Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams [62]
Zaphod did not want to tangle with them and, deciding that just as discretion was the better part of valor, so was cowardice the better part of discretion, he valiantly hid himself in a closet.
The closet in fact turned out to be the top part of a shaft that led down through an inspection hatch into a wide ventilation tunnel. He let himself down into it and started to crawl along it.
He didn’t like it. It was cold, dark and profoundly uncomfortable, and it frightened him. At the first opportunity—which was another shaft a hundred yards farther along—he climbed back up out of it.
This time he emerged into a smaller chamber, which appeared to be a computer intelligence center. He emerged in a dark narrow space between a large computer bank and the wall.
He quickly learned that he was not alone in the chamber and started to leave again, when he began to listen with interest to what the other occupants were saying.
“It’s the robots, sir,” said one voice, “there’s something wrong with them.”
“What, exactly?”
These were the voices of two War Command Krikkiters. All the War Commanders lived up in the sky in the Robot War Zones, and were largely immune to the whimsical doubts and uncertainties that were afflicting their fellows down on the surface of the planet.
“Well, sir, I think it’s just as well that they are being phased out of the war effort, and that we are now going to detonate the supernova bomb. In the very short time since we were released from the envelope …”
“Get to the point.”
“The robots aren’t enjoying it, sir.”
“What?”
“The war, sir, it seems to be getting them down. There’s a certain world-weariness about them, or perhaps I should say Universe-weariness.”
“Well, that’s all right, they’re meant to be helping to destroy it.”
“Yes, well, they’re finding it difficult, sir. They are afflicted with a certain lassitude. They’re just finding it hard to get behind the job. They lack oomph.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Well, I think they’re very depressed about something, sir.”
“What on Krikkit are you talking about?”
“Well, in the few skirmishes they’ve had recently, it seems that they go into battle, raise their weapons to fire and suddenly think, why bother? What, cosmically speaking, is it all about? And they just seem to get a little tired and a little grim.”
“And then what do they do?”
“Er, quadratic equations mostly, sir, fiendishly difficult ones by all accounts. And then they sulk.”
“Sulk?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Whoever heard of a robot sulking?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“What was that noise?”
It was the noise of Zaphod leaving with his heads spinning.
Chapter 31
n a deep well of darkness a crippled robot sat. It had been silent in its metallic darkness for some time. It was cold and damp but, being a robot, it was supposed not to be able to notice these things. With an enormous effort of will, however, it did manage to notice them.
Its brain had been harnessed to the central intelligence core of the Krikkit War Computer. It wasn’t enjoying the experience, and neither was the central intelligence core of the Krikkit War Computer.
The Krikkit robots who had salvaged this pathetic metal creature from the swamps of Sqornshellous Zeta had done so because they had recognized almost immediately its gigantic intelligence, and the use this could be to them.
They hadn’t reckoned with the attendant personality disorders, which the coldness, the darkness, the dampness, the crampedness and the loneliness were doing nothing to decrease.
It was not happy with its task.
Apart from anything else, the mere coordination of an entire planet’s military strategy was only taking up a tiny part of its formidable mind, and the rest of it had become extremely bored. Having solved all the major mathematical, physical, chemical, biological, sociological, philosophical, etymological, meteorological and psychological problems