The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Read online

  “Oh, well,” he said with resignation, “I was just hoping there would be some sort of reason.”

  “Do you know,” said Prak, “the story of the reason?”

  Arthur said that he didn’t, and Prak said that he knew that he didn’t.

  He told it.

  One night, he said, a spaceship appeared in the sky of a planet that had never seen one before. The planet was Dalforsas, the ship was this one. It appeared as a brilliant new star moving silently across the heavens.

  Primitive Tribesmen who were sitting huddled on the Cold Hillsides looked up from their steaming night drinks and pointed with trembling fingers, and swore that they had seen a sign, a sign from their Gods that meant that they must now arise at last and go and slay the evil Princes of the Plains.

  In the high turrets of their palaces, the Princes of the Plains looked up and saw the shining star, and received it unmistakably as a sign from their Gods that they must go and attack the accursed Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides.

  And between them, the Dwellers in the Forest looked up into the sky and saw the sign of the new star, and saw it with fear and apprehension, for though they had never seen anything like it before, they, too, knew precisely what it foreshadowed, and they bowed their heads in despair.

  They knew that when the rains came, it was a sign.

  When the rains departed, it was a sign.

  When the winds rose, it was a sign.

  When the winds fell, it was a sign.

  When in the land there was born at the midnight of a full moon a goat with three heads, that was a sign.

  When in the land there was born at some time in the afternoon a perfectly normal cat or pig with no birth complications, or even just a child with a retroussé nose, that, too, would often be taken as a sign.

  So there was no doubt at all that a new star in the sky was a sign of a particularly spectacular order.

  And each new sign signified the same thing—that the Princes of the Plains and the Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides were about to beat the hell out of each other again.

  This in itself wouldn’t be so bad, except that the Princes of the Plains and the Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides always elected to beat the hell out of each other in the Forest, and it was always the Dwellers in the Forest who came off worst in these exchanges, though as far as they could see it never had anything to do with them.

  And sometimes, after some of the worst of these outrages, the Dwellers in the Forest would send a Messenger to either the Leader of the Princes of the Plains or the Leader of the Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides and demand to know the reason for this intolerable behavior.

  And the Leader, whichever one it was, would take the Messenger aside and explain the reason to him, slowly and carefully, and with great attention to the considerable detail involved.

  And the terrible thing was, it was a very good one. It was very clear, very rational and tough. The Messenger would hang his head and feel sad and foolish that he had not realized what a tough and complex place the real world was, and what difficulties and paradoxes had to be embraced if one was to live in it.

  “Now do you understand?” the Leader would say.

  The Messenger would nod dumbly.

  “And you see these battles have to take place?”

  Another dumb nod.

  “And why they have to take place in the Forest, and why it is in everybody’s best interest, the Forest Dwellers included, that they should?”

  “Er …”

  “In the long run.”

  “Er, yes.”

  And the Messenger did understand the reason, and he returned to his people in the Forest. But as he approached them, as he walked through the Forest and among the trees, he found that all he could remember of the reason was how terribly clear the argument had seemed. What it actually was, he couldn’t remember at all.

  And this, of course, was a great comfort when next the Tribesmen and the Princes came hacking and burning their way through the Forest, killing every Forest Dweller in their way.

  Prak paused in his story and coughed pathetically.

  “I was the Messenger,” he said, “after the battles precipitated by the appearance of your ship, which were particularly savage. Many of our people died. I thought I could bring the reason back. I went, and was told it by the Leader of the Princes, but on the way back it slipped and melted away in my mind like snow in the sun. That was many years ago, and much has happened since then.”

  He looked up at Arthur, and giggled again very gently.

  “There is one other thing I can remember from the truth drug, apart from the frogs, and that is God’s last message to his creation. Would you like to hear it?”

  For a moment they didn’t know whether to take him seriously.

  “’S true,” he said, “for real. I mean it.”

  His chest heaved weakly and he struggled for breath. His head lolled slightly.

  “I wasn’t very impressed with it when I first knew what it was,” he said, “but now I think back to how impressed I was by the Prince’s reason, and how soon afterward I couldn’t recall it at all, I think it might be a lot more helpful. Would you like to know what it is? Would you?”

  They nodded dumbly.

  “I bet you would. If you’re that interested I suggest you go and look for it. It is written in thirty-foot-high letters of fire on top of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains in the land of Sevorbeupstry on the planet Preliumtarn, third out from the sun Zarss in Galactic Sector QQ7 ActiveJ Gamma. It is guarded by the Lajestic Vantrashell of Lob.”

  There was a long silence following this announcement, which was finally broken by Arthur.

  “Sorry, it’s where?” he said.

  “It is written,” repeated Prak, “in thirty-foot-high letters of fire on top of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains in the land of Sevorbeupstry on the planet Preliumtarn, third out from the …”

  “Sorry,” said Arthur again, “which mountains?”

  “The Quentulus Quazgar Mountains in the land of Sevorbeupstry on the planet …”

  “Which land was that? I didn’t quite catch it.”

  “Sevorbeupstry, on the planet …”

  “Sevorbe what?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Prak, and died testily.

  In the following days Arthur thought a little about this message, but in the end he decided that he was not going to allow himself to be drawn by it, and insisted on following his original plan of finding a nice little world somewhere to settle down and lead a quiet retired life. Having saved the Universe twice in one day he thought that he could take things a little easier from now on.

  They dropped him off on the planet Krikkit, which was now once again a pleasant idyllic pastoral world, even if the songs did occasionally get on his nerves.

  He spent a lot of time flying.

  He learned to communicate with birds and discovered that their conversation was fantastically boring. It was all to do with wind speed, wingspans, power-to-weight ratios and a fair bit about berries. Unfortunately, he discovered, once you have learned birdspeak you quickly come to realize that the air is full of it the whole time, just inane bird chatter. There is no getting away from it.

  For that reason Arthur eventually gave up the sport and learned to live on the ground and love it, despite the inane chatter he heard down there as well.

  One day he was walking through the fields humming a ravishing tune he’d heard recently when a silver spaceship descended from the sky and landed in front of him.

  A hatchway opened, a ramp extended and a tall gray green alien marched out and approached him.

  “Arthur Phili …” it said, then glanced sharply at him, and down at his clipboard. It frowned. It looked up at him again.

  “I’ve done you before, haven’t I?” it said.

  So Long,

  and Thanks

  for All the

  Fish

  For Jane

  With thanks


  to Rick and Heidi for the loan of their stable event

  to Mogens and Andy and all at Huntsham Court for a number of unstable events

  and especially to Sonny Mehta for being stable through all events.

  Prologue

  Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

  Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

  This planet has—or rather, had—a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time.

  Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

  And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

  Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

  And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.

  Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, and so the idea was lost, seemingly for ever.

  This is her story.

  Chapter 1

  That evening it was dark early, which was normal for the time of year. It was cold and windy, which was normal.

  It started to rain, which was particularly normal.

  A spacecraft landed, which was not.

  There was nobody around to see it except for some spectacularly stupid quadrupeds who hadn’t the faintest idea what to make of it, or whether they were meant to make anything of it, or eat it, or what. So they did what they did to everything, which was to run away from it and try to hide under each other, which never worked.

  It slipped down out of the clouds, seeming to be balanced on a single beam of light.

  From a distance you would scarcely have noticed it through the lightning and the storm clouds, but seen from close up to it was strangely beautiful—a gray craft of elegantly sculpted form; quite small.

  Of course, one never has the slightest notion what size or shape different species are going to turn out to be, but if you were to take the findings of the latest Mid-Galactic Census report as any kind of accurate guide to statistical averages you would probably guess that the craft would hold about six people, and you would be right.

  You’d probably guessed that anyway. The Census report, like most such surveys, had cost an awful lot of money and told nobody anything they didn’t already know—except that every single person in the Galaxy had 2.4 legs and owned a hyena. Since this was clearly not true the whole thing eventually had to be scrapped.

  The craft slid quietly down through the rain, its dim operating lights seeming to wrap it in tasteful rainbows. It hummed very quietly, a hum that became gradually louder and deeper as it approached the ground and which at an altitude of six inches became a heavy throb.

  At last it dropped and was quiet.

  A hatchway opened. A short flight of steps unfolded itself.

  A light appeared in the opening, a bright light streaming out into the wet night, and shadows moved within.

  A tall figure appeared in the light, looked around, flinched, and hurried down the steps, carrying a large shopping bag under his arm.

  He turned and gave a single abrupt wave back to the ship. Already the rain was streaming through his hair.

  “Thank you,” he called out, “thank you very—”

  He was interrupted by a sharp crack of thunder. He glanced up apprehensively, and in response to a sudden thought started quickly to rummage through the large plastic shopping bag, which he now discovered had a hole in the bottom.

  It had large characters printed on the side which read (to anyone who could decipher the Centaurian alphabet) DUTY FREE MEGA-MARKET, PORT BRASTA, ALPHA CENTAURI. BE LIKE THE TWENTY-SECOND ELEPHANT WITH HEATED VALUE IN SPACE—BARK!

  “Hold on!” the figure called, waving at the ship.

  The steps, which had started to fold themselves back through the hatchway, stopped, re-unfolded, and allowed him back in.

  He emerged again a few seconds later carrying a battered and threadbare towel which he shoved into the bag.

  He waved again, hoisted the bag under his arm, and started to run for the shelter of some trees as, behind him, the spacecraft had already begun its ascent.

  Lightning flitted through the sky and made the figure pause for a moment, and then hurry onward, revising his path to give the trees a wide berth. He moved swiftly across the ground, slipping here and there, hunching himself against the rain which was falling now with ever-increasing concentration, as if being pulled from the sky.

  His feet sloshed through the mud. Thunder grumbled over the hills. He pointlessly wiped the rain off his face and stumbled on.

  More lights.

  Not lightning this time, but more diffused and dimmer lights which played slowly over the horizon and faded.

  The figure paused again on seeing them, and then redoubled his steps, making directly toward the point on the horizon at which they had appeared.

  And now the ground was becoming steeper, sloping upward, and after another two or three hundred yards it led at last to an obstacle. The figure paused to examine the barrier and then dropped the bag over it before climbing over it himself.

  Hardly had the figure touched the ground on the other side than there came a machine sweeping out of the rain toward him with lights streaming through the wall of water. The figure pressed back as the machine streaked toward him. It was a low, bulbous shape, like a small whale surfing—sleek, gray, and rounded and moving at terrifying speed.

  The figure instinctively threw up his hands to protect himself, but was hit only by a sluice of water as the machine swept past and off into the night.

  It was illuminated briefly by another flicker of lightning crossing the sky, which allowed the soaked figure by the roadside a split second to read a small sign at the back of the machine before it disappeared.

  To the figure’s apparent incredulous astonishment the sign read “My other car is also a Porsche.”

  Chapter 2

  Rob McKenna was a miserable bastard and he knew it because he’d had a lot of people point it out to him over the years and he saw no reason to disagree with them except the obvious one which was that he liked disagreeing with people, particularly people he disliked, which included, at the last count, everybody.

  He heaved a sigh and shoved down a gear.

  The hill was beginning to steepen and his lorry was heavy with Danish thermostatic radiator controls.

  It wasn’t that he was naturally predisposed to be so surly, at least he hoped not. It was just the rain that got him down, always the rain.

  It was raining now, just for a change.

  It was a particular type of rain that he particularly disliked, particularly when he was driving. He had a number for it. It was rain type 17.

  He had read somewhere that the Eskimos had over two hundred different words for snow, without which their conversation would probably have got very monotonous. So they would distinguish between thin snow and thick snow, light snow and heavy snow, sludgy snow, brittle snow, snow that came in
flurries, snow that came in drifts, snow that came in on the bottom of your neighbor’s boots all over your nice clean igloo floor, the snows of winter, the snows of spring, the snows you remember from your childhood that were so much better than any of your modern snow, fine snow, feathery snow, hill snow, valley snow, snow that falls in the morning, snow that falls at night, snow that falls all of a sudden just when you were going out fishing, and snow that despite all your efforts to train them, the huskies have pissed on.

  Rob McKenna had two hundred and thirty-one different types of rain entered in his little book, and he didn’t like any of them.

  He shifted down another gear and the lorry heaved its revs up. It grumbled in a comfortable sort of way about all the Danish thermostatic radiator controls it was carrying.

  Since he had left Denmark the previous afternoon, he had been through types 33 (light pricking drizzle which made the roads slippery), 39 (heavy spotting), 47 to 51 (vertical light drizzle through to sharply slanting light to moderate drizzle freshening), 87 and 88 (two finely distinguished varieties of vertical torrential downpour), 100 (postdownpour squalling, cold), all the sea-storm types between 192 and 213 at once, 123, 124, 126, 127 (mild and intermediate cold gusting, regular and syncopated cab-drumming), 11 (breezy droplets), and now his least favorite of all, 17.

  Rain type 17 was a dirty blatter battering against his windshield so hard that it didn’t make much odds whether he had his wipers on or off.

  He tested this theory by turning them off briefly, but as it turned out the visibility did get quite a lot worse. It just failed to get better again when he turned them back on.

  In fact one of the wiper blades began to flap off.

  Swish swish swish flop swish swish flop swish swish flop swish flop swish flop flop flap scrape.

  He pounded his steering wheel, kicked the floor, thumped his cassette player until it suddenly started playing Barry Manilow, thumped it until it stopped again, and swore and swore and swore and swore and swore.

  It was at the very moment that his fury was peaking that there loomed swimmingly in his headlights, hardly visible through the blatter, a figure by the roadside.