Douglas Adams. The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
Douglas Adams. The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
When a passenger check-in desk at Terminal Two, Heathrow Airport, shot up through the roof engulfed in a ball of orange flame the usual peaple tried to claim responsibility. First the IRA, then the PLO and the Gas Board. Even British Nuclear Fuels rushed out a statement to the effect that the situation was completely under control, that it was a one in a million chance, that there was hardly any radioactive leakage at all, and that the site of the explosion would make a nice location for a day out with the kids and a picnic, before finally having to admit that it wasn’t actually anything to do with them at all.
No rational cause could be found for the explosion – it was simply designated an act of god. But, thinks Dirk Gently, which God? And why? What God would be hanging around Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport trying to chatch the 15.37 to Oslo.
Funnier than Psycho… more chilling than Jeeves Takes Charge… shorter than War and Peace… the new Dirk Gently novel, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul. Douglas Adams is the best-selling author of the Hitch Hiker books: The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, the Universe and Everything, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, and Mostly Harmless. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has appeared in more forms than one might reasonably expect, most of which flatly contradict each other. It has appeared as a BBC radio series (its original form), a BBC TV series, all sorts of different records, cassettes, and CD’s, a computer game, and also, apotheotically, a bath towel. A series of graphic novels is currently in preparation, and the motion-picture version is confidently expected any decade now. He is also the author of the Dirk Gently books, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. He is currently working on another book in this series. He has also written The Deeper Meaning of Liff with John Lloyd and, most recently, the travel and wildlife book Last Chance to See, with Mark Carwardine. He is making more TV programmes these days and also frequently lectures on computers and semi-extinct parrots. He lives partly in Islington, London, partly in Provence, France, but mostly in airport bookstalls. Also by Douglas Adams in Pan Books
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy The Restaurant at the End of the Universe Life, the Universe and Everything So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish Mostly Harmless
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency The Deeper Meaning of Liff (With John Lloyd) Last Chance to See (With Mark Carwardine)
Douglas Adams. The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
Pan Books in association with William HeinemannFor Jane This book was written and typeset on an Apple Macintosh II and an Apple LaserWriter II NTX. The word processing software was FullWrite Professional from Ashton Tate. The fnal proofing and photosetting was done by The Last Word, London SW6.
I would like to say an enormous thank you to my amazing and wonderful editor, Sue Freestone. Her help, support, criticism, encouragement. enthusiasm and sandwiches have been beyond measure. I also owe thanks and apologies to Sophie, James and Vivian who saw so little of her during the final weeks of work.
Chapter 1
It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression “as pretty as an airport”. Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports ane full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only known exception to this otherwise infallible rule), and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs. They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve jangling colours, to make effortless the business of separating the traveller for ever from his or her luggage or loved ones, to confuse the traveller with arrows that appear to point at the windows, distant tie racks, or the current position of Ursa Minor in the night sky, and wherever possible to expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the location of the departure gates, presumably on the grounds that they are not.