Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams [13]
It landed gently. It extended a short ramp. A tall gray green figure marched briskly out and approached the small knot of people who were gathered in the center of the pitch tending to the casualties of the recent bizarre massacre. It moved people aside with quiet understated authority, and came at last to a man lying in a desperate pool of blood, clearly now beyond the reach of any earthly medicine, breathing, coughing his last. The figure knelt down quietly beside him.
“Arthur Philip Deodat?” asked the figure.
The man, with horrified confusion in his eyes, nodded feebly.
“You’re a no-good dumbo nothing,” whispered the creature. “I thought you should know that before you went.”
Chapter 4
t seemed to Arthur as if the whole sky suddenly just stood aside and let them through. It seemed to him that the atoms of his brain and the atoms of the cosmos were streaming through each other.
It seemed to him that he was blown on the wind of the Universe, and that the wind was him.
It seemed to him that he was one of the thoughts of the Universe and that the Universe was a thought of his.
It seemed to the people at Lord’s Cricket Ground that another north London restaurant had just come and gone as they so often do, and that this was Somebody Else’s Problem.
“What happened?” whispered Arthur in considerable awe.
“We took off,” said Slartibartfast.
Arthur lay in startled stillness on the acceleration couch. He wasn’t certain whether he had just got space-sickness or religion.
“Nice mover,” said Ford in an unsuccessful attempt to disguise the degree to which he had been impressed by what Slartibartfast’s ship had just done. “Shame about the decor.”
For a moment or two the old man didn’t reply. He was staring at the instruments with the air of one who is trying to convert Fahrenheit to centigrade in his head while his house is burning down. Then his brow cleared and he stared for a moment at the wide panoramic screen in front of him, which displayed a bewildering complexity of stars streaming like silver threads around them. His lips moved as if he were trying to spell something. Suddenly his eyes darted in alarm back to his instruments, but then his expression merely subsided into a steady frown. He looked back up at the screen. He felt his own pulse. His frown deepened for a moment, then he relaxed.
“It’s a mistake to try to understand machines,” he said, “they only worry me. What did you say?”
“Decor,” said Ford, “pity about it.”
“Deep in the fundamental heart of mind and Universe,” said Slartibartfast, “there is a reason.”
Ford glanced sharply around. He clearly thought this was taking an optimistic view of things.
The interior of the flight deck was dark green, dark red, dark brown, cramped and moodily lit. Inexplicably, the resemblance to a small Italian bistro had failed to end at the hatchway. Small pools of light picked out pot plants, glazed tiles and all sorts of little unidentifiable brass things.
Raffia-wrapped bottles lurked hideously in the shadows.
The instruments that had occupied Slartibartfast’s attention seemed to be mounted in the bottoms of bottles that were set in concrete.
Ford reached out and touched it.
Fake concrete. Plastic. Fake bottles set in fake concrete.
The fundamental heart of mind and Universe can take a running jump, he thought to himself, this is rubbish. On the other hand, it could not be denied that the way the ship had moved made the Heart of Gold seem like an electric pram.
He swung himself off the couch. He brushed himself off. He looked at Arthur, who was singing quietly to himself. He looked at the screen and recognized nothing. He looked at Slartibartfast.
“How far did we just travel?” he said.
“About …” said Slartibartfast, “about two-thirds of the way across the Galactic disc, I would say, roughly. Yes, roughly two-thirds, I think.”
“It’s a strange thing,” said Arthur quietly, “that the farther and faster one travels across the