The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (42 page)

“Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like guys, oh, but don’t eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting ‘Gotcha.’ It wouldn’t have made any difference if they hadn’t eaten it.”

“Why not?”

“Because if you’re dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won’t give up. They’ll get you in the end.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Never mind, eat the fruit.”

“You know, this place almost looks like the Garden of Eden.”

“Eat the fruit.”

“Sounds quite like it too.”

Arthur took a bite from the thing which looked like a pear.

“It’s a pear,” he said.

A few moments later, when they had eaten the lot, Ford Prefect turned round and called out.

“Thank you. Thank you very much,” he called, “you’re very kind.”

They went on their way.

For the next fifty miles of their journey eastward they kept on finding the occasional gift of fruit lying in their path, and though they once or twice had a quick glimpse of a native man-creature among the trees, they never again made direct contact. They decided they rather liked a race of people who made it clear that they were grateful simply to be left alone.

The fruit and berries stopped after fifty miles, because that was where the sea started.

Having no pressing calls on their time they built a raft and crossed the sea. It was relatively calm, only about sixty miles wide and they had a reasonably pleasant crossing, landing in a country that was at least as beautiful as the one they had left.

Life was, in short, ridiculously easy and for a while at least they were
able to cope with the problems of aimlessness and isolation by deciding to ignore them. When the craving for company became too great they would know where to find it, but for the moment they were happy to feel that the Golgafrinchans were hundreds of miles behind them.

Nevertheless, Ford Prefect began to use his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic more often again. Only once did he pick up a signal, but that was so faint and from such enormous distance that it depressed him more than the silence that had otherwise continued unbroken.

On a whim they turned northward. After weeks of traveling they came to another sea, built another raft and crossed it. This time it was harder going, the climate was getting colder. Arthur suspected a streak of masochism in Ford Prefect—the increasing difficulty of the journey seemed to give him a sense of purpose that was otherwise lacking. He strode onward relentlessly.

Their journey northward brought them into steep mountainous terrain of breathtaking sweep and beauty. The vast, jagged, snow-covered peaks ravished their senses. The cold began to bite into their bones.

They wrapped themselves in animal skins and furs which Ford Prefect acquired by a technique he once learned from a couple of ex-Pralite monks running a mind-surfing resort in the Hills of Hunian.

The Galaxy is littered with ex-Pralite monks, all on the make, because the mental control techniques the Order have evolved as a form of devotional discipline are, frankly, sensational—and extraordinary numbers of monks leave the Order just after they have finished their devotional training and just before they take their final vows to stay locked in small metal boxes for the rest of their lives.

Ford’s technique seemed to consist mainly of standing still for a while and smiling.

After a while an animal—a deer perhaps—would appear from out of the trees and watch him cautiously. Ford would continue to smile at it, his eyes would soften and shine, and he would seem to radiate a deep and universal love, a love which reached out to embrace all of creation. A wonderful quietness would descend on the surrounding countryside, peaceful and serene, emanating from this transfigured man. Slowly the deer would approach, step by step, until it was almost nuzzling him, whereupon Ford Prefect would reach out to it and break its neck.

“Pheromone control,” he said it was. “You just have to know how to generate the right smell.”

A
few days after landing in this mountainous land they hit a coastline which swept diagonally before them from the south-west to the northeast, a coastline of monumental grandeur: deep majestic ravines, soaring pinnacles of ice—fjords.

For two further days they scrambled and climbed over the rocks and glaciers, awestruck with beauty.

“Arthur!” yelled Ford suddenly.

It was the afternoon of the second day. Arthur was sitting on a high rock watching the thundering sea smashing itself against the craggy promontories.

“Arthur!” yelled Ford again.

Arthur looked to where Ford’s voice had come from, carried faintly in the wind.

Ford had gone to examine a glacier, and Arthur found him there crouching by the solid wall of the blue ice. He was tense with excitement—his eyes darted up to meet Arthur’s.

“Look,” he said, “look!”

Arthur looked. He saw the solid wall of blue ice.

“Yes,” he said, “it’s a glacier. I’ve already seen it.”

“No,” said Ford, “you’ve looked at it, you haven’t seen it. Look.”

Ford was pointing deep into the heart of the ice.

Arthur peered—he saw nothing but vague shadows.

“Move back from it,” insisted Ford, “look again.”

Arthur moved back and looked again.

“No,” he said, and shrugged. “What am I supposed to be looking for?”

And suddenly he saw it.

“You see it?”

He saw it.

His mouth started to speak, but his brain decided it hadn’t got anything to say yet and shut it again. His brain then started to contend with the problem of what his eyes told it they were looking at, but in doing so relinquished control of the mouth which promptly fell open again. Once more gathering up the jaw, his brain lost control of his left hand which
then wandered around in an aimless fashion. For a second or so the brain tried to catch the left hand without letting go of the mouth and simultaneously tried to think about what was buried in the ice, which is probably why the legs went and Arthur dropped restfully to the ground.

The thing that had been causing all this neural upset was a network of shadows in the ice, about eighteen inches beneath the surface. Looked at from the right angle they resolved into the solid shapes of letters from an alien alphabet, each about three feet high; and for those, like Arthur, who couldn’t read Magrathean there was above the letters the outline of a face hanging in the ice.

It was an old face, thin and distinguished, careworn but not unkind.

It was the face of the man who had won an award for designing the coastline they now knew themselves to be standing on.

A
thin whine filled the air. It whirled and howled through the trees, upsetting the squirrels. A few birds flew off in disgust. The noise danced and skittered round the clearing. It whooped, it rasped, it generally offended.

The Captain, however, regarded the lone bagpiper with an indulgent eye. Little could disturb his equanimity; indeed, once he had got over the loss of his gorgeous bath during that unpleasantness in the swamp all those months ago he had begun to find his new life remarkably congenial. A hollow had been scooped out of a large rock which stood in the middle of the clearing, and in this he would bask daily while attendants sloshed water over him. Not particularly warm water, it must be said, as they hadn’t yet worked out a way of heating it. Never mind, that would come, and in the meantime search parties were scouring the countryside far and wide for a hot spring, preferably one in a nice leafy glade, and if it was near a soap mine—perfection. To those who said that they had a feeling soap wasn’t found in mines, the Captain had ventured to suggest that perhaps that was because no one had looked hard enough, and this possibility had been reluctantly acknowledged.

No, life was very pleasant, and the great thing about it was that when the hot spring was found, complete with leafy glade
en suite
, and when in the fullness of time the cry came reverberating across the hills that the soap mine had been located and was producing five hundred cakes a day it would be more pleasant still. It was very important to have things to look forward to.

Wail, wail, screech, wail, howl, honk, squeak went the bagpipes, increasing the Captain’s already considerable pleasure at the thought that any moment now they might stop. That was something he looked forward to as well.

What else was pleasant? he asked himself. Well, so many things; the red and gold of the trees, now that autumn was approaching; the peaceful chatter of scissors a few feet from his bath where a couple of hairdressers were exercising their skills on a dozing art director and his assistant; the sunlight gleaming off the six shiny telephones lined up along the edge of his
rock-hewn bath. The only thing nicer than a phone that didn’t ring all the time (or indeed at all) was six phones that didn’t ring all the time (or indeed at all).

Nicest of all was the happy murmur of all the hundreds of people slowly assembling in the clearing around him to watch the afternoon committee meeting.

The Captain punched his rubber duck playfully on the beak. The afternoon committee meetings were his favorite.

Other eyes watched the assembling crowds. High in a tree on the edge of the clearing squatted Ford Prefect, lately returned from foreign climes. After his six-month journey he was lean and healthy, his eyes gleamed, he wore a reindeer-skin coat; his beard was as thick and his face as bronzed as a country-rock singer’s.

He and Arthur Dent had been watching the Golgafrinchans for almost a week now, and Ford had decided it was time to stir things up a bit.

The clearing was now full. Hundreds of men and women lounged around, chatting, eating fruit, playing cards and generally having a fairly relaxed time of it. Their track suits were now all dirty and even torn, but they all had immaculately styled hair. Ford was puzzled to see that many of them had stuffed their track suits full of leaves and wondered if this was meant to be some form of insulation against the coming winter. Ford’s eyes narrowed. They couldn’t be interested in botany all of a sudden could they?

In the middle of these speculations the Captain’s voice rose above the hubbub.

“All right,” he said, “I’d like to call this meeting to some sort of order, if that’s at all possible. Is that all right with everybody?” He smiled genially. “In a minute. When you’re all ready.”

The talking gradually died away and the clearing fell silent, except for the bagpiper who seemed to be in some wild and uninhabitable musical world of his own. A few of those in his immediate vicinity threw some leaves to him. If there was any reason for this then it escaped Ford Prefect for the moment.

A small group of people had clustered round the Captain and one of them was clearly preparing to speak. He did this by standing up, clearing his throat and then gazing off into the distance as if to signify to the crowd that he would be with them in a minute.

The crowd of course were riveted and all turned their eyes on him.

A moment of silence followed, which Ford judged to be the right dramatic moment to make his entry. The man turned to speak.

Ford dropped down out of the tree.

“Hi there,” he said.

The crowd swiveled round.

“Ah, my dear fellow,” called out the Captain, “got any matches on you? Or a lighter? Anything like that?”

“No,” said Ford, sounding a little deflated. It wasn’t what he’d prepared. He decided he’d better be a little stronger on the subject.

“No, I haven’t,” he continued. “No matches. Instead I bring you news …”

“Pity,” said the Captain. “We’ve all run out you see. Haven’t had a hot bath in weeks.”

Ford refused to be headed off.

“I bring you news,” he said, “of a discovery that might interest you.”

“Is it on the agenda?” snapped the man whom Ford had interrupted.

Ford smiled a broad country-rock singer smile.

“Now, come on,” he said.

“Well, I’m sorry,” said the man huffily, “but speaking as a management consultant of many years’ standing, I must insist on the importance of observing the committee structure.”

Ford looked around the crowd.

“He’s mad, you know,” he said, “this is a prehistoric planet.”

“Address the chair!” snapped the management consultant.

“There isn’t a chair,” explained Ford, “there’s only a rock.”

The management consultant decided that testiness was what the situation now called for.

“Well, call it a chair,” he said testily.

“Why not call it a rock?” asked Ford.

“You obviously have no conception,” said the management consultant, now abandoning testiness in favor of good old-fashioned hauteur, “of modern business methods.”

“And you have no conception of where you are,” said Ford.

A girl with a strident voice leaped to her feet and used it.

“Shut up, you two,” she said, “I want to table a motion.”

“You mean boulder a motion,” tittered a hairdresser.

“Order, order!” yapped the management consultant.

“All right,” said Ford, “let’s see how you’re doing.” He plunked himself down on the ground to see how long he could keep his temper.

The Captain made a sort of conciliatory harrumphing noise.

“I would like to call to order,” he said pleasantly, “the five hundred and seventy-third meeting of the colonization committee of Fintlewoodlewix.…”

Ten seconds, thought Ford, as he leaped to his feet again.

“This is futile,” he exclaimed. “Five hundred and seventy-three committee meetings and you haven’t even discovered fire yet!”

“If you would care,” said the girl with the strident voice, “to examine the agenda sheet—”

“Agenda rock,” trilled the hairdresser happily.

“Thank you, I’ve made that point,” muttered Ford.

“ … you … will … see …” continued the girl firmly, “that we are having a report from the hairdressers’ Fire Development Subcommittee today.”