The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Read online

  “Good choice.”

  “I like them. Laden with all these new possessions, I go and sit at a table. And don’t ask me what the table was like because this was some time ago and I can’t remember. It was probably round.”

  “All right.”

  “So let me give you the layout. Me sitting at the table. On my left, the newspaper. On my right, the cup of coffee. In the middle of the table, the packet of biscuits.”

  “I see it perfectly.”

  “What you don’t see,” said Arthur, “because I haven’t mentioned him yet, is the guy sitting at the table already. He is sitting there opposite me.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Perfectly ordinary. Briefcase. Business suit. He didn’t look,” said Arthur, “as if he was about to do anything weird.”

  “Ah. I know the type. What did he do?”

  “He did this. He leaned across the table, picked up the packet of biscuits, tore it open, took one out, and …”

  “What?”

  “Ate it.”

  “What?”

  “He ate it.”

  Fenchurch looked at him in astonishment. “What on earth did you do?”

  “Well, in the circumstances I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do. I was compelled,” said Arthur, “to ignore it.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Well, it’s not the sort of thing you’re trained for, is it? I searched my soul, and discovered that there was nothing anywhere in my upbringing, experience, or even primal instincts to tell me how to react to someone who has quite simply, calmly, sitting right there in front of me, stolen one of my biscuits.”

  “Well, you could … ” Fenchurch thought about it. “I must say I’m not sure what I would have done either. So what happened?”

  “I stared furiously at the crossword,” said Arthur, “couldn’t do a single clue, took a sip of coffee, it was too hot to drink, so there was nothing for it. I braced myself. I took a biscuit, trying very hard not to notice,” he added, “that the packet was already mysteriously open.…”

  “But you’re fighting back, taking a tough line.”

  “After my fashion, yes. I ate the biscuit. I ate it very deliberately and visibly, so that he would have no doubt as to what it was I was doing. When I eat a biscuit,” said Arthur, “it stays eaten.”

  “So what did he do?”

  “Took another one. Honestly,” insisted Arthur, “this is exactly what happened. He took another biscuit, he ate it. Clear as daylight. Certain as we are sitting on the ground.”

  Fenchurch stirred uncomfortably.

  “And the problem was,” said Arthur, “that having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject the second time around. What do you say? ’excuse me … I couldn’t help noticing, er …’ Doesn’t work. No, I ignored it with, if anything, even more vigor than previously.”

  “My man …”

  “Stared at the crossword again, still couldn’t budge a bit of it, so showing some of the spirit that Henry V did on St. Crispin’s Day …”

  “What?”

  “I went into the breach again. I took,” said Arthur, “another biscuit. And for an instant our eyes met.”

  “Like this?”

  “Yes, well, no, not quite like that. But they met. Just for an instant. And we both looked away. But I am here to tell you,” said Arthur, “that there was a little electricity in the air. There was a little tension building up over the table. At about this time.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “We went through the whole packet like this. Him, me, him, me … “

  “The whole packet?”

  “Well, it was only eight biscuits, but it seemed like a lifetime of biscuits we were getting through at this point. Gladiators could hardly have had a tougher time.”

  “Gladiators,” said Fenchurch, “would have had to do it in the sun. More physically grueling.”

  “There is that. So. When the empty packet was lying dead between us the man at last got up, having done his worst, and left. I heaved a sigh of relief, of course.

  “As it happened, my train was announced a moment or two later, so I finished my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper…”

  “Yes?”

  “Were my biscuits.”

  “What?” said Fenchurch. “What?”

  “True.”

  “No!” She gasped and tossed herself back on the grass laughing.

  She sat up again.

  “You complete nitwit,” she hooted, “you almost completely and utterly foolish person.”

  She pushed him backward, rolled over him, kissed him, and rolled off again. He was surprised at how light she was.

  “Now you tell me a story.”

  “I thought,” she said, putting on a low husky voice, “that you were very keen to get back.”

  “No hurry,” he said airily, “I want you to tell me a story.”

  She looked out over the lake and pondered.

  “All right,” she said, “it’s only a short one. And not funny like yours, but … anyway.”

  She looked down. Arthur could feel that it was one of those sorts of moments. The air seemed to stand still around them, waiting. Arthur wished that the air would go away and mind its own business.

  “When I was a kid …” she said. “These sorts of stories always start like this, don’t they? ‘When I was a kid … ’ Anyway. This is the bit when the girl suddenly says, ‘When I was a kid … ’ and starts to unburden herself. We have got to that bit. When I was a kid I had this picture hanging over the foot of my bed.… What do you think of it so far?”

  “I like it. I think it’s moving well. You’re getting the bedroom interest in nice and early. We could probably do with some development with the picture.”

  “It was one of those pictures that children are supposed to like,” she said, “but don’t. Full of endearing little animals doing endearing things, you know?”

  “I know. I was plagued with them too. Rabbits in waistcoats.”

  “Exactly. These rabbits were in fact on a raft, as were assorted rats and owls. There may even have been a reindeer.”

  “On the raft.”

  “On the raft. And a boy was sitting on the raft.”

  “Among the rabbits in waistcoats and the owls and the reindeer.”

  “Precisely there. A boy of the cheery gypsy ragamuffin variety.”

  “Ugh.”

  “The picture worried me, I must say. There was an otter swimming in front of the raft, and I used to lie awake at night worrying about this otter having to pull the raft, with all these wretched animals on it who shouldn’t even be on a raft, and the otter had such a thin tail to pull it with I thought it must hurt pulling it all the time. Worried me. Not badly, but just vaguely, all the time.

  “Then one day—and remember I’d been looking at this picture every night for years—I suddenly noticed that the raft had a sail. Never seen it before. The otter was fine, he was just swimming along.”

  She shrugged.

  “Good story?” she said.

  “Ends weakly,” said Arthur, “leaves the audience crying, ‘Yes, but what of it?’ Fine up till there, but needs a final sting before the credits.”

  Fenchurch laughed and hugged her legs.

  “It was just such a sudden revelation, years of almost unnoticed worry just dropping away, like taking off heavy weights, like black and white becoming color, like a dry stick suddenly being watered. The sudden shift of perspective that says, ‘Put away your worries, the world is a good and perfect place. It is in fact very easy.’ You probably think I’m saying that because I’m going to say that I felt like that this afternoon or something, don’t you?”

  “Well, I …” said Arthur, his composure suddenly shattered.

  “Well, it’s all right,” she said, “I did. That’s exactly what I felt. But, you see, I’ve felt that before, even stronger. Incredibly
strongly. I’m afraid I’m a bit of a one,” she said, gazing off into the distance, “for sudden startling revelations.”

  Arthur was at sea, could hardly speak, and felt it wiser therefore for the moment not to try.

  “It was very odd,” she said, much as one of the pursuing Egyptians might have said that the behavior of the Red Sea when Moses waved his rod at it was a little on the strange side.

  “Very odd,” she repeated, “for days before, the strangest feeling had been building in me, as if I was going to give birth. No, it wasn’t like that in fact, it was more as if I was being connected into something, bit by bit, no, not even that, it was as if the whole of the Earth, through me, was going to …”

  “Does the number,” said Arthur gently, “forty-two mean anything to you at all?”

  “What? No, what are you talking about?” exclaimed Fenchurch.

  “Just a thought,” murmured Arthur.

  “Arthur, I mean this, this is very real to me, this is serious.”

  “I was being perfectly serious,” said Arthur; “it’s just the Universe I’m never quite sure about.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Tell me the rest of it,” he said. “Don’t worry if it sounds odd. Believe me, you are talking to someone who has seen a lot of stuff,” he added, “that is odd. And I don’t mean biscuits.”

  She nodded, and seemed to believe him. Suddenly, she gripped his arm.

  “It was so simple,” she said, “so wonderfully and extraordinarily simple, when it came.”

  “What was it?” said Arthur quietly.

  “Arthur, you see,” she said, “that’s what I no longer know. And the loss is unbearable. If I try to think back to it it all goes flickery and jumpy, and if I try too hard, I get as far as the teacup and I just black out.”

  “What?”

  “Well, like your story,” she said, “the best bit happened in a café. I was sitting there, having a cup of tea. This was after days of this build-up, the feeling of becoming connected up. I think I was buzzing gently. And there was some work going on at a building site opposite the café, and I was watching it through the window, over the rim of my teacup, which I always find is the nicest way of watching other people working. And suddenly, there it was in my mind, this message from somewhere. And it was so simple. It made such sense of everything. I just sat up and thought, ‘Oh! Oh, well, that’s all right, then.’ I was so startled I almost dropped my teacup, in fact I think I did drop it. Yes,” she added thoughtfully, “I’m sure I did. How much sense am I making?”

  “It was fine up to the bit about the teacup.”

  She shook her head, and shook it again, as if trying to clear it, which is what she was trying to do.

  “Well, that’s it,” she said, “fine up to the bit about the teacup. That was the point at which it seemed to me quite literally as if the world exploded.”

  “What …?”

  “I know it sounds crazy, and everybody says it was hallucinations, but if that was hallucinations then I have hallucinations in big screen 3D with 16-track Dolby stereo and should probably hire myself out to people who are bored with shark movies. It was as if the ground was literally ripped from under my feet, and … and …”

  She patted the grass lightly, as if for reassurance, and then seemed to change her mind about what she was going to say.

  “And I woke up in hospital. I suppose I’ve been in and out ever since. And that’s why I have an instinctive nervousness,” she said, “of sudden startling revelations that everything’s going to be all right.” She looked up at him.

  Arthur had simply ceased to worry himself about the strange anomalies surrounding his return to his home world, or rather had consigned them to that part of his mind marked “Things To Think About—Urgent.” “Here is the world,” he had told himself, “here, for whatever reason, is the world, and here it stays. With me on it.” But now it seemed to go swimmy around him, as it had that night in the car when Fenchurch’s brother had told him the silly story of the CIA agent in the reservoir. The French Embassy went swimmy. The Sheraton Tower Hotel and the Bank of Abu Dhabi went swimmy. The trees went swimmy. The lake went swimmy, but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be alarmed at because a gray goose had just landed on it. The geese were having a great relaxed time and had no major answers they wished to know the questions to.

  “Anyway,” said Fenchurch, suddenly and brightly and with a wide-eyed smile, “there is something wrong with part of me, and you’ve got to find out what it is. We’ll go home.”

  Arthur shook his head.

  “What’s the matter?” she said.

  Arthur had shaken his head, not to disagree with her suggestion which he thought was a truly excellent one, one of the world’s great suggestions, but because he was just for a moment trying to free himself of the recurring impression he had that just when he was least expecting it the Universe would suddenly leap out from behind a door and go boo at him.

  “I’m just trying to get this entirely clear in my mind,” said Arthur. “You say you felt as if the Earth actually … exploded.…”

  “Yes. More than felt.”

  “Which is what everybody else says,” he said hesitantly, “is hallucinations?”

  “Yes but, Arthur, that’s ridiculous. People think that if you just say ‘hallucinations’ it explains anything you want it to explain and eventually whatever it is you can’t understand will just go away. It’s just a word, it doesn’t explain anything. It doesn’t explain why the dolphins disappeared.”

  “No,” said Arthur, “no,” he added thoughtfully. “No,” he added again, even more thoughtfully. “What?” he said at last.

  “Doesn’t explain the dolphins disappearing.”

  “No,” said Arthur, “I see that. Which dolphins do you mean?”

  “What do you mean which dolphins? I’m talking about when all the dolphins disappeared.”

  She put her hand on his knee, which made him realize that the tingling going up and down his spine was not her gently stroking his back, and must instead be one of those nasty creepy feelings he so often got when people were trying to explain things to him.

  “Disappeared?”

  “Yes.”

  “The dolphins?”

  “Yes.”

  “All the dolphins,” said Arthur, “disappeared?”

  “Yes.”

  “The dolphins? You’re saying the dolphins all disappeared? Is this,” said Arthur, trying to be absolutely clear on this point, “what you’re saying?”

  “Arthur, where have you been, for heaven’s sake? The dolphins all disappeared on the same day I … “

  She stared him intently in his startled eyes.

  “What …?”

  “No dolphins. All gone. Vanished.”

  She searched his face.

  “Did you really not know that?”

  It was clear from his startled expression that he did not.

  “Where did they go?” he asked.

  “No one knows. That’s what vanished means.” She paused. “Well, there is one man who says he knows about it, but everyone says he lives in California,” she said, “and is mad. I was thinking of going to see him because it seems the only lead I’ve got on what happened to me.”

  She shrugged, and then looked at him long and quietly. She laid her hand on the side of his face.

  “I really would like to know where you’ve been,” she said. “I think something terrible happened to you then as well. And that’s why we recognized each other.”

  She glanced around the park, which was now being gathered into the clutches of dusk.

  “Well,” she said, “now you’ve got someone you can tell.”

  Arthur slowly let out a long year of a sigh.

  “It is,” he said, “a very long story.”

  Fenchurch leaned across him and drew over her canvas bag.

  “Is it anything to do with this?” she said. The thing she took out of her b
ag was battered and travel-worn as if it had been hurled into prehistoric rivers, baked under the sun that shines so redly on the deserts of Kakrafoon, half buried in the marbled sands that fringe the heady vapored oceans of Santraginus V, frozen on the glaciers of the moon of Jaglan Beta, sat on, kicked around spaceships, scuffed and generally abused, and since its makers had thought that these were exactly the sorts of things that might happen to it, they had thoughtfully encased it in a sturdy plastic cover and written on it, in large friendly letters, the words “Don’t Panic.”

  “Where did you get this?” said Arthur, startled, taking it from her.

  “Ah,” she said, “I thought it was yours. In Russell’s car that night. You dropped it. Have you been to many of these places?”

  Arthur drew The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy from its cover. It was like a small, thin, flexible lap computer. He tapped some buttons till the screen flared with text.

  “A few,” he said.

  “Can we go?”

  “What? No,” said Arthur abruptly, then relented, but relented warily. “Do you want to?” he said, hoping for the answer no. It was an act of great generosity on his part not to say, “You don’t want to, do you?” which expects it.

  “Yes,” she said. “I want to know what the message was that I lost, and where it came from. Because I don’t think,” she added, standing up and looking round the increasing gloom of the park, “that it came from here.”

  “I’m not even sure,” she further added, slipping her arm around Arthur’s waist, “that I know where here is.”

  Chapter 21

  The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is, as has been remarked before often and accurately, a pretty startling kind of a thing. It is, essentially, as the title implies, a guidebook. The problem is, or rather one of the problems, for there are many, a sizable number of which are continually clogging up the civil, commercial, and criminal courts in all areas of the Galaxy, and especially, where possible, the more corrupt ones, this.

  The previous sentence makes sense. That is not the problem.

  This is:

  Change.

  Read it through again and you’ll get it.

  The Galaxy is a rapidly changing place. There is, frankly, so much of it, every bit of which is continually on the move, continually changing. A bit of a nightmare, you might think, for a scrupulous and conscientious editor diligently striving to keep this massively detailed and complex electronic tome abreast of all the changing circumstances and conditions that the Galaxy throws up every minute of every hour of every day, and you would be wrong. Where you would be wrong would be in failing to realize that the editor, like all the editors the Guide has ever had, has no real grasp of the meaning of the words “scrupulous,” “conscientious,” and “diligent,” and tends to get his nightmares through a straw.