Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams [64]
Zaphod was mad with frustration that he couldn’t see the screen. The robot’s head was obscuring his view of the people Trillian was talking to, its multifunctional battleclub was obscuring the background, and the elbow of the arm it had pressed tragically against its brow was obscuring Trillian herself.
“Then,” said Trillian, “this spaceship that crash-landed on your planet. That’s really likely, isn’t it? Have you any idea what the odds are against a drifting spaceship accidentally intersecting with the orbit of a planet?”
“Hey,” said Zaphod, “she doesn’t know what the zark she’s talking about. I’ve seen that spaceship. It’s a fake. No deal.”
“I thought it might be,” said Marvin from his prison behind Zaphod.
“Oh yeah,” said Zaphod, “its easy for you to say that. I just told you. Anyway, I don’t see what it’s got to do with anything.”
“And especially,” continued Trillian, “the odds against its intersecting with the orbit of the one planet in the Galaxy or with the whole of the Universe, as far as I know would be totally staggering. You don’t know what the odds are? Nor do I, they’re that big. Again, it’s a setup. I wouldn’t be surprised if that spaceship was just a fake.”
Zaphod managed to move the robot’s battleclub. Behind it on the screen were the figures of Ford, Arthur and Slartibartfast, who appeared astonished and bewildered by the whole thing.
“Hey, look,” said Zaphod excitedly, “the guys are doing great. Rah, rah, rah! Go get ’em, guys.”
“And what about,” said Trillian, “all this technology you suddenly managed to build for yourselves almost overnight? Most people would take thousands of years to do all that. Someone was feeding you what you needed to know, someone was keeping you at it.
“I know, I know,” she added in response to some unseen interruption, “I know you didn’t realize it was going on. That is exactly my point. You never realized anything at all. Like this supernova bomb.”
“How do you know about that?” said an unseen voice.
“I just know,” said Trillian. “You expect me to believe that you are bright enough to invent something that brilliant and be too dumb to realize it would take you with it as well? That’s not just stupid, that is spectacularly obtuse.”
“Hey, what’s this bomb thing?” said Zaphod in alarm to Marvin.
“The supernova bomb?” said Marvin. “It’s a very, very small bomb.”
“Yeah?”
“That would destroy the Universe completely,” added Marvin. “Good idea, if you ask me. They won’t get it to work though.”
“Why not, if it’s so brilliant?”
“It’s brilliant,” said Marvin, “they’re not. They got as far as designing it before they were locked in the envelope. They’ve spent the last five years building it. They think they’ve got it right but they haven’t. They’re as stupid as any other organic life-form. I hate them.”
Trillian was continuing.
Zaphod tried to pull the Krikkit robot away by its leg, but it kicked and growled at him, and then quaked with a fresh outburst of sobbing. Then suddenly it slumped over and continued to express its feelings out of everybody’s way on the floor.
Trillian was standing alone in the middle of the chamber, tired but with fiercely burning eyes.
Ranged in front of her were the pale-faced and wrinkled Elder Masters of Krikkit, motionless behind their widely curved control desk, staring at her with helpless fear and hatred.
In front of them, equidistant between their control desk and the middle of the chamber, where Trillian stood, as if on trial, was a slim white pillar about four feet tall. On top of it stood a small white globe, about three, maybe four inches in diameter.
Beside it stood a Krikkit robot with its multifunctional battleclub.
“In fact,” explained Trillian, “you are so dumb stupid …” (She was sweating. Zaphod felt that this was an unattractive thing for her to be doing at this