"Adams, Douglas - Life, the Universe, and Everything" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adams Douglas)

..."
"And the time at which I would like you to shut up about it," continued
Ford in a low growl, "is now."
"All right," said Arthur, starting to stuff it back into the primitively
stitched rabbit-skin bag. "I realize that it is probably not important in the
cosmic scale of things, it's just odd, that's all. A pink towel suddenly,
instead of a blue one with yellow stars."
Ford was beginning to behave rather strangely, or rather not actually
beginning to behave strangely but beginning to behave in a way which was
strangely different from the other strange ways in which he more regularly
behaved. What he was doing was this. Regardless of the bemused stares it was
provoking from his fellow members of the crowd gathered round the pitch, he
was waving his hands in sharp movements across his face, ducking down behind
some people, leaping up behind others, then standing still and blinking a lot.
After a moment or two of this he started to stalk forward slowly and
stealthily wearing a puzzled frown of concentration, like a leopard that's not
sure whether it's just seen a half-empty tin of cat food half a mile away
across a hot and dusty plain.
"This isn't my bag either," said Arthur suddenly.
Ford's spell of concentration was broken. He turned angrily on Arthur.
"I wasn't talking about my towel," said Arthur. "We've established that
that isn't mine. It's just that the bag into which I was putting the towel
which is not mine is also not mine, though it is extraordinarily similar. Now
personally I think that that is extremely odd, especially as the bag was one I
made myself on prehistoric Earth. These are also not my stones," he added,
pulling a few flat grey stones out of the bag. "I was making a collection of
interesting stones and these are clearly very dull ones."
A roar of excitement thrilled through the crowd and obliterated whatever
it was that Ford said in reply to this piece of information. The cricket ball
which had excited this reaction fell out of the sky and dropped neatly into
Arthur's mysterious rabbit-skin bag.
"Now I would say that that was also a very curious event," said Arthur,
rapidly closing the bag and pretending to look for the ball on the ground.
"I don't think it's here," he said to the small boys who immediately
clustered round him to join in the search, "it probably rolled off somewhere.
Over there I expect." He pointed vaguely in the direction in which he wished
they would push off. One of the boys looked at him quizzically.
"You all right?" said the boy.
"No," said Arthur.
"Then why you got a bone in your beard?" said the boy.
"I'm training it to like being wherever it's put." Arthur prided himself
on saying this. It was, he thought, exactly the sort of thing which would
entertain and stimulate young minds.
"Oh," said the small boy, putting his head to one side and thinking about
it. "What's your name?"
"Dent," said Arthur, "Arthur Dent."
"You're a jerk, Dent," said the boy, "a complete asshole." The boy looked
past him at something else, to show that he wasn't in any particular hurry to
run away, and then wandered off scratching his nose. Suddenly Arthur
remembered that the Earth was going to be demolished again in two days' time,