So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish - Douglas Adams [53]
This was perfectly true, and a very respectable view widely held by right-thinking people, who are largely recognizable as being right-thinking people by the mere fact that they hold this view.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in a moment of reasoned lucidity which is almost unique among its current tally of five million, nine hundred and seventy-three thousand, five hundred and nine pages, says of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products that “it is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all.
“In other words—and this is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation’s Galaxywide success is founded—their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.”
“And this guy,” ranted Ford, “was on a drive to sell more of them! His five-year mission to seek out and explore strange new worlds, and sell Advanced Music Substitute Systems to their restaurants, elevators, and wine bars! Or if they didn’t have restaurants, elevators, and wine bars yet, to artificially accelerate their civilization growth until they bloody well did have! Where’s that coffee!”
“I threw it away.”
“Make some more. I have now remembered what I did next. I saved civilization as we know. I knew it was something like that.”
He stumbled determinedly back into the sitting room, where he seemed to carry on talking to himself, tripping over the furniture and making beep-beep noises.
A couple of minutes later, wearing his very placid face, Arthur followed him.
Ford looked stunned.
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
“Making some coffee,” said Arthur, still wearing his very placid face. He had long ago realized that the only way of being in Ford’s company successfully was to keep a large stock of very placid faces and wear them at all times.
“You missed the best bit!” raged Ford. “You missed the bit where I jumped the guy! Now,” he said, “I shall have to jump him all over again!”
He hurled himself recklessly at a chair and broke it.
“It was better,” he said sullenly, “last time,” and waved vaguely in the direction of another broken chair which he had already got trussed up on the dining table.
“I see,” said Arthur, casting a placid eye over the trussed-up wreckage, “and, er, what are all the ice cubes for?”
“What?” screamed Ford. “What? You missed that bit, too? That’s the suspended animation facility! I put the guy in the suspended animation facility. Well, I had to, didn’t I?”
“So it would seem,” said Arthur, in his placid voice.
“Don’t touch that!!!” yelled Ford.
Arthur, who was about to replace the phone, which was for some mysterious reason lying on the table, off the hook, paused, placidly.
“Okay,” said Ford, calming down, “listen to it.”
Arthur put the phone to his ear.
“It’s the speaking clock,” he said.
“Beep, beep, beep,” said Ford, “beep, beep, beep.”
“I see,” said Arthur, with every ounce of placidness he could muster.
“Beep, beep, beep,” said Ford, “is exactly what is being heard all over that guy’s ship, while he sleeps, in the ice, going slowly round a little known moon of Sesefras Magna. The London speaking clock!”
“I see,” said Arthur again, and decided that now was the time to ask the big one.
“Why?” he said, acidly.
“With a bit of luck,” said Ford, “the phone bill will bankrupt the buggers.”
He threw himself, sweating, onto the sofa.
“Anyway,” he said, “dramatic arrival, don’t you think?”
Chapter 36
he flying saucer in which Ford Prefect had stowed away had stunned the world.
Finally there was no doubt, no possibility of mistake, no hallucinations, no mysterious CIA agents found floating in reservoirs.
This time it was real, it was definite. It was quite definitely definite.
It had come down with a wonderful disregard