Douglas Adams - The Salmon of Doubt - Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“People walk up to you, steal your car.”

“No, but thanks for asking. We have people who clean your windscreen against your will, but, er ...”

Joe barked with contempt.

“The thing is,” explained Dirk, “in London you could certainly walk up to someone and steal their car, but you wouldn’t be able to drive it away.” “Some kinda fancy device?”

“No, just traffic,” said Dirk. “But, er ... your sister,” he asked nervously.

“Was she okay?”

“Okay?” shouted Joe. “You shoot someone with a Kalashnikov and they’re okay, you’re gonna want your money back. Hur-hur.”

Dirk tried to make sympathetic noises, but they wouldn’t form properly in his throat. The car was slowing down, so he lowered the peeling window to look at the desert night.

A passing road sign flared briefly in the car’s headlights.

“Stop the car!” shouted Dirk suddenly.

He leant out of the car window, straining to look back as the car gradually wallowed to a halt. In the distance the dim shape of a road sign was silhouetted in the moonlight.

“Can you reverse back down the road?” said Dirk urgently.

“It’s a freeway,” protested Joe.

“Yes, yes,” said Dirk. “There’s no one behind us. The road’s empty. Only a few hundred yards.”

Grumbling to himself, Joe put the big barge into reverse, and slowly they weaved their way back down the freeway.

“This is what they do in New Zealand, isn’t it?” he whined.

“What?”

“Drive backwards.”

“No,” said Dirk. “But I know what you’re thinking of. Just like us British, they do drive on the other side of the road.” “Suppose it’s safer that way,” said Joe, “if everyone’s driving backwards.” “Yes,” said Dirk. “Much safer.” He leaped out of the car as soon as it drew to a halt.

Highlighted in the pool of the car’s lights, five thousand miles from Dirk’s ramshackle office in Clerkenwell, was a square yellow road sign that said, in large letters, GUSTY WINDS, and, in smaller letters underneath it, MAY EXIST. The moon hung high in the sky above it.

“Joe!” shouted Dirk to the driver. “Who put this here?”

“What?” said Joe.

“This sign!” said Dirk.

“You mean this sign?” said Joe.

“Yes!” shouted Dirk. “ ‘Gusty Winds May Exist.’ ” “Well, I suppose,” said Joe, “the State Highway Authority.” “What?” said Dirk, bewildered again. “The State Highway Authority,” said Joe, a bit flummoxed. “You see ’em all over.”

“ ‘Gusty Winds May Exist’?” said Dirk. “You mean this is just a regular road sign?”

“Well, yeah,” said Joe. “Just means it’s a bit windy here. You know, wind comes across the desert. Can blow you around a bit. Especially in one of these.” Dirk blinked. He suddenly felt rather foolish. He had been imagining, a little wildly, that someone had specially painted the name of a bisected cat on a signpost on a New Mexican road especially for his benefit. This was absurd. The cat in question had obviously been named after a perfectly commonplace American road sign. Paranoia, he reminded himself, was one of the normal by-products of jet lag and whisky.

Joe’s window and peered in.

“Joe,” he said. “You slowed the car down just as we were approaching the sign. Was that deliberately so that I would see it?” He hoped it wasn’t just the whisky and the jet lag talking.

“Oh no,” said Joe. “I was slowing down for the rhinoceros.”

“PROBABLY THE JET LAG,” Dirk said. “I thought for a moment you said a rhinoceros.”

“Yeah,” said Joe, disgustedly. “Got held up by it earlier. As it was leaving the airport.”

Dirk tried to think this through before he said anything that might expose him to ridicule. Presumably there must be a local football team or rock band called the Rhinoceroses. Must be. Coming from the airport? Driving to Santa Fe? He was going to have to ask.

“What exact type of rhinoceros are we discussing here?” he said.

“Dunno. I’m not as good at breeds of rhinoceros,” said Joe, “as I am at accents. If it was an accent, I could tell you what exact type it was, but since it’s a rhinoceros I can only tell you that it’s one of the big grey type, you know, with the horn. From Irkutsk or one of those kinda places. You know, Portugal or somewhere.”

“You mean Africa?”

“Could be Africa.”

“And you say it’s up there on the road ahead of us?”

“Yup.”

“Then let’s get after it,” said Dirk. “Quickly.”

He climbed back into the car, and Joe eased it out onto the highway once more. Dirk hunched himself up at the front of the passenger compartment and peered over Joe’s shoulder as they sped on through the desert. In a few minutes the shape of a large truck loomed up ahead in the Cadillac’s headlights. It was a green low-loader with a large, slatted crate roped down on to it. “So. You’re pretty interested in rhinoceroses, then,” said Joe conversationally. “Not especially,” said Dirk. “Not till I read my horoscope this morning.”

“That right? Don’t believe in them myself. You know what mine said this morning? It said that I should think long and hard about my personal and financial prospects. Pretty much what it said yesterday.

‘Course, that’s pretty much what I do every day, just driving around. So I suppose that means something, then. What did yours say?”

“That I would meet a three-ton rhinoceros called Desmond.”

“I guess you can see a different bunch of stars from New Zealand,” said Joe.

“It’s a replacement. That’s what I heard,” volunteered Joe.

“A replacement?”

“Yup.”

“A replacement for what?”

“Previous rhinoceros.”

“Well, I suppose it would hardly be a replacement for a lightbulb?” said Dirk.

“Tell me—what happened to the, er, previous rhinoceros?”

“Died.”

“What a tragedy. Where? At the zoo?”

“At a party.”

“A party?”

“Yup.”

Dirk sucked his lip thoughtfully. There was a principle he liked to adhere to when he remembered, which was never to ask a question unless he was fairly certain he would like the answer. He sucked his other lip. “I think I’ll go and take a look myself,” he said, and climbed out of the car. The large, dark green truck was pulled onto the side of the road. The sides of the truck were about four feet high, and a heavy tarpaulin was roped down over an enormous crate. The driver was leaning against the door of the cab, smoking a cigarette. He clearly thought that being in charge of a three-ton rhinoceros meant that no one would argue with him about this, but he was wrong. The most astonishing amount of abuse was being hurled at him by the drivers negotiating their way one by one past his truck.

“Bastards!” muttered the driver to himself as Dirk wandered up to him in a nonchalant kind of way and lit a companionable cigarette himself. He was trying to give it up, but usually kept a pack in his pocket for tactical purposes. “You know what I hate?” said Dirk to the truckdriver, “Those signs in cabs that say

‘Thank You for Not Smoking.’ I don’t mind if they say ‘Please Don’t Smoke,’ or even just a straightforward ‘No Smoking.’ But I hate those prim ‘Thank You for Not Smoking’ signs. Make you want to light up immediately and say, ‘No need to thank me, I wasn’t going to not smoke.’ ” The driver laughed.

“Taking this old bugger far?” asked Dirk, with the air of one seasoned rhinoceros delivery driver comparing notes with another. He gave the truck an appraising glance.

“Just out to Malibu,” said the driver. “Way up Topanga Canyon.” Dirk gave a knowing cluck as if to say, “Don’t talk to me about Topanga Canyon, I once had to take a whole herd of wildebeest to Cardiff in a minibus. You want trouble? That was trouble.” He sucked deeply on his cigarette. “Must have been some party,” he remarked.