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  'What I lost, I think, was a whole other life.'

  'Everybody does that. Every moment of every day. Every single decision we make, every breath we draw, opens some doors and closes many others. Most of them we don't notice. Some we do. Sounds like you noticed one.'

  'Oh yes, I noticed,' said Tricia. 'All right. Here it is. It's very simple. Many years ago I met a guy at a party. He said he was from another planet and did I want to go along with him. I said, yes, OK. It was that kind of party. I said to him to wait while I went to get my bag and then I'd be happy to go off to another planet with him. He said I wouldn't need my bag. I said he obviously came from a very backward planet or he'd know that a woman always needed to take her bag with her. He got a bit impatient, but I wasn't gong to be a complete pushover just because he said he was from another planet.

  'I went upstairs. Took me a while to find my bag, and then there was someone else in the bathroom. Came down and he was gone.'

  Tricia paused.

  'And . . . ?' said Gail.

  'The garden door was open. I went outside. There were lights. Some kind of gleaming thing. I was just in time to see it rise up into the sky, shoot silently up through the clouds and disappear. That was it. End of story. End of one life, beginning of another. But hardly a moment of this life goes by that I don't wonder about some other me. A me that didn't go back for her bag. I feel like she's out there somewhere and I'm walking in her shadow.'

  A member of the hotel staff was now going round the bar asking people if they were Mr Miller. Nobody was.

  'You really think this . . . person was from another planet?' asked Gail.

  'Oh, certainly. There was the spacecraft. Oh, and also he had two heads.'

  'Two? Didn't anybody else notice?'

  'It was a fancy dress party.'

  'I see . . .'

  'And he had a bird cage over it, of course. With a cloth over the cage. Pretended he had a parrot. He tapped on the cage and it did a lot of stupid «Pretty Polly» stuff and squawking and so on. Then he pulled the cloth back for a moment and roared with laughter. There was another head in there, laughing along with him. It was a worrying moment I can tell you.'

  'I think you probably did the right thing, dear, don't you?' said Gail.

  'No,' said Tricia. 'No I don't. And I couldn't carry on doing what I was doing either. I was an astrophysicist, you see. You can't be an astrophysicist properly if you've actually met someone from another planet who's got a second head that pretends to be a parrot. You just can't do it. I couldn't at least.'

  'I can see it would be hard. And that's probably why you tend to be a little hard on other people who talk what sounds like complete nonsense.'

  'Yes,' said Tricia. 'I expect you're right. I'm sorry.'

  'That's OK.'

  'You're the first person I've ever told this, by the way.'

  'I wondered. You married?'

  'Er, no. So hard to tell these days isn't it? But you're right to ask because that was probably the reason. I came very close a few times, mostly because I wanted to have a kid. But every guy ended up asking why I was constantly looking over his shoulder. What do you tell someone? At one point I even thought I might just go to a sperm bank and take pot luck. Have somebody's child at random.'

  'You can't seriously do that, can you?'

  Tricia laughed. 'Probably not. I never quite went and found out for real. Never quite did it. Story of my life. Never quite did the real thing. That's why I'm in television I guess. Nothing is real.

  'Excuse me lady, your name Tricia McMillan'!'

  Tricia looked round in surprise. There was a man standing there in a chauffeur's hat.

  'Yes,' she said, instantly pulling herself back together again.

  'Lady, I been looking for you for about an hour. Hotel said they didn't have anybody of that name, but I checked back with Mr Martin's office and they said that this was definitely where you staying. So I ask again, they still say they never heard of you, so I get them to page you anyway and they can't find you. In the end I get the office to FAX a picture of you through to the car and have a look myself.'

  He looked at his watch.

  'May be a bit late now, but do you want to go anyway?'

  Tricia was stunned.

  'Mr Martin? You mean Andy Martin at NBS?'

  'That's correct, lady. Screen test for USIAM.'

  Tricia shot up out of her seat. She couldn't even bear to think of all the messages she'd heard for Mr MacManus and Mr Miller.

  'Only we have to hurry,' said the chauffeur. 'As I heard it Mr Martin thinks it might be worth trying a British accent. His boss at the network is dead against the idea. That's Mr Zwingler, and I happen to know he's flying out to the coast this evening because I'm the one has to pick him up and take him to the airport.'

  'OK,' said Tricia, 'I'm ready. Let's go.'

  'OK, lady. It's the big limo out the front.'

  Tricia turned back to Gail. 'I'm sorry,' she said.

  'Go! Go!' said Gail. 'And good luck. I've enjoyed meeting you.'

  Tricia made to reach for her bag for some cash.

  'Damn,' she said. She'd left it upstairs.

  'Drinks are on me,' insisted Gail. 'Really. It's been very interesting.'

  Tricia sighed.

  'Look, I'm really sorry about this morning and . . .

  'Don't say another word. I'm fine. It's only astrology. It's harmless. It's not the end of the world.'

  'Thanks.' On an impulse Tricia gave her a hug.

  'You got everything?' said the chauffeur. 'You don't want to pick up your bag or anything?'

  'If there's one thing that life's taught me,' said Tricia, 'it's never go back for your bag.'

  Just a little over an hour later, Tricia sat on one of the pair of beds in her hotel room. For a few minutes she didn't move. She just stared at her bag, which was sitting innocently on top of the other bed.

  In her hand was a note from Gail Andrews, saying, 'Don't be too disappointed. Do ring if you want to talk about it. If I were you I'd stay in at home tomorrow night. Get some rest. But don't mind me, and don't worry. It's only astrology. It's not the end of the world. Gail.'

  The chauffeur had been dead right. In fact the chauffeur seemed to know more about what was going on inside NBS than any other single person she had encountered in the organisation. Martin had been keen, Zwingler had not. She had had her one shot at proving Martin right and she had blown it.

  Oh well. Oh well, oh well, oh well.

  Time to go home. Time to phone the airline and see if she could still get the red-eye back to Heathrow tonight. She reached for the big phone directory.

  Oh. First things first.

  She put down the directory again, picked up her handbag, and took it through to the bathroom. She put it down and took out the small plastic case which held her contact lenses, without which she had been unable properly to read either the script or the autocue.

  As she dabbed each tiny plastic cup into her eyes she reflected that if there was one thing life had taught her it was that there are times when you do not go back for your bag and other times when you do. It had yet to teach her to distinguish between the two types of occasion.

  Chapter 3

  The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has, in what we laughingly call the past, had a great deal to say on the subject of parallel universes. Very little of this is, however, at all comprehensible to anyone below the level of Advanced God, and since it is now well-established that all known gods came into existence a good three millionths of a second after the Universe began rather than, as they usually claimed, the previous week, they already have a great deal of explaining to do as it is, and are therefore not available for comment on matters of deep physics at this time.

  One encouraging thing the Guide does have to say on the subject of parallel universes is that you don't stand the remotest chance of understanding it. You can therefore say 'What?' and 'Eh?' and even go cross-eyed and start to blither if you
like without any fear of making a fool of yourself.

  The first thing to realise about parallel universes, the Guide says, is that they are not parallel.

  It is also important to realise that they are not, strictly speaking, universes either, but it is easiest if you try and realise that a little later, after you've realised that everything you've realised up to that moment is not true.

  The reason they are not universes is that any given universe is not actually a thing as such, but is just a way of looking at what is technically known as the WSOGMM, or Whole Sort of General Mish Mash. The Whole Sort of General Mish Mash doesn't actually exist either, but is just the sum total of all the different ways there would be of looking at it if it did.

  The reason they are not parallel is the same reason that the sea is not parallel. It doesn't mean anything. You can slice the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash any way you like and you will generally come up with something that someone will call home.

  Please feel free to blither now.

  The Earth with which we are here concerned, because of its particular orientation in the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash, was hit by a neutrino that other Earths were not.

  A neutrino is not a big thing to be hit by.

  In fact it's hard to think of anything much smaller by which one could reasonably hope to be hit. And it's not as if being hit by neutrinos was in itself a particularly unusual event for something the size of the Earth. Far from it. It would be an unusual nanosecond in which the Earth was not hit by several billion passing neutrinos.

  It all depends on what you mean by 'hit', of course, seeing as matter consists almost entirely of nothing at all. The chances of a neutrino actually hitting something as it travels through all this howling emptiness are roughly comparable to that of dropping a ball bearing at random from a cruising 747 and hitting, say, an egg sandwich.

  Anyway, this neutrino hit something. Nothing terribly impor– tant in the scale of things, you might say. But the problem with saying something like that is that you would be talking cross– eyed badger spit. Once something actually happens somewhere in something as wildly complicated as the Universe, Kevin knows where it will all end up – where 'Kevin' is any random entity that doesn't know nothin' about nothin'.

  This neutrino struck an atom.

  The atom was part of a molecule. The molecule was part of a nucleic acid. The nucleic acid was part of a gene. The gene was part of a genetic recipe for growing . . . and so on. The upshot was that a plant ended up growing an extra leaf. In Essex. Or what would, after a lot of palaver and local difficulties of a geological nature, become Essex.

  The plant was a clover. It threw its weight, or rather its seed, around extremely effectively and rapidly became the world's dominant type of clover. The precise causal connection between this tiny biological happenstance, and a few other minor vari– ations that exist in that slice of the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash – such as Tricia McMillan failing to leave with Zaphod Beeblebrox, abnormally low sales of pecan-flavoured ice-cream and the fact that the Earth on which all this occurred did not get demolished by the Vogons to make way for a new hyperspace bypass – is currently sitting at number 4,763,984,132 on the research project priority list at what was once the History Department of the University of MaxiMegalon, and no one cur– rently at the prayer meeting by the poolside appears to feel any sense of urgency about the problem.

  Chapter 4

  Tricia began to feel that the world was conspiring against her. She knew that this was a perfectly normal way to feel after an overnight flight going east, when you suddenly have a whole other mysteriously threatening day to deal with for which you are not the least bit prepared. But still.

  There were marks on her lawn.

  She didn't really care about marks on her lawn very much. Marks on her lawn could go and take a running jump as far as she was concerned. It was Saturday morning. She had just got home from New York feeling tired, crabby and paranoid, and all she wanted to do was go to bed with the radio on quietly and gradually fall asleep to the sound of Ned Sherrin being terribly clever about something.

  But Eric Bartlett was not going to let her get away with not making a thorough inspection of the marks. Eric was the old gardener who came in from the village on Saturday mornings to poke around at her garden with a stick. He didn't believe in people coming in from New York first thing in the morning. Didn't hold with it. Went against nature. He believed in virtually everything else, though.

  'Probably them space aliens,' he said, bending over and prod– ding at the edges of the small indentations with his stick. 'Hear a lot about space aliens these days. I expect it's them.'

  'Do you?' said Tricia, looking furtively at her watch. Ten minutes, she reckoned. Ten minutes she'd be able to stay standing up. Then she would simply keel over, whether she was in her bedroom or still out here in the garden. That was if she just had to stand. If she also had to nod intelligently and say 'Do you?' from time to time, it might cut it down to five.

  'Oh yes,' said Eric. 'They come down here, land on your lawn, and then buzz off again, sometimes with your cat. Mrs Williams at the Post Office, her cat – you know the ginger one? – it got abducted by space aliens. Course, they brought it back the next day but it were in a very odd mood. Kept prowling around all morning, and then falling asleep in the afternoon. Used to be the other way round, is the point. Sleep in the morning, prowl in the afternoon. Jet lag, you see, from being in an interplanetary craft.

  'I see, said Tricia.

  'They dyed it tabby, too, she says. These marks are exactly the sort of marks that their landing pods would probably make.'

  'You don't think it's the lawn mower?' asked Tricia.

  'If the marks were more round, I'd say, but these are just off-round, you see. Altogether more alien in shape.'

  'It's just that you mentioned the lawn mower was playing up and needed fixing or it might start gouging holes in the lawn.'

  'I did say that, Miss Tricia, and I stand by what I said. I'm not saying it's not the lawn mower for definite, I'm just saying what seems to me more likely given the shapes of the holes. They come in over these trees, you see, in their landing pods . . .'

  'Eric . . . ,' said Tricia, patiently.

  'Tell you what, though, Miss Tricia,' said Eric, 'I will take a look at the mower, like I meant to last week, and leave you to get on with whatever you're wanting to.'

  'Thank you, Eric,' said Tricia. 'I'm going to bed now, in fact. Help yourself to anything you want in the kitchen.'

  'Thank you, Miss Tricia, and good luck to you,' said Eric. He bent over and picked something from the lawn.

  'There,' he said. 'Three-leaf clover. Good luck you see.'

  He peered at it closely to check that it was a real three-leaf clover and not just a regular four-leaf one that one of the leaves had fallen off. 'If I were you, though, I'd watch for signs of alien activity in the area.' He scanned the horizon keenly. 'Particularly from over there in the Henley direction.'

  'Thank you, Eric,' said Tricia again. 'I will.'

  She went to bed and dreamt fitfully of parrots and other birds. In the afternoon she got up and prowled around restlessly, not certain what to do with the rest of the day, or indeed the rest of her life. She spent at least an hour dithering, trying to make up her mind whether to head up into town and go to Stavro's for the evening. This was the currently fashionable spot for high-flying media people, and seeing a few friends there might help her ease herself back into the swing of things. She decided at last she would go. It was good. It was fun there. She was very fond of Stavro himself, who was a Greek with a German father– a fairly odd combination. Tricia had been to the Alpha a couple of nights earlier, which was Stavro's original club in New York, now run by his brother Karl, who thought of himself as a German with a Greek mother. Stavro would be very happy to be told that Karl was making a bit of a pig's ear of running the New York club, so Tricia would go and make him happy. There was little love lost be
tween Stavro and Karl Mueller.

  OK. That's what she would do.

  She then spent another hour dithering about what to wear. At last she settled on a smart little black dress she'd got in New York. She phoned a friend to see who was likely to be at the club that evening, and was told that it was closed this evening for a private wedding party.

  She thought that trying to live life according to any plan you actually work out is like trying to buy ingredients for a recipe from the supermarket. You get one of those trolleys which simply will not go in the direction you push it and end up just having to buy completely different stuff. What do you do with it? What do you do with the recipe? She didn't know.

  Anyway, that night an alien spacecraft landed on her lawn.

  Chapter 5

  She watched it coming in from over the Henley direction with mild curiosity at first, wondering what those lights were. Living, as she did, not a million miles from Heathrow, she was used to seeing lights in the sky. Not usually so late in the evening, or so low, though, which was why she was mildly curious.

  When whatever it was began to come closer and closer her curiosity began to turn to bemusement.

  'Hmmm,' she thought, which was about as far as she could get with thinking. She was still feeling dopey and jet-lagged and the messages that one part of her brain was busy sending to another were not necessarily arriving on time or the right way up. She left the kitchen where she'd been fixing herself a coffee and went to open the back door which led out to the garden. She took a deep breath of cool evening air, stepped outside and looked up.

  There was something roughly the size of a large camper van parked about a hundred feet above her lawn.

  It was really there. Hanging there. Almost silent.

  Something moved deep inside her.

  Her arms dropped slowly down to her side. She didn't notice the scalding coffee slopping over her foot. She was hardly breathing as slowly, inch by inch, foot by foot, the craft came downwards. Its lights were playing softly over the ground as if probing and feeling it. They played over her.