by Eoin Colfer
Hel hmmmed. ‘The southern hemisphere, you say. Not through the Bifrost arch?’
‘Nope. I’m looking at the arch. Up from the south definitely.’
‘And you can’t see any aliens? Maybe green chaps, with lasers or some such?’
Heimdall squeezed Gjallarhorn’s shaft until it squeaked. ‘No. No zarking aliens, okay? Just groups of blue torpedoes with pinkish trails. A bit like ours, if I remember.’
‘No, no,’ said Hel in the tone of a guilty teenager blocking her mother at the door to a bedroom which is full of boys and drugs, stolen jewellery and possibly music playing backwards. ‘They couldn’t be like ours. Ours have red trails. A light red, some would call it puce.’
Heimdall growled as another of his dragons took a hit. ‘I don’t care what some would call it. Shoot them down, Hel. Can you do that?’
‘Erm, yes. I should think so. The computer has… eh… isolated their frequency, so we should be able to send a self-destruct signal, which I am doing… now.’
The remaining missiles exploded in flashes of pink and electric white, gears and pistons thunking into the ice shell.
‘Well done,’ said Heimdall, tears of relief on his tanned cheeks. ‘Odin shall hear of your labours this day.’
‘Will he? Would you? That’s marvellous. Of course, I could have destroyed those missiles much sooner had they actually been our missiles, because I already have those frequencies. So obviously they weren’t our missiles and why would they be, but in case anyone asks, they weren’t. Anyone like Odin, for example. Not ours. Got it?’
Heimdall was about to answer when he noticed that Zaphod Beeblebrox had discovered new reserves of energy and was racing just as fast as he could towards the wall.
If he gets over that wall, I am bound to parlay.
In spite of this truth and the recent losses to his dragon brigade, Heimdall’s face was smeared with a grin. Beeblebrox had nearly reached the wall, but nearly was about as much use as a flaybooz in any activity involving thumbs – bottle-opening, for example, or playing the lute or perhaps hitching a ride. The Betelgeusean may as well have been standing still for all the good it would do him. Nothing could outrun a god in real space. Even with one footfall to go, Beeblebrox may as well have been a light year away from the wall, wearing a lead jacket and neutronium boots.
Catch Beeblebrox, Heimdall thought and, before the electrical impulses containing this notion had time to fade, he had Zaphod by the throat and pinned to the wall.
‘I don’t know what you did to my lovely dragons. Whatever it was, it won’t help you now.’
Zaphod felt as though a mammaloid was squatting on his chest. Not a nice vegetarian mammaloid either, who had probably sat down by accident and would lumber off as soon as it heard Zaphod’s voice. No, a vicious mutant carnivore mammaloid who had gone against the advice of its parents and the herd in general in making the decision to tenderize its prey with buttock bounces before consuming it.
‘Stupid mutant mammaloid,’ huffed Zaphod, woozy with all the running and CO2 inhalation.
Heimdall’s grip tightened a knuckle. ‘Is that it? Are those the last words of the famous President Needlefrocks?’
Zaphod remembered something. ‘I’m not the only one with a nickname, am I?’
The god twitched nervously. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Don’t bother denying it. You guys all have, like, a secret pet name. A name of power. Thor told me all about it one night on tour, after an open-air gig in a quarry on Zentalquabula. We were so hammered, you have no idea. I kissed a Silagestrian.’
‘Liar,’ hissed Heimdall.
Zaphod was hurt. ‘I’m not proud of it, but I kissed that Silagestrian all right and its handler.’
‘No mortal can know our monikers. It is forbidden. You lie.’
Heimdall’s huge, smooth face was inches away from Zaphod. His anger shimmered in the air around them and Gjallarhorn glowed red with godly power. Zaphod took all of this in and said: ‘Lie? Me? That’s a bit strong, isn’t it? I’m just repeating what Thor told me. Don’t kill the messenger and so forth.’
‘Don’t say it. I am warning you, mortal.’
Even Zaphod saw the absurdity of that warning. ‘Or what? You’ll do something nasty like send dragons after me or squeeze my head off?’
It occurred to Heimdall that he should get on with the head squeezing before Zaphod could get the name out, but a sudden nervousness gagged him for a vital moment. And instinctive exploitation of vital moments was one of Zaphod’s few areas of expertise, the others being his much-reported Big Bang technique, three-handed preparation of Gargle Blasters and a system of inverted blow-drying that gave his quiff that extra bounce.
‘Come on, Bent Stick,’ he said. ‘Let me up.’
And Heimdall did. He had no choice once his divine moniker had been invoked. The god took a dozen steps backwards then turned his back in a sulk.
‘Someone… anyone… calls me Bent Stick on Asgard and I am bound to civility. Bloody Bent Stick? What sort of a divine name is that?’ he grumbled, kicking loose lumps of ice through the wall of the atmosphere tube, creating localized rainfall on the planet’s surface below. ‘Loki suggests it and, of course, Odin thinks it’s hilarious. Loki says, he says, “Look at Heimdall out there on his ski slope with that old bent stick of his.” And the bossman nearly swallows his beard laughing. So from that day on it’s Bent Stick this and Bent Stick that. I used to have a great name. I was Asgard’s Eye. But apparently that’s too tricky to pronounce after a few tankards, so now I’m Bent bloody Stick.’ The giant god’s shoulders hitched repeatedly and he looked from the back very much like someone who might be having a little self-pitying sob.
‘Hey, come on,’ said Zaphod, picking himself up. ‘Why the long face? You’ve got stuff going for you.’
‘What do I have going for me? I’m stuck out here on this stupid bridge with a bunch of reptiles for friends.’ He stamped a foot, sending tremors rippling across Bifrost. ‘Do you know what they’re doing in there now? Do you know?’
‘Well, no I…’
‘Orgies!’ shouted Heimdall. ‘Old-school orgies. And look at me, out here chasing mortals. I could be in there, covered in jartle resin, up to my neck in…’
‘Okay, big fellow, there are a few pictures that even I don’t need floating around in either of my heads.’
‘Loki has got two palaces. Two! After all the stunts he’s pulled. And he sits at Odin’s table. And why? Why? Because he can remember jokes.’ Heimdall turned, his moustache wet, his eyes despairing. ‘Bloody jokes! I am guarding the planet here. Hello.’
Zaphod tucked his third hand into a pocket. ‘You know what I see?’
‘What?’ said Heimdall, his jutting bottom lip casting a shadow.
‘I see a hero.’
‘Don’t you patronize me, Feeb– Beeblebrox.’
Zaphod punched the god’s thigh. ‘I’m not patronizing you, silly. What you are is a genuine hero. And there are only a dozen of those in the Universe. Me, you and four others.’
Heimdall’s nod was barely perceptible, even for a chin as big as his. ‘Maybe. Odin doesn’t see it like that.’
Zaphod stood on tiptoes. ‘Can Odin hear me now?’
‘Probably not, inside the tube. Unless he’s specifically listening.’
‘Well then, forgive me for saying it, but Odin doesn’t deserve you. In fact, I’ll go further. Maybe Odin needs to take a look at himself and ask: Who should be sitting beside me now? A gutless trickster? Or my loyal guardian? I think a lot of people would like to hear that question answered.’
‘Gutless? You think so? A lot?’
‘We may be mortal, but we’re not stupid. People like you, Heimdall. They adore you.’
‘Maybe once they did.’
‘Now. Still. Did you know that they have a Heimdall cult on Algol? Those sun simians can’t get enough of you.’
‘Really? Algol, you say?’
‘And
on Earth you were, well, a god. Statues all over the place.’
Heimdall chuckled. ‘Yes, Earth. They loved the whole horn thing.’ His eyes misted and for a moment the Light God was doing encores in Scandinavia, until he realized that Zaphod was playing on his weaknesses.
‘No,’ snapped the god, wiping his nose. ‘It’s over. We’re over. No parlay with mortals.’
‘You have to. I know your secret name.’
‘Oh sure, spring that one on me. That’s low, even for you.’
Zaphod placed two of his hands on his hips. ‘I invoke your secret name and demand my right to entry, Heimdall God of Light, also known as Asgard’s Eye.’
Heimdall snorted, not unhappily, and hefted Gjallarhorn. He tapped a section of the wall and the entire edifice crumbled to dust, dust that flittered into the atmosphere squeaking: ‘Free. Free at last. Heimdall, you bastard.’
‘I have to let you in’ said the God of Light. ‘Thor is probably in the Well of Urd drowning his sorrows; he more or less lives there these days. You can have one beer with him, if he will permit it.’
‘One beer,’ said Zaphod. ‘I’ll just sip.’
If Left Brain could have intercepted this thought, he would have laughed bitterly and proclaimed that there was about as much chance of Zaphod Beeblebrox just sipping as there was of a mouse giving a straight answer to a simple question.
8
The Tanngrísnir
Ford Prefect was also heading towards a beer moment. The Betelgeusean researcher was determined to enjoy the peace and quiet of dark travel for as long as it lasted. He draped blankets over the portholes in his room, replicated a tankard of Goggles Beer, then plugged himself into the ship’s computer. His Hitchhiker’s Guide had a pretty good Sub-Etha connection, but the Tanngrísnir’s system was so fast that it could run a real-time hologram from a hub a thousand light years away with no discernable delay.
Mega-lightning froody, thought Ford, who knew nothing about holograms apart from the fact that they were sparkly and you should never lick one.
Ford logged on to uBid and bet himself a second tankard of beer that he could not spend his entire projected lifetime’s earnings before blinking. It was an easy bet to win. He purchased a couple of luxury space yachts, three hundred gallons of Bounce-O-Jelly with garlic, a small continent on Antares for a favourite nephew and several potted Deadly When Watered mega flora for his least-favourite staffers at InfiniDim Enterprises, all charged to his limitless Dine-O-Charge credit card.
I might feel a twinge of guilt about sticking it to the Guide, thought Ford, if the editor, Zarniwoop Vann Harl, wasn’t a gutless stooge who took bribes from Vogons.
As a roving researcher, Ford had nothing against taking bribes on principle, but you had to draw the line somewhere and for Ford Prefect that line was drawn just above anybody trying to murder him in one of the nasty ways. Attempted murder through alcohol poisoning he was prepared to forgive and more than likely forget, but when someone tried to kill him with thermonuclear warheads Ford tended to nurse a grudge.
Retail therapy over, Ford blinked several times and leaned back in the chair.
Thank you, Doxy Ribonu-Clegg, he thought. Thank you for inventing the Sub-Etha.
Guide Note: Technically speaking, Doxy Ribonu-Clegg did not invent the Sub-Etha, rather he discovered its existence. The Sub-Etha waves had been around for at least as long as the gods, just waiting for someone to pump some data into them. The legend goes that Ribonu-Clegg had been lying on his back in a field on his home planet. As he gazed blearily up through the wedge of space suspended above him it occurred to the renowned professor that all this space was loaded with information and that perhaps it would be possible to transport some information of his own through the cosmic conduits if only he could make it small enough. So Ribonu-Clegg hurried back to his rudimentary lab and constructed the first ever set of Sub-Etha transmitters using pepper grinders, several live pinky rats, various cannibalized lab machines and some professional-standard hairdressing scissors. Once these components were connected, Ribonu-Clegg fed in the phot-o-pix from his wedding album and prayed they would be reassembled on the other side of the room. They were not, but the national lottery numbers for the following evening did show up, which encouraged the professor to patent his invention. Ribonu-Clegg used his winnings to hire a team of shark lawyers who successfully sued eighty-nine companies that invented actual working Sub-Etha transmitters, making the professor the richest man on the planet until he fell into his lawyers’ tank and they followed their instincts and ate him.
Ford was halfway through his fourth tankard when the door to his chamber slid open and a parallelogram of green light bleached his wall screen.
‘Hey. Come on. I’m trying to relax blowing company money here. Switch off that beam.’
‘Very funny,’ said a voice so sarcastic that even the auditorily challenged nut tree voles of Oglaroon could have detected its insincerity through their whiskers.
Ford swivelled on his chair and realized that the glow came from a person in the doorway.
‘You seem a little green,’ he commented.
Random scowled. ‘So would you, if you’d spent the past while sealed in a tube with a cloud of viridigenous gas that was trying to make you happy.’
‘Happiness? That would never do, would it?’
‘Not when your mother is making out with that horrible alien right under your nose. Disgusting.’
Ford nodded with a wisdom beyond his ears. ‘Ah, yes, the deBeouf Principle. I read about that in a thing with actual pages in it. A quaint thing where you flip the paper over.’
‘A book,’ said Random, and she may have glowered, it was hard to tell.
‘That was it. I’m guessing that you’re not too happy about this latest romantic development.’
Random stomped into the chamber, puff clouds of green dust rising from her shoulders with each footfall. ‘No. I am not happy. He is so arrogant. Such a…’
‘Pormwrangler?’ offered Ford helpfully.
‘Yes. Exactly.’
Ford’s fingers tapped the air impatiently, eager to wrap themselves around a tankard handle. ‘So, why don’t you talk to Arthur about it? He’s your biological patriarch.’
Random smiled bitterly. ‘Arthur? I tried, but he’s in love too, with his blasted computer.’
Even Ford was a little surprised by this. It wasn’t that people didn’t fall in love with machines – he had a cousin who once spent two years shacked up with a sandwich toaster – but Arthur was so uptight, so strait-laced, such a total Earthling.
‘Love is love,’ he said, falling back on his brochure knowledge from a peace spa he had once visited on Hawalius. ‘Don’t judge unless you want someone else to come along, possibly someone green, and judge you and you’ll say come on, what’s all this judging for, don’t judge unless you want someone else to come along and judge you and so on.’ Ford paused for breath. ‘I’ve had a few beers so I’m paraphrasing.’
He winced, expecting to be smacked about the chops with the wet fish of cynicism, but Random was suddenly all sweetness.
‘That’s really good, Ford. Wise, you know. I am going to go back to my room to wash some of this junk off and think really hard about not judging people.’
Ford waved her off gallantly. ‘No charge for that nugget, young missy. Any time you want a few words of wisdom, feel free to drop in on ol’ Fordy. I’ve got tonnes of advice on the more offbeat areas that most people wouldn’t have the first clue about. What to do just before a planet explodes, for example. I am the Universe’s expert on that particular subject, believe me.’
And he returned to his screen, satisfied that his sometime role as Ford Prefect, Nurturer of Youth, had been fulfilled for at least this lifetime.
Parenting. Nothing to it. I don’t know what all the fuss is about.
If Ford had been a little more tuned in and a little less zoned out, he might have remembered from his own youth that teenagers only lad
led on the sweetness for one of three reasons. One: there was some shocking news that needed breaking, possibly involving pregnancy, substance abuse or a forbidden relationship. Two: they had developed a deeper level of sarcasm that was virtually undetectable except to another master of the form and that definitely wasn’t the adult being sarcastigated. And three: a bit of sweet talk was a handy distraction when there was something the sweet-talking teenager needed to steal.
By the time Ford might have realized that his limitless credit card was missing, it had already been put back. And shortly before that, Random Dent had utilized uBid’s retro-buy time window and purchased something from a long-dead seller. Something a little more sinister than three hundred gallons of Bounce-O-Jelly. With garlic.
Garlic in the jelly, not in the sinister item.
‘I am the unluckiest man in the Universe,’ Arthur Dent explained to the Tanngrísnir’s computer. ‘Bad things happen to me. I don’t know why, but it’s always been that way. My nan used to give me bull’s-eyes and call me her little trouble magnet. Only she was from Manchester so she didn’t say trouble.’
The sparkling hologram, which sat cross-legged at the foot of the bunk, squinted while she rifled Arthur’s memory.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Bull’s-eyes. For a nanosecond there I thought…’
‘Wherever I go, things get blown up or blasted by angry aliens.’
‘But not you,’ said Fenchurch.
‘What?’
‘You don’t get blown up or blasted. You’ve already had one long and healthy life, and now you’re having another.’
Arthur frowned. ‘Yes… but. There was the whole dressing gown and pyjamas period. How unlucky can you get? Not to mention being stranded on…’
‘Most of your species are dead,’ interjected the computer, just as Arthur’s memory assured it Fenchurch would have done. ‘It was a billion to one against you surviving, but you did. Twice. That seems pretty lucky. That’s, like, fictional hero lucky.’
‘I see your point, but still…’
‘And you have a beautiful daughter.’