The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Read online

  The first part of each song would tell how there once went forth from the City of Vassillian a party of five sage princes with four horses. The princes, who are of course brave, noble and wise, travel widely in distant lands, fight giant ogres, pursue exotic philosophies, take tea with weird gods and rescue beautiful monsters from ravening princesses before finally announcing that they have achieved enlightenment and that their wanderings are therefore accomplished.

  The second, and much longer, part of each song would then tell of all their bickerings about which one of them is going to have to walk back.

  All this lay in the planet’s remote past. It was, however, a descendant of one of these eccentric poets who invented the spurious tales of impending doom which enabled the people of Golgafrincham to rid themselves of an entire useless third of their population. The other two-thirds stayed firmly at home and lived full, rich and happy lives until they were all suddenly wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.

  Chapter 26

  That night the ship crash-landed onto an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet which circled a small unregarded yellow sun in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the Galaxy.

  In the hours preceding the crash Ford Prefect had fought furiously but in vain to unlock the controls of the ship from their preordained flight path. It had quickly become apparent to him that the ship had been programmed to convey its payload safely, if uncomfortably, to its new home but to cripple itself beyond all hope of repair in the process.

  Its screaming, blazing descent through the atmosphere had stripped away most of its superstructure and outer shielding, and its final inglorious bellyflop into a murky swamp had left its crew only a few hours of darkness during which to revive and offload its deep-frozen and unwanted cargo, for the ship began to settle almost at once, slowly upending its gigantic bulk in the stagnant slime. Once or twice during the night it was starkly silhouetted against the sky as burning meteors—the detritus of its descent—flashed across the sky.

  In the gray predawn light it let out an obscene roaring gurgle and sank forever into the stinking depths.

  When the sun came up that morning it shed its thin watery light over a vast area heaving with wailing hairdressers, public relations executives, opinion pollsters and the rest, all clawing their way desperately to dry land.

  A less strong-minded sun would probably have gone straight back down again, but it continued to climb its way through the sky and after a while the influence of its warming rays began to have some restoring effect on the feebly struggling creatures.

  Countless numbers had, unsurprisingly, been lost to the swamp in the night, and millions more had been sucked down with the ship, but those who survived still numbered hundreds of thousands and as the day wore on they crawled out over the surrounding countryside, each looking for a few square feet of solid ground on which to collapse and recover from their nightmare ordeal.

  Two figures moved farther afield.

  From a nearby hillside Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent watched the horror of which they could not feel a part.

  “Filthy dirty trick to pull,” muttered Arthur.

  Ford scraped a stick along the ground and shrugged.

  “An imaginative solution to a problem I’d have thought,” he said.

  “Why can’t people just learn to live together in peace and harmony?” said Arthur.

  Ford gave a loud, very hollow laugh.

  “Forty-two!” he said with a malicious grin. “No, doesn’t work. Never mind.”

  Arthur looked at him as if he’d gone mad and, seeing nothing to indicate to the contrary, realized that it would be perfectly reasonable to assume that this had in fact happened.

  “What do you think will happen to them all?” he said after a while.

  “In an infinite Universe anything can happen,” said Ford. “Even survival. Strange but true.”

  A curious look came into his eyes as they passed over the landscape and then settled again on the scene of misery below them.

  “I think they’ll manage for a while,” he said.

  Arthur looked up sharply.

  “Why do you say that?” he said

  Ford shrugged.

  “Just a hunch,” he said, and refused to be drawn on any further questions.

  “Look,” he said suddenly.

  Arthur followed his pointing finger. Down among the sprawling masses a figure was moving—or perhaps lurching would be a more accurate description. He appeared to be carrying something on his shoulder. As he lurched from prostrate form to prostrate form he seemed to wave whatever the something was at them in a drunken fashion. After a while he gave up the struggle and collapsed in a heap.

  Arthur had no idea what this was meant to mean to him.

  “Movie camera,” said Ford. “Recording the historic moment.”

  “Well, I don’t know about you,” said Ford again after a moment, “but I’m off.”

  He sat awhile in silence.

  After a while this seemed to require comment.

  “Er, when you say you’re off, what do you mean exactly?” said Arthur.

  “Good question,” said Ford. “I’m getting total silence.”

  Looking over his shoulder Arthur saw that he was twiddling with knobs on a small black box. Ford had already introduced this box to Arthur as a Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic, but Arthur had merely nodded absently and not pursued the matter. In his mind the Universe still divided into two parts—the Earth, and everything else. The Earth having been demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass meant that this view of things was a little lopsided, but Arthur tended to cling to that lopsidedness as being his last remaining contact with his home. Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matics belonged firmly in the “everything else” category.

  “Not a sausage,” said Ford, shaking the thing.

  Sausage, thought Arthur to himself as he gazed listlessly at the primitive world about him, what I wouldn’t give for a good Earth sausage.

  “Would you believe,” said Ford in exasperation, “that there are no transmissions of any kind within light-years of this benighted tip? Are you listening to me?”

  “What?” said Arthur.

  “We’re in trouble,” said Ford.

  “Oh,” said Arthur. This sounded like month-old news to him.

  “Until we pick up anything on this machine,” said Ford, “our chances of getting off this planet are zero. It may be some freak standing wave effect in the planet’s magnetic field—in which case we just travel round and round till we find a clear reception area. Coming?”

  He picked up his gear and strode off.

  Arthur looked down the hill. The man with the movie camera had struggled back up to his feet just in time to film one of his colleagues collapsing.

  Arthur picked a blade of grass and strode off after Ford.

  Chapter 27

  I trust you had a pleasant meal?” said Zarniwoop to Zaphod and Trillian as they rematerialized on the bridge of the starship Heart of Gold and lay panting on the floor.

  Zaphod opened some eyes and glowered at him.

  “You,” he spat. He staggered to his feet and stomped off to find a chair to slump into. He found one and slumped into it.

  “I have programmed the computer with the Improbability Coordinates pertinent to our journey,” said Zarniwoop. “We will arrive there very shortly. Meanwhile, why don’t you relax and prepare yourself for the meeting?”

  Zaphod said nothing. He got up again and marched over to a small cabinet from which he pulled a bottle of old Janx Spirit. He took a long pull at it.

  “And when this is all done,” said Zaphod savagely, “it’s done, all right? I’m free to go and do what the hell I like and lie on beaches and stuff?”

  “It depends what transpires from the meeting,” said Zarniwoop.

  “Zaphod, who is this man?” said Trillian shakily, wobbling to her feet. “What’s he doing here? Why’s he on o
ur ship?”

  “He’s a very stupid man,” said Zaphod, “who wants to meet the man who rules the Universe.”

  “Ah,” said Trillian, taking the bottle from Zaphod and helping herself, “a social climber.”

  Chapter 28

  The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.

  To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

  And so this is the situation we find: a succession of Galactic Presidents who so much enjoy the fun and palaver of being in power that they very rarely notice that they’re not.

  And somewhere in the shadows behind them—who?

  Who can possibly rule if no one who wants to do it can be allowed to?

  Chapter 29

  On a small obscure world somewhere in the middle of nowhere in particular—nowhere, that is, that could ever be found, since it is protected by a vast field of Unprobability to which only six men in this Galaxy have a key—it was raining.

  It was bucketing down, and had been for hours. It beat the top of the sea into a mist, it pounded the trees, it churned and slopped a stretch of scrubby land near the sea into a mudbath.

  The rain pelted and danced on the corrugated iron roof of the small shack that stood in the middle of this patch of scrubby land. It obliterated the small rough pathway that led from the shack down to the seashore and smashed apart the neat piles of interesting shells which had been placed there.

  The noise of the rain on the roof of the shack was deafening within, but went largely unnoticed by its occupant, whose attention was otherwise engaged.

  He was a tall shambling man with rough straw-colored hair that was damp from the leaking roof. His clothes were shabby, his back was hunched, and his eyes, though open, seemed closed.

  In his shack was an old beaten-up armchair, an old scratched table, an old mattress, some cushions and a stove that was small but warm.

  There was also an old and slightly weatherbeaten cat, and this was currently the focus of the man’s attention. He bent his shambling form over it.

  “Pussy, pussy, pussy,” he said, “coochicoochicoochicoo … pussy want his fish? Nice piece of fish … pussy want it?”

  The cat seemed undecided on the matter. It pawed rather condescendingly at the piece of fish the man was holding out, and then got distracted by a piece of dust on the floor.

  “Pussy not eat his fish, pussy get thin and waste away, I think,” said the man. Doubt crept into his voice.

  “I imagine this is what will happen,” he said, “but how can I tell?”

  He proffered the fish again.

  “Pussy think,” he said, “eat fish or not eat fish. I think it is better if I don’t get involved.” He sighed.

  “I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?”

  He left the fish on the floor for the cat, and retired to his seat.

  “Ah, I seem to see you eating it,” he said at last, as the cat exhausted the entertainment possibilities of the speck of dust and pounced onto the fish.

  “I like it when I see you eat fish,” said the man, “because in my mind you will waste away if you don’t.”

  He picked up from the table a piece of paper and the stub of a pencil. He held one in one hand and the other in the other, and experimented with the different ways of bringing them together. He tried holding the pencil under the paper, then over the paper, then next to the paper. He tried wrapping the paper round the pencil, he tried rubbing the stubby end of the pencil against the paper and then he tried rubbing the sharp end of the pencil against the paper. It made a mark, and he was delighted with the discovery, as he was every day. He picked up another piece of paper from the table. This had a crossword on it. He studied it briefly and filled in a couple of clues before losing interest.

  He tried sitting on one of his hands and was intrigued by the feel of the bones of his hip.

  “Fish come from far away,” he said, “or so I’m told. Or so I imagine I’m told. When the men come, or when in my mind the men come in their six black shiny ships, do they come in your mind too? What do you see, pussy?”

  He looked at the cat, which was more concerned with getting the fish down as rapidly as possible than it was with these speculations.

  “And when I hear their questions, do you hear questions? What do their voices mean to you? Perhaps you just think they’re singing songs to you.” He reflected on this, and saw the flaw in the supposition.

  “Perhaps they are singing songs to you,” he said, “and I just think they’re asking me questions.”

  He paused again. Sometimes he would pause for days, just to see what it was like.

  “Do you think they came today?” he said. “I do. There’s mud on the floor, cigarettes and whisky on the table, fish on a plate for you and a memory of them in my mind. Hardly conclusive evidence I know, but then all evidence is circumstantial. And look what else they’ve left me.”

  He reached over to the table and pulled some things off it.

  “Crosswords, dictionaries and a calculator.”

  He played with the calculator for an hour, while the cat went to sleep and the rain outside continued to pour. Eventually he put the calculator aside.

  “I think I must be right in thinking they ask me questions,” he said. “To come all that way and leave all these things just for the privilege of singing songs to you would be very strange behavior. Or so it seems to me. Who can tell, who can tell.”

  From the table he picked up a cigarette and lit it with a spill from the stove. He inhaled deeply and sat back.

  “I think I saw another ship in the sky today,” he said at last. “A big white one. I’ve never seen a big white one, just the six black ones. And the six green ones. And the others who say they come from so far away. Never a big white one. Perhaps six small black ones can look like one big white one at certain times. Perhaps I would like a glass of whisky. Yes, that seems more likely.”

  He stood up and found a glass that was lying on the floor by his mattress. He poured in a measure from his whisky bottle. He sat again.

  “Perhaps some other people are coming to see me,” he said.

  A hundred yards away, pelted by the torrential rain, lay the Heart of Gold.

  Its hatchway opened, and three figures emerged, huddling into themselves to keep the rain off their faces.

  “In there?” shouted Trillian above the noise of the rain.

  “Yes,” said Zarniwoop.

  “That shack?”

  “Yes.”

  “Weird,” said Zaphod.

  “But it’s in the middle of nowhere,” said Trillian. “We must have come to the wrong place. You can’t rule the Universe from a shack.”

  They hurried through the pouring rain, and arrived, wet through, at the door. They knocked. They shivered.

  The door opened.

  “Hello?” said the man.

  “Ah, excuse me,” said Zarniwoop, “I have reason to believe …”

  “Do you rule the Universe?” said Zaphod.

  The man smiled at him.

  “I try not to,” he said. “Are you wet?”

  Zaphod looked at him in astonishment.

  “Wet?” he cried. “Doesn’t it look as if we’re wet?”

  “That’s how it looks to me,” said the man, “but how you feel about it might be an altogether different matter. If you find warmth makes you dry, you’d better come in.”

  They went in.

  They looked around the tiny shack, Zarniwoop with slight distaste, Trillian with interest, Zaphod with delight.

  “Hey, er …�
� said Zaphod, “what’s your name?”

  The man looked at them doubtfully.

  “I don’t know. Why, do you think I should have one? It seems very odd to give a bundle of vague sensory perceptions a name.”

  He invited Trillian to sit in the chair. He sat on the edge of the chair, Zarniwoop leaned stiffly against the table and Zaphod lay on the mattress.

  “Wowee!” said Zaphod. “The seat of power!” He tickled the cat.

  “Listen,” said Zarniwoop, “I must ask you some questions.”

  “All right,” said the man kindly, “you can sing to my cat if you like.”

  “Would he like that?” asked Zaphod.

  “You’d better ask him,” said the man.

  “Does he talk?” said Zaphod.

  “I have no memory of him talking,” said the man, “but I am very unreliable.”

  Zarniwoop pulled some notes out of a pocket.

  “Now,” he said, “you do rule the Universe, do you?”

  “How can I tell?” said the man.

  Zarniwoop ticked off a note on the paper.

  “How long have you been doing this?”

  “Ah,” said the man, “this is a question about the past, is it?”

  Zarniwoop looked at him in puzzlement. This wasn’t exactly what he had been expecting.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “How can I tell,” said the man, “that the past isn’t a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?”

  Zarniwoop stared at him. The steam began to rise from his sodden clothes.

  “So you answer all questions like this?” he said.

  The man answered quickly.

  “I say what it occurs to me to say when I think I hear people say things. More I cannot say.”

  Zaphod laughed happily.

  “I’ll drink to that,” he said and pulled out the bottle of Janx Spirit. He leaped and handed the bottle to the ruler of the Universe, who took it with pleasure.