And Another Thing...

by Eoin Colfer

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s an old Betelgeusean nursery rhyme. Arkle Schmarkle was a little kid who glued eggs together after they fell off walls. Tragic ending.’

  ‘I see. Anyway, to get back to this planet: I am Aseed Preflux? I am that pompous, deluded moron? That’s what you’re saying?’

  Zaphod snapped the fingers of his third hand, something that had taken him months to learn. ‘Badabingo. Well, you’re not him exactly. You’re a version of him from a couple of million Universes down the axis, which is why there are all the little differences. The name, of course. You have the paunch, he doesn’t. You dye your hair, he’s still naturally red. That sort of thing.’

  Hillman didn’t even have the energy to protest the hair dye slur. It was one thing to know that there were an infinite number of alternate Hillman Hunters; it was quite another to be at war with one of them.

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ he spluttered eventually. ‘You set me up, Beeblebrox. You pitted me against myself.’

  Zaphod slapped his own cheeks and chest in mock horror. ‘I set you up? Me? That’s preposteraneous. I was just trying to make a few bucks. You knew there would be other colonists, Hillman. It’s not my fault you ape descendants will fight with anyone, even versions of yourselves.’ Zaphod suddenly sat bolt upright. ‘Holy shankwursters! I’m right, aren’t I? I just made a valid point.’

  Hillman fumed silently, tugging on his goatee. Beeblebrox did have a point. He had saved their lives and transported them to a new Eden. It was hardly his fault if the human race screwed it up all over again. Hillman glanced across the square to where Buff Orpington was acting like a kid on a sugar drip, running in circles around Thor, tongue hanging out, twirling the golf club.

  ‘The settlement has been falling apart, Zaphod,’ admitted Hillman. ‘I could really use a god.’

  Zaphod tried to look surprised, as if this was not exactly where he’d hoped the conversation would go. ‘Well, I do have a god.’

  ‘Is that the real Thor? Really, is it?’

  ‘It really is and I am his manager.’

  Hillman flapped his lips. ‘What? So even gods cost money now?’

  ‘Wake up, Hillman. Gods have always cost money. But I can do you a deal.’

  ‘Would we have exclusive rights?’

  ‘I couldn’t promise that. Thor is in the big league. A class-one deity. There are a lot of cultures who want to adore him.’

  ‘And is he omnipresent?’

  ‘No, but he’s pretty fast.’

  Hillman thought about it. Having a god of Thor’s stature could get this planet back on the straight and narrow. Aseed Preflux’s wheel of cheese wouldn’t last long against a big hammer like Thor’s, and the staff might think twice about neglecting their duties if they had to answer to the God of Thunder.

  ‘When could he start?’

  Something beeped in Zaphod’s pocket and he patted himself down until he located the tiny computer card that Wowbagger had given him.

  ‘Almost immediately,’ he said, reading the screen. ‘Thor just has one little bit of divine retribution to hand out. You guys might want to watch this, test drive the merchandise, so to speak. It’s going to be spectacular.’ He called across the square to the god: ‘Hey, Thor. Ready to go do the thing? The immortal has landed.’

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ said Thor, frowning suspiciously at Buff Orpington, who was trying to heft Mjöllnir. ‘I don’t know if I’m ready. Did you see this guy? Is he being sarcastic or does he really think I’m great? He wants to be a priest. He wants a robe. Is that what you want, boy, is it?’

  Buff nodded his jowly head and stamped the grass.

  ‘Yeah,’ he panted. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’

  Tyropolis

  Wowbagger’s longship touched down in a beautiful rolling meadow outside the settlement and instantly assumed the shape and texture of a grassy hillock. A nearby herd of Ameglian Major cows who had been arguing over who got to sacrifice themselves to the newcomers, cursed their luck then returned to tail-painting placards which protested the Tyromancers refusal to eat them.

  Wowbagger dissolved the hatch and the passengers set grateful feet on solid earth.

  ‘It’s really nice here,’ said Trillian. ‘Peaceful.’ At which point a hysterical cow thundered across the meadow and butted her in the chest, bellowing, ‘Eat me! Eat me!’

  Trillian jumped away from the wet, hairy snout. ‘No. Ugh. I’m a… vegetarian.’

  ‘Vegetables!’ spat the cow. ‘What’s so special about them? Why do they get to have all the fun? Fibre and vitamins. So bloody what? I’ve got protein coming out my wazoo. Literally.’

  Before the Tanngrísnir’s passengers could take another step, they were surrounded by a mob of angry cows.

  ‘We’re mad cows!’ they chorused. ‘We’re mad cows.’

  Arthur laughed. ‘You know, that’s funny, because on Earth there was a disease…’

  A brown cow sidled up to Arthur. ‘You’re not a vegetarian, are you, sir?’

  ‘Why, no, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘I bet you’d gobble down a lovely sirloin, sir, with a few fingerling potatoes and a half bottle of vino.’

  Arthur patted his stomach. ‘I would, actually. That sounds delicious. An actual steak. Nothing replicated about that. You get what you ask for. Honest to goodness meat.’ There had been a time when the idea of animals bred to dream of slaughter had horrified Arthur, but now he found a spark of acceptance and optimism in his heart.

  Dark matter, he thought. It won’t last.

  ‘You’ve read my mind, Arthur mate,’ said Ford. ‘I’m not usually in favour of devouring sentient beings, but these guys are persistent.’

  With one foreleg, the cow ushered Arthur and Ford towards a wood-burning barbecue.

  ‘And how would sirs like their steak?’

  ‘Rare,’ said Ford. ‘So rare a vet with shock paddles could revive it.’

  ‘Medium for me, I think.’

  The cow somehow managed to drape a napkin across its foreleg. ‘Excellent. And the wine?’

  Arthur had no idea what the wine situation was on this new planet. It wasn’t as if they’d had time for vintages. ‘Surprise me.’

  Wowbagger was feeling a little hemmed in by the other cows. He had never been overly fond of talking quadrupeds. It was a phobia he was struggling to deal with.

  ‘You creatures really should back up a little or I will be forced to fry you with my energy pistol.’

  ‘Finally!’ cried one cow.

  ‘Maximum setting, please!’ begged another.

  Trillian took his arm. ‘I know this species. They want to be eaten.’

  ‘I’m not going to eat them, but I may shoot them.’

  Random was still emotional from the journey. ‘Why don’t you shoot them all, alien? Show my mother what you’re really like.’

  Wowbagger felt Trillian squeeze his arm and his anxiety drained away.

  He looked at her. How was that possible? How did you do that?

  As previously discussed, the Universe has an aversion to tenderness and cannot allow it to exist for long, as every loving glance has to be balanced by a short sharp shock somewhere else in the cosmos. Sometimes not so short.

  Guide Note: Bowerick Wowbagger or, as the H2G2 describes him, ‘that green frood with the hoopy ship who goes around insulting people’, has to this point shared three tender moments in real space with Trillian Astra, or as WooHoo magazine would dub her, ‘The Lucky Gal who Bagged the Bagger’, and each of these moments had to be paid for by other unfortunate individuals at antipodal points in the Universe. Glam Fodder, a planning officer on Alpha Centauri, had his finger nipped by a pygmy vole that had climbed into his monthly brown bag because the bag donor had decided to recycle his speef sandwich bag. Ursool Dypher, a marriage counsellor from the super-hot system of Hastromil, suffered a panic attack when her three o’clock married couple turned out to be the son and daughter she had given up for adopt
ion as a younger being. Morty Grimm, the lead singer with the Hooloovoo super group Visible Spectrum, suffered third-degree diffusion when the lighting engineer accidentally put a blue gel on the singer’s solo spotlight.

  This tender moment was torn asunder by the arrival of a golf cart convoy. It might have been a dramatic entrance had the leading cart actually managed to breach the enclosure gate, instead of becoming entangled in splintered planks.

  Arthur’s cow friend spat a wad of cud. ‘Morons. And these are the people in charge.’

  ‘Vegetarians?’ Arthur offered.

  ‘No. They love pigs. Can’t get enough of pigs. But us poor cows, for some reason we’re not on the menu. So thank goodness for you, sirs. Thank goodness for you.’

  Aseed Preflux crawled from the wreckage of fence and cart.

  ‘Hey, Arthur,’ said Ford. ‘What do you get if you cross a fence with a cart?’

  Arthur never had time to hazard a guess because they were set upon by Tyromancers.

  ‘Step away from that barbecue,’ Aseed ordered shrilly. ‘We need those cows.’

  Ford hissed into Arthur’s ear: ‘I’ll stall them. You get Bessy on the barbecue.’

  The cow overheard. ‘I resent that. We’re not all called Bessy, you know. As a matter of fact, Bessy is quite passé in sophisticated circles. Trisjam and Pollygrino are the names of choice this season.’

  Aseed shouldered his way through the assembled cattle until he arrived, breathless and battered, before the newcomers.

  ‘Who is in charge here?’ he demanded to know.

  Wowbagger stepped forward, avoiding anything that squelched or steamed.

  ‘That would be me. I am Bowerick Wowbagger, the ship’s captain.’

  ‘What ship? I don’t see any ship.’

  ‘That’s because it’s camouflaged, you bletcherous nincompoop.’

  Aseed flushed. ‘What? There’s no call for that. How dare you?’

  ‘Now, that’s more like it,’ said Wowbagger, gratified. ‘Surprise and outrage. Reminds me why I used to do this job.’

  ‘Used to?’ said Trillian.

  Wowbagger glanced at his shoes, which were still reasonably clean. ‘Lately, it’s lost its appeal.’

  Aseed’s courage blossomed as the other colonists began to show up, wondering what all the commotion was about.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt your tender moment…’

  (On a cruise liner near Barnard’s Star, the ship’s doctor sneezed and stabbed himself in the knee with a Motox hypodermic. The knee was put on a strict water diet for two days, in spite of all its moaning.)

  ‘… but what is your business here, Wowbagger?’

  ‘I have come to drop these humans off with their own kind and I was going to insult everyone, but now I don’t think I’ll bother.’

  Aseed perked up a little. ‘These people are our own kind? They are Tyromancers?’

  Wowbagger’s chin jerked. ‘Tyromancers? You people are Tyromancers? I don’t believe it!’

  Aseed’s upswing in perkiness levelled off. ‘Don’t tell me: you don’t believe in the Cheese. You think it’s all in my head.’

  ‘No. I actually know the Cheese. I haven’t seen old Cheesy in for ever.’

  Preflux dropped to his knees. Something squelched and another something cracked and steamed. ‘Y–you know the Cheese? You have been in His exalted presence?’

  ‘Exalted? Who told you that?’

  ‘The Cheese Lord Himself, in my visions.’

  Wowbagger nodded. ‘He’s still doing the dream bit. Some things never change. Find an empty brain and slip yourself in, that’s always been Cheesy’s modus operandi. I’ve been down this god route before: a long time ago I hired Cheesy to kill me. He tried with some kind of cheese dip. It didn’t work, obviously, but I’ve been lactose intolerant ever since.’

  ‘Did you bring Edamnation down upon us?’

  ‘Edamnation? That’s hilarious. Really? No. Come on. You can’t expect people not to laugh if you insist on using theological terms like that. If you’re talking about the big ball of cheese over the other settlement, I think you’ll find that was another spaceship rolling into a normality zone.’

  ‘Not Edamnation?’

  ‘I doubt it. In fairness to Cheesy, he might be a junior god, but he’s not great on projection. The last I heard he was studying for his Middle Grade divinity exams, and seeing as I haven’t seen any Holy Cheese calendars around, I am guessing he failed.’

  ‘Me too,’ said a cow. ‘Because he’s a loser, just like you, Preflux.’

  ‘Shut it, cow, or so help me…’

  The cow spat. ‘What are you going to do? Not eat me?’

  ‘That’s right. I won’t eat you and I won’t eat your entire family. Wherever they hide, I’ll find them and not eat a single bite.’

  The cow was cowed. ‘This is not over, Preflux,’ he muttered.

  Aseed’s phone rang and he took a brief call, glancing back along the road towards the tunnel. ‘So, you’re a representative of the Cheese, Wowbagger?’

  Wowbagger frowned. ‘I wouldn’t say representative. I know him a little. We had a few beers.’

  Aseed persisted. ‘You are a friend, then. A champion, if you like.’

  ‘An acquaintance at best.’

  ‘It’s just that from what my insider tells me, Hunter has got himself a real god.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘And he’s on the way over here.’

  ‘I see. And you’d like me to represent the Cheese.’

  ‘Would you? That would be fab.’ Aseed made the triangle sign.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a cheese triangle. Appease the Cheese. It’s kind of a slogan I made up.’

  Wowbagger laughed. ‘Don’t move. I have to get a photo of that for Cheesy, he will be so thrilled.’

  Aseed’s triangle wavered. ‘He can’t see us? The Cheese is not all around us?’

  ‘Cheesy? It’s all he can do to hook himself up to a dish and send out dairy dreams. And I’ll tell you something else: he loves beef and cheese. Especially meals that combine beef and cheese.’

  Aseed’s hands dropped to his sides. ‘All this time we have been protecting the cheese vessels…’

  The air crackled suddenly and Arthur felt the hair standing on his forearms. ‘I feel as though I should be running away. Thor might remember me.’

  In the sky, to the east, a small storm cloud churned just above the tree line. Photogenic lightning bolts shot from its belly at regular intervals and there seemed to be a huge being riding the bolts.

  Wowbagger smiled wryly. ‘Beeblebrox actually got the big guy himself. I don’t believe it.’

  ‘Believe it,’ said Ford. ‘You called him Fat Arse, remember?’

  Trillian shielded her eyes with a forearm, squinting to catch a glimpse of the Thunder God.

  ‘He is such a show-off. A big hammer isn’t everything, you know. Maybe it’s all a big light show. Maybe he doesn’t even want to fight.’

  A statement like this virtually guarantees a contradictory and, considering the characters involved, melodramatic event, and Trillian as a journalist should have known better than to utter it.

  Guide Note: There is a theory, postulated by Schick Brithaus, the controversial bone doctor from pre-telepathy Kakrafoon Kappa, which states that the Universe is built on uncertainty and that a definitive statement/action creates a momentary energy vacuum into which flows a diametrically opposing statement/action. Famous vacuum-inducing statements include:

  Surely that’s not going to fit in there?

  And:

  I am sick of betting the same numbers every week. They are never going to come up.

  And:

  We are a peaceful people. Not even the Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax would want to pick a fight with us.

  And:

  You look gorgeous in that sweater, Felix. There is no way anyone is going to call you a freak and throw you in a dumple composter.

/>   And:

  Maybe it’s all a big light show. Maybe he doesn’t even want to fight.

  Sub-atomic beings heard the whoosh of energy suction, and into the vacuum flowed a massive lightning bolt that scorched a huge section of the meadow, leaving only cooked cow carcasses and a massive X right in the centre.

  ‘Lucky blebers,’ muttered a surviving cow.

  Wowbagger’s central brain and assorted ganglia were flooded with conflicting emotions. For millennia, his most heartfelt wish had been to die, but now there was a slice of light in his darkness, a chance that the principle he sought his death by was in fact flawed. His dilemma was this: would it be wise to pass up a sterling opportunity to get himself killed, on the off-chance that he could enjoy a few brief decades of happiness with this already dying woman?

  ‘I guess X marks the spot,’ said Ford, a hank of charred meat in his hand. He turned to the nearest cow. ‘Do you have any sauce? This is a little dry.’

  Arthur found that he was not as scandalized by this sort of behaviour as he once had been. Repeated exposure to Ford Prefect’s rampant gourmandizing had eroded some of his behavioural notions.

  ‘I believe that someone mentioned wine,’ he said, trying not to sound overly enthusiastic.

  Random scowled, although no one noticed as it was one of her two normal expressions, the other being a contemptuous curl of the lip.

  ‘That is disgusting,’ she said, transitioning smoothly into expression number two. ‘You two are pigs.’

  ‘Pigs?’ said the cow. ‘Don’t talk to me about pigs.’

  10

  The word went out to the sentient beings of Nano that there was some major aggravation about to kick off in Tyropolis and it would probably be best to steer clear until the earth stopped shaking. Which, of course, meant that everyone made their way immediately to the scorched meadow on the outskirts of the town, except Nickles Adare, an ex-mayor of New York who was locked in a Cong treatment room on enforced detox.

  The pootle-tink birds were among the first to arrive, having the advantage of sensitive primary feathers, which their leader, Perko St Waring Speckle, used to steer a borrowed minibus. Perko stopped the bus by driving it into the ditch and then sent two of his flock to keep places at the fence, while the rest of them went in search of dairy-free cappuccinos.