The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (76 page)

Still not it, though.

Acrid smoke was drifting up from one end of the corridor, so he walked along it in the other direction.

He passed a series of observation monitors built into the walls behind plates of toughened but still badly scratched Plexiglas.

One of them showed some horrible green scaly reptilian figure ranting and raving about the Single Transferable Vote system. It was hard to tell whether he was for or against it, but he clearly felt very strongly about it. Ford turned the sound down.

That wasn’t it, though.

He passed another monitor. It was showing a commercial for some brand of toothpaste that would apparently make you feel free if you used it. There was nasty blaring music with it, too.

That wasn’t it.

He came upon another, much larger three-dimensional screen that was monitoring the outside of the vast silver Xaxisian ship.

As he watched, a thousand horribly beweaponed Zirzla robot star cruisers came searing round the dark shadow of a moon, silhouetted against the blinding disk of the star Xaxis, and the ship simultaneously unleashed a vicious blaze of hideously incomprehensible forces from all its orifices against them.

That was it.

Ford shook his head irritably and rubbed his eyes. He slumped on the wrecked body of a dull silver robot which clearly had been burning earlier on but had now cooled down enough to sit on.

He yawned and dug his copy of
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
out of his satchel. He activated the screen, and flickered idly through some level-three entries and some level-four entries. He was looking for some good insomnia cures. He found REST, which was what he reckoned he needed. He found
REST AND RECUPERATION
and was about to pass on when he suddenly had a better idea. He looked up at the monitor screen. The battle was raging more fiercely every second and the noise was appalling. The ship juddered, screamed, and lurched as each new bolt of stunning energy was delivered or received.

He looked back down at the
Guide
again and flipped through a few likely locations. He suddenly laughed, and then rummaged in his satchel again.

He pulled out a small memory dump module, wiped off the fluff and biscuit crumbs, and plugged it into an interface on the back of the
Guide.

When all the information that he could think was relevant had been dumped into the module, he unplugged it again, tossed it lightly in the palm of his hand, put the
Guide
away in his satchel, smirked, and went in search of the ship’s computer data banks.

T
he purpose of having the sun go low in the evenings, in the summer, especially in parks,” said the voice earnestly, “is to make girls’ breasts bob up and down more clearly to the eye. I am convinced that this is the case.” Arthur and Fenchurch giggled about this to each other as they passed. She hugged him more tightly for a moment.

“And I am certain,” said the frizzy ginger-haired youth with the long thin nose who was expostulating from his deck chair by the side of the Serpentine, “that if one worked the argument through, one would find that it flowed with perfect naturalness and logic from everything,” he insisted to his thin dark-haired companion who was slumped in the next-door deck chair feeling dejected about his spots, “that Darwin was going on about. This is certain. This is indisputable. And,” he added, “I love it.”

He turned sharply and squinted through his spectacles at Fenchurch. Arthur steered her away.

“Next guess,” she said, when she had stopped giggling, “come on.”

“All right,” he said, “your elbow. Your left elbow. There’s something wrong with your left elbow.”

“Wrong again,” she said, “completely wrong. You’re on completely the wrong track.”

The summer sun was sinking through the trees in the park, looking as if—let’s not mince words. Hyde Park is stunning. Everything about it is stunning except for the rubbish on Monday mornings. Even the ducks are stunning. Anyone who can go through Hyde Park on a summer’s evening and not feel moved by it is probably going through in an ambulance with the sheet pulled up over his face.

It is a park in which people do more extraordinary things than they do elsewhere. Arthur and Fenchurch found a man in shorts practicing the bagpipes to himself under a tree. The piper paused to chase off an American couple who had tried, timidly, to put some coins on the box his bagpipes came in.

“No!” he shouted at them; “go away! I’m only practicing.”

He started resolutely to reinflate his bag, but even the noise this made could not disfigure their mood.

Arthur put his arms around her and moved them slowly downward.

“I don’t think it can be your bottom,” he said after a while. “There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with that at all.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “there’s absolutely nothing wrong with my bottom.”

They kissed for so long that eventually the piper went and practiced on the other side of the tree.

“I’ll tell you a story,” said Arthur.

“Good.”

They found a patch of grass which was relatively free of couples actually lying on top of each other and sat and watched the stunning ducks and the low sunlight rippling on the water which ran beneath the stunning ducks.

“A story,” said Fenchurch, cuddling his arm to her.

“Which will tell something of the sort of things that happen to me. It’s absolutely true.”

“True story.”

“You know sometimes people tell you stories that are supposed to be something that happened to their wife’s cousin’s best friend, but actually probably got made up somewhere along the line.

“Well, it’s like one of those stories, except that it actually happened, and I know it actually happened, because the person it actually happened to was me.”

“Like the raffle ticket.”

Arthur laughed. “Yes. I had a train to catch. I arrived at the station—”

“Did I ever tell you,” interrupted Fenchurch, “what happened to my parents in a station?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “you did.”

“Just checking.”

Arthur glanced at his watch. “I suppose we could think of getting back,” he said.

“Tell me the story,” said Fenchurch firmly. “You arrived at the station.”

“I was about twenty minutes early. I’d got the time of the train wrong. I suppose it is at least equally possible,” he added after a moment’s reflection, “that British Rail had got the time of the train wrong. Hadn’t occurred to me before.”

“Get on with it.” Fenchurch laughed.

“So I bought a newspaper, to do the crossword, and went to the buffet to get a cup of coffee.”

“You do the crossword?”

“Yes.”

“Which one?”

“The Guardian
usually.”

“I think it tries to be too cute. I prefer
The Times.
Did you solve it?”

“What?”

“The crossword in
The Guardian.”

“I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet,” said Arthur. “I’m still trying to buy the coffee.”

“All right then. Buy the coffee.”

“I’m buying it. I am also,” said Arthur, “buying some biscuits.”

“What sort?”

“Rich Tea.”

“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.