known to be one of those most bizarre of mathematical concepts, a
recipriversexcluson, a number whose existence can only be defined as being
anything other than itself. In other words, the given time of arrival is the
one moment of time at which it is impossible that any member of the party will
arrive. Recipriversexclusons now play a vital part in many branches of maths,
including statistics and accountancy and also form the basic equations used to
engineer the Somebody Else's Problem field.
The third and most mysterious piece of non-absoluteness of all lies in the
relationship between the number of items on the bill, the cost of each item,
the number of people at the table, and what they are each prepared to pay for.
(The number of people who have actually brought any money is only a sub+
phenomenon in this field.)
The baffling discrepancies which used to occur at this point remained
uninvestigated for centuries simply because no one took them seriously. They
were at the time put down to such things as politeness, rudeness, meanness,
flashness, tiredness, emotionality, or the lateness of the hour, and
completely forgotten about on the following morning. They were never tested
under laboratory conditions, of course, because they never occurred in
laboratories - not in reputable laboratories at least.
And so it was only with the advent of pocket computers that the startling
truth became finally apparent, and it was this:
Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines of restaurants do
not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces
of paper in any other parts of the Universe.
This single fact took the scientific world by storm. It completely
revolutionized it. So many mathematical conferences got held in such good
restaurants that many of the finest minds of a generation died of obesity and
heart failure and the science of maths was put back by years.
Slowly, however, the implications of the idea began to be understood. To
begin with it had been too stark, too crazy, too much what the man in the
street would have said, "Oh yes, I could have told you that," about. Then some
phrases like "Interactive Subjectivity Frameworks" were invented, and
everybody was able to relax and get on with it.
The small groups of monks who had taken up hanging around the major
research institutes singing strange chants to the effect that the Universe was
only a figment of its own imagination were eventually given a street theatre
grant and went away.
Chapter 8
"In space travel, you see," said Slartibartfast, as he fiddled with some
instruments in the Room of Informational Illusions, "in space travel ..."
He stopped and looked about him.
The Room of Informational Illusions was a welcome relief after the visual
monstrosities of the central computational area. There was nothing in it. No
information, no illusions, just themselves, white walls and a few small
instruments which looked as if they were meant to plug into something which
Slartibartfast couldn't find.
"Yes?" urged Arthur. He had picked up Slartibartfast's sense of urgency
but didn't know what to do with it.
"Yes what?" said the old man.
"You were saying?"
Slartibartfast looked at him sharply.
"The numbers," he said, "are awful." He resumed his search.
Arthur nodded wisely to himself. After a while he realized that this
wasn't getting him anywhere and decided that he would say "what?" after all.
"In space travel," repeated Slartibartfast, "all the numbers are awful."
Arthur nodded again and looked round to Ford for help, but Ford was
practising being sullen and getting quite good at it.
"I was only," said Slartibartfast with a sigh, "trying to save you the
trouble of asking me why all the ship's computations were being done on a
waiter's bill pad."
Arthur frowned.
"Why," he said, "were all the ship's computations being done on a wait-"
He stopped.
Slartibartfast said, "Because in space travel all the numbers are awful."
He could tell that he wasn't getting his point across.
"Listen," he said. "On a waiter's bill pad numbers dance. You must have
encountered the phenomenon."
"Well ..."
"On a waiter's bill pad," said Slartibartfast, "reality and unreality
collide on such a fundamental level that each becomes the other and anything
is possible, within certain parameters."
"What parameters?"
"It's impossible to say," said Slartibartfast. "That's one of them.
Strange but true. At least, I think it's strange," he added, "and I'm assured
that it's true."
At that moment he located the slot in the wall for which he had been
searching, and clicked the instrument he was holding into it.
"Do not be alarmed," he said, and then suddenly darted an alarmed look at
himself, and lunged back, "it's ..."
They didn't hear what he said, because at that moment the ship winked out
of existence around them and a starbattle-ship the size of a small Midlands
industrial city plunged out of the sundered night towards them, star lasers
ablaze.
They gaped, pop-eyed, and were unable to scream.
Chapter 9
Another world, another day, another dawn.
The early morning's thinnest sliver of light appeared silently.
Several billion trillion tons of superhot exploding hydrogen nuclei rose
slowly above the horizon and managed to look small, cold and slightly damp.
There is a moment in every dawn when light floats, there is the
possibility of magic. Creation holds its breath.
The moment passed as it regularly did on Squornshellous Zeta, without
incident.
The mist clung to the surface of the marshes. The swamp trees were grey
with it, the tall reeds indistinct. It hung motionless like held breath.
Nothing moved.
There was silence.
The sun struggled feebly with the mist, tried to impart a little warmth
here, shed a little light there, but clearly today was going to be just
another long haul across the sky.
Nothing moved.
Again, silence.
Nothing moved.
Silence.
Very often on Squornshellous Zeta, whole days would go on like this, and
this was indeed going to be one of them.
Fourteen hours later the sun sank hopelessly beneath the opposite horizon
with a sense of totally wasted effort.
And a few hours later it reappeared, squared its shoulders and started on
up the sky again.
This time, however, something was happening. A mattress had just met a
robot.
"Hello, robot," said the mattress.
"Bleah," said the robot and continued what it was doing, which was walking
round very slowly in a very tiny circle.
"Happy?" said the mattress.
The robot stopped and looked at the mattress. It looked at it quizzically.
It was clearly a very stupid mattress. It looked back at him with wide eyes.
After what it had calculated to ten significant decimal places as being
the precise length of
pause most likely to convey a general contempt for all
things mattressy, the robot continued to walk round in tight circles.
"We could have a conversation," said the mattress, "would you like that?"
It was a large mattress, and probably one of quite high quality. Very few
things actually get manufactured these days, because in an infinitely large
Universe such as, for instance, the one in which we live, most things one
could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow
somewhere. A forest was discovered recently in which most of the trees grew
ratchet screwdrivers as fruit. The life cycle of ratchet screwdriver fruit it
quite interesting. Once picked it needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can
lie undisturbed for years. Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its
outer skin which crumbles into dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable
little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a sort
of hole for a screw. This, when found, will get thrown away. No one knows what
it is supposed to gain from this. Nature, in her infinite wisdom, is
presumably working on it.
No one really knows what mattresses are meant to gain from their lives
either. They are large, friendly, pocket-sprung creatures which live quiet
private lives in the marshes of Squornshellous Zeta. Many of them get caught,
slaughtered, dried out, shipped out and slept on. None of them seem to mind
and all of them are called Zem.
"No," said Marvin.
"My name," said the mattress, "is Zem. We could discuss the weather a
little."
Marvin paused again in his weary circular plod.
"The dew," he observed, "has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening
thud this morning."
He resumed his walk, as if inspired by this conversational outburst to
fresh heights of gloom and despondency. He plodded tenaciously. If he had had
teeth he would have gritted them at this point. He hadn't. He didn't. The mere
plod said it all.
The mattress flolloped around. This is a thing that only live mattresses
in swamps are able to do, which is why the word is not in more common usage.
It flolloped in a sympathetic sort of way, moving a fairish body of water as
it did so. It blew a few bubbles up through the water engagingly. Its blue and
white stripes glistened briefly in a sudden feeble ray of sun that had
unexpectedly made it through the mist, causing the creature to bask
momentarily.
Marvin plodded.
"You have something on your mind, I think," said the mattress floopily.
"More than you can possibly imagine," dreaded Marvin. "My capacity for
mental activity of all kinds is as boundless as the infinite reaches of space
itself. Except of course for my capacity for happiness."
Stomp, stomp, he went.
"My capacity for happiness," he added, "you could fit into a matchbox
without taking out the matches first."
The mattress globbered. This is the noise made by a live, swampdwelling
mattress that is deeply moved by a story of personal tragedy. The word can
also, according to The Ultra-Complete Maximegalon Dictionary of Every Language
Ever, mean the noise made by the Lord High Sanvalvwag of Hollop on discovering
that he has forgotten his wife's birthday for the second year running. Since
there was only ever one Lord High Sanvalvwag of Hollop, and he never married,
the word is only ever used in a negative or speculative sense, and there is an
ever-increasing body of opinion which holds that The Ultra-Complete
Maximegalon Dictionary is not worth the fleet of lorries it takes to cart its
microstored edition around in. Strangely enough, the dictionary omits the word
"floopily", which simply means "in the manner of something which is floopy".
The mattress globbered again.
"I sense a deep dejection in your diodes," it vollued (for the meaning of
the word "vollue", buy a copy of Squornshellous Swamptalk at any remaindered
bookshop, or alternatively buy The Ultra-Complete Maximegalon Dictionary, as
the University will be very glad to get it off their hands and regain some
valuable parking lots), "and it saddens me. You should be more mattresslike.
We live quiet retired lives in the swamp, where we are content to flollop and
vollue and regard the wetness in a fairly floopy manner. Some of us are
killed, but all of us are called Zem, so we never know which and globbering is
thus kept to a minimum. Why are you walking in circles?"
"Because my leg is stuck," said Marvin simply.
"It seems to me," said the mattress eyeing it compassionately, "that it is
a pretty poor sort of leg."
"You are right," said Marvin, "it is."
"Voon," said the mattress.
"I expect so," said Marvin, "and I also expect that you find the idea of a
robot with an artificial leg pretty amusing. You should tell your friends Zem
and Zem when you see them later; they'll laugh, if I know them, which I don't
of course - except insofar as I know all organic life forms, which is much
better than I would wish to. Ha, but my life is but a box of wormgears."
He stomped around again in his tiny circle, around his thin steel peg-leg
which revolved in the mud but seemed otherwise stuck.
"But why do you just keep walking round and round?" said the mattress.
"Just to make the point," said Marvin, and continued, round and round.
"Consider it made, my dear friend," flurbled the mattress, "consider it
made."
"Just another million years," said Marvin, "just another quick million.
Then I might try it backwards. Just for the variety, you understand."
The mattress could feel deep in his innermost spring pockets that the
robot dearly wished to be asked how long he had been trudging in this futile
and fruitless manner, and with another quiet flurble he did so.
"Oh, just over the one-point-five-million mark, just over," said Marvin
airily. "Ask me if I ever get bored, go on, ask me."
The mattress did.
Marvin ignored the question, he merely trudged with added emphasis.
"I gave a speech once," he said suddenly, and apparently unconnectedly.
"You may not instantly see why I bring the subject up, but that is because my
mind works so phenomenally fast, and I am at a rough estimate thirty billion
times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a
number, any number."
"Er, five," said the mattress.
"Wrong," said Marvin. "You see?"
The mattress was much impressed by this and realized that it was in the
presence of a not unremarkable mind. It willomied along its entire length,
sending excited little ripples through its shallow algae-covered pool.
It gupped.
"Tell me," it urged, "of the speech you once made, I long to hear it."
"It was received very badly," said Marvin, "for a variety of reasons. I
delivered it," he added, pausing to make an awkward humping sort of gesture
with his not-exactly-good arm, but his arm which was better than the other one
which was dishearteningly welded to his left side, "over there, about a mile
distance."
He was pointing as well as he could manage, and he obv
iously wanted to
make it totally clear that this was as well as he could manage, through the
mist, over the reeds, to a part of the marsh which looked exactly the same as
every other part of the marsh.
"There," he repeated. "I was somewhat of a celebrity at the time."
Excitement gripped the mattress. It had never heard of speeches being
delivered on Squornshellous Zeta, and certainly not by celebrities. Water
spattered off it as a thrill glurried across its back.
It did something which mattresses very rarely bother to do. Summoning
every bit of its strength, it reared its oblong body, heaved it up into the
air and held it quivering there for a few seconds whilst it peered through the
mist over the reeds at the part of the marsh which Marvin had indicated,
observing, without disappointment, that it was exactly the same as every other
part of the marsh. The effort was too much, and it flodged back into its pool,
deluging Marvin with smelly mud, moss and weeds.
"I was a celebrity," droned the robot sadly, "for a short while on account
of my miraculous and bitterly resented escape from a fate almost as good as
death in the heart of a blazing sun. You can guess from my condition," he
added, "how narrow my escape was. I was rescued by a scrap-metal merchant,
imagine that. Here I am, brain the size of ... never mind."
He trudged savagely for a few seconds.
"He it was who fixed me up with this leg. Hateful, isn't it? He sold me to
a Mind Zoo. I was the star exhibit. I had to sit on a box and tell my story
whilst people told me to cheer up and think positive. `Give us a grin, little
robot,' they would shout at me, `give us a little chuckle.' I would explain to
them that to get my face to grin wold take a good couple of hours in a
workshop with a wrench, and that went down very well."
"The speech," urged the mattress. "I long to hear of the speech you gave
in the marshes."
"There was a bridge built across the marshes. A cyberstructured
hyperbridge, hundreds of miles in length, to carry ion-buggies and freighters
over the swamp."
"A bridge?" quirruled the mattress. "Here in the swamp?"
"A bridge," confirmed Marvin, "here in the swamp. It was going to
revitalize the economy of the Squornshellous System. They spent the entire
economy of the Squornshellous System building it. They asked me to open it.
ADAMS, Douglas - Life, the Universe, and Everything Page 5