So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish - Douglas Adams [39]
He stood up quickly, put his arms around her and gave her a single kiss.
“Perhaps you can do what I can do,” he said, and walked straight out of her upstairs front door.
The record got to the good bit.
Chapter 23
he battle raged on about the star of Xaxis. Hundreds of the fierce and horribly beweaponed Zirzla ships had now been smashed and wrenched to atoms by the withering forces the huge silver Xaxisian ship was able to deploy.
Part of the moon had gone, too, blasted away by those same blazing force guns that ripped the very fabric of space as they passed through it.
The Zirzla ships that remained, horribly beweaponed though they were, were now hopelessly outclassed by the devastating power of the Xaxisian ship, and were fleeing for cover behind the rapidly disintegrating moon, when the Xaxisian ship, in hurtling pursuit behind them, suddenly announced that it needed a holiday and left the field of battle.
All was redoubled fear and consternation for a moment, but the ship was gone.
With the stupendous powers at its command it flitted across vast tracts of irrationally shaped space, quickly, effortlessly, and above all, quietly.
Deep in his greasy, smelly bunk, fashioned out of a maintenance hatchway, Ford Prefect slept among his towels, dreaming of old haunts. He dreamed at one point in his slumbers of New York. In his dreams he was walking late at night along the East Side, beside the river which had become so extravagantly polluted that new life forms were now emerging from it spontaneously, demanding welfare and voting rights.
One of these floated past, waving. Ford waved back.
The thing thrashed to the shore and struggled up the bank.
“Hi,” it said, “I’ve just been created. I’m completely new to the Universe in all respects. Is there anything you can tell me?”
“Phew,” said Ford, a little nonplussed, “I can tell you where some bars are, I guess.”
“What about love and happiness? I sense deep needs for things like that,” it said, waving its tentacles. “Got any leads there?”
“You can get some of that,” said Ford, “on Seventh Avenue.”
“I instinctively feel,” said the creature, urgently, “that I need to be beautiful. Am I?”
“You’re pretty direct, aren’t you?”
“No point in mucking about. Am I?”
The thing was oozing all over the place now, squelching and blubbering. A nearby wino was getting interested.
“To me?” said Ford. “No. But listen,” he added after a moment, “most people make out, you know. Are there any more like you down there?”
“Search me, buster,” said the creature. “As I said, I’m new here. Life is entirely strange to me. What’s it like?”
Here was something that Ford felt he could speak about with authority.
“Life,” he said, “is like a grapefruit.”
“Er, how so?”
“Well, it’s sort of orangy-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It’s got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast.”
“Is there anyone else out there I can talk to?”
“I expect so,” said Ford; “ask a policeman.”
Deep in his bunk, Ford Prefect wriggled and turned onto his other side. It wasn’t his favorite type of dream because it didn’t have Eccentrica Gallumbits (the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon Six) in it, whom many of his dreams did feature. But at least it was a dream. At least he was asleep.
Chapter 24
uckily there was a strong updraft in the alley because Arthur hadn’t done this sort of thing for a while, at least not deliberately, and deliberately is exactly the way you are not meant to do it.
He swung down sharply, nearly catching himself a nasty crack on the jaw with the doorstep, and tumbled through the air, so suddenly stunned with what a profoundly stupid thing he had just done that he completely forgot the bit about hitting the ground and didn’t.
A nice trick, he thought to himself, if you can do it.
The ground was hanging menacingly above his head.
He tried not to think about the ground, what an extraordinarily big thing it was and how much it would hurt him