the emotion come into it? I would say that it's never been out of it.
The things by which our emotions can be moved - the shape of a flower or a Grecian urn, the way a baby grows, the way the wind brushes across your face, the way clouds move, their shapes, the way light dances on the water, or daffodils flutter in the breeze, the way in which the person you love moves their head, the way their hair follows that movement, the curve described by the dying fall of the last chord of a piece of music - all these things can be described by the complex flow of numbers.
That's not a reduction of it, that's the beauty of it.
Ask Newton.
Ask Einstein.
Ask the poet (Keats) who said that what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.
He might also have said that what the hand seizes as a ball must be truth, but he didn't, because he was a poet and preferred loafing about under trees with a bottle of laudanum and a notebook to playing cricket, but it would have been equally true.
This jogged a thought at the back of Michael's memory, but he couldn't immediately place it.
Because that is at the heart of the relationship between on the one hand our 'instinctive' understanding of shape, form, movement, light, and on the other hand our emotional responses to them.
And that is why I believe that there must be a form of music inherent in nature, in natural objects, in the patterns of natural processes. A music that would be as deeply satisfying as any naturally occurring beauty - and our own deepest emotions are, after all, a form of naturally occurring beauty…
Michael stopped reading and let his gaze gradually drift from the page.
He wondered if he knew what such a music would be and tried to grope in the dark recesses of his mind for it. Each part of his mind that he visited seemed as if that music had been playing there only seconds before and all that was left was the last dying echo of something he was unable to catch at and hear. He laid the magazine limply aside.
Then he remembered what it was that the mention of Keats had jogged in his memory.
The slimy things with legs from his dream.
A cold calm came over him as he felt himself coming very close to something.
Coleridge. That man.
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.
'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.'
Dazed, Michael walked over to the bookshelf and pulled down his Coleridge anthology. He took it back to his seat and with a certain apprehension he riffled through the pages until he found the opening lines.
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
The words were very familiar to him, and yet as he read on through them they awoke in him strange sensations and fearful memories that he knew were not his. There reared up inside him a sense of loss and desolation of terrifying intensity which, while he knew it was not his own, resonated so perfectly now with his own aggrievements that he could not but surrender to it absolutely.
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.
CHAPTER 20
The blind rolled up with a sharp rattle and Richard blinked.
'A fascinating evening you appear to have spent,' said Dirk Gently, 'even though the most interesting aspects of it seem to have escaped your curiosity entirely.'
He returned to his seat and lounged back in it pressing his fingertips together.
'Please,' he said, 'do not disappoint me by saying 'where am I?' A glance will suffice.'
Richard looked around him in slow puzzlement and felt as if he were returning unexpectedly from a long sojourn on another planet where all was peace and light and music that went on for ever and ever. He felt so relaxed he could hardly be bothered to breathe.
The wooden toggle on the end of the blind cord knocked a few times against the window, but otherwise all was now silent. The metronome was still. He glanced at his watch. It was just after one o'clock.
'You have been under hypnosis for a little less than an hour,' said Dirk, 'during which I have learned many interesting things and been puzzled by some others which I would now like to discuss with you. A little fresh air will probably help revive you and I suggest a bracing stroll along the canal. No one will be looking for you there. Janice!'
Silence.
A lot of things were still not clear to Richard, and he frowned to himself. When his immediate memory returned a moment later, it was like an elephant suddenly barging through the door and he sat up with a startled jolt.
'Janice!' shouted Dirk again. 'Miss Pearce! Damn the girl.'
He yanked the telephone receivers out of the wastepaper basket and replaced them. An old and battered leather briefcase stood by the desk, and he picked this up, retrieved his hat from the floor and stood up, screwing his hat absurdly on his head.
'Come,' he said, sweeping through the door to where Miss Janice Pearce sat glaring at a pencil, 'let us go. Let us leave this festering hellhole. Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all. Now, Janice -'
'Shut up.'
Dirk shrugged, and then picked off her desk the book which earlier she had mutilated when trying to slam her drawer. He leafed through it, frowning, and then replaced it with a sigh. Janice returned to what she had clearly been doing a moment or two earlier, which was writing a long note with the pencil.
Richard regarded all this in silence, still feeling only semipresent. He shook his head.
Dirk said to him, 'Events may seem to you to be a tangled mass of confusion at the moment. And yet we have some interesting threads to pull on. For of all the things you have told me that have happened, only two are actually physically impossible.'
Richard spoke at last. 'Impossible?' he said with a frown.
'Yes,' said Dirk, 'completely and utterly impossible.'
He smiled.
'Luckily,' he went on, 'you have come to exactly the right place with your interesting problem, for there is no such word as 'impossible' in my dictionary. In fact,' he added, brandishing the abused book, 'everything between 'herring' and 'marmalade' appears to be missing. Thank you, Miss Pearce, you have once again rendered me sterling service, for which I thank you and will, in the event of a successful outcome to this endeavour, even attempt to pay you. In the meantime we have much to think on, and I leave the office in your very capable hands.'
The phone rang and Janice answered it.
'Good afternoon,' she said, 'Wainwright's Fruit Emporium. Mr Wainwright is not able to take calls at this time since he is not right in the head and thinks he is a cucumber. Thank you for calling.'
She slammed the phone down. She looked up again to see the door closing softly behind her ex-employer and his befuddled client.
'Impossible?' said Richard again, in surprise.
'Everything about it,' insisted Dirk, 'completely and utterly -well, let us say inexplicable. There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened. But it cannot be explained by
