The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (34 page)

“No,” he said, “look,” he said, “as soon as you come into this dive you get held in this sort of amazing force-shielded temporal warp thing. I think.”

“Oh,” said Arthur. He turned his attention back to a bowl of soup he’d
managed to get from the waiter to replace his steak.

“Look,” said Ford. “I’ll show you.”

He grabbed at a napkin off the table and fumbled hopelessly with it.

“Look,” he said again, “imagine this napkin, right, as the temporal Universe, right? And this spoon as a transductional mode in the matter curve …”

It took him a while to say this last part, and Arthur hated to interrupt him.

“That’s the spoon I was eating with,” he said.

“All right,” said Ford, “imagine
this
spoon”—he found a small wooden spoon on a tray of relishes—“this spoon”—but found it rather tricky to pick up—“no, better still this fork.…”

“Hey, would you let go of my fork?” snapped Zaphod.

“All right,” said Ford, “all right, all right. Why don’t we say … why don’t we say that this wineglass is the temporal Universe.…”

“What, the one you’ve just knocked on the floor?”

“Did I do that?”

“Yes.”

“All right,” said Ford, “forget that. I mean … I mean, look, do you know—do you know how the Universe actually began for a kick off?”

“Probably not,” said Arthur, who wished he’d never embarked on any of this.

“All right,” said Ford, “imagine this. Right. You get this bath. Right. A large round bath. And it’s made of ebony.”

“Where from?” said Arthur. “Harrods was destroyed by the Vogons.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“So you keep saying.”

“Listen.”

“All right.”

“You get this bath, see? Imagine you’ve got this bath. And it’s ebony. And it’s conical.”

“Conical?” said Arthur. “What sort of …”

“Shhh!” said Ford. “It’s conical. So what you do is, you see, you fill it with fine white sand, all right? Or sugar. Fine white sand, and/or sugar. Anything. Doesn’t matter. Sugar’s fine. And when it’s full, you pull the plug out … are you listening?”

“I’m listening.”

“You pull the plug out, and it all just twirls away, twirls away you see, out of the plughole.”

“I see.”

“You don’t see. You don’t see at all. I haven’t got to the clever bit yet. You want to hear the clever bit?”

“Tell me the clever bit.”

“I’ll tell you the clever bit.”

Ford thought for a moment, trying to remember what the clever bit was.

“The clever bit,” he said, “is this. You film it happening.”

“Clever,” agreed Arthur.

“You get a movie camera, and you film it happening.”

“Clever.”

“That’s not the clever bit. This is the clever bit, I remember now that this is the clever bit. The clever bit is that you then thread the film in the projector … backward!”

“Backward?”

“Yes. Threading it backward is definitely the clever bit. So then, you just sit and watch it, and everything just appears to spiral upward out of the plughole and fill the bath. See?”

“And that’s how the Universe began, is it?” said Arthur.

“No,” said Ford, “but it’s a marvelous way to relax.”

He reached for his wineglass.

“Where’s my wineglass?” he said.

“It’s on the floor.”

“Ah.”

Tipping back his chair to look for it, Ford collided with the small green waiter who was approaching the table carrying a portable telephone.

Ford excused himself to the waiter explaining that it was because he was extemely drunk.

The waiter said that that was quite all right and that he perfectly understood.

Ford thanked the waiter for his kind indulgence, attempted to tug his forelock, missed by six inches and slid under the table.

“Mr. Zaphod Beeblebrox?” inquired the waiter.

“Er, yeah?” said Zaphod, glancing up from his third steak.

“There is a phone call for you.”

“Hey, what?”

“A phone call, sir.”

“For me? Here? Hey, but who knows where I am?”

One of his minds raced. The other dawdled lovingly over the food it was still shoveling in.

“Excuse me if I carry on, won’t you?” said his eating head and carried on.

There were now so many people after him he’d lost count. He shouldn’t have made such a conspicuous entrance. Hell, why not though, he thought. How do you know you’re having fun if there’s no one watching you have it?

“Maybe somebody here tipped off the Galactic Police,” said Trillian. “Everyone saw you come in.”

“You mean they want to arrest me over the phone?” said Zaphod. “Could be. I’m a pretty dangerous dude when I’m cornered.”

“Yeah,” said the voice from under the table, “you go to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel.”

“Hey, what is this, Judgment Day?” snapped Zaphod.

“Do we get to see that as well?” asked Arthur nervously.

“I’m in no hurry,” muttered Zaphod. “Okay, so who’s the cat on the phone?” He kicked Ford. “Hey, get up there, kid,” he said to him. “I may need you.”

“I am not,” said the waiter, “personally acquainted with the metal gentleman in question, sir.…”

“Metal?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you say metal?”

“Yes, sir. I said that I am not personally acquainted with the metal gentleman in question.…”

“Okay, carry on.”

“But I am informed that he has been awaiting your return for a considerable number of millennia. It seems you left here somewhat precipitately.”

“Left
here?” said Zaphod. “Are you being strange? We only just arrived here.”

“Indeed, sir,” persisted the waiter doggedly, “but before you arrived here, sir, I understand that you left here.”

Zaphod tried this in one brain, then in the other.

“You’re saying,” he said, “that before we arrived here, we left here?”

This is going to be a long night, thought the waiter.

“Precisely, sir,” he said.

“Put your analyst on danger money, baby,” advised Zaphod.

“No, wait a minute,” said Ford, emerging above table level again, “where exactly is here?”

“To be absolutely exact, sir, it is Frogstar World B.”

“But we just
left
there,” protested Zaphod. “We left there and came to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.”

“Yes, sir,” said the waiter, feeling that he was now into the home stretch and running well, “the one was constructed on the ruins of the other.”

“Oh,” said Arthur brightly, “you mean we’ve traveled in time but not in space.”

“Listen, you semievolved simian,” cut in Zaphod, “go climb a tree will you?”

Arthur bristled.

“Go bang your heads together, four-eyes,” he advised Zaphod.

“No, no,” the waiter said to Zaphod, “your monkey has got it right, sir.”

Arthur stuttered in fury and said nothing apposite, or indeed coherent.

“You jumped forward … I believe five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years while staying in exactly the same place,” explained the waiter. He smiled. He had a wonderful feeling that he had finally won though against what had seemed to be insuperable odds.

“That’s it!” said Zaphod. “I got it. I told the computer to send us to the nearest place to eat, that’s exactly what it did. Give or take five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years or whatever, we never moved. Neat.”

They all agreed this was very neat.

“But who,” said Zaphod, “is the cat on the phone?”

“Whatever happened to Marvin?” said Trillian.

Zaphod clapped his hands to his heads.

“The Paranoid Android! I left him moping about on Frogstar World B.”

“When was this?”

“Well, er, five hundred and seventy-six thousand million years ago I suppose,” said Zaphod. “Hey, er, hand me the raprod, Plate Captain.”

The little waiter’s eyebrows wandered about his forehead in confusion.

“I beg your pardon, sir?” he said.

“The phone, waiter,” said Zaphod, grabbing it off him. “Shee, you guys are so unhip it’s a wonder your bums don’t fall off.”

“Indeed, sir.”

“Hey, Marvin, is that you?” said Zaphod into the phone. “How you doing, kid?”

There was a long pause before a thin low voice came up the line.

Zaphod cupped his hand over the phone.

“It’s Marvin,” he said.

“Hey, Marvin,” he said into the phone again, “we’re having a great time. Food, wine, a little personal abuse and the Universe going foom. Where can we find you?”

Again the pause.

“You don’t have to pretend to be interested in me you know,” said Marvin at last. “I know perfectly well I’m only a menial robot.”

“Okay, okay,” said Zaphod, “but where are you?”

“ ‘Reverse primary thrust, Marvin,’ that’s what they say to me, ‘open airlock number three, Marvin. Marvin, can you pick up that piece of paper?’ Can I pick up that piece of paper! Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to …”

“Yeah, yeah,” sympathized Zaphod hardly at all.

“But I’m quite used to being humiliated,” droned Marvin, “I can even go and stick my head in a bucket of water if you like. Would you like me to go and stick my head in a bucket of water? I’ve got one ready. Wait a minute.”

“Er, hey, Marvin …” interrupted Zaphod, but it was too late. Sad little clunks and gurgles came up the line.

“What’s he saying?” asked Trillian.

“Nothing,” said Zaphod, “he just phoned up to wash his head at us.”

“There,” said Marvin, coming back on the line and bubbling a bit, “I hope that gave satisfaction.…”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Zaphod, “now will you please tell us where you are?”

“I’m in the parking lot,” said Marvin.

“The parking lot?” said Zaphod. “What are you doing there?”

“Parking cars, what else does one do/in a parking lot?”

“Okay, hang in there, we’ll be right down.”

In one movement Zaphod leaped to his feet, threw down the phone and wrote “Hotblack Desiato” on the bill.

“Come on, guys,” he said, “Marvin’s in the parking lot. Let’s get on down.”

“What’s he doing in the parking lot?” asked Arthur.

“Parking cars, what else? Dum dum.”

“But what about the End of the Universe? We’ll miss the big moment.”

“I’ve seen it. It’s rubbish,” said Zaphod, “nothing but a gnab gib.”

“A what?”

“Opposite of a big bang. Come on, let’s get zappy.”

Few of the other diners paid them any attention as they weaved their way through the Restaurant to the exit. Their eyes were riveted on the horror of the skies.

“An interesting effect to watch for,” Max was telling them, “is in the upper left-hand quadrant of the sky, where if you look very carefully you can see the star system Hastromil boiling away into the ultraviolet. Anyone here from Hastromil?”

There were one or two slightly hesitant cheers from somewhere at the back.

“Well,” said Max beaming cheerfully at them, “it’s too late to worry about whether you left the gas on now.”

T
he main reception foyer was almost empty but Ford nevertheless weaved his way through it.

Zaphod grasped him firmly by the arm and maneuvered him into a cubicle standing to one side of the entrance hall.

“What are you doing to him?” asked Arthur.

“Sobering him up,” said Zaphod and pushed a coin into a slot. Lights flashed, gases swirled.

“Hi,” said Ford stepping out a moment later, “where are we going?”

“Down to the parking lot, come on.”

“What about the personnel Time Teleports?” said Ford. “Get us straight back to the
Heart of Gold.”

“Yeah, but I’ve cooled on that ship. Zarniwoop can have it. I don’t want to play his games. Let’s see what we can find.”

A Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Happy Vertical People Transporter took them down deep into the substrata beneath the Restaurant. They were glad to see it had been vandalized and didn’t try to make them happy as well as take them down.

At the bottom of the shaft the elevator doors opened and a blast of cold stale air hit them.

The first thing they saw on leaving the elevator was a long concrete wall with over fifty doors in it offering lavatory facilities for all of fifty major life forms. Nevertheless, like every parking lot in the Galaxy throughout the entire history of parking lots, this parking lot smelled predominantly of impatience.

They turned a corner and found themselves on a moving catwalk that traversed a vast cavernous space that stretched off into the dim distance.

It was divided off into bays each of which contained a spaceship belonging to one of the diners upstairs, some smallish and utilitarian mass production models, others vast shining limoships, the playthings of the very rich.

Zaphod’s eyes sparkled with something that may or may not have been avarice as he passed over them. In fact it’s best to be clear on this point—avarice is definitely what it was.

“There he is,” said Trillian. “Marvin, down there.”

They looked where she was pointing. Dimly they could see a small metal figure listlessly rubbing a small rag on one remote corner of a giant silver suncruiser.

At short intervals along the moving catwalk, wide transparent tubes led down to floor level. Zaphod stepped off the catwalk into one of these and floated gently downward. The others followed. Thinking back to this later, Arthur Dent thought it was the single most enjoyable experience of his travels in the Galaxy.

“Hey, Marvin,” said Zaphod, striding over toward to him. “Hey, kid, are we pleased to see you.”

Marvin turned, and insofar as it is possible for a totally inert metal face to look reproachful, this is what it did.

“No you’re not,” he said, “no one ever is.”

“Suit yourself,” said Zaphod and turned away to ogle the ships. Ford went with him.

Only Trillian and Arthur actually went up to Marvin.

“No, really we are,” said Trillian and patted him in a way that he disliked intensely, “hanging around waiting for us all this time.”

“Five hundred and seventy-six thousand million, three thousand five hundred and seventy-nine years,” said Marvin. “I counted them.”

“Well, here we are now,” said Trillian, feeling—quite correctly in Marvin’s view—that it was a slightly foolish thing to say.