So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish - Douglas Adams [6]
they have made a bona fide attempt to pay for a service in the normal way;
their lives would be otherwise in danger; or
they really want to.
Since invoking the third rule involved giving the editor a cut, Ford always preferred to muck about with the first two.
He stepped out along the street, walking briskly.
The air was stifling, but he liked it because it was stifling city air, full of excitingly unpleasant smells, dangerous music, and the distant sound of warring police tribes.
He carried his satchel with an easy swaying motion so that he could get a good swing at anybody who tried to take it from him without asking. It contained everything he owned, which at the moment wasn’t much.
A limousine careened down the street, dodging between the piles of burning garbage, and frightening an old pack animal which lurched, screeching, out of its way, stumbled against the window of a herbal remedies shop, set off a wailing alarm, blundered off down the street, and then pretended to fall down the steps of a small Italian restaurant where it knew it would get photographed and fed.
Ford was walking north. He thought he was probably on his way to the spaceport, but he had thought that before. He knew he was going through that part of the city where people’s plans often changed quite abruptly.
“Do you want to have a good time?” said a voice from a doorway.
“As far as I can tell,” said Ford, “I’m having one. Thanks.”
“Are you rich?” said another.
This made Ford laugh.
He turned and opened his arms in a wide gesture.
“Do I look rich?” he said.
“Don’t know,” said the girl. “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you’ll get rich. I have a very special service for rich people….”
“Oh yes,” said Ford, intrigued but careful, “and what’s that?”
“I tell them it’s okay to be rich.”
Gunfire erupted from a window high above them, but it was only a bass player getting shot for playing the wrong riff three times in a row, and bass players are two a penny in Han Dold City.
Ford stopped and peered into the dark doorway.
“You what?” he said.
The girl laughed and stepped forward a little out of the shadow. She was tall, and had that kind of self-possessed shyness which is a great trick if you can do it.
“It’s my big number,” she said. “I have a master’s degree in social economics and can be very convincing. People love it. Especially in this city.”
“Goosnargh,” said Ford Prefect, which was a special Betelgeusian word he used when he knew he should say something but didn’t know what it should be.
He sat on a step, took from his satchel a bottle of that Ol’ Janx Spirit and a towel. He opened the bottle and wiped the top of it with the towel, which had the opposite effect to the one intended, in that the Ol’ Janx Spirit instantly killed off millions of the germs which had been slowly building up quite a complex and enlightened civilization on the smellier patches of his towel.
“Want some?” he said, after he’d had a swig himself.
She shrugged and took the proffered bottle.
They sat for a while, peacefully listening to the clamor of burglar alarms in the next block.
“As it happens, I’m owed a lot of money,” said Ford, “so if I ever get hold of it, can I come and see you then maybe?”
“Sure, I’ll be here,” said the girl. “So how much is a lot?”
“Fifteen years’ back pay.”
“For?”
“Writing two words.”
“Zarquon,” said the girl, “which one took the time?”
“The first one. Once I’d got that the second one just came one afternoon after lunch.”
A huge electronic drum kit hurtled through the window high above them and smashed itself to bits in the street in front of them.
It soon became apparent that some of the burglar alarms on the next block had been deliberately set off by one police tribe in order to lay an ambush for the other. Cars with screaming sirens converged on the area, only to find themselves being picked off by helicopters which came thudding through the air between the city’s mountainous tower blocks.
“In fact,