”Well, your team, as I say, have just won. The match. It means they retain the Ashes. You must be very pleased. I must say, I’m rather fond of cricket, though I wouldn’t like anyone outside this planet to hear me saying that. Oh dear no.” The apparition gave what looked as if it might have been a mischievous grin, but it was hard to tell because the sun was directly behind him, creating a blinding halo around his head and illuminating his silver hair and beard in a way which was awesome, dramatic and hard to reconcile with mischievous grins. ”Still,” he said, ”it’ll all be over in a couple of days, won’t it? Though as I said to you when we last met, I was very sorry about that.
Still, whatever will have been, will have been.” Arthur tried to speak but gave up the unequal struggle. He prodded Ford again. ”I thought something terrible had happened,” said Ford, ”but it’s just the end of the game.
We ought to get out. Oh, hello, Slartibartfast, what are you doing here?” ”Oh, pottering, pottering,” said the old man gravely. ”That your ship? Can you give us a lift anywhere?” ”Patience, patience,” the old man admonished. ”OK,” said Ford. ”It’s just that this planet’s going to be demolished pretty soon.” ”I know that,” said Slartibartfast. ”And, well, I just wanted to make that point,” said Ford. ”The point is taken.” And if you feel that you really want to hang around a cricket pitch at this point ...” ”I do.” ”Then it’s your ship.” ”It is.” ”I suppose.”
Ford turned away sharply at this point. ”Hello, Slartibartfast,” said Arthur at last. ”Hello, Earthman,” said Slartibartfast. ”After all,” said Ford, ”we can only die once.” The old man ignored this and stared keenly onto the pitch, with eyes that seemed alive with expressions that had no apparent bearing on what was happening out there. What was happening was that the crowd was gathering itself into a wide circle round the center of the pitch. What Slartibartfast saw in it, he alone knew. Ford was humming something. It was just one note repeated at intervals.
He was hoping that somebody would ask him what he was humming, but nobody did. If anybody had asked him he would have said he was humming the first line of a Noel Coward song called ”Mad About the Boy” over and over again. It would then have been pointed out to him that he was only singing one note, to which he would have replied that for reasons which he hoped would be apparent, he was omitting the ”about the boy” bit. He was annoyed that nobody asked. ”It’s just,” he burst out at last, ”that if we don’t go soon, we might get caught in the middle of it all again. And there’s nothing that depresses me more than seeing a planet being destroyed.
Except possibly still being on it when it happens. Or,” he added in an undertone, ”hanging around cricket matches.” ”Patience,” said Slartibartfast again. ”Great things are afoot.” ”That’s what you said last time we met,” said Arthur.
”They were,” said Slartibartfast. ”Yes, that’s true,” admitted Arthur. All, however, that seemed to be afoot was a ceremony of some kind. It was being specially staged for the benefit of tv rather than the spectators, and all they could gather about it from where they were standing was what they heard from a nearby radio. Ford was aggressively uninterested. 16 He fretted as he heard it explained that the Ashes were about to be presented to the Captain of the English team out there on the pitch, fumed when told that this was because they had now won them for the nth time, positively barked with annoyance at the information that the Ashes were the remains of a cricket stump, and when, further to this, he was asked to contend with the fact that the cricket stump in question had been burnt in Melbourne, Australia, in 1882, to signify the ”death of English cricket”, he rounded on Slartibartfast, took a deep breath, but didn’t have a chance to say anything because the old man wasn’t there.
He was marching out onto the pitch with terrible purpose in his gait, his hair, beard, and robes swept behind him, looking very much as Moses would have looked if Sinai had been a well-cut lawn instead of, as it is more usually represented, a fiery smoking mountain. ”He said to meet him at his ship,” said Arthur. ”What in the name of zarking fardwarks is the old fool doing?” exploded Ford. ”Meeting us at his ship in two minutes,” said Arthur with a shrug which indicated total abdication of thought. They started off towards it. Strange sounds reached their ears. They tried not to listen, but could not help noticing that Slartibartfast was querulously demanding that he be given the silver urn containing the Ashes, as they were, he said, ”vitally important for the past, present and future safety of the Galaxy”, and that this was causing wild hilarity.
They resolved to ignore it. What happened next they could not ignore. With a noise like a hundred thousand people saying ”wop”, a steely white spaceship suddenly seemed to create itself out of nothing in the air directly above the cricket pitch and hung there with infinite menace and a slight hum.
Then for a while, it did nothing, as if it expected everybody to go about their normal business and not mind it just hanging there. Then it did something quite extraordinary. Or rather, it opened up and let something quite extraordinary come out of it, eleven quite extraordinary things.
They were robots, white robots. What was most extraordinary about them was that they appeared to have come dressed for the occasion. Not only were they white, but they carried what appeared to be cricket bats, and not only that, but they also carried what appeared to be cricket balls, and not only that but they wore white ribbing pads around the lower parts of their legs.
These last were extraordinary because they appeared to contain jets which allowed these curiously civilized robots to fly down from their hovering spaceship and start to kill people, which is what they did ”Hello,” said Arthur, ”something seems to be happening.” ”Get to the ship,” shouted Ford.
”I don’t want to know, I don’t want to see, I don’t want to hear,” he yelled as he ran, ”this is not my planet, I didn’t choose to be here, I don’t want to get involved, just get me out of here, and get me to a party, with people I can relate to!” Smoke and flame billowed from the pitch. ”Well, the supernatural brigade certainly seems to be out in force here today ...” burbled a radio happily to itself. ”What I need,” shouted Ford, by way of clarifying his previous remarks, ”is a strong drink and a peer group.” He continued to run, pausing only for a moment to grab Arthur’s arm and drag him along with him. Arthur had adopted his normal crisis role, which was to stand with his mouth hanging open and let it all wash over him. ”They’re playing cricket,” muttered Arthur, stumbling along after Ford. ”I swear they are playing cricket. I do not know why they are doing this, but that is what they are doing.
They’re not just killing people, they’re sending them up,” he shouted, ”Ford, they’re sending us up!” It would have been hard to disbelieve this without knowing a great deal more Galactic history than Arthur had so far managed to pick up in his travels.
The ghostly but violent shapes that could be seen moving within the thick pall of smoke seemed to be performing a series of bizarre parodies of batting strokes, the difference being that every ball they struck with their bats exploded wherever it landed.
The very first one of these had dispelled Arthur’s initial reaction, that the whole thing might just be a publicity stunt by Australian margarine manufacturers. 17 And then, as suddenly as it had all started, it was over. The eleven white robots ascended through the seething cloud in a tight formation, and with a few last flashes of flame entered the bowels of their hovering white ship, which, with the noise of a hundred thousand people saying ”food”, promptly vanished into the thin air out of which it had wrapped. For a moment there was a terrible stunned silence, and then out of the drifting smoke emerged the pale figure of Slartibartfast looking even more like Moses because in spite of the continued absence of the mountain he was at least now striding across a fiery and smoking well-mown lawn.
He stared wildly about him until he saw the hurrying figures of Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect forcing their way through the frightened crowd which was for the moment busy stampeding in the opposite direction. The crowd was clearly thinking to itself about what an unusual day this was turning out to be, and not really knowing which way, if any, to turn.
Slartibartfast was gesturing urgently at Ford and Arthur and shouting at them, as the three of them gradually converged on his ship, still parked behind the sight-screens and still apparently unnoticed by the crowd stampeding past it who presumably had enough of their own problems to cope with at that time. ”They’ve garble warble fable!” shouted Slartibartfast in his thin tremulous voice. ”What did he say?” panted Ford as he elbowed his way onwards. Arthur shook his head. ”‘They’ve ...’ something or other,” he said. ”
They’ve table warble fable!” shouted Slartibartfast again. Ford and Arthur shook their heads at each other. ”It sounds urgent,” said Arthur. He stopped and shouted. ”What?” ”They’ve garble warble fashes!” cried Slartibartfast, still waving at them. ”He says,” said Arthur, ”that they’ve taken the Ashes. That is what I think he says.” They ran on. ”The ...?” said Ford. ”Ashes,” said Arthur tersely. ”The burnt remains of a cricket stump. It’s a trophy. That ...” he was panting, ”is ... apparently ... what they ... have come and taken.” He shook his head very slightly as if he was trying to get his brain to settle down lower in his sk
ull. ”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 science-magician Effrafax of Wug once bet his life that, given a year, he could render the great mega mountain Magramal entirely invisible.
Having spent most of the year jiggling around with immense Lux- O-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. 18 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 comes 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 onto 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 center 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 his eyes, nodded feebly. ”You’re a no-good dumbo nothing,” whispered the creature. ”I thought you should know that before you went.” 5 Chapter 5 Important facts from Galactic history, number two: (Reproduced from the Sidereal 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. 6 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. 19 ”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 that 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. 20 ”Yes, I expect so,” said Ford. ”Hey,” he said, lighting accidentally on one particular reference entry, ”Eccentric 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 the 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.
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 halfdrunk 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 meter 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, apollo's surprise, without actually being one. 21 And all participated in a little dance together - a complex routine involving the manipulation of menus, bill pads, wallets, checkbooks, 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 meter d’, whilst one of the customer robots, an authority, 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 around 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, 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 para science. Come to the Room of Informational Illusions.” He swept past and carried them bewildered in his wake. 7 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 behavior 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. 22 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. 8 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 practicing 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, ” where 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.” 23 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 star battleship 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. 9 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 a 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 around 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 24 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 that 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 lolloped around. This is a thing that only lives mattresses in swamps are able to do, which is why the word is not in more common usage. It lolloped 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 floppily. ”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 clobbered. This is the noise made by a live, swamp-dwelling 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 that holds that The Ultra-Complete Maximegalon Dictionary is not worth the fleet of lorries it takes to cart its macro stored edition around in. Strangely enough, the dictionary omits the word ”floppy”, which simply means ”in the manner of something which is floppy”.
The mattress clobbered again. ”I sense a deep dejection in your diodes,” it valued (for the meaning of the word ”volume”, 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 lollop and volume and regard the wetness in a fairly floppy manner.
Some of us are killed, but all of us are called Zem, so we never know which, and slobbering 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. 25 ”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,” fumbled the mattress, ”consider it made.” ”Just another million years,” said Marvin, ”just another quick million. Then I might try it backward. 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 welcomed along its entire length, sending excited little ripples through its shallow algae-covered pool.
It cupped. ”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 flurried 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 lodged 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 a 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. 26 ”He 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 would 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 cyber structure hyper bridge, hundreds of miles in length, to carry ion-buggies and freight over the swamp.”.
”A bridge?” quarreled 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, honor, 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 flurried and flurried. It lolloped, cupped, and welcomed, doing this last in a, particularly floppy 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 ”food”. ”You see the sort of thing I have to contend with?” said Marvin to the gibbering 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 lolloped around in astonishment and alarm. He almost laughed 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. 10 Chapter 10 The body of Arthur Dent span. 27
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 that 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 unspeakably. ”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. 28 ”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.
Thus it was that the forces of Krikkit destroyed, and thus 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 Ikki gate. The 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 space-time continuum, and lost forever. 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 feel, 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 backward. Lights came and went, the pillars disappeared, the man gabled himself backward 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 color 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 star battleship 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 whichever stood out clearly from the avalanche 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 computer-issued parking, a 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 29 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 blurred 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 that 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. 11 Chapter 11 Stomp stomp. Where. ”Pleased to be of service.” ”Shut up.” ”Thank you.” Stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp. Where. ”Thank you for making a simple door very happy.” ”Hope your diodes rot.” ”Thank you. Have a nice day.” Stomp stomp stomp stomp. Where. ”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.” 30 ”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 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 given 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. 31 ”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 known 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 that consists largely of fabulous ultra-luxury hotels and casinos, all of which have been formed by the natural erosion of wind and rain. The chances of this happening are more or less one to infinity against. Little is known of how this came about because none of the geophysicists, probability statisticians, meteoranalysts or bizzarrologists who are so keen to research it can afford to stay there. Terrific, thought Trillian to herself, and within a few hours the great white running-shoe ship was slowly powering down out of the sky beneath a hot brilliant sun towards a brightly colored sandy spaceport.
The ship was clearly causing a sensation on the ground, and Trillian was enjoying herself. She heard Zaphod moving around and whistling somewhere in the ship. ”How are you?” she said over the general intercom. ”Fine,” he said brightly, ”terribly well.” ”Where are you?” ”In the bathroom.” ”What are you doing?” ”Staying here.” After an hour or two it became plain that he meant it and the ship returned to the sky without having once opened its hatchway. 32 ”Heigh ho,” said Eddie the Computer. Trillian nodded patiently, tapped her fingers a couple of times and pushed the intercom switch. ”I think that enforced fun is probably not what you need at this point.” ”Probably not,” replied Zaphod from wherever he was. ”I think a bit of physical challenge would help draw you out of yourself.” ”Whatever you think, I think,” said Zaphod. ”Recreational Impossibilities” was a heading which caught Trillian’s eye when, a short while later, she sat down to flip through the Guide again, and as the Heart of Gold rushed at improbable speeds in an indeterminate direction, she sipped a cup of something undrinkable from the Nutrimatic Drink Dispenser and read about how to fly.
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of flying. There is an art, it says, or rather a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, it suggests, and try it.
The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it’s going to hurt. That is, it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard. Clearly, it’s the second point, the missing, which presents the difficulties. One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It’s no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won’t. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you’re halfway there so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss it. It is notoriously difficult to prize your attention away from these three things during the split second you have at your disposal.
Hence most people’s failure, and their eventual disillusionment with this exhilarating and spectacular sport. If, however, you are lucky enough to have your attention momentarily distracted at the crucial moment by, say, a gorgeous pair of legs (tentacles, pseudopodia, according to phylum and/or personal inclination) or a bomb going off in your vicinity, or by suddenly spotting an extremely rare species of a beetle crawling along a nearby twig, then in your astonishment, you will miss the ground completely and remain to bob just a few inches above it in what might seem to be a slightly foolish manner. This is a moment for superb and delicate concentration. Bob and float, float, and bob. Ignore all considerations of your own weight and simply let yourself waft higher. Do not listen to what anybody says to you at this point because they are unlikely to say anything helpful.
They are most likely to say something along the lines of, ”Good God, you can’t possibly be flying!” It is vitally important not to believe them or they will suddenly be right. Waft higher and higher. Try a few swoops, gentle ones at first, then drift above the treetops breathing regularly. Do not wave at anybody. 33 When you have done this a few times you will find the moment of distraction rapidly becomes easier and easier to achieve.
You will then learn all sorts of things about how to control your flight, your speed, your maneuverability, and the trick usually lies in not thinking too hard about whatever you want to do, but just allowing it to happen as if it was going to anyway. You will also learn how to land properly, which is something you will almost certainly cock up, and cock up badly, on your first attempt. There are private flying clubs you can join which help you achieve the all-important moment of distraction.
They hire people with surprising bodies or opinions to leap out from behind bushes and exhibit and/or explain them at the crucial moments. Few genuine hitch-hikers will be able to afford to join these clubs, but some may be able to get temporary employment at them. Trillian read this longingly but reluctantly decided that Zaphod wasn’t really in the right frame of mind for attempting to fly, or for walking through mountains or for trying to get the Brantisvogan Civil Service to acknowledge a change-of-address card, which was the other things listed under the heading ”Recreational Impossibilities”. Instead, she flew the ship to Allosimanius Seneca, a world of ice, snow, mind-hurtling beauty, and stunning cold.
The trek from the snow plains of Liska to the summit of the Ice Crystal Pyramids of Sastantua is long and grueling, even with jet skis and a team of Seneca Snowhounds, but the view from the top, a view which takes in the Stin Glacier Fields, the shimmering Prism Mountains, and the far ethereal dancing ice lights, is one which first freezes the mind and then slowly releases it to hitherto unexperienced horizons of beauty, and Trillian, for one, felt that she could do with a bit of having her mind slowly released to hitherto unexperienced horizons of beauty. They went into a low orbit.
There lay the silver-white beauty of Allosimanius Syneca beneath them. Zaphod stayed in bed with one head stuck under a pillow and the other doing crosswords till late into the night. Trillian nodded patiently again, counted to a sufficiently high number, and told herself that the important thing now was just to get Zaphod talking. She prepared, by dint of deactivating all the robot kitchen synthetics, the most fabulously delicious meal she could contrive - delicately oiled meals, scented fruits, fragrant cheeses, fine Aldebaran wines.
She carried it through to him and asked if he felt like talking things through. ”Zark off,” said Zaphod. Trillian nodded patiently to herself, counted to an even higher number, tossed the tray lightly aside, walked to the transport room, and just teleported herself the hell out of his life. She didn’t even program any coordinates,
she hadn’t the faintest idea where she was going, she just went - a random row of dots flowing through the Universe. ”Anything,” she said to herself as she left, ”is better than this.” ”Good job too,” muttered Zaphod to himself, turned over, and failed to go to sleep. The next day he restlessly paced the empty corridors of the ship, pretending not to look for her, though he knew she wasn’t there. He ignored the computer’s querulous demands to know just what the hell was going on around here by fitting a small electronic gag across a pair of its terminals. After a while, he began to turn down the lights.
There was nothing to see. Nothing was about to happen. Lying in bed one night - and the night was now virtually continuous on the ship - he decided to pull himself together, to get things into some kind of perspective. He sat up sharply and started to pull clothes on. He decided that there must be someone in the Universe feeling more wretched, miserable, and forsaken than himself, and he determined to set out and find him. Halfway to the bridge, it occurred to him that it might be Marvin, and he returned to bed. 34 It was a few hours later than this, as he stomped disconsolately about the darkened corridors swearing at cheerful doors, that he heard the ”wop” said, and it made him very nervous. He leaned tensely against the corridor wall and frowned like a man trying to unbend a corkscrew by telekinesis.
He laid his fingertips against the wall and felt an unusual vibration. And now he could quite clearly hear slight noises, and could hear where they were coming from - they were coming from the bridge. ”Computer?” he hissed. ”Mmmm?” said the computer terminal nearest him, equally quietly. ”Is there someone on this ship?” ”Mmmmm,” said the computer. ”Who is it?” Mmmmm mmm Mmmmm,” said the computer. ”What?” ”Mmmmm mmmm mm mmmm mmmm.” Zaphod buried one of his faces in two of his hands. ”Oh, Zarquon,” he muttered to himself.
Then he stared up the corridor towards the entrance to the bridge in the dim distance from which more and purposeful noises were coming, and in which the gagged terminals were situated. ”Computer,” he hissed again. ”Mmmmm?” ”When I ungag you ...” ”Mmmmm.” ”Remind me to punch myself in the mouth.” ”Mmmmm mmm?” ”Either one. Now just tell me this. One for yes, two for no. Is it dangerous?” ”Mmmmm.” ”It is?” ”Mmmm.” ”You didn’t just go ‘mmmm’ twice?” ”Mmmm mmmm.” ”Hmmm.” He inched his way up the corridor as if he would rather be yarding his way down it, which was true.
He was within two yards of the door to the bridge when he suddenly realized to his horror that it was going to be nice to him, and he stopped dead. He hadn’t been able to turn off the doors’ courtesy voice circuits.
This doorway to the bridge was concealed from view within it because of the excitingly chunky way in which the bridge had been designed to curve around, and he had been hoping to enter unobserved. He leaned despondently back against the wall again and said some words which his other head was quite shocked to hear. He peered at the dim pink outline of the door and discovered that in the darkness of the corridor he could just about make out the Sensor Field which extended out into the corridor and told the door when there was someone there for whom it must open and to whom it must make a cheery and pleasant remark.
He pressed himself hard back against the wall and edged himself towards the door, flattening his chest as much as he possibly could to avoid brushing against the very, very dim perimeter of the field. He held his breath and congratulated himself on having lain in bed sulking for the last few days rather than trying to work out his feelings on chest expanders in the ship’s gym. 35 He then realized he was going to have to speak at this point. He took a series of very shallow breaths, and then said as quickly and as quietly as he could, ”Door, if you can hear me, say so very, very quietly.” Very, very quietly, the door murmured, ”I can hear you.” ”Good. Now, in a moment, I’m going to ask you to open.
When you open I do not want you to say that you enjoyed it, OK?” ”OK.” ”And I don’t want you to say to me that I have made a simple door very happy, or that it is your pleasure to open for me and your satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done, OK?” ”OK.” ”And I do not want you to ask me to have a nice day, understand?” ”I understand.” ”OK,” said Zaphod, tensing himself, ”open now.” The door slid open quietly. Zaphod slipped quietly through.
The door closed quietly behind him. ”Is that the way you like it, Mr. Beeblebrox?” said the door out loud. ”I want you to imagine,” said Zaphod to the group of white robots who swung round to stare at him at that point, ”that I have an extremely powerful Kill-O-Zap blaster pistol in my hand.” There was an immensely cold and savage silence. The robots regarded him with hideously dead eyes. They stood very still. There was something intensely macabre about their appearance, especially to Zaphod who had never seen one before or even known anything about them.
The Krikkit Wars belonged to the ancient past of the Galaxy, and Zaphod had spent most of his early history lessons plotting how he was going to have sex with the girl in the cybercubicle next to him, and since his teaching computer had been an integral part of this plot it had eventually had all its history circuits wiped and replaced with an entirely different set of ideas which had then resulted in it being scrapped and sent to a home for Degenerate Cybermats, whither it was followed by the girl who had inadvertently fallen deeply in love with the unfortunate machine, with the result (a) that Zaphod never got near her and (b) that he missed out on a period of ancient history that would have been of inestimable value to him at this moment. He stared at them in shock. It was impossible to explain why, but their smooth and sleek white bodies seemed to be the utter embodiment of clean, clinical evil. From their hideously dead eyes to their powerful lifeless feet, they were clearly the calculated product of a mind that wanted simply to kill.
Zaphod gulped in cold fear. They had been dismantling part of the rear bridge wall and had forced a passage through some of the vital innards of the ship. Through the tangled wreckage Zaphod could see, with a further and worse sense of shock, that they were tunneling towards the very heart of the ship, the heart of the Improbability Drive that had been so mysteriously created out of thin air, the Heart of Gold itself.
The robot closest to him was regarding him in such a way as to suggest that it was measuring every smallest particle of his body, mind, and capability. And when it spoke, what it said seemed to bear this impression out. Before going on to what it actually said, it is worth recording at this point that Zaphod was the first living organic being to hear one of these creatures speak for something over ten billion years. If he had paid more attention to his ancient history lessons and less to his organic being, he might have been more impressed by this honor.
The robot’s voice was like its body, cold, sleek, and lifeless. It had almost a cultured rasp to it. It sounded as ancient as it was. It said, ”You do have a Kill-O-Zap blaster pistol in your hand.” Zaphod didn’t know what it meant for a moment, but then he glanced down at his own hand and was relieved to see that what he had found clipped to a wall bracket was indeed what he had thought it was. 36 ”Yeah,” he said in a kind of relieved sneer, which is quite tricky, ”well, I wouldn’t want to overtax your imagination, robot.” For a while nobody said anything, and
Zaphod realized that the robots were obviously not here to make conversation and that it was up to him. ”I can’t help noticing that you have parked your ship,” he said with a nod of one of his heads in the appropriate direction, ”through mine.” There was no denying this. Without regard for any kind of proper dimensional behavior, they had simply materialized their ship precisely where they wanted it to be, which meant that it was simply locked through the Heart of Gold as if they were nothing more than two combs. Again, they made no response to this, and Zaphod wondered if the conversation would gather any momentum if he phrased his part of it in the form of questions. ”... haven’t you?” he added. ”Yes,” replied the robot.” ”Er, OK,” said Zaphod. ”So what are you cats doing here?” Silence. ”Robots,” said Zaphod, ”what are you robots doing here?” ”We have come,” rasped the robot, ”for the Gold of the Bail.” Zaphod nodded.
He waggled his gun to invite further elaboration. The robot seemed to understand this. ”The Gold Bail is part of the Key we seek,” continued the robot, ”to release our Masters from Krikkit.” Zaphod nodded again. He waggled his gun again. ”The Key,” continued the robot simply, ”was disintegrated in time and space. The Golden Bail is embedded in the device which drives your ship. It will be reconstituted in the Key. Our Masters shall be released. The Universal Readjustment will continue.” Zaphod nodded again. ”What are you talking about?” he said. A slightly pained expression seemed to cross the robot’s totally expressionless face. He seemed to be finding the conversation depressing. ”Obliteration,” it said. ”We seek the Key,” it repeated, ”we already have the Wooden Pillar, the Steel Pillar, and the Perspex Pillar.
In a moment we will have the Gold Bail ...” ”No you won’t.” ”We will,” stated the robot. ”No you won’t. It makes my ship work.” ”In a moment,” repeated the robot patiently, ”we will have the Gold Bail ...” ”You will not,” said Zaphod. ”And then we must go,” said the robot, in all seriousness, ”to a party.” ”Oh,” said Zaphod, startled. ”Can I come?” ”No,” said the robot. ”We are going to shoot you.” ”Oh yeah?” said Zaphod, waggling his gun. ”Yes,” said the robot, and they shot him. Zaphod was so surprised that they had to shoot him again before he fell down. 37 12 Chapter 12 ”Shhh,” said Slartibartfast. ”Listen and watch.” Night had now fallen on ancient Krikkit. The sky was dark and empty.
The only light was coming from the nearby town, from which pleasant convivial sounds were drifting quietly on the breeze. They stood beneath a tree from which heady fragrances wafted around them. Arthur squatted and felt the Informational Illusion of the soil and the grass. He ran it through his fingers. The soil seemed heavy and rich, the grass strong. It was hard to avoid the impression that this was a thoroughly delightful place in all respects.
The sky was, however, extremely blank and seemed to Arthur to cast a certain chill over the otherwise idyllic, if currently invisible, landscape. Still, he supposed, it’s a question of what you’re used to. He felt a tap on his shoulder and looked up. Slartibartfast was quietly directing his attention to something down the other side of the hill.
He looked and could just see some faint lights dancing and waving, and moving slowly in their direction. As they came nearer, sounds became audible too, and soon the dim lights and noises resolved themselves into a small group of people who were walking home across the hill towards the town.
They walked quite near the watchers beneath the tree, swinging lanterns which made soft and crazy lights dance among the trees and grass, chattering contentedly, and actually singing a song about how terribly nice everything was, how happy they were, how much they enjoyed working on the farm, and how pleasant it was to be going home to see their wives and children, with a lilting chorus to the effect that the flowers were smelling particularly nice at this time of year and that it was a pity the dog had died seeing as it liked them so much. Arthur could almost imagine Paul McCartney sitting with his feet up by the fire on the evening, humming it to Linda and wondering what to buy with the proceeds, and thinking probably Essex.
”The Masters of Krikkit,” breathed Slartibartfast in sepulchral tones. Coming, as it did, so hard upon the heels of his own thoughts about Essex this remark caused Arthur a moment’s confusion. Then the logic of the situation imposed itself on his scattered mind, and he discovered that he still didn’t understand what the old man meant. ”What?” he said. ”The Masters of Krikkit,” said Slartibartfast again, and if his breathing had been sepulchral before, this time he sounded like someone in Hades with bronchitis.
Arthur peered at the group and tried to make sense of what little information he had at his disposal at this point.
The people in the group were clearly alien, if only because they seemed a little tall, thin, angular, and almost as pale as to be white, but otherwise, they appeared remarkably pleasant; a little whimsical perhaps, one wouldn’t necessarily want to spend a long coach journey with them, but the point was that if they deviated in any way from being good straightforward people it was in being perhaps too nice rather than not nice enough. So why all this rasping lung work from Slartibartfast which would seem more appropriate to a radio commercial for one of those nasty films about chainsaw operators taking their work home with them? Then, this Krikkit angle was a tough one, too. He hadn’t quite fathomed the connection between what he knew as cricket, and what ... Slartibartfast interrupted his train of thought at this point as if sensing what was going through his mind.
”The game you know as cricket,” he said, and his voice still seemed to be wandering lost in subterranean passages, ”is just one of those curious freaks of racial memory which can keep images alive in the mind eons after their true significance has been lost in the mists of time. Of all the races on the Galaxy, only the English could possibly revive the memory of the most horrific wars ever to sunder the Universe and transform it into what I’m afraid is generally regarded as an incomprehensibly dull and pointless game. ”Rather fond of it myself,” he added, ”but in most people’s eyes, you have been inadvertently guilty of the most grotesque bad taste.
Particularly the bit about the little red ball hitting the wicket, that’s very nasty.” ”Um,” said Arthur with a reflective frown to indicate that his cognitive synapses were coping with this as best as they could, ”um.” 38 ”And these,” said Slartibartfast, slipping back into crypt guttural and indicating the group of Krikkit men who had now walked past them, ”are the ones who started it all, and it will start tonight. Come, we will follow, and see why.” They slipped out from underneath the tree and followed the cheery party along the dark hill path.
Their natural instinct was to tread quietly and stealthily in pursuit of their quarry, though, as they were simply walking through a recorded Informational Illusion, they could as easily have been wearing euphoniums and woad for all the notice their quarry would have taken of them. Arthur noticed that a couple of members of the party were now singing a different song.
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