Prak posted:

- You wanted to ask me something, - said Prak in a thin voice and coughed slightly.
Just the cough made Arthur stiffen, but it passed and subsided.
- How do you know that? - he asked.
Prak shrugged weakly.
- 'Cos it's true, - he said simply.
Arthur took the point.
- Yes, - he said at last in rather a strained drawl. - I did have a question. Or rather, what I actually have is an Answer. I wanted to know what the Question was.
Prak nodded sympathetically, and Arthur relaxed a little.
- It's... well, it's a long story, - he said, - but the Question I would like to know is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know is that the Answer is Forty-Two, which is a little aggravating.
Prak nodded again.
- Forty-Two, - he said. - Yes, that's right.
He paused. Shadows of thought and memory crossed his face like the shadows of clouds crossing the land.
- I'm afraid, - he said at last, - that the Question and the Answer are mutually exclusive. Knowledge of one logically precludes knowledge of the other. It is impossible that both can ever be known about the same universe.
He paused again. Disappointment crept into Arthur's face and snuggled down into its accustomed place.
- Except, - said Prak, struggling to sort a thought out, - if it happened, it seems that the Question and the Answer would just cancel each other out and take the Universe with them, which would then be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable. It is possible that this has already happened, - he added with a weak smile, - but there is a certain amount of Uncertainty about it.
A little giggle brushed through him.
Arthur sat down on a stool.
- Oh well, - he said with resignation, - I was just hoping there would be some sort of reason.
- Do you know, - said Prak, - the story of the Reason?
Arthur said that he didn't, and Prak said that he knew that he didn't.
He told it.
One night, he said, a spaceship appeared in the sky of a planet which had never seen one before. The planet was Dalforsas, the ship was this one. It appeared as a brilliant new star moving silently across the heavens.
Primitive tribesmen who were sitting huddled on the Cold Hillsides looked up from their steaming night-drinks and pointed with trembling fingers, swearing that they had seen a sign, a sign from their gods which meant that they must now arise at last and go and slay the evil Princes of the Plains.
In the high turrets of their palaces, the Princes of the Plains looked up and saw the shining star, and received it unmistakably as a sign from their gods that they must now go and set about the accursed Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides.
And between them, the Dwellers in the Forest looked up into the sky and saw the sigh of the new star, and saw it with fear and apprehension, for though they had never seen anything like it before, they too knew precisely what it foreshadowed, and they bowed their heads in despair.
They knew that when the rains came, it was a sign.
When the rains departed, it was a sign.
When the winds rose, it was a sign.
When the winds fell, it was a sign.
When in the land there was born at midnight of a full moon a goat with three heads, that was a sign.
When in the land there was born at some time in the afternoon a perfectly normal cat or pig with no birth complications at all, or even just a child with a retrousse nose, that too would often be taken as a sign.
So there was no doubt at all that a new star in the sky was a sign of a particularly spectacular order.
And each new sign signified the same thing - that the Princes of the Plains and the Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides were about to beat the hell out of each other again.
This in itself wouldn't be so bad, except that the Princes of the Plains and the Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides always elected to beat the hell out of each other in the Forest, and it was always the Dwellers in the Forest who came off worst in these exchanges, though as far as they could see it never had anything to do with them.
And sometimes, after some of the worst of these outrages, the Dwellers in the Forest would send a messenger to either the leader of the Princes of the Plains or the leader of the Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides and demand to know the reason for this intolerable behaviour.
And the leader, whichever one it was, would take the messenger aside and explain the Reason to him, slowly and carefully and with great attention to the considerable detail involved.
And the terrible thing was, it was a very good one. It was very clear, very rational, and tough. The messenger would hang his head and feel sad and foolish that he had not realized what a tough and complex place the real world was, and what difficulties and paradoxes had to be embraced if one was to live in it.
- Now do you understand? - the leader would say.
The messenger would nod dumbly.
- And you see these battles have to take place?
Another dumb nod.
- And why they have to take place in the forest, and why it is in everybody's best interest, the Forest Dwellers included, that they should?
- Er...
- In the long run.
- Er, yes.
And the messenger did understand the Reason, and he returned to his people in the Forest. But as he approached them, as he walked through the Forest and amongst the trees, he found that all he could remember of the Reason was how terribly clear the argument had seemed. What it actually was he couldn't remember at all.
And this, of course, was a great comfort when next the Tribesmen and the Princes came hacking and burning their way through the Forest, killing every Forest Dweller in their way.
Prak paused in his story and coughed pathetically.
- I was the messenger, - he said, - after the battles precipitated by the appearance of your ship, which were particularly savage. Many of our people died. I thought I could bring the Reason back. I went and was told it by the leader of the Princes, but on the way back it slipped and melted away in my mind like snow in the sun. That was many years ago, and much has happened since then.
He looked up at Arthur and giggled again very gently.