by Eoin Colfer
Arthur rapped on the sphere. ‘Hello… Zaphod… Left Brain. Are you driving the ship? Can you get us out of here?’
‘Please don’t touch the glass, Earthman. You have no idea how many times I have to spin around in the gel to get smears off.’
‘Sorry.’
‘To answer your questions: I am currently interfacing with the Dodge-O-Matic program so that we can avoid the Grebulon death rays. Their lattice is closing as we speak, so the sooner we engage the Improbability Drive, the better.’
‘How soon is that likely to be?’
‘In ninety seconds. Several minutes before the death rays can possibly destroy the ship.’
‘You’re sure about that?’
Left Brain did not appreciate the question. ‘You’re new here and we’ve just met, so I’m going to explain this. I am the ship, the ship is me. There is no mis-information.’
‘New? I’ve been here before, mate. And we have met, only the last time…’
‘I was still attached to Zaphod, the idiot.’
‘Wohoo!’ yelled Zaphod. ‘He nailed you there, Arty. Don’t go toe to toe with this guy.’
‘Subjugated by his raucous personality,’ continued Left Brain. ‘Dominated by his irrepressible hedonism.’
‘I warned you, Earthman. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Left Brain will skin you alive and make fritters with the shavings.’
Left Brain swivelled, focussing his gaze on Zaphod. ‘This shiftless monkey kept me locked inside my own head until I planted the separation idea during a drunken binge. Zaphod is such a gobemouche that he actually believes the notion was his own.’
Zaphod’s eyes clouded. ‘Gobemouche? Say what now?’
Although Arthur was worried about the ramifications of the heads’ sibling rivalry, or split personality, or whatever the correct medical term might be, he decided to choke down his misgivings for Random’s sake. They were saved, after all. Random was safe and that was all that mattered. Arthur knew from experience that losing his home planet would crush his spirit in the near future, possibly around teatime when there was no tea, or perhaps following a particularly beautiful holo-sunset, but for now he was determined to put on a brave face for his daughter.
‘Okay, everyone,’ he said, his voice as bright and hollow as a light bulb. ‘Emergency over for the moment. Why don’t we all strap ourselves in for an Improbability jaunt.’ He chuckled. ‘We all know how wacky they are.’
Random patted the spot on her chest where Fertle used to be. ‘Wacky, Arthur? Wacky? You’re not fooling anyone. And that was the most forced chuckle I have ever heard, Arthur. You’ll never be half the man my husband was.’
And once again, everything is my fault, thought Arthur. Maybe I should fake being cheerful more often, then perhaps people would fall for it.
‘I don’t suppose this computer has learned to make tea?’
A red light flashed on Left Brain’s dome. ‘Stop talking now, Earthman. The word “tea” has been flagged. The last time you asked for “tea”, you backed up the entire system during an alert.’
Another forced chuckle from Arthur, followed by a little shuffle and a quick exit to the viewing gallery. ‘I’m just going to check the death-ray lattice thing. See how we’re getting on. Can I get anyone anything?’
No one bothered to reply.
Guide Note: ‘Can I get anyone anything?’ is a standard get-out-of-room-quick card and can be played whenever uncomfortable circumstances, ranging from mild embarrassment to major impending doom, are fast approaching. Most cultures have a variation on the ‘can I get anyone anything’ comment and they are so obviously rhetorical that they barely merit a question mark. Betelgeuseans ask: ‘Did anyone hear a plopping sound? Like a tennis ball into a bowl of custard? Anyone? I better go check it out.’ The Jatravartid version is: ‘Did someone hear the door crystal? I bet it’s Poople. Late as usual. I better go and let him in before he fills his handkerchief.’
To Arthur’s relief, no one broke interstellar protocol by actually asking for something and he was able to sneak off to the viewing gallery and pretend he was back on his beach.
Ford rapped his knuckles on the console, listening to the ‘bong’. ‘I’d forgotten that bong, Zaph. You know, noises and things. You forget all about them then experience them again and remember how important they are to you. Then you wonder where all the memories were all that time you weren’t thinking about them.’
Zaphod had no trouble tuning into this wavelength. ‘I always thought my memories were across the hallway in head number two. And, if I needed them, head number two just beamed them across.’
‘Wow. That is, like, it. Like the essence of what I’m trying to communicate. Did you guys, like, look in each other’s eyes, you know, when he was shooting the memories across?’
‘Absolutely not,’ said Left Brain, bobbing a little in spite of his gyroscopic field. ‘His theory is ridiculous. We both have a cortex.’
Ford danced around the sphere, cradling it like a crystal ball. ‘Yeah, but you have the big brain. You’re the smart one hooked up to the Infinite Improbability Drive?’
Left Brain could not contain a little satisfied smirk. ‘That is true. I control the drive. It is part of me now. I feel its every uncertainty.’
Ford’s eyes were glazed, but still intelligent. ‘So, explain to me how I was expecting you.’
Left Brain froze in mid-glide. ‘What?’
‘Yep. That’s right, smarty-pants-less. I knew you guys would show up.’
‘That’s ridiculous. How could you know? The odds that the only person in the Universe who could rescue you would turn up exactly when you needed him was one hundred and fifty billion to one against. Acceptable odds for the Drive.’
Ford begged to differ. ‘Depends how you cal-cu-late, mate.’
‘There is only one way to calculate,’ said Left Brain stiffly.
‘Oh, no,’ said Ford in the tone of one who has spent far too many hours in cheap hotels with no credits for the Boob-O-Whooper and is forced to read his own guide book. ‘There are many ways to calculate. The Vl’hurgs’ entire mathematical system was based on entrails.’
Guide Note: This is not entirely true. Dried velohound penis was also involved.
‘And I myself,’ continued Ford in a voice so superior it would have caused single-cell life forms to accelerate their evolution so that they could use their fab new opposable thumbs to pick up a rock and beat him to death, ‘I myself base most of my calculations on emotions.’
‘Emotions!’ spluttered Left Brain all over the inside of his own bowl. ‘Emotions? How can you afford to have only one head and still be so stupid?’
‘I like being stupid. You see things clearly. Being stupid is like squinting through the sunlight.’
Each statement rocked Left Brain’s sphere like a slap from a wet towel. ‘Sunlight? What are you saying? Stupidity is ignorance and darkness.’
‘So you planned to come here? These are the coordinates you selected?’
‘No,’ admitted Left Brain. ‘The exact spot had already been destroyed, so the Drive moved us to safety.’
‘So out of all the spots in the Universe, the ship brings us here.’
‘Coincidence. Backwash from the Improbability Drive.’
‘This is more than coincidence. Zaphod comes to the rescue of his favourite cousin. How unlikely is that? It’s happened before near enough to this very same planet. One more time and it’s a pattern. And the last time I checked, patterns are not very improbable.’
Another Guide Note: This last was a lie, as Ford Prefect had never once checked the probability of patterns. Ford rarely checked anything apart from how full his glass was and general froodiness levels. He once paid a month’s salary for a froody detector which only worked if the operator’s own froodiness was sufficient to power it. Ford tried it once in the bathroom, then forced it into the trash compacter along with the receipt.
Left Brain rocked back on his x-axis.
‘Yes, it is true that patterns are not good models for improbability.’
‘Generally true?’
‘Generally.’
‘Generally doesn’t sound very improbable. Doesn’t sound very zenzizenzizenzic to one against. Sounds more like even money to me.’
‘Y-yes,’ stammered Left Brain. ‘You make a good point.’
‘Are you sweating, man? Can robot heads sweat now?’
Left Brain was indeed perspiring profusely. Little spider-bots emerged from the sphere’s collar, feasting on the moisture drops.
‘I am not a robot,’ protested Left Brain.
‘Hey, you’re floating in a glass bubble, hooked up to a computer. Spiders coming out of your neck. The last time I checked, those things all scream robot.’
Guide Note: Again, no checking. Total buffa-biscuit.
‘Although,’ mused Ford, stroking close to his chin, ‘the total cock-up of the Improbability Drive is very organic being territory.’
‘Total cock-up,’ said Left Brain nervously. ‘You really think so?’
‘Absolutely. But let’s dwell on that later, and at great length, to much embarrassment for one of us. Now, how about you fire up that Drive and send us somewhere that actually is improbable.’
Left Brain’s dome light pulsed a sickly green and streams of numbers flashed across the glass. ‘Improbable? But how to calculate? How to… Everything I believe in. Numbers are fallible? Can that be true? Can it?’
Ford was beginning to sober up. ‘Hey, buddy. Forget it. I’m just twisting your pormwrangler. Tell him, Zaphod.’
Zaphod draped an arm around his cousin’s shoulders. ‘It’s true, buddy. You’ve been wrangled by the best. Ford here once made a Voondonian grand high friar attack him with incense sticks.’
‘For a bet,’ said Ford, who wouldn’t like people to believe that he went around incensing incensed friars for no reason.
Left Brain was in some distress. ‘The computer sings to me of numbers, but you… You two buffa-biscuit heads with your buffa-puckey!’
‘Hey, less of the buffa,’ said Ford, injured. ‘I’m just trying to bond. You know, impress you with my offbeat intellectualism.’
‘It’s just all… It’s just too… Numbers. Emotions. Zark!’
And then Left Brain went into a loop. A very short loop. One word, over and over.
‘Zark… Zark… Zark…’
Zaphod’s third arm popped out from underneath his ruffled silk shirt, slapping Ford on the crown of his head.
‘Idiot. You froze him.’
‘You kept the arm, then.’
Zaphod tucked his spare hand across his chest into the left pocket of his spray-on trousers.
Guide Note: Not a euphemism. Zaphod bought a pants sprayer on Port Sesefron that promised to ‘reach those hard to reach places’. After the first application, Zaphod turned the power down a bit. There was a special nozzle for pockets.
‘I mostly use the third arm for ceremonial stuff. Stick a purple sleeve on, and, hey presto, it’s a sash.’
Ford flapped his lips, unimpressed by Left Brain. ‘It didn’t take much to freeze him. You should have waited for version 2.0.’
Trillian strapped herself into a luxurious Tilt-O-Chair beside Random, who was sulking hard enough to feed a family of Cyphroles for five hundred years.
‘Why aren’t we somewhere else, Zaphod? I can still see death rays.’
Zaphod betrayed his cousin with a thumb jerk. ‘Ask Ford im-perfect. He froze the ship.’
Arthur chose this moment to stroll back on to the bridge. ‘Froze the ship? Did you say froze the ship?’
Arthur’s old memories were reasserting themselves by the second and, to his chagrin, he found them not entirely dissimilar to the new ones.
I miss being surprised, he realized. These days I go straight from calm to terrified.
‘What is your problem, Ford?’ he asked. ‘Are you wired somehow to screw things up?’
‘He’s wired, not me,’ said Ford, pointing to Left Brain, who was now bobbling against the ceiling like an escaped balloon.
Arthur sensed that something was missing on the bridge.
‘I don’t know what it is,’ he said, testing the air with his fingers. ‘But something was here a second ago and now it’s gone.’
Zaphod was delighted to have some relevant information. ‘Let me fill you in on that, Earthman. When the Dodge-O-Matic is activated, the computer paints the walls with an off-white light. Phototherapeutic brain-calming stuff.’
‘And the light is off.’
‘Badabingo!’
Guide Note: Badabingo is a board game played by lifers on the prison moon in orbit around Blagulon Kappa. A game for up to a hundred players, the object being to get all your little horsies around the board and back to their stables, at which point a six is needed before you can twist off the horsies’ heads. Once the last horsey is beheaded, the leader jumps to his feet and shouts ‘Badabingo’. After that, it is up to him to stay alive until the riot squad arrive.
‘Which means the Dodge-O-Matic is also off.’
‘Green stick in the green hole, boy.’
Another Guide Note: The ‘green stick in the green hole’ cry is a reference to a simple matching game used in the very special Adult Ed. classes on Betelgeuse Five where President Beeblebrox grew up. A Striteraxian equivalent would be: ‘You display inordinate pride for someone who has completed a task which could have been performed by a lesser primate in a shorter time.’ The Armorfiends were never very good at references, but they were quite excellent at getting to the point. Usually the point would be made of toughened steel and coated with venom.
‘Which means we can be diced into cubes by that death-ray lattice thing, just like the entire planet.’
Zaphod snorted like this was the craziest thing he had ever heard. ‘The Earth ain’t going to be diced, Arty. Those death rays will superheat the surface and totally vaporize the entire planet. Any second now.’
‘That’s comforting. What about us?’
‘Oh, yeah. The lattice has already figured out how to box us in. We’re gonna be diced. No doubt about that. Green stick and all that. I was just beginning to take ownership of this haircut too.’
Arthur pressed his face to the porthole. Outside, in space, the green rays sliced soundlessly through the blackness, vast emerald pendulums, boiling the planet below where they touched. As the rays swung closer, Arthur saw that they were comprised of pulsating bars, crackling with internal lightning.
A really fat, evil one was swinging inexorably their way.
My daughter is going to die, he realized. And that really upsets me. I bet it’s Thursday.
He pulled his face away from the glass with a soft pop. ‘There must be something we can do? We’re not beaten yet, are we?’
Ford was waggling his joystick under Zaphod’s nose. ‘Do you think that if I have another puff now, that would constitute a second puff, or another first puff?’
‘Couldn’t we somehow jump-start Left Brain?’
Zaphod frowned. ‘Tricky one, cousin-o-mine. Maybe if I have a puff, the answer will come to me.’
Arthur found that his surprise gland was alive and functioning after all.
‘Don’t you care that we are all about to die? How can you not care?’
Ford winked at him. ‘In a spot like this, Arthur, what does it benefit a man to care?’
‘I don’t know, Ford. I truly do not. But I have a daughter there, in that seat. That’s what I know.’
There was a knock at the door.
‘Get that, would you, Earthman?’ said Zaphod.
Arthur was kind enough to provide both a delayed reaction and a double take for the entertainment of the Betelgeuseans.
‘You get it. It’s your… arkkkkk!’
‘You’re funny, buddy!’ howled Ford, punching his shoulder. ‘Didn’t I tell you, cousin? I’ve been telling you for years. Arthur is a riot.’
‘Did you hear t
hat?,’ whispered Arthur, afraid to hope too loudly. ‘Can there be someone at the door, in space?’
The knock sounded again, a booming boing that made Arthur feel as though he were inside a belfry.
‘Don’t worry about the boing thing,’ said Zaphod. ‘It’s just a recording. I can set it to ding-dong if you like. Or a pootle-tink bird, my favourite.’
Green light glowed through the porthole. The window began to bubble.
‘Open the door!’ yelled Arthur, waving his arms for emphasis. ‘Open it quickly.’
‘I can’t,’ said Zaphod, not seeming too upset. ‘Little Ix broke the ship. Remember?’
Trillian stroked Random’s hair once, then crossed the bridge to the emergency hatch.
‘Improbability? You want improbability? You two idiots staying alive this long, now that’s improbable.’
She reached into what seemed to be a solid panel and pulled out a crank.
‘Emergency manual handle. Remember?’
‘Hey, sugar. It’s not my ship. I just stole it.’
Arthur grabbed the handle and cranked until the sweat dripped down his jaw line. This did not take as long as one might imagine, as the Grebulon rays’ proximity was turning the drifting Heart of Gold into a very effective cauldron.
‘Come on, Arthur,’ urged Trillian. ‘Come on.’
Arthur opened his mouth to argue that he was coming on as fast as he could and could she please give him a break as he had spent the last century or so on a beach taking no strenuous exercise whatsoever and where the hell did she get off dropping his surprise teenage daughter on Lamuella then zipping off to cover a war that never happened? Arthur was about to say all of this, then thought that maybe he would crank harder instead.
Surprisingly, just thinking these things made him feel a little better.
Arthur’s cranking powered a small plasma cell that sent a charge through the hatch and excited the molecules sufficiently to precipitate a phase transition, turning the portal to a gas.
‘Now, you see, that’s not what I thought was going to happen at all,’ puffed Arthur.
A tall green humanoid alien stood in the airlock, wringing his fingers. He was an impressive specimen, if your criteria for being impressed included developed musculature, wide intelligent brow, dark, tortured eyes and a suit so sharp that just thinking about it could give a person a migraine.