The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (41 page)

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.

“Good on you, great ruler,” he said, “tell it like it is.”

“No, listen to me,” said Zarniwoop, “people come to you, do they? In ships …”

“I think so,” said the man. He handed the bottle to Trillian.

“And they ask you,” said Zarniwoop, “to make decisions for them? About people’s lives, about worlds, about economies, about wars, about everything going on out there in the Universe?”

“Out there?” said the man. “Out where?”

“Out there!” said Zarniwoop, pointing at the door.

“How can you tell there’s anything out there?” said the man politely. “The door’s closed.”

The rain continued to pound the roof. Inside the shack it was warm.

“But you know there’s a whole Universe out there!” cried Zarniwoop. “You can’t dodge your responsibilities by saying they don’t exist!”

The ruler of the Universe thought for a long while while Zarniwoop quivered with anger.

“You’re very sure of your facts,” he said at last. “I couldn’t trust the thinking of a man who takes the Universe—if there is one—for granted.”

Zarniwoop still quivered, but was silent.

“I only decide about my Universe,” continued the man quietly. “My Universe is my eyes and my ears. Anything else is hearsay.”

“But don’t you believe in anything?”

The man shrugged and picked up his cat.

“I don’t understand what you mean,” he said.

“You don’t understand that what you decide in this shack of yours affects the lives and fates of millions of people? This is all monstrously wrong!”

“I don’t know. I’ve never met all these people you speak of. And neither, I suspect, have you. They only exist in words we hear. It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own Universes of their eyes and ears.”

Trillian said:

“I think I’m just popping outside for a moment.”

She left and walked into the rain.

“Do you believe other people exist?” insisted Zarniwoop.

“I have no opinion. How can I say?”

“I’d better see what’s up with Trillian,” said Zaphod and slipped out.

Outside, he said to her:

“I think the Universe is in pretty good hands, yeah?”

“Very good,” said Trillian. They walked off into the rain.

Inside, Zarniwoop continued.

“But don’t you understand that people live or die on your word?”

The ruler of the Universe waited for as long as he could. When he heard the faint sound of the ship’s engines starting, he spoke to cover it.

“It’s nothing to do with me,” he said. “I am not involved with people. The Lord knows I am not a cruel man.”

“Ah!” barked Zarniwoop, “you say ‘The Lord.’ You believe in something!”

“My cat,” said the man benignly, picking it up and stroking it. “I call him The Lord. I am kind to him.”

“All right,” said Zarniwoop, pressing home his point, “how do you know he exists? How do you know he knows you to be kind, or enjoys what he thinks of as your kindness?”

‘I don’t,” said the man with a smile, “I have no idea. It merely pleases me to behave in a certain way to what appears to be a cat. Do you behave any differently? Please, I think I am tired.”

Zarniwoop heaved a thoroughly dissatisfied sigh and looked about.

“Where are the other two?” he said suddenly.

“What other two?” said the ruler of the Universe, settling back into his chair and refilling his whisky glass.

“Beeblebrox and the girl! The two who were here!”

“I remember no one. The past is a fiction to account for …”

“Stuff it,” snapped Zarniwoop and ran out into the rain. There was no ship. The rain continued to churn the mud. There was no sign to show where the ship had been. He hollered into the rain. He turned and ran back to the shack and found it locked.

The ruler of the Universe dozed lightly in his chair. After a while he played with the pencil and the paper again and was delighted when he discovered how to make a mark with the one on the other. Various noises continued outside, but he didn’t know whether they were real or not. He then talked to his table for a week to see how it would react.

T
he stars came out that night, dazzling in their brilliance and clarity. Ford and Arthur had walked more miles than they had any means of judging and finally stopped to rest. The night was cool and balmy, the air pure, the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic totally silent.

A wonderful stillness hung over the world, a magical calm which combined with the soft fragrances of the woods, the quiet chatter of insects and the brilliant light of the stars to soothe their jangled spirits. Even Ford Prefect, who had seen more worlds than he could count on a long afternoon, was moved to wonder if this was the most beautiful he had ever seen. All that day they had passed through rolling green hills and valleys, richly covered with grasses, wild scented flowers and tall thickly leaved trees; the sun had warmed them, light breezes had kept them cool, and Ford Prefect had checked his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic at less and less frequent intervals, and had exhibited less and less annoyance at its continued silence. He was beginning to think he liked it here.

Cool though the night air was they slept soundly and comfortably in the open and awoke a few hours later with the light dewfall, feeling refreshed but hungry. Ford had stuffed some small rolls into his satchel at Milliways and they breakfasted on these before moving on.

So far they had wandered purely at random, but now they struck out firmly eastward, feeling that if they were going to explore this world they should have some clear idea of where they had come from and where they were going.

Shortly before noon they had their first indication that the world they had landed on was not an uninhabited one: a half-glimpsed face among the trees, watching them. It vanished at the moment they both saw it, but the image they were both left with was of a humanoid creature, curious to see them but not alarmed. Half an hour later they glimpsed another such face, and ten minutes after that another.

A minute later they stumbled into a wide clearing and stopped short.

Before them in the middle of the clearing stood a group of about two dozen men and women. They stood still and quiet facing Ford and Arthur.
Around some of the women huddled some small children and behind the group was a ramshackle array of small dwellings made of mud and branches.

Ford and Arthur held their breath.

The tallest of the men stood little over five feet high, they all stooped forward slightly, had longish arms and lowish foreheads, and clear bright eyes with which they stared intently at the strangers.

Seeing that they carried no weapons and made no move toward them, Ford and Arthur relaxed slightly.

For a while the two groups simply stared at each other, neither side making any move. The natives seemed puzzled by the intruders, and while they showed no sign of aggression they were quite clearly not issuing any invitations.

Nothing happened.

For a full two minutes nothing continued to happen.

After two minutes Ford decided it was time something happened.

“Hello,” he said.

The women drew their children slightly closer to them.

The men made hardly any discernible move and yet their whole disposition made it clear that the greeting was not welcome—it was not resented in any great degree, it was just not welcome.

One of the men, who had been standing slightly forward of the rest of the group and who might therefore have been their leader, stepped forward. His face was quiet and calm, almost serene.

“Ugghhhuuggghhhrrrr uh uh ruh uurgh,” he said quietly.

This caught Arthur by surprise. He had grown so used to receiving an instantaneous and unconscious translation of everything he heard via the Babel fish lodged in his ear that he had ceased to be aware of it, and he was only reminded of its presence now by the fact that it didn’t seem to be working. Vague shadows of meaning had flickered at the back of his mind, but there was nothing he could get any firm grasp on. He guessed, correctly as it happens, that these people had as yet evolved no more than the barest rudiments of language, and that the Babel fish was therefore powerless to help. He glanced at Ford, who was infinitely more experienced in these matters.

“I think,” said Ford out of the corner of his mouth, “he’s asking us if we’d mind walking on around the edge of the village.”

A moment later, a gesture from the man-creature seemed to confirm this.

“Ruurgggghhhh urrgggh; urgh urgh (uh ruh) rruurruuh ug,” continued the man-creature.

“The general gist,” said Ford, “as far as I can make out, is that we are welcome to continue our journey in any way we like, but if we would walk around his village rather than through it it would make them all very happy.”

“So what do we do?”

“I think we make them happy,” said Ford.

Slowly and watchfully they walked around the perimeter of the clearing. This seemed to go down very well with the natives who bowed to them very slightly and then went about their business.

Ford and Arthur continued their journey through the wood. A few hundred yards past the clearing they suddenly came upon a small pile of fruit lying in their path—berries that looked remarkably like raspberries and strawberries, and pulpy, green-skinned fruit that looked remarkably like pears.

So far they had steered clear of the fruit and berries they had seen, though the trees and bushes were laden with them.

“Look at it this way,” Ford Prefect had said, “fruit and berries on strange planets either make you live or make you die. Therefore the point at which to start toying with them is when you’re going to die if you don’t. That way you stay ahead. The secret of healthy hitchhiking is to eat junk food.”

They looked at the pile that lay in their path with suspicion. It looked so good it made them almost dizzy with hunger.

“Look at it this way,” said Ford, “er …”

“Yes?” said Arthur.

“I’m trying to think of a way of looking at it which means we get to eat it,” said Ford.

The leaf-dappled sun gleamed on the plump skins of the things which looked like pears. The things which looked like raspberries and strawberries were fatter and riper than any Arthur had ever seen, even in ice cream commercials.

“Why don’t we eat them and think about it afterward?” he said.

“Maybe that’s what they want us to do.”

“All right, look at it this way.…”

“Sounds good so far.”

“It’s there for us to eat. Either it’s good or it’s bad, either they want to feed us or to poison us. If it’s poisonous and we don’t eat it they’ll just
attack us some other way. If we don’t eat, we lose out either way.”

“I like the way you’re thinking,” said Ford. “Now eat one.”

Hesitantly, Arthur picked up one of the things that looked like pears.

“I always thought that about the Garden of Eden story,” said Ford.

“Eh?”

“Garden of Eden. Tree. Apple. That bit, remember?”

“Yes, of course I do.”