Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams [21]
Suddenly there was a dramatic hush in what was presumably meant to be the cosmos, and a darkening of the lights.
“There is not a world,” thrilled the man’s expert voice, “not a civilized world in the Galaxy where this symbol is not revered even today. Even in primitive worlds it persists in racial memories. This it was that the forces of Krikkit destroyed, and this it is that now locks their world away till the end of eternity!”
And with a flourish, the man produced in his hands a model of the Wikkit Gate. Scale was terribly hard to judge in this whole extraordinary spectacle, but the model looked as if it must have been about three feet high.
“Not the original Key, of course. That, as everyone knows, was destroyed, blasted into the ever whirling eddies in the space-time continuum and lost forever. This is a remarkable replica, hand-tooled by skilled craftsmen, lovingly assembled using ancient craft secrets into a memento you will be proud to own, in memory of those who fell, and in tribute to the Galaxy—our Galaxy—which they died to defend….”
Slartibartfast floated past again at this moment.
“Found it,” he said, “we can lose all this rubbish. Just don’t nod, that’s all.”
“Now, let us bow our heads in payment,” intoned the voice, and then said it again, much faster and backward.
Lights came and went, the pillars disappeared, the man gabbled himself backward into nothing, the Universe snappily reassembled itself around them.
“You get the gist?” said Slartibartfast.
“I’m astonished,” said Arthur, “and bewildered.”
“I was asleep,” said Ford, who floated into view at this point. “Did I miss anything?”
They found themselves once again teetering rather rapidly on the edge of an agonizingly high cliff. The wind whipped out from their faces and across a bay on which the remains of one of the greatest and most powerful space battle fleets ever assembled in the Galaxy were briskly burning themselves back into existence. The sky was a sullen pink, darkening, via a rather curious color, to blue and upward to black. Smoke billowed down out of it at an incredible lick.
Events were now passing back by them almost too quickly to be distinguished, and when, a short while later, a huge star battleship rushed away from them as if they’d said “Boo,” they only just recognized it as the point at which they had come in.
But now things were too rapid, a videotactile blur that brushed and jiggled them through centuries of Galactic history, turning, twisting, flickering. The sound was a mere thin trill.
Periodically throughout the thickening jumble of events they sensed appalling catastrophies, deep horrors, cataclysmic shocks, and these were always associated with certain recurring images, the only images which ever stood out clearly from the avalanche of tumbling history: a Wikkit Gate, a small, hard red ball, and hard white robots, and also something less distinct, something dark and cloudy.
But there was also another sensation that rose clearly out of the trilling passage of time.
Just as a slow series of clicks when speeded up will lose the definition of each individual click and gradually take on the quality of a sustained and rising tone, so a series of individual impressions here took on the quality of a sustained emotion—and yet not an emotion. If it was an emotion, it was a totally emotionless one. It was hatred, implacable hatred. It was cold, not like ice is cold, but like a wall is cold. It was impersonal, not like a randomly flung fist in a crowd is impersonal, but like a computer-issued parking summons is impersonal. And it was deadly, again, not like a bullet or a knife is deadly, but like a brick wall across an expressway is deadly.
And just as a rising tone will change in character and take on harmonics as it rises, so again this emotionless emotion seemed to rise to an unbearable if unheard scream and suddenly seemed to be a scream of guilt and failure.
And suddenly it stopped.
They were left standing on a quiet hilltop on