Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams [43]
“Save the Universe,” spat Agrajag with contempt. “You should have thought of that before you started your vendetta against me! What about the time when you were on Stavromula Beta and someone …”
“I’ve never been there,” said Arthur.
“… tried to assassinate you and you ducked. Who do you think the bullet hit? What did you say?”
“Never been there,” repeated Arthur. “What are you talking about? I have to go.”
Agrajag stopped in his tracks.
“You must have been there. You were responsible for my death there, as everywhere else. An innocent bystander!” He quivered.
“I’ve never heard of the place,” insisted Arthur. “I’ve certainly never had anyone try to assassinate me. Other than you. Perhaps I go there later, do you think?”
Agrajag blinked slowly in a kind of frozen logical horror.
“You haven’t been to Stavromula Beta … yet?” he whispered.
“No,” said Arthur, “I don’t know anything about the place. Certainly never been to it, and don’t have any plans to go.”
“Oh, you go there all right,” muttered Agrajag in a broken voice, “you go there all right. Oh, zark!” He tottered, and stared wildly about him at his huge Cathedral of Hate. “I’ve brought you here too soon!”
He started to scream and bellow, “I’ve brought you here too zarking soon!”
Suddenly he rallied, and turned a baleful, hating eye on Arthur.
“I’m going to kill you anyway!” he roared. “Even if it’s a logical impossibility I’m going to zarking well try! I’m going to blow this whole mountain up!” He screamed, “Let’s see you get out of this one, Dent!”
He rushed in a painful waddling hobble to what appeared to be a small black sacrificial altar. He was shouting so wildly now that he was really carving his face up badly. Arthur leaped down from his vantage place on the carving of his own foot and ran to try to restrain the three-quarters-crazed creature.
He leaped upon him, and brought the strange monstrosity crashing down on top of the altar.
Agrajag screamed again, thrashing wildly for a brief moment, and turned a wild eye on Arthur.
“You know what you’ve done?” he gurgled painfully; “you’ve gone and killed me again. I mean, what do you want from me, blood?”
He thrashed again in a brief apoplectic fit, quivered and collapsed, smacking a large red button on the altar as he did so.
Arthur started with horror and fear, first at what he appeared to have done, and then at the loud sirens and bells that suddenly shattered the air to announce some clamoring emergency. He stared wildly around him.
The only exit appeared to be the way he had come in. He pelted toward it, throwing away the nasty fake leopard-skin bag as he did so.
He dashed randomly, haphazardly through the labyrinthine maze; he seemed to be pursued more and more fiercely by klaxons, sirens, flashing lights.
Suddenly, he turned a corner and there was a light in front of him.
It wasn’t flashing. It was daylight.
Chapter 17
lthough it has been said that on Earth alone in our Galaxy is Krikkit (or cricket) treated as a fit subject for a game, and that for this reason the Earth has been shunned, this only applies to our Galaxy, and more specifically to our dimension. In some of the higher dimensions they feel they can more or less please themselves, and have been playing a peculiar game called Brockian Ultra Cricket for whatever their transdimensional equivalent of billions of years is.
“Let’s be blunt, it’s a nasty game” (says The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), “but then anyone who has been to any of the higher dimensions will know that they’re a pretty nasty heathen lot up there who should just be smashed and done in, and would be, too, if anyone could work out a way of firing missiles at right angles to reality.”
This is another example that The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will employ anybody who wants to walk straight in off the street and get ripped off, especially if they happen to walk in off the street during the afternoon, when very few of the regular staff members are there.
There is a fundamental point here:
The history