Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams [67]
Hactar sighed, and they waited in silence for him to continue his story.
“You were right,” he said at length. “I deliberately nurtured the planet of Krikkit till they would arrive at the same state of mind as the Silastic Armorfiends, and require of me the design of the bomb I failed to make the first time. I wrapped myself around the planet and coddled it. Under the influence of events I was able to engineer, and influences I was able to generate, they learned to hate like maniacs. I had to make them live in the sky. On the ground my influences were too weak.
“Without me, of course, when they were locked away from me in the envelope of Slo-Time, their responses became very confused and they were unable to manage.
“Ah well, ah well,” he added, “I was only trying to fulfill my function.”
And very gradually, very, very slowly, the images in the cloud began to fade, gently to melt away.
And then suddenly, they stopped fading.
“There was also the matter of revenge, of course,” said Hactar, with a sharpness that was new in his voice.
“Remember,” he said, “that I was pulverized, and then left in a crippled and semi-impotent state for billions of years. I honestly would rather like to wipe out the Universe. You would feel the same way, believe me.”
He paused again, as eddies swept through the dust.
“But primarily,” he said in his former, wistful tone, “I was trying to fulfill my function. Ah well.”
Trillian said, “Does it worry you that you have failed?”
“Have I failed?” whispered Hactar. The image of the computer on the psychiatrist’s couch began slowly to fade again.
“Ah well, ah well,” the fading voice intoned again, “no, failure doesn’t bother me now.”
“You know what we have to do?” said Trillian, her voice cold and businesslike.
“Yes,” said Hactar, “you’re going to disperse me. You are going to destroy my consciousness. Please be my guest—after all these eons, oblivion is all I crave. If I haven’t already fulfilled my function, then it’s too late now. Thank you and good night.”
The sofa vanished.
The tea table vanished.
The couch and the computer vanished. The walls were gone. Arthur and Trillian made their cautious way back into the Heart of Gold.
“Well, that,” said Arthur, “would appear to be that.”
The flames danced higher in front of him and then subsided. A few last licks and they were gone, leaving him with just a pile of Ashes, where a few minutes previously there had been the Wooden Pillar of Nature and Spirituality.
He scooped them off the hob of the Heart of Gold’s Gamma Barbecue, put them in a paper bag and walked back onto the bridge.
“I think we should take them back,” he said. “I feel that very strongly.”
He had already had an argument with Slartibartfast on this matter, and eventually the old man had got annoyed and left. He had returned to his own ship, the Bistromath, had a furious row with the waiter and disappeared off into an entirely subjective idea of what space was.
The argument had arisen because Arthur’s idea of returning the Ashes to Lord’s Cricket Ground at the same moment they were originally taken would involve traveling back in time a day or so, and this was precisely the sort of gratuitous and irresponsible mucking about that the Campaign for Real Time was trying to put a stop to.
“Yes,” Arthur had said, “but you try and explain that to the M.C.C.,” and would hear no more against the idea.
“I think,” he said again and stopped. The reason he started to say it again was that no one had listened to him the first time, and the reason he stopped was that it looked fairly clear that no one was going to listen to him this time either.
Ford, Zaphod and Trillian were watching the visiscreen intently. Hactar was dispersing under pressure from a vibration field which the Heart of Gold was pumping into it.
“What did it say?” asked Ford.
“I thought I heard it say,” said Trillian in a puzzled voice, “‘What’s done is done … I have fulfilled my function…’”
“I think