The Restaurant at the End of the Universe Read online

  "Listen, you miserable heap of maladjusted metal..."

  "Aren't you going to ask me what I want?"

  The insect paused. Its long thin tongue darted out and licked its eyes and darted back again.

  "Is it worth it?" it asked.

  "Is anything?" said Marvin immediately.

  "What... do... you... want?"

  "I'm looking for someone."

  "Who?" hissed the insect.

  "Zaphod Beeblebrox," said Marvin, "he's over there."

  The insect shook with rage. It could hardly speak.

  "Then why did you ask me?" it screamed.

  "I just wanted something to talk to," said Marvin.

  "What!"

  "Pathetic isn't it?"

  With a grinding of gears Marvin turned and trundled off. He caught up with Zaphod approaching the elevators. Zaphod span round in astonishment.

  "Hey... Marvin!" he said, "Marvin! How did you get here?"

  Marvin was forced to say something which came very hard to him.

  "I don't know," he said.

  "But--"

  "One moment I was sitting in your ship feeling very depressed, and the next moment I was standing here feeling utterly miserable. An Improbability Field I expect."

  "Yeah," said Zaphod, "I expect my great-grandfather sent you along to keep me company."

  "Thanks a bundle, Granddad," he added to himself under his breath.

  "So, how are you?" he said aloud.

  "Oh, fine," said Marvin, "if you happen to like being me which personally I don't."

  "Yeah, yeah," said Zaphod as the elevator doors opened.

  "Hello," said the elevator sweetly, "I am to be your elevator for this trip to the floor of your choice. I have been designed by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation to take you, the visitor to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, into these their offices. If you enjoy your ride, which will be swift and pleasurable, then you may care to experience some of the other elevators which have recently been installed in the offices of the Galactic tax department, Boobiloo Baby Foods and the Sirian State Mental Hospital, where many ex-Sirius Cybernetics Corporation executives will be delighted to welcome your visits, sympathy, and happy tales of the outside world."

  "Yeah," said Zaphod, stepping into it, "what else do you do besides talk?"

  "I go up," said the elevator, "or down."

  "Good," said Zaphod, "We're going up."

  "Or down," the elevator reminded him.

  "Yeah, OK, up please."

  There was a moment of silence.

  "Down's very nice," suggested the elevator hopefully.

  "Oh yeah?"

  "Super."

  "Good," said Zaphod, "Now will you take us up?"

  "May I ask you," inquired the elevator in its sweetest, most reasonable voice, "if you've considered all the possibilities that down might offer you?"

  Zaphod knocked one of his heads against the inside wall. He didn't need this, he thought to himself, this of all things he had no need of. He hadn't asked to be here. If he was asked at this moment where he would like to be he would probably have said he would like to be lying on the beach with at least fifty beautiful women and a small team of experts working out new ways they could be nice to him, which was his usual reply. To this he would probably have added something passionate on the subject of food.

  One thing he didn't want to be doing was chasing after the man who ruled the Universe, who was only doing a job which he might as well keep at, because if it wasn't him it would only be someone else. Most of all he didn't want to be standing in an office block arguing with an elevator.

  "Like what other possibilities?" he asked wearily.

  "Well," the voice trickled on like honey on biscuits, "there's the basement, the microfiles, the heating system... er..."

  It paused.

  "Nothing particularly exciting," it admitted, "but they are alternatives."

  "Holy Zarquon," muttered Zaphod, "did I ask for an existentialist elevator?" he beat his fists against the wall.

  "What's the matter with the thing?" he spat.

  "It doesn't want to go up," said Marvin simply, "I think it's afraid."

  "Afraid?" cried Zaphod, "Of what? Heights? An elevator that's afraid of heights?"

  "No," said the elevator miserably, "of the future..."

  "The future?" exclaimed Zaphod, "What does the wretched thing want, a pension scheme?"

  At that moment a commotion broke out in the reception hall behind them. From the walls around them came the sound of suddenly active machinery.

  "We can all see into the future," whispered the elevator in what sounded like terror, "it's part of our programming."

  Zaphod looked out of the elevator--an agitated crowd had gathered round the elevator area, pointing and shouting.

  Every elevator in the building was coming down, very fast.

  He ducked back in.

  "Marvin," he said, "just get this elevator go up will you? We've got to get to Zarniwoop."

  "Why?" asked Marvin dolefully.

  "I don't know," said Zaphod, "but when I find him, he'd better have a very good reason for me wanting to see him."

  Modern elevators are strange and complex entities. The ancient electric winch and "maximum-capacity-eight-persons" jobs bear as much relation to a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Happy Vertical People Transporter as a packet of mixed nuts does to the entire west wing of the Sirian State Mental Hospital.

  This is because they operate on the curios principle of "defocused temporal perception". In other words they have the capacity to see dimly into the immediate future, which enables the elevator to be on the right floor to pick you up even before you knew you wanted it, thus eliminating all the tedious chatting, relaxing, and making friends that people were previously forced to do while waiting for elevators.

  Not unnaturally, many elevators imbued with intelligence and precognition became terribly frustrated with the mindless business of going up and down, up and down, experimented briefly with the notion of going sideways, as a sort of existential protest, demanded participation in the decision-making process and finally took to squatting in basements sulking.

  An impoverished hitch-hiker visiting any planets in the Sirius star system these days can pick up easy money working as a counsellor for neurotic elevators.

  At the fifteenth floor the elevator doors opened quickly.

  "Fifteenth," said the elevator, "and remember, I'm only doing this because I like your robot."

  Zaphod and Marvin bundled out of the elevator which instantly snapped its doors shut and dropped as fast as its mechanism would take it.

  Zaphod looked around warily. The corridor was deserted and silent and gave no clue as to where Zarniwoop might be found. All the doors that led off the corridor were closed and unmarked.

  They were standing close to the bridge which led across from one tower of the building to the other. Through a large window the brilliant sun of Ursa Minor Beta threw blocks of light in which danced small specks of dust. A shadow flitted past momentarily.

  "Left in the lurch by a lift," muttered Zaphod, who was feeling at his least jaunty.

  They both stood and looked in both directions.

  "You know something?" said Zaphod to Marvin.

  "More that you can possibly imagine."

  "I'm dead certain this building shouldn't be shaking," Zaphod said.

  It was just a light tremor through the soles of his feet--and another one. In the sunbeams the flecks of dust danced more vigorously. Another shadow flitted past.

  Zaphod looked at the floor.

  "Either," he said, not very confidently, "they've got some vibro system for toning up your muscles while you work, or..."

  He walked across to the window and suddenly stumbled because at that moment his Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive sunglasses had turned utterly black. A large shadow flitted past the window with a sharp buzz.

  Zaphod ripped off his sunglasses,
and as he did so the building shook with a thunderous roar. He leapt to the window.

  "Or," he said, "this building's being bombed!"

  Another roar cracked through the building.

  "Who in the Galaxy would want to bomb a publishing company?" asked Zaphod, but never heard Marvin's reply because at that moment the building shook with another bomb attack. He tried to stagger back to the elevator--a pointless manoeuvre he realized, but the only one he could think of.

  Suddenly, at the end of the corridor leading at right angles from this one, he caught sight of a figure as it lunged into view, a man. The man saw him.

  "Beeblebrox, over here!" he shouted.

  Zaphod eyed him with distrust as another bomb blast rocked the building.

  "No," called Zaphod, "Beeblebrox over here! Who are you?"

  "A friend!" shouted back the man. He ran towards Zaphod.

  "Oh yeah?" said Zaphod, "Anyone's friend in particular, or just generally well disposed of people?"

  The man raced along the corridor, the floor bucking beneath his feet like an excited blanket. He was short, stocky and weatherbeaten and his clothes looked as if they'd been twice round the Galaxy and back with him in them.

  "Do you know," Zaphod shouted in his ear when he arrived, "your building's being bombed?"

  The man indicated his awareness.

  It suddenly stopped being light. Glancing round at the window to see why, Zaphod gaped as a huge sluglike, gunmetal-green spacecraft crept through the air past the building. Two more followed it.

  "The government you deserted is out to get you, Zaphod," hissed the man, "they've sent a squadron of Frogstar Fighters."

  "Frogstar Fighters!" muttered Zaphod, "Zarquon!"

  "You get the picture?"

  "What are Frogstar Fighters?" Zaphod was sure he'd heard someone talk about them when he was President, but he never paid much attention to official matters.

  The man was pulling him back through a door. He went with him. With a searing whine a small black spider-like object shot through the air and disappeared down the corridor.

  "What was that?" hissed Zaphod.

  "Frogstar Scout robot class A out looking for you," said the man.

  "Hey, yeah?"

  "Get down!"

  From the opposite direction came a larger black spider-like object. It zapped past them.

  "And that was...?"

  "A Frogstar Scout robot class B out looking for you."

  "And that?" said Zaphod, as a third one seared through the air.

  "A Frogstar Scout robot class C out looking for you."

  "Hey," chuckled Zaphod to himself, "pretty stupid robots, eh?"

  From over the bridge came a massive rumbling hum. A gigantic black shape was moving over it from the opposite tower, the size and shape of a tank.

  "Holy photon, what's that?"

  "A tank," said the man, "Frogstar Scout robot class D come to get you."

  "Should we leave?"

  "I think we should."

  "Marvin!" called Zaphod.

  "What do you want?"

  Marvin rose from a pile of rubble further down the corridor and looked at them.

  "You see that robot coming towards us?"

  Marvin looked at the gigantic black shape edging forward towards them over the bridge. He looked down at his own small metal body. He looked back up at the tank.

  "I suppose you want me to stop it," he said.

  "Yeah."

  "Whilst you save your skins."

  "Yeah," said Zaphod, "get in there!"

  "Just so long," said Marvin, "as I know where I stand."

  The man tugged at Zaphod's arm, and Zaphod followed him off down the corridor.

  A point occurred to him about this.

  "Where are we going?" he said.

  "Zarniwoop's office."

  "Is this any time to keep an appointment?"

  "Come on."

  Chapter 7

  Marvin stood at the end of the bridge corridor. He was not in fact a particularly small robot. His silver body gleamed in the dusty sunbeams and shook with the continual barrage which the building was still undergoing.

  He did, however, look pitifully small as the gigantic black tank rolled to a halt in front of him. The tank examined him with a probe. The probe withdrew.

  Marvin stood there.

  "Out of my way little robot," growled the tank.

  "I'm afraid," said Marvin, "that I've been left here to stop you."

  The probe extended again for a quick recheck. It withdrew again.

  "You? Stop me?" roared the tank. "Go on!"

  "No, really I have," said Marvin simply.

  "What are you armed with?" roared the tank in disbelief.

  "Guess," said Marvin.

  The tank's engines rumbled, its gears ground. Molecule-sized electronic relays deep in its microbrain flipped backwards and forwards in consternation.

  "Guess?" said the tank.

  Zaphod and the as yet unnamed man lurched up one corridor, down a second and along a third. The building continued to rock and judder and this puzzled Zaphod. If they wanted to blow the building up, why was it taking so long?

  With difficulty they reached one of a number of totally anonymous unmarked doors and heaved at it. With a sudden jolt it opened and they fell inside.

  All this way, thought Zaphod, all this trouble, all this not-lying-on-the-beach-having-a-wonderful-time, and for what? A single chair, a single desk and a single dirty ashtray in an undecorated office. The desk, apart from a bit of dancing dust and single, revolutionary form of paper clip, was empty.

  "Where," said Zaphod, "is Zarniwoop?" feeling that his already tenuous grasp of the point of this whole exercise was beginning to slip.

  "He's on an intergalactic cruise," said the man.

  Zaphod tried to size the man up. Earnest type, he thought, not a barrel of laughs. He probably apportioned a fair whack of his time to running up and down heaving corridors, breaking down doors and making cryptic remarks in empty offices.

  "Let me introduce myself," the man said, "My name is Roosta, and this is my towel."

  "Hello Roosta," said Zaphod.

  "Hello, towel," he added as Roosta held out to him a rather nasty old flowery towel. Not knowing what to do with it, he shook it by the corner.

  Outside the window, one of the huge slug-like, gunmetal-green spaceships growled past.

  "Yes, go on," said Marvin to the huge battle machine, "you'll never guess."

  "Errmmm..." said the machine, vibrating with unaccustomed thought, "laser beams?"

  Marvin shook his head solemnly.

  "No," muttered the machine in its deep guttural rumble, "Too obvious. Antimatter ray?" it hazarded.

  "Far too obvious," admonished Marvin.

  "Yes," grumbled the machine, somewhat abashed, "Er... how about an electron ram?"

  This was new to Marvin.

  "What's that?" he said.

  "One of these," said the machine with enthusiasm.

  From its turret emerged a sharp prong which spat a single lethal blaze of light. Behind Marvin a wall roared and collapsed as a heap of dust. The dust billowed briefly, then settled.

  "No," said Marvin, "not one of those."

  "Good though, isn't it?"

  "Very good," agreed Marvin.

  "I know," said the Frogstar battle machine, after another moment's consideration, "you must have one of those new Xanthic Restructron Destabilized Zenon Emitters!"

  "Nice, aren't they?" said Marvin.

  "That's what you've got?" said the machine in considerable awe.

  "No," said Marvin.

  "Oh," said the machine, disappointed, "then it must be..."

  "You're thinking along the wrong lines," said Marvin, "You're failing to take into account something fairly basic in the relationship between men and robots."

  "Er, I know," said the battle machine, "is it..." it tailed off into thought again.

  "Just think," ur
ged Marvin, "they left me, an ordinary, menial robot, to stop you, a gigantic heavy-duty battle machine, whilst they ran off to save themselves. What do you think they would leave me with?"

  "Oooh, er," muttered the machine in alarm, "something pretty damn devastating I should expect."

  "Expect!" said Marvin, "oh yes, expect. I'll tell you what they gave me to protect myself with, shall I."

  "Yes, alright," said the battle machine, bracing itself.

  "Nothing," said Marvin.

  There was a dangerous pause.

  "Nothing?" roared the battle machine.

  "Nothing at all," intoned Marvin dismally, "not an electronic sausage."

  The machine heaved about with fury.

  "Well, doesn't that just take the biscuit!" it roared, "Nothing, eh? Just don't think, do they?"

  "And me," said Marvin in a soft low voice, "with this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side."

  "Makes you spit, doesn't it?"

  "Yes," agreed Marvin with feeling.

  "Hell that makes me angry," bellowed the machine, "think I'll smash that wall down!"

  The electron ram stabbed out another searing blaze of light and took out the wall next to the machine.

  "How do you think I feel?" said Marvin bitterly.

  "Just ran off and left you, did they?" the machine thundered.

  "Yes," said Marvin.

  "I think I'll shoot down their bloody ceiling as well!" raged the tank.

  It took out the ceiling of the bridge.

  "That's very impressive," murmured Marvin.

  "You ain't seeing nothing yet," promised the machine, "I can take out this floor too, no trouble!"

  It took out the floor, too.

  "Hell's bells!" the machine roared as it plummeted fifteen storeys and smashed itself to bits on the ground below.

  "What a depressingly stupid machine," said Marvin and trudged away.

  Chapter 8

  "So, do we just sit here, or what?" said Zaphod angrily, "what do these guys out here want?"

  "You, Beeblebrox," said Roosta, "they're going to take you to the Frogstar--the most totally evil world in the Galaxy."

  "Oh, yeah?" said Zaphod. "They'll have to come and get me first."

  "They have come and got you," said Roosta, "look out of the window."

  Zaphod looked, and gaped.

  "The ground's going away!" he gasped, "where are they taking the ground?"

  "They're taking the building," said Roosta, "we're airborne."

  Clouds streaked past the office window.

  Out in the open air again Zaphod could see the ring of dark green Frogstar Fighters round the uprooted tower of the building. A network of force beams radiated in from them and held the tower in a firm grip.