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THE RESTAURANT AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE |
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The Restaurant at The End of the Universe To Jane and James with many thanks to the Paul Simon album One Trick Pony which I played incessantly while writing this book. Five years is far too long. And with very special thanks to Jacqui Graham for infinite patience, kindness and food in adversity There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another which states that this has already happened. Chapter 1 The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Many races believe that it was created by some sort of god, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe that the entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure. The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the time they call The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures with more than fifty arms each, who are therefore unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel. However, the Great Green Arkleseizure Theory is not widely accepted outside Viltvodle VI and so, the Universe being the puzzling place it is, other explanations are constantly being sought. For instance, a race of hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings once built themselves a gigantic supercomputer called Deep Thought to calculate once and for all the Question to the Ultimate Answer of Life, the Universe and Everything. For seven and a half million years, Deep Thought computed and calculated, and in the end announced that the answer was in fact Forty- two-and so another, even bigger, computer had to be built to find out what the actual question was. And this computer, which was called the Earth, was so large that it was frequently mistaken for a planet -- especially by the strange apelike beings who roamed its surface, totally unaware that they were simply part of a gigantic computer program. And this is very odd, because without that fairly simple and obvious piece of knowledge, nothing that ever happened on the Earth could possibly make the slightest bit of sense. Sadly, however, just before the critical moment of read-out, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished by the Vogons to make way -- so they claimed -- for a new hyperspace bypass, and so all hope of discovering a meaning for life was lost foever. Or so it would seem. Two of these strange, apelike creatures survived. Arthur Dent escaped at the very last moment because an old friend of his, Ford Prefect, suddenly turned out to be from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from Guildford as he had hitherto claimed; and, more to the point, he knew how to hitch rides on flying saucers. Tricia McMillan -- or Trillian -- had skipped the planer six months earlier with Zaphod Beeblebrox, the then President of the Galaxy. Two survivors. They are all that remains of the greatest experiment ever conducted -- to find the Ultimate Question and the Ultimate Answer of Life, the Universe and Everything. And, less than half a million miles from where their starship is drifting lazily through the inky blackness of space, a Vogon ship is moving slowly toward them. Like all Vogon ships it looked as if it had been not so much designed as congealed. The unpleasant yellow lumps and edifices which protruded from it at unsightly angles would have disfigured the looks of most ships, but in this case that was sadly impossible. Uglier things have been spotted in the skies, but not by reliable witnesses. In fact to see anything much uglier than a Vogon ship you would have to go inside it and look at a Vogon. If you are wise, however, this is precisely what you will avoid doing because the average Vogon will not think twice before doing something so pointlessly hideous to you that you will wish you had never been born -- or (if you are a clearer minded thinker) that the Vogon had never been born. In fact, the average Vogon probably wouldn't even think once. They are simple-minded, thick-willed, slug-brained creatures, and thinking is not really something they are cut out for. Anatomical analysis of the Vogon reveals that its brain was originally a badly deformed, misplaced and dyspeptic liver. The fairest thing you can say about them, then, is that they know what they like, and what they like generally involves hurting people and, wherever possible, getting very angry. One thing they don't like is leaving a job unfinished -- particularly this Vogon, and particularly -- for various reasons -- this job. This Vogon was Captain Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council, and he it was who had had the job of demolishing the so-called "planet" Earth. He heaved his monumentally vile body round in his ill-fitting, slimy seat and stared at the monitor screen on which the starship Heart of Gold was being systematically scanned. It mattered little to him that the Heart of Gold, with its Infinite Improbability Drive, was the most beautiful and revolutionary ship ever built. Aesthetics and technology were closed books to him and, had he had his way, burned and buried books as well. It mattered even less to him that Zaphod Beeblebrox was aboard. Zaphod Beeblebrox was now the ex-President of the Galaxy, and though every police force in the Galaxy was currently pursuing both him and this ship he had stolen, the Vogon was not interested. He had other fish to fry. It has been said that Vogons are not above a little bribery and corruption in the same way that the sea is not above the clouds, and this was certainly true in his case. When he heard the words integrity or moral rectitude he reached for his dictionary, and when he heard the chink of ready money in large quantities he reached for the rule book and threw it away. In seeking so implacably the destruction of the Earth and all that therein lay he was moving somewhat above and beyond the call of his professional duty. There was even some doubt as to whether the said bypass was actually going to be built, but the matter had been glossed over. He grunted a repellent grunt of satisfaction. "Computer," he croaked, "get me my brain care specialist on the line." Within a few seconds the face of Gag Halfrunt appeared on the screen, smiling the smile of a man who knew he was ten light-years away from the Vogon face he was looking at. Mixed up somewhere in the smile was a glint of irony too. Though the Vogon persistently referred to him as "my private brain care specialist" there was not a lot of brain to take care of, and it was in fact Halfrunt who was employing the Vogon. He was paying him an awful lot of money to do some very dirty work. As one of the Galaxy's most prominent and successful psychiatrists, he and a consortium of his colleagues were quite prepared to spend an awful lot of money when it seemed that the entire future of psychiatry might be at stake. "Well," he said, "hello my Captain of Vogons Prostetnic, and how are we feeling today?" The Vogon Captain told him that in the last few hours he had wiped out nearly half his crew in a disciplinary exercise. Halfrunt's smile did not flicker for an instant. "Well," he said, "I think this is perfectly normal behavior for a Vogon, you know? The natural and healthy channeling of the aggressive instincts into acts of senseless violence." "That," rumbled the Vogon, "is what you always say." "Well again," said Halfrunt, "I think that this is perfectly normal behavior for a psychiatrist. Good. We are clearly both very well adjusted in our mental attitudes today. Now tell me, what news of the mission?" "We have located the ship." "Wonderful," said Halfrunt, "wonderful! And the occupants?" "The Earthman is there." "Excellent! And ...?" "A female from the same planet. They are the last." "Good, good," beamed Halfrunt. "Who else?" "The man Prefect." "Yes?" "And Zaphod Beeblebrox." For an instant Halfrunt's smile flickered. "Ah, yes," he said, "I had been expecting this. It is most regrettable." "A personal friend?" inquired the Vogon, who had heard the expression somewhere once and decided to try it out. "Ah, no," said Halfrunt, "in my profession you know, we do not make personal friends." "Ah," grunted the Vogon, "professional detachment." "No," said Halfrunt cheerfully, "we just don't have the knack." He paused. His mouth continued to smile, but his eyes frowned slightly. "But Beeblebrox, you know," he said, "he is one of my most profitable clients. He has personality problems beyond the dreams of analysts." He toyed with this thought a little before reluctantly dismissing it. "Still," he said, "you are ready for your task?" "Yes." "Good. Destroy the ship immediately." "What about Beeblebrox?" "Well," said Halfrunt brightly, "Zaphod's just this guy, you know?" He vanished from the screen. The Vogon Captain pressed a communicator button which connected him with the remains of his crew. "Attack," he said. *** At that precise moment Zaphod Beeblebrox was in his cabin swearing very loudly. Two hours ago, he had said that they would go for a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, whereupon he had had a blazing row with the ship's computer and stormed off to his cabin shouting that he would work out the Improbability factors with a pencil. The Heart of Gold's Improbability Drive made it the most powerful and unpredictable ship in existence. There was nothing it couldn't do, provided you knew exactly how improbable it was that the thing you wanted it to do would even happen. He had stolen it when, as President, he was meant to be launching it. He didn't know exactly why he had stolen it, except that he liked it. He didn't know why he had become President of the Galaxy, except that it seemed a fun thing to be. He did know that there were better reasons than these, but that they were buried in a dark, locked off section of his two brains. He wished the dark, locked off section of his two brains would go away because they occasionally surfaced momentarily and put strange thoughts into the light, fun sections of his mind and tried to deflect him from what he saw as being the basic business of his life, which was to have a wonderfully good time. At the moment he was not having a wonderfully good time. He had run out of patience and pencils and was feeling very hungry. "Starpox!" he shouted. At that same precise moment, Ford Prefect was in midair. This was not because of anything wrong with the ship's artificial gravity field, but because he was leaping down the stairwell which led to the ship's personal cabins. It was a very high jump to do in one bound and he landed awkwardly, stumbled, recovered, raced down the corridor sending a couple of miniature service robots flying, skidded around the corner, burst into Zaphod's door and explained what was on his mind. "Vogons," he said. A short while before this, Arthur Dent had set out from his cabin in search of a cup of tea. It was not a quest he embarked upon with a great deal of optimism, because he knew that the only source of hot drinks on the entire ship was a benighted piece of equipment produced by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. It was called a Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer, and he had encountered it before. It claimed to produce the widest possible range of drinks personally matched to the tastes and metabolism of whoever cared to use it. When put to the test, however, it invariably produced a plastic cup filled with a liquid which was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. He attempted to reason with the thing. "Tea," he said. "Share and Enjoy," the machine replied and provided him with yet another cup of the sickly liquid. He threw it away. "Share and Enjoy," the machine repeated and produced another one. "Share and Enjoy" is the company motto of the hugely successful Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints Division, which now covers the major land masses of three medium-sized planets and is the only part of the Corporation to have shown a consistent profit in recent years. The motto stands -- or rather stood -- in three mile high illuminated letters near the Complaints Department spaceport on Eadrax. Unfortunately its weight was such that shortly after it was erected, the ground beneath the letters caved in and they dropped for nearly half their length through the offices of many talented young Complaints executives -- now deceased. The protruding upper halves of the letters now appear, in the local language, to read "Go stick your head in a pig," and are no longer illuminated, except at times of special celebration. Arthur threw away a sixth cup of the liquid. "Listen, you machine," he said, "you claim you can synthesize any drink in existence, so why do you keep giving me the same undrinkable stuff?" "Nutrition and pleasurable sense data," burbled the machine. "Share and Enjoy." "It tastes filthy!" "If you have enjoyed the experience of this drink," continued the machine, "why not share it with your friends?" "Because," said Arthur tartly, "I want to keep them. Will you try to comprehend what I'm telling you? That drink ..." "That drink," said the machine sweetly, "was individually tailored to meet your personal requirements for nutrition and pleasure." "Ah," said Arthur, "so I'm a masochist on a diet am I?" "Share and Enjoy." "Oh, shut up." "Will that be all?" Arthur decided to give up. "Yes," he said. Then he decided he'd be damned if he'd give up. "No," he said, "look, it's very, very simple. All I want ... is a cup of tea. You are going to make one for me. Keep quiet and listen." And he sat. He told the Nutri-Matic about India, he told it about China, he told it about Ceylon. He told it about broad leaves drying in the sun. He told it about silver teapots. He told it about summer afternoons on the lawn. He told it about putting in the milk before the tea so it wouldn't get scalded. He even told it (briefly) about the history of the East India Company. "So that's it, is it?" said the Nutri-Matic when he had finished. "Yes," said Arthur, "that is what I want." "You want the taste of dried leaves boiled in water?" "Er, yes. With milk." "Squirted out of a cow?" "Well, in a manner of speaking I suppose ..." "I'm going to need some help with this one," said the machine tersely. All the cheerful burbling had dropped out of its voice and it now meant business. "Well, anything I can do," said Arthur. "You've done quite enough," the Nutri-Matic informed him. It summoned up the ship's computer. "Hi there!" said the ship's computer. The Nutri-Matic explained about tea to the ship's computer. The computer boggled, linked logic circuits with the Nutri-Matic and together they lapsed into a grim silence. Arthur watched and waited for a while, but nothing further happened. He thumped it, but still nothing happened. Eventually he gave up and wandered up to the bridge. *** In the empty wastes of space, the Heart of Gold hung still. Around it blazed the billion pinpricks of the Galaxy. Towards it crept the ugly yellow lump of the Vogon ship. Does anyone have a kettle?" Arthur asked as he walked on to the bridge, and instantly began to wonder why Trillian was yelling at the computer to talk to her, Ford was thumping it and Zaphod was kicking it, and also why there was a nasty yellow lump on the vision screen. He put down the empty cup he was carrying and walked over to them. "Hello?" he said. At that moment Zaphod flung himself over to the polished marble surfaces that contained the instruments that controlled the conventional photon drive. They materialized beneath his hands and he flipped over to manual control. He pushed, he pulled, he pressed and he swore. The photon drive gave a sickly shudder and cut out again. "Something up?" said Arthur. "Hey, didja hear that?" muttered Zaphod as he leaped now for the manual controls on the Infinite Improbability Drive, "the monkey spoke!" The Improbability Drive gave two small whines and then also cut out. "Pure history, man," said Zaphod, kicking the Improbability Drive, "a talking monkey!" "If you're upset about something ..." said Arthur. "Vogons!" snapped Ford. "We're under attack!" Arthur gibbered. "Well, what are you doing? Let's get out of here!" "Can't. Computer's jammed." "Jammed?" "It says all its circuits are occupied. There's no power anywhere in the ship." Ford moved away from the computer terminal, wiped a sleeve across his forehead and slumped back against the wall. "Nothing we can do," he said. He glared at nothing and bit his lip. When Arthur had been a boy at school, long before the Earth had been demolished, he had used to play football. He had not been at all good at it, and his particular specialty had been scoring own goals in important matches. Whenever this happened he used to experience a peculiar tingling round the back of his neck that would slowly creep up across his cheeks and heat his brow. The image of mud and grass and lots of little jeering boys flinging it at him suddenly came vividly to his mind at this moment. A peculiar tingling sensation at the back of his neck was creeping up across his cheeks and heating his brow. He started to speak, and stopped. He started to speak again and stopped again. Finally he managed to speak. "Er," he said. He cleared his throat. "Tell me," he continued, and said it so nervously that the others all turned to stare at him. He glanced at the approaching yellow blob on the vision screen. "Tell me," he said again, "did the computer say what was occupying it? I just ask out of interest ..." Their eyes were riveted on him. "And, er ... well, that's it really, just asking." Zaphod put out a hand and held Arthur by the scruff of the neck. "What have you done to it, Monkeyman?" he breathed. "Well," said Arthur, "nothing in fact. It's just that I think a short while ago it was trying to work out how to ..." "Yes?" "Make some tea." "That's right, guys," the computer sang out suddenly, "just coping with that problem right now, and wow, it's a biggy. Be with you in a while." It lapsed back into a silence that was only matched for sheer intensity by the silence of the three people staring at Arthur Dent. As if to relieve the tension, the Vogons chose that moment to start firing. *** The ship shook, the ship thundered. Outside, the inch thick force shield around it blistered, crackled and spat under the barrage of a dozen 30-Megahurt Definit-Kil Photrazon Cannon, and looked as if it wouldn't be around for long. Four minutes is how long Ford Prefect gave it. "Three minutes and fifty seconds," he said a short while later. "Forty-five seconds," he added at the appropriate time. He flicked idly at some useless switches, then gave Arthur an unfriendly look. "Dying for a cup of tea, eh?" he said. "Three minutes and forty seconds." "Will you stop counting!" snarled Zaphod. "Yes," said Ford Prefect, "in three minutes and thirty-five seconds." *** Aboard the Vogon ship, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was puzzled. He had expected a chase, he had expected an exciting grapple with tractor beams, he had expected to have to use the specially installed Sub-Cyclic Normality Assert-i-Tron to counter the Heart of Gold's Infinite Improbability Drive; but the Sub-Cyclic Normality Assert-i-Tron lay idle as the Heart of Gold just sat there and took it. A dozen 30-Megahurt Definit-Kil Photrazon Cannon continued to blaze away at the Heart of Gold, and still it just sat there and took it. He tested every sensor at his disposal to see if there was any subtle trickery afoot, but no subtle trickery was to be found. He didn't know about the tea of course. Nor did he know exactly how the occupants of the Heart of Gold were spending the last three minutes and thirty seconds of life they had left to spend. *** Quite how Zaphod Beeblebrox arrived at the idea of holding a seance at this point is something he was never quite clear on. Obviously the subject of death was in the air, but more as something to be avoided than harped upon. Possibly the horror that Zaphod experienced at the prospect of being reunited with his deceased relatives led on to the thought that they might just feel the same way about him and, what's more, be able to do something about helping to postpone this reunion. Or again it might just have been one of the strange promptings that occasionally surfaced from that dark area of his mind that he had inexplicably locked off prior to becoming President of the Galaxy. "You want to talk to your great-grandfather?" boggled Ford. "Yeah." "Does it have to be now?" The ship continued to shake and thunder. The temperature was rising. The light was getting dimmer -- all the energy the computer didn't require for thinking about tea was being pumped into the rapidly fading force field. "Yeah!" insisted Zaphod. "Listen, Ford, I think he may be able to help us." "Are you sure you mean think? Pick your words with care." "Suggest something else we can do." "Er, well ..." "Okay, round the central console. Now. Come on! Trillian, Monkey man, move." They clustered round the central console in confusion, sat down and, feeling exceptionally foolish, held hands. With his third hand Zaphod turned off the lights. Darkness gripped the ship. Outside, the thunderous roar of the Definit-Kil Cannon continued to rip at the force field. "Concentrate," hissed Zaphod, "on his name." "What is it?" asked Arthur. "Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth." "What?" "Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth. Concentrate!" "The Fourth?" "Yeah. Listen, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox, my father was Zaphod Beeblebrox the Second, my grandfather Zaphod Beeblebrox the Third. .." "What?" "There was an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine. Now concentrate!" "Three minutes," said Ford Prefect. "Why," said Arthur Dent, "are we doing this?" "Shut up," suggested Zaphod Beeblebrox. Trillian said nothing. What, she thought, was there to say? The only light on the bridge came from two dim red triangles in a far corner where Marvin the Paranoid Android sat slumped, ignoring all and ignored by all, in a private and rather unpleasant world of his own. Round the central console four figures hunched in tight concentration trying to blot from their minds the terrifying shuddering of the ship and the fearful roar that echoed through it. They concentrated. Still they concentrated. And still they concentrated. The seconds ticked by. On Zaphod's brows stood beads of sweat, first of concentration, then of frustration and finally of embarrassment. At last he let out a cry of anger, snatched back his hands from Trillian and Ford and stabbed at the light switch. "Ah, I was beginning to think you'd never turn the lights on," said a voice. "No, not too bright please, my eyes aren't what they once were." Four figures jolted upright in their seats. Slowly they turned their heads to look, though their scalps showed a distinct propensity to try and stay in the same place. "Now. Who disturbs me at this time?" said the small, bent, gaunt figure standing by the sprays of fern at the far end of the bridge. His two small wispy-haired heads looked so ancient that it seemed they might hold dim memories of the birth of the galaxies themselves. One lolled in sleep, the other squinted sharply at them. If his eyes weren't what they once were, they must once have been diamond cutters. Zaphod stuttered nervously for a moment. He gave the intricate little double nod which is the traditional Betelgeusian gesture of familial respect. "Oh ... er, hi Great-granddad ..." he breathed. The little old figure moved closer toward them. He peered through the dim light. He thrust out a bony finger at his great grandson. "Ah," he snapped, "Zaphod Beeblebrox. The last of our great line. Zaphod Beeblebrox the Nothingth." "The First." "The Nothingth," spat the figure. Zaphod hated his voice. It always seemed to him to screech like fingernails across the blackboard of what he liked to think of as his soul. He shifted awkwardly in his seat. "Er, yeah," he muttered. "Er, look, I'm really sorry about the flowers, I meant to send them along, but you know, the shop was fresh out of wreaths and ..." "You forgot!" snapped Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth. "Well ..." "Too busy. Never think of other people. The living are all the same." "Two minutes, Zaphod," whispered Ford in an awed whisper. Zaphod fidgeted nervously. "Yeah, but I did mean to send them," he said. " And I'll write to my great-grandmother as well, just as soon as we get out of this ..." "Your great-grandmother," mused the gaunt little figure to himself. "Yeah," said Zaphod, "er, how is she? Tell you what, I'll go and see her. But first we've just got to ..." "Your late great-grandmother and I are very well," rasped Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth. "Ah. Oh." "But very disappointed in you, young Zaphod ..." "Yeah, well ..." Zaphod felt strangely powerless to take charge of this conversation, and Ford's heavy breathing at his side told him that the seconds were ticking away fast. The noise and the shaking had reached terrifying proportions. He saw Trillian's and Arthur's faces white and unblinking in the gloom. "Er, Great-grandfather ..." "We've been following your progress with considerable despondency ..." "Yeah, look, just at the moment you see ..." "Not to say contempt!" "Could you sort of listen for a moment ...?" "I mean what exactly are you doing with your life?" "I'm being attacked by a Vogon fleet!" cried Zaphod. It was an exaggeration, but it was his only opportunity so far of getting the basic point of the exercise across. "Doesn't surprise me in the least," said the little old figure with a shrug. "Only it's happening right now, you see," insisted Zaphod feverishly. The spectral ancestor nodded, picked up the cup Arthur Dent had brought in and looked at it with interest. "Er ... Great-granddad --" "Did you know," interrupted the ghostly figure, fixing Zaphod with a stern look, "the Betelgeuse Five has now developed a very slight eccentricity in its orbit?" Zaphod didn't and found the information hard to concentrate on what with all the noise and the imminence of death and so on. "Er, no ... look," he said "Me spinning in my grave!" barked the ancestor. He slammed the cup down and pointed a quivering, sticklike see-through finger at Zaphod. "Your fault!" he screeched. "One minute thirty," muttered Ford, his head in his hands. "Yeah, look Great-granddad, can you actually help because ..." "Help?" exclaimed the old man as if he'd been asked for a weasel. "Yeah, help, and like, now, because otherwise ..." "Help!" repeated the old man as if he'd been asked for a lightly grilled weasel in a bun with French fries. He stood amazed. "You go swanning your way round the Galaxy with your" -- the ancestor waved a contemptuous hand -- "with your disreputable friends, too busy to put flowers on my grave, plastic ones would have done, would have been quite appropriate from you, but no. Too busy. Too modern. Too skeptical -- till you suddenly find yourself in a bit of a fix and come over suddenly all astrally minded!" He shook his head-carefully, so as not to disturb the slumber of the other one, which was already becoming restive. "Well, I don't know, young Zaphod," he continued, "I think I'll have to think about this one." "One minute ten," said Ford hollowly. Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth peered at him curiously. "Why does that man keep talking in numbers?" he said. "Those numbers," said Zaphod tersely, "are the time we've got left to live." "Oh," said his great-grandfather. He grunted to himself. "Doesn't apply to me, of course," he said and moved off to a dimmer recess of the bridge in search of something else to poke around at. Zaphod felt he was teetering on the edge of madness and wondered if he shouldn't just jump over and have done with it. "Great.grandfather," he said, "it applies to us! We are still alive, and we are about to lose our lives." "Good job too." "What?" "What use is your life to anyone? When I think of what you've made of it the phrase 'pig's ear' comes irresistibly to mind." "But I was President of the Galaxy, man!" "Huh," muttered his ancestor. "And what kind of a job is that for a Beeblebrox?" "Hey, what? Only President you know, of the whole Galaxy!" "Conceited little megapuppy." Zaphod blinked in bewilderment. "Hey -- er, what are you at, man? I mean Great-grandfather." The hunched up little figure stalked up to his great-grandson and tapped him sternly on the knee. This had the effect of reminding Zaphod that he was talking to a ghost because he didn't feel a thing. "You know and I know what being President means, young Zaphod. You know because you've been it, and I know because I'm dead and it gives one such a wonderfully uncluttered perspective. We have a saying up here. 'Life is wasted on the living.'" "Yeah," said Zaphod bitterly, "very good. Very deep. Right now I need aphorisms like I need holes in my heads." "Fifty seconds," grunted Ford Prefect. "Where was I?" said Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth. "Pontificating," said Zaphod Beeblebrox. "Oh yes." "Can this guy," muttered Ford quietly to Zaphod, "actually in fact help us?" "Nobody else can," whispered Zaphod. Ford nodded despondently. "Zaphod!" the ghost was saying, "you became President of the Galaxy for a reason. Have you forgotten?" "Could we go into this later?" "Have you forgotten?" insisted the ghost. "Yeah! Of course I forgot! I had to forget. They screen your brain when you get the job, you know. If they'd found my head full of tricksy ideas I'd have been right out on the streets again with nothing but a fat pension, secretarial staff, a fleet of ships and a couple of slit throats." "Ah," nodded the ghost in satisfaction, "then you do remember!" He paused for a moment. "Good," he said and the noise stopped. "Forty-eight seconds," said Ford. He looked again at his watch and tapped it. He looked up. "Hey, the noise has stopped," he said. A mischievous twinkle gleamed in the ghost's hard little eyes. "I've slowed down time for a moment," he said, "just for a moment you understand. I would hate you to miss all I have to say." "No, you listen to me, you see-through old bat," said Zaphod leaping out of his chair, "A -- thanks for stopping time and all that, great, terrific, wonderful, but B -- no thanks for the homily, right? I don't know what this great thing I'm meant to be doing is, and it looks to me as if I was supposed not to know. And I resent that, right? "The old me knew. The old me cared. Fine, so far so good. Except that the old me cared so much that he actually got inside his own brain -- my own brain -- and locked off the bits that knew and cared, because if I knew and cared I wouldn't be able to do it. I wouldn't be able to go and be President, and I wouldn't be able to steal this ship, which must be the important thing. "But this former self of mine killed himself off, didn't he, by changing my brain? Okay, that was his choice. This new me has its own choices to make, and by a strange coincidence those choices involve not knowing and not caring about this big number, whatever it is. That's what he wanted, that's what he got. "Except this old self of mine tried to leave himself in control, leaving orders for me in the bit of my brain he locked off. Well, I don't want to know, and I don't want to hear them. That's my choice. I'm not going to be anybody's puppet, particularly not my own." Zaphod banged on the console in fury, oblivious of the dumbfounded looks he was attracting. "The old me is dead!" he raved. "Killed himself! The dead shouldn't hang about trying to interfere with the living!" "And yet you summon me up to help you out of a scrape," said the ghost. "Ah," said Zaphod, sitting down again, "well that's different, isn't it?" He grinned at Trillian weakly. "Zaphod," rasped the apparition, "I think the only reason I waste my breath on you is that being dead I don't have any other use for it." "Okay," said Zaphod, "why don't you tell me what the big secret is. Try me." "Zaphod, you knew when you were President of the Galaxy, as did Yooden Vranx before you, that the President is nothing. A cipher. Somewhere in the shadows behind is another man, being, something, with ultimate power. That man, or being, or something, you must find -- the man who controls this Galaxy, and -- we suspect -- others. Possibly the entire Universe." "Why?" "Why?" exclaimed an astonished ghost. "Why? Look around you, lad, does it look to you as if it's in very good hands?" "It's all right." The old ghost glowered at him. "I will not argue with you. You will simply take this ship, this Improbability Drive ship, to where it is needed. You will do it. Don't think you can escape your purpose. The Improbability Field controls you, you are in its grip. What's this?" He was standing tapping at one of the terminals of Eddie the Shipboard Computer. Zaphod told him. "What's it doing?" "It is trying," said Zaphod with wonderful restraint, "to make tea." "Good," said his great-grandfather, "I approve of that. Now Zaphod," he said, turning and wagging a finger at him, "I don't know if you are really capable of succeeding in your job. I think you will not be able to avoid it. However, I am too long dead and too tired to care as much as I did. The principal reason I am helping you now is that I couldn't bear the thought of you and your modern friends slouching about up here. Understood?" "Yeah, thanks a bundle." "Oh, and Zaphod?" "Er, yeah?" "If you ever find you need help again, you know, if you're in trouble, need a hand out of a tight corner ..." "Yeah?" "Please don't hesitate to get lost." Within the space of one second, a bolt of light flashed from the wizened old ghost's hands to the computer, the ghost vanished, the bridge filled with billowing smoke and the Heart of Gold leaped an unknown distance through the dimensions of time and space. Ten light-years away, Gag Halfrunt jacked up his smile by several notches. As he watched the picture on his vision screen, relayed across the sub-ether from the bridge of the Vogon ship, he saw the final shreds of the Heart of Gold's force shield ripped away, and the ship itself vanish in a puff of smoke. Good, he thought. The end of the last stray survivors of the demolition he had ordered on the planet Earth, he thought. The final end of this dangerous (to the psychiatric profession) and subversive (also to the psychiatric profession) experiment to find the Question to the Ultimate Answer of Life, the Universe and Everything, he thought. There would be some celebration with his fellows tonight, and in the morning they would meet again their unhappy, bewildered and highly profitable patients, secure in the knowledge that the Meaning of Life would not now be, once and for all, well and truly sorted out, he thought. *** "Family's always embarrassing, isn't it," said Ford to Zaphod as the smoke began to clear. He paused, he looked about. "Where's Zaphod?" he said. Arthur and Trillian looked about blankly. They were pale and shaken and didn't know where Zaphod was. "Marvin?" said Ford, "where's Zaphod?" A moment later he said: "Where's Marvin?" The robot's corner was empty. The ship was utterly silent. It lay in thick black space. Occasionally it rocked and swayed. Every instrument was dead, every vision screen was dead. They consulted the computer. It said: "I regret I have been temporarily closed to all communication. Meanwhile, here is some light music." They turned off the light music. They searched every corner of the ship in increasing bewilderment and alarm. Everywhere was dead and silent. Nowhere was there any trace of Zaphod or of Marvin. One of the last areas they checked was the small bay in which the Nutri-Matic machine was located. On the delivery plate of the Nutri-Matic Drink Synthesizer was a small tray, on which sat three bone china cups and saucers, a bone china jug of milk, a silver teapot full of the best tea Arthur had ever tasted and a small printed note saying "Wait." Ursa Minor Beta is, some say, one of the most appalling places in the known Universe. Although it is excruciatingly rich, horrifyingly sunny and more full of wonderfully exciting people than a pomegranate is of pips, it can hardly be insignificant that when a recent edition of Playbeing magazine headlined an article with the words, "When you are tired of Ursa Minor Beta you are tired of life," the suicide rate there quadrupled overnight. Not that there are any nights on Ursa Minor Beta. It is a West zone planet which by an inexplicable and somewhat suspicious freak of topography consists almost entirely of subtropical coastline. By an equally suspicious freak of temporal relastatics, it is nearly always Saturday afternoon just before the beach bars close. No adequate explanation for this has been forthcoming from the dominant life forms on Ursa Mjnor Beta, who spend most of their time attempting to achieve spiritual enlightenment by running round swimming pools, and inviting Investigation Officials from the Galactic Geo Temporal Control Board to "have a nice diurnal anomaly." There is only one city on Ursa Minor Beta, and that is only called a city because the swimming pools are slightly thicker on the ground there than elsewhere. If you approach Light City by air -- and there is no other way of approaching it, no roads, no port facilities -- if you don't fly they don't want to see you in Light City -- you will see why it has this name. Here the sun shines brightest of all, glittering on the swimming pools, shimmering on the white, palm-lined boulevards, glistening on the healthy bronzed specks moving up and down them, gleaming off the villas, the hazy airpads, the beach bars and so on. Most particularly it shines on a building, a tall, beautiful building consisting of two thirty-story white towers connected by a bridge halfway up their length. The building is the home of a book, and was built here on the proceeds of an extraordinary copyright lawsuit fought between the book's editors and a breakfast cereal company. The book is a guide book, a travel book. It is one of the most remarkable, certainly the most successful, books ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor -- more popular than Life Begins at Five Hundred and Fifty, better selling than The Big Bang Theory-A Personal View by Eccentrica Gallumbits (the tripled-breasted whore of Eroticon Six) and more controversial then Oolon Colluphid's latest blockbusting title Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Sex but Have Been Forced to Find Out. (And in many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, it has long supplanted the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper, and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC printed in large friendly letters on its cover.) It is of course that invaluable companion for all those who want to see the marvels of the known Universe for less than thirty Altairian dollars a day -- The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. If you stood with your back to the main entrance lobby of the Guide offices (assuming you had landed by now and freshened up with a quick dip and shower) and then walked east, you would pass along the leafy shade of Life Boulevard, be amazed by the pale golden color of the beaches stretching away to your left, astounded by the mind-surfers floating carelessly along two feet above the waves as if this was nothing special, surprised and eventually slightly irritated by the giant palm trees that hum tuneless nothings throughout the daylight hours, in other words continuously. If you then walked to the end of Life Boulevard you would enter the Lalamatine district of shops, bolonut trees and pavement cafes where the UM-Betans come to relax after a hard afternoon's relaxation on the beach. The Lalamatine district is one of those very few areas which doesn't enjoy a perpetual Saturday afternoon -- it enjoys instead the cool of a perpetual early Saturday evening. Behind it lie the nightclubs. If, on this particular day, afternoon, stretch of eveningtime -- call it what you will -- you had approached the second pavement cafe on the right, you would have seen the usual crowd of UM-Betans chatting, drinking, looking very relaxed and casually glancing at each other's watches to see how expensive they were. You would also have seen a couple of rather disheveled-looking hitchhikers from Algol who had recently arrived on an Arcturan Megafreighter aboard which they had been roughing it for a few days. They were angry and bewildered to discover that here, within sight of the Hitchhikers Guide building itself, a simple glass of fruit juice cost the equivalent of over sixty Altairian dollars. "Sell out," one of them said, bitterly. If at that moment you had then looked at the next table you would have seen Zaphod Beeblebrox sitting and looking very startled and confused. The reason for his confusion was that five seconds earlier he had been sitting on the bridge of the starship Heart of Gold. "Absolute sell out," said the voice again. Zaphod looked nervously out of the corners of his eyes at the two disheveled hitchhikers at the next table. Where the hell was he? How had he got there? Where was his ship? His hand felt the arm of the chair on which he was sitting, and then the table in front of him. They seemed solid enough. He sat very still. "How can they sit and write a guide for hitchhikers in a place like this?" continued the voice. "I mean look at it. Look at it!" Zaphod was looking at it. Nice place, he thought. But where? And why? He fished in his pocket for his two pairs of sunglasses. In the same pocket he felt a hard, smooth, unidentified lump of very heavy metal. He pulled it out and looked at it. He blinked at it in surprise. Where had he got that? He returned it to his pocket and put on the sunglasses, annoyed to discover that the metal object had scratched one of the lenses. Nevertheless, he felt much more comfortable with them on. They were a double pair of Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses, which had been specially designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble they turn totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might alarm you. Apart from the scratch the lenses were clear. He relaxed, but only a little bit. The angry hitchhiker continued to glare at his monstrously expensive fruit juice. "Worst thing that ever happened to the Guide, moving to Ursa Minor Beta," he grumbled; "they've all gone soft. You know, I've even heard that they've created a whole electronically synthesized Universe in one of their offices so they can go and research stories during the day and still go to parties in the evening. Not that day and evening mean much in this place." Ursa Minor Beta, thought Zaphod. At leasy he knew where he was now. He assumed that this must be his great-grandfather's doing, but why? Much to his annoyance, a thought popped into his mind. It was very clear and very distinct, and he had now come to recognize these thoughts for what they were. His instinct was to resist them. They were the preordained promptings from the dark and locked off parts of his mind. He sat still and ignored the thought furiously. It nagged at him. He ignored it. It nagged at him. He ignored it. It nagged at him. He gave in to it. What the hell, he thought, go with the flow. He was too tired, confused and hungry to resist. He didn't even know what the thought meant.
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