by So Long
"Who was that?"
"Called Ford Prefect."
He caught himself doing something he had never really expected to
do again.
He wondered where Ford Prefect was.
By an extraordinary coincidence, the following day there were two
reports in the paper, one concerning the most astonishing
incidents with a flying saucer, and the other about a series of
unseemly riots in pubs.
Ford Prefect turned up the day after that looking hung over and
complaining that Arthur never answered the phone.
In fact he looked extremely ill, not merely as if he'd been
pulled through a hedge backwards, but as if the hedge was being
simultaneously pulled backwards through a combine harvester. He
staggered into Arthur's sitting room, waving aside all offers of
support, which was an error, because the effort caused him to
lose his balance altogether and Arthur had eventually to drag him
to the sofa.
"Thank you," said Ford, "thank you very much. Have you ..." he
said, and fell asleep for three hours.
"... the faintest idea" he continued suddenly, when he revived,
"how hard it is to tap into the British phone system from the
Pleiades? I can see that you haven't, so I'll tell you," he said,
"over the very large mug of black coffee that you are about to
make me."
He followed Arthur wobbily into the kitchen.
"Stupid operators keep asking you where you're calling from and
you try and tell them Letchworth and they say you couldn't be if
you're coming in on that circuit. What are you doing?"
"Making you some black coffee."
"Oh." Ford seemed oddly disappointed. He looked about the place
forlornly.
"What's this?" he said.
"Rice Crispies."
"And this?"
"Paprika."
"I see," said Ford, solemnly, and put the two items back down,
one on top of the other, but that didn't seem to balance
properly, so he put the other on top of the one and that seemed
to work.
"A little space-lagged," he said. "What was I saying?"
"About not phoning from Letchworth."
"I wasn't. I explained this to the lady. `Bugger Letchworth,' I
said, `if that's your attitude. I am in fact calling from a sales
scoutship of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, currently on the
sub-light-speed leg of a journey between the stars known on your
world, though not necessarily to you, dear lady.' - I said `dear
lady'," explained Ford Prefect, "because I didn't want her to be
offended by my implication that she was an ignorant cretin ..."
"Tactful," said Arthur Dent.
"Exactly," said Ford, "tactful."
He frowned.
"Space-lag," he said, "is very bad for sub-clauses. You'll have
to assist me again," he continued, "by reminding me what I was
talking about."
"`Between the stars,'" said Arthur, "`known on your world, though
not necessarily to you, dear lady, as ...'"
"`Pleiades Epsilon and Pleiades Zeta,'" concluded Ford
triumphantly. "This conversation lark is quite gas isn't it?"
"Have some coffee."
"Thank you, no. `And the reason,' I said, `why I am bothering you
with it rather than just dialling direct as I could, because we
have some pretty sophisticated telecommunications equipment out
here in the Pleiades, I can tell you, is that the penny pinching
son of a starbeast piloting this son of a starbeast spaceship
insists that I call collect. Can you believe that?'"
"And could she?"
"I don't know. She had hung up," said Ford, "by this time. So!
What do you suppose," he asked fiercely, "I did next?"
"I've no idea, Ford," said Arthur.
"Pity," said Ford, "I was hoping you could remind me. I really
hate those guys you know. They really are the creeps of the
cosmos, buzzing around the celestial infinite with their junky
little machines that never work properly or, when they do,
perform functions that no sane man would require of them and," he
added savagely, "go beep to tell you when they've done it!"
This was perfectly true, and a very respectable view widely held
by right thinking people, who are largely recognizable as being
right thinking people by the mere fact that they hold this view.
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in a moment of reasoned
lucidity which is almost unique among its current tally of five
million, nine hundred and seventy-five thousand, five hundred and
nine pages, says of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation product
that "it is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness
of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to
work at all.
"In other words - and this is the rock solid principle on which
the whole of the Corporation's Galaxy-wide success is founded -
their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their
superficial design flaws."
"And this guy," ranted Ford, "was on a drive to sell more of
them! His five-year mission to seek out and explore strange new
worlds, and sell Advanced Music Substitute Systems to their
restaurants, elevators and wine bars! Or if they didn't have
restaurants, elevators and wine bars yet, to artificially
accelerate their civilization growth until they bloody well did
have! Where's that coffee!"
"I threw it away."
"Make some more. I have now remembered what I did next. I saved
civilization as we know it. I knew it was something like that."
He stumbled determinedly back into the sitting room, where he
seemed to carry on talking to himself, tripping over the
furniture and making beep beep noises.
A couple of minutes later, wearing his very placid face, Arthur
followed him.
Ford looked stunned.
"Where have you been?" he demanded.
"Making some coffee," said Arthur, still wearing his very placid
face. He had long ago realized that the only way of being in
Ford's company successfully was to keep a large stock of very
placid faces and wear them at all times.
"You missed the best bit!" raged Ford. "You missed the bit where
I jumped the guy! Now," he said, "I shall have to jump him, all
over him!"
He hurled himself recklessly at a chair and broke it.
"It was better," he said sullenly, "last time," and waved vaguely
in the direction of another broken chair which he had already got
trussed up on the dining table.
"I see," said Arthur, casting a placid eye over the trussed up
wreckage, "and, er, what are all the ice cubes for?"
"What?" screamed Ford. "What? You missed that bit too? That's the
suspended animation facility! I put the guy in the suspended
animation facility. Well I had to didn't I?"
"So it would seem," said Arthur, in his placid voice.
"Don't touch that!!!" yelled Ford.
Arthur, who was about to replace the phone, which was for some
mysterious reason lying on the table, off the hook, paused,
placidly.
"OK," said Ford, calming down, "listen to it."
Arthur put the phone to his ear.
"It's the speaking clock," he said.
"Beep, beep, beep," said Ford, "is exactly what is being heard
all over that guy's ship, while he sleeps, in the ice, going
slowly round a little-known moon of Sesefras Magna. The London
Speaking Clock!"
"I see," said Arthur again, and decided that now was the time to
ask the big one.
"Why?" he said, placidly.
"With a bit of luck," said Ford, "the phone bill will bankrupt
the buggers."
He threw himself, sweating, on to the sofa.
"Anyway," he said, "dramatic arrival don't you think?"
=================================================================
Chapter 36
The flying saucer in which Ford Prefect had stowed away had
stunned the world.
Finally there was no doubt, no possibility of mistake, no
hallucinations, no mysterious CIA agents found floating in
reservoirs.
This time it was real, it was definite. It was quite definitely
definite.
It had come down with a wonderful disregard for anything beneath
it and crushed a large area of some of the most expensive real
estate in the world, including much of Harrods.
The thing was massive, nearly a mile across, some said, dull
silver in colour, pitted, scorched and disfigured with the scars
of unnumbered vicious space battles fought with savage forces by
the light of suns unknown to man.
A hatchway opened, crashed down through the Harrods Food Halls,
demolished Harvey Nicholls, and with a final grinding scream of
tortured architecture, toppled the Sheraton Park Tower.
After a long, heart-stopping moment of internal crashes and
grumbles of rending machinery, there marched from it, down the
ramp, an immense silver robot, a hundred feet tall.
It held up a hand.
"I come in peace," it said, adding after a long moment of further
grinding, "take me to your Lizard."
Ford Prefect, of course, had an explanation for this, as he sat
with Arthur and watched the non-stop frenetic news reports on the
television, none of which had anything to say other than to
record that the thing had done this amount of damage which was
valued at that amount of billions of pounds and had killed this
totally other number of people, and then say it again, because
the robot was doing nothing more than standing there, swaying
very slightly, and emitting short incomprehensible error
messages.
"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see ..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and
coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced
down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so
straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders
are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards role the
people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse,
"why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got
the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government
they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they
want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong
lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
"What?"
"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping
into his voice, "have you got any gin?"
"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."
Ford shrugged again.
"Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever
happened to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course,
completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."
"But that's terrible," said Arthur.
"Listen, bud," said Ford, "if I had one Altairan dollar for every
time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the
Universe and say `That's terrible' I wouldn't be sitting here
like a lemon looking for a gin. But I haven't and I am. Anyway,
what are you looking so placid and moon-eyed for? Are you in
love?"
Arthur said yes, he was, and said it placidly.
"With someone who knows where the gin bottle is? Do I get to meet
her?"
He did because Fenchurch came in at that moment with a pile of
newspapers she'd been into the village to buy. She stopped in
astonishment at the wreckage on the table and the wreckage from
Betelgeuse on the sofa.
"Where's the gin?" said Ford to Fenchurch. And to Arthur, "What
happened to Trillian by the way?"
"Er, this is Fenchurch," said Arthur, awkwardly. "There was
nothing with Trillian, you must have seen her last."
"Oh, yeah," said Ford, "she went off with Zaphod somewhere. They
had some kids or something. At least," he added, "I think that's
what they were. Zaphod's calmed down a lot you know."
"Really?" said Arthur, clustering hurriedly round Fenchurch to
relieve her of the shopping.
"Yeah," said Ford, "at least one of his heads is now saner than
an emu on acid."
"Arthur, who is this?" said Fenchurch.
"Ford Prefect," said Arthur. "I may have mentioned him in
passing."
=================================================================
Chapter 37
For a total of three days and nights the giant silver robot stood
in stunned amazement straddling the remains of Knightsbridge,
swaying slightly and trying to work out a number of things.
Government deputations came to see it, ranting journalists by the
truckload asked each other questions on the air about what they
thought of it, flights of fighter bombers tried pathetically to
attack it - but no lizards appeared. It scanned the horizon
slowly.
At night it was at its most spectacular, floodlit by the teams of
television crews who covered it continuously as it continuously
did nothing.
It thought and thought and eventually reached a conclusion.
It would have to send out its service robots.
It should have thought of that before, but it was having a number
of problems.
The tiny flying robots came screeching out of the hatchway one
afternoon in a terrifying cloud of metal. They roamed the
surrounding terrain, frantically attacking some things and
defending others.
One of them at last found a pet shop with some lizards, but it
instantly defended the pet shop for democracy so savagely that
little in the area survived.
A turning point came when a crack team of flying screechers
discovered the Zoo in Regent's Park, and most particularly the
reptile house.
Learning a little caution from their pr
evious mistakes in the
petshop, the flying drills and fretsaws brought some of the
larger and fatter iguanas to the giant silver robot, who tried to
conduct high-level talks with them.
Eventually the robot announced to the world that despite the
full, frank and wide-ranging exchange of views the high level
talks had broken down, the lizards had been retired, and that it,
the robot would take a short holiday somewhere, and for some
reason selected Bournemouth.
Ford Prefect, watching it on TV, nodded, laughed, and had another
beer.
Immediate preparations were made for its departure.
The flying toolkits screeched and sawed and drilled and fried
things with light throughout that day and all through the night
time, and in the morning, stunningly, a giant mobile gantry
started to roll westwards on several roads simultaneously with
the robot standing on it, supported within the gantry.
Westward it crawled, like a strange carnival buzzed around by its