clothes that lay next to him. He grinned, andallowed a stray shaft of sunlight to glitter on one of his teeth.These things dont happen by accident. Toe Rag had spent sometime while Thor was unconscious working out how long itwould take him to recover, then industriously moving the pile ofrubble to exactly this spot, checking the height and thencalculating the exact angle at which to lean. As a provocateur heregarded himself as a professional.