Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams [63]
Marvin droned,
Now the world has gone to bed,
Darkness won’t engulf my head,
I can see by infrared,
How I hate the night.
He paused to gather the artistic and emotional strength to tackle the next verse.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
Try to count electric sheep, Sweet
dream wishes you can keep,
How I hate the night.
“Marvin!” hissed a voice.
His head snapped up, almost dislodging the intricate network of electrodes that connected him to the central. Krikkit War Computer.
An inspection hatch had opened and one of a pair of unruly heads was peering through while the other kept on jogging it by continually darting to look this way and that extremely nervously.
“Oh, it’s you,” muttered the robot, “I might have known.”
“Hey, kid,” said Zaphod in astonishment, “was that you singing just then?”
“I am,” Marvin acknowledged bitterly, “in particularly scintillating form at the moment.”
Zaphod poked his head in through the hatchway and looked around.
“Are you alone?” he said.
“Yes,” said Marvin, “wearily I sit here, pain and misery my only companions. And vast intelligence of course. And infinite sorrow. And …”
“Yeah,” said Zaphod, “hey, what’s your connection with all this?”
“This,” said Marvin, indicating with his less damaged arm all the electrodes that connected him with the Krikkit computer.
“Then,” said Zaphod awkwardly, “I guess you must have saved my life. Twice.”
“Three times,” said Marvin.
Zaphod’s head snapped round (his other one was looking hawkishly in entirely the wrong direction) just in time to see the lethal killer robot directly behind him seize up and start to smoke. It staggered backward and slumped against a wall. It slid down it. It slipped sideways, threw its head back and started to sob inconsolably.
Zaphod looked back at Marvin.
“You must have a terrific outlook on life,” he said.
“Just don’t even ask,” said Marvin.
“I won’t,” said Zaphod, and didn’t. “Hey, look” he added, “you’re doing a terrific job.”
“Which means, I suppose,” said Marvin, and requiring only one ten thousand million billion trillion grillionth part of his mental powers to make this particular logical leap, “that you’re not going to release me or anything like that.”
“Kid, you know I’d love to.”
“But you’re not going to.”
“No.”
“I see.”
“You’re working well.”
“Yes,” said Marvin, “why stop now just when I’m hating it?”
“I have to go find Trillian and the guys. Hey, you any idea where they are? I mean, I just got a planet to choose from. Could take a while.”
“They are very close,” said Marvin dolefully. “You can monitor them from here if you like.”
“I better go get them,” asserted Zaphod; “er, maybe they need some help, right?”
“Maybe,” said Marvin with unexpected authority in his lugubrious voice, “it would be better if you monitored them from here. That young girl,” he added unexpectedly, “is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life-forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting.”
Zaphod took a moment or two to find his way through this labyrinthine string of negatives and emerged at the other end with surprise.
“Trillian?” he said. “She’s just a kid. Cute, yeah, but temperamental. You know how it is with women. Or perhaps you don’t. I assume you don’t. If you do I don’t want to hear about it. Plug us in.”
“… totally manipulated.”
“What?” said Zaphod.
It was Trillian speaking. He turned round.
The wall against which the Krikkit robot was sobbing had lit up to reveal a scene taking place in some other unknown part of the Krikkit Robot War Zones. It seemed to be a council chamber of some kind—Zaphod couldn’t make it out too clearly because of the robot slumped against the screen.
He tried to move the robot, but it was heavy with its grief and tried to bite him, so he just looked around it as best he could.
“Just think about it,” said Trillian’s voice,