The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (8 page)

Chapter 12

A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive— you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program.

Zaphod waved a hand and the channel switched again. More gunk music, but this time it was a background to a news announcement. The news was always heavily edited to fit the rhythms of the music.

“. . . and news reports brought to you here on the sub-etha wave
band, broadcasting around the Galaxy around the clock,”
squawked a voice,
“and we’ll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere . . . and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks
together, guys. And of course, the big news story tonight is the sensational theft of the new Improbability Drive prototype ship by none
other than Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox. And the question
everyone’s asking is . . . has the Big Z finally flipped? Beeblebrox, the
man who invented the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, ex-confidence trickster, once described by Eccentrica Gallumbits as the Best Bang since the
Big One, and recently voted the Worst Dressed Sentient Being in the
Known Universe for the seventh time . . . has he got an answer this
time? We asked his private brain care specialist Gag Halfrunt . . .”

The music swirled and dived for a moment. Another voice broke in, presumably Halfrunt. He said
“Vell, Zaphod’s just zis
guy, you know?”
but got no further because an electric pencil flew across the cabin and through the radio’s on/off-sensitive airspace. Zaphod turned and glared at Trillian—she had thrown the pencil.

“Hey,” he said, “what you do that for?”

Trillian was tapping her finger on a screenful of figures.

“I’ve just thought of something,” she said.

“Yeah? Worth interrupting a news bulletin about me for?”

“You hear enough about yourself as it is.”

“I’m very insecure. We know that.”

“Can we drop your ego for a moment? This is important.”

“If there’s anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.” Zaphod glared at her again, then laughed.

“Listen,” she said, “we picked up those couple of guys . . .”

“What couple of guys?”

“The couple of guys we picked up.”

“Oh yeah,” said Zaphod, “those couple of guys.”

“We picked them up in Sector ZZ
₉
Plural Z Alpha.”

“Yeah?” said Zaphod, and blinked.

Trillian said quietly, “Does that mean anything to you?”

“Mmmm,” said Zaphod, “ZZ
₉
Plural Z Alpha. ZZ
₉
Plural Z Alpha?”

“Well?” said Trillian.

“Er . . . what does the Z mean?” said Zaphod.

“Which one?”

“Any one.”

One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn’t be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so—but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous. This above all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about it.

She sighed and punched up a star map on the visiscreen so she could make it simple for him, whatever his reasons for wanting it to be that way.

“There,” she pointed, “right there.”

“Hey . . . yeah!” said Zaphod.

“Well?” she said.

“Well what?”

Parts of the inside of her head screamed at other parts of the inside of her head. She said, very calmly, “It’s the same sector you originally picked me up in.”

He looked at her and then looked back at the screen.

“Hey, yeah,” he said, “now that is wild. We should have zapped straight into the middle of the Horsehead Nebula. How did we come to be there? I mean, that’s nowhere.”

She ignored this.

“Improbability Drive,” she said patiently. “You explained it to me yourself. We pass through every point in the Universe, you know that.”

“Yeah, but that’s one wild coincidence, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Picking someone up at that point? Out of the whole of the Universe to choose from? That’s just too . . . I want to work this out. Computer!”

The Sirius Cybernetics Shipboard Computer, which controlled and permeated every particle of the ship, switched into communication mode.

“Hi there!” it said brightly and simultaneously spewed out a tiny ribbon of ticker tape just for the record. The ticker tape said,
Hi there!

“Oh God,” said Zaphod. He hadn’t worked with this computer for long but had already learned to loathe it.

The computer continued, brash and cheery as if it were selling detergent.

“I want you to know that whatever your problem, I am here to help you solve it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Zaphod. “Look, I think I’ll just use a piece of paper.”

“Sure thing,” said the computer, spilling out its message into a waste bin at the same time, “I understand. If you ever want . . .”

“Shut up!” said Zaphod, and snatching up a pencil sat down next to Trillian at the console.

“Okay, okay,” said the computer in a hurt tone of voice and closed down its speech channel again.

Zaphod and Trillian pored over the figures that the Improbability flight-path scanner flashed silently up in front of them.

“Can we work out,” said Zaphod, “from their point of view what the Improbability of their rescue was?”

“Yes, that’s a constant,” said Trillian, “two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand, seven hundred and nine to one against.”

“That’s high. They’re two lucky lucky guys.”

“Yes.”

“But relative to what we were doing when the ship picked them up . . .”

Trillian punched up the figures. They showed two-to-the-power-of-Infinity-minus-one to one against (an irrational number that only has a conventional meaning in Improbability Physics).

“It’s pretty low,” continued Zaphod with a slight whistle.

“Yes,” agreed Trillian, and looked at him quizzically.

“That’s one big whack of Improbability to be accounted for. Something pretty improbable has got to show up on the balance sheet if it’s all going to add up into a pretty sum.”

Zaphod scribbled a few sums, crossed them out and threw the pencil away.

“Bat’s dos, I can’t work it out.”

“Well?”

Zaphod knocked his two heads together in irritation and gritted his teeth.

“Okay,” he said. “Computer!”

The voice circuits sprang to life again.

“Why, hello there!” they said (ticker tape, ticker tape). “All I want to do is make your day nicer and nicer and nicer . . .”

“Yeah, well, shut up and work something out for me.”

“Sure thing,” chattered the computer, “you want a probability forecast based on . . .”

“Improbability data, yeah.”

“Okay,” the computer continued. “Here’s an interesting little notion. Did you realize that most people’s lives are governed by telephone numbers?”

A pained look crawled across one of Zaphod’s faces and on to the other one.

“Have you flipped?” he said.

“No, but you will when I tell you that . . .”

Trillian gasped. She scrabbled at the buttons on the Improbability flight-path screen.

“Telephone number?” she said. “Did that thing say
telephone
number?
”

Numbers flashed up on the screen.

The computer had paused politely, but now it continued.

“What I was about to say was that . . .”

“Don’t bother, please,” said Trillian.

“Look, what is this?” said Zaphod.

“I don’t know,” said Trillian, “but those aliens—they’re on the way up to the bridge with that wretched robot. Can we pick them up on any monitor cameras?”

Chapter 13

Marvin trudged on down the corridor, still moaning. “And then of course I’ve got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left-hand side . . .”

“No?” said Arthur grimly as he walked along beside him. “Really?”

“Oh yes,” said Marvin, “I mean I’ve asked for them to be replaced but no one ever listens.”

“I can imagine.”

Vague whistling and humming noises were coming from Ford. “Well well well,” he kept saying to himself, “Zaphod Beeblebrox . . .”

Suddenly Marvin stopped, and held up a hand.

“You know what’s happened now, of course?”

“No, what?” said Arthur, who didn’t want to know.

“We’ve arrived at another of those doors.”

There was a sliding door let into the side of the corridor. Marvin eyed it suspiciously.

“Well?” said Ford impatiently. “Do we go through?”

“Do we go through?”
mimicked Marvin. “Yes. This is the entrance to the bridge. I was told to take you to the bridge. Probably the highest demand that will be made on my intellectual capacities today, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Slowly, with great loathing, he stepped toward the door, like a hunter stalking his prey. Suddenly it slid open.

“Thank you,”
it said,
“for making a simple door very happy.”

Deep in Marvin’s thorax gears ground.

“Funny,” he intoned funereally, “how just when you think life can’t possibly get any worse it suddenly does.”

He heaved himself through the door and left Ford and Arthur staring at each other and shrugging their shoulders. From inside they heard Marvin’s voice again.

“I suppose you’ll want to see the aliens now,” he said. “Do you want me to sit in a corner and rust, or just fall apart where I’m standing?”

“Yeah, just show them in, would you, Marvin?” came another voice.

Arthur looked at Ford and was astonished to see him laughing.

“What’s . . . ?”

“Shhh,” said Ford, “come on in.”

He stepped through into the bridge.

Arthur followed him in nervously and was astonished to see a man lolling back in a chair with his feet on a control console picking the teeth in his right-hand head with his left hand. The right-hand head seemed to be thoroughly preoccupied with this task, but the left-hand one was grinning a broad, relaxed, nonchalant grin. The number of things that Arthur couldn’t believe he was seeing was fairly large. His jaw flopped about at a loose end for a while.

The peculiar man waved a lazy wave at Ford and with an appalling affectation of nonchalance said, “Ford, hi, how are you? Glad you could drop in.”

Ford was not going to be outcooled.

“Zaphod,” he drawled, “great to see you, you’re looking well, the extra arm suits you. Nice ship you’ve stolen.”

Arthur goggled at him.

“You mean you know this guy?” he said, waving a wild finger at Zaphod.

“Know him!” exclaimed Ford, “he’s . . .” he paused, and decided to do the introductions the other way round.

“Oh, Zaphod, this is a friend of mine, Arthur Dent,” he said. “I saved him when his planet blew up.”

“Oh sure,” said Zaphod, “hi, Arthur, glad you could make it.” His right-hand head looked round casually, said “hi” and went back to having its teeth picked.

Ford carried on. “And Arthur,” he said, “this is my semicousin Zaphod Beeb . . .”

“We’ve met,” said Arthur sharply.

When you’re cruising down the road in the fast lane and you lazily sail past a few hard-driving cars and are feeling pretty pleased with yourself and then accidentally change down from fourth to first instead of third thus making your engine leap out of your hood in a rather ugly mess, it tends to throw you off your stride in much the same way that this remark threw Ford Prefect off his.

“Er . . . what?” he said.

“I said we’ve met.”

Zaphod gave an awkward start of surprise and jabbed a gum sharply.

“Hey . . . er, have we? Hey . . . er . . .”

Ford rounded on Arthur with an angry flash in his eyes. Now he felt he was back on home ground he suddenly began to resent having lumbered himself with this ignorant primitive who knew as much about the affairs of the Galaxy as an Ilfordbased gnat knew about life in Peking.

“What do you mean you’ve met?” he demanded. “This is Zaphod Beeblebrox from Betelgeuse Five, you know, not bloody Martin Smith from Croydon.”

“I don’t care,” said Arthur coldly. “We’ve met, haven’t we, Zaphod Beeblebrox—or should I say . . . Phil?”

“What!” shouted Ford.

“You’ll have to remind me,” said Zaphod. “I’ve a terrible memory for species.”

“It was at a party,” pursued Arthur.

“Yeah, well, I doubt that,” said Zaphod.

“Cool it, will you, Arthur!” demanded Ford.

Arthur would not be deterred. “A party six months ago. On Earth . . . England . . .”

Zaphod shook his head with a tight-lipped smile. “London,” insisted Arthur, “Islington.”

“Oh,” said Zaphod with a guilty start, “
that
party.”

This wasn’t fair on Ford at all. He looked backward and forward between Arthur and Zaphod. “What?” he said to Zaphod. “You don’t mean to say you’ve been on that miserable little planet as well, do you?”

“No, of course not,” said Zaphod breezily. “Well, I may have just dropped in briefly, you know, on my way somewhere . . .”

“But I was stuck there for fifteen years!”

“Well, I didn’t know that, did I?”

“But what were you doing there?”

“Looking about, you know.”

“He gate-crashed a party,” said Arthur, trembling with anger, “a fancy dress party . . .”

“It would have to be, wouldn’t it?” said Ford.

“At this party,” persisted Arthur, “was a girl . . . oh, well, look, it doesn’t matter now. The whole place has gone up in smoke anyway . . .”

“I wish you’d stop sulking about that bloody planet,” said Ford. “Who was the lady?”

“Oh, just somebody. Well all right, I wasn’t doing very well with her. I’d been trying all evening. Hell, she was something though. Beautiful, charming, devastatingly intelligent, at last I’d got her to myself for a bit and was plying her with a bit of talk when this friend of yours barges up and says, ‘Hey, doll, is this guy boring you? Why don’t you talk to me instead? I’m from a different planet.’ I never saw her again.”

“Zaphod?” exclaimed Ford.

“Yes,” said Arthur, glaring at him and trying not to feel foolish. “He only had the two arms and the one head and he called himself Phil, but . . .”

“But you must admit he did turn out to be from another planet,” said Trillian, wandering into sight at the other end of the bridge. She gave Arthur a pleasant smile which settled on him like a ton of bricks and then turned her attention to the ship’s controls again.

There was silence for a few seconds, and then out of the scrambled mess of Arthur’s brain crawled some words.

“Tricia McMillan?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

“Same as you,” she said, “I hitched a lift. After all, with a degree in math and another in astrophysics what else was there to do? It was either that or the dole queue again on Monday.”

“Infinity minus one,” chattered the computer. “Improbability sum now complete.”

Zaphod looked about him, at Ford, at Arthur, and then at Trillian.

“Trillian,” he said, “is this sort of thing going to happen every time we use the Improbability Drive?”

“Very probably, I’m afraid,” she said.