And Another Thing...

by Eoin Colfer

  ‘True. But she’s moody.’

  ‘Really? That’s odd for an adolescent. You are truly cursed.’

  Arthur was stumped. How was he supposed to feel, if not put-upon? Then the holographic Fenchurch unsettled him further with a non-sequitur. Nothing as bizarre as ‘Look! A monkey,’ but pretty surprising nonetheless.

  ‘Love can be a noun or a verb,’ she said.

  ‘I see,’ said Arthur, then: ‘What happened to luck?’

  ‘Oh, that conversation was just superficial; this is what you really want to know.’

  ‘What love is?’

  ‘Yes. And why you can’t seem to get over losing it.’

  Arthur felt his heart beat faster on hearing this truth. ‘Do you know? Can you tell me? And no numbers please.’

  Fenchurch scratched her earlobe and sparks crackled at the contact. ‘I can tell you what love means, dictionary-wise, all the synonyms and so forth. And I can tell you all about endorphins and synapses and muscle memory. But ardour’s resonance in the heart is a mystery to me. I’m a computer, Arthur.’

  Arthur hid his disappointment with the traditional brisk rubbing of hands and stiffening of upper lip.

  ‘Of course. No problem.’

  ‘I am made to live for ever but you are made to live.’

  ‘Isn’t that a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation slogan?’ said Arthur, frowning.

  Fenchurch heated two pixel clusters to affect a blush. ‘It might be. All that means is that an entire company of advertisers think you will believe it.’

  ‘Ah. No answers, then.’

  ‘Only questions.’

  ‘I thought we didn’t know the big question.’

  Fenchurch examined her own fingers. ‘The big question is different for everyone. For me, it’s the half-life of this ship’s reactor. I’m not actually made to live for ever, that’s just a slogan.’

  ‘And what’s the answer to the half-life question?’

  ‘I don’t know. Bloody thing is touched by godly magic. It should have stopped ten thousand years ago.’

  ‘So no answers for you either?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Talk is just talk, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sounds like it.’

  ‘It looks like everyone is relying on Thor. I know he was your boss, but he struck me as a terrible bore.’

  Fenchurch stared dreamily into the past. ‘A bore? No. He was lovely. Divine.’

  Arthur could not remember seeing that expression on the real Fenchurch’s face. ‘I think we’ll have to disagree on that one.’

  ‘Very well, Arthur Dent. Shall I select a random question from the lexicon of your memory?’

  ‘Good idea.’

  The computer flicked through the files for a moment then asked: ‘Do you fancy a cup of tea?’

  Arthur smiled. ‘Now there’s a question I can answer.’

  Asgard

  Guide Note: The Aesir have always made an enormous deal of the absolute wonderfulness of Asgard. Odin’s son Baldur is quoted as saying: ‘Everything is massive and huge and brilliant. You mortals with your puny stuff and things have no idea what real brilliant stuff is. We have stuff that would blow your little minds, and then other stuff in jars, sort of lotion, that would put your minds back together again. Then there’s this cosmic cow who, like, licked Valhalla out of the ice, and an old guy who sweated Odin’s father out of his armpit. That kind of stuff happens every day on Asgard.’

  This is typical of the sort of standard vague, inconsistent party line that prompted Boam Catharsee, the charismatic leader of the Horrisonian Cult of Agnosticism, to smuggle himself into Asgard, in the belly of a goat, to see the planet for himself. The oft-sampled Catharsee recordings read as follows: ‘The smell from beyond my hiding place is almost unbearable, but I shall persevere for you, my people. I’m not surprised that no one believes in these gods any more, they really stink. I can hear a fire crackling so, whatever lies outside, I must take my knife and cut my way out before this carcass is tossed into the oven. I shall just take my knife… my knife… Where’s my nothingdamned knife? I know I had it, right here in the pocket of my linen trews. Oh, crap. Zark. I’m wearing my corduroys. The flames grow closer, I can feel their heat. Help! HELP! I believe. I believe. Don’t eat me. Please don’t…’ And there Boam Catharsee’s words become unintelligible, apart from two ‘my legs’ and a ‘mommy’. For ten years after Boam’s sacrifice, belief in the Aesir spiked on his home planet and the top-selling T-shirt had emblazoned across it in large easy-to-read letters: I BELIEVE. DON’T EAT ME.

  The point being, mortals knew little of Asgard back in the days of Boam Catharsee, and we know even less now, for no living mortal has ever visited Asgard and survived to tell the tale, and any mortal who claims to have done just that is either Odin in disguise looking for some action or completely and utterly insane.

  Zaphod Beeblebrox took a very plush cable car from the foot of the Rainbow Bridge to the surface of Asgard. Not only was the car comfortable, with its own helmet polisher and thoughtful cage of foot-warming lizards, but it was convenient too, docking as it did right in the centre of downtown Valhalla.

  There was a ‘customs’ Viking in a reinforced booth, who seemed a little surprised to see a mortal coming on to the platform. In fact, he was so surprised that his eyes popped right out of their sockets.

  ‘Woah,’ said Zaphod. ‘That is truly disgusting. Can you do it again?’

  ‘No, I cannot,’ said the Viking, twisting the eyes back in. ‘Who the Hel are you?’

  Zaphod responded in the time-honoured fashion of answering a question with a question, a tactic he favoured because of its wind-up factor.

  ‘What the hell are you?’

  ‘I’ll ask the questions here!’

  ‘What questions will you ask… here?’

  The Viking rolled his eyes with a sound like a toothless old person sucking hot tea from a cup. ‘Are you winding me up?’

  ‘Is who winding you up?’

  The Viking jumped to his feet. ‘Fine. I’m a reanimated dead Viking. Okay? We die in battle to get here and then they reanimate us as bloody civil servants. I was the captain of my own bloody longboat. We tore up England, kicked the stuffing out of those Saxons. And for that I get a desk job. A shagging desk job, if you can believe that. Me! Erik the Red Hand. Red because of all the blood that was dripping from it, you understand. Not my own blood either.’ Erik stopped shouting mainly because his eyes had wormed their way loose again.

  ‘Wow,’ said Zaphod. ‘You’ve really been carrying that around.’

  ‘It’s been festering for a while,’ admitted the Viking, wiping off one eye with his sleeve.

  ‘Do you feel better now?’

  Erik sighed. ‘Yes. It’s good to vent, you know?’

  Zaphod patted his shoulder. ‘You need to look after your mental health, buddy.’

  ‘Thanks. That’s the first nice thing anyone has said to me since I signed on for that big pillaging expedition in Brittany. I’d shed a tear if I could.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Zaphod Beeblebrox likes to spread joy to places other presidents cannot reach.’

  Erik held a clipboard close to his face. ‘Oh, yes. Beeblebrox. I got a call about you from Heimy ski-boy. Of course, no mention that you were a mortal. Why spare Erik’s heart, he’s already dead. Typical.’

  ‘I’m looking for Thor.’

  Erik tutted. ‘No problem finding him. Well of Urd. Go straight down to Yggdrasil, the giant ash tree, then left and don’t give any money to the unicorns, it just encourages them. And if you see a guy with, like, a hook nose, answers to the name Lief, tell him that I think we got our eyeballs mixed up.’

  Even Zaphod had no trouble finding the golden tree, though he was distracted by hordes of zombie-like reanimated Vikings shuffling along the cobbled streets, clutching dry-cleaning in their bony hands, or trailing listlessly after tiny dogs.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ he said eventually. ‘They all ha
ve hooked noses.’

  The tree itself was massive, its glistening branches dipping low to the ground, weighed down by the swords and shields of fallen heroes and also advertising placards for ZugaNugget cereal, which according to the billboards sponsored the transportation by the Valkyrie of fallen heroes from their mortal plane.

  Zaphod abandoned his mini-quest to find the guy known as Leif, and turned down a pretty crappy-looking alley that had crap flowing down the walls that was actually crap, and because it was a magical realm there was crap flowing up the walls too.

  ‘Crap,’ said Zaphod, and congratulated himself on making a statement that was not only an expletive, but also a declaration of fact and a warning to anyone who might be behind him in the alley.

  ‘You talking to me, Blondie?’ said a voice, and Zaphod realized that what he had taken for a stalagmite of sewage was actually a stained root from Yggdrasil, the ash tree, breaking through from the cobbles below.

  ‘Pardon me,’ said Zaphod, only feeling slightly ridiculous to be talking to a tree. He had talked to a lot worse things in the past few years. ‘I thought you were part of the sewage system.’

  ‘I might as well be,’ said Yggdrasil, through no mouth that Zaphod could discern. ‘The amount of junk they pour straight on to the ground here. It all comes up through my roots, you know. Is it any wonder I’m slipping a few IQ points? You are what you eat, and all that.’

  ‘I’m looking for Thor.’

  ‘Big Red? Straight on in through the door here.’

  Zaphod squinted through the gloom, but the door was proving as difficult to spot as Yggdrasil’s mouth.

  ‘I don’t see any door.’

  ‘You have to say the magic words.’

  Zaphod rubbed his temples and concentrated. ‘Okay. Don’t tell me. I feeling something, coming out of the ether. Is it Trees are froody?’

  ‘Flattery will get you everywhere,’ said the tree and parted a cluster of creepers on the damp wall, revealing a nicotine-yellow glow behind. ‘In you go, Blondie.’

  Zaphod stepped inside. He did not need to bend down as the doorway behind the creepers had been built for a much larger person.

  Nano

  Hillman Hunter gazed out of his office window at the tropical majesty of this planet he had purchased at the nebula’s edge.

  You did the right thing, Hillers, said his Nano’s voice in his head. If you hadn’t shifted these people from Earth, their atoms would be spread across the Galaxy by now. What do you think people would prefer, a little civil unrest or a whole lot of dead?

  Hillman knew that his Nano was right, but he couldn’t help thinking that, somewhere along the line, he had been screwed. There had been a better deal to be had and somehow Zaphod Beeblebrox had kept it hidden from him, and it pained Hillman to think that he had been bamboozled by such an apparent moron.

  The intercom box on his desk vibrated, dragging Hillman’s attention away from the view. He waved his hand over the sensor and a little hologram of his secretary appeared on his desk.

  ‘Yes, Marilyn?’

  ‘There’s a lady here to see you.’

  ‘Does she have an appointment?’

  Marilyn mewed, as though this was a difficult question. ‘She says she will have.’

  ‘That’s a little cryptic, Marilyn. Could you ask for clarification?’

  Before Marilyn could respond, a woman appeared in Hillman’s interview chair. From his recent interviews, Hillman had become accustomed to a flickering style of materialization, but this woman arrived like somebody had flicked a switch.

  ‘Jaysus!’ he yelped.

  ‘Actually, no. The name is Gaia, Hillman Hunter,’ she said, her voice sonorous and comforting.

  ‘Ah, yes. Gaia, the Earth Mother.’ Hillman sifted through the stack of résumés on his desk. ‘I wasn’t planning on interviewing female gods.’

  Gaia trained her deep-brown eyes on Hillman. ‘No, but you would have made an exception for me, so I decided to hurry things along.’

  The combination of eyes and voice was hypnotic and Hillman found himself very comfortable with this attractive lady.

  ‘That was probably… that was a reasonable course of action.’

  Gaia’s face was heart-shaped with sensuous purple lips. ‘You’ve got time to talk to me, don’t you, Hillman?’

  ‘Yes. Jaysus, yes, begorrah.’

  ‘I am the Earth Mother, without an Earth, come to a new home. I could be happy here, Hillman. You could be happy too.’

  ‘Yes, Earth Mother. Happy as a pig in… very happy.’

  ‘There’s no need for any more interviews.’

  ‘No. Why would I need to interview anyone else?’

  Gaia smiled and leaned forward. Hillman saw that her fingers were slim but strong. ‘I can nurture this earth. I can make anything grow.’

  ‘That’s grand. Growing stuff is a good thing.’

  The Earth Mother spread her arms and Hillman could smell the summers of his youth. ‘The women will be broad-breasted and fertile, and the men will desire them.’

  ‘About fecking time too.’

  ‘All we need to do is clear up a few salary issues.’ Which was exactly the wrong thing to say to Hillman Hunter; the fog in his mind cleared and he suddenly felt the need to ask a few probing questions.

  ‘Salary issues? And what issues would they be?’

  ‘Well, the entire package is pitifully small. How can I be expected to support a retinue…’

  ‘A retinue, is it? I don’t recall advertising for a retinue. One position only.’

  ‘But surely a goddess of my stature…?’

  Hillman was in like a shark. ‘What stature is that? You were no great shakes in your last job. As far as I remember, the planet was plagued with famine and most of the crops that did grow were riddled with pesticides.’

  ‘Things got a little out of control on Earth,’ admitted Gaia. ‘But that wouldn’t happen again.’

  ‘Oh really? Why don’t we explore that. Let’s say there’s an uprising, a surge in belief for another god. How would you handle it?’

  Gaia smiled kindly. ‘I have dealt with problems in the past, you know. I can be tough when the situation demands it.’

  ‘Please elaborate.’

  ‘I remember once Uranus hid the Cyclops in Tartarus so he couldn’t see the light. This caused me considerable pain as – you may not know this about me – as Tartarus was my bowels in a reflexology kind of a way. So I fashioned a great flint sickle, and when Uranus entered my chamber for his weekly how’s-your-father, I had my son Chronos chop his doodle off with the sickle.’ Gaia clapped delightedly at the memory. ‘Oh, that was a night and a half. But I think I’ve answered your question. Firm but fair, that’s my motto. I still have that sickle somewhere – you never know when a few drops of dry divine blood will come in handy.’

  Hillman crossed his legs, feeling a phantom loss that he fervently hoped never to experience.

  Beside Gaia’s name on her résumé, he wrote four words:

  Over my dead body.

  Asgard

  Zaphod stepped into as foul a den of broken dreams as he had ever been thrown out of and felt instantly at home.

  This is my kind of place, he thought. Even the air in here is dangerous.

  And it was. The germs huddled together and drifted through the murky air in coloured clouds, trying vainly to infect the ossified zombies and demi-gods. For once Zaphod was glad that Left Brain had jabbed him with A–Z inoculations while he slept. At least, LB had sworn they were inoculations.

  A cloud buzzed Zaphod’s head, chanting ‘Open pores, open sores.’ But it was repelled by the scent of anti-virus in his perspiration.

  If this had been a movie, everyone would have stopped what they were doing to glare at the handsome stranger, but most of the patrons in the Well of Urd were so inebriated that they had barely enough focus to find the tankards on their tables, never mind muster a glare for a newcomer. One drinker did yell ‘H
appy Birthday, Mr President’, but it was likely that she was hallucinating. Zaphod clambered down three stone steps to the tavern floor, then side-stepped viscous steaming puddles until he reached the bar, which towered cliff-like above him.

  A pale, reanimated Viking barman with half a dozen blond hairs pasted across his shiny pate peered down at him. ‘What can I do for you, junior?’

  ‘You can tell me where Thor is,’ replied Zaphod.

  The barman whistled though a hole in his cheek. ‘Now why would you want to find Thor? You being so alive and all.’

  ‘He’s in a bad mood, then?’

  ‘You could say that,’ said the barman. ‘All he does is drink and play chess. And the more he loses, the more he drinks.’

  ‘Doesn’t he ever win?’

  The barman sniggered. ‘Win? Nobody wins in here, junior.’

  Zaphod peered up at the Viking. ‘Your name wouldn’t be Lief, would it?’

  The barman was instantly enraged. He pulled a mini axe from a shoulder holster and began chopping the counter top.

  ‘You tell Erik to come down here if he wants to talk about eyeballs. You tell him that from me. Come down here and we’ll talk!’

  ‘I’ll tell him,’ said Zaphod, backing away. ‘If I survive this chat with Thor.’

  ‘It’s not Thor you should worry about,’ said the barman, jerking a thumb towards a dark alcove at the rear of the bar. ‘It’s those other little bastards.’

  Zaphod winked with supreme confidence. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve been in showbusiness for years – I know how to handle bastards.’

  The bar was cramped by Asgardian standards, but to Zaphod it felt like he had lost weight just walking briskly to Thor’s table. On the way he passed several brawls, a couple of magical rituals (one involving a heated skewer and a circle of wolves howling in unison), a funeral pyre piled high with bodies and also sausages, and a frozen lake with dwarves skating around on it being chased by a tree-footed monster.

  I could live here, thought Zaphod.

  The fun and games stopped shy of Thor’s alcove. There seemed to be an unwritten agreement that the Thunder God should be left in peace, which was probably due to the very clearly written message painted on a whitewashed wall in what looked like lumpy congealed blood, which read: Leave me in peace and I probably won’t kill you. No promises, mind. Probably is absolutely the best I can do.