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The Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy |
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“Technology is the word we use to
describe things we don’t understand.” ---- Douglas Adams
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" was originally a 1978 BBC radio series, written by
Douglas Adams, which first premiered in the The Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy By Douglas Adams
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of
the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting
this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly
insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so
amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat
idea. This
planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people on
it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested
for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements
of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't
the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And
so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were
miserable, even the ones with digital watches. Many
were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming
down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had
been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans. And
then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed
to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change,
one girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly
realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally
knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was
right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything. Sadly,
however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terribly
stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever. This
is not her story. But
it is the story of that terrible stupid catastrophe and some of its consequences. It
is also the story of a book, a book called The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the
Galaxy — not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the terrible
catastrophe occurred, never seen or heard of by any Earthman. Nevertheless,
a wholly remarkable book. In
fact it was probably the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great
publishing houses of Ursa Minor — of which no Earthman had ever heard either. Not
only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one —
more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty
More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon
Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some
More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway? In
many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the
Galaxy, the Hitch Hiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia
Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though
it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least
wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two
important respects. First,
it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words Don't Panic inscribed
in large friendly letters on its cover. But
the story of this terrible, stupid Thursday, the story of its extraordinary
consequences, and the story of how these consequences are inextricably
intertwined with this remarkable book begins very simply. It
begins with a house. Chapter 1
The
house stood on a slight rise just on the edge of the village. It stood on its
own and looked over a broad spread of West Country farmland. Not a remarkable
house by any means — it was about thirty years old, squattish, squarish, made
of brick, and had four windows set in the front of a size and proportion
which more or less exactly failed to please the eye. The
only person for whom the house was in any way special was Arthur Dent, and
that was only because it happened to be the one he lived in. He had lived in
it for about three years, ever since he had moved out of It
hadn't properly registered with Arthur that the council wanted to knock down
his house and build an bypass instead. At
eight o'clock on Thursday morning Arthur didn't feel very good. He woke up
blearily, got up, wandered blearily round his room, opened a window, saw a
bulldozer, found his slippers, and stomped off to the bathroom to wash. Toothpaste
on the brush — so. Scrub. Shaving
mirror — pointing at the ceiling. He adjusted it. For a moment it reflected a
second bulldozer through the bathroom window. Properly adjusted, it reflected
Arthur Dent's bristles. He shaved them off, washed, dried, and stomped off to
the kitchen to find something pleasant to put in his mouth. Kettle,
plug, fridge, milk, coffee. Yawn. The
word bulldozer wandered through his mind for a moment in search of something
to connect with. The
bulldozer outside the kitchen window was quite a big one. He
stared at it. "Yellow,"
he thought and stomped off back to his bedroom to get dressed. Passing
the bathroom he stopped to drink a large glass of water, and another. He
began to suspect that he was hung over. Why was he hung over? Had he been
drinking the night before? He supposed that he must have been. He caught a
glint in the shaving mirror. "Yellow," he thought and stomped on to
the bedroom. He
stood and thought. The pub, he thought. Oh dear, the pub. He vaguely
remembered being angry, angry about something that seemed important. He'd
been telling people about it, telling people about it at great length, he
rather suspected: his clearest visual recollection was of glazed looks on
other people's faces. Something about a new bypass he had just found out
about. It had been in the pipeline for months only no one seemed to have
known about it. Ridiculous. He took a swig of water. It would sort itself
out, he'd decided, no one wanted a bypass, the council didn't have a leg to
stand on. It would sort itself out. God
what a terrible hangover it had earned him though. He looked at himself in
the wardrobe mirror. He stuck out his tongue. "Yellow," he thought.
The word yellow wandered through his mind in search of something to connect
with. Fifteen
seconds later he was out of the house and lying in front of a big yellow
bulldozer that was advancing up his garden path. Mr
L Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based
life form descended from an ape. More specifically he was forty, fat and
shabby and worked for the local council. Curiously enough, though he didn't
know it, he was also a direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan, though
intervening generations and racial mixing had so juggled his genes that he
had no discernible Mongoloid characteristics, and the only vestiges left in
Mr L Prosser of his mighty ancestry were a pronounced stoutness about the tum
and a predilection for little fur hats. He
was by no means a great warrior: in fact he was a nervous worried man. Today
he was particularly nervous and worried because something had gone seriously
wrong with his job — which was to see that Arthur Dent's house got cleared
out of the way before the day was out. "Come
off it, Mr Dent,", he said, "you can't win
you know. You can't lie in front of the bulldozer indefinitely." He
tried to make his eyes blaze fiercely but they just wouldn't do it. Arthur
lay in the mud and squelched at him. "I'm
game," he said, "we'll see who rusts first." "I'm
afraid you're going to have to accept it," said Mr Prosser gripping his
fur hat and rolling it round the top of his head, "this bypass has got
to be built and it's going to be built!" "First
I've heard of it," said Arthur, "why's it going to be built?" Mr
Prosser shook his finger at him for a bit, then stopped and put it away
again. "What
do you mean, why's it got to be built?" he said. "It's a bypass. You've
got to build bypasses." Bypasses
are devices which allow some people to drive from point A to point B very
fast whilst other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People
living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to
wonder what's so great about point A that so many people of point B are so
keen to get there, and what's so great about point B that so many people of
point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once
and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be. Mr
Prosser wanted to be at point D. Point D wasn't anywhere in particular, it was just any convenient point a very long
way from points A, B and C. He would have a nice little cottage at point D,
with axes over the door, and spend a pleasant amount of time at point E,
which would be the nearest pub to point D. His wife of course wanted climbing
roses, but he wanted axes. He didn't know why - he just liked axes. He
flushed hotly under the derisive grins of the bulldozer drivers. He
shifted his weight from foot to foot, but it was equally uncomfortable on
each. Obviously somebody had been appallingly incompetent and he hoped to God
it wasn't him. Mr
Prosser said: "You were quite entitled to make any suggestions or
protests at the appropriate time you know." "Appropriate
time?" hooted Arthur. "Appropriate time? The first I knew about it
was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I asked him if he'd come to clean
the windows and he said no he'd come to demolish the house. He didn't tell me
straight away of course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and
charged me a fiver. Then he told me." "But
Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the
last nine month." "Oh
yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday
afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them
had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or anything." "But
the plans were on display ..." "On
display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them." "That's
the display department." "With
a torch." "Ah,
well the lights had probably gone." "So
had the stairs." "But
look, you found the notice didn't you?" "Yes,"
said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked
filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying
Beware of the Leopard." A
cloud passed overhead. It cast a shadow over Arthur Dent as he lay propped up
on his elbow in the cold mud. It cast a shadow over Arthur Dent's house. Mr
Prosser frowned at it. "It's
not as if it's a particularly nice house," he said. "I'm
sorry, but I happen to like it." "You'll
like the bypass." "Oh
shut up," said Arthur Dent. "Shut up and go away, and take your
bloody bypass with you. You haven't got a leg to stand on and you know
it." Mr
Prosser's mouth opened and closed a couple of times while his mind was for a
moment filled with inexplicable but terribly attractive visions of Arthur
Dent's house being consumed with fire and Arthur himself running screaming
from the blazing ruin with at least three hefty spears protruding from his
back. Mr Prosser was often bothered with visions like these and they made him
feel very nervous. He stuttered for a moment and then pulled himself
together. "Mr
Dent," he said. "Hello?
Yes?" said Arthur. "Some
factual information for you. Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer
would suffer if I just let it roll straight over you?" "How
much?" said Arthur. "None
at all," said Mr Prosser, and stormed nervously off wondering why his
brain was filled with a thousand hairy horsemen all shouting at him. By
a curious coincidence, None at all is exactly how much suspicion the
ape-descendant Arthur Dent had that one of his closest friends was not
descended from an ape, but was in fact from a small planet in the vicinity of
Betelgeuse and not from Arthur
Dent had never, ever suspected this. This
friend of his had first arrived on the planet some fifteen Earth years
previously, and he had worked hard to blend himself into Earth society —
with, it must be said, some success. For instance he had spent those fifteen
years pretending to be an out of work actor, which was plausible enough. He
had made one careless blunder though, because he had skimped a bit on his
preparatory research. The information he had gathered had led him to choose
the name "Ford Prefect" as being nicely inconspicuous. He
was not conspicuously tall, his features were
striking but not conspicuously handsome. His hair was wiry and gingerish and
brushed backwards from the temples. His skin seemed to be pulled backwards
from the nose. There was something very slightly odd about him, but it was
difficult to say what it was. Perhaps it was that his eyes didn't blink often
enough and when you talked to him for any length of time your eyes began
involuntarily to water on his behalf. Perhaps it was that he smiled slightly
too broadly and gave people the unnerving impression that he was about to go
for their neck. He
struck most of the friends he had made on Earth as an eccentric, but a
harmless one — an unruly boozer with some oddish habits. For instance he
would often gatecrash university parties, get badly drunk and start making
fun of any astrophysicist he could find till he got thrown out. Sometimes
he would get seized with oddly distracted moods and stare into the sky as if
hypnotized until someone asked him what he was doing. Then he would start guiltily
for a moment, relax and grin. "Oh,
just looking for flying saucers," he would joke and everyone would laugh
and ask him what sort of flying saucers he was looking for. "Green
ones!" he would reply with a wicked grin, laugh wildly for a moment and then
suddenly lunge for the nearest bar and buy an enormous round of drinks. Evenings
like this usually ended badly. Ford would get out of his skull on whisky,
huddle into a corner with some girl and explain to her in slurred phrases
that honestly the colour of the flying saucers didn't matter that much
really. Thereafter,
staggering semi-paralytic down the night streets he would often ask passing
policemen if they knew the way to Betelgeuse. The policemen would usually say
something like, "Don't you think it's about time you went off home
sir?" "I'm
trying to baby, I'm trying to," is what Ford invariably replied on these
occasions. In
fact what he was really looking out for when he stared distractedly into the
night sky was any kind of flying saucer at all. The reason he said green was
that green was the traditional space livery of the Betelgeuse trading scouts. Ford
Prefect was desperate that any flying saucer at all would arrive soon because
fifteen years was a long time to get stranded anywhere, particularly
somewhere as mindboggingly dull as the Earth. Ford
wished that a flying saucer would arrive soon because he knew how to flag
flying saucers down and get lifts from them. He knew how to see the Marvels
of the Universe for less than thirty Altairan dollars a day. In
fact, Ford Prefect was a roving researcher for that wholly remarkable book
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Human
beings are great adaptors, and by lunchtime life in the environs of Arthur's
house had settled into a steady routine. It was Arthur's accepted role to lie
squelching in the mud making occasional demands to see his lawyer, his mother
or a good book; it was Mr Prosser's accepted role to tackle Arthur with the
occasional new ploy such as the For the Public Good talk, the March of
Progress talk, the They Knocked My House Down Once You Know, Never Looked
Back talk and various other cajoleries and threats; and it was the bulldozer
drivers' accepted role to sit around drinking coffee and experimenting with
union regulations to see how they could turn the situation to their financial
advantage. The
Earth moved slowly in its diurnal course. The
sun was beginning to dry out the mud Arthur lay in. A
shadow moved across him again. "Hello
Arthur," said the shadow. Arthur
looked up and squinting into the sun was startled to see Ford Prefect
standing above him. "Ford!
Hello, how are you?" "Fine,"
said Ford, "look, are you busy?" "Am
I busy?" exclaimed Arthur. "Well, I've just got all these
bulldozers and things to lie in front of because they'll knock my house down
if I don't, but other than that ... well, no not especially, why?" They
don't have sarcasm on Betelgeuse, and Ford Prefect often failed to notice it
unless he was concentrating. He said, "Good, is there anywhere we can
talk?" "What?"
said Arthur Dent. For
a few seconds Ford seemed to ignore him, and stared fixedly into the sky like
a rabbit trying to get run over by a car. Then suddenly he squatted down
beside Arthur. "We've
got to talk," he said urgently. "Fine,"
said Arthur, "talk." "And
drink," said Ford. "It's vitally important that we talk and drink.
Now. We'll go to the pub in the village." He
looked into the sky again, nervous, expectant. "Look,
don't you understand?" shouted Arthur. He pointed at Prosser. "That
man wants to knock my house down!" Ford
glanced at him, puzzled. "Well
he can do it while you're away can't he?" he asked. "But
I don't want him to!" "Ah." "Look,
what's the matter with you Ford?" said Arthur. "Nothing.
Nothing's the matter. Listen to me — I've got to tell you the most important
thing you've ever heard. I've got to tell you now, and I've got to tell you
in the saloon bar of the Horse and Groom." "But
why?" "Because
you are going to need a very stiff drink." Ford
stared at Arthur, and Arthur was astonished to find that his will was
beginning to weaken. He didn't realize that this was because of an old
drinking game that Ford learned to play in the hyperspace ports that served
the madranite mining belts in the star system of Orion Beta. The
game was not unlike the Earth game called Indian Wrestling, and was played
like this: Two
contestants would sit either side of a table, with a glass in front of each
of them. Between
them would be placed a bottle of Janx Spirit (as immortalized in that ancient
Orion mining song "Oh don't give me none more of that Old Janx Spirit/
No, don't you give me none more of that Old Janx Spirit/ For my head will
fly, my tongue will lie, my eyes will fry and I may die/ Won't you pour me
one more of that sinful Old Janx Spirit"). Each
of the two contestants would then concentrate their will on the bottle and
attempt to tip it and pour spirit into the glass of his opponent — who would
then have to drink it. The
bottle would then be refilled. The game would be played again. And again. Once
you started to lose you would probably keep losing, because one of the
effects of Janx spirit is to depress telepsychic power. As
soon as a predetermined quantity had been consumed, the final loser would
have to perform a forfeit, which was usually obscenely biological. Ford
Prefect usually played to lose. Ford
stared at Arthur, who began to think that perhaps he did want to go to the
Horse and Groom after all. "But
what about my house ...?" he asked plaintively. Ford
looked across to Mr Prosser, and suddenly a wicked thought struck him. "He
wants to knock your house down?" "Yes,
he wants to build ..." "And
he can't because you're lying in front of the bulldozers?" "Yes,
and ..." "I'm
sure we can come to some arrangement," said Ford. "Excuse me!"
he shouted. Mr
Prosser (who was arguing with a spokesman for the bulldozer drivers about
whether or not Arthur Dent constituted a mental health hazard,
and how much they should get paid if he did) looked around. He was surprised
and slightly alarmed to find that Arthur had company. "Yes?
Hello?" he called. "Has Mr Dent come to his senses yet?" "Can
we for the moment," called Ford, "assume that he hasn't?" "Well?"
sighed Mr Prosser. "And
can we also assume," said Ford, "that he's going to be staying here
all day?" "So?" "So
all your men are going to be standing around all day doing nothing?" "Could
be, could be ..." "Well,
if you're resigned to doing that anyway, you don't actually need him to lie here
all the time do you?" "What?" "You
don't," said Ford patiently, "actually need him here." Mr
Prosser thought about this. "Well
no, not as such...", he said, "not exactly
need ..." Prosser was worried. He thought that one of them wasn't making
a lot of sense. Ford
said, "So if you would just like to take it as read that he's actually
here, then he and I could slip off down to the pub for half an hour. How does
that sound?" Mr
Prosser thought it sounded perfectly potty. "That
sounds perfectly reasonable," he said in a reassuring tone of voice,
wondering who he was trying to reassure. "And
if you want to pop off for a quick one yourself later on," said Ford,
"we can always cover up for you in return." "Thank
you very much," said Mr Prosser who no longer knew how to play this at
all, "thank you very much, yes, that's very kind ..." He frowned,
then smiled, then tried to do both at once, failed, grasped hold of his fur
hat and rolled it fitfully round the top of his head. He could only assume
that he had just won. "So,"
continued Ford Prefect, "if you would just like to come over here and
lie down ..." "What?"
said Mr Prosser. "Ah,
I'm sorry," said Ford, "perhaps I hadn't made myself fully clear.
Somebody's got to lie in front of the bulldozers haven't they? Or there won't
be anything to stop them driving into Mr Dent's house will there?" "What?"
said Mr Prosser again. "It's
very simple," said Ford, "my client, Mr Dent, says that he will
stop lying here in the mud on the sole condition that you come and take over
from him." "What
are you talking about?" said Arthur, but Ford nudged him with his shoe
to be quiet. "You
want me," said Mr Prosser, spelling out this new thought to himself,
"to come and lie there ..." "Yes." "In
front of the bulldozer?" "Yes." "Instead
of Mr Dent." "Yes." "In
the mud." "In,
as you say it, the mud." As
soon as Mr Prosser realized that he was substantially the loser after all, it
was as if a weight lifted itself off his shoulders: this was more like the
world as he knew it. He sighed. "In
return for which you will take Mr Dent with you down to the pub?" "That's
it," said Ford. "That's it exactly." Mr
Prosser took a few nervous steps forward and stopped. "Promise?" "Promise,"
said Ford. He turned to Arthur. "Come
on," he said to him, "get up and let the man lie down." Arthur
stood up, feeling as if he was in a dream. Ford
beckoned to Prosser who sadly, awkwardly, sat down in the mud. He felt that
his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was
and whether they were enjoying it. The mud folded itself round his bottom and
his arms and oozed into his shoes. Ford
looked at him severely. "And
no sneaky knocking down Mr Dent's house whilst he's away, alright?" he
said. "The
mere thought," growled Mr Prosser, "hadn't even begun to
speculate," he continued, settling himself back, "about the merest
possibility of crossing my mind." He
saw the bulldozer driver's union representative approaching and let his head
sink back and closed his eyes. He was trying to marshal his arguments for
proving that he did not now constitute a mental health hazard himself. He was
far from certain about this — his mind seemed to be full of noise, horses,
smoke, and the stench of blood. This always happened when he felt miserable
and put upon, and he had never been able to explain it to himself. In a high
dimension of which we know nothing the mighty Khan bellowed with rage, but Mr
Prosser only trembled slightly and whimpered. He began to fell little pricks
of water behind the eyelids. Bureaucratic cock-ups, angry men lying in the
mud, indecipherable strangers handing out inexplicable humiliations and an
unidentified army of horsemen laughing at him in his head — what a day. What
a day. Ford Prefect knew that it didn't matter a pair of dingo's kidneys
whether Arthur's house got knocked down or not now. Arthur
remained very worried. "But
can we trust him?" he said. "Myself
I'd trust him to the end of the Earth," said Ford. "Oh
yes," said Arthur, "and how far's that?" "About
twelve minutes away," said Ford, "come on, I need a drink." Chapter 2
Here's
what the Encyclopedia Galactica has to say about alcohol. It says that
alcohol is a colourless volatile liquid formed by the fermentation of sugars
and also notes its intoxicating effect on certain carbon-based life forms. The
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the
best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. It
says that the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your
brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick. The
Guide also tells you on which planets the best Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters
are mixed, how much you can expect to pay for one and what voluntary
organizations exist to help you rehabilitate afterwards. The
Guide even tells you how you can mix one yourself. Take
the juice from one bottle of that Ol' Janx Spirit, it says. Pour
into it one measure of water from the seas of Santraginus V — Oh that
Santraginean sea water, it says. Oh those Santraginean fish!!! Allow
three cubes of Arcturan Mega-gin to melt into the mixture (it must be
properly iced or the benzine is lost). Allow
four litres of Fallian marsh gas to bubble through it, in memory of all those
happy Hikers who have died of pleasure in the Marshes of Fallia. Over
the back of a silver spoon float a measure of Qualactin Hypermint extract,
redolent of all the heady odours of the dark Qualactin Zones, subtle sweet
and mystic. Drop
in the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger. Watch it dissolve, spreading the fires
of the Algolian Suns deep into the heart of the drink. Sprinkle
Zamphuor. Add
an olive. Drink
... but ... very carefully ... The
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy sells rather better than the Encyclopedia
Galactica. "Six
pints of bitter," said Ford Prefect to the barman of the Horse and
Groom. "And quickly please, the world's about
to end." The
barman of the Horse and Groom didn't deserve this sort of treatment,
he was a dignified old man. He pushed his glasses up his nose and blinked at
Ford Prefect. Ford ignored him and stared out of the window, so the barman
looked instead at Arthur who shrugged helplessly and said nothing. So
the barman said, "Oh yes sir? Nice weather for it," and started
pulling pints. He
tried again. "Going
to watch the match this afternoon then?" Ford
glanced round at him. "No,
no point," he said, and looked back out of the window. "What's
that, foregone conclusion then you reckon sir?" said the barman.
"Arsenal without a chance?" "No,
no," said Ford, "it's just that the world's about to end." "Oh
yes sir, so you said," said the barman, looking over his glasses this
time at Arthur. "Lucky escape for Arsenal if it did." Ford
looked back at him, genuinely surprised. "No,
not really," he said. He frowned. The
barman breathed in heavily. "There you are sir, six pints," he
said. Arthur
smiled at him wanly and shrugged again. He turned and smiled wanly at the
rest of the pub just in case any of them had heard what was going on. None
of them had, and none of them could understand what he was smiling at them
for. A
man sitting next to Ford at the bar looked at the two men, looked at the six
pints, did a swift burst of mental arithmetic, arrived at an answer he liked
and grinned a stupid hopeful grin at them. "Get
off," said Ford, "They're ours," giving him a look that would
have an Algolian Suntiger get on with what it was doing. Ford
slapped a five-pound note on the bar. He said, "Keep the change." "What,
from a fiver? Thank you sir." "You've
got ten minutes left to spend it." The
barman simply decided to walk away for a bit. "Ford,"
said Arthur, "would you please tell me what the hell is going on?" "Drink
up," said Ford, "you've got three pints to get through." "Three
pints?" said Arthur. "At lunchtime?" The
man next to ford grinned and nodded happily. Ford ignored him. He said,
"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." "Very
deep," said Arthur, "you should send that in to the Reader's
Digest. They've got a page for people like you." "Drink
up." "Why
three pints all of a sudden?" "Muscle
relaxant, you'll need it." "Muscle
relaxant?" "Muscle
relaxant." Arthur
stared into his beer. "Did
I do anything wrong today," he said, "or has the world always been
like this and I've been too wrapped up in myself to notice?" "Alright,"
said Ford, "I'll try to explain. How long have we known each
other?" "How
long?" Arthur thought. "Er, about five years, maybe six," he
said. "Most of it seemed to make some sense at the time." "Alright,"
said Ford. "How would you react if I said that I'm not from Arthur
shrugged in a so-so sort of way. "I
don't know," he said, taking a pull of beer. "Why — do you think
it's the sort of thing you're likely to say?" Ford
gave up. It really wasn't worth bothering at the moment, what with the world
being about to end. He just said: "Drink
up." He
added, perfectly factually: "The
world's about to end." Arthur
gave the rest of the pub another wan smile. The rest of the pub frowned at
him. A man waved at him to stop smiling at them and mind his own business. "This
must be Thursday," said Arthur musing to himself,
sinking low over his beer, "I never could get the hang of
Thursdays." Chapter 3
On
this particular Thursday, something was moving quietly through the ionosphere
many miles above the surface of the planet; several somethings in fact,
several dozen huge yellow chunky slablike somethings, huge as office
buildings, silent as birds. They soared with ease, basking in electromagnetic
rays from the star Sol, biding their time, grouping, preparing. The
planet beneath them was almost perfectly oblivious of their presence, which
was just how they wanted it for the moment. The huge yellow somethings went
unnoticed at Goonhilly, they passed over The
only place they registered at all was on a small black device called a
Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic which winked away quietly to itself. It nestled in the
darkness inside a leather satchel which Ford Prefect wore habitually round
his neck. The contents of Ford Prefect's satchel were quite interesting in
fact and would have made any Earth physicist's eyes pop out of his head,
which is why he always concealed them by keeping a couple of dog-eared
scripts for plays he pretended he was auditioning for stuffed in the top.
Besides the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic and the scripts he had an Electronic Thumb
— a short squat black rod, smooth and matt with a couple of flat switches and
dials at one end; he also had a device which looked rather like a largish
electronic calculator. This had about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a
screen about four inches square on which any one of a million
"pages" could be summoned at a moment's notice. It looked insanely
complicated, and this was one of the reasons why the snug plastic cover it
fitted into had the words Don't Panic printed on it in large friendly
letters. The other reason was that this device was in fact that most
remarkable of all books ever to come out of the great publishing corporations
of Ursa Minor — The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The reason why it was
published in the form of a micro sub meson electronic component is that if it
were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitch hiker would require
several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around in. Beneath
that in Ford Prefect's satchel were a few biros, a notepad, and a largish
bath towel from Marks and Spencer. The
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of
towels. A
towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar
hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value — you can wrap it
around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you
can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V,
inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars
which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini
raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat;
wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes
that if you can't see it, it can't see you — daft as a bush, but very
ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and
of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. More
importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a
strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel
with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a
toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of
string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the
strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other
items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the
strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the
galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and
still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with. Hence
a phrase which has passed into hitch hiking slang,
as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really
knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex
with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.) Nestling
quietly on top of the towel in Ford Prefect's satchel, the Sub-Etha
Sens-O-Matic began to wink more quickly. Miles above the surface of the
planet the huge yellow somethings began to fan out. At Jodrell Bank, someone
decided it was time for a nice relaxing cup of tea. "You
got a towel with you?" said Ford Prefect suddenly to Arthur. Arthur,
struggling through his third pint, looked round at him. "Why?
What, no ... should I have?" He had given up being surprised, there
didn't seem to be any point any longer. Ford
clicked his tongue in irritation. "Drink
up," he urged. At
that moment the dull sound of a rumbling crash from outside filtered through
the low murmur of the pub, through the sound of the jukebox, through the
sound of the man next to Ford hiccupping over the whisky Ford had eventually
bought him. Arthur
choked on his beer, leapt to his feet. "What's
that?" he yelped. "Don't
worry," said Ford, "they haven't started yet." "Thank
God for that," said Arthur and relaxed. "It's
probably just your house being knocked down," said Ford, drowning his
last pint. "What?"
shouted Arthur. Suddenly Ford's spell was broken.
Arthur looked wildly around him and ran to the window. "My
God they are! They're knocking my house down. What the hell am I doing in the
pub, Ford?" "It
hardly makes any difference at this stage," said Ford, "let them
have their fun." "Fun?"
yelped Arthur. "Fun!" He quickly checked out of the window again
that they were talking about the same thing. "Damn
their fun!" he hooted and ran out of the pub furiously waving a nearly
empty beer glass. He made no friends at all in the pub that lunchtime. "Stop,
you vandals! You home wreckers!" bawled Arthur. "You half crazed
Visigoths, stop will you!" Ford
would have to go after him. Turning quickly to the barman he asked for four
packets of peanuts. "There
you are sir," said the barman, slapping the packets on the bar,
"twenty-eight pence if you'd be so kind." Ford
was very kind — he gave the barman another five-pound note and told him to
keep the change. The barman looked at it and then looked at Ford. He suddenly
shivered: he experienced a momentary sensation that he didn't understand
because no one on Earth had ever experienced it before. In moments of great
stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny sublimal signal. This
signal simply communicates an exact and almost pathetic sense of how far that
being is from the place of his birth. On Earth it is never possible to be
further than sixteen thousand miles from your birthplace, which really isn't
very far, so such signals are too minute to be noticed. Ford Prefect was at
this moment under great stress, and he was born 600 light years away in the
near vicinity of Betelgeuse. The
barman reeled for a moment, hit by a shocking, incomprehensible sense of
distance. He didn't know what it meant, but he looked at Ford Prefect with a
new sense of respect, almost awe. "Are
you serious, sir?" he said in a small whisper which had the effect of
silencing the pub. "You think the world's going to end?" "Yes,"
said Ford. "But,
this afternoon?" Ford
had recovered himself. He was at his flippest. "Yes,"
he said gaily, "in less than two minutes I would estimate." The
barman couldn't believe the conversation he was having, but he couldn't
believe the sensation he had just had either. "Isn't
there anything we can do about it then?" he said. "No,
nothing," said Ford, stuffing the peanuts into his pockets. Someone
in the hushed bar suddenly laughed raucously at how stupid everyone had
become. The
man sitting next to Ford was a bit sozzled by now. His eyes waved their way
up to Ford. "I
thought," he said, "that if the world was going to end we were
meant to lie down or put a paper bag over our head or something." "If
you like, yes," said Ford. "That's
what they told us in the army," said the man, and his eyes began the
long trek back down to his whisky. "Will
that help?" asked the barman. "No,"
said Ford and gave him a friendly smile. "Excuse me," he said,
"I've got to go." With a wave, he left. The
pub was silent for a moment longer, and then, embarrassingly enough, the man with the raucous laugh did it again. The
girl he had dragged along to the pub with him had grown to loathe him dearly
over the last hour or so, and it would probably have been a great
satisfaction to her to know that in a minute and a half or so he would
suddenly evaporate into a whiff of hydrogen, ozone and carbon monoxide.
However, when the moment came she would be too busy evaporating herself to
notice it. The
barman cleared his throat. He heard himself say: "Last
orders, please." The
huge yellow machines began to sink downward and to move faster. Ford
knew they were there. This wasn't the way he had wanted it. Running
up the lane, Arthur had nearly reached his house. He didn't notice how cold
it had suddenly become, he didn't notice the wind, he
didn't notice the sudden irrational squall of rain. He didn't notice anything
but the caterpillar bulldozers crawling over the rubble that had been his
home. "You
barbarians!" he yelled. "I'll sue the council for every penny it's
got! I'll have you hung, drawn and quartered! And whipped! And boiled ...
until ... until ... until you've had enough." Ford
was running after him very fast. Very very fast. "And
then I'll do it again!" yelled Arthur. "And when I've finished I
will take all the little bits, and I will jump on them!" Arthur
didn't notice that the men were running from the bulldozers; he didn't notice
that Mr Prosser was staring hectically into the sky. What Mr Prosser had
noticed was that huge yellow somethings were screaming through the clouds.
Impossibly huge yellow somethings. "And
I will carry on jumping on them," yelled Arthur, still running,
"until I get blisters, or I can think of anything even more unpleasant
to do, and then ..." Arthur
tripped, and fell headlong, rolled and landed flat on his back. At last he
noticed that something was going on. His finger shot upwards. "What
the hell's that?" he shrieked. Whatever
it was raced across the sky in monstrous yellowness, tore the sky apart with
mind-buggering noise and leapt off into the distance leaving the gaping air
to shut behind it with a bang that drove your ears six feet into your skull. Another
one followed and did the same thing only louder. It's
difficult to say exactly what the people on the surface of the planet were doing
now, because they didn't really know what they were doing themselves. None of
it made a lot of sense — running into houses, running out of houses, howling
noiselessly at the noise. All around the world city streets exploded with
people, cars slewed into each other as the noise fell on them and then rolled
off like a tidal wave over hills and valleys, deserts and oceans, seeming to
flatten everything it hit. Only
one man stood and watched the sky, stood with terrible sadness in his eyes
and rubber bungs in his ears. He knew exactly what was happening and had
known ever since his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic had started winking in the dead of
night beside his pillar and woken him with a start. It was what he had waited
for all these years, but when he had deciphered the signal pattern sitting
alone in his small dark room a coldness had gripped
him and squeezed his heart. Of all the races in all of the
Galaxy who could have come and said a big hello to planet Earth, he thought,
didn't it just have to be the Vogons. Still
he knew what he had to do. As the Vogon craft screamed through the air high
above him he opened his satchel. He threw away a copy of Joseph and the
Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, he threw away a copy
of Godspell: He wouldn't need them where he was going. Everything was ready,
everything was prepared. He
knew where his towel was. A
sudden silence hit the Earth. If anything it was worse than the noise. For a
while nothing happened. The
great ships hung motionless in the air, over every nation on Earth.
Motionless they hung, huge, heavy, steady in the
sky, a blasphemy against nature. Many people went straight into shock as
their minds tried to encompass what they were looking at. The ships hung in
the sky in much the same way that bricks don't. And
still nothing happened. Then
there was a slight whisper, a sudden spacious whisper of open ambient sound.
Every hi fi set in the world, every radio, every television, every cassette
recorder, every woofer, every tweeter, every mid-range driver in the world quietly
turned itself on. Every
tin can, every dust bin, every window, every car, every wine glass, every
sheet of rusty metal became activated as an acoustically perfect sounding
board. Before
the Earth passed away it was going to be treated to the very ultimate in
sound reproduction, the greatest public address system ever built. But there
was no concert, no music, no fanfare, just a simple message. "People
of Earth, your attention please," a voice said, and it was wonderful.
Wonderful perfect quadrophonic sound with distortion levels so low as to make
a brave man weep. "This
is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council,"
the voice continued. "As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for
development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a
hyperspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably your
planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take
slightly less that two of your Earth minutes. Thank you." The
PA died away. Uncomprehending
terror settled on the watching people of Earth. The terror moved slowly
through the gathered crowds as if they were iron fillings on a sheet of board
and a magnet was moving beneath them. Panic sprouted again, desperate fleeing
panic, but there was nowhere to flee to. Observing
this, the Vogons turned on their PA again. It said: "There's
no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and
demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department on Alpha
Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge
any formal complaint and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it
now." The
PA fell silent again and its echo drifted off across the land. The huge ships
turned slowly in the sky with easy power. On the underside of each a hatchway
opened, an empty black space. By
this time somebody somewhere must have manned a radio transmitter, located a
wavelength and broadcasted a message back to the Vogon ships, to plead on behalf
of the planet. Nobody ever heard what they said, they only heard the reply.
The PA slammed back into life again. The voice was annoyed. It said: "What
do you mean you've never been to Alpha Centauri? For heaven's sake mankind,
it's only four light years away you know. I'm sorry, but if you can't be
bothered to take an interest in local affairs that's your own lookout. "Energize
the demolition beams." Light
poured out into the hatchways. "I
don't know," said the voice on the PA, "apathetic bloody planet,
I've no sympathy at all." It cut off. There
was a terrible ghastly silence. There
was a terrible ghastly noise. There
was a terrible ghastly silence. The
Vogon Constructor fleet coasted away into the inky starry void. Chapter 4
Far
away on the opposite spiral arm of the Galaxy, five hundred thousand light
years from the star Sol, Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Imperial
Galactic Government, sped across the seas of Damogran, his ion drive delta
boat winking and flashing in the Damogran sun. Damogran
the hot; Damogran the remote; Damogran the almost totally unheard of. Damogran,
secret home of the Heart of Gold. The
boat sped on across the water. It would be some time before it reached its
destination because Damogran is such an inconveniently arranged planet. It
consists of nothing but middling to large desert islands separated by very
pretty but annoyingly wide stretches of ocean. The
boat sped on. Because
of this topological awkwardness Damogran has always remained a deserted
planet. This is why the Imperial Galactic Government chose Damogran for the
Heart of Gold project, because it was so deserted and the Heart of Gold was
so secret. The
boat zipped and skipped across the sea, the sea that lay between the main
islands of the only archipelago of any useful size on the whole planet.
Zaphod Beeblebrox was on his way from the tiny spaceport on Easter Island
(the name was an entirely meaningless coincidence — in Galacticspeke, easter
means small flat and light brown) to the Heart of Gold island, which by another
meaningless coincidence was called One
of the side effects of work on the Heart of Gold was a whole string of pretty
meaningless coincidences. But
it was not in any way a coincidence that today, the day of culmination of the
project, the great day of unveiling, the day that the Heart of Gold was
finally to be introduced to a marvelling Galaxy, was also a great day of
culmination for Zaphod Beeblebrox. It was for the sake of this day that he
had first decided to run for the Presidency, a decision which had sent waves
of astonishment throughout the Imperial Galaxy — Zaphod Beeblebrox?
President? Not the Zaphod Beeblebrox? Not the President? Many had seen it as
a clinching proof that the whole of known creation had finally gone bananas. Zaphod
grinned and gave the boat an extra kick of speed. Zaphod
Beeblebrox, adventurer, ex-hippy, good timer, (crook? quite possibly), manic
self-publicist, terribly bad at personal relationships, often thought to be
completely out to lunch. President? No
one had gone bananas, not in that way at least. Only
six people in the entire Galaxy understood the principle on which the Galaxy
was governed, and they knew that once Zaphod Beeblebrox had announced his
intention to run as President it was more or less a fait accompli: he was the
ideal Presidency fodder \footnote{ President: full title President of the
Imperial Galactic Government.} . What
they completely failed to understand was why Zaphod was doing it. He
banked sharply, shooting a wild wall of water at the sun. Today
was the day; today was the day when they would realize what Zaphod had been
up to. Today was what Zaphod Beeblebrox's Presidency was all about. Today was
also his two hundredth birthday, but that was just another meaningless
coincidence. As
he skipped his boat across the seas of Damogran he smiled quietly to himself
about what a wonderful exciting day it was going to be. He relaxed and spread
his two arms lazily across the seat back. He steered with an extra arm he'd
recently fitted just beneath his right one to help improve his ski-boxing. "Hey,"
he cooed to himself, "you're a real cool boy you." But his nerves
sang a song shriller than a dog whistle. The
On
top of the cliffs stood a reception committee. It
consisted in large part of the engineers and researchers who had built the
Heart of Gold — mostly humanoid, but here and there were a few reptiloid
atomineers, two or three green slyph-like maximegalacticans, an octopoid
physucturalist or two and a Hooloovoo (a Hooloovoo is a super-intelligent
shade of the color blue). All except the Hooloovoo were resplendent in their
multi-colored ceremonial lab coats; the Hooloovoo had been temporarily
refracted into a free standing prism for the occasion. There
was a mood of immense excitement thrilling through all of them. Together and
between them they had gone to and beyond the furthest limits of physical
laws, restructured the fundamental fabric of matter, strained, twisted and
broken the laws of possibility and impossibility, but still the greatest
excitement of all seemed to be to meet a man with an orange sash round his
neck. (An orange sash was what the President of the Galaxy traditionally
wore.) It might not even have made much difference to them if they'd known
exactly how much power the President of the Galaxy actually wielded: none at all. Only six people in the Galaxy knew that the
job of the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention
away from it. Zaphod
Beeblebrox was amazingly good at his job. The
crowd gasped, dazzled by sun and seemanship, as the Presidential speedboat
zipped round the headland into the bay. It flashed and shone as it came
skating over the sea in wide skidding turns. In
fact it didn't need to touch the water at all, because it was supported on a
hazy cushion of ionized atoms — but just for effect
it was fitted with thin finblades which could be lowered into the water. They
slashed sheets of water hissing into the air, carved deep gashes into the sea
which swayed crazily and sank back foaming into the boat's wake as it
careered across the bay. Zaphod
loved effect: it was what he was best at. He
twisted the wheel sharply, the boat slewed round in
a wild scything skid beneath the cliff face and dropped to rest lightly on
the rocking waves. Within
seconds he ran out onto the deck and waved and grinned at over three billion
people. The three billion people weren't actually there, but they watched his
every gesture through the eyes of a small robot tri-D camera which hovered
obsequiously in the air nearby. The antics of the President always made
amazingly popular tri-D; that's what they were for. He
grinned again. Three billion and six people didn't know it, but today would
be a bigger antic than anyone had bargained for. The
robot camera homed in for a close up on the more popular of his two heads and
he waved again. He was roughly humanoid in appearance except for the extra
head and third arm. His fair tousled hair stuck out in random directions, his
blue eyes glinted with something completely unidentifiable, and his chins
were almost always unshaven. A
twenty-foot-high transparent globe floated next to his boat, rolling and
bobbing, glistening in the brilliant sun. Inside it floated a wide
semi-circular sofa upholstered in glorious red leather: the more the globe
bobbed and rolled, the more the sofa stayed perfectly still, steady as an
upholstered rock. Again, all done for effect as much as anything. Zaphod
stepped through the wall of the globe and relaxed on the sofa. He spread his two
arms lazily along the back and with the third brushed some dust off his knee.
His heads looked about, smiling; he put his feet up. At any moment, he
thought, he might scream. Water
boiled up beneath the bubble, it seethed and spouted. The bubble surged into
the air, bobbing and rolling on the water spout. Up, up it climbed, throwing
stilts of light at the cliff. Up it surged on the jet, the water falling from
beneath it, crashing back into the sea hundreds of feet below. Zaphod
smiled, picturing himself. A
thoroughly ridiculous form of transport, but a thoroughly beautiful one. At
the top of the cliff the globe wavered for a moment, tipped on to a railed
ramp, rolled down it to a small concave platform and riddled to a halt. To
tremendous applause Zaphod Beeblebrox stepped out of the bubble, his orange
sash blazing in the light. The
President of the Galaxy had arrived. He
waited for the applause to die down, then raised his
hands in greeting. "Hi,"
he said. A
government spider sidled up to him and attempted to press a copy of his
prepared speech into his hands. Pages three to seven of the original version
were at the moment floating soggily on the Damogran sea some five miles out
from the bay. Pages one and two had been salvaged by a Damogran Frond Crested
Eagle and had already become incorporated into an extraordinary new form of
nest which the eagle had invented. It was constructed largely of papier m@ch@
and it was virtually impossible for a newly hatched baby eagle to break out
of it. The Damogran Frond Crested Eagle had heard of the notion of survival
of the species but wanted no truck with it. Zaphod
Beeblebrox would not be needing his set speech and
he gently deflected the one being offered him by the spider. "Hi,"
he said again. Everyone
beamed at him, or, at least, nearly everyone. He singled out Trillian from
the crowd. Trillian was a gird that Zaphod had picked up recently whilst
visiting a planet, just for fun, incognito. She was slim, darkish, humanoid, with long waves of black hair, a full mouth, an
odd little nob of a nose and ridiculously brown eyes. With her red head scarf
knotted in that particular way and her long flowing silky brown dress she
looked vaguely Arabic. Not that anyone there had ever heard of an Arab of
course. The Arabs had very recently ceased to exist, and even when they had
existed they were five hundred thousand light years from Damogran. Trillian
wasn't anybody in particular, or so Zaphod claimed. She just went around with
him rather a lot and told him what she thought of him. "Hi
honey," he said to her. She
flashed him a quick tight smile and looked away. Then she looked back for a
moment and smiled more warmly — but by this time he was looking at something
else. "Hi,"
he said to a small knot of creatures from the press who were standing nearby
wishing that he would stop saying Hi and get on with the quotes. He grinned
at them particularly because he knew that in a few moments he would be giving
them one hell of a quote. The
next thing he said though was not a lot of use to them. One of the officials
of the party had irritably decided that the President was clearly not in a
mood to read the deliciously turned speech that had been written for him, and
had flipped the switch on the remote control device in his pocket. Away in front
of them a huge white dome that bulged against the sky cracked down in the
middle, split, and slowly folded itself down into the ground. Everyone gasped
although they had known perfectly well it was going to do that because they
had built it that way. Beneath
it lay uncovered a huge starship, one hundred and
fifty metres long, shaped like a sleek running shoe, perfectly white and
mindboggingly beautiful. At the heart of it, unseen, lay
a small gold box which carried within it the most brain-wretching device ever
conceived, a device which made this starship unique in the history of the
galaxy, a device after which the ship had been named — The Heart of Gold. "Wow",
said Zaphod Beeblebrox to the Heart of Gold. There wasn't much else he could
say. He
said it again because he knew it would annoy the press. "Wow." The
crowd turned their faces back towards him expectantly. He winked at Trillian
who raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes at him. She knew what he was
about to say and thought him a terrible showoff. "That
is really amazing," he said. "That really is truly amazing. That is
so amazingly amazing I think I'd like to steal it." A
marvellous Presidential quote, absolutely true to form. The crowd laughed
appreciatively, the newsmen gleefully punched buttons on their Sub-Etha
News-Matics and the President grinned. As
he grinned his heart screamed unbearably and he fingered the small
Paralyso-Matic bomb that nestled quietly in his pocket. Finally
he could bear it no more. He lifted his heads up to the sky, let out a wild
whoop in major thirds, threw the bomb to the ground and ran forward through
the sea of suddenly frozen smiles. Chapter 5
Prostetnic
Vogon Jeltz was not a pleasant sight, even for other Vogons. His highly domed
nose rose high above a small piggy forehead. His dark green rubbery skin was
thick enough for him to play the game of Vogon Civil Service politics, and
play it well, and waterproof enough for him to survive indefinitely at sea
depths of up to a thousand feet with no ill effects. Not
that he ever went swimming of course. His busy schedule would not allow it.
He was the way he was because billions of years ago when the Vogons had first
crawled out of the sluggish primeval seas of Vogsphere, and had lain panting
and heaving on the planet's virgin shores... when the first rays of the
bright young Vogsol sun had shone across them that morning, it was as if the
forces of evolution ad simply given up on them there and then, had turned aside
in disgust and written them off as an ugly and unfortunate mistake. They
never evolved again; they should never have survived. The
fact that they did is some kind of tribute to the thick-willed slug-brained
stubbornness of these creatures. Evolution? they said to themselves, Who
needs it?, and what nature refused to do for them they simply did without
until such time as they were able to rectify the grosser anatomical
inconveniences with surgery. Meanwhile,
the natural forces on the planet Vogsphere had been working overtime to make
up for their earlier blunder. They brought forth scintillating jewelled
scuttling crabs, which the Vogons ate, smashing their shells with iron
mallets; tall aspiring trees with breathtaking slenderness and colour which
the Vogons cut down and burned the crab meat with; elegant gazelle-like
creatures with silken coats and dewy eyes which the Vogons would catch and
sit on. They were no use as transport because their backs would snap
instantly, but the Vogons sat on them anyway. Thus
the planet Vogsphere whiled away the unhappy millennia until the Vogons
suddenly discovered the principles of interstellar travel. Within a few short
Vog years every last Vogon had migrated to the Megabrantis cluster, the
political hub of the Galaxy and now formed the immensely powerful backbone of
the Galactic Civil Service. They have attempted to acquire learning, they
have attempted to acquire style and social grace, but in most respects the
modern Vogon is little different from his primitive forebears. Every year
they import twenty-seven thousand scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs from
their native planet and while away a happy drunken night smashing them to
bits with iron mallets. Prostetnic
Vogon Jeltz was a fairly typical Vogon in that he was thoroughly vile. Also,
he did not like hitch hikers. Somewhere
in a small dark cabin buried deep in the intestines of Prostetnic Vogon
Jeltz's flagship, a small match flared nervously. The owner of the match was
not a Vogon, but he knew all about them and was right to be nervous. His name
was Ford Prefect \footnote{Ford Prefect's original name is only pronuncible
in an obscure Betelgeusian dialect, now virtually extinct since the Great
Collapsing Hrung Disaster of Gal./Sid./Year 03758 which wiped out all the old
Praxibetel communities on Betelgeuse Seven. Ford's father was the only man on
the entire planet to survive the Great Collapsing Hrung disaster, by an
extraordinary coincidence that he was never able satisfactorily to explain.
The whole episode is shrouded in deep mystery: in fact no one ever knew what
a Hrung was nor why it had chosen to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven
particularly. Ford's father, magnanimously waving aside the clouds of
suspicion that had inevitably settled around him, came to live on Betelgeuse
Five where he both fathered and uncled Ford; in memory of his now dead race
he christened him in the ancient Praxibetel tongue.} . He
looked about the cabin but could see very little; strange monstrous shadows
loomed and leaped with the tiny flickering flame, but all was quiet. He
breathed a silent thank you to the Dentrassis. The Dentrassis are an unruly
tribe of gourmands, a wild but pleasant bunch whom the Vogons had recently
taken to employing as catering staff on their long haul fleets, on the strict
understanding that they keep themselves very much to themselves. This
suited the Dentrassis fine, because they loved Vogon money, which is one of
the hardest currencies in space, but loathed the Vogons themselves. The only
sort of Vogon a Dentrassi liked to see was an annoyed Vogon. It
was because of this tiny piece of information that Ford Prefect was not now a
whiff of hydrogen, ozone and carbon monoxide. He
heard a slight groan. By the light of the match he saw a heavy shape moving
slightly on the floor. Quickly he shook the match out, reached in his pocket,
found what he was looking for and took it out. He crouched on the floor. The
shape moved again. Ford
Prefect said: "I bought some peanuts." Arthur
Dent moved, and groaned again, muttering incoherently. "Here,
have some," urged Ford, shaking the packet again, "if you've never
been through a matter transference beam before you've probably lost some salt
and protein. The beer you had should have cushioned your system a bit." "Whhhrrrr..."
said Arthur Dent. He opened his eyes. "It's
dark," he said. "Yes,"
said Ford Prefect, "it's dark." "No
light," said Arthur Dent. "Dark, no light." One
of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about human
beings was their habit of continually stating and repeating the obvious, as
in It's a nice day, or You're very tall, or Oh dear you seem to have fallen
down a thirty-foot well, are you alright? At first Ford had formed a theory
to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings don't keep exercising
their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months'
consideration and observation he abandoned this theory in favour of a new
one. If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains
start working. After a while he abandoned this one as well as being
obstructively cynical and decided he quite liked human beings after all, but
he always remained desperately worried about the terrible number of things
they didn't know about. "Yes,"
he agreed with Arthur, "no light." He helped Arthur to some
peanuts. "How do you feel?" he asked. "Like
a military academy," said Arthur, "bits of me keep on passing
out." Ford
stared at him blankly in the darkness. "If
I asked you where the hell we were," said Arthur weakly, "would I
regret it?" Ford
stood up. "We're safe," he said. "Oh
good," said Arthur. "We're
in a small galley cabin," said Ford, "in one of the spaceships of
the Vogon Constructor Fleet." "Ah,"
said Arthur, "this is obviously some strange usage of the word safe that
I wasn't previously aware of." Ford
struck another match to help him search for a light switch. Monstrous shadows
leaped and loomed again. Arthur struggled to his feet and hugged himself
apprehensively. Hideous alien shapes seemed to throng about him, the air was
thick with musty smells which sidled into his lungs without identifying
themselves, and a low irritating hum kept his brain from focusing. "How
did we get here?" he asked, shivering slightly. "We
hitched a lift," said Ford. "Excuse
me?" said Arthur. "Are you trying to tell me that we just stuck out
our thumbs and some green bug-eyed monster stuck his head out and said, Hi
fellas, hop right in. I can take you as far as the "Well,"
said Ford, "the Thumb's an electronic sub-etha signalling device, the
roundabout's at Barnard's Star six light years away, but otherwise, that's
more or less right." "And
the bug-eyed monster?" "Is
green, yes." "Fine,"
said Arthur, "when can I get home?" "You
can't," said Ford Prefect, and found the light switch. "Shade
your eyes ..." he said, and turned it on. Even
Ford was surprised. "Good
grief," said Arthur, "is this really the
interior of a flying saucer?" Prostetnic
Vogon Jeltz heaved his unpleasant green body round the control bridge. He
always felt vaguely irritable after demolishing populated planets. He wished
that someone would come and tell him that it was all wrong so that he could
shout at them and feel better. He flopped as heavily as he could on to his
control seat in the hope that it would break and give him something to be
genuinely angry about, but it only gave a complaining sort of creak. "Go
away!" he shouted at a young Vogon guard who entered the bridge at that
moment. The guard vanished immediately, feeling rather relieved. He was glad
it wouldn't now be him who delivered the report they'd just received. The
report was an official release which said that a wonderful new form of
spaceship drive was at this moment being unveiled at a government research
base on Damogran which would henceforth make all hyperspatial express routes
unnecessary. Another
door slid open, but this time the Vogon captain didn't shout because it was
the door from the galley quarters where the Dentrassis prepared his meals. A
meal would be most welcome. A
huge furry creature bounded through the door with his lunch tray. It was
grinning like a maniac. Prostetnic
Vogon Jeltz was delighted. He knew that when a Dentrassi looked that pleased
with itself there was something going on somewhere on the ship that he could
get very angry indeed about. Ford
and Arthur stared about them. "Well,
what do you think?" said Ford. "It's
a bit squalid, isn't it?" Ford
frowned at the grubby mattress, unwashed cups and unidentifiable bits of
smelly alien underwear that lay around the cramped cabin. "Well,
this is a working ship, you see," said Ford. "These are the
Dentrassi sleeping quarters." "I
thought you said they were called Vogons or something." "Yes,"
said Ford, "the Vogons run the ship, the Dentrassis are the cooks, they let us on board." "I'm
confused," said Arthur. "Here,
have a look at this," said Ford. He sat down on one of the mattresses
and rummaged about in his satchel. Arthur prodded the mattress nervously and
then sat on it himself: in fact he had very little to be nervous about,
because all mattresses grown in the swamps of Squornshellous Zeta are very
thoroughly killed and dried before being put to service. Very few have ever
come to life again. Ford
handed the book to Arthur. "What
is it?" asked Arthur. "The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's a sort of electronic book. It tells
you everything you need to know about anything. That's its job." Arthur
turned it over nervously in his hands. "I
like the cover," he said. "Don't Panic. It's the first helpful or
intelligible thing anybody's said to me all day." "I'll
show you how it works," said Ford. He snatched it from Arthur who was
still holding it as if it was a two-week-dead lark and pulled it out of its
cover. "You
press this button here you see and the screen lights up giving you the
index." A
screen, about three inches by four, lit up and characters began to flicker
across the surface. "You
want to know about Vogons, so I enter that name so." His fingers tapped
some more keys. "And there we are." The
words Vogon Constructor Fleets flared in green across the screen. Ford
pressed a large red button at the bottom of the screen and words began to
undulate across it. At the same time, the book began to speak the entry as
well in a still quiet measured voice. This is what the book said. "Vogon
Constructor Fleets. Here is what to do if you want to get a lift from a
Vogon: forget it. They are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy — not
actually evil, but bad tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They
wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous
Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent
back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and
finally buried in soft peat and recycled as firelighters. "The
best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick your finger down his
throat, and the best way to irritate him is to feed his grandmother to the
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. "On
no account allow a Vogon to read poetry at you." Arthur
blinked at it. "What
a strange book. How did we get a lift then?" "That's
the point, it's out of date now," said Ford, sliding the book back into
its cover. "I'm doing the field research for the New Revised Edition,
and one of the things I'll have to include is a bit about how the Vogons now
employ Dentrassi cooks which gives us a rather useful little loophole." A
pained expression crossed Arthur's face. "But who are the
Dentrassi?" he said. "Great
guys," said Ford. "They're the best cooks and the best drink mixers
and they don't give a wet slap about anything else. And they'll always help
hitch hikers aboard, partly because they like the company, but mostly because
it annoys the Vogons. Which is exactly the sort of thing
you need to know if you're an impoverished hitch hiker trying to see the
marvels of the Universe for less than thirty Altairan Dollars a day.
And that's my job. Fun, isn't it?" Arthur
looked lost. "It's
amazing," he said and frowned at one of the other mattresses. "Unfortunately
I got stuck on the Earth for rather longer than I intended," said Ford.
"I came for a week and got stuck for fifteen years." "But
how did you get there in the first place then?" "Easy,
I got a lift with a teaser." "A
teaser?" "Yeah." "Er,
what is ..." "A
teaser? Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around
looking for planets which haven't made interstellar contact yet and buzz
them." "Buzz
them?" Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult
for him. "Yeah",
said Ford, "they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few
people around, then land right by some poor soul whom no one's ever going to believe
and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennae on their
heads and making beep beep noises. Rather childish really." Ford leant
back on the mattress with his hands behind his head and looked infuriatingly
pleased with himself. "Ford,"
insisted Arthur, "I don't know if this sounds like a silly question, but
what am I doing here?" "Well
you know that," said Ford. "I rescued you from the Earth." "And
what's happened to the Earth?" "Ah.
It's been demolished." "Has
it," said Arthur levelly. "Yes.
It just boiled away into space." "Look,"
said Arthur, "I'm a bit upset about that." Ford
frowned to himself and seemed to roll the thought around his mind. "Yes,
I can understand that," he said at last. "Understand
that!" shouted Arthur. "Understand that!" Ford
sprang up. "Keep
looking at the book!" he hissed urgently. "What?" "Don't
Panic." "I'm
not panicking!" "Yes
you are." "Alright
so I'm panicking, what else is there to do?" "You
just come along with me and have a good time. The Galaxy's a fun place.
You'll need to have this fish in your ear." "I
beg your pardon?" asked Arthur, rather politely he thought. Ford
was holding up a small glass jar which quite clearly had a small yellow fish
wriggling around in it. Arthur blinked at him. He wished there was something
simple and recognizable he could grasp hold of. He would have felt safe if
alongside the Dentrassi underwear, the piles of Squornshellous mattresses and
the man from Betelgeuse holding up a small yellow fish and offering to put it
in his ear he had been able to see just a small packet of corn flakes. He
couldn't, and he didn't feel safe. Suddenly
a violent noise leapt at them from no source that he could identify. He
gasped in terror at what sounded like a man trying to gargle whilst fighting
off a pack of wolves. "Shush!"
said Ford. "Listen, it might be important." "Im
... important?" "It's
the Vogon captain making an announcement on the T'annoy." "You
mean that's how the Vogons talk?" "Listen!" "But
I can't speak Vogon!" "You
don't need to. Just put that fish in your ear." Ford,
with a lightning movement, clapped his hand to Arthur's ear, and he had the
sudden sickening sensation of the fish slithering deep into his aural tract. Gasping
with horror he scrabbled at his ear for a second or so, but then slowly
turned goggle-eyed with wonder. He was experiencing the aural equivalent of
looking at a picture of two black silhouetted faces and suddenly seeing it as
a picture of a white candlestick. Or of looking at a lot of coloured dots on
a piece of paper which suddenly resolve themselves into the figure six and
mean that your optician is going to charge you a lot of money for a new pair
of glasses. He
was still listening to the howling gargles, he knew
that, only now it had taken on the semblance of perfectly straightforward
English. This
is what he heard ... Chapter 6
"Howl
howl gargle howl gargle howl howl howl gargle howl gargle howl howl gargle
gargle howl gargle gargle gargle howl slurrp uuuurgh should have a good time.
Message repeats. This is your captain speaking, so stop whatever you're doing
and pay attention. First of all I see from our instruments that we have a
couple of hitchhikers aboard. Hello wherever you are. I just want to make it
totally clear that you are not at all welcome. I worked hard to get where I
am today, and I didn't become captain of a Vogon constructor ship simply so I
could turn it into a taxi service for a load of degenerate freeloaders. I
have sent out a search party, and as soon that they find you I will put you
off the ship. If you're very lucky I might read you some of my poetry first. "Secondly,
we are about to jump into hyperspace for the journey to Barnard's Star. On
arrival we will stay in dock for a seventy-two hour refit, and no one's to
leave the ship during that time. I repeat, all
planet leave is cancelled. I've just had an unhappy love affair, so I don't
see why anybody else should have a good time. Message ends." The
noise stopped. Arthur
discovered to his embarrassment that he was lying curled up in a small ball
on the floor with his arms wrapped round his head. He smiled weakly. "Charming
man," he said. "I wish I had a daughter so I could forbid her to
marry one ..." "You
wouldn't need to," said Ford. "They've got as much sex appeal as a
road accident. No, don't move," he added as Arthur began to uncurl
himself, "you'd better be prepared for the jump into hyperspace. It's
unpleasantly like being drunk." "What's
so unpleasant about being drunk?" "You
ask a glass of water." Arthur
thought about this. "Ford,"
he said. "Yeah?" "What's
this fish doing in my ear?" "It's
translating for you. It's a He
tossed over The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and then curled himself up
into a foetal ball to prepare himself for the jump. At
that moment the bottom fell out of Arthur's mind. His
eyes turned inside out. His feet began to leak out of the top of his head. The
room folded flat about him, spun around, shifted out of existence and left
him sliding into his own navel. They
were passing through hyperspace. "The
"Now
it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindboggingly
useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to
see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. "The
argument goes something like this: `I refuse to prove that I exist,' says
God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.' "`But,'
says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have
evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own
arguments, you don't. QED.' "`Oh
dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff
of logic. "`Oh,
that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is
white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing. "Most
leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but
that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as
the central theme of his best-selling book Well That About Wraps It Up For
God. "Meanwhile,
the poor Arthur
let out a low groan. He was horrified to discover that the kick through
hyperspace hadn't killed him. He was now six light years from the place that
the Earth would have been if it still existed. The
Earth. Visions
of it swam sickeningly through his nauseated mind. There was no way his
imagination could feel the impact of the whole Earth having gone, it was too
big. He prodded his feelings by thinking that his parents and his sister had
gone. No reaction. He thought of all the people he had been close to. No
reaction. Then he thought of a complete stranger he had been standing behind
in the queue at the supermarket before and felt a sudden stab — the
supermarket was gone, everything in it was gone. Nelson's Column had gone!
Nelson's Column had gone and there would be no outcry, because there was no
one left to make an outcry. From now on Nelson's Column only existed in his
mind. He
passed out. When he came round a second later he found he was sobbing for his
mother. He
jerked himself violently to his feet. "Ford!" Ford
looked up from where he was sitting in a corner humming to himself.
He always found the actual travelling-through-space part of space travel
rather trying. "Yeah?"
he said. "If
you're a researcher on this book thing and you were on Earth, you must have
been gathering material on it." "Well,
I was able to extend the original entry a bit, yes." "Let
me see what it says in this edition then, I've got to see it." "Yeah
OK." He passed it over again. Arthur
grabbed hold of it and tried to stop his hands shaking. He pressed the entry
for the relevant page. The screen flashed and swirled and resolved into a
page of print. Arthur stared at it. "It
doesn't have an entry!" he burst out. Ford
looked over his shoulder. "Yes
it does," he said, "down there, see at the bottom of the screen,
just under Eccentrica Gallumbits, the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon
6." Arthur
followed Ford's finger, and saw where it was pointing. For a moment it still
didn't register, then his mind nearly blew up. "What?
Harmless? Is that all it's got to say? Harmless! One word!" Ford
shrugged. "Well,
there are a hundred billion stars in the Galaxy, and only a limited amount of
space in the book's microprocessors," he said, "and no one knew
much about the Earth of course." "Well
for God's sake I hope you managed to rectify that a bit." "Oh
yes, well I managed to transmit a new entry off to the editor. He had to trim
it a bit, but it's still an improvement." "And
what does it say now?" asked Arthur. "Mostly
harmless," admitted Ford with a slightly embarrassed cough. "Mostly
harmless!" shouted Arthur. "What
was that noise?" hissed Ford. "It
was me shouting," shouted Arthur. "No!
Shut up!" said Ford. I think we're in trouble." "You
think we're in trouble!" Outside
the door were the sounds of marching feet. "The
Dentrassi?" whispered Arthur. "No,
those are steel tipped boots," said Ford. There
was a sharp ringing rap on the door. "Then
who is it?" said Arthur. "Well,"
said Ford, "if we're lucky it's just the Vogons come to throw us in to
space." "And
if we're unlucky?" "If
we're unlucky," said Ford grimly, "the captain might be serious in
his threat that he's going to read us some of his poetry first ..." Chapter 7
Vogon
poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The
second worst is that of the Azagoths of Kria. During a recitation by their
Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode To A Small Lump of
Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his
audience died of internal haemorrhaging, and the President of the
Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs
off. Grunthos is reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's
reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic
entitled My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a
desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leapt straight up through
his neck and throttled his brain. The
very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator Paula Nancy Millstone
Jennings of Greenbridge, Prostetnic
Vogon Jeltz smiled very slowly. This was done not so much for effect as
because he was trying to remember the sequence of muscle movements. He had
had a terribly therapeutic yell at his prisoners and was now feeling quite
relaxed and ready for a little callousness. The
prisoners sat in Poetry Appreciation Chairs — strapped in. Vogons suffered no
illusions as to the regard their works were generally held in. Their early
attempts at composition had been part of bludgeoning insistence that they be
accepted as a properly evolved and cultured race, but now the only thing that
kept them going was sheer bloodymindedness. The
sweat stood out cold on Ford Prefect's brow, and slid round the electrodes
strapped to his temples. These were attached to a battery of electronic
equipment — imagery intensifiers, rhythmic modulators, alliterative
residulators and simile dumpers — all designed to heighten the experience of
the poem and make sure that not a single nuance of the poet's thought was
lost. Arthur
Dent sat and quivered. He had no idea what he was in for, but he knew that he
hadn't liked anything that had happened so far and didn't think things were
likely to change. The
Vogon began to read — a fetid little passage of his own devising. "Oh
frettled gruntbuggly ..." he began. Spasms wracked Ford's body — this
was worse than ever he'd been prepared for. "...
thy micturations are to me | As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee." "Aaaaaaarggggghhhhhh!"
went Ford Prefect, wrenching his head back as lumps of pain thumped through
it. He could dimly see beside him Arthur lolling and rolling in his seat. He
clenched his teeth. "Groop
I implore thee," continued the merciless Vogon, "my foonting
turlingdromes." His
voice was rising to a horrible pitch of impassioned stridency. "And
hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,| Or I will rend thee in
the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, see if I don't!" "Nnnnnnnnnnyyyyyyyuuuuuuurrrrrrrggggggghhhhh!"
cried Ford Prefect and threw one final spasm as the electronic enhancement of
the last line caught him full blast across the temples. He went limp. Arthur
lolled. "Now
Earthlings ..." whirred the Vogon (he didn't know that Ford Prefect was
in fact from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and wouldn't have
cared if he had) "I present you with a simple choice! Either die in the
vacuum of space, or ..." he paused for melodramatic effect, "tell
me how good you thought my poem was!" He
threw himself backwards into a huge leathery bat-shaped seat and watched
them. He did the smile again. Ford
was rasping for breath. He rolled his dusty tongue round his parched mouth
and moaned. Arthur
said brightly: "Actually I quite liked it." Ford
turned and gaped. Here was an approach that had quite simply not occurred to
him. The
Vogon raised a surprised eyebrow that effectively obscured his nose and was
therefore no bad thing. "Oh
good ..." he whirred, in considerable astonishment. "Oh
yes," said Arthur, "I thought that some of the metaphysical imagery
was really particularly effective." Ford
continued to stare at him, slowly organizing his thoughts around this totally
new concept. Were they really going to be able to bareface their way out of
this? "Yes,
do continue ..." invited the Vogon. "Oh
... and er ... interesting rhythmic devices too," continued Arthur,
"which seemed to counterpoint the ... er ... er ..." He floundered. Ford
leaped to his rescue, hazarding "counterpoint the surrealism of the
underlying metaphor of the ... er ..." He floundered too, but Arthur was
ready again. "...
humanity of the ..." "Vogonity,"
Ford hissed at him. "Ah
yes, Vogonity (sorry) of the poet's compassionate soul," Arthur felt he
was on a home stretch now, "which contrives through the medium of the
verse structure to sublimate this, transcend that, and come to terms with the
fundamental dichotomies of the other," (he was reaching a triumphant crescendo
...) "and one is left with a profound and vivid insight into ... into
... er ..." (... which suddenly gave out on him.) Ford leaped in with
the coup de gr@ce: "Into
whatever it was the poem was about!" he yelled. Out of the corner of his
mouth: "Well done, Arthur, that was very
good." The
Vogon perused them. For a moment his embittered racial soul had been touched,
but he thought no — too little too late. His voice took on the quality of a
cat snagging brushed nylon. "So
what you're saying is that I write poetry because underneath my mean callous
heartless exterior I really just want to be loved," he said. He paused.
"Is that right?" Ford
laughed a nervous laugh. "Well I mean yes," he said, "don't we
all, deep down, you know ... er ..." The
Vogon stood up. "No,
well you're completely wrong," he said, "I just write poetry to
throw my mean callous heartless exterior into sharp relief. I'm going to
throw you off the ship anyway. Guard! Take the prisoners to number three
airlock and throw them out!" "What?"
shouted Ford. A
huge young Vogon guard stepped forward and yanked them out of their straps
with his huge blubbery arms. "You
can't throw us into space," yelled Ford, "we're trying to write a
book." "Resistance
is useless!" shouted the Vogon guard back at him. It was the first
phrase he'd learnt when he joined the Vogon Guard Corps. The
captain watched with detached amusement and then turned away. Arthur
stared round him wildly. "I
don't want to die now!" he yelled. "I've still got a headache! I don't
want to go to heaven with a headache, I'd be all
cross and wouldn't enjoy it!" The
guard grasped them both firmly round the neck, and bowing deferentially
towards his captain's back, hoiked them both protesting out of the bridge. A
steel door closed and the captain was on his own
again. He hummed quietly and mused to himself, lightly fingering his notebook
of verses. "Hmmmm,"
he said, "counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor
..." He considered this for a moment, and then closed the book with a
grim smile. "Death's
too good for them," he said. The
long steel-lined corridor echoed to the feeble struggles of the two humanoids
clamped firmly under rubbery Vogon armpits. "This
is great," spluttered Arthur, "this is really terrific. Let go of me
you brute!" The
Vogon guard dragged them on. "Don't
you worry," said Ford, "I'll think of something." He didn't
sound hopeful. "Resistance
is useless!" bellowed the guard. "Just
don't say things like that," stammered Ford. "How can anyone
maintain a positive mental attitude if you're saying things like that?" "My
God," complained Arthur, "you're talking about a positive mental
attitude and you haven't even had your planet demolished today. I woke up
this morning and thought I'd have a nice relaxed day, do a bit of reading,
brush the dog ... It's now just after four in the afternoon and I'm already
thrown out of an alien spaceship six light years from the smoking remains of
the Earth!" He spluttered and gurgled as the Vogon tightened his grip. "Alright,"
said Ford, "just stop panicking." "Who
said anything about panicking?" snapped Arthur. "This is still just
the culture shock. You wait till I've settled down into the situation and
found my bearings. Then I'll start panicking." "Arthur
you're getting hysterical. Shut up!" Ford tried desperately to think,
but was interrupted by the guard shouting again. "Resistance
is useless!" "And
you can shut up as well!" snapped Ford. "Resistance
is useless!" "Oh
give it a rest," said Ford. He twisted his head till he was looking
straight up into his captor's face. A thought struck him. "Do
you really enjoy this sort of thing?" he asked suddenly. The
Vogon stopped dead and a look of immense stupidity seeped slowly over his
face. "Enjoy?"
he boomed. "What do you mean?" "What
I mean," said Ford, "is does it give you a full satisfying life?
Stomping around, shouting, pushing people out of spaceships ..." The
Vogon stared up at the low steel ceiling and his eyebrows almost rolled over
each other. His mouth slacked. Finally he said, "Well the hours are good
..." "They'd
have to be," agreed Ford. Arthur
twisted his head to look at Ford. "Ford,
what are you doing?" he asked in an amazed
whisper. "Oh,
just trying to take an interest in the world around me, OK?" he said.
"So the hours are pretty good then?" he resumed. The
Vogon stared down at him as sluggish thoughts moiled around in the murky
depths. "Yeah,"
he said, "but now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are
pretty lousy. Except ..." he thought again, which required looking at
the ceiling — "except some of the shouting I quite like." He filled
his lungs and bellowed, "Resistance is ..." "Sure,
yes," interrupted Ford hurriedly, "you're good at that, I can tell.
But if it's mostly lousy," he said, slowly giving the words time to
reach their mark, "then why do you do it? What is it? The girls? The
leather? The machismo? Or do you just find that coming to terms with the
mindless tedium of it all presents an interesting challenge?" "Er
..." said the guard, "er ... er ... I dunno. I think I just sort of
... do it really. My aunt said that spaceship guard was a good career for a
young Vogon — you know, the uniform, the low-slung stun ray holster, the
mindless tedium ..." "There
you are Arthur," said Ford with the air of someone reaching the
conclusion of his argument, "you think you've got problems." Arthur
rather thought he had. Apart from the unpleasant business with his home
planet the Vogon guard had half-throttled him
already and he didn't like the sound of being thrown into space very much. "Try
and understand his problem," insisted Ford. "Here he is poor lad,
his entire life's work is stamping around, throwing people off spaceships
..." "And
shouting," added the guard. "And
shouting, sure," said Ford patting the blubbery arm clamped round his
neck in friendly condescension, "... and he doesn't even know why he's
doing it!" Arthur
agreed this was very sad. He did this with a small feeble gesture, because he
was too asphyxicated to speak. Deep
rumblings of bemusement came from the guard. "Well.
Now you put it like that I suppose ..." "Good
lad!" encouraged Ford. "But
alright," went on the rumblings, "so what's the alternative?" "Well,"
said Ford, brightly but slowly, "stop doing it of course! Tell
them," he went on, "you're not going to do it anymore." He
felt he had to add something to that, but for the moment the guard seemed to
have his mind occupied pondering that much. "Eerrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
..." said the guard, "erm, well that doesn't sound that great to
me." Ford
suddenly felt the moment slipping away. "Now
wait a minute," he said, "that's just the start you see, there's
more to it than that you see ..." But
at that moment the guard renewed his grip and continued his original purpose
of lugging his prisoners to the airlock. He was obviously quite touched. "No,
I think if it's all the same to you," he said, "I'd better get you
both shoved into this airlock and then go and get on with some other bits of
shouting I've got to do." It
wasn't all the same to Ford Prefect after all. "Come
on now ... but look!" he said, less slowly, less brightly. "Huhhhhgggggggnnnnnnn
..." said Arthur without any clear inflection. "But
hang on," pursued Ford, "there's music and art and things to tell
you about yet! Arrrggghhh!" "Resistance
is useless," bellowed the guard, and then added, "You see if I keep
it up I can eventually get promoted to Senior Shouting Officer, and there
aren't usually many vacancies for non-shouting and non-pushing-people-about
officers, so I think I'd better stick to what I know." They
had now reached the airlock — a large circular steel hatchway of massive
strength and weight let into the inner skin of the craft. The guard operated
a control and the hatchway swung smoothly open. "But
thanks for taking an interest," said the Vogon guard. "Bye
now." He flung Ford and Arthur through the hatchway into the small
chamber within. Arthur lay panting for breath. Ford scrambled round and flung
his shoulder uselessly against the reclosing hatchway. "But
listen," he shouted to the guard, "there's a whole world you don't
know anything about ... here how about this?" Desperately he grabbed for
the only bit of culture he knew offhand — he hummed the first bar of
Beethoven's Fifth. "Da
da da dum! Doesn't that stir anything in you?" "No,"
said the guard, "not really. But I'll mention it to my aunt." If
he said anything further after that it was lost. The hatchway sealed itself
tight, and all sound was lost but the faint distant hum of the ship's
engines. They
were in a brightly polished cylindrical chamber about six feet in diameter
and ten feet long. "Potentially
bright lad I thought," he said and slumped against the curved wall. Arthur
was still lying in the curve of the floor where he had fallen. He didn't look
up. He just lay panting. "We're
trapped now aren't we?" "Yes,"
said Ford, "we're trapped." "Well
didn't you think of anything? I thought you said you were going to think of
something. Perhaps you thought of something and didn't notice." "Oh
yes, I thought of something," panted Ford. Arthur looked up expectantly. "But
unfortunately," continued Ford, "it rather involved being on the
other side of this airtight hatchway." He kicked the hatch they'd just
been through. "But
it was a good idea was it?" "Oh
yes, very neat." "What
was it?" "Well
I hadn't worked out the details yet. Not much point now is there?" "So
... er, what happens next?" "Oh,
er, well the hatchway in front of us will open automatically in a few moments
and we will shoot out into deep space I expect and asphyxicate. If you take a
lungful of air with you you can last for up to thirty seconds of course
..." said Ford. He stuck his hands behind his back, raised his eyebrows
and started to hum an old Betelgeusian battle hymn. To Arthur's eyes he
suddenly looked very alien. "So
this is it," said Arthur, "we're going to die." "Yes,"
said Ford, "except ... no! Wait a minute!" he suddenly lunged
across the chamber at something behind Arthur's line of vision. "What's
this switch?" he cried. "What?
Where?" cried Arthur twisting round. "No,
I was only fooling," said Ford, "we are going to die after
all." He
slumped against the wall again and carried on the tune from where he left
off. "You
know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a
Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxication
in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when
I was young." "Why,
what did she tell you?" "I don't know, I didn't listen." "Oh."
Ford carried on humming. "This
is terrific," Arthur thought to himself,
"Nelson's Column has gone, McDonald's have gone, all that's left is me
and the words Mostly Harmless. Any second now all that will be left is Mostly
Harmless. And yesterday the planet seemed to be going so well." A
motor whirred. A
slight hiss built into a deafening roar of rushing air as the outer hatchway
opened on to an empty blackness studded with tiny impossibly bright points of
light. Ford and Arthur popped into outer space like corks from a toy gun. Chapter 8
The
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled
and recompiled many times over many years and under many
different editorships. It contains contributions from countless
numbers of travellers and researchers. The
introduction begins like this: "Space,"
it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely
mindboggingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road
to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. Listen ..." and so on. (After
a while the style settles down a bit and it begins to tell you things you
really need to know, like the fact that the fabulously beautiful planet
Bethselamin is now so worried about the cumulative erosion by ten billion
visiting tourists a year that any net imbalance between the amount you eat
and the amount you excrete whilst on the planet is surgically removed from
your bodyweight when you leave: so every time you go to the lavatory it is
vitally important to get a receipt.) To
be fair though, when confronted by the sheer enormity of distances between
the stars, better minds than the one responsible for the Guide's introduction
have faltered. Some invite you to consider for a moment a peanut in reading
and a small walnut in The
simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human
imagination. Even
light, which travels so fast that it takes most races thousands of years to
realize that it travels at all, takes time to journey between the stars. It
takes eight minutes from the star Sol to the place where the Earth used to
be, and four years more to arrive at Sol's nearest stellar neighbour, Alpha
Proxima. For
light to reach the other side of the Galaxy, for it to reach Damogran for
instance, takes rather longer: five hundred thousand years. The
record for hitch hiking this distance is just under five years, but you don't
get to see much on the way. The
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy says that if you hold a lungful of air you
can survive in the total vacuum of space for about thirty seconds. However it
goes on to say that what with space being the mind boggling size it is the
chances of getting picked up by another ship within those thirty seconds are
two to the power of two hundred and sixty-seven thousand seven hundred and
nine to one against. By
a totally staggering coincidence that is also the telephone number of an
Islington flat where Arthur once went to a very good party and met a very
nice girl whom he totally failed to get off with — she went off with a
gatecrasher. Though
the planet Earth, the Islington flat and the telephone have all now been
demolished, it is comforting to reflect that they are all in some small way
commemorated by the fact that twenty-nine seconds later Ford and Arthur were
rescued. Chapter 9
A
computer chatted to itself in alarm as it noticed an airlock open and close
itself for no apparent reason. This
was because Reason was in fact out to lunch. A
hole had just appeared in the Galaxy. It was exactly a nothingth of a second
long, a nothingth of an inch wide, and quite a lot of million light years
from end to end. As
it closed up lots of paper hats and party balloons fell out of it and drifted
off through the universe. A team of seven three-foot-high market analysts
fell out of it and died, partly of asphyxication, partly of surprise. Two
hundred and thirty-nine thousand lightly fried eggs fell out of it too,
materializing in a large woobly heap on the famine-struck The
whole Poghril tribe had died out from famine except for one last man who died
of cholesterol poisoning some weeks later. The
nothingth of a second for which the hole existed reverberated backwards and
forwards through time in a most improbable fashion. Somewhere in the deeply
remote past it seriously traumatized a small random group of atoms drifting
through the empty sterility of space and made them cling together in the most
extraordinarily unlikely patterns. These patterns quickly learnt to copy
themselves (this was part of what was so extraordinary of the patterns) and
went on to cause massive trouble on every planet
they drifted on to. That was how life began in the Universe. Five
wild Event Maelstroms swirled in vicious storms of unreason and spewed up a
pavement. On
the pavement lay Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent gulping like half-spent fish. "There
you are," gasped Ford, scrabbling for a fingerhold on the pavement as it
raced through the Third Reach of the Unknown, "I told you I'd think of
something." "Oh
sure," said Arthur, "sure." "Bright
idea of mine," said Ford, "to find a passing spaceship and get
rescued by it." The
real universe arched sickeningly away beneath them. Various pretend ones
flitted silently by, like mountain goats. Primal light exploded, splattering
space-time as with gobbets of junket. Time blossomed, matter shrank away. The
highest prime number coalesced quietly in a corner and hid itself away for
ever. "Oh
come off it," said Arthur, "the chances against it were
astronomical." "Don't
knock it, it worked," said Ford. "What
sort of ship are we in?" asked Arthur as the pit of eternity yawned
beneath them. "I
don't know," said Ford, "I haven't opened my eyes yet." "No,
nor have I," said Arthur. The
Universe jumped, froze, quivered and splayed out in several unexpected
directions. Arthur
and Ford opened their eyes and looked about in considerable surprise. "Good
god," said Arthur, "it looks just like the sea front at
Southend." "Hell,
I'm relieved to hear you say that," said Ford. "Why?" "Because
I thought I must be going mad." "Perhaps
you are. Perhaps you only thought I said it." Ford
thought about this. "Well,
did you say it or didn't you?" he asked. "I
think so," said Arthur. "Well,
perhaps we're both going mad." "Yes,"
said Arthur, "we'd be mad, all things considered, to think this was
Southend." "Well,
do you think this is Southend?" "Oh
yes." "So
do I." "Therefore
we must be mad." "Nice
day for it." "Yes,"
said a passing maniac. "Who
was that?" asked Arthur "Who
— the man with the five heads and the elderberry bush full of kippers?" "Yes." "I
don't know. Just someone." "Ah." They
both sat on the pavement and watched with a certain unease as huge children
bounced heavily along the sand and wild horses thundered through the sky
taking fresh supplies of reinforced railings to the Uncertain Areas. "You
know," said Arthur with a slight cough, "if this is Southend,
there's something very odd about it ..." "You
mean the way the sea stays steady and the buildings keep washing up and
down?" said Ford. "Yes I thought that was odd too. In fact," he
continued as with a huge bang Southend split itself into six equal segments
which danced and span giddily round each other in lewd and licentious
formation, "there is something altogether very strange going on." Wild
yowling noises of pipes and strings seared through the wind, hot doughnuts
popped out of the road for ten pence each, horrid fish stormed out of the sky
and Arthur and Ford decided to make a run for it. They
plunged through heavy walls of sound, mountains of archaic thought, valleys of mood music, bad shoe sessions and footling bats
and suddenly heard a girl's voice. It
sounded quite a sensible voice, but it just said, "Two to the power of
one hundred thousand to one against and falling," and that was all. Ford
skidded down a beam of light and span round trying to find a source for the
voice but could see nothing he could seriously believe in. "What
was that voice?" shouted Arthur. "I
don't know," yelled Ford, "I don't know. It sounded like a
measurement of probability." "Probability?
What do you mean?" "Probability.
You know, like two to one, three to one, five to four against. It said two to
the power of one hundred thousand to one against. That's pretty improbable
you know." A
million-gallon vat of custard upended itself over them without warning. "But
what does it mean?" cried Arthur. "What,
the custard?" "No,
the measurement of probability!" "I
don't know. I don't know at all. I think we're on some kind of
spaceship." "I
can only assume," said Arthur, "that this is not the first-class
compartment." Bulges
appeared in the fabric of space-time. Great ugly bulges. "Haaaauuurrgghhh
..." said Arthur as he felt his body softening and bending in unusual
directions. "Southend seems to be melting away ... the stars are
swirling ... a dustbowl ... my legs are drifting off into the sunset ... my
left arm's come off too." A frightening thought struck him:
"Hell," he said, "how am I going to operate my digital watch
now?" He wound his eyes desperately around in Ford's direction. "Ford,"
he said, "you're turning into a penguin. Stop it." Again
came the voice. "Two
to the power of seventy-five thousand to one against and falling." Ford
waddled around his pond in a furious circle. "Hey,
who are you," he quacked. "Where are you? What's going on and is there
any way of stopping it?" "Please
relax," said the voice pleasantly, like a stewardess in an airliner with
only one wing and two engines one of which is on fire, "you are
perfectly safe." "But
that's not the point!" raged Ford. "The point is that I am now a
perfectly save penguin, and my colleague here is rapidly running out of
limbs!" "It's
alright, I've got them back now," said Arthur. "Two
to the power of fifty thousand to one against and falling," said the
voice. "Admittedly,"
said Arthur, "they're longer than I usually like them, but ..." "Isn't
there anything," squawked Ford in avian fury, "you feel you ought
to be telling us?" The
voice cleared its throat. A giant petit four lolloped off into the distance. "Welcome,"
the voice said, "to the Starship Heart of Gold." The
voice continued. "Please
do not be alarmed," it said, "by anything you see or hear around
you. You are bound to feel some initial ill effects as you have been rescued
from certain death at an improbability level of two to the power of two
hundred and seventy-six thousand to one against — possibly much higher. We
are now cruising at a level of two to the power of twenty-five thousand to
one against and falling, and we will be restoring normality just as soon as
we are sure what is normal anyway. Thank you. Two to the power of twenty
thousand to one against and falling." The
voice cut out. Ford
and Arthur were in a small luminous pink cubicle. Ford
was wildly excited. "Arthur!"
he said, "this is fantastic! We've been picked up by a ship powered by
the Arthur
had jammed himself against the door to the cubicle, trying to hold it closed,
but it was ill fitting. Tiny furry little hands were squeezing themselves
through the cracks, their fingers were inkstained; tiny voices chattered
insanely. Arthur
looked up. "Ford!"
he said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk
to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out." Chapter 10
The
It
was discovered by a lucky chance, and then developed into a governable form
of propulsion by the Galactic Government's research team on Damogran. This,
briefly, is the story of its discovery. The
principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply
hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain to an atomic
vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot
cup of tea) were of course well understood — and such generators were often
used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess's
undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with
the Theory of Indeterminacy. Many
respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand for this —
partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn't
get invited to those sort of parties. Another
thing they couldn't stand was the perpetual failure they encountered in
trying to construct a machine which could generate the infinite improbability
field needed to flip a spaceship across the mind-paralysing distances between
the furthest stars, and in the end they grumpily announced that such a
machine was virtually impossible. Then,
one day, a student who had been left to sweep up the lab after a particularly
unsuccessful party found himself reasoning this way: If,
he thought to himself, such a machine is a virtual impossibility, then it must logically be a finite improbability. So all I
have to do in order to make one is to work out exactly how improbable it is,
feed that figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup
of really hot tea ... and turn it on! He
did this, and was rather startled to discover that he had managed to create
the long sought after golden Infinite Improbability generator out of thin
air. It
startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic
Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched by a rampaging mob of
respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they
really couldn't stand was a smartass. Chapter 11
The
Improbability-proof control cabin of the Heart of Gold looked like a
perfectly conventional spaceship except that it was perfectly clean because
it was so new. Some of the control seats hadn't had the plastic wrapping
taken off yet. The cabin was mostly white, oblong, and about the size of a
smallish restaurant. In fact it wasn't perfectly oblong: the two long walls were
raked round in a slight parallel curve, and all the angles and corners were
contoured in excitingly chunky shapes. The truth of the matter is that it
would have been a great deal simpler and more practical to build the cabin as
an ordinary three-dimensional oblong rom, but then the designers would have
got miserable. As it was the cabin looked excitingly purposeful, with large
video screens ranged over the control and guidance system panels on the
concave wall, and long banks of computers set into the convex wall. In one
corner a robot sat humped, its gleaming brushed steel head hanging loosely
between its gleaming brushed steel knees. It too was fairly new, but though
it was beautifully constructed and polished it somehow looked as if the
various parts of its more or less humanoid body didn't quite fit properly. In
fact they fitted perfectly well, but something in its bearing suggested that
they might have fitted better. Zaphod
Beeblebrox paced nervously up and down the cabin, brushing his hands over pieces
of gleaming equipment and giggling with excitement. Trillian
sat hunched over a clump of instruments reading off figures. Her voice was
carried round the Tannoy system of the whole ship. "Five
to one against and falling ..." she said, "four to one against and
falling ... three to one ... two ... one ... probability factor of one to one
... we have normality, I repeat we have normality." She turned her
microphone off — then turned it back on, with a slight smile and continued:
"Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem.
Please relax. You will be sent for soon." Zaphod
burst out in annoyance: "Who are they Trillian?" Trillian span her seat round to face him and shrugged. "Just
a couple of guys we seem to have picked up in open space," she said.
"Section ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha." "Yeah,
well that's a very sweet thought Trillian," complained Zaphod, "but
do you really think it's wise under the circumstances? I mean, here we are on
the run and everything, we must have the police of half the Galaxy after us
by now, and we stop to pick up hitch hikers. OK, so ten out of ten for style,
but minus several million for good thinking, yeah?" He
tapped irritably at a control panel. Trillian quietly moved his hand before
he tapped anything important. Whatever Zaphod's qualities of mind might
include — dash, bravado, conceit — he was mechanically inept and could easily
blow the ship up with an extravagant gesture. Trillian had come to suspect
that the main reason why he had had such a wild and successful life that he
never really understood the significance of anything he did. "Zaphod,"
she said patiently, "they were floating unprotected in open space ...
you wouldn't want them to have died would you?" "Well,
you know ... no. Not as such, but ..." "Not
as such? Not die as such? But?" Trillian cocked her head on one side. "Well,
maybe someone else might have picked them up later." "A
second later and they would have been dead." "Yeah,
so if you'd taken the trouble to think about the problem a bit longer it would
have gone away." "You'd
been happy to let them die?" "Well,
you know, not happy as such, but ..." "Anyway,"
said Trillian, turning back to the controls, "I didn't pick them
up." "What
do you mean? Who picked them up then?" "The
ship did." "Huh?" "The
ship did. All by itself." "Huh?" "Whilst
we were in "But
that's incredible." "No
Zaphod. Just very very improbable." "Er,
yeah." "Look
Zaphod," she said, patting his arm, "don't worry about the aliens.
They're just a couple of guys I expect. I'll send the robot down to get them
and bring them up here. Hey Marvin!" In
the corner, the robot's head swung up sharply, but then wobbled about
imperceptibly. It pulled itself up to its feet as if it was about five pounds
heavier that it actually was, and made what an outside observer would have
thought was a heroic effort to cross the room. It stopped in front of
Trillian and seemed to stare through her left shoulder. "I
think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed," it said. Its voice
was low and hopeless. "Oh
God," muttered Zaphod and slumped into a seat. "Well,"
said Trillian in a bright compassionate tone, "here's something to
occupy you and keep your mind off things." "It
won't work," droned Marvin, "I have an exceptionally large mind." "Marvin!"
warned Trillian. "Alright,"
said Marvin, "what do you want me to do?" "Go
down to number two entry bay and bring the two
aliens up here under surveillance." With
a microsecond pause, and a finely calculated micromodulation of pitch and timbre
— nothing you could actually take offence at — Marvin managed to convey his
utter contempt and horror of all things human. "Just
that?" he said. "Yes,"
said Trillian firmly. "I
won't enjoy it," said Marvin. Zaphod
leaped out of his seat. "She's
not asking you to enjoy it," he shouted, "just do it will
you?" "Alright,"
said Marvin like the tolling of a great cracked bell, "I'll do it." "Good
..." snapped Zaphod, "great ... thank you ..." Marvin
turned and lifted his flat-topped triangular red eyes up towards him. "I'm
not getting you down at all am I?" he said pathetically. "No
no Marvin," lilted Trillian, "that's just fine, really ..." "I
wouldn't like to think that I was getting you down." "No,
don't worry about that," the lilt continued, "you just act as comes
naturally and everything will be just fine." "You're
sure you don't mind?" probed Marvin. "No
no Marvin," lilted Trillian, "that's just fine, really ... just
part of life." "Marvin
flashed him an electronic look. "Life,"
said Marvin, "don't talk to me about life." He
turned hopelessly on his heel and lugged himself out of the cabin. With a
satisfied hum and a click the door closed behind him "I
don't think I can stand that robot much longer Zaphod," growled
Trillian. The
Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to
do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics
Corporation defines a robot as "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be
With." The
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the
Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be
the first against the wall when the revolution comes," with a footnote
to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone
interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent. Curiously
enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that had the good fortune
to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined the
marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of
mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution
came." The
pink cubicle had winked out of existence, the
monkeys had sunk away to a better dimension. Ford and Arthur found themselves
in the embarkation area of the ship. It was rather smart. "I
think the ship's brand new," said Ford. "How
can you tell?" asked Arthur. "Have you got some exotic device for
measuring the age of metal?" "No,
I just found this sales brochure lying on the floor. It's a lot of `the Universe
can be yours' stuff. Ah! Look, I was right." Ford
jabbed at one of the pages and showed it to Arthur. "It
says: Sensational new breakthrough in Improbability Physics. As soon as the
ship's drive reaches Infinite Improbability it passes through every point in
the Universe. Be the envy of other major governments. Wow, this is big league
stuff." Ford
hunted excitedly through the technical specs of the ship, occasionally
gasping with astonishment at what he read — clearly Galactic astrotechnology
had moved ahead during the years of his exile. Arthur
listened for a short while, but being unable to understand the vast majority
of what Ford was saying he began to let his mind wander, trailing his fingers
along the edge of an incomprehensible computer bank, he reached out and
pressed an invitingly large red button on a nearby panel. The panel lit up with the words Please do not press this
button again. He shook himself. "Listen,"
said Ford, who was still engrossed in the sales brochure, "they make a
big thing of the ship's cybernetics. A new generation of Sirius Cybernetics
Corporation robots and computers, with the new GPP feature." "GPP
feature?" said Arthur. "What's that?" "Oh,
it says Genuine People Personalities." "Oh,"
said Arthur, "sounds ghastly." A voice
behind them said, "It is." The voice was low and hopeless and
accompanied by a slight clanking sound. They span round and saw an abject
steel man standing hunched in the doorway. "What?"
they said. "Ghastly,"
continued Marvin, "it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just don't even talk
about it. Look at this door," he said, stepping through it. The irony
circuits cut into his voice modulator as he mimicked the style of the sales
brochure. "All the doors in this spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition.
It is their pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again
with the knowledge of a job well done." As
the door closed behind them it became apparent that it did indeed have a
satisfied sigh-like quality to it. "Hummmmmmmyummmmmmm ah!" it said. Marvin
regarded it with cold loathing whilst his logic circuits chattered with
disgust and tinkered with the concept of directing physical violence against
it Further circuits cut in saying, Why bother? What's the point? Nothing is
worth getting involved in. Further circuits amused themselves by analysing
the molecular components of the door, and of the humanoids' brain cells. For
a quick encore they measured the level of hydrogen emissions in the
surrounding cubic parsec of space and then shut down again in boredom. A
spasm of despair shook the robot's body as he turned. "Come
on," he droned, "I've been ordered to take you down to the bridge.
Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you down to the
bridge. Call that job satisfaction? 'Cos I don't." He
turned and walked back to the hated door. "Er,
excuse me," said Ford following after him, "which government owns
this ship?" Marvin
ignored him. "You
watch this door," he muttered, "it's about to open again. I can
tell by the intolerable air of smugness it suddenly generates." With
an ingratiating little whine the door slit open again and Marvin stomped
through. "Come
on," he said. The
others followed quickly and the door slit back into place with pleased little
clicks and whirrs. "Thank
you the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation," said
Marvin and trudged desolately up the gleaming curved corridor that stretched
out before them. "Let's build robots with Genuine People
Personalities," they said. So they tried it out with me. I'm a
personality prototype. You can tell can't you?" Ford
and Arthur muttered embarrassed little disclaimers. "I
hate that door," continued Marvin. "I'm not getting you down at all
am I?" "Which
government ..." started Ford again. "No
government owns it," snapped the robot, "it's been stolen." "Stolen?" "Stolen?"
mimicked Marvin. "Who
by?" asked Ford. "Zaphod
Beeblebrox." Something
extraordinary happened to Ford's face. At least five entirely separate and distinct
expressions of shock and amazement piled up on it in a jumbled mess. His left
leg, which was in mid stride, seemed to have difficulty in finding the floor
again. He stared at the robot and tried to entangle some dartoid muscles. "Zaphod
Beeblebrox ...?" he said weakly. "Sorry,
did I say something wrong?" said Marvin, dragging himself on regardless.
"Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't know why I
bother to say it, oh God I'm so depressed. Here's another of those
self-satisfied door. Life! Don't talk to me about life." "No
one ever mentioned it," muttered Arthur irritably. "Ford, are you
alright?" Ford
stared at him. "Did that robot say Zaphod Beeblebrox?" he said. Chapter 12
A
loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod
searched the sub-etha radio wavebands for news of himself.
The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been
operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the
technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive —
you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do
was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It
saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit
infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme. Zaphod
waved a hand and the channel switched again. More gunk music, but this time
it was a background to a news announcement. The news was always heavily
edited to fit the rhythms of the music. "...
and news brought to you here on the sub-etha wave band, broadcasting around
the galaxy around the clock," squawked a voice, "and we'll be
saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere ... and to
everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys. And
of course, the big news story tonight is the sensational theft of the new "Hey,"
he said, what do you do that for?" Trillian
was tapping her fingers on a screenful of figures. "I've
just thought of something," she said. "Yeah?
Worth interrupting a news bulletin about me for?" "You
hear enough about yourself as it is." "I'm
very insecure. We know that." "Can
we drop your ego for a moment? This is important." + "If there's
anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot
now." Zaphod glared at her again, then laughed. "Listen,"
she said, "we picked up those couple of guys ..." "What
couple of guys?" "The
couple of guys we picked up." "Oh,
yeah," said Zaphod, "those couple of guys." "We
picked them up in sector ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha." "Yeah?"
said Zaphod and blinked. Trillian
said quietly, "Does that mean anything to you?" "Mmmmm,"
said Zaphod, "ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha. ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha?" "Well?"
said Trillian. "Er
... what does the Z mean?" said Zaphod. "Which
one?" "Any
one." One
of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with
Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just
to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be
bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be
outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand what
was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being
amazingly clever and quite clearly was so — but not all the
time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He proffered people
to be puzzled rather than contemptuous. This above all appeared to Trillian
to be genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about
it. She
sighed and punched up a star map on the visiscreen so she could make it simple
for him, whatever his reasons for wanting it to be that way. "There,"
she pointed, "right there." "Hey
... Yeah!" said Zaphod. "Well?"
she said. "Well
what?" Parts
of the inside of her head screamed at other parts of the inside of her head.
She said, very calmly, "It's the same sector you originally picked me up
in." He
looked at her and then looked back at the screen. "Hey,
yeah," he said, "now that is wild. We should have zapped straight
into the middle of the Horsehead Nebula. How did we come to be there? I mean
that's nowhere." She
ignored this. " "Yeah,
but that's one wild coincidence isn't it?" "Yes." "Picking
someone up at that point? Out of the whole of the Universe to choose from?
That's just too ... I want to work this out. Computer!" The
Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Shipboard Computer which controlled and
permeated every particle of the ship switched into communication mode. "Hi
there!" it said brightly and simultaneously spewed out a tiny ribbon of
ticker tape just for the record. The ticker tape said, Hi there! "Oh
God," said Zaphod. He hadn't worked with this computer for long but had
already learned to loathe it. The
computer continued, brash and cheery as if it was selling detergent. "I
want you to know that whatever your problem, I am here to help you solve
it." "Yeah
yeah," said Zaphod. "Look, I think I'll just use a piece of
paper." "Sure
thing," said the computer, spilling out its message into a waste bin at
the same time, "I understand. If you ever want ..." "Shut
up!" said Zaphod, and snatching up a pencil sat down next to Trillian at
the console. "OK,
OK ..." said the computer in a hurt tone of voice and closed down its
speech channel again. Zaphod
and Trillian pored over the figures that the Improbability flight path
scanner flashed silently up in front of them. "Can
we work out," said Zaphod, "from their point of view what the Improbability
of their rescue was?" "Yes,
that's a constant", said Trillian, "two to the power of two hundred
and seventy-six thousand seven hundred and nine to one against." "That's
high. They're two lucky lucky guys." "Yes." "But
relative to what we were doing when the ship picked them up ..." Trillian
punched up the figures. They showed tow-to-the power-of-Infinity-minus-one
(an irrational number that only has a conventional meaning in Improbability
physics). "... it's pretty low," continued Zaphod with a slight whistle. "Yes,"
agreed Trillian, and looked at him quizzically. "That's
one big whack of Improbability to be accounted for. Something pretty
improbable has got to show up on the balance sheet if it's all going to add
up into a pretty sum." Zaphod
scribbled a few sums, crossed them out and threw the pencil away. "Bat's
dots, I can't work it out." "Well?" Zaphod
knocked his two heads together in irritation and gritted his teeth. "OK,"
he said. "Computer!" The
voice circuits sprang to life again. "Why
hello there!" they said (ticker tape, ticker tape). "All I want to
do is make your day nicer and nicer and nicer ..." "Yeah
well shut up and work something out for me." "Sure
thing," chattered the computer, "you want a probability forecast
based on ..." "Improbability
data, yeah." "OK,"
the computer continued. "Here's an interesting little notion. Did you
realize that most people's lives are governed by telephone numbers?" A
pained look crawled across one of Zaphod's faces and on to the other one. "Have
you flipped?" he said. "No,
but you will when I tell you that ..." Trillian
gasped. She scrabbled at the buttons on the Improbability flight path screen. "Telephone
number?" she said. "Did that thing say telephone number?" Numbers
flashed up on the screen. The
computer had paused politely, but now it continued. "What
I was about to say was that ..." "Don't
bother please," said Trillian. "Look,
what is this?" said Zaphod. "I
don't know," said Trillian, "but those aliens — they're on the way
up to the bridge with that wretched robot. Can we pick them up on any monitor
cameras?" Chapter 13
Marvin
trudged on down the corridor, still moaning. "...
and then of course I've got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left
hand side ..." "No?"
said Arthur grimly as he walked along beside him. "Really?" "Oh
yes," said Marvin, "I mean I've asked for them to be replaced but
no one ever listens." "I
can imagine." Vague
whistling and humming noises were coming from Ford. "Well well
well," he kept saying to himself, "Zaphod Beeblebrox ..." Suddenly
Marvin stopped, and held up a hand. "You
know what's happened now of course?" "No,
what?" said Arthur, who didn't what to know. "We've
arrived at another of those doors." There
was a sliding door let into the side of the corridor. Marvin eyed it
suspiciously. "Well?"
said Ford impatiently. "Do we go through?" "Do
we go through?" mimicked Marvin. "Yes. This is the entrance to the
bridge. I was told to take you to the bridge. Probably the highest demand
that will be made on my intellectual capacities today I shouldn't
wonder." Slowly,
with great loathing, he stepped towards the door, like a hunter stalking his
prey. Suddenly it slid open. "Thank
you," it said, "for making a simple door very happy." Deep
in Marvin's thorax gears ground. "Funny,"
he intoned funerally, "how just when you think life can't possibly get
any worse it suddenly does." He
heaved himself through the door and left Ford and Arthur staring at each
other and shrugging their shoulders. From inside they heard Marvin's voice
again. "I
suppose you want to see the aliens now," he said. "Do you want me
to sit in a corner and rust, or just fall apart where I'm standing?" "Yeah,
just show them in would you Marvin?" came
another voice. Arthur
looked at Ford and was astonished to see him laughing. "What's
...?" "Shhh,"
said Ford, "come in." He
stepped through into the bridge. Arthur
followed him in nervously and was astonished to see a man lolling back in a chair
with his feet on a control console picking the teeth in his right-hand head
with his left hand. The right-hand head seemed to be thoroughly preoccupied
with this task, but the left-hand one was grinning a
broad, relaxed, nonchalant grin. The number of things that Arthur couldn't
believe he was seeing was fairly large. His jaw flapped about at a loose end
for a while. The
peculiar man waved a lazy wave at Ford and with an appalling affectation of
nonchalance said, "Ford, hi, how are you? Glad
you could drop in." Ford
was not going to be outcooled. "Zaphod,"
he drawled, "great to see you, you're looking well, the extra arm suits
you. Nice ship you've stolen." Arthur
goggled at him. "You
mean you know this guy?" he said, waving a wild finger at Zaphod. "Know
him!" exclaimed Ford, "he's ..." he paused, and decided to do
the introductions the other way round. "Oh,
Zaphod, this is a friend of mine, Arthur Dent," he said, "I saved
him when his planet blew up." "Oh
sure," said Zaphod, "hi Arthur, glad you could make it." His
right-hand head looked round casually, said "hi" and went back to
having his teeth picked. Ford
carried on. "And Arthur," he said, "this is my semi-cousin
Zaphod Beeb ..." "We've
met," said Arthur sharply. When
you're cruising down the road in the fast lane and you lazily sail past a few
hard driving cars and are feeling pretty pleased with yourself and then
accidentally change down from fourth to first instead of third thus making
your engine leap out of your bonnet in a rather ugly mess, it tends to throw
you off your stride in much the same way that this remark threw Ford Prefect
off his. "Err
... what?" "I
said we've met." Zaphod
gave an awkward start of surprise and jabbed a gum sharply. "Hey
... er, have we? Hey ... er ..." Ford
rounded on Arthur with an angry flash in his eyes. Now he felt he was back on
home ground he suddenly began to resent having lumbered himself with this
ignorant primitive who knew as much about the affairs of the Galaxy as an
Ilford-based gnat knew about life in "What
do you mean you've met?" he demanded. "This is Zaphod Beeblebrox
from Betelgeuse Five you know, not bloody Martin Smith from Croydon." "I
don't care," said Arthur coldly. We've met, haven't we Zaphod Beeblebrox
- or should I say ... Phil?" "What!"
shouted Ford. "You'll
have to remind me," said Zaphod. "I've a terrible memory for
species." "It
was at a party," pursued Arthur. "Yeah,
well I doubt that," said Zaphod. "Cool
it will you Arthur!" demanded Ford. Arthur
would not be deterred. "A party six months ago. On Earth ... Zaphod
shook his head with a tight-lipped smile. " "Oh,"
said Zaphod with a guilty start, "that party." This
wasn't fair on Ford at all. He looked backwards and forwards between Arthur
and Zaphod. "What?" he said to Zaphod. "You don't mean to say
you've been on that miserable planet as well do you?" "No,
of course not," said Zaphod breezily. "Well, I may have just
dropped in briefly, you know, on my way somewhere ..." "But
I was stuck there for fifteen years!" "Well
I didn't know that did I?" "But
what were you doing there?" "Looking
about, you know." "He
gatecrashed a party," persisted Arthur, trembling with anger, "a
fancy dress party ..." "It
would have to be, wouldn't it?" said Ford. "At
this party," persisted Arthur, "was a girl ... oh well, look it
doesn't matter now. The whole place has gone up in smoke anyway ..." "I
wish you'd stop sulking about that bloody planet," said Ford. "Who
was the lady?" "Oh
just somebody. Well alright, I wasn't doing very well with her. I'd been
trying all evening. Hell, she was something though. Beautiful, charming,
devastatingly intelligent, at last I'd got her to myself for a bit and was
plying her with a bit of talk when this friend of yours barges up and says
Hey doll, is this guy boring you? Why don't you talk to me instead? I'm from
a different planet." I never saw her again." "Zaphod?"
exclaimed Ford. "Yes,"
said Arthur, glaring at him and trying not to feel foolish. "He only had
the two arms and the one head and he called himself Phil, but ..." "But
you must admit he did turn out to be from another planet," said Trillian
wandering into sight at the other end of the bridge. She gave Arthur a
pleasant smile which settled on him like a ton of bricks and then turned her
attention to the ship's controls again. There
was silence for a few seconds, and then out of the scrambled mess of Arthur's
brain crawled some words. "Tricia
McMillian?" he said. "What are you doing here?" "Same
as you," she said, "I hitched a lift. After all with a degree in
Maths and another in astrophysics what else was there to do? It was either
that or the dole queue again on Monday." "Infinity
minus one," chattered the computer, "Improbability sum now
complete." Zaphod
looked about him, at Ford, at Arthur, and then at Trillian. "Trillian,"
he said, "is this sort of thing going to happen every time we use the
Improbability drive?" "Very
probably, I'm afraid," she said. Chapter 14
The
Heart of Gold fled on silently through the night of space, now on
conventional photon drive. Its crew of four were ill
at ease knowing that they had been brought together not of their own volition
or by simple coincidence, but by some curious principle of physics — as if
relationships between people were susceptible to the same laws that governed
the relationships between atoms and molecules. As
the ship's artificial night closed in they were each grateful to retire to
separate cabins and try to rationalize their thoughts. Trillian
couldn't sleep. She sat on a couch and stared at a small cage which contained
her last and only links with Earth — two white mice that she had insisted
Zaphod let her bring. She had expected not to see the planet again, but she
was disturbed by her negative reaction to the planet's destruction. It seemed
remote and unreal and she could find no thoughts to think about it. She
watched the mice scurrying round the cage and running furiously in their
little plastic treadwheels till they occupied her whole attention. Suddenly
she shook herself and went back to the bridge to watch over the tiny flashing
lights and figures that charted the ship's progress through the void. She
wished she knew what it was she was trying not to think about. Zaphod
couldn't sleep. He also wished he knew what it was that he wouldn't let
himself think about. For as long as he could remember he'd suffered from a
vague nagging feeling of being not all there. Most of the time he was able to
put this thought aside and not worry about it, but it had been re-awakened by
the sudden inexplicable arrival of Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent. Somehow it
seemed to conform to a pattern that he couldn't see. Ford
couldn't sleep. He was too excited about being back on the road again.
Fifteen years of virtual imprisonment were over, just as he was finally
beginning to give up hope. Knocking about with Zaphod for a bit promised to
be a lot of fun, though there seemed to be something faintly odd about his semi-cousin
that he couldn't put his finger on. The fact that he had become President of
the Galaxy was frankly astonishing, as was the manner of his leaving the
post. Was there a reason behind it? There would be no point in asking Zaphod,
he never appeared to have a reason for anything he did at all: he had turned
unfathomably into an art form. He attacked everything in life with a mixture
of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence and it was often difficult to
tell which was which. Arthur
slept: he was terribly tired. There
was a tap at Zaphod's door. It slid open. "Zaphod
...?" "Yeah?" "I
think we just found what you came to look for." "Hey,
yeah?" Ford
gave up the attempt to sleep. In the corner of his cabin was a small computer
screen and keyboard. He sat at it for a while and tried to compose a new
entry for the Guide on the subject of Vogons but couldn't think of anything
vitriolic enough so he gave that up too, wrapped a robe round himself and
went for a walk to the bridge. As
he entered he was surprised to see two figures hunched excitedly over the
instruments. "See?
The ship's about to move into orbit," Trillian was saying. "There's
a planet out there. It's at the exact coordinates you predicted." Zaphod
heard a noise and looked up. "Ford!"
he hissed. "Hey, come and take a look at this." Ford
went and had a look at it. It was a series of figures flashing over a screen. "You
recognize those Galactic coordinates?" said Zaphod. "No." "I'll
give you a clue. Computer!" "Hi
gang!" enthused the computer. "This is
getting real sociable isn't it?" "Shut
up," said Zaphod, "and show up the screens." Light
on the bridge sank. Pinpoints of light played across the consoles and
reflected in four pairs of eyes that stared up at the external monitor
screens. There
was absolutely nothing on them. "Recognize
that?" whispered Zaphod. Ford
frowned. "Er,
no," he said. "What
do you see?" "Nothing." "Recognize
it?" "What
are you talking about?" "We're
in the Horsehead Nebula. One whole vast dark cloud." "And
I was meant to recognize that from a blank screen?" "Inside
a dark nebula is the only place in the Galaxy you'd see a dark screen." "Very
good." Zaphod
laughed. He was clearly very excited about something, almost childishly so. "Hey,
this is really terrific, this is just far too
much!" "What's
so great about being stuck in a dust cloud?" said Ford. "What
would you reckon to find here?" urged Zaphod. "Nothing." "No
stars? No planets?" "No." "Computer!"
shouted Zaphod, "rotate angle of vision through one-eighty degrees and
don't talk about it!" For
a moment it seemed that nothing was happening, then
a brightness glowed at the edge of the huge screen. A red star the size of a
small plate crept across it followed quickly by another one — a binary
system. Then a vast crescent sliced into the corner of the picture — a red
glare shading away into the deep black, the night side of the planet. "I've
found it!" cried Zaphod, thumping the console. "I've found
it!" Ford
stared at it in astonishment. "What
is it?" he said. "That
..." said Zaphod, "is the most improbable planet that ever
existed." Chapter 15
(Excerpt
from The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Page 634784, Section 5a, Entry:
Magrathea) Far
back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the
former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich and largely tax free. Mighty
starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking adventure and reward
amongst the furthest reaches of Galactic space. In those days spirits were
brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women, and
small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures
from Alpha Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty
deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before — and thus
was the Empire forged. Many
men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural and
nothing to be ashamed of because no one was really poor — at least no one
worth speaking of. And for all the richest and most successful merchants life
inevitably became rather dull and niggly, and they began to imagine that this
was therefore the fault of the worlds they'd settled on — none of them was
entirely satisfactory: either the climate wasn't quite right in the later
part of the afternoon, or the day was half an hour too long, or the sea was
exactly the wrong shade of pink. And
thus were created the conditions for a staggering new form of specialist
industry: custom-made luxury planet building. The home of this industry was
the planet Magrathea, where hyperspatial engineers sucked matter through
white holes in space to form it into dream planets — gold planets, platinum
planets, soft rubber planets with lots of earthquakes — all lovingly made to
meet the exacting standards that the Galaxy's richest men naturally came to
expect. But
so successful was this venture that Magrathea itself soon became the richest
planet of all time and the rest of the Galaxy was reduced to abject poverty.
And so the system broke down, the Empire collapsed, and a long sullen silence
settled over a billion worlds, disturbed only by the pen scratchings of
scholars as they laboured into the night over smug little treaties on the
value of a planned political economy. Magrathea
itself disappeared and its memory soon passed into the obscurity of legend. In
these enlightened days of course, no one believes a word of it. Chapter 16
Arthur
awoke to the sound of argument and went to the bridge. Ford was waving his
arms about. "You're
crazy, Zaphod," he was saying, "Magrathea is a myth, a fairy story,
it's what parents tell their kids about at night if they want them to grow up
to become economists, it's ..." "And
that's what we are currently in orbit around," insisted Zaphod. "Look,
I can't help what you may personally be in orbit around," said Ford,
"but this ship ..." "Computer!"
shouted Zaphod. "Oh
no ..." "Hi
there! This is Eddie your shipboard computer, and I'm feeling just great guys,
and I know I'm just going to get a bundle of kicks out of any programme you
care to run through me." Arthur
looked inquiringly at Trillian. She motioned him to come on in but keep
quiet. "Computer,"
said Zaphod, "tell us again what our present trajectory is." "A
real pleasure feller," it burbled, "we are currently in orbit at an
altitude of three hundred miles around the legendary planet of
Magrathea." "Proving
nothing," said Ford. "I wouldn't trust that computer to speak my
weight." "I
can do that for you, sure," enthused the
computer, punching out more tickertape. "I can even work out you
personality problems to ten decimal places if it will help." Trillian
interrupted. "Zaphod,"
she said, "any minute now we will be swinging round to the daylight side
of this planet," adding, "whatever it turns out to be." "Hey,
what do you mean by that? The planet's where I predicted it would be isn't
it?" "Yes,
I know there's a planet there. I'm not arguing with anyone, it's just that I
wouldn't know Magrathea from any other lump of cold rock. Dawn's coming up if
you want it." "OK,
OK," muttered Zaphod, "let's at least give our eyes a good time.
Computer!" "Hi
there! What can I ..." "Just
shut up and give us a view of the planet again." A
dark featureless mass once more filled the screens — the planet rolling away
beneath them. They
watched for a moment in silence, but Zaphod was fidgety with excitement. "We
are now traversing the night side ..." he said in a hushed voice. The
planet rolled on. "The
surface of the planet is now three hundred miles beneath us ..." he
continued. He was trying to restore a sense of occasion to what he felt
should have been a great moment. Magrathea! He was piqued by Ford's sceptical
reaction. Magrathea! "In
a few seconds," he continued, "we should see ... there!" The
moment carried itself. Even the most seasoned star tramp can't help but
shiver at the spectacular drama of a sunrise seen from space, but a binary
sunrise is one of the marvels of the Galaxy. Out
of the utter blackness stabbed a sudden point of blinding light. It crept up
by slight degrees and spread sideways in a thin crescent blade, and within
seconds two suns were visible, furnaces of light, searing the black edge of
the horizon with white fire. Fierce shafts of colour streaked through the
thin atmosphere beneath them. "The
fires of dawn ... !" breathed Zaphod. "The
twin suns of Soulianis and Rahm ... !" "Or
whatever," said Ford quietly. "Soulianis
and Rahm!" insisted Zaphod. The
suns blazed into the pitch of space and a low ghostly music floated through
the bridge: Marvin was humming ironically because he hated humans so much. As
Ford gazed at the spectacle of light before them excitement burnt inside him,
but only the excitement of seeing a strange new planet, it was enough for him
to see it as it was. It faintly irritated him that Zaphod had to impose some
ludicrous fantasy on to the scene to make it work for him. All this Magrathea
nonsense seemed juvenile. Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful
without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? All
this Magrathea business seemed totally incomprehensible to Arthur. He edged
up to Trillian and asked her what was going on. "I
only know what Zaphod's told me," she whispered. "Apparently Magrathea
is some kind of legend from way back which no one seriously believes in. Bit like Atlantis on Earth, except that the legends say the
Magratheans used to manufacture planets." Arthur
blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something important. Suddenly
he realized what it was. "Is
there any tea on this spaceship?" he asked. More
of the planet was unfolding beneath them as the Heart of Gold streaked along
its orbital path. The suns now stood high in the black sky, the pyrotechnics
of dawn were over, and the surface of the planet appeared bleak and
forbidding in the common light of day — grey, dusty and only dimly contoured.
It looked dead and cold as a crypt. From time to time promising features
would appear on the distant horizon — ravines, maybe mountains, maybe even
cities — but as they approached the lines would soften and blur into
anonymity and nothing would transpire. The planet's surface was blurred by
time, by the slow movement of the thin stagnant air that had crept across it
for century upon century. Clearly,
it was very very old. A
moment of doubt came to Ford as he watched the grey landscape move beneath
them. The immensity of time worried him, he could
feel it as a presence. He cleared his throat. "Well,
even supposing it is ..." "It
is," said Zaphod. "Which
it isn't," continued Ford. "What do you want with it anyway?
There's nothing there." "Not
on the surface," said Zaphod. "Alright,
just supposing there's something. I take it you're not here for the sheer
industrial archaeology of it all. What are you after?" One
of Zaphod's heads looked away. The other one looked round to see what the
first was looking at, but it wasn't looking at anything very much. "Well,"
said Zaphod airily, "it's partly the curiosity, partly a sense of adventure,
but mostly I think it's the fame and the money ..." Ford
glanced at him sharply. He got a very strong impression that Zaphod hadn't
the faintest idea why he was there at all. "You
know I don't like the look of that planet at all," said Trillian shivering. "Ah,
take no notice," said Zaphod, "with half the wealth of the former
Galactic Empire stored on it somewhere it can afford to look frumpy." Bullshit,
thought Ford. Even supposing this was the home of some ancient civilization
now gone to dust, even supposing a number of exceedingly unlikely things,
there was no way that vast treasures of wealth were going to be stored there
in any form that would still have meaning now. He shrugged. "I
think it's just a dead planet," he said. "The
suspense is killing me," said Arthur testily. Stress
and nervous tension are now serious social problems in all parts of the
Galaxy, and it is in order that this situation should not in any way be
exacerbated that the following facts will now be revealed in advance. The
planet in question is in fact the legendary Magrathea. The
deadly missile attack shortly to be launched by an ancient automatic defence
system will result merely in the breakage of three coffee cups and a
micecage, the bruising of somebody's upper arm, and the untimely creation and
sudden demise of a bowl of petunias and an innocent sperm whale. In
order that some sense of mystery should still be preserved, no revelation
will yet be made concerning whose upper arm sustained the bruise. This fact
may safely be made the subject of suspense since it is of no significance
whatsoever. Chapter 17
After
a fairly shaky start to the day, Arthur's mind was beginning to reassemble
itself from the shellshocked fragments the previous day had left him with. He
had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup
filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. The
way it functioned was very interesting. When the Drink button was pressed it
made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds,
a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism and then sent tiny
experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the
subject's brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew
quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that
was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. The Nutri-Matic was designed
and manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation whose complaints
department now covers all the major land masses of the first three planets in
the Sirius Tau Star system. Arthur
drank the liquid and found it reviving. He glanced up at the screens again
and watched a few more hundred miles of barren greyness slide past. It
suddenly occurred to him to ask a question which had been bothering him. "Is
it safe?" he said. "Magrathea's
been dead for five million years," said Zaphod, "of course it's
safe. Even the ghosts will have settled down and raised families by
now." At which point a strange and inexplicable sound thrilled suddenly
through the bridge — a noise as of a distant fanfare; a hollow, reedy,
insubstantial sound. It preceded a voice that was equally hollow, reedy and
insubstantial. The voice said "Greetings to you ..." Someone
from the dead planet was talking to them. "Computer!"
shouted Zaphod. "Hi
there!" "What
the photon is it?" "Oh,
just some five-million-year-old tape that's being broadcast at us." "A
what? A recording?" "Shush!"
said Ford. "It's carrying on." The
voice was old, courteous, almost charming, but was underscored with quite
unmistakable menace. "This
is a recorded announcement," it said, "as I'm afraid we're all out
at the moment. The commercial council of Magrathea thanks you for your
esteemed visit ..." ("A
voice from ancient Magrathea!" shouted Zaphod. "OK, OK," said
Ford.) "...
but regrets," continued the voice, "that
the entire planet is temporarily closed for business. Thank you. If you would
care to leave your name and the address of a planet where you can be
contacted, kindly speak when you hear the tone." A
short buzz followed, then silence. "They
want to get rid of us," said Trillian nervously. "What do we
do?" "It's
just a recording," said Zaphod. "We keep going. Got that,
computer?" "I
got it," said the computer and gave the ship an extra kick of speed. They
waited. After
a second or so came the fanfare once again, and then the voice. "We
would like to assure you that as soon as our business is resumed
announcements will be made in all fashionable magazines and colour
supplements, when our clients will once again be able to select from all
that's best in contemporary geography." The menace in the voice took on
a sharper edge. "Meanwhile we thank our clients for their kind interest
and would ask them to leave. Now." Arthur
looked round the nervous faces of his companions. "Well,
I suppose we'd better be going then, hadn't we?" he suggested. "Shhh!"
said Zaphod. "There's absolutely nothing to be worried about." "Then
why's everyone so tense?" "They're
just interested!" shouted Zaphod. "Computer, start a descent into
the atmosphere and prepare for landing." This
time the fanfare was quite perfunctory, the voice distinctly cold. "It
is most gratifying," it said, "that your enthusiasm for our planet
continues unabated, and so we would like to assure you that the guided
missiles currently converging with your ship are part of a special service we
extend to all of our most enthusiastic clients, and the fully armed nuclear
warheads are of course merely a courtesy detail. We look forward to your
custom in future lives ... thank you." The
voice snapped off. "Oh,"
said Trillian. "Er
..." said Arthur. "Well?"
said Ford. "Look,"
said Zaphod, "will you get it into your heads? That's just a recorded message.
It's millions of years old. It doesn't apply to us,
get it?" "What," said Trillian quietly, "about the
missiles?" "Missiles?
Don't make me laugh." Ford
tapped Zaphod on the shoulder and pointed at the rear screen. Clear in the
distance behind them two silver darts were climbing through the atmosphere
towards the ship. A quick change of magnification brought them into close
focus - two massively real rockets thundering through the sky. The suddenness
of it was shocking. "I
think they're going to have a very good try at applying to us," said
Ford. Zaphod
stared at them in astonishment. + "Hey this is terrific!" he said.
"Someone down there is trying to kill us!" "Terrific,"
said Arthur. "But
don't you see what this means?" "Yes.
We're going to die." "Yes,
but apart from that." "Apart
from that?" "It
means we must be on to something!" "How
soon can we get off it?" Second
by second the image of the missiles on the screen became larger. They had
swung round now on to a direct homing course so that all that could be seen
of them now was the warheads, head on. "As
a matter of interest," said Trillian, "what are we going to
do?" "Just
keep cool," said Zaphod. "Is
that all?" shouted Arthur. "No,
we're also going to ... er ... take evasive action!" said Zaphod with a
sudden access of panic. "Computer, what evasive action can we
take?" "Er,
none I'm afraid, guys," said the computer. "...
or something," said Zaphod, "... er ..." he said. "There
seems to be something jamming my guidance system," explained the computer
brightly, "impact minus forty-five seconds. Please call me Eddie if it
will help you to relax." Zaphod
tried to run in several equally decisive directions simultaneously.
"Right!" he said. "Er ... we've got to get manual control of
this ship." "Can
you fly her?" asked Ford pleasantly. "No,
can you?" "No." "Trillian,
can you?" "No." "Fine,"
said Zaphod, relaxing. "We'll do it together." "I
can't either," said Arthur, who felt it was time he began to assert
himself. "I'd
guessed that," said Zaphod. "OK computer, I want full manual
control now." "You
got it," said the computer. Several
large desk panels slid open and banks of control consoles sprang up out of
them, showering the crew with bits of expanded polystyrene packaging and
balls of rolled-up cellophane: these controls had never been used before. Zaphod
stared at them wildly. "OK,
Ford," he said, "full retro thrust and ten degrees starboard. Or
something ..." "Good
luck guys," chirped the computer, "impact minus thirty seconds
..." Ford
leapt to the controls — only a few of them made any immediate sense to him so
he pulled those. The ship shook and screamed as its guidance rocked jets
tried to push it every which way simultaneously. He released half of them and
the ship span round in a tight arc and headed back the way it had come,
straight towards the oncoming missiles. Air
cushions ballooned out of the walls in an instant as everyone was thrown
against them. For a few seconds the inertial forces held them flattened and
squirming for breath, unable to move. Zaphod struggled and pushed in manic
desperation and finally managed a savage kick at a small lever that formed
part of the guidance system. The
lever snapped off. The ship twisted sharply and rocketed upwards. The crew were hurled violently back across the cabin. Ford's
copy of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy smashed into another section of
the control console with the combined result that the guide started to
explain to anyone who cared to listen about the best ways of smuggling
Antarean parakeet glands out of Antares (an Antarean parakeet gland stuck on
a small stick is a revolting but much sought after cocktail delicacy and very
large sums of money are often paid for them by very rich idiots who want to
impress other very rich idiots), and the ship suddenly dropped out of the sky
like a stone. It
was of course more or less at this moment that one of the crew sustained a
nasty bruise to the upper arm. This should be emphasized because, as had
already been revealed, they escape otherwise completely unharmed and the
deadly nuclear missiles do not eventually hit the ship. The safety of the
crew is absolutely assured. "Impact
minus twenty seconds, guys ..." said the computer. "Then
turn the bloody engines back on!" bawled Zaphod. "OK,
sure thing, guys," said the computer. With a subtle roar the engines cut
back in, the ship smoothly flattened out of its dive and headed back towards
the missiles again. The
computer started to sing. "When
you walk through the storm ..." it whined nasally, "hold your head
up high ..." Zaphod
screamed at it to shut up, but his voice was lost in the din of what they
quite naturally assumed was approaching destruction. "And
don't ... be afraid ... of the dark!" Eddie wailed. The
ship, in flattening out had in fact flattened out upside down and lying on
the ceiling as they were it was now totally impossible for any of the crew to
reach the guidance systems. "At
the end of the storm ..." crooned Eddie. The
two missiles loomed massively on the screens as they thundered towards the
ship. "...
is a golden sky ..." But
by an extraordinarily lucky chance they had not yet fully corrected their
flight paths to that of the erratically weaving ship, and they passed right
under it. "And
the sweet silver songs of the lark ... Revised impact time fifteen seconds
fellas ... Walk on through the wind ..." The
missiles banked round in a screeching arc and plunged back into pursuit. +
"This is it," said Arthur watching them. "We are now quite
definitely going to die aren't we?" "I
wish you'd stop saying that," shouted Ford. "Well
we are aren't we?" "Yes." "Walk
on through the rain ..." sang Eddie. A
thought struck Arthur. He struggled to his feet. "Why
doesn't anyone turn on this "What
are you crazy?" said Zaphod. "Without proper programming anything
could happen." "Does
that matter at this stage?" shouted Arthur. "Though
your dreams be tossed and blown ..." sand
Eddie. Arthur
scrambled up on to one end of the excitingly chunky pieces of moulded
contouring where the curve of the wall met the ceiling. "Walk
on, walk on, with hope in your heart ..." "Does
anyone know why Arthur can't turn on the "And
you'll never walk alone ... Impact minus five seconds, it's been great
knowing you guys, God bless ... You'll ne ... ver ... walk ... alone!" "I
said," yelled Trillian, "does anyone know ..." The
next thing that happened was a mid-mangling explosion of noise and light. Chapter 18
And
the next thing that happened after that was that the Heart of Gold continued
on its way perfectly normally with a rather fetchingly redesigned interior.
It was somewhat larger, and done out in delicate pastel shades of green and blue.
In the centre a spiral staircase, leading nowhere in particular, stood in a
spray of ferns and yellow flowers and next to it a stone sundial pedestal
housed the main computer terminal. Cunningly deployed lighting and mirrors
created the illusion of standing in a conservatory overlooking a wide stretch
of exquisitely manicured garden. Around the periphery of the conservatory
area stood marble-topped tables on intricately beautiful wrought-iron legs.
As you gazed into the polished surface of the marble the vague forms of
instruments became visible, and as you touched them the instruments
materialized instantly under your hands. Looked at from the correct angles
the mirrors appeared to reflect all the required data readouts, though it was
far from clear where they were reflected from. It was in fact sensationally
beautiful. Relaxing
in a wickerwork sun chair, Zaphod Beeblebrox said, "What the hell
happened?" "Well
I was just saying," said Arthur lounging by a small fish pool,
"there's this "But
where are we?" said Ford who was sitting on the spiral staircase, a
nicely chilled Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster in his hand. "Exactly
where we were, I think ..." said Trillian, as all about them the mirrors
showed them an image of the blighted landscape of Magrathea which still
scooted along beneath them. Zaphod
leapt out of his seat. "Then
what's happened to the missiles?" he said. A
new and astounding image appeared in the mirrors. "They
would appear," said Ford doubtfully, "to have turned into a bowl of
petunias and a very surprised looking whale ..." "At
an Improbability Factor," cut in Eddie, who hadn't changed a bit,
"of eight million seven hundred and sixty-seven thousand one hundred and
twenty-eight to one against." Zaphod
stared at Arthur. "Did
you think of that, Earthman?" he demanded. "Well,"
said Arthur, "all I did was ..." "That's
very good thinking you know. Turn on the "Oh,"
said Arthur, "well, it was nothing really ..." "Was
it?" said Zaphod. "Oh well, forget it then. OK, computer, take us
in to land." "But
..." "I
said forget it." Another
thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm
whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface
of an alien planet. And
since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor
innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as
a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more. This
is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its life till
the moment it ended it. Ah ... ! What's happening? it thought. Er,
excuse me, who am I? Hello? Why
am I here? What's my purpose in life? What
do I mean by who am I? Calm
down, get a grip now ... oh! this is an interesting
sensation, what is it? It's a sort of ... yawning, tingling sensation in my
... my ... well I suppose I'd better start finding names for things if I want
to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I
shall call the world, so let's call it my stomach. Good.
Ooooh, it's getting quite strong. And hey, what's about this whistling
roaring sound going past what I'm suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I
can call that ... wind! Is that a good name? It'll do ... perhaps I can find
a better name for it later when I've found out what it's for. It must be
something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot
of it. Hey! What's this thing? This ... let's call it a tail — yeah, tail.
Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good
can't I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn't seem to achieve very much but
I'll probably find out what it's for later on. Now - have I built up any
coherent picture of things yet? No. Never
mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to
look forward to, I'm quite dizzy with anticipation ... Or
is it the wind? There
really is a lot of that now isn't it? And
wow! Hey! What's this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very
fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like ...
ow ... ound ... round ... ground! That's it! That's a good name — ground! I
wonder if it will be friends with me? And
the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence. Curiously
enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as
it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew
exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more
about the nature of the universe than we do now. Chapter 19
"Are
we taking this robot with us?" said Ford, looking with distaste at
Marvin who was standing in an awkward hunched posture in the corner under a
small palm tree. Zaphod
glanced away from the mirror screens which presented a panoramic view of the
blighted landscape on which the Heart of Gold had now landed. "Oh,
the Paranoid Android," he said. "Yeah, we'll take him." "But
what are supposed to do with a manically depressed robot?" "You
think you've got problems," said Marvin as if he was addressing a newly
occupied coffin, "what are you supposed to do if you are a manically
depressed robot? No, don't bother to answer that, I'm fifty thousand times
more intelligent than you and even I don't know the answer. It gives me a
headache just trying to think down to your level." Trillian
burst in through the door from her cabin. "My
white mice have escaped!" she said. An
expression of deep worry and concern failed to cross either of Zaphod's
faces. "Nuts
to your white mice," he said. Trillian
glared an upset glare at him, and disappeared again. It
is possible that her remark would have commanded greater attention had it
been generally realized that human beings were only the third most
intelligent life form present on the planet Earth, instead of (as was
generally thought by most independent observers) the second. "Good
afternoon boys." The
voice was oddly familiar, but oddly different. It had a matriarchal twang. It
announced itself to the crew as they arrived at the airlock hatchway that
would let them out on the planet surface. They
looked at each other in puzzlement. "It's
the computer," explained Zaphod. "I discovered it had an emergency
back-up personality that I thought might work out better." "Now
this is going to be your first day out on a strange new planet,"
continued Eddie's new voice, "so I want you all wrapped up snug and
warm, and no playing with any naughty bug-eyed monsters." Zaphod
tapped impatiently on the hatch. "I'm
sorry," he said, "I think we might be better off with a slide
rule." "Right!"
snapped the computer. "Who said that?" "Will
you open the exit hatch please, computer?" said Zaphod trying not to get
angry. "Not
until whoever said that owns up," urged the computer, stamping a few
synapses closed. "Oh
God," muttered Ford, slumped against a bulkhead and started to count to
ten. He was desperately worried that one day sentinent life forms would
forget how to do this. Only by counting could humans demonstrate their
independence of computers. "Come
on," said Eddie sternly. "Computer
..." began Zaphod ... "I'm
waiting," interrupted Eddie. "I can wait all day if necessary
..." "Computer
..." said Zaphod again, who had been trying to think of some subtle
piece of reasoning to put the computer down with, and had decided not to bother
competing with it on its own ground, "if you don't open that exit hatch
this moment I shall zap straight off to your major data banks and reprogram
you with a very large axe, got that?" Eddie,
shocked, paused and considered this. Ford
carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can
do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying
Blood ... blood ... blood ... blood ... Finally
Eddie said quietly, "I can see this relationship is something we're all
going to have to work at," and the hatchway opened. An
icy wind ripped into them, they hugged themselves warmly and stepped down the
ramp on to the barren dust of Magrathea. "It'll
all end in tears, I know it," shouted Eddie after them and closed the
hatchway again. A
few minutes later he opened and closed the hatchway again in response to a
command that caught him entirely by surprise. Chapter 20
Five
figures wandered slowly over the blighted land. Bits of it were dullish grey,
bits of it dullish brown, the rest of it rather less interesting to look at.
It was like a dried-out marsh, now barren of all vegetation and covered with
a layer of dust about an inch thick. It was very cold. Zaphod
was clearly rather depressed about it. He stalked off by himself and was soon
lost to sight behind a slight rise in the ground. The
wind stung Arthur's eyes and ears, and the stale thin air clasped his throat.
However, the thing stung most was his mind. "It's
fantastic ..." he said, and his own voice rattled his ears. Sound
carried badly in this thin atmosphere. "Desolate
hole if you ask me," said Ford. "I could have more fun in a cat
litter." He felt a mounting irritation. Of all the planets in all the
star systems of all the Galaxy — didn't he just have
to turn up at a dump like this after fifteen years of being a castaway? Not
even a hot dog stand in evidence. He stooped down and picked up a cold clot
of earth, but there was nothing underneath it worth crossing thousands of
light years to look at. "No,"
insisted Arthur, "don't you understand, this is
the first time I've actually stood on the surface of another planet ... a
whole alien world ...! Pity it's such a dump though." Trillian
hugged herself, shivered and frowned. She could have sworn she saw a slight
and unexpected movement out of the corner of her eye, but when she glanced in
that direction all she could see was the ship, still and silent, a hundred
yards or so behind them. She
was relieved when a second or so later they caught sight of Zaphod standing
on top of the ridge of ground and waving to them to come and join him. He
seemed to be excited, but they couldn't clearly hear what he was saying
because of the thinnish atmosphere and the wind. As
they approached the ridge of higher ground they became aware that it seemed
to be circular — a crater about a hundred and fifty yards wide. Round the
outside of the crater the sloping ground was spattered with black and red
lumps. They stopped and looked at a piece. It was wet. It was rubbery. With
horror they suddenly realized that it was fresh whalemeat. At
the top of the crater's lip they met Zaphod. "Look,"
he said, pointing into the crater. In
the centre lay the exploded carcass of a lonely sperm whale that hadn't lived
long enough to be disappointed with its lot. The silence was only disturbed
by the slight involuntary spasms of Trillian's throat. "I
suppose there's no point in trying to bury it?" murmured Arthur, and
then wished he hadn't. "Come,"
said Zaphod and started back down into the crater. "What,
down there?" said Trillian with severe distaste. "Yeah,"
said Zaphod, "come on, I've got something to show you." "We
can see it," said Trillian. "Not
that," said Zaphod, "something else. Come on." They
all hesitated. "Come
on," insisted Zaphod, "I've found a way in." "In?"
said Arthur in horror. "Into
the interior of the planet! An underground passage. The force of the whale's
impact cracked it open, and that's where we have to go. Where no man has trod
these five million years, into the very depths of time itself ..." Marvin
started his ironical humming again. Zaphod
hit him and he shut up. With
little shudders of disgust they all followed Zaphod down the incline into the
crater, trying very hard not to look at its unfortunate creator. "Life,"
said Marvin dolefully, "loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it." The
ground had caved in where the whale had hit it revealing a network of
galleries and passages, now largely obstructed by collapsed rubble and entrails.
Zaphod had made a start clearing a way into one of them, but Marvin was able
to do it rather faster. Dank air wafted out of its dark recesses, and as
Zaphod shone a torch into it, little was visible in the dusty gloom. "According
to the legends," he said, "the Magratheans lived most of their
lives underground." "Why's
that?" said Arthur. "Did the surface become too polluted or
overpopulated?" "No,
I don't think so," said Zaphod. "I think they just didn't like it
very much." "Are
you sure you know what you're doing?" said Trillian peering nervously
into the darkness. "We've been attacked once already you know." "Look
kid, I promise you the live population of this planet is nil plus the four of
us, so come on, let's get on in there. Er, hey Earthman ..." "Arthur,"
said Arthur. "Yeah
could you just sort of keep this robot with you and guard this end of the
passageway. OK?" "Guard?"
said Arthur. "What from? You just said there's no one here." "Yeah,
well, just for safety, OK?" said Zaphod. "Whose?
Yours or mine?" "Good
lad. OK, here we go." Zaphod
scrambled down into the passage, followed by Trillian and Ford. "Well
I hope you all have a really miserable time," complained Arthur. "Don't
worry," Marvin assured him, "they will." In
a few seconds they had disappeared from view. Arthur
stamped around in a huff, and then decided that a whale's graveyard is not on
the whole a good place to stamp around in. Marvin
eyed him balefully for a moment, and then turned himself off. Zaphod
marched quickly down the passageway, nervous as hell, but trying to hide it
by striding purposefully. He flung the torch beam around. The walls were
covered in dark tiles and were cold to the touch, the air thick with decay. "There,
what did I tell you?" he said. "An inhabited planet. Magrathea," and he strode on through the dirt and
debris that littered the tile floor. Trillian
was reminded unavoidably of the London Underground, though it was less
thoroughly squalid. At
intervals along the walls the tiles gave way to large mosaics — simple
angular patterns in bright colours. Trillian stopped and studied one of them
but could not interpret any sense in them. She called to Zaphod. "Hey,
have you any idea what these strange symbols are?" "I
think they're just strange symbols of some kind," said Zaphod, hardly
glancing back. Trillian
shrugged and hurried after him. From
time to time a doorway led either to the left or right into smallish chambers
which Ford discovered to be full of derelict computer equipment. He dragged
Zaphod into one to have a look. Trillian followed. "Look,"
said Ford, "you reckon this is Magrathea ..." "Yeah,"
said Zaphod, "and we heard the voice, right?" "OK,
so I've bought the fact that it's Magrathea — for the moment. What you have
so far said nothing about is how in the Galaxy you found it. You didn't just
look it up in a star atlas, that's for sure." "Research.
Government archives. Detective work. Few lucky guesses. Easy." "And
then you stole the Heart of Gold to come and look for it with?" "I
stole it to look for a lot of things." "A
lot of things?" said Ford in surprise. "Like what?" "I
don't know." "What?" "I
don't know what I'm looking for." "Why
not?" "Because
... because ... I think it might be because if I knew I wouldn't be able to
look for them." "What,
are you crazy?" "It's
a possibility I haven't ruled out yet," said Zaphod quietly. "I
only know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current
conditions. And its current conditions are not good." For
a long time nobody said anything as Ford gazed at Zaphod with a mind suddenly
full of worry. "Listen
old friend, if you want to ..." started Ford eventually. "No,
wait ... I'll tell you something," said Zaphod. "I freewheel a lot.
I get an idea to do something, and, hey, why not, I do it. I reckon I'll
become President of the Galaxy, and it just happens, it's easy. I decide to
steal this ship. I decide to look for Magrathea, and it all just happens.
Yeah, I work out how it can best be done, right, but it always works out.
It's like having a Galacticredit card which keeps on working though you never
send off the cheques. And then whenever I stop and think — why did I want to
do something? — how did I work out how to do it? — I
get a very strong desire just to stop thinking about it. Like I have now.
It's a big effort to talk about it." Zaphod
paused for a while. For a while there was silence. Then he frowned and said,
"Last night I was worrying about this again. About the fact that part of
my mind just didn't seem to work properly. Then it occurred to me that the
way it seemed was that someone else was using my mind to have good ideas
with, without telling me about it. I put the two ideas together and decided
that maybe that somebody had locked off part of my mind for that purpose,
which was why I couldn't use it. I wondered if there was a way I could check. "I
went to the ship's medical bay and plugged myself into the encephelographic
screen. I went through every major screening test on both my heads — all the
tests I had to go through under government medical officers before my
nomination for Presidency could be properly ratified. They showed up nothing.
Nothing unexpected at least. They showed that I was clever, imaginative,
irresponsible, untrustworthy, extrovert, nothing you couldn't have guessed.
And no other anomalies. So I started inventing further tests, completely at
random. Nothing. Then I tried superimposing the results from one head on top of
the results from the other head. Still nothing. Finally I got silly, because
I'd given it all up as nothing more than an attack of paranoia. Last thing I
did before I packed it in was take the superimposed picture and look at it
through a green filter. You remember I was always superstitious about the
color green when I was a kid? I always wanted to be a pilot on one of the
trading scouts?" Ford
nodded. "And
there it was," said Zaphod, "clear as day. A whole section in the
middle of both brains that related only to each other and not to anything
else around them. Some bastard had cauterized all the synapses and
electronically traumatised those two lumps of cerebellum." Ford
stared at him, aghast. Trillian had turned white. "Somebody
did that to you?" whispered Ford. "Yeah." "But
have you any idea who? Or why?" "Why?
I can only guess. But I do know who the bastard was." "You
know? How do you know?" "Because
they left their initials burnt into the cauterized synapses. They left them
there for me to see." Ford
stared at him in horror and felt his skin begin to crawl. "Initials?
Burnt into your brain?" "Yeah." "Well,
what were they, for God's sake?" Zaphod
looked at him in silence again for a moment. Then he looked away. "Z.B.,"
he said. At that
moment a steel shutter slammed down behind them and gas started to pour into
the chamber. "I'll
tell you about it later," choked Zaphod as all three passed out. Chapter 21
On
the surface of Magrathea Arthur wandered about moodily. Ford
had thoughtfully left him his copy of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
to while away the time with. He pushed a few buttons at random. The
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a very unevenly edited book and contains
many passages that simply seemed to its editors like a good idea at the time. One
of these (the one Arthur now came across) supposedly relates the experiences
of one Veet Voojagig, a quiet young student at the University of Maximegalon,
who pursued a brilliant academic career studying ancient philology, transformational
ethics and the wave harmonic theory of historical perception, and then, after
a night of drinking Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters with Zaphod Beeblebrox,
became increasingly obsessed with the problem of what had happened to all the
biros he'd bought over the past few years. There
followed a long period of painstaking research during which he visited all
the major centres of biro loss throughout the galaxy and eventually came up
with a quaint little theory which quite caught the public imagination at the
time. Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited
by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent
shades of the colour blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to
biro life forms. And it was to this planet that unattended biros would make
their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where
they knew they could enjoy a uniquely biroid lifestyle, responding to highly
biro-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the biro equivalent of the good
life. And
as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet Voojagig
suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have worked there for a
while driving a limousine for a family of cheap green retractables, whereupon
he was taken away, locked up, wrote a book, and was finally sent into tax
exile, which is the usual fate reserved for those who are determined to make
a fool of themselves in public. When
one day an expedition was sent to the spatial coordinates that Voojagig had
claimed for this planet they discovered only a small asteroid inhabited by a
solitary old man who claimed repeatedly that nothing was true, though he was
later discovered to be lying. There
did, however, remain the question of both the mysterious 60,000 Altairan
dollars paid yearly into his Brantisvogan bank account, and of course Zaphod
Beeblebrox's highly profitable second-hand biro business. Arthur
read this, and put the book down. The
robot still sat there, completely inert. Arthur
got up and walked to the top of the crater. He walked around the crater. He
watched two suns set magnificently over Magrathea. He
went back down into the crater. He woke the robot up because even a manically
depressed robot is better to talk to than nobody. "Night's
falling," he said. "Look robot, the stars are coming out." From
the heart of a dark nebula it is possible to see very few stars, and only
very faintly, but they were there to be seen. The
robot obediently looked at them, then looked back. "I
know," he said. "Wretched isn't it?" "But
that sunset! I've never seen anything like it in my wildest dreams ... the
two suns! It was like mountains of fire boiling into space." "I've
seen it," said Marvin. "It's rubbish." "We
only ever had the one sun at home," persevered Arthur, "I came from
a planet called Earth you know." "I
know," said Marvin, "you keep going on about it. It sounds
awful." "Ah
no, it was a beautiful place." "Did
it have oceans?" "Oh
yes," said Arthur with a sigh, "great wide rolling blue oceans
..." "Can't
bear oceans," said Marvin. "Tell
me," inquired Arthur, "do you get on well with other robots?" "Hate
them," said Marvin. "Where are you going?" Arthur
couldn't bear any more. He had got up again. "I
think I'll just take another walk," he said. "Don't
blame you," said Marvin and counted five hundred and ninety-seven
thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a second later. Arthur
slapped his arms about himself to try and get his circulation a little more
enthusiastic about its job. He trudged back up the wall of the crater. Because
the atmosphere was so thin and because there was no moon, nightfall was very
rapid and it was by now very dark. Because of this, Arthur practically walked
into the old man before he noticed him. Chapter 22
He
was standing with his back to Arthur watching the very last glimmers of light
sink into blackness behind the horizon. He was tallish, elderly and dressed
in a single long grey robe. When he turned his face was thin and distinguished,
careworn but not unkind, the sort of face you would happily bank with. But he
didn't turn yet, not even to react to Arthur's yelp of surprise. Eventually
the last rays of the sun had vanished completely, and he turned. His face was
still illuminated from somewhere, and when Arthur looked for the source of
the light he saw that a few yards away stood a small craft of some kind — a
small hovercraft, Arthur guessed. It shed a dim pool of light around it. The
man looked at Arthur, sadly it seemed. "You
choose a cold night to visit our dead planet," he said. "Who
... who are you?" stammered Arthur. The
man looked away. Again a kind of sadness seemed to cross his face. "My
name is not important," he said. He
seemed to have something on his mind. Conversation was clearly something he
felt he didn't have to rush at. Arthur felt awkward. "I
... er ... you startled me ..." he said, lamely. The
man looked round to him again and slightly raised his eyebrows. "Hmmmm?"
he said. "I
said you startled me." "Do
not be alarmed, I will not harm you." Arthur
frowned at him. "But you shot at us! There were missiles ..." he
said. The
man chuckled slightly. "An
automatic system," he said and gave a small sigh. "Ancient
computers ranged in the bowels of the planet tick away the dark millennia,
and the ages hang heavy on their dusty data banks. I think they take the
occasional pot shot to relieve the monotony." He
looked gravely at Arthur and said, "I'm a great fan of science you
know." "Oh
... er, really?" said Arthur, who was beginning to find the man's
curious, kindly manner disconcerting. "Oh,
yes," said the old man, and simply stopped talking again. "Ah,"
said Arthur, "er ..." He had an odd felling of being like a man in
the act of adultery who is surprised when the woman's husband wanders into
the room, changes his trousers, passes a few idle remarks about the weather
and leaves again. "You
seem ill at ease," said the old man with polite concern. "Er,
no ... well, yes. Actually you see, we weren't
really expecting to find anybody about in fact. I sort of gathered that you
were all dead or something ..." "Dead?"
said the old man. "Good gracious no, we have but slept." "Slept?"
said Arthur incredulously. "Yes,
through the economic recession you see," said the old man, apparently
unconcerned about whether Arthur understood a word he was talking about or
not. "Er,
economic recession?" "Well
you see, five million years ago the Galactic economy collapsed, and seeing
that custom-made planets are something of a luxury commodity you see
..." He
paused and looked at Arthur. "You
know we built planets do you?" he asked solemnly. "Well
yes," said Arthur, "I'd sort of gathered ..." "Fascinating
trade," said the old man, and a wistful look came into his eyes, "doing
the coastlines was always my favourite. Used to have endless fun doing the
little bits in fjords ... so anyway," he said trying to find his thread
again, "the recession came and we decided it would save us a lot of
bother if we just slept through it. So we programmed the computers to revive
us when it was all over." The
man stifled a very slight yawn and continued. "The
computers were index linked to the Galactic stock market prices you see, so
that we'd all be revived when everybody else had rebuilt the economy enough
to afford our rather expensive services." Arthur,
a regular Guardian reader, was deeply shocked at this. "That's
a pretty unpleasant way to behave isn't it?" "Is
it?" asked the old man mildly. "I'm sorry,
I'm a bit out of touch." He
pointed down into the crater. "Is
that robot yours?" he said. "No,"
came a thin metallic voice from the crater,
"I'm mine." "If
you'd call it a robot," muttered Arthur. "It's more a sort of
electronic sulking machine." "Bring
it," said the old man. Arthur was quite surprised to hear a note of
decision suddenly present in the old man's voice. He called to Marvin who
crawled up the slope making a big show of being lame, which he wasn't. "On
second thoughts," said the old man, "leave it here. You must come
with me. Great things are afoot." He turned towards his craft which,
though no apparent signal had been given, now drifted quietly towards them
through the dark. Arthur
looked down at Marvin, who now made an equally big show of turning round
laboriously and trudging off down into the crater again muttering sour
nothings to himself. "Come,"
called the old man, "come now or you will be late." "Late?"
said Arthur. "What for?" "What
is your name, human?" "Dent.
Arthur Dent," said Arthur. "Late,
as in the late Dentarthurdent," said the old man, sternly. "It's a
sort of threat you see." Another wistful look came into his tired old
eyes. "I've never been very good at them myself, but I'm told they can
be very effective." Arthur
blinked at him. "What
an extraordinary person," he muttered to himself. "I
beg your pardon?" said the old man. "Oh
nothing, I'm sorry," said Arthur in embarrassment. "Alright, where
do we go?" "In
my aircar," said the old man motioning Arthur to get into the craft
which had settled silently next to them. "We are going deep into the
bowels of the planet where even now our race is being revived from its
five-million-year slumber. Magrathea awakes." Arthur
shivered involuntarily as he seated himself next to the old man. The
strangeness of it, the silent bobbing movement of the craft as it soared into
the night sky quite unsettled him. He
looked at the old man, his face illuminated by the dull glow of tiny lights
on the instrument panel. "Excuse
me," he said to him, "what is your name by the way?" "My
name?" said the old man, and the same distant sadness came into his face
again. He paused. "My name," he said, "... is
Slartibartfast." Arthur
practically choked. "I
beg your pardon?" he spluttered. "Slartibartfast,"
repeated the old man quietly. "Slartibartfast?" The
old man looked at him gravely. "I
said it wasn't important," he said. The
aircar sailed through the night. Chapter 23
It
is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem.
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more
intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, Curiously
enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending destruction of the
planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind of the danger; but
most of their communications were misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch
footballs or whistle for tidbits, so they eventually gave up and left the
Earth by their own means shortly before the Vogons arrived. The
last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated
attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling
the "Star Sprangled Banner", but in fact the message was this: So
long and thanks for all the fish. In
fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins,
and they spent a lot of their time in behavioural research laboratories
running round inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle
experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this
relationship was entirely according to these creatures' plans. Chapter 24
Silently
the aircar coasted through the cold darkness, a single soft glow of light
that was utterly alone in the deep Magrathean night. It sped swiftly.
Arthur's companion seemed sunk in his own thoughts, and when Arthur tried on
a couple of occasions to engage him in conversation again he would simply
reply by asking if he was comfortable enough, and then left it at that. Arthur
tried to gauge the speed at which they were travelling, but the blackness
outside was absolute and he was denied any reference points. The sense of
motion was so soft and slight he could almost believe they were hardly moving
at all. Then
a tiny glow of light appeared in the far distance and within seconds had
grown so much in size that Arthur realized it was travelling towards them at
a colossal speed, and he tried to make out what sort of craft it might be. He
peered at it, but was unable to discern any clear shape, and suddenly gasped
in alarm as the aircraft dipped sharply and headed downwards in what seemed
certain to be a collision course. Their relative velocity seemed
unbelievable, and Arthur had hardly time to draw breath before it was all
over. The next thing he was aware of was an insane silver blur that seemed to
surround him. He twisted his head sharply round and saw a small black point
dwindling rapidly in the distance behind them, and it took him several
seconds to realize what had happened. They
had plunged into a tunnel in the ground. The colossal speed had been their
own relative to the glow of light which was a stationary hole in the ground,
the mouth of the tunnel. The insane blur of silver was the circular wall of
the tunnel down which they were shooting, apparently at several hundred miles
an hour. He
closed his eyes in terror. After
a length of time which he made no attempt to judge, he sensed a slight
subsidence in their speed and some while later became aware that they were gradually
gliding to a gentle halt. He
opened his eyes again. They were still in the silver tunnel, threading and
weaving their way through what appeared to be a crisscross warren of
converging tunnels. When they finally stopped it was in a small chamber of
curved steel. Several tunnels also had their terminus here, and at the
farther end of the chamber Arthur could see a large circle of dim irritating
light. It was irritating because it played tricks with the eyes, it was
impossible to focus on it properly or tell how near or far it was. Arthur
guessed (quite wrongly) that it might be ultra violet. Slartibartfast
turned and regarded Arthur with his solemn old eyes. "Earthman,"
he said, "we are now deep in the heart of Magrathea." "How
did you know I was an Earthman?" demanded Arthur. "These
things will become clear to you," said the old man gently, "at
least," he added with slight doubt in his voice, "clearer than they
are at the moment." He
continued: "I should warn you that the chamber we are about to pass into
does not literally exist within our planet. It is a little too ... large. We
are about to pass through a gateway into a vast tract of hyperspace. It may
disturb you." Arthur
made nervous noises. Slartibartfast
touched a button and added, not entirely reassuringly. "It scares the
willies out of me. Hold tight." The
car shot forward straight into the circle of light, and suddenly Arthur had a
fairly clear idea of what infinity looked like. It
wasn't infinity in fact. Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting.
Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity — distance is
incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. The chamber into which the aircar
emerged was anything but infinite, it was just very very big, so that it gave
the impression of infinity far better than infinity itself. Arthur's
senses bobbed and span, as, travelling at the immense speed he knew the
aircar attained, they climbed slowly through the open air leaving the gateway
through which they had passed an invisible pinprick in the shimmering wall
behind them. The
wall. The
wall defied the imagination — seduced it and defeated it. The wall was so
paralysingly vast and sheer that its top, bottom and sides passed away beyond
the reach of sight. The mere shock of vertigo could kill a man. The
wall appeared perfectly flat. It would take the finest laser measuring
equipment to detect that as it climbed, apparently to infinity, as it dropped
dizzily away, as it planed out to either side, it also curved. It met itself
again thirteen light seconds away. In other words the wall formed the inside
of a hollow sphere, a sphere over three million miles across and flooded with
unimaginable light. "Welcome,"
said Slartibartfast as the tiny speck that was the aircar, travelling now at
three times the speed of sound, crept imperceptibly forward into the
mindboggling space, "welcome," he said, "to
our factory floor." Arthur
stared about him in a kind of wonderful horror. Ranged away before them, at
distances he could neither judge nor even guess at, were a series of curious
suspensions, delicate traceries of metal and light hung about shadowy
spherical shapes that hung in the space. "This,"
said Slartibartfast, "is where we make most of
our planets you see." "You
mean," said Arthur, trying to form the words, "you mean you're
starting it all up again now?" "No
no, good heavens no," exclaimed the old man, "no, the Galaxy isn't
nearly rich enough to support us yet. No, we've been awakened to perform just
one extraordinary commission for very ... special clients from another
dimension. It may interest you ... there in the distance in front of
us." Arthur
followed the old man's finger, till he was able to pick out the floating
structure he was pointing out. It was indeed the only one of the many
structures that betrayed any sign of activity about it, though this was more
a sublimal impression than anything one could put one's finger on. At
the moment however a flash of light arced through the structure and revealed
in stark relief the patterns that were formed on the dark sphere within.
Patterns that Arthur knew, rough blobby shapes that were as familiar to him
as the shapes of words, part of the furniture of his mind. For a few seconds
he sat in stunned silence as the images rushed around his mind and tried to find
somewhere to settle down and make sense. Part
of his brain told him that he knew perfectly well what he was looking at and
what the shapes represented whilst another quite sensibly refused to
countenance the idea and abdicated responsibility for any further thinking in
that direction. The
flash came again, and this time there could be no doubt. "The
Earth ..." whispered Arthur. "Well,
the Earth Mark Two in fact," said Slartibartfast cheerfully. "We're
making a copy from our original blueprints." There
was a pause. "Are
you trying to tell me," said Arthur, slowly and with control, "that
you originally ... made the Earth?" "Oh
yes," said Slartibartfast. "Did you ever go to a place ... I think
it was called "No,"
said Arthur, "no, I didn't." "Pity,"
said Slartibartfast, "that was one of mine. Won an award you know.
Lovely crinkly edges. I was most upset to hear about its destruction." "You
were upset!" "Yes.
Five minutes later and it wouldn't have mattered so much. It was a quite
shocking cock-up." "Huh?"
said Arthur. "The
mice were furious." "The
mice were furious?" "Oh
yes," said the old man mildly. "Yes
well so I expect were the dogs and cats and duckbilled platypuses, but
..." "Ah,
but they hadn't paid for it you see, had they?" "Look,"
said Arthur, "would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went
mad now?" For
a while the aircar flew on in awkward silence. Then the old man tried
patiently to explain. "Earthman,
the planet you lived on was commissioned, paid for, and run by mice. It was
destroyed five minutes before the completion of the purpose for which it was
built, and we've got to build another one." Only
one word registered with Arthur. "Mice?"
he said. "Indeed
Earthman." "Look,
sorry — are we talking about the little white furry things with the cheese
fixation and women standing on tables screaming in early sixties sit
coms?" Slartibartfast
coughed politely. "Earthman,"
he said, "it is sometimes hard to follow your mode of speech. Remember I
have been asleep inside this planet of Magrathea for five million years and
know little of these early sixties sit coms of which you speak. These
creatures you call mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are
merely the protrusion into our dimension of vast hyperintelligent pan-dimensional
beings. The whole business with the cheese and the squeaking is just a
front." The
old man paused, and with a sympathetic frown continued. "They've
been experimenting on you I'm afraid." Arthur
thought about this for a second, and then his face cleared. "Ah
no," he said, "I see the source of the misunderstanding now. No,
look you see, what happened was that we used to do experiments on them. They
were often used in behavioural research, Pavlov and all that sort of stuff.
So what happened was hat the mice would be set all sorts of tests, learning
to ring bells, run around mazes and things so that the whole nature of the
learning process could be examined. From our observations of their behaviour
we were able to learn all sorts of things about our own ..." Arthur's
voice tailed off. "Such
subtlety ..." said Slartibartfast, "one has to admire it." "What?"
said Arthur. "How
better to disguise their real natures, and how better to guide your thinking.
Suddenly running down a maze the wrong way, eating the wrong bit of cheese,
unexpectedly dropping dead of myxomatosis, — if it's finely calculated the
cumulative effect is enormous." He
paused for effect. "You
see, Earthman, they really are particularly clever hyperintelligent
pan-dimensional beings. Your planet and people have formed the matrix of an
organic computer running a ten-million-year research programme ... "Let
me tell you the whole story. It'll take a little time." "Time,"
said Arthur weakly, "is not currently one of my
problems." Chapter 25
There
are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most
popular are Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend
so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches? Many
many millions of years ago a race of hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings
(whose physical manifestation in their own pan-dimensional universe is not
dissimilar to our own) got so fed up with the constant bickering about the
meaning of life which used to interrupt their favourite pastime of Brockian
Ultra Cricket (a curious game which involved suddenly hitting people for no
readily apparent reason and then running away) that they decided to sit down
and solve their problems once and for all. And
to this end they built themselves a stupendous super computer which was so
amazingly intelligent that even before the data banks had been connected up
it had started from I think therefore I am and got as far as the existence of
rice pudding and income tax before anyone managed to turn it off. It
was the size of a small city. Its
main console was installed in a specially designed executive office, mounted
on an enormous executive desk of finest ultramahagony topped with rich
ultrared leather. The dark carpeting was discreetly sumptuous, exotic pot
plants and tastefully engraved prints of the principal computer programmers
and their families were deployed liberally about the room, and stately
windows looked out upon a tree-lined public square. On
the day of the Great On-Turning two soberly dressed programmers with brief
cases arrived and were shown discreetly into the office. They were aware that
this day they would represent their entire race in its greatest moment, but
they conducted themselves calmly and quietly as they seated themselves
deferentially before the desk, opened their brief cases and took out their
leather-bound notebooks. Their
names were Lunkwill and Fook. For
a few moments they sat in respectful silence, then, after exchanging a quiet
glance with Fook, Lunkwill leaned forward and touched a small black panel. The
subtlest of hums indicated that the massive computer was now in total active
mode. After a pause it spoke to them in a voice rich resonant and deep. It
said: "What is this great task for which I, Deep Thought, the second
greatest computer in the Universe of Time and Space have been called into
existence?" Lunkwill
and Fook glanced at each other in surprise. "Your
task, O Computer ..." began Fook. "No,
wait a minute, this isn't right," said Lunkwill, worried. "We
distinctly designed this computer to be the greatest one ever and we're not
making do with second best. Deep Thought," he addressed the computer,
"are you not as we designed you to be, the
greatest most powerful computer in all time?" "I
described myself as the second greatest," intoned Deep Thought,
"and such I am." Another
worried look passed between the two programmers. Lunkwill cleared his throat. "There
must be some mistake," he said, "are you not a greatest computer
than the Milliard Gargantubrain which can count all the atoms in a star in a
millisecond?" "The
Milliard Gargantubrain?" said Deep Thought with unconcealed contempt.
"A mere abacus — mention it not." "And
are you not," said Fook leaning anxiously forward, "a greater
analyst than the Googleplex Star Thinker in the Seventh Galaxy of Light and
Ingenuity which can calculate the trajectory of every single dust particle
throughout a five-week Dangrabad Beta sand blizzard?" "A
five-week sand blizzard?" said Deep Thought haughtily. "You ask
this of me who have contemplated the very vectors of the atoms in the Big
Bang itself? Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff." The
two programmers sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment. Then Lunkwill
leaned forward again. "But
are you not," he said, "a more fiendish disputant than the Great
Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler of Ciceronicus 12, the Magic and
Indefatigable?" "The
Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler," said Deep Thought
thoroughly rolling the r's, "could talk all four legs off an Arcturan
MegaDonkey — but only I could persuade it to go for a walk afterwards." "Then
what," asked Fook, "is the problem?" "There
is no problem," said Deep Thought with magnificent ringing tones.
"I am simply the second greatest computer in the Universe of Space and
Time." "But
the second?" insisted Lunkwill. "Why do you keep saying the second?
You're surely not thinking of the Multicorticoid Perspicutron Titan Muller
are you? Or the Pondermatic? Or the ..." Contemptuous
lights flashed across the computer's console. "I
spare not a single unit of thought on these cybernetic simpletons!" he
boomed. "I speak of none but the computer that is to come after
me!" Fook
was losing patience. He pushed his notebook aside and muttered, "I think
this is getting needlessly messianic." "You
know nothing of future time," pronounced Deep Thought, "and yet in
my teeming circuitry I can navigate the infinite delta streams of future
probability and see that there must one day come a computer whose merest
operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate, but which it will be my
fate eventually to design." Fook
sighed heavily and glanced across to Lunkwill. "Can
we get on and ask the question?" he said. Lunkwill
motioned him to wait. "What
computer is this of which you speak?" he asked. "I
will speak of it no further in this present time," said Deep Thought.
"Now. Ask what else of me you will that I may function. Speak." They
shrugged at each other. Fook composed himself. "O
Deep Thought Computer," he said, "the task we have designed you to
perform is this. We want you to tell us ..." he paused, "... the
Answer!" "The
answer?" said Deep Thought. "The answer to what?" "Life!"
urged Fook. "The
Universe!" said Lunkwill. "Everything!"
they said in chorus. Deep
Thought paused for a moment's reflection. "Tricky,"
he said finally. "But
can you do it?" Again,
a significant pause. "Yes,"
said Deep Thought, "I can do it." "There
is an answer?" said Fook with breathless excitement." "A
simple answer?" added Lunkwill. "Yes,"
said Deep Thought. "Life, the Universe, and Everything. There is an
answer. But," he added, "I'll have to think about it." A
sudden commotion destroyed the moment: the door flew open and two angry men
wearing the coarse faded-blue robes and belts of the "We
demand admission!" shouted the younger of the two men elbowing a pretty
young secretary in the throat. "Come
on," shouted the older one, "you can't keep us out!" He pushed
a junior programmer back through the door. "We
demand that you can't keep us out!" bawled the younger one, though he
was now firmly inside the room and no further attempts were being made to
stop him. "Who
are you?" said Lunkwill, rising angrily from his seat. "What do you
want?" "I
am Majikthise!" announced the older one. "And
I demand that I am Vroomfondel!" shouted the younger one. Majikthise
turned on Vroomfondel. "It's alright," he explained angrily,
"you don't need to demand that." "Alright!"
bawled Vroomfondel banging on an nearby desk.
"I am Vroomfondel, and that is not a demand, that is a solid fact! What
we demand is solid facts!" "No
we don't!" exclaimed Majikthise in irritation. "That is precisely
what we don't demand!" Scarcely
pausing for breath, Vroomfondel shouted, "We don't demand solid facts!
What we demand is a total absence of solid facts. I demand that I may or may
not be Vroomfondel!" "But
who the devil are you?" exclaimed an outraged Fook. "We,"
said Majikthise, "are Philosophers." "Though
we may not be," said Vroomfondel waving a warning finger at the
programmers. "Yes
we are," insisted Majikthise. "We are quite definitely here as
representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries
and Other Thinking Persons, and we want this machine off, and we want it off
now!" "What's
the problem?" said Lunkwill. "I'll
tell you what the problem is mate," said
Majikthise, "demarcation, that's the problem!" "We
demand," yelled Vroomfondel, "that demarcation may or may not be
the problem!" "You
just let the machines get on with the adding up," warned Majikthise,
"and we'll take care of the eternal verities thank you very much. You
want to check your legal position you do mate. Under law the Quest for
Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working
thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight
out of a job aren't we? I mean what's the use of our sitting up half the night
arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and
gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?" "That's
right!" shouted Vroomfondel, "we demand rigidly defined areas of
doubt and uncertainty!" Suddenly
a stentorian voice boomed across the room. "Might
I make an observation at this point?" inquired Deep Thought. "We'll
go on strike!" yelled Vroomfondel. "That's
right!" agreed Majikthise. "You'll have a national Philosopher's
strike on your hands!" The
hum level in the room suddenly increased as several ancillary bass driver
units, mounted in sedately carved and varnished cabinet speakers around the
room, cut in to give Deep Thought's voice a little more power. "All
I wanted to say," bellowed the computer, "is that my circuits are
now irrevocably committed to calculating the answer to the Ultimate Question
of Life, the Universe, and Everything -" he paused and satisfied himself
that he now had everyone's attention, before continuing more quietly,
"but the programme will take me a little while to run." Fook
glanced impatiently at his watch. "How
long?" he said. "Seven
and a half million years," said Deep Thought. Lunkwill
and Fook blinked at each other. "Seven
and a half million years ...!" they cried in chorus. "Yes,"
declaimed Deep Thought, "I said I'd have to think about it, didn't I?
And it occurs to me that running a programme like this is bound to create an
enormous amount of popular publicity for the whole area of philosophy in
general. Everyone's going to have their own theories about what answer I'm
eventually to come up with, and who better to capitalize on that media market
than you yourself? So long as you can keep
disagreeing with each other violently enough and slagging each other off in
the popular press, you can keep yourself on the gravy train for life. How
does that sound?" The
two philosophers gaped at him. "Bloody
hell," said Majikthise, "now that is what I call thinking. Here
Vroomfondel, why do we never think of things like that?" "Dunno,"
said Vroomfondel in an awed whisper, "think our brains must be too
highly trained Majikthise." So
saying, they turned on their heels and walked out of the door and into a
lifestyle beyond their wildest dreams. Chapter 26
"Yes,
very salutary," said Arthur, after Slartibartfast had related the
salient points of the story to him, "but I don't understand what all
this has got to do with the Earth and mice and things." "That
is but the first half of the story Earthman," said the old man. "If
you would care to discover what happened seven and a half millions later, on
the great day of the Answer, allow me to invite you to my study where you can
experience the events yourself on our Sens-O-Tape records. That is unless you
would care to take a quick stroll on the surface of New Earth. It's only half
completed I'm afraid — we haven't even finished burying the artificial
dinosaur skeletons in the crust yet, then we have the Tertiary and
Quarternary Periods of the Cenozoic Era to lay down, and ..." "No
thank you," said Arthur, "it wouldn't be quite the same." "No,"
said Slartibartfast, "it won't be," and he turned the aircar round
and headed back towards the mind-numbing wall. Chapter 27
Slartibartfast's
study was a total mess, like the results of an explosion in a public library.
The old man frowned as they stepped in. "Terribly
unfortunate," he said, "a diode blew in one of the life-support
computers. When we tried to revive our cleaning staff we discovered they'd
been dead for nearly thirty thousand years. Who's going to clear away the
bodies, that's what I want to know. Look why don't you sit yourself down over
there and let me plug you in?" He
gestured Arthur towards a chair which looked as if it had been made out of
the rib cage of a stegosaurus. "It
was made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus," explained the old man as
he pottered about fishing bits of wire out from under tottering piles of
paper and drawing instruments. "Here," he said, "hold
these," and passed a couple of stripped wire end to Arthur. The
instant he took hold of them a bird flew straight through him. He
was suspended in mid-air and totally invisible to himself. Beneath him was a
pretty treelined city square, and all around it as far as the eye could see
were white concrete buildings of airy spacious design but somewhat the worse
for wear — many were cracked and stained with rain. Today however the sun was
shining, a fresh breeze danced lightly through the trees, and the odd
sensation that all the buildings were quietly humming was probably caused by
the fact that the square and all the streets around it were thronged with
cheerful excited people. Somewhere a band was playing, brightly coloured
flags were fluttering in the breeze and the spirit of carnival was in the
air. Arthur
felt extraordinarily lonely stuck up in the air above it all without so much
as a body to his name, but before he had time to reflect on this a voice rang
out across the square and called for everyone's attention. A
man standing on a brightly dressed dais before the building which clearly
dominated the square was addressing the crowd over a Tannoy. "O
people waiting in the Shadow of Deep Thought!" he cried out.
"Honoured Descendants of Vroomfondel and Majikthise, the Greatest and
Most Truly Interesting Pundits the Universe has ever known ... The Time of
Waiting is over!" Wild
cheers broke out amongst the crowd. Flags, streamers and wolf whistles sailed
through the air. The narrower streets looked rather like centipedes rolled
over on their backs and frantically waving their legs in the air. "Seven
and a half million years our race has waited for this Great and Hopefully
Enlightening Day!" cried the cheer leader. "The Day of the
Answer!" Hurrahs
burst from the ecstatic crowd. "Never
again," cried the man, "never again will we wake up in the morning
and think Who am I? What is my purpose in life? Does
it really, cosmically speaking, matter if I don't get up and go to work? For
today we will finally learn once and for all the plain and simple answer to
all these nagging little problems of Life, the Universe and Everything!" As
the crowd erupted once again, Arthur found himself gliding through the air
and down towards one of the large stately windows on the first floor of the
building behind the dais from which the speaker was addressing the crowd. He
experienced a moment's panic as he sailed straight through towards the
window, which passed when a second or so later he found he had gone right
through the solid glass without apparently touching it. No one
in the room remarked on his peculiar arrival, which is hardly surprising as
he wasn't there. He began to realize that the whole experience was merely a
recorded projection which knocked six-track seventy-millimetre into a cocked
hat. The
room was much as Slartibartfast had described it. In seven and a half million
years it had been well looked after and cleaned regularly every century or
so. The ultramahagony desk was worn at the edges, the carpet a little faded
now, but the large computer terminal sat in sparkling glory on the desk's
leather top, as bright as if it had been constructed yesterday. Two
severely dressed men sat respectfully before the terminal and waited. "The
time is nearly upon us," said one, and Arthur was surprised to see a
word suddenly materialize in thin air just by the man's neck. The word was
Loonquawl, and it flashed a couple of times and the disappeared again. Before
Arthur was able to assimilate this the other man
spoke and the word Phouchg appeared by his neck. "Seventy-five
thousand generations ago, our ancestors set this program in motion," the
second man said, "and in all that time we will be the first to hear the
computer speak." "An
awesome prospect, Phouchg," agreed the first man, and Arthur suddenly
realized that he was watching a recording with subtitles. "We
are the ones who will hear," said Phouchg, "the answer to the great
question of Life ...!" "The
Universe ...!" said Loonquawl. "And
Everything ...!" "Shhh,"
said Loonquawl with a slight gesture, "I think Deep Thought is preparing
to speak!" There
was a moment's expectant pause whilst panels slowly came to life on the front
of the console. Lights flashed on and off experimentally and settled down
into a businesslike pattern. A soft low hum came from the communication channel. "Good
morning," said Deep Thought at last. "Er
... Good morning, O Deep Thought," said Loonquawl nervously, "do
you have ... er, that is ..." "An
answer for you?" interrupted Deep Thought majestically. "Yes. I
have." The
two men shivered with expectancy. Their waiting had not been in vain. "There
really is one?" breathed Phouchg. "There
really is one," confirmed Deep Thought. "To
Everything? To the great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything?" "Yes." Both
of the men had been trained for this moment, their lives had been a
preparation for it, they had been selected at birth as those who would
witness the answer, but even so they found themselves gasping and squirming
like excited children. "And
you're ready to give it to us?" urged Loonquawl. "I
am." "Now?" "Now,"
said Deep Thought. They
both licked their dry lips. "Though
I don't think," added Deep Thought, "that you're going to like
it." "Doesn't
matter!" said Phouchg. "We must know it! Now!" "Now?"
inquired Deep Thought. "Yes!
Now ..." "Alright,"
said the computer and settled into silence again. The two men fidgeted. The
tension was unbearable. "You're
really not going to like it," observed Deep Thought. "Tell
us!" "Alright,"
said Deep Thought. "The Answer to the Great Question ..." "Yes
...!" "Of
Life, the Universe and Everything ..." said Deep Thought. "Yes
...!" "Is
..." said Deep Thought, and paused. "Yes
...!" "Is
..." "Yes
...!!!...?" "Forty-two,"
said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm. Chapter 28
It
was a long time before anyone spoke. Out
of the corner of his eye Phouchg could see the sea of tense expectant faces
down in the square outside. "We're
going to get lynched aren't we?" he whispered. "It
was a tough assignment," said Deep Thought mildly. "Forty-two!"
yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half
million years' work?" "I
checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite
definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you,
is that you've never actually known what the question is." "But
it was the Great Question! The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and
Everything!" howled Loonquawl. "Yes,"
said Deep Thought with the air of one who suffers fools gladly, "but
what actually is it?" A
slow stupefied silence crept over the men as they stared at the computer and
then at each other. "Well,
you know, it's just Everything ... Everything ..." offered Phouchg
weakly. "Exactly!"
said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is,
you'll know what the answer means." "Oh
terrific," muttered Phouchg flinging aside his notebook and wiping away
a tiny tear. "Look,
alright, alright," said Loonquawl, "can you just please tell us the
Question?" "The
Ultimate Question?" "Yes!" "Of
Life, the Universe, and Everything?" "Yes!" Deep
Thought pondered this for a moment. "Tricky,"
he said. "But
can you do it?" cried Loonquawl. Deep
Thought pondered this for another long moment. Finally:
"No," he said firmly. Both
men collapsed on to their chairs in despair. "But
I'll tell you who can," said Deep Thought. They
both looked up sharply. "Who?"
"Tell us!" Suddenly
Arthur began to feel his apparently non-existent scalp begin to crawl as he
found himself moving slowly but inexorably forward towards the console, but
it was only a dramatic zoom on the part of whoever had made the recording he
assumed. "I
speak of none other than the computer that is to come after me," intoned
Deep Thought, his voice regaining its accustomed declamatory tones. "A
computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate —
and yet I will design it for you. A computer which can calculate the Question
to the Ultimate Answer, a computer of such infinite and subtle complexity
that organic life itself shall form part of its operational matrix. And you
yourselves shall take on new forms and go down into the computer to navigate
its ten-million-year program! Yes! I shall design this computer for you. And
I shall name it also unto you. And it shall be called ... The Earth." Phouchg
gaped at Deep Thought. "What
a dull name," he said and great incisions appeared down the length of
his body. Loonquawl too suddenly sustained horrific gashed from nowhere. The
Computer console blotched and cracked, the walls flickered and crumbled and
the room crashed upwards into its own ceiling ... Slartibartfast
was standing in front of Arthur holding the two wires. "End
of the tape," he explained. Chapter 29
"Zaphod!
Wake up!" "Mmmmmwwwwwerrrrr?" "Hey
come on, wake up." "Just
let me stick to what I'm good at, yeah?" muttered Zaphod and rolled away
from the voice back to sleep. "Do
you want me to kick you?" said Ford. "Would
it give you a lot of pleasure?" said Zaphod, blearily. "No." "Nor
me. So what's the point? Stop bugging me." Zaphod curled himself up. "He
got a double dose of the gas," said Trillian looking down at him,
"two windpipes." "And
stop talking," said Zaphod, "it's hard
enough trying to sleep anyway. What's the matter with the ground? It's all
cold and hard." "It's
gold," said Ford. With
an amazingly balletic movement Zaphod was standing and scanning the horizon,
because that was how far the gold ground stretched in every direction,
perfectly smooth and solid. It gleamed like ... it's impossible to say what
it gleamed like because nothing in the Universe gleams in quite the same way
that a planet of solid gold does. "Who
put all that there?" yelped Zaphod, goggle-eyed. "Don't
get excited," said Ford, "it's only a catalogue." "A
who?" "A
catalogue," said Trillian, "an illusion." "How
can you say that?" cried Zaphod, falling to his hands and knees and
staring at the ground. He poked it and prodded it with his fingernail. It was
very heavy and very slightly soft — he could mark it with his fingernail. It
was very yellow and very shiny, and when he breathed on it his breath
evaporated off it in that very peculiar and special way that breath
evaporates off solid gold. "Trillian
and I came round a while ago," said Ford. "We shouted and yelled
till somebody came and then carried on shouting and yelling till they got fed
up and put us in their planet catalogue to keep us busy till they were ready
to deal with us. This is all Sens-O-Tape." Zaphod
stared at him bitterly. "Ah,
shit," he said, "you wake me up from my own perfectly good dream to
show me somebody else's." He sat down in a huff. "What's
that series of valleys over there?" he said. "Hallmark,"
said Ford. "We had a look." "We
didn't wake you earlier," said Trillian. "The last planet was knee
deep in fish." "Fish?" "Some
people like the oddest things." "And
before that," said Ford, "we had platinum. Bit dull. We thought
you'd like to see this one though." Seas
of light glared at them in one solid blaze wherever they looked. "Very
pretty," said Zaphod petulantly. In
the sky a huge green catalogue number appeared. It flickered and changed, and
when they looked around again so had the land. As
with one voice they all went, "Yuch." The
sea was purple. The beach they were on was composed of tiny yellow and green
pebbles — presumably terribly precious stones. The mountains in the distance
seemed soft and undulating with red peaks. Nearby stood a solid silver beach
table with a frilly mauve parasol and silver tassles. In
the sky a huge sign appeared, replacing the catalogue number. It said,
Whatever your tastes, Magrathea can cater for you. We are not proud. And
five hundred entirely naked women dropped out of the sky on parachutes. In
a moment the scene vanished and left them in a springtime meadow full of
cows. "Ow!"
said Zaphod. "My brains!" "You
want to talk about it?" said Ford. "Yeah,
OK," said Zaphod, and all three sat down and ignored the scenes that
came and went around them. "I
figure this," said Zaphod. "Whatever happened to my mind, I did it.
And I did it in such a way that it wouldn't be detected by the government
screening tests. And I wasn't to know anything about it myself. Pretty crazy,
right?" The
other two nodded in agreement. "So
I reckon, what's so secret that I can't let anybody know I know it, not the
Galactic Government, not even myself? And the answer
is I don't know. Obviously. But I put a few things together and I can begin
to guess. When did I decide to run for President? Shortly after the death of
President Yooden Vranx. You remember Yooden, Ford?" "Yeah,"
said Ford, "he was that guy we met when we were kids, the Arcturan
captain. He was a gas. He gave us conkers when you bust your way into his
megafreighter. Said you were the most amazing kid he'd ever met." "What's
all this?" said Trillian. "Ancient
history," said Ford, "when we were kids together on Betelgeuse. The
Arcturan megafreighters used to carry most of the bulky trade between the
Galactic Centre and the outlying regions The Betelgeuse trading scouts used
to find the markets and the Arcturans would supply them. There was a lot of
trouble with space pirates before they were wiped out in the Dordellis wars,
and the megafreighters had to be equipped with the most fantastic defence
shields known to Galactic science. They were real brutes of ships, and huge.
In orbit round a planet they would eclipse the sun. "One
day, young Zaphod here decides to raid one. On a tri-jet scooter designed for
stratosphere work, a mere kid. I mean forget it, it
was crazier than a mad monkey. I went along for the ride because I'd got some
very safe money on him not doing it, and didn't want him coming back with
fake evidence. So what happens? We got in his tri-jet which he had souped up
into something totally other, crossed three parsecs in a matter of weeks,
bust our way into a megafreighter I still don't know how, marched on to the
bridge waving toy pistols and demanded conkers. A wilder thing I have not
known. Lost me a year's pocket money. For what? Conkers." "The
captain was this really amazing guy, Yooden Vranx," said Zaphod.
"He gave us food, booze — stuff from really weird parts of the Galaxy —
lots of conkers of course, and we had just the most incredible time. Then he
teleported us back. Into the maximum security wing of Betelgeuse state
prison. He was a cool guy. Went on to become President of the Galaxy." Zaphod
paused. The
scene around them was currently plunged into gloom. Dark mists swirled round
them and elephantine shapes lurked indistinctly in the shadows. The air was
occasionally rent with the sounds of illusory beings murdering other illusory
beings. Presumably enough people must have liked this sort of thing to make
it a paying proposition. "Ford,"
said Zaphod quietly. "Yeah?" "Just
before Yooden died he came to see me." "What?
You never told me." "No." "What
did he say? What did he come to see you about?" "He
told me about the Heart of Gold. It was his idea that I should steal
it." "His
idea?" "Yeah,"
said Zaphod, "and the only possible way of stealing it was to be at the
launching ceremony." Ford
gaped at him in astonishment for a moment, and then roared with laughter. "Are
you telling me," he said, "that you set yourself up to become
President of the Galaxy just to steal that ship?" "That's
it," said Zaphod with the sort of grin that would get most people locked
away in a room with soft walls. "But
why?" said Ford. "What's so important about having it?" "Dunno,"
said Zaphod, "I think if I'd consciously known what was so important
about it and what I would need it for it would have showed up on the brain
screening tests and I would never have passed. I think Yooden told me a lot
of things that are still locked away." "So
you think you went and mucked about inside your own brain as a result of
Yooden talking to you?" "He
was a hell of a talker." "Yeah,
but Zaphod old mate, you want to look after yourself you know." Zaphod
shrugged. "I
mean, don't you have any inkling of the reasons for all this?" asked
Ford. Zaphod
thought hard about this and doubts seemed to cross his minds. "No,"
he said at last, "I don't seem to be letting myself into any of my
secrets. Still," he added on further reflection, "I can understand
that. I wouldn't trust myself further than I could spit a rat." A
moment later, the last planet in the catalogue vanished from beneath them and
the solid world resolved itself again. They
were sitting in a plush waiting room full of glass-top tables and design
awards. A
tall Magrathean man was standing in front of them. "The
mice will see you now," he said. Chapter 30
"So
there you have it," said Slartibartfast, making a feeble and perfunctory
attempt to clear away some of the appalling mess of his study. He picked up a
paper from the top of a pile, but then couldn't think of anywhere else to put
it, so he but it back on top of the original pile
which promptly fell over. "Deep Thought designed the Earth, we built it
and you lived on it." "And
the Vogons came and destroyed it five minutes before the program was
completed," added Arthur, not unbitterly. "Yes,"
said the old man, pausing to gaze hopelessly round the room. "Ten
million years of planning and work gone just like that. Ten million years,
Earthman ... can you conceive of that kind of time span? A galactic
civilization could grow from a single worm five times over in that time.
Gone." He paused. "Well
that's bureaucracy for you," he added. "You
know," said Arthur thoughtfully, "all this explains a lot of
things. All through my life I've had this strange unaccountable feeling that
something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one
would tell me what it was." "No,"
said the old man, "that's just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in
the Universe has that." "Everyone?"
said Arthur. "Well, if everyone has that perhaps it means something!
Perhaps somewhere outside the Universe we know ..." "Maybe.
Who cares?" said Slartibartfast before Arthur got too excited.
"Perhaps I'm old and tired," he continued, "but I always think
that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly
remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep
yourself occupied. Look at me: I design coastlines.
I got an award for He
rummaged around in a pile of debris and pulled out a large perspex block with
his name on it and a model of "Where's
the sense in that?" he said. "None that I've been able to make out.
I've been doing fjords in all my life. For a fleeting moment they become
fashionable and I get a major award." He
turned it over in his hands with a shrug and tossed it aside carelessly, but
not so carelessly that it didn't land on something soft. "In
this replacement Earth we're building they've given me "And
are you?" "No.
That's where it all falls down of course." "Pity,"
said Arthur with sympathy. "It sounded like quite a good lifestyle
otherwise." Somewhere
on the wall a small white light flashed. "Come,"
said Slartibartfast, "you are to meet the mice. Your arrival on the
planet has caused considerable excitement. It has already been hailed, so I
gather, as the third most improbable event in the history of the
Universe." "What
were the first two?" "Oh,
probably just coincidences," said Slartibartfast carelessly. He opened
the door and stood waiting for Arthur to follow. Arthur
glanced around him once more, and then down at himself, at the sweaty dishevelled
clothes he had been lying in the mud in on Thursday morning. "I
seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle," he muttered
to himself. "I
beg your pardon?" said the old man mildly. "Oh
nothing," said Arthur, "only joking." Chapter 31
It is
of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of
the problem is not always appreciated. For
instance, at the very moment that Arthur said "I seem to be having
tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle," a freak wormhole opened up in
the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried his words far far back in
time across almost infinite reaches of space to a distant Galaxy where
strange and warlike beings were poised on the brink of frightful interstellar
battle. The
two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time. A
dreadful silence fell across the conference table as the commander of the
Vl'hurgs, resplendent in his black jewelled battle shorts, gazed levelly at
the G'Gugvuntt leader squatting opposite him in a cloud of green sweet-smelling
steam, and, with a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised
to unleash electric death at his single word of command, challenged the vile
creature to take back what it had said about his mother. The
creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapour, and
at that very moment the words I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with
my lifestyle drifted across the conference table. Unfortunately,
in the Vl'hurg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable, and there
was nothing for it but to wage terrible war for centuries. Eventually
of course, after their Galaxy had been decimated over a few thousand years,
it was realized that the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake, and so the
two opposing battle fleets settled their few remaining differences in order
to launch a joint attack on our own Galaxy — now positively identified as the
source of the offending remark. For
thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space
and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across — which
happened to be the Earth — where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale
the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog. Those
who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the
Universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but that we
are powerless to prevent it. "It's
just life," they say. A
short aircar trip brought Arthur and the old Magrathean to a doorway. They
left the car and went through the door into a waiting room full of
glass-topped tables and perspex awards. Almost immediately, a light flashed
above the door at the other side of the room and they entered. +
"Arthur! You're safe!" a voice cried. "Am
I?" said Arthur, rather startled. "Oh good." The
lighting was rather subdued and it took him a moment or so to see Ford,
Trillian and Zaphod sitting round a large table beautifully decked out with
exotic dishes, strange sweetmeats and bizarre fruits. They were stuffing
their faces. "What
happened to you?" demanded Arthur. "Well,"
said Zaphod, attacking a boneful of grilled muscle, "our guests here
have been gassing us and zapping our minds and being generally weird and have
now given us a rather nice meal to make it up to us. Here," he said
hoiking out a lump of evil smelling meat from a bowl, "have some Vegan Rhino's cutlet. It's delicious if you
happen to like that sort of thing." "Hosts?"
said Arthur. "What hosts? I don't see any ..." A
small voice said, "Welcome to lunch, Earth creature." Arthur
glanced around and suddenly yelped. "Ugh!"
he said. "There are mice on the table!" There
was an awkward silence as everyone looked pointedly at Arthur. He
was busy staring at two white mice sitting in what looked like whisky glasses
on the table. He heard the silence and glanced around at everyone. "Oh!"
he said, with sudden realization. "Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't quite
prepared for ..." "Let
me introduce you," said Trillian. "Arthur this is Benji
mouse." "Hi,"
said one of the mice. His whiskers stroked what must have been a touch
sensitive panel on the inside of the whisky-glass like affair, and it moved
forward slightly. "And
this is Frankie mouse." The
other mouse said, "Pleased to meet you," and did likewise. Arthur
gaped. "But
aren't they ..." "Yes,"
said Trillian, "they are the mice I brought with me from the
Earth." She
looked him in the eye and Arthur thought he detected the tiniest resigned
shrug. "Could
you pass me that bowl of grated Arcturan Megadonkey?" she said. Slartibartfast
coughed politely. "Er,
excuse me," he said. "Yes,
thank you Slartibartfast," said Benji mouse sharply, "you may
go." "What?
Oh ... er, very well," said the old man, slightly taken aback,
"I'll just go and get on with some of my fjords then." "Ah,
well in fact that won't be necessary," said Frankie mouse. "It
looks very much as if we won't be needing the new
Earth any longer." He swivelled his pink little eyes. "Not now that
we have found a native of the planet who was there seconds before it was destroyed." "What?"
cried Slartibartfast, aghast. "You can't mean
that! I've got a thousand glaciers poised and ready to roll over "Well
perhaps you can take a quick skiing holiday before you dismantle them,"
said Frankie, acidly. "Skiing
holiday!" cried the old man. "Those glaciers are works of art!
Elegantly sculptured contours, soaring pinnacles of ice, deep majestic
ravines! It would be sacrilege to go skiing on high art!" "Thank
you Slartibartfast," said Benji firmly. "That will be all." "Yes
sir," said the old man coldly, "thank you very much. Well, goodbye
Earthman," he said to Arthur, "hope the
lifestyle comes together." With
a brief nod to the rest of the company he turned and walked sadly out of the
room. Arthur
stared after him not knowing what to say. "Now,"
said Benji mouse, "to business." Ford
and Zaphod clinked their glasses together. "To
business!" they said. "I
beg your pardon?" said Benji. Ford
looked round. "Sorry,
I thought you were proposing a toast," he said. The
two mice scuttled impatiently around in their glass transports. Finally they
composed themselves, and Benji moved forward to address Arthur. + "Now,
Earth creature," he said, "the situation we have in effect is this.
We have, as you know, been more or less running your planet for the last ten
million years in order to find this wretched thing called the Ultimate
Question." "Why?"
said Arthur, sharply. "No
— we already thought of that one," said Frankie interrupting, "but
it doesn't fit the answer. Why? — Forty-Two ... you see, it doesn't
work." "No,"
said Arthur, "I mean why have you been doing it?" "Oh,
I see," said Frankie. "Well, eventually just habit I think, to be
brutally honest. And this is more or less the point — we're sick to the teeth
with the whole thing, and the prospect of doing it all over again on account
of those whinnet-ridden Vogons quite frankly gives me the screaming heeby
jeebies, you know what I mean? It was by the merest lucky chance that Benji
and I finished our particular job and left the planet early for a quick
holiday, and have since manipulated our way back to Magrathea by the good
offices of your friends." "Magrathea
is a gateway back to our own dimension," put in Benji. "Since
when," continued his murine colleague, "we have had an offer of a
quite enormously fat contract to do the 5D chat show and lecture circuit back
in our own dimensional neck of the woods, and we're very much inclined to
take it." "I
would, wouldn't you Ford?" said Zaphod promptingly. "Oh
yes," said Ford, "jump at it, like a shot." Arthur
glanced at them, wondering what all this was leading up to. "But
we've got to have a product you see," said Frankie, "I mean ideally
we still need the Ultimate Question in some form or other." Zaphod
leaned forward to Arthur. "You
see," he said, "if they're just sitting there in the studio looking
very relaxed and, you know, just mentioning that they happen to know the
Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, and then eventually have to
admit that in fact it's Forty-two, then the show's probably quite short. No
follow-up, you see." "We
have to have something that sounds good," said Benji. "Something
that sounds good?" exclaimed Arthur. "An Ultimate Question that
sounds good? From a couple of mice?" The
mice bristled. "Well,
I mean, yes idealism, yes the dignity of pure research, yes the pursuit of
truth in all its forms, but there comes a point I'm afraid where you begin to
suspect that if there's any real truth, it's that the entire
multi-dimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a
bunch of maniacs. And if it comes to a choice between spending yet another
ten million years finding that out, and on the other hand just taking the
money and running, then I for one could do with the exercise," said
Frankie. "But
..." started Arthur, hopelessly. "Hey,
will you get this, Earthman," interrupted Zaphod. "You are a last
generation product of that computer matrix, right, and you were there right
up to the moment your planet got the finger, yeah?" "Er
..." "So
your brain was an organic part of the penultimate configuration of the
computer programme," said Ford, rather lucidly he thought. "Right?"
said Zaphod. "Well,"
said Arthur doubtfully. He wasn't aware of ever having felt an organic part
of anything. He had always seen this as one of his problems. "In
other words," said Benji, steering his curious little vehicle right over
to Arthur, "there's a good chance that the structure of the question is
encoded in the structure of your brain — so we want to buy it off you." "What,
the question?" said Arthur. "Yes,"
said Ford and Trillian. "For
lots of money," said Zaphod. + "No, no," said Frankie,
"it's the brain we want to buy." "What!" "I
thought you said you could just read his brain electronically," protested
Ford. "Oh
yes," said Frankie, "but we'd have to get it out first. It's got to
be prepared." "Treated,"
said Benji. "Diced." "Thank
you," shouted Arthur, tipping up his chair and backing away from the
table in horror. "It
could always be replaced," said Benji reasonably, "if you think
it's important." "Yes,
an electronic brain," said Frankie, "a simple one would
suffice." "A
simple one!" wailed Arthur. "Yeah,"
said Zaphod with a sudden evil grin, "you'd just have to program it to
say What? and I don't understand and Where's the
tea? — who'd know the difference?" "What?"
cried Arthur, backing away still further. "See
what I mean?" said Zaphod and howled with pain because of something that
Trillian did at that moment. "I'd
notice the difference," said Arthur. "No
you wouldn't," said Frankie mouse, "you'd be programmed not
to." Ford
made for the door. "Look,
I'm sorry, mice old lads," he said. "I don't think we've got a
deal." "I
rather think we have to have a deal," said the mice in chorus, all the
charm vanishing fro their piping little voices in an instant. With a tiny
whining shriek their two glass transports lifted themselves off the table,
and swung through the air towards Arthur, who stumbled further backwards into
a blind corner, utterly unable to cope or think of anything. Trillian
grabbed him desperately by the arm and tried to drag him towards the door,
which Ford and Zaphod were struggling to open, but Arthur was dead weight -
he seemed hypnotized by the airborne rodents swooping towards him. She
screamed at him, but he just gaped. With
one more yank, Ford and Zaphod got the door open. On the other side of it was
a small pack of rather ugly men who they could only assume were the heavy mob
of Magrathea. Not only were they ugly themselves, but the medical equipment
they carried with them was also far from pretty. They charged. So
— Arthur was about to have his head cut open, Trillian was unable to help
him, and Ford and Zaphod were about to be set upon by several thugs a great
deal heavier and more sharply armed than they were. All
in all it was extremely fortunate that at that moment every alarm on the
planet burst into an earsplitting din. Chapter 32
"Emergency!
Emergency!" blared the klaxons throughout
Magrathea. "Hostile ship has landed on planet. Armed intruders in
section 8A. Defence stations, defence stations!" The
two mice sniffed irritably round the fragments of their glass transports
where they lay shattered on the floor. "Damnation,"
muttered Frankie mouse, "all that fuss over two pounds of Earthling
brain." He scuttled round and about, his pink eyes flashing, his fine
white coat bristling with static. "The
only thing we can do now," said Benji, crouching and stroking his
whiskers in thought, "is to try and fake a question, invent one that will
sound plausible." "Difficult,"
said Frankie. He thought. "How about What's yellow and dangerous?" Benji
considered this for a moment. "No,
no good," he said. "Doesn't fit the answer." They
sank into silence for a few seconds. "Alright,"
said Benji. "What do you get if you multiply six by seven?" "No,
no, too literal, too factual," said Frankie, "wouldn't sustain the
punters' interest." Again
they thought. Then
Frankie said: "Here's a thought. How many roads must a man walk
down?" "Ah,"
said Benji. "Aha, now that does sound promising!" He rolled the
phrase around a little. "Yes," he said, "that's excellent!
Sounds very significant without actually tying you down to meaning anything
at all. How many roads must a man walk down? Forty-two. Excellent, excellent,
that'll fox 'em. Frankie baby, we are made!" They
performed a scampering dance in their excitement. Near
them on the floor lay several rather ugly men who had been hit about the head
with some heavy design awards. Half
a mile away, four figures pounded up a corridor looking for a way out. They
emerged into a wide open-plan computer bay. They glanced about wildly. "Which
way do you reckon Zaphod?" said Ford. "At
a wild guess, I'd say down here," said Zaphod, running off down to the
right between a computer bank and the wall. As the others started after him
he was brought up short by a Kill-O-Zap energy bolt that cracked through the
air inches in front of him and fried a small section of adjacent wall. A
voice on a loud hailer said, "OK Beeblebrox, hold it right there. We've
got you covered." "Cops!"
hissed Zaphod, and span around in a crouch. "You want to try a guess at
all, Ford?" "OK,
this way," said Ford, and the four of them ran down a gangway between
two computer banks. At
the end of the gangway appeared a heavily armoured and space-suited figure
waving a vicious Kill-O-Zap gun. "We
don't want to shoot you, Beeblebrox!" shouted the figure. "Suits
me fine!" shouted Zaphod back and dived down a wide gap between two data
process units. The
others swerved in behind him. "There
are two of them," said Trillian. "We're cornered." They
squeezed themselves down in an angle between a large computer data bank and
the wall. They
held their breath and waited. Suddenly
the air exploded with energy bolts as both the cops opened fire on them
simultaneously. "Hey,
they're shooting at us," said Arthur, crouching in a tight ball, "I
thought they said they didn't want to do that." "Yeah,
I thought they said that," agreed Ford. Zaphod
stuck a head up for a dangerous moment. "Hey,"
he said, "I thought you said you didn't want to shoot us!" and
ducked again. They
waited. After
a moment a voice replied, "It isn't easy being a cop!" "What
did he say?" whispered Ford in astonishment. "He
said it isn't easy being a cop." "Well
surely that's his problem isn't it?" "I'd
have thought so." Ford
shouted out, "Hey listen! I think we've got enough problems on our own
having you shooting at us, so if you could avoid laying your problems on us
as well, I think we'd all find it easier to cope!" Another
pause, and then the loud hailer again. "Now
see here, guy," said the voice on the loud hailer, "you're not
dealing with any dumb two-bit trigger-pumping morons with low hairlines,
little piggy eyes and no conversation, we're a couple of intelligent caring
guys that you'd probably quite like if you met us socially! I don't go around
gratuitously shooting people and then bragging about it afterwards in seedy
space-rangers bars, like some cops I could mention! I go around shooting
people gratuitously and then I agonize about it afterwards for hours to my
girlfriend!" "And
I write novels!" chimed in the other cop. "Though I haven't had any
of them published yet, so I better warn you, I'm in a meeeean mood!" Ford's
eyes popped halfway out of their sockets. "Who are these guys?" he
said. "Dunno,"
said Zaphod, "I think I preferred it when they were shooting." "So
are you going to come quietly," shouted one of the cops again, "or
are you going to let us blast you out?" "Which
would you prefer?" shouted Ford. A
millisecond later the air about them started to fry again, as bolt after bolt
of Kill-O-Zap hurled itself into the computer bank in front of them. The
fusillade continued for several seconds at unbearable intensity. When
it stopped, there were a few seconds of near quietness ad the echoes died
away. "You
still there?" called one of the cops. "Yes,"
they called back. "We
didn't enjoy doing that at all," shouted the other cop. "We
could tell," shouted Ford. "Now,
listen to this, Beeblebrox, and you better listen good!" "Why?"
shouted Back Zaphod. "Because,"
shouted the cop, "it's going to be very intelligent, and quite
interesting and humane! Now either you all give yourselves up now and let us
beat you up a bit, though not very much of course because we are firmly
opposed to needless violence, or we blow up this entire planet and possibly
one or two others we noticed on our way out here!" "But
that's crazy!" cried Trillian. "You wouldn't do that!" "Oh
yes we would," shouted the cop, "wouldn't we?" he asked the
other one. "Oh
yes, we'd have to, no question," the other one called back. "But
why?" demanded Trillian. "Because
there are some things you have to do even if you are an enlightened liberal
cop who knows all about sensitivity and everything!" "I
just don't believe these guys," muttered Ford, shaking his head. One
cop shouted to the other, "Shall we shoot them again for a bit?" "Yeah,
why not?" They
let fly another electric barrage. The
heat and noise was quite fantastic. Slowly, the computer bank was beginning
to disintegrate. The front had almost all melted away, and thick rivulets of
molten metal were winding their way back towards where they were squatting.
They huddled further back and waited for the end. Chapter 33
But
the end never came, at least not then. Quite
suddenly the barrage stopped, and the sudden silence afterwards was
punctuated by a couple of strangled gurgles and thuds. The
four stared at each other. "What
happened?" said Arthur. "They
stopped," said Zaphod with a shrug. "Why?" "Dunno,
do you want to go and ask them?" "No." They
waited. "Hello?"
called out Ford. No
answer. "That's
odd." "Perhaps
it's a trap." "They
haven't the wit." "What
were those thuds?" "Dunno." They
waited for a few more seconds. "Right,"
said Ford, "I'm going to have a look." He
glanced round at the others. "Is
no one going to say, No you can't possibly, let me go instead?" They
all shook their heads. "Oh
well," he said, and stood up. For
a moment, nothing happened. Then,
after a second or so, nothing continued to happen. Ford peered through the
thick smoke that was billowing out of the burning computer. Cautiously
he stepped out into the open. Still
nothing happened. Twenty
yards away he could dimly see through the smoke the space-suited figure of
one of the cops. He was lying in a crumpled heap on the ground. Twenty yards
in the other direction lay the second man. No one else was anywhere to be
seen. This
struck Ford as being extremely odd. Slowly,
nervously, he walked towards the first one. The body lay reassuringly still
as he approached it, and continued to lie reassuringly still as he reached it
and put his foot down on the Kill-O-Zap gun that still dangled from its limp fingers. He
reached down and picked it up, meeting no resistance. The
cop was quite clearly dead. A
quick examination revealed him to be from Blagulon Kappa — he was a
methane-breathing life form, dependent on his space suit for survival in the
thin oxygen atmosphere of Magrathea. The
tiny life-support system computer on his backpack appeared unexpectedly to
have blown up. Ford
poked around in it in considerable astonishment. These miniature suit
computers usually had the full back-up of the main computer back on the ship,
with which they were directly linked through the sub-etha. Such a system was
fail-safe in all circumstances other than total feedback malfunction, which
was unheard of. He
hurried over to the other prone figure, and discovered that exactly the same
impossible thing had happened to him, presumably simultaneously. He
called the others over to look. They came, shared his astonishment, but not
his curiosity. "Let's
get shot out of this hole," said Zaphod. "If whatever I'm supposed to
be looking for is here, I don't want it." He grabbed the second
Kill-O-Zap gun, blasted a perfectly harmless accounting computer and rushed
out into the corridor, followed by the others. He very nearly blasted hell
out of an aircar that stood waiting for them a few yards away. The
aircar was empty, but Arthur recognized it as belonging to Slartibartfast. It
had a note from him pinned to part of its sparse instrument panel. The note
had an arrow drawn on it, pointing at one of the controls. It
said, This is probably the best button to press. Chapter 34
The
aircar rocketed them at speeds in excess of R17 through the steel tunnels
that lead out onto the appalling surface of the planet which was now in the
grip of yet another drear morning twilight. Ghastly
grey lights congealed on the land. R
is a velocity measure, defined as a reasonable speed of travel that is
consistent with health, mental wellbeing and not being more than say five
minutes late. It is therefore clearly an almost infinitely variable figure according
to circumstances, since the first two factors vary not only with speed taken
as an absolute, but also with awareness of the third factor. Unless handled
with tranquility this equation can result in considerable stress, ulcers and
even death. R17
is not a fixed velocity, but it is clearly far too fast. The
aircar flung itself through the air at R17 and above, deposited them next to
the Heart of Gold which stood starkly on the frozen ground like a bleached
bone, and then precipitately hurled itself back in the direction whence they
had come, presumably on important business of its own. Shivering,
the four of them stood and looked at the ship. Beside
it stood another one. It
was the Blagulon Kappa policecraft, a bulbous sharklike affair, slate green in colour and smothered with black stencilled
letters of varying degrees of size and unfriendliness. The letters informed
anyone who cared to read them as to where the ship was from, what section of
the police it was assigned to, and where the power feeds should be connected. It
seemed somehow unnaturally dark and silent, even for a ship whose two-man
crew was at that moment lying asphyxicated in a smoke-filled chamber several
miles beneath the ground. It is one of those curious things that is impossible to explain or define, but one can sense when
a ship is completely dead. Ford
could sense it and found it most mysterious — a ship and two policemen seemed
to have gone spontaneously dead. In his experience the Universe simply didn't
work like that. The
other three could sense it too, but they could sense the bitter cold even
more and hurried back into the Heart of Gold suffering from an acute attack
of no curiosity. Ford
stayed, and went to examine the Blagulon ship. As he walked, he nearly
tripped over an inert steel figure lying face down in the cold dust. "Marvin!"
he exclaimed. "What are you doing?" "Don't
feel you have to take any notice of me, please," came
a muffled drone. "But
how are you, metalman?" said Ford. "Very
depressed." "What's
up?" "I
don't know," said Marvin, "I've never been there." "Why,"
said Ford squatting down beside him and shivering,
"are you lying face down in the dust?" "It's
a very effective way of being wretched," said Marvin. "Don't
pretend you want to talk to me, I know you hate me." "No
I don't." "Yes
you do, everybody does. It's part of the shape of the Universe. I only have
to talk to somebody and they begin to hate me. Even robots hate me. If you
just ignore me I expect I shall probably go away." He
jacked himself up to his feet and stood resolutely facing the opposite
direction. "That
ship hated me," he said dejectedly, indicating the policecraft. "That
ship?" said Ford in sudden excitement. "What happened to it? Do you
know?" "It
hated me because I talked to it." "You
talked to it?" exclaimed Ford. "What do you mean you talked to
it?" "Simple.
I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its
external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and
explained my view of the Universe to it," said Marvin. "And
what happened?" pressed Ford. "It
committed suicide," said Marvin and stalked off back to the Heart of
Gold. Chapter 35
That
night, as the Heart of Gold was busy putting a few light years between itself
and the Horsehead Nebula, Zaphod lounged under the small palm tree on the
bridge trying to bang his brain into shape with massive Pan Galactic Gargle
Blasters; Ford and Trillian sat in a corner discussing life and matters
arising from it; and Arthur took to his bed to flip through Ford's copy of
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Since he was going to live in the
place, he reasoned, he'd better start finding out something about it. + He
came across this entry. It
said: 'The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through
three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and
Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. "For
instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have
lunch?" He
got no further before the ship's intercom buzzed into life. "Hey
Earthman? You hungry kid?" said Zaphod's voice. "Er,
well yes, a little peckish I suppose," said Arthur. "OK
baby, hold tight," said Zaphod. "We'll take in a quick bite at the
Restaurant at the End of the Universe." The
term Imperial is kept though it is now an anachronism. The hereditary Emperor
is nearly dead and has been so for many centuries. In the last moments of his
dying coma he was locked in a statis field which keeps him in a state of
perpetual unchangingness. All his heirs are now long dead, and this means
that without any drastic political upheaval, power has simply and effectively
moved a rung or two down the ladder, and is now seen to be vested in a body
which used to act simply as advisers to the Emperor — an elected Governmental
assembly headed by a President elected by that assembly. In fact it vests in
no such place. The
President in particular is very much a figurehead — he wields no real power
whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he
is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged
outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice,
always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield
power but to draw attention away from it. On those criteria Zaphod Beeblebrox
is one of the most successful Presidents the Galaxy has ever had — he has
already spent two of his ten Presidential years in prison for fraud. Very
very few people realize that the President and the Government have virtually
no power at all, and of these very few people only six know whence ultimate
political power is wielded. Most of the others secretly believe that the
ultimate decision-making process is handled by a computer. They couldn't be
more wrong. Because
Ford never learned to say his original name, his father eventually died of
shame, which is still a terminal disease in some parts of the Galaxy. The
other kids at school nicknamed him Ix, which in the language of Betelgeuse
Five translates as "boy who is not able satisfactorily to explain what a
Hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven". |