Dirk gently's holistic detective agency

hundred years?’ murmured Richard. ‘You’d think someone would notice, or think it was odd.’

‘Oh, that’s one of the delights of the older Cambridge colleges,’ said Reg, ‘everyone is so discreet. If we all went around mentioning what was odd about each other we’d be here till Christmas. Svlad, er -Dirk, my dear fellow, please don’t touch that just at the moment.’

Dirk’s hand was reaching out to touch the abacus standing on its own on the only clear spot on the big table.

‘What is it?’ said Dirk sharply.

‘It’s just what it looks like, an old wooden abacus,’ said Reg. ‘I’ll show you in a moment, but first I must congratulate you on your powers of perception. May I ask how you arrived at the solution?’

‘I have to admit,’ said Dirk with rare humility, ‘that I did not. In the end I asked a child. I told him the story of the trick and asked him how he thought it had been done, and he said and I quote, “It’s bleedin’ obvious, innit, he must’ve ‘ad a bleedin’ time machine.’ I thanked the little fellow and gave him a shilling for his trouble. He kicked me rather sharply on the shin and went about his business. But he was the one who solved it. My only contribution to the matter was to see that he /must/ be right. He had even saved me the bother of kicking myself.’

‘But you had the perception to think of asking a child,’ said Reg. ‘Well then, I congratulate you on that instead.’

Dirk was still eyeing the abacus suspiciously.

‘How... does it work?’ he said, trying to make it sound like a casual enquiry.

‘Well, it’s really terribly simple,’ said Reg, ‘it works any way you want it to. You see, the computer that runs it is a rather advanced one. In fact it is more powerful than the sum total of all the computers on this planet including -- and this is the tricky part -including itself. Never really understood that bit myself, to be honest with you. But over ninety-five per cent of that power is used in simply understanding what it is you want it to do. I simply plonk my abacus down there and it understands the way I use it. I think I must have been brought up to use an abacus when I was a... well, a child, I suppose.

‘Richard, for instance, would probably want to use his own personal computer. If you put it down there, where the abacus is the machine’s computer would simple take charge of it and offer you lots of nice user-friendly time-travel applications complete with pull-down menus and desk accessories if you like. Except that you point to 1066 on the screen and you’ve got the Battle of Hastings going on outside your door, er, if that’s the sort of thing you’re interested in.’

Reg’s tone of voice suggested that his own interests lay in other areas.

‘It’s, er, really quite fun in its way,’ he concluded. ‘Certainly better than television and a great deal easier to use than a video recorder. If I miss a programme I just pop back in time and watch it.

I’m hopeless fiddling with all those buttons.’

Dirk reacted to this revelation with horror.

‘You have a time machine and you use it for... watching television?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t use it at all if I could get the hang of the video recorder. It’s a very delicate business, time travel, you know. Full of appalling traps and dangers, if you should change the wrong thing in file:///E|/...cifi,%20Fantasy,%20And%20Classic%20Ebooks/Adams,%20Douglas/Dirk%20Gently's%20Holistic%20Detective%20Agency.txt[9/5/2013 12:20:28 PM]