ADAMS, Douglas - Life, the Universe, and Everything

by Life, the Universe

  top of a nearby outcrop of rock and surveyed the scene around them.

  "What happened to the Golgafrinchans?" asked Ford.

  Arthur shrugged.

  "A lot of them didn't make it through the winter three years ago," he

  said, "and the few who remained in the spring said they needed a holiday and

  set off on a raft. History says that they must have survived ..."

  "Huh," said Ford, "well well." He stuck his hands on his hips and looked

  round again at the empty world. Suddenly, there was about Ford a sense of

  energy and purpose.

  "We're going," he said excitedly, and shivered with energy.

  "Where? How?" said Arthur.

  "I don't know," said Ford, "but I just feel that the time is right. Things

  are going to happen. We're on our way."

  He lowered his voice to a whisper.

  "I have detected," he said, "disturbances in the wash."

  He gazed keenly into the distance and looked as if he would quite like the

  wind to blow his hair back dramatically at that point, but the wind was busy

  fooling around with some leaves a little way off.

  Arthur asked him to repeat what he had just said because he hadn't quite

  taken his meaning. Ford repeated it.

  "The wash?" said Arthur.

  "The space-time wash," said Ford, and as the wind blew briefly past at

  that moment, he bared his teeth into it.

  Arthur nodded, and then cleared his throat.

  "Are we talking about," he asked cautiously, "some sort of Vogon

  laundromat, or what are we talking about?"

  "Eddies," said Ford, "in the space-time continuum."

  "Ah," nodded Arthur, "is he? Is he?" He pushed his hands into the pocket

  of his dressing gown and looked knowledgeably into the distance.

  "What?" said Ford.

  "Er, who," said Arthur, "is Eddy, then, exactly?"

  Ford looked angrily at him.

  "Will you listen?" he snapped.

  "I have been listening," said Arthur, "but I'm not sure it's helped."

  Ford grasped him by the lapels of his dressing gown and spoke to him as

  slowly and distinctly and patiently as if he were somebody from a telephone

  company accounts department.

  "There seem ..." he said, "to be some pools ..." he said, "of instability

  ..." he said, "in the fabric ..." he said ...

  Arthur looked foolishly at the cloth of his dressing gown where Ford was

  holding it. Ford swept on before Arthur could turn the foolish look into a

  foolish remark.

  "... in the fabric of space-time," he said.

  "Ah, that," said Arthur.

  "Yes, that," confirmed Ford.

  They stood there alone on a hill on prehistoric Earth and stared each

  other resolutely in the face.

  "And it's done what?" said Arthur.

  "It," said Ford, "has developed pools of instability."

  "Has it?" said Arthur, his eyes not wavering for a moment.

  "It has," said Ford with a similar degree of ocular immobility.

  "Good," said Arthur.

  "See?" said Ford.

  "No," said Arthur.

  There was a quiet pause.

  "The difficulty with this conversation," said Arthur after a sort of

  pondering look had crawled slowly across his face like a mountaineer

  negotiating a tricky outcrop, "is that it's very different from most of the

  ones I've had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.

  They weren't like this. Except perhaps some of the ones I've had with elms

  which sometimes get a bit bogged down."

  "Arthur," said Ford.

  "Hello? Yes?" said Arthur.

  "Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very

  simple."

  "Ah, well I'm not sure I believe that."

  They sat down and composed their thoughts.

  Ford got out his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic. It was making vague humming noises

  and a tiny light on it was flickering faintly.

  "Flat battery?" said Arthur.

  "No," said Ford, "there is a moving disturbance in the fabric of space+

  time, an eddy, a pool of instability, and it's somewhere in our vicinity."

  "Where?"

  Ford moved the device in a slow lightly bobbing semi-circle. Suddenly the

  light flashed.

  "There!" said Ford, shooting out his arm. "There, behind that sofa!"

  Arthur looked. Much to his surprise, there was a velvet paisleycovered

  Chesterfield sofa in the field in front of them. He boggled intelligently at

  it. Shrewd questions sprang into his mind.

  "Why," he said, "is there a sofa in that field?"

  "I told you!" shouted Ford, leaping to his feet. "Eddies in the space-time

  continuum!"

  "And this is his sofa, is it?" asked Arthur, struggling to his feet and,

  he hoped, though not very optimistically, to his senses.

  "Arthur!" shouted Ford at him, "that sofa is there because of the space+

  time instability I've been trying to get your terminally softened brain to get

  to grips with. It's been washed out of the continuum, it's space-time jetsam,

  it doesn't matter what it is, we've got to catch it, it's our only way out of

  here!"

  He scrambled rapidly down the rocky outcrop and made off across the field.

  "Catch it?" muttered Arthur, then frowned in bemusement as he saw that the

  Chesterfield was lazily bobbing and wafting away across the grass.

  With a whoop of utterly unexpected delight he leapt down the rock and

  plunged off in hectic pursuit of Ford Prefect and the irrational piece of

  furniture.

  They careered wildly through the grass, leaping, laughing, shouting

  instructions to each other to head the thing off this way or that way. The sun

  shone dreamily on the swaying grass, tiny field animals scattered crazily in

  their wake.

  Arthur felt happy. He was terribly pleased that the day was for once

  working out so much according to plan. Only twenty minutes ago he had decided

  he would go mad, and now he was already chasing a Chesterfield sofa across the

  fields of prehistoric Earth.

  The sofa bobbed this way and that and seemed simultaneously to be as solid

  as the trees as it drifted past some of them and hazy as a billowing dream as

  it floated like a ghost through others.

  Ford and Arthur pounded chaotically after it, but it dodged and weaved as

  if following its own complex mathematical topography, which it was. Still they

  pursued, still it danced and span, and suddenly turned and dipped as if

  crossing the lip of a catastrophe graph, and they were practically on top of

  it. With a heave and a shout they leapt on it, the sun winked out, they fell

  through a sickening nothingness, and emerged unexpectedly in the middle of the

  pitch at Lord's Cricked Ground, St John's Wood, London, towards the end of the

  last Test Match of the Australian Series in the year 198-, with England

  needing only twenty-eight runs to win.

  Chapter 3

  Important facts from Galactic history, number one:

  (Reproduced from the Siderial Daily Mentioner's Book of popular Galactic

  History.)

  The night sky over the planet Krikkit is the least interesting sight in

  the entire Universe.

  Chapter 4

  It was a charming and delightful day at Lord's as Ford and Arthur tumbled

  haphazardly out o
f a space-time anomaly and hit the immaculate turf rather

  hard.

  The applause of the crowd was tremendous. It wasn't for them, but

  instinctively they bowed anyway, which was fortunate because the small red

  heavy ball which the crowd actually had been applauding whistled mere

  millimetres over Arthur's head. In the crowd a man collapsed.

  They threw themselves back to the ground which seemed to spin hideously

  around them.

  "What was that?" hissed Arthur.

  "Something red," hissed Ford back at him.

  "Where are we?"

  "Er, somewhere green."

  "Shapes," muttered Arthur. "I need shapes."

  The applause of the crowd had been rapidly succeeded by gasps of

  astonishment, and the awkward titters of hundreds of people who could not yet

  make up their minds about whether to believe what they had just seen or not.

  "This your sofa?" said a voice.

  "What was that?" whispered Ford.

  Arthur looked up.

  "Something blue," he said.

  "Shape?" said Ford.

  Arthur looked again.

  "It is shaped," he hissed at Ford, with his brow savagely furrowing, "like

  a policeman."

  They remained crouched there for a few moments, frowning deeply. The blue

  thing shaped like a policeman tapped them both on the shoulders.

  "Come on, you two," the shape said, "let's be having you."

  These words had an electrifying effect on Arthur. He leapt to his feet

  like an author hearing the phone ring and shot a series of startled glanced at

  the panorama around him which had suddenly settled down into something of

  quite terrifying ordinariness.

  "Where did you get this from?" he yelled at the policeman shape.

  "What did you say?" said the startled shape.

  "This is Lord's Cricket Ground, isn't it?" snapped Arthur. "Where did you

  find it, how did you get it here? I think," he added, clasping his hand to his

  brow, "that I had better calm down." He squatted down abruptly in front of

  Ford.

  "It is a policeman," he said, "What do we do?"

  Ford shrugged.

  "What do you want to do?" he said.

  "I want you," said Arthur, "to tell me that I have been dreaming for the

  last five years."

  Ford shrugged again, and obliged.

  "You've been dreaming for the last five years," he said.

  Arthur got to his feet.

  "It's all right, officer," he said. "I've been dreaming for the last five

  years. Ask him," he added, pointing at Ford, "he was in it."

  Having said this, he sauntered off towards the edge of the pitch, brushing

  down his dressing gown. He then noticed his dressing gown and stopped. He

  stared at it. He flung himself at the policeman.

  "So where did I get these clothes from?" he howled.

  He collapsed and lay twitching on the grass.

  Ford shook his head.

  "He's had a bad two million years," he said to the policeman, and together

  they heaved Arthur on to the sofa and carried him off the pitch and were only

  briefly hampered by the sudden disappearance of the sofa on the way.

  Reaction to all this from the crowd were many and various. Most of them

  couldn't cope with watching it, and listened to it on the radio instead.

  "Well, this is an interesting incident, Brian," said one radio commentator

  to another. "I don't think there have been any mysterious materializations on

  the pitch since, oh since, well I don't think there have been any - have

  there? - that I recall?"

  "Edgbaston, 1932?"

  "Ah, now what happened then ..."

  "Well, Peter, I think it was Canter facing Willcox coming up to bowl from

  the pavilion end when a spectator suddenly ran straight across the pitch."

  There was a pause while the first commentator considered this.

  "Ye ... e ... s ..." he said, "yes, there's nothing actually very

  mysterious about that, is there? He didn't actually materialize, did he? Just

  ran on."

  "No, that's true, but he did claim to have seen something materialize on

  the pitch."

  "Ah, did he?"

  "Yes. An alligator, I think, of some description."

  "Ah. And had anyone else noticed it?"

  "Apparently not. And no one was able to get a very detailed description

  from him, so only the most perfunctory search was made."

  "And what happened to the man?"

  "Well, I think someone offered to take him off and give him some lunch,

  but he explained that he'd already had a rather good one, so the matter was

  dropped and Warwickshire went on to win by three wickets."

  "So, not very like this current instance. For those of you who've just

  tuned in, you may be interested to know that, er ... two men, two rather

  scruffily attired men, and indeed a sofa - a Chesterfield I think?"

  "Yes, a Chesterfield."

  "Have just materialized here in the middle of Lord's Cricket Ground. But I

  don't think they meant any harm, they've been very good-natured about it, and

  ..."

  "Sorry, can I interrupt you a moment Peter and say that the sofa has just

  vanished."

  "So it has. Well, that's one mystery less. Still, it's definitely one for

  the record books I think, particularly occurring at this dramatic moment in

  play, England now needing only twenty-four runs to win the series. The men are

  leaving the pitch in the company of a police officer, and I think everyone's

  settling down now and play is about to resume."

  "Now, sir," said the policeman after they had made a passage through the

  curious crowd and laid Arthur's peacefully inert body on a blanket, "perhaps

  you'd care to tell me who you are, where you come from, and what that little

  scene was all about?"

  Ford looked at the ground for a moment as if steadying himself for

  something, then he straightened up and aimed a look at the policeman which hit

  him with the full force of every inch of the six hundred light-years' distance

  between Earth and Ford's home near Betelgeuse.

  "All right," said Ford, very quietly, "I'll tell you."

  "Yes, well, that won't be necessary," said the policeman hurriedly, "just

  don't let whatever it was happen again." The policeman turned around and

  wandered off in search of anyone who wasn't from Betelgeuse. Fortunately, the

  ground was full of them.

  Arthur's consciousness approached his body as from a great distance, and

  reluctantly. It had had some bad times in there. Slowly, nervously, it entered

  and settled down in to its accustomed position.

  Arthur sat up.

  "Where am I?" he said.

  "Lord's Cricket Ground," said Ford.

  "Fine," said Arthur, and his consciousness stepped out again for a quick

  breather. His body flopped back on the grass.

  Ten minutes later, hunched over a cup of tea in the refreshment tent, the

  colour started to come back to his haggard face.

  "How're you feeling?" said Ford.

  "I'm home," said Arthur hoarsely. He closed his eyes and greedily inhaled

  the steam from his tea as if it was - well, as far as Arthur was concerned, as

  if it was tea, which it was.

  "I'm home," he repeated, "home. It's England, it's today, the nightmare is

  over." He opened h
is eyes again and smiled serenely. "I'm where I belong," he

  said in an emotional whisper.

  "There are two things I fell which I should tell you," said Ford, tossing

  a copy of the Guardian over the table at him.

  "I'm home," said Arthur.

  "Yes," said Ford. "One is," he said pointing at the date at the top of the

  paper, "that the Earth will be demolished in two days' time."

  "I'm home," said Arthur. "Tea," he said, "cricket," he added with

  pleasure, "mown grass, wooden benches, white linen jackets, beer cans ..."

  Slowly he began to focus on the newspaper. He cocked his head on one side

  with a slight frown.

  "I've seen that one before," he said. His eyes wandered slowly up to the

  date, which Ford was idly tapping at. His face froze for a second or two and

  then began to do that terribly slow crashing trick which Arctic ice-floes do

  so spectacularly in the spring.

  "And the other thing," said Ford, "is that you appear to have a bone in

  your beard." He tossed back his tea.

  Outside the refreshment tent, the sun was shining on a happy crowd. It

  shone on white hats and red faces. It shone on ice lollies and melted them. It

  shone on the tears of small children whose ice lollies had just melted and

  fallen off the stick. It shone on the trees, it flashed off whirling cricket

  bats, it gleamed off the utterly extraordinary object which was parked behind

  the sight-screens and which nobody appeared to have noticed. It beamed on Ford

  and Arthur as they emerged blinking from the refreshment tent and surveyed the

  scene around them.

  Arthur was shaking.

  "Perhaps," he said, "I should ..."

  "No," said Ford sharply.

  "What?" said Arthur.

  "Don't try and phone yourself up at home."

  "How did you know ...?"

  Ford shrugged.

  "But why not?" said Arthur.

  "People who talk to themselves on the phone," said Ford, "never learn

  anything to their advantage."

  "But ..."

  "Look," said Ford. He picked up an imaginary phone and dialled an

  imaginary dial.

  "Hello?" he said into the imaginary mouthpiece. "Is that Arthur Dent? Ah,

  hello, yes. This is Arthur Dent speaking. Don't hang up."

  He looked at the imaginary mouthpiece in disappointment.

  "He hung up," he said, shrugged, and put the imaginary phone neatly back

  on its imaginary hook.

  "This is not my first temporal anomaly," he added.