Douglas Adams. Life, the Universe, and Everything
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...nting, "is ... apparently ... what they ... havecome and taken." He shook his head very slightly as if he was trying to get
his brain to settle down lower in his skull.
"Strange thing to want to tell us," snapped Ford.
"Strange thing to take."
"Strange ship."
They had arrived at it. The second strangest thing about the ship was
watching the Somebody Else's Problem field at work. They could now clearly see
the ship for what it was simply because they knew it was there. It was quite
apparent, however, that nobody else could. This wasn't because it was actually
invisible or anything hyper-impossible like that. The technology involved in
making anything invisible is so infinitely complex that nine hundred and
ninety-nine thousand million, nine hundred and ninety-nine million, nine
hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a
billion it is much simpler and more effective just to take the thing away and
do without it. The ultra-famous sciento-magician Effrafax of Wug once bet his
life that, given a year, he could render the great megamountain Magramal
entirely invisible.
Having spent most of the year jiggling around with immense LuxO-Valves and
Refracto-Nullifiers and Spectrum-Bypass-O-Matics, he realized, with nine hours
to go, that he wasn't going to make it.
So, he and his friends, and his friends' friends, and his friends'
friends' friends, and his friends' friends' friends' friends, and some rather
less good friends of theirs who happened to own a major stellar trucking
company, put in what now is widely recognized as being the hardest night's
work in history, and, sure enough, on the following day, Magramal was no
longer visible. Effrafax lost his bet - and therefore his life - simply
because some pedantic adjudicating official noticed (a) that when walking
around the area that Magramal ought to be he didn't trip over or break his
nose on anything, and (b) a suspicious-looking extra moon.
The Somebody Else's Problem field is much simpler and more effective, and
what's more can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery.
This is because it relies on people's natural disposition not to see anything
they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain. If Effrafax had
painted the mountain pink and erected a cheap and simple Somebody Else's
Problem field on it, then people would have walked past the mountain, round
it, even over it, and simply never have noticed that the thing was there.
And this is precisely what was happening with Slartibartfast's ship. It
wasn't pink, but if it had been, that would have been the least of its visual
problems and people were simply ignoring it like anything.
The most extraordinary thing about it was that it looked only partly like
a spaceship with guidance fins, rocket engines and escape hatches and so on,
and a great deal like a small upended Italian bistro.
Ford and Arthur gazed up at it with wonderment and deeply offended
sensibilities.
"Yes, I know," said Slartibartfast, hurrying up to them at that point,
breathless and agitated, "but there is a reason. Come, we must go. The ancient
nightmare is come again. Doom confronts us all. We must leave at once."
"I fancy somewhere sunny," said Ford.
Ford and Arthur followed Slartibartfast into the ship and were so
perplexed by what they saw inside it that they were totally unaware of what
happened next outside.
A spaceship, yet another one, but this one sleek and silver, descended
from the sky on to the pitch, quietly, without fuss, its long legs unlocking
in a smooth ballet of technology.
It landed gently. It extended a short ramp. A tall grey-green figure
marched briskly out and approached the small knot of people who were gathered
in the centre of the pitch tending to the casualties of the recent bizarre
massacre. It moved people aside with quiet, understated authority, and came at
last to a man lying in a desperate pool of blood, clearly now beyond the reach
of any Earthly medicine, breathing, coughing his last. The figure knelt down
quietly beside him.
"Arthur Philip Deodat?" asked the figure.
The man, with horrified confusion in eyes, nodded feebly.
"You're a no-good dumbo nothing," whispered the creature. "I thought you
should know that before you went."
Chapter 5
Important facts from Galactic history, number two:
(Reproduced from the Siderial Daily Mentioner's Book of popular Galactic
History.)
Since this Galaxy began, vast civilizations have risen and fallen, risen
and fallen, risen and fallen so often that it's quite tempting to think that
life in the Galaxy must be
(a) something akin to seasick - space-sick, time sick, history sick or
some such thing, and
(b) stupid.
Chapter 6
It seemed to Arthur as if the whole sky suddenly just stood aside and let
them through.
It seemed to him that the atoms of his brain and the atoms of the cosmos
were streaming through each other.
It seemed to him that he was blown on the wind of the Universe, and that
the wind was him.
It seemed to him that he was one of the thoughts of the Universe and that
the Universe was a thought of his.
It seemed to the people at Lord's Cricket Ground that another North London
restaurant had just come and gone as they so often do, and that this was
Somebody Else's Problem.
"What happened?" whispered Arthur in considerable awe.
"We took off," said Slartibartfast.
Arthur lay in startled stillness on the acceleration couch. He wasn't
certain whether he had just got space-sickness or religion.
"Nice mover," said Ford in an unsuccessful attempt to disguise the degree
to which he had been impressed by what Slartibartfast's ship had just done,
"shame about the decor."
For a moment or two the old man didn't reply. He was staring at the
instruments with the air of one who is trying to convert fahrenheit to
centigrade in his head whilst his house is burning down. Then his brow cleared
and he stared for a moment at the wide panoramic screen in front of him, which
displayed a bewildering complexity of stars streaming like silver threads
around them.
His lips moved as if he was trying to spell something. Suddenly his eyes
darted in alarm back to his instruments, but then his expression merely
subsided into a steady frown. He looked back up at the screen. He felt his own
pulse. His frown deepened for a moment, then he relaxed.
"It's a mistake to try and understand mathematics," he said, "they only
worry me. What did you say?"
"Decor," said Ford. "Pity about it."
"Deep in the fundamental heart of mind and Universe," said Slartibartfast,
"there is a reason."
Ford glanced sharply around. He clearly thought this was taking an
optimistic view of things.
The interior of the flight deck was dark green, dark red, dark brown,
cramped and moodily lit. Inexplicably, the resemblance to a small Italian
bistro had failed to end at the hatchway. Small pools of light picked out pot
plants, glazed tiles and all sorts of little unidentifiable brass things.
Rafia-wrapped bottles lurked hideously in the shadows.
The instruments which had occupied Slartibartfast's attention seemed to be
mounted in the bottom of bottles which were set in concrete.
Ford reached out and touched it.
Fake concrete. Plastic. Fake bottles set in fake concrete.
The fundamental heart of mind and Universe can take a running jump, he
thought to himself, this is rubbish. On the other hand, it could not be denied
that the way the ship had moved made the Heart of Gold seem like an electric
pram.
He swung himself off the couch. He brushed himself down. He looked at
Arthur who was singing quietly to himself. He looked at the screen and
recognized nothing. He looked at Slartibartfast.
"How far did we just travel?" he said.
"About ..." said Slartibartfast, "about two thirds of the way across the
Galactic disc, I would say, roughly. Yes, roughly two thirds, I think."
"It's a strange thing," said Arthur quietly, "that the further and faster
one travels across the Universe, the more one's position in it seems to be
largely immaterial, and one is filled with a profound, or rather emptied of a
..."
"Yes, very strange," said Ford. "Where are we going?"
"We are going," said Slartibartfast, "to confront an ancient nightmare of
the Universe."
"And where are you going to drop us off?"
"I will need your help."
"Tough. Look, there's somewhere you can take us where we can have fun, I'm
trying to think of it, we can get drunk and maybe listen to some extremely
evil music. Hold on, I'll look it up." He dug out his copy of The Hitch
Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and tipped through those parts of the index
primarily concerned with sex and drugs and rock and roll.
"A curse has arisen from the mists of time," said Slartibartfast.
"Yes, I expect so," said Ford. "Hey," he said, lighting accidentally on
one particular reference entry, "Eccentrica Gallumbits, did you ever meet her?
The triple-breasted whore of Eroticon Six. Some people say her erogenous zones
start some four miles from her actual body. Me, I disagree, I say five."
"A curse," said Slartibartfast, "which will engulf the Galaxy in fire and
destruction, and possibly bring the Universe to a premature doom. I mean it,"
he added.
"Sounds like a bad time," said Ford, "with look I'll be drunk enough not
to notice. Here," he said, stabbing his finger at the screen of the Guide,
"would be a really wicked place to go, and I think we should. What do you say,
Arthur? Stop mumbling mantras and pay attention. There's important stuff
you're missing here."
Arthur pushed himself up from his couch and shook his head.
"Where are we going?" he said.
"To confront an ancient night-"
"Can it," said Ford. "Arthur, we are going out into the Galaxy to have
some fun. Is that an idea you can cope with?"
"What's Slartibartfast looking so anxious about?" said Arthur.
"Nothing," said Ford.
"Doom," said Slartibartfast. "Come," he added, with sudden authority,
"there is much I must show and tell you."
He walked towards a green wrought-iron spiral staircase set
incomprehensibly in the middle of the flight deck and started to ascend.
Arthur, with a frown, followed.
Ford slung the Guide sullenly back into his satchel.
"My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural
deficiency in moral fibre," he muttered to himself, "and that I am therefore
excused from saving Universes."
Nevertheless, he stomped up the stairs behind them.
What they found upstairs was just stupid, or so it seemed, and Ford shook
his head, buried his face in his hands and slumped against a pot plant,
crushing it against the wall.
"The central computational area," said Slartibartfast unperturbed, "this
is where every calculation affecting the ship in any way is performed. Yes I
know what it looks like, but it is in fact a complex four-dimensional
topographical map of a series of highly complex mathematical functions."
"It looks like a joke," said Arthur.
"I know what it looks like," said Slartibartfast, and went into it. As he
did so, Arthur had a sudden vague flash of what it might mean, but he refused
to believe it. The Universe could not possibly work like that, he thought,
cannot possibly. That, he thought to himself, would be as absurd as ... he
terminated that line of thinking. Most of the really absurd things he could
think of had already happened.
And this was one of them.
It was a large glass cage, or box - in fact a room.
In it was a table, a long one. Around it were gathered about a dozen
chairs, of the bentwood style. On it was a tablecloth - a grubby, red and
white check tablecloth, scarred with the occasional cigarette burn, each,
presumably, at a precise calculated mathematical position.
And on the tablecloth sat some half-eaten Italian meals, hedged about with
half-eaten breadsticks and half-drunk glasses of wine, and toyed with
listlessly by robots.
It was all completely artificial. The robot customers were attended by a
robot waiter, a robot wine waiter and a robot maetre d'. The furniture was
artificial, the tablecloth artificial, and each particular piece of food was
clearly capable of exhibiting all the mechanical characteristics of, say, a
pollo sorpreso, without actually being one.
And all participated in a little dance together - a complex routine
involving the manipulation of menus, bill pads, wallets, cheque books, credit
cards, watches, pencils and paper napkins, which seemed to be hovering
constantly on the edge of violence, but never actually getting anywhere.
Slartibartfast hurried in, and then appeared to pass the time of day quite
idly with the maetre d', whilst one of the customer robots, an autorory, slid
slowly under the table, mentioning what he intended to do to some guy over
some girl.
Slartibartfast took over the seat which had been thus vacated and passed a
shrewd eye over the menu. The tempo of the routine round the table seemed
somehow imperceptibly to quicken. Arguments broke out, people attempted to
prove things on napkins. They waved fiercely at each other, and attempted to
examine each other's pieces of chicken. The waiter's hand began to move on the
bill pad more quickly than a human hand could manage, and then more quickly
than a human eye could follow. The pace accelerated. Soon, an extraordinary
and insistent politeness overwhelmed the group, and seconds later it seemed
that a moment of consensus was suddenly achieved. A new vibration thrilled
through the ship.
Slartibartfast emerged from the glass room.
"Bistromathics," he said. "The most powerful computational force known to
parascience. Come to the Room of Informational Illusions."
He swept past and carried them bewildered in his wake.
Chapter 7
The Bistromatic Drive is a wonderful new method of crossing vast
interstellar distances without all that dangerous mucking about with
Improbability Factors.
Bistromathics itself is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding
the behaviour of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that time was not an
absolute but depended on the observer's movement in space, and that space was
not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in time, so it is now
realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer's movement
in restaurants.
The first non-absolute number is the number of people for whom the table
is reserved. This will vary during the course of the first three telephone
calls to the restaurant, and then bear no apparent relation to the number of
people who actually turn up, or to the number of people who subsequently join
them after the show/match/party/gig, or to the number of people who leave when
they see who else has turned up.
The second non-absolute number is the given time of arrival, which is now
known to be one of those most bizarre of mathematical concepts, a
recipriversexcluson, a number whose existence can only be defined as being
anything other than itself. In other words, the given time of arrival is the
one moment of time at which it is impossible that any member of the party will
arrive. Recipriversexclusons now play a vital part in many branches of maths,
including statistics and accountancy and also form the basic equations used to
engineer the Somebody Else's Problem field.
The third and most mysterious piece of non-absoluteness of all lies in the
relationship between the number of items on the bill, the cost of each item,
the number of people at the table, and what they are each prepared to pay for.
(The number of people who have actually brought any money is only a sub
phenomenon in this field.)
The baffling discrepancies which used to occur at this point remained
uninvestigated for centuries simply because no one took them seriously. They
were at the time put down to such things as politeness, rudeness, meanness,
flashness, tiredness, emotionality, or the lateness of the hour, and
completely forgotten about on the following morning. They were never tested
under laboratory conditions, of course, because they never occurred in
laboratories - not in reputable laboratories at least.
And so it was only with the advent of pocket computers that the startling
truth became finally apparent, and it was this:
Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines of restaurants do
not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces
of paper in any other parts of the Universe.
This single fact took the scientific world by storm. It completely
revolutionized it. So many mathematical conferences got held in such good
restaurants that many of the finest minds of a generation died of obesity and
heart failure and the science of maths was put back by years.
Slowly, however, the implications of the idea began to be understood. To
begin with it had been too stark, too crazy, too much what the man in the
street would have said, "Oh yes, I could have told you that," about. Then some
phrases like "Interactive Subjectivity Frameworks" were invented, and
everybody was able to relax and get on with it.
The small groups of monks who had taken up hanging around the major
research institutes singing strange chants to the effect that the Universe was
only a figment of its own imagination were eventually given a street theatre
grant and went away.
Chapter 8
"In space travel, you see," said Slartibartfast, as he fiddled with some
instruments in the Room of Informational Illusions, "in space travel ..."
He stopped and looked about him.
The Room of Informational Illusions was a welcome relief after the visual
monstrosities of the central computational area. There was nothing in it. No
information, no illusions, just themselves, white walls and a few small
instruments which looked as if they were meant to plug into something which
Slartibartfast couldn't find.
"Yes?" urged Arthur. He had picked up Slartibartfast's sense of urgency
but didn't know what to do with it.
"Yes what?" said the old man.
"You were saying?"
Slartibartfast looked at him sharply.
"The numbers," he said, "are awful." He resumed his search.
Arthur nodded wisely to himself. After a while he realized that this
wasn't getting him anywhere and decided that he would say "what?" after all.
"In space travel," repeated Slartibartfast, "all the numbers are awful."
Arthur nodded again and looked round to Ford for help, but Ford was
practising being sullen and getting quite good at it.
"I was only," said Slartibartfast with a sigh, "trying to save you the
trouble of asking me why all the ship's computations were being done on a
waiter's bill pad."
Arthur frowned.
"Why," he said, "were all the ship's computations being done on a wait-"
He stopped.
Slartibartfast said, "Because in space travel all the numbers are awful."
He could tell that he wasn't getting his point across.
"Listen," he said. "On a waiter's bill pad numbers dance. You must have
encountered the phenomenon."
"Well ..."
"On a waiter's bill pad," said Slartibartfast, "reality and unreality
collide on such a fundamental level that each becomes the other and anything
is possible, within certain parameters."
"What parameters?"
"It's impossible to say," said Slartibartfast. "That's one of them.
Strange but true. At least, I think it's strange," he added, "and I'm assured
that it's true."
At that moment he located the slot in the wall for which he had been
searching, and clicked the instrument he was holding into it.
"Do not be alarmed," he said, and then suddenly darted an alarmed look at
himself, and lunged back, "it's ..."
They didn't hear what he said, because at that moment the ship winked out
of existence around them and a starbattle-ship the size of a small Midlands
industrial city plunged out of the sundered night towards them, star lasers
ablaze.
They gaped, pop-eyed, and were unable to scream.
Chapter 9
Another world, another day, another dawn.
The early morning's thinnest sliver of light appeared silently.
Several billion trillion tons of superhot exploding hydrogen nuclei rose
slowly above the horizon and managed to look small, cold and slightly damp.
There is a moment in every dawn when light floats, there is the
possibility of magic. Creation holds its breath.
The moment passed as it regularly did on Squornshellous Zeta, without
incident.
The mist clung to the surface of the marshes. The swamp trees were grey
with it, the tall reeds indistinct. It hung motionless like held breath.
Nothing moved.
There was silence.
The sun struggled feebly with the mist, tried to impart a little warmth
here, shed a little light there, but clearly today was going to be just
another long haul across the sky.
Nothing moved.
Again, silence.
Nothing moved.
Silence.
Very often on Squornshellous Zeta, whole days would go on like this, and
this was indeed going to be one of them.
Fourteen hours later the sun sank hopelessly beneath the opposite horizon
with a sense of totally wasted effort.
And a few hours later it reappeared, squared its shoulders and started on
up the sky again.
This time, however, something was happening. A mattress had just met a
robot.
"Hello, robot," said the mattress.
"Bleah," said the robot and continued what it was doing, which was walking
round very slowly in a very tiny circle.
"Happy?" said the mattress.
The robot stopped and looked at the mattress. It looked at it quizzically.
It was clearly a very stupid mattress. It looked back at him with wide eyes.
After what it had calculated to ten significant decimal places as being
the precise length of pause most likely to convey a general contempt for all
things mattressy, the robot continued to walk round in tight circles.
"We could have a conversation," said the mattress, "would you like that?"
It was a large mattress, and probably one of quite high quality. Very few
things actually get manufactured these days, because in an infinitely large
Universe such as, for instance, the one in which we live, most things one
could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow
somewhere. A forest was discovered recently in which most of the trees grew
ratchet screwdrivers as fruit. The life cycle of ratchet screwdriver fruit it
quite interesting. Once picked it needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can
lie undisturbed for years. Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its
outer skin which crumbles into dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable
little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a sort
of hole for a screw. This, when found, will get thrown away. No one knows what
it is supposed to gain from this. Nature, in her infinite wisdom, is
presumably working on it.
No one really knows what mattresses are meant to gain from their lives
either. They are large, friendly, pocket-sprung creatures which live quiet
private lives in the marshes of Squornshellous Zeta. Many of them get caught,
slaughtered, dried out, shipped out and slept on. None of them seem to mind
and all of them are called Zem.
"No," said Marvin.
"My name," said the mattress, "is Zem. We could discuss the weather a
little."
Marvin paused again in his weary circular plod.
"The dew," he observed, "has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening
thud this morning."
He resumed his walk, as if inspired by this conversational outburst to
fresh heights of gloom and despondency. He plodded tenaciously. If he had had
teeth he would have gritted them at this point. He hadn't. He didn't. The mere
plod said it all.
The mattress flolloped around. This is a thing that only live mattresses
in swamps are able to do, which is why the word is not in more common usage.
It flolloped in a sympathetic sort of way, moving a fairish body of water as
it did so. It blew a few bubbles up through the water engagingly. Its blue and
white stripes glistened briefly in a sudden feeble ray of sun that had
unexpectedly made it through the mist, causing the creature to bask
momentarily.
Marvin plodded.
"You have something on your mind, I think," said the mattress floopily.
"More than you can possibly imagine," dreaded Marvin. "My capacity for
mental activity of all kinds is as boundless as the infinite reaches of space
itself. Except of course for my capacity for happiness."
Stomp, stomp, he went.
"My capacity for happiness," he added, "you could fit into a matchbox
without taking out the matches first."
The mattress globbered. This is the noise made by a live, swampdwelling
mattress that is deeply moved by a story of personal tragedy. The word can
also, according to The Ultra-Complete Maximegalon Dictionary of Every Language
Ever, mean the noise made by the Lord High Sanvalvwag of Hollop on discovering
that he has forgotten his wife's birthday for the second year running. Since
there was only ever one Lord High Sanvalvwag of Hollop, and he never married,
the word is only ever used in a negative or speculative sense, and there is an
ever-increasing body of opinion which holds that The Ultra-Complete
Maximegalon Dictionary is not worth the fleet of lorries it takes to cart its
microstored edition around in. Strangely enough, the dictionary omits the word
"floopily", which simply means "in the manner of something which is floopy".
The mattress globbered again.
"I sense a deep dejection in your diodes," it vollued (for the meaning of
the word "vollue", buy a copy of Squornshellous Swamptalk at any remaindered
bookshop, or alternatively buy The Ultra-Complete Maximegalon Dictionary, as
the University will be very glad to get it off their hands and regain some
valuable parking lots), "and it saddens me. You should be more mattresslike.
We live quiet retired lives in the swamp, where we are content to flollop and
vollue and regard the wetness in a fairly floopy manner. Some of us are
killed, but all of us are called Zem, so we never know which and globbering is
thus kept to a minimum. Why are you walking in circles?"
"Because my leg is stuck," said Marvin simply.
"It seems to me," said the mattress eyeing it compassionately, "that it is
a pretty poor sort of leg."
"You are right," said Marvin, "it is."
"Voon," said the mattress.
"I expect so," said Marvin, "and I also expect that you find the idea of a
robot with an artificial leg pretty amusing. You should tell your friends Zem
and Zem when you see them later; they'll laugh, if I know them, which I don't
of course - except insofar as I know all organic life forms, which is much
better than I would wish to. Ha, but my life is but a box of wormgears."
He stomped around again in his tiny circle, around his thin steel peg-leg
which revolved in the mud but seemed otherwise stuck.
"But why do you just keep walking round and round?" said the mattress.
"Just to make the point," said Marvin, and continued, round and round.
"Consider it made, my dear friend," flurbled the mattress, "consider it
made."
"Just another million years," said Marvin, "just another quick million.
Then I might try it backwards. Just for the variety, you understand."
The mattress could feel deep in his innermost spring pockets that the
robot dearly wished to be asked how long he had been trudging in this futile
and fruitless manner, and with another quiet flurble he did so.
"Oh, just over the one-point-five-million mark, just over," said Marvin
airily. "Ask me if I ever get bored, go on, ask me."
The mattress did.
Marvin ignored the question, he merely trudged with added emphasis.
"I gave a speech once," he said suddenly, and apparently unconnectedly.
"You may not instantly see why I bring the subject up, but that is because my
mind works so phenomenally fast, and I am at a rough estimate thirty billion
times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a
number, any number."
"Er, five," said the mattress.
"Wrong," said Marvin. "You see?"
The mattress was much impressed by this and realized that it was in the
presence of a not unremarkable mind. It willomied along its entire length,
sending excited little ripples through its shallow algae-covered pool.
It gupped.
"Tell me," it urged, "of the speech you once made, I long to hear it."
"It was received very badly," said Marvin, "for a variety of reasons. I
delivered it," he added, pausing to make an awkward humping sort of gesture
with his not-exactly-good arm, but his arm which was better than the other one
which was dishearteningly welded to his left side, "over there, about a mile
distance."
He was pointing as well as he could manage, and he obviously wanted to
make it totally clear that this was as well as he could manage, through the
mist, over the reeds, to a part of the marsh which looked exactly the same as
every other part of the marsh.
"There," he repeated. "I was somewhat of a celebrity at the time."
Excitement gripped the mattress. It had never heard of speeches being
delivered on Squornshellous Zeta, and certainly not by celebrities. Water
spattered off it as a thrill glurried across its back.
It did something which mattresses very rarely bother to do. Summoning
every bit of its strength, it reared its oblong body, heaved it up into the
air and held it quivering there for a few seconds whilst it peered through the
mist over the reeds at the part of the marsh which Marvin had indicated,
observing, without disappointment, that it was exactly the same as every other
part of the marsh. The effort was too much, and it flodged back into its pool,
deluging Marvin with smelly mud, moss and weeds.
"I was a celebrity," droned the robot sadly, "for a short while on account
of my miraculous and bitterly resented escape from a fate almost as good as
death in the heart of a blazing sun. You can guess from my condition," he
added, "how narrow my escape was. I was rescued by a scrap-metal merchant,
imagine that. Here I am, brain the size of ... never mind."
He trudged savagely for a few seconds.
"He it was who fixed me up with this leg. Hateful, isn't it? He sold me to
a Mind Zoo. I was the star exhibit. I had to sit on a box and tell my story
whilst people told me to cheer up and think positive. `Give us a grin, little
robot,' they would shout at me, `give us a little chuckle.' I would explain to
them that to get my face to grin wold take a good couple of hours in a
workshop with a wrench, and that went down very well."
"The speech," urged the mattress. "I long to hear of the speech you gave
in the marshes."
"There was a bridge built across the marshes. A cyberstructured
hyperbridge, hundreds of miles in length, to carry ion-buggies and freighters
over the swamp."
"A bridge?" quirruled the mattress. "Here in the swamp?"
"A bridge," confirmed Marvin, "here in the swamp. It was going to
revitalize the economy of the Squornshellous System. They spent the entire
economy of the Squornshellous System building it. They asked me to open it.
Poor fools."
It began to rain a little, a fine spray slid through the mist.
"I stood on the platform. For hundreds of miles in front of me, and
hundreds of miles behind me, the bridge stretched."
"Did it glitter?" enthused the mattress.
"It glittered."
"Did it span the miles majestically?"
"It spanned the miles majestically."
"Did it stretch like a silver thread far out into the invisible mist?"
"Yes," said Marvin. "Do you want to hear this story?"
"I want to hear your speech," said the mattress.
"This is what I said. I said, `I would like to say that it is a very great
pleasure, honour and privilege for me to open this bridge, but I can't because
my lying circuits are all out of commission. I hate and despise you all. I now
declare this hapless cyberstructure open to the unthinkable abuse of all who
wantonly cross her.' And I plugged myself into the opening circuits."
Marvin paused, remembering the moment.
The mattress flurred and glurried. It flolloped, gupped and willomied,
doing this last in a particularly floopy way.
"Voon," it wurfed at last. "And it was a magnificent occasion?"
"Reasonably magnificent. The entire thousand-mile-long bridge
spontaneously folded up its glittering spans and sank weeping into the mire,
taking everybody with it."
There was a sad and terrible pause at this point in the conversation
during which a hundred thousand people seemed unexpectedly to say "wop" and a
team of white robots descended from the sky like dandelion seeds drifting on
the wind in tight military formation. For a sudden violent moment they were
all there, in the swamp, wrenching Marvin's false leg off, and then they were
gone again in their ship, which said "foop".
"You see the sort of thing I have to contend with?" said Marvin to the
gobbering mattress.
Suddenly, a moment later, the robots were back again for another violent
incident, and this time when they left, the mattress was alone in the swamp.
He flolloped around in astonishment and alarm. He almost lurgled in fear. He
reared himself to see over the reeds, but there was nothing to see, just more
reeds. He listened, but there was no sound on the wind beyond the now familiar
sound of half-crazed etymologists calling distantly to each other across the
sullen mire.
Chapter 10
The body of Arthur Dent span.
The Universe shattered into a million glittering fragments around it, and
each particular shard span silently through the void, reflecting on its silver
surface some single searing holocaust of fire and destruction.
And then the blackness behind the Universe exploded, and each particular
piece of blackness was the furious smoke of hell.
And the nothingness behind the blackness behind the Universe erupted, and
behind the nothingness behind the blackness behind the shattered Universe was
at last the dark figure of an immense man speaking immense words.
"These, then," said the figure, speaking from an immensely comfortable
chair, "were the Krikkit Wars, the greatest devastation ever visited upon our
Galaxy. What you have experienced ..."
Slartibartfast floated past, waving.
"It's just a documentary," he called out. "This is not a good bit.
Terribly sorry, trying to find the rewind control ..."
"... is what billions of billions of innocent ..."
"Do not," called out Slartibartfast floating past again, and fiddling
furiously with the thing that he had stuck into the wall of the Room of
Informational Illusions and which was in fact still stuck there, "agree to buy
anything at this point."
"... people, creatures, your fellow beings ..."
Music swelled - again, it was immense music, immense chords. And behind
the man, slowly, three tall pillars began to emerge out of the immensely
swirling mist.
"... experienced, lived through - or, more often, failed to live through.
Think of that, my friends. And let us not forget - and in just a moment I
shall be able to suggest a way which will help us always to remember - that
before the Krikkit Wars, the Galaxy was that rare and wonderful thing a happy
Galaxy!"
The music was going bananas with immensity at this point.
"A Happy Galaxy, my friends, as represented by the symbol of the Wikkit
Gate!"
The three pillars stood out clearly now, three pillars topped with two
cross pieces in a way which looked stupefyingly familiar to Arthur's addled
brain.
"The three pillars," thundered the man. "The Steel Pillar which
represented the Strength and Power of the Galaxy!"
Searchlights seared out and danced crazy dances up and down the pillar on
the left which was, clearly, made of steel or something very like it. The
music thumped and bellowed.
"The Perspex Pillar," announced the man, "representing the forces of
Science and Reason in the Galaxy!"
Other searchlights played exotically up and down the righthand,
transparent pillar creating dazzling patterns within it and a sudden
inexplicable craving for ice-cream in the stomach of Arthur Dent.
"And," the thunderous voice continued, "the Wooden Pillar, representing
..." and here his voice became just very slightly hoarse with wonderful
sentiments, "the forces of Nature and Spirituality."
The lights picked out the central pillar. The music moved bravely up into
the realms of complete unspeakability.
"Between them supporting," the voice rolled on, approaching its climax,
"the Golden Bail of Prosperity and the Silver Bail of Peace!"
The whole structure was now flooded with dazzling lights, and the music
had now, fortunately, gone far beyond the limits of the discernible. At the
top of the three pillars the two brilliantly gleaming bails sat and dazzled.
There seemed to be girls sitting on top of them, or maybe they were meant to
be angels. Angels are usually represented as wearing more than that, though.
Suddenly there was a dramatic hush in what was presumably meant to be the
Cosmos, and a darkening of the lights.
"There is not a world," thrilled the man's expert voice, "not a civilized
world in the Galaxy where this symbol is not revered even today. Even in
primitive worlds it persists in racial memories. This it was that the forces
of Krikkit destroyed, and this it is that now locks their world away till the
end of eternity!"
And with a flourish, the man produced in his hands a model of the Wikkit
gate. Scale was terribly hard to judge in this whole extraordinary spectacle,
but the model looked as if it must have been about three feet high.
"Not the original key, of course. That, as everyone knows, was destroyed,
blasted into the ever-whirling eddies of the spacetime continuum and lost for
ever. This is a remarkable replica, hand-tooled by skilled craftsmen, lovingly
assembled using ancient craft secrets into a memento you will be proud to own,
in memory of those who fell, and in tribute to the Galaxy - our Galaxy - which
they died to defend ..."
Slartibartfast floated past again at this moment.
"Found it," he said. "We can lose all this rubbish. Just don't nod, that's
all."
"Now, let us bow our heads in payment," intoned the voice, and then said
it again, much faster and backwards.
Lights came and went, the pillars disappeared, the man gabled himself
backwards into nothing, the Universe snappily reassembled itself around them.
"You get the gist?" said Slartibartfast.
"I'm astonished," said Arthur, "and bewildered."
"I was asleep," said Ford, who floated into view at this point. "Did I
miss anything?"
They found themselves once again teetering rather rapidly on the edge of
an agonizingly high cliff. The wind whipped out from their faces and across a
bay on which the remains of one of the greatest and most powerful space
battle-fleets ever assembled in the Galaxy was briskly burning itself back
into existence. The sky was a sullen pink, darkening via a rather curious
colour to blue and upwards to black. Smoke billowed down out of it at an
incredible lick.
Events were now passing back by them almost too quickly to be
distinguished, and when, a short while later, a huge starbattleship rushed
away from them as if they'd said "boo", they only just recognized it as the
point at which they had come in.
But now things were too rapid, a video-tactile blur which brushed and
jiggled them through centuries of galactic history, turning, twisting,
flickering. The sound was a mere thin thrill.
Periodically through the thickening jumble of events they sensed appalling
catastrophes, deep horrors, cataclysmic shocks, and these were always
associated with certain recurring images, the only images which ever stood out
clearly from the avalance of tumbling history: a wicket gate, a small hard red
ball, hard white robots, and also something less distinct, something dark and
cloudy.
But there was also another sensation which rose clearly out of the
thrilling passage of time.
Just as a slow series of clicks when speeded up will lose the definition
of each individual click and gradually take on the quality of a sustained and
rising tone, so a series of individual impressions here took on the quality of
a sustained emotion - and yet not an emotion. If it was an emotion, it was a
totally emotionless one. It was hatred, implacable hatred. It was cold, not
like ice is cold, but like a wall is cold. It was impersonal, not as a
randomly flung fist in a crowd is impersonal, but like a computer-issued
parking summons is impersonal. And it was deadly - again, not like a bullet or
a knife is deadly, but like a brick wall across a motorway is deadly.
And just as a rising tone will change in character and take on harmonics
as it rises, so again, this emotionless emotion seemed to rise to an
unbearable if unheard scream and suddenly seemed to be a scream of guilt and
failure.
And suddenly it stopped.
They were left standing on a quiet hilltop on a tranquil evening.
The sun was setting.
All around them softly undulating green countryside rolled off gently into
the distance. Birds sang about what they thought of it all, and the general
opinion seemed to be good. A little way away could be heard the sound of
children playing, and a little further away than the apparent source of that
sound could be seen in the dimming evening light the outlines of a small town.
The town appeared to consist mostly of fairly low buildings made of white
stone. The skyline was of gentle pleasing curves.
The sun had nearly set.
As if out of nowhere, music began. Slartibartfast tugged at a switch and
it stopped.
A voice said, "This ..." Slartibartfast tugged at a switch and it stopped.
"I will tell you about it," he said quietly.
The place was peaceful. Arthur felt happy. Even Ford seemed cheerful. They
walked a short way in the direction of the town, and the Informational
Illusion of the grass was pleasant and springy under their feet, and the
Informational Illusion of the flowers smelt sweet and fragrant. Only
Slartibartfast seemed apprehensive and out of sorts.
He stopped and looked up.
It suddenly occurred to Arthur that, coming as this did at the end, so to
speak, or rather the beginning of all the horror they had just blurredly
experienced, something nasty must be about to happen. He was distressed to
think that something nasty could happen to somewhere as idyllic as this. He
too glanced up. There was nothing in the sky.
"They're not about to attack here, are they?" he said. He realized that
this was merely a recording he was walking through, but he still felt alarmed.
"Nothing is about to attack here," said Slartibartfast in a voice which
unexpectedly trembled with emotion. "This is where it all started. This is the
place itself. This is Krikkit."
He stared up into the sky.
The sky, from one horizon to another, from east to west, from north to
south, was utterly and completely black.
Chapter 11
Stomp stomp.
Whirrr.
"Pleased to be of service."
"Shut up."
"Thank you."
Stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp.
Whirrr.
"Thank you for making a simple door very happy."
"Hope your diodes rot."
"Thank you. Have a nice day."
Stomp stomp stomp stomp.
Whirrr.
"It is my pleasure to open for you ..."
"Zark off."
"... and my satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well
done."
"I said zark off."
"Thank you for listening to this message."
Stomp stomp stomp stomp.
"Wop."
Zaphod stopped stomping. He had been stomping around the Heart of Gold for
days, and so far no door had said "wop" to him. He was fairly certain that no
door had said "wop" to him now. It was not the sort of thing doors said. Too
concise. Furthermore, there were not enough doors. It sounded as if a hundred
thousand people had said "wop", which puzzled him because he was the only
person on the ship.
It was dark. Most of the ship's non-essential systems were closed down. It
was drifting in a remote area of the Galaxy, deep in the inky blackness of
space. So which particular hundred thousand people would turn up at this point
and say a totally unexpected "wop"?
He looked about him, up the corridor and down the corridor. It was all in
deep shadow. There were just the very dim pinkish outlines of the doors which
glowed in the dark and pulsed whenever they spoke, though he had tried every
way he could think of of stopping them.
The lights were off so that his heads could avoid looking at each other,
because neither of them was currently a particularly engaging sight, and nor
had they been since he had made the error of looking into his soul.
It had indeed been an error. It had been late one night - of course.
It had been a difficult day - of course.
There had been soulful music playing on the ship's sound system - of
course.
And he had, of course, been slightly drunk.
In other words, all the usual conditions which bring on a bout of soul
searching had applied, but it had, nevertheless, clearly been an error.
Standing now, silent and alone in the dark corridor he remembered the
moment and shivered. His one head looked one way and his other the other and
each decided that the other was the way to go.
He listened but could hear nothing.
All there had been was the "wop".
It seemed an awfully long way to bring an awfully large number of people
just to say one word.
He started nervously to edge his way in the direction of the bridge. There
at least he would feel in control. He stopped again. The way he was feeling he
didn't think he was an awfully good person to be in control.
The first shock of that moment, thinking back, had been discovering that
he actually had a soul.
In fact he'd always more or less assumed that he had one as he had a full
complement of everything else, and indeed two of somethings, but suddenly
actually to encounter the thing lurking there deep within him had giving him a
severe jolt.
And then to discover (this was the second shock) that it wasn't the
totally wonderful object which he felt a man in his position had a natural
right to expect had jolted him again.
Then he had thought about what his position actually was and the renewed
shock had nearly made him spill his drink. He drained it quickly before
anything serious happened to it. He then had another quick one to follow the
first one down and check that it was all right.
"Freedom," he said aloud.
Trillian came on to the bridge at that point and said several enthusiastic
things on the subject of freedom.
"I can't cope with it," he said darkly, and sent a third drink down to see
why the second hadn't yet reported on the condition of the first. He looked
uncertainly at both of her and preferred the one on the right.
He poured a drink down his other throat with the plan that it would head
the previous one off at the pass, join forces with it, and together they would
get the second to pull itself together. Then all three would go off in search
of the first, give it a good talking to and maybe a bit of a sing as well.
He felt uncertain as to whether the fourth drink had understood all that,
so he sent down a fifth to explain the plan more fully and a sixth for moral
support.
"You're drinking too much," said Trillian.
His heads collided trying to sort out the four of her he could now see
into a whole position. He gave up and looked at the navigation screen and was
astonished to see a quite phenomenal number of stars.
"Excitement and adventure and really wild things," he muttered.
"Look," she said in a sympathetic tone of voice, and sat down near him,
"it's quite understandable that you're going to feel a little aimless for a
bit."
He boggled at her. He had never seen anyone sit on their own lap before.
"Wow," he said. He had another drink.
"You've finished the mission you've been on for years."
"I haven't been on it. I've tried to avoid being on it."
"You've still finished it."
He grunted. There seemed to be a terrific party going on in his stomach.
"I think it finished me," he said. "Here I am, Zaphod Beeblebrox, I can go
anywhere, do anything. I have the greatest ship in the know sky, a girl with
whom things seem to be working out pretty well ..."
"Are they?"
"As far as I can tell I'm not an expert in personal relationships ..."
Trillian raised her eyebrows.
"I am," he added, "one hell of a guy, I can do anything I want only I just
don't have the faintest idea what."
He paused.
"One thing," he further added, "has suddenly ceased to lead to another" -
in contradiction of which he had another drink and slid gracelessly off his
chair.
Whilst he slept it off, Trillian did a little research in the ship's copy
of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It had some advice to offer on
drunkenness.
"Go to it," it said, "and good luck."
It was cross-referenced to the entry concerning the size of the Universe
and ways of coping with that.
Then she found the entry on Han Wavel, an exotic holiday planet, and one
of the wonders of the Galaxy.
Han Wavel is a world which cons...
