ADAMS, Douglas - Life, the Universe, and Everything

by Life, the Universe

  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 farble!" 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 farble!" 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 skull.

  "Strange thing to want to tell us," snapped Ford.

  "Strange thing to take."

  "Strange ship."

  They had arrived at it. The second strangest thing about the ship was

  watching the Somebody Else's Problem field at work. They could now clearly see

  the ship for what it was simply because they knew it was there. It was quite

  apparent, however, that nobody else could. This wasn't because it was actually

  invisible or anything hyper-impossible like that. The technology involved in

  making anything invisible is so infinitely complex that nine hundred and

  ninety-nine thousand million, nine hundred and ninety-nine million, nine

  hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a

  billion it is much simpler and more effective just to take the thing away and

  do without it. The ultra-famous sciento-magician Effrafax of Wug once bet his

  life that, given a year, he could render the great megamountain Magramal

  entirely invisible.

  Having spent most of the year jiggling around with immense LuxO-Valves and

  Refracto-Nullifiers and Spectrum-Bypass-O-Matics, he realized, with nine hours

  to go, that he wasn't going to make it.

  So, he and his friends, and his friends' friends, and his friends'

  friends' friends, and his friends' friends' friends' friends, and some rather

  less good friends of theirs who happened to own a major stellar trucking

  company, put in what now is widely recognized as being the hardest night's

  work in history, and, sure enough, on the following day, Magramal was no

  longer visible. Effrafax lost his bet - and therefore his life - simply

  because some pedantic adjudicating official noticed (a) that when walking

  around the area that Magramal ought to be he didn't trip over or break his

  nose on anything, and (b) a suspicious-looking extra moon.

  The Somebody Else's Problem field is much simpler and more effective, and

  what's more can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery.

  This is because it relies on people's natural disposition not to see anything

  they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain. If Effrafax had

  painted the mountain pink and erected a cheap and simple Somebody Else's

  Problem field on it, then people would have walked past the mountain, round

  it, even over it, and simply never have noticed that the thing was there.

  And this is precisely what was happening with Slartibartfast's ship. It

  wasn't pink, but if it had been, that would have been the least of its visual

  problems and people were simply ignoring it like anything.

  The most extraordinary thing about it was that it looked only partly like

  a spaceship with guidance fins, rocket engines and escape hatches and so on,

  and a great deal like a small upended Italian bistro.

  Ford and Arthur gazed up at it with wonderment and deeply offended

  sensibilities.

  "Yes, I know," said Slartibartfast, hurrying up to them at that point,

  breathless and agitated, "but there is a reason. Come, we must go. The ancient

  nightmare is come again. Doom confronts us all. We must leave at once."

  "I fancy somewhere sunny," said Ford.

  Ford and Arthur followed Slartibartfast into the ship and were so

  perplexed by what they saw inside it that they were totally unaware of what

  happened next outside.

  A spaceship, yet another one, but this one sleek and silver, descended

  from the sky on to the pitch, quietly, without fuss, its long legs unlocking

  in a smooth ballet of technology.

  It landed gently. It extended a short ramp. A tall grey-green figure

  marched briskly out and approached the small knot of people who were gathered

  in the centre of the pitch tending to the casualties of the recent bizarre

  massacre. It moved people aside with quiet, understated authority, and came at

  last to a man lying in a desperate pool of blood, clearly now beyond the reach

  of any Earthly medicine, breathing, coughing his last. The figure knelt down

  quietly beside him.

  "Arthur Philip Deodat?" asked the figure.

  The man, with horrified confusion in eyes, nodded feebly.

  "You're a no-good dumbo nothing," whispered the creature. "I thought you

  should know that before you went."

  Chapter 5

  Important facts from Galactic history, number two:

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

  History.)

  Since this Galaxy began, vast civilizations have risen and fallen, risen

  and fallen, risen and fallen so often that it's quite tempting to think that

  life in the Galaxy must be

  (a) something akin to seasick - space-sick, time sick, history sick or

  some such thing, and

  (b) stupid.

  Chapter 6

  It seemed to Arthur as if the whole sky suddenly just stood aside and let

  them through.

  It seemed to him that the atoms of his brain and the atoms of the cosmos

  were streaming through each other.

  It seemed to him that he was blown on the wind of the Universe, and that

  the wind was him.

  It seemed to him that he was one of the thoughts of the Universe and that

  the Universe was a thought of his.

  It seemed to the people at Lord's Cricket Ground that another North London

  restaurant had just come and gone as they so often do, and that this was

  Somebody Else's Problem.

  "What happened?" whispered Arthur in considerable awe.

  "We took off," said Slartibartfast.

  Arthur lay in startled stillness on the acceleration couch. He wasn't

  certain whether he had just got space-sickness or religion.

  "Ni
ce mover," said Ford in an unsuccessful attempt to disguise the degree

  to which he had been impressed by what Slartibartfast's ship had just done,

  "shame about the decor."

  For a moment or two the old man didn't reply. He was staring at the

  instruments with the air of one who is trying to convert fahrenheit to

  centigrade in his head whilst his house is burning down. Then his brow cleared

  and he stared for a moment at the wide panoramic screen in front of him, which

  displayed a bewildering complexity of stars streaming like silver threads

  around them.

  His lips moved as if he was trying to spell something. Suddenly his eyes

  darted in alarm back to his instruments, but then his expression merely

  subsided into a steady frown. He looked back up at the screen. He felt his own

  pulse. His frown deepened for a moment, then he relaxed.

  "It's a mistake to try and understand mathematics," he said, "they only

  worry me. What did you say?"

  "Decor," said Ford. "Pity about it."

  "Deep in the fundamental heart of mind and Universe," said Slartibartfast,

  "there is a reason."

  Ford glanced sharply around. He clearly thought this was taking an

  optimistic view of things.

  The interior of the flight deck was dark green, dark red, dark brown,

  cramped and moodily lit. Inexplicably, the resemblance to a small Italian

  bistro had failed to end at the hatchway. Small pools of light picked out pot

  plants, glazed tiles and all sorts of little unidentifiable brass things.

  Rafia-wrapped bottles lurked hideously in the shadows.

  The instruments which had occupied Slartibartfast's attention seemed to be

  mounted in the bottom of bottles which were set in concrete.

  Ford reached out and touched it.

  Fake concrete. Plastic. Fake bottles set in fake concrete.

  The fundamental heart of mind and Universe can take a running jump, he

  thought to himself, this is rubbish. On the other hand, it could not be denied

  that the way the ship had moved made the Heart of Gold seem like an electric

  pram.

  He swung himself off the couch. He brushed himself down. He looked at

  Arthur who was singing quietly to himself. He looked at the screen and

  recognized nothing. He looked at Slartibartfast.

  "How far did we just travel?" he said.

  "About ..." said Slartibartfast, "about two thirds of the way across the

  Galactic disc, I would say, roughly. Yes, roughly two thirds, I think."

  "It's a strange thing," said Arthur quietly, "that the further and faster

  one travels across the Universe, the more one's position in it seems to be

  largely immaterial, and one is filled with a profound, or rather emptied of a

  ..."

  "Yes, very strange," said Ford. "Where are we going?"

  "We are going," said Slartibartfast, "to confront an ancient nightmare of

  the Universe."

  "And where are you going to drop us off?"

  "I will need your help."

  "Tough. Look, there's somewhere you can take us where we can have fun, I'm

  trying to think of it, we can get drunk and maybe listen to some extremely

  evil music. Hold on, I'll look it up." He dug out his copy of The Hitch

  Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and tipped through those parts of the index

  primarily concerned with sex and drugs and rock and roll.

  "A curse has arisen from the mists of time," said Slartibartfast.

  "Yes, I expect so," said Ford. "Hey," he said, lighting accidentally on

  one particular reference entry, "Eccentrica Gallumbits, did you ever meet her?

  The triple-breasted whore of Eroticon Six. Some people say her erogenous zones

  start some four miles from her actual body. Me, I disagree, I say five."

  "A curse," said Slartibartfast, "which will engulf the Galaxy in fire and

  destruction, and possibly bring the Universe to a premature doom. I mean it,"

  he added.

  "Sounds like a bad time," said Ford, "with look I'll be drunk enough not

  to notice. Here," he said, stabbing his finger at the screen of the Guide,

  "would be a really wicked place to go, and I think we should. What do you say,

  Arthur? Stop mumbling mantras and pay attention. There's important stuff

  you're missing here."

  Arthur pushed himself up from his couch and shook his head.

  "Where are we going?" he said.

  "To confront an ancient night-"

  "Can it," said Ford. "Arthur, we are going out into the Galaxy to have

  some fun. Is that an idea you can cope with?"

  "What's Slartibartfast looking so anxious about?" said Arthur.

  "Nothing," said Ford.

  "Doom," said Slartibartfast. "Come," he added, with sudden authority,

  "there is much I must show and tell you."

  He walked towards a green wrought-iron spiral staircase set

  incomprehensibly in the middle of the flight deck and started to ascend.

  Arthur, with a frown, followed.

  Ford slung the Guide sullenly back into his satchel.

  "My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural

  deficiency in moral fibre," he muttered to himself, "and that I am therefore

  excused from saving Universes."

  Nevertheless, he stomped up the stairs behind them.

  What they found upstairs was just stupid, or so it seemed, and Ford shook

  his head, buried his face in his hands and slumped against a pot plant,

  crushing it against the wall.

  "The central computational area," said Slartibartfast unperturbed, "this

  is where every calculation affecting the ship in any way is performed. Yes I

  know what it looks like, but it is in fact a complex four-dimensional

  topographical map of a series of highly complex mathematical functions."

  "It looks like a joke," said Arthur.

  "I know what it looks like," said Slartibartfast, and went into it. As he

  did so, Arthur had a sudden vague flash of what it might mean, but he refused

  to believe it. The Universe could not possibly work like that, he thought,

  cannot possibly. That, he thought to himself, would be as absurd as ... he

  terminated that line of thinking. Most of the really absurd things he could

  think of had already happened.

  And this was one of them.

  It was a large glass cage, or box - in fact a room.

  In it was a table, a long one. Around it were gathered about a dozen

  chairs, of the bentwood style. On it was a tablecloth - a grubby, red and

  white check tablecloth, scarred with the occasional cigarette burn, each,

  presumably, at a precise calculated mathematical position.

  And on the tablecloth sat some half-eaten Italian meals, hedged about with

  half-eaten breadsticks and half-drunk glasses of wine, and toyed with

  listlessly by robots.

  It was all completely artificial. The robot customers were attended by a

  robot waiter, a robot wine waiter and a robot maetre d'. The furniture was

  artificial, the tablecloth artificial, and each particular piece of food was

  clearly capable of exhibiting all the mechanical characteristics of, say, a

  pollo sorpreso, without actually being one.

  And all participated in a little dance together - a complex routine

  involving the manipulation of menus, bill pads, wallets, cheque books, credit

  cards, watches, pencils and paper napkin
s, which seemed to be hovering

  constantly on the edge of violence, but never actually getting anywhere.

  Slartibartfast hurried in, and then appeared to pass the time of day quite

  idly with the maetre d', whilst one of the customer robots, an autorory, slid

  slowly under the table, mentioning what he intended to do to some guy over

  some girl.

  Slartibartfast took over the seat which had been thus vacated and passed a

  shrewd eye over the menu. The tempo of the routine round the table seemed

  somehow imperceptibly to quicken. Arguments broke out, people attempted to

  prove things on napkins. They waved fiercely at each other, and attempted to

  examine each other's pieces of chicken. The waiter's hand began to move on the

  bill pad more quickly than a human hand could manage, and then more quickly

  than a human eye could follow. The pace accelerated. Soon, an extraordinary

  and insistent politeness overwhelmed the group, and seconds later it seemed

  that a moment of consensus was suddenly achieved. A new vibration thrilled

  through the ship.

  Slartibartfast emerged from the glass room.

  "Bistromathics," he said. "The most powerful computational force known to

  parascience. Come to the Room of Informational Illusions."

  He swept past and carried them bewildered in his wake.

  Chapter 7

  The Bistromatic Drive is a wonderful new method of crossing vast

  interstellar distances without all that dangerous mucking about with

  Improbability Factors.

  Bistromathics itself is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding

  the behaviour of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that time was not an

  absolute but depended on the observer's movement in space, and that space was

  not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in time, so it is now

  realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer's movement

  in restaurants.

  The first non-absolute number is the number of people for whom the table

  is reserved. This will vary during the course of the first three telephone

  calls to the restaurant, and then bear no apparent relation to the number of

  people who actually turn up, or to the number of people who subsequently join

  them after the show/match/party/gig, or to the number of people who leave when

  they see who else has turned up.

  The second non-absolute number is the given time of arrival, which is now