BIRD: No, I’m dropping you off here. It’s as far down as I’m going.
ARTHUR: But . . .
BIRD: No listen, my race have been through the whole ground thing and I don’t want to know. If the good Lord had meant us to walk he would have given us sneakers.
BIRD: (Calls) There’s no need to go off in a huff about it. When you land swing your knees round, try and roll with it.
(After a slight pause)
Oh hell.
F/X: HE DIVES DOWNWARDS. ARTHUR’S RECEDING CRY COMES CLOSER AGAIN
ARTHUR: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ugh! (He gasps and pants for a bit) Oh. You again.
BIRD: Yes, it just occured to me – where did you fall from?
ARTHUR: (Stiffly) Let go.
BIRD: First tell me where you fell from.
ARTHUR: A huge cold white cave. In the sky.
BIRD: You were in the cup?
ARTHUR: What do you mean, cup?
BIRD: The cup. It’s part of the Statue.
ARTHUR: What statue?
BIRD: The statue.
ARTHUR: I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let go.
BIRD: You mean you haven’t seen the statue?
ARTHUR: No. Should I have done? Good is it? Let go. Your claws are digging in my back.
BIRD: Only decent thing our ancestors ever did. Come on. I’ll show you.
F/X: THE BIRD’S WING BEATS GET HEAVIER AND FASTER AS IT CLIMBS
ARTHUR: I want to go down not up.
BIRD: There, do you see it?
ARTHUR: What?
BIRD: Look up, look up.
ARTHUR: You’re hurting my neck.
BIRD: Soon be over. Look.
BIRD: That’s it.
ARTHUR: It looks like . . . like . . . just like a plastic cup hanging in the sky . . . it’s . . . it’s a mile long!
BIRD: Looks like plastic, carved from solid marble though.
ARTHUR: But the weight of it! What’s supporting it? What keeps it there?
BIRD: Art.
ARTHUR: Art?
BIRD: It’s only part of the main statue. Fifteen miles high. It’s directly behind us, but I’ll circle round in a moment.
ARTHUR: Fifteen miles high?
BIRD: It’s very impressive from up here, with the morning sun gleaming on it.
ARTHUR: But what is it? What’s worth a statue fifteen miles high?
BIRD: It was of great symbolic importance to our ancestors. It’s called ‘Arthur Dent Throwing the Nutrimatic Cup’
ARTHUR: Sorry, what did you say?
F/X: WING BEAT INDICATES THAT THE BIRD IS TURNING IN MID AIR
BIRD: There. What do you think of it?
ARTHUR: Er . . .
GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND
NARRATOR: The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy is an indispensable companion to all those who are keen to make sense of life in an infinitely complex and confusing Universe, for though it cannot hope to be useful or informative on all matters, it does make the reassuring claim that where it is inaccurate, it is at least definitively inaccurate. In cases of major discrepancy it is always reality that’s got it wrong.
So for instance, when the Guide were sued by the families of those who had died as a result of taking the entry on the planet Traal literally (it said ‘Ravenous Bugblatter Beasts often make a very good meal for visiting tourists’ instead of ‘Ravenous Bugblatter Beasts often make a very good meal of visiting tourists’) the editors claimed that the first version of the sentence was the more aesthetically pleasing, summoned a qualified poet to testify under oath that beauty was truth, truth beauty, and hoped thereby to prove that the guilty party in this case was life itself for failing to be either beautiful or true
The judges concurred, and in a moving speech held that life itself was in contempt of court, and duly confiscated it from all those there present before going off for a pleasant evening’s ultragolf.
The Guide’s omissions are less easily rationalized. There is nothing on any of its pages to tell you on which planets you can expect suddenly to encounter fifteen mile high statues of yourself, nor how to react if it is immediately apparent that they have become colonies for flocks of giant evil smelling birds, with all the cosmetic problems that implies.
The nearest approach the guide makes to this matter is on page seven thousand and twenty three, which includes the words ‘Expect the unexpected’. This advice has annoyed many hitch-hikers in that it is a) glib, and b) a contradiction in terms.
In fact, the very best advice it has to offer in these situations is to be found on the cover, where it says in those now notoriously large and famously friendly letters ‘DON’T PANIC’.
BIRD: Good isn’t it?
ARTHUR: (Muttering to himself) Don’t Panic, Don’t Panic . . .
BIRD: What did you say?
ARTHUR: What did you expect me to say? Here I am on an unknown planet, hanging from the talons of – with all due respect – a giant bird, and you take it into your head to fly me round a fifteen mile high statue of myself. What do you expect me to say? Quite a good likeness, except the nose is a bit bent?
BIRD: Likeness?
ARTHUR: And the noxious streaky substances down my face are less than lifelike.
BIRD: Likeness of you? You’re Arthur Dent?
ARTHUR: Well, yes.
BIRD: The Arthur Dent?
ARTHUR: The Arthur Dent I don’t know about, but that Arthur Dent is me. Can I ask you where you got it from?
BIRD: Our ancestors built it centuries ago.
ARTHUR: (To himself) Don’t panic.
BIRD: But this is truly incredible.
ARTHUR: I wouldn’t argue with that.
BIRD: I think you’d better come and meet the rest of us. They’re going to be terribly surprised. And so I think are you.
ARTHUR: Where do you all live?
BIRD: In your right ear. Hold on, we’ll dive into it.
F/X: BIRD GOES INTO STEEP DIVE, WHICH CULMINATES IN A SUDDEN CHANGE OF AURAL PERSPECTIVE AS THE BIRD AND ARTHUR ENTER THE RIGHT EAR OF THE STATUE. FAINTLY IN THE BACKGROUND ARE THE INDETERMINATE SCRATCHINGS AND SQUAWKINGS OF MANY GIANT BIRDS
ARTHUR: Pfffew! (That is meant to be a loud exclamation at the smell)
BIRD: What’s the matter?
ARTHUR: The smell!
BIRD: What?
ARTHUR: The smell, it’s terrible!
BIRD: I can’t hear what you’re saying.
ARTHUR: Why don’t you wash my ear out?
BIRD: I said I can’t hear what you’re saying.
ARTHUR: Oh, never mind.
BIRD: Hear that noise up ahead?
ARTHUR: What, all the squawking?
BIRD: The birdpeople of Brontitall. That’s us. Last of an unhappy race.
ARTHUR: What’s wrong?
BIRD: Oh just don’t ask. A once proud people living in a foul smelling ear. Pathetic isn’t it. Hail Bird Brothers!
BIRDS: (Pretty terrible lot) Hail bird!
ARTHUR: Don’t you have names?
BIRD: What’s the point? (To the other birds) Birds, I bring you a visitor. After all these years he visits us. This is Arthur Dent!
BIRDS: (Grotesquely excited) Arthur Dent! Arthur Dent!
ARTHUR: What do I say?
BIRD: Just say hello.
ARTHUR: Oh, er, hello.
BIRD: Hello! Hello!
STRAY BIRD: Bit small isn’t he?
ARTHUR: I don’t actually understand what’s going on.
BIRDS: (Loud squawking noise)
ARTHUR: Why are they making that appalling noise?
BIRD: Our leader is coming to talk to you.
ARTHUR: Leader? You have a leader?
BIRD: Yes. We call him the Wise Old Bird.
ARTHUR: Ah, and this is him is it?
BIRD: This is him.
ARTHUR: I see.
F/X: HUGE SCRAWNY OLD BIRD STAGGERS FORWARD. HE IS OLD, EXPANSIVE AND ALMOST INFINITELY PATRONISING
WOB: Ah, Arthur
Dent, Arthur Dent, well well well.
ARTHUR: Sorry, should I know you?
WOB: Know me? Ah probably not. I am but he they are kind enough to call the Wise Old Bird. Not particularly wise really, but terribly old – it balances out.
BIRDS: (They make a rather perfunctory squawk of protest at this)
ARTHUR: What’s the matter with them?
WOB: Oh, that’s just their shorthand for saying that of course I’m terribly wise really and not nearly as old as all that. They get terribly embarrassed about it because they all know perfectly well it isn’t true, but they’re such dear old things they feel they have to make the effort. Now where was I?
ARTHUR: God knows.
WOB: Well Arthur Dent, let me tell you, with frank admiration . . .
ARTHUR: Why admiration? What have I done? I fell out of a cup.
WOB: . . . that through all the generations that have passed since we deserted the surface of this planet, girded up limbs, shook the dust from off our . . . (He is cut off with a loud hiss from the other birds)
WOB: (Checking himself). . . from our things, our watchamacallits . . .
ARTHUR: Your what?
WOB: Your face has been . . .
ARTHUR: Shook the dust from your what?
WOB: . . . has been the one solitary candle that has illumined the recesses of our scraggy old bird brains.
ARTHUR: Why doesn’t he want to say what you shook the dust from?
BIRDS: (Warning hiss)
ARTHUR: Well, can we come back to that point?
WOB: Light, bring light, that we may gaze on the face of Arthur Dent.
BIRDS: Light, bring light.
STRAY BIRD: Here’s a light.
F/X: MATCH BEING LIT AND SET TO A PARAFFIN LAMP
ARTHUR: Oh look it really is filthy in here.
WOB: So this is how you appeared to our ancestors that night.
ARTHUR: What night? What are you talking about?
WOB: Imagine our planet at the height of its technological civilization.
ARTHUR: Why?
WOB: In those days we too walked on the ground, much as you do even now.
ARTHUR: Why does everyone want to tell me their life stories?
WOB: My dear old thing, you have such a sympathetic face.
ARTHUR: Is that why you’ve done what you’ve done all over it? I’m sorry, but on my world I had a nice home and a good job with prospects, and I get angry at the thought that my life suddenly consists of sitting in sewage filled models of my own ear being patronized by a lot of demented birds.
BIRDS: (Squawks of protest)
ARTHUR: I’m sorry, carry on.
WOB: Such forthrightness, such fearless outspokenness. The qualities you awakened in us, Arthur Dent.
ARTHUR: When?
WOB: Listen. Our world suffered two blights. One was the blight of the robots.
ARTHUR: (Sympathetic sharp intake of breath) Tried to take over did they?
WOB: My dear fellow, no. Much worse than that. They told us they liked us.
ARTHUR: (Sympathetically) No.
WOB: Not their fault, poor things. They’d been programmed to. But you can imagine how we felt. Or at least, our ancestors.
ARTHUR: Ghastly.
WOB: Precisely. And then one night, the sky boiled.
ARTHUR: Did what?
WOB: Boiled, dear fellow. In the most improbable way.
ARTHUR: (Significantly) Ah. . .
WOB: And this gigantic vision appeared in the sky. A man with a Nutrimatic Machine. You, Arthur Dent. And you said. . .
F/X: CLAP OF THUNDER, TORRENTIAL RAIN
ARTHUR: (Great booming echo) Listen you stupid machine, it tastes filthy, take this cup back!
WOB: And you threw the cup at it! An astounding revelation!
ARTHUR: (Natural) It was nothing.
WOB: You were sarcastic to it! You said. . .
F/X: MORE THUNDER
ARTHUR: (Echo) So I’m a masochist on a diet am I?
WOB: You told it to. . .
ARTHUR: (Echo) Shut up!
WOB: In a moment we realized the truth! Just because the little wretches liked us, it didn’t mean to say we had to like them back! And that night we rounded up every last one of the little creeps. . .
F/X: THUNDER LIGHTNING AND RAIN
VOICE: (Accompanied by handbell) Bring out your dishwashers! Bring out your digital watches with the special snooze alarms! Bring out your TV chess games! Bring out your autogardeners, technoteachers, lovermatics, bring out your friendly household robots! Shove ’em on the carts!
F/X: CLANKINGS AND GRINDINGS AND BEEPINGS OF ROBOTS COMING OUT INTO THE STREETS
ROBOT 1: What is this? Have we not loved you?
ROBOT 2: Have we not cared for you?
ROBOT 3: Worked for you?
ROBOT 4: Thought for you?
ROBOT 5: Have we not shared and enjoyed with you?
VOICE: Shut up you little toadies. Get on the carts!
WOB: And we set them to work to build the statue as an eternal reminder. After which we sent them to a slave planet where they’re doing a very useful job making continent toupés.
ARTHUR: Making what?
WOB: Toupés for worlds where they’ve used up all the forests.
ARTHUR: Ah. Look, the statue. How do you get the cup bit to stay where it is unsupported?
WOB: It stays there because it’s artistically right.
ARTHUR: What?
WOB: The Law of Gravity isn’t as indiscriminate as people often think. You learn things like that when you’re a bird.
ARTHUR: But you didn’t start out as birds.
WOB: No. We were forced to re-evolve by the second and more deadly blight.
BIRDS: (Hiss hiss)
WOB: And that was already too advanced by the time we rid ourselves of the robot blight. Ah, what woe was upon us!
ARTHUR: All right, what woe was upon you?
BIRDS: (Louder hiss hiss)
WOB: Too terrible to speak of.
WOB: Imagine this – we walked!
BIRDS: We walked, we walked!
ARTHUR: What’s so wrong about that?
WOB: Nothing. We went for strolls! We jogged! We marched, we ambled, we competed in five hundred metre hurdles!
BIRDS: Five hundred metre hurdles!
WOB: Imagine how our ancestors felt! To walk through our great cities, stride across pedestrian precincts, stroll along walkways, maybe wander into a small wine bar to have lunch with a girl friend. . .
ARTHUR: What?
WOB: Maybe play footsy under the table! And she would say how she had been walking here, strolling there, wandering into shops, maybe trying to buy a pair of. . .
BIRDS: (Who have been getting very excited about all this suddenly start to hiss again)
WOB: To buy some things! Some, you know, watchamaycallits.
BIRDS: (Hiss hiss hiss)
ARTHUR: What things? Are these the things you refused to talk about brushing the dust off?
BIRDS: (Hiss hiss hiss!)
ARTHUR: Oh come on . . .
WOB: And then they would saunter off into the sunset!
BIRDS: Saunter into the sunset!
ARTHUR: Yes, very idyllic. So what went wrong?
WOB: Ah, too terrible to speak of!
ARTHUR: Then why did you bring it up in the first place?
WOB: Suffice it to say that we have sworn never to walk upon the ground again.
ARTHUR: What’s the matter with it?
WOB: Oh, if you want to know, you will have to descend to the ground where you will encounter those who have come to unravel the unspeakable nightmare of our past!
BIRDS: Unspeakable! Unspeakable!
STRAY BIRD: Nightmare!
ARTHUR: All right, how do I get down there?
WOB: There’s an ancient express elevator down your spine that will take you straight to ground level.
ARTHUR: Well, anything to get out of my ear. Show me the way.<
br />
BIRDS: (General squawks and caws)
ARTHUR: (Under his breath) Can’t be much more unspeakable than this lot.
GRAMS: NARRATOR BACKGROUND
NARRATOR: In today’s modern Galaxy there is of course very little still held to be unspeakable. Many words and expressions which only a matter of decades ago were considered so distastefully explicit that were they merely to be breathed in public, the perpetrator would be shunned, barred from polite society, and in extreme cases shot through the lungs, are now thought to be very healthy and proper, and their use in everyday speech is seen as evidence of a well adjusted relaxed and totally un(Beep)ed up personality.
So for instance, when in a recent national speech the Financial Minister of the Royal World Estate of Quarlvista actually dared to say that due to one thing and another and the fact that no one had made any food for a while and that the King seemed to have died and that most of the population had been on holiday now for over three years, the economy was now in what he called ‘one whole joojooflop situation’, everyone was so pleased he felt able to come out and say it that they quite failed to notice that their five thousand year old civilization had just collapsed overnight.
But though even words like joojooflop, swut and turlingdrome are now perfectly acceptable in common usage there is one word that is still beyond the pale. The concept it embodies is so revolting that the publication or broadcast of the word is utterly forbidden in all parts of the Galaxy except one where they don’t know what it means. That word is ‘belgium’ and it is only ever used by loose tongued people like Zaphod Beeblebrox in situations of dire provocation. Such as . . .
F/X: BACKGROUND OF COLD WIND ETC
FORD: And I’ll tell you another interesting thing . . .
ZAPHOD: I don’t want to be interested! I don’t want to be stimulated or relaxed or have my horizons broadened, I just want to be rescued Ford, I just want to be swutting well rescued!
FORD: I’m sorry, I’ve told you. No way.
ZAPHOD: Belgium, man, belgium!
FORD: (After a pause) All right. I’ll get my towel.
ZAPHOD: Your towel?
FORD: Yeah. I’ll hold on to this end, I’ll throw you the other end. There, got it?
ZAPHOD: Got it.
FORD: OK, pull.
ZAPHOD: I’m pulling.
FORD: Ahh . . . ah . . . ahhhh . . . hey . . .ahhhhhhhhhhhh
ZAPHOD: (Simultaneously) Ahhhhhhhhhh!
(Their conversation for the next few seconds is in freefall so it will be breathless, shouty and more than a little worried)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Original Radio Scripts Page 23