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Mostly harmless
Heinemann, London, 1992

[... on Hawalius: a planet of oracles and seers and soothsayers and also take-away pizza shops ...]

• The village of oracles wasn't much better.
• He had been told that when looking for a good oracle it was best to find the oracle that other oracles went to, but he was shut.
• [...] Next door was a cave a few hundred yards away and Arthur walked towards it.
• [...] There was also a very nasty smell coming from the pot. At least, Arthur thought it was coming from the pot. The distendes bladdersof some of the local goat-like things were hanging from a propped-up line drying in the sun, and the smell could have been coming from them. There was also, a worryingly small distance away, a pile of discarded bodies of the local goat-like things and the smell could have been coming from them.
• But the smell could have just as easily have been coming from the old lady who was busy beating flies away from the pile of bodies. It was a hopeless task because each of the flies was about the size of a wingled bottle top and all she had was a table tennis bat. Also she seemed half blind. Every now and then, by chance, her wild trashing would connect with one of the flies with a richly satisfying thunk, and the fly would hurtle through the air and smack itself open against the rock face a few yards from the entrance to her cave.
• She gave the impression, by her demeanour, that these were the moments she lived for.
• Arthur watched this exotic performance for a while from a polite distance, and then at last tried giving a gentle cough to attract her attention. The gentle cough, courteously meant, unfortunately involved first inhaling rather more of the local atmosphere than he had so far being doing and as a result, he erupted into a fit of raucous expectoration, and collapsed against the rock face, choking and streaming with tears. He struggled for breath, but each new breath made things worse. He vomited, half-choked again, rolled over his vomit, kept rolling for a few yards, and eventually made it up on to his hands and knees and crawled, panting, into slightly fresher air.

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