The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy [53]
Suddenly a stentorian voice boomed across the room.
"Might I make an observation at this point?" inquired Deep Thought.
"We'll go on strike!" yelled Vroomfondel.
"That's right!" agreed Majikthise. "You'll have a national Philosopher's strike on your hands!"
The hum level in the room suddenly increased as several ancillary bass driver units, mounted in sedately carved and varnished cabinet speakers around the room, cut in to give Deep Thought's voice a little more power.
"All I wanted to say," bellowed the computer, "is that my circuits are now irrevocably committed to calculating the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything -" he paused and satisfied himself that he now had everyone's attention, before continuing more quietly, "but the programme will take me a little while to run."
Fook glanced impatiently at his watch.
"How long?" he said.
"Seven and a half million years," said Deep Thought.
Lunkwill and Fook blinked at each other.
"Seven and a half million years ...!" they cried in chorus.
"Yes," declaimed Deep Thought, "I said I'd have to think about it, didn't I? And it occurs to me that running a programme like this is bound to create an enormous amount of popular publicity for the whole area of philosophy in general. Everyone's going to have their own theories about what answer I'm eventually to come up with, and who better to capitalize on that media market than you yourself? So long as you can keep disagreeing with each other violently enough and slagging each other off in the popular press, you can keep yourself on the gravy train for life. How does that sound?"
The two philosophers gaped at him.
"Bloody hell," said Majikthise, "now that is what I call thinking. Here Vroomfondel, why do we never think of things like that?"
"Dunno," said Vroomfondel in an awed whisper, "think our brains must be too highly trained Majikthise."
So saying, they turned on their heels and walked out of the door and into a lifestyle beyond their wildest dreams.
Chapter 26
"Yes, very salutary," said Arthur, after Slartibartfast had related the salient points of the story to him, "but I don't understand what all this has got to do with the Earth and mice and things."
"That is but the first half of the story Earthman," said the old man. "If you would care to discover what happened seven and a half millions later, on the great day of the Answer, allow me to invite you to my study where you can experience the events yourself on our Sens-O-Tape records. That is unless you would care to take a quick stroll on the surface of New Earth. It's only half completed I'm afraid — we haven't even finished burying the artificial dinosaur skeletons in the crust yet, then we have the Tertiary and Quarternary Periods of the Cenozoic Era to lay down, and ..."
"No thank you," said Arthur, "it wouldn't be quite the same."
"No," said Slartibartfast, "it won't be," and he turned the aircar round and headed back towards the mind-numbing wall.
Chapter 27
Slartibartfast's study was a total mess, like the results of an explosion in a public library. The old man frowned as they stepped in.
"Terribly unfortunate," he said, "a diode blew in one of the life-support computers. When we tried to revive our cleaning staff we discovered they'd been dead for nearly thirty thousand years. Who's going to clear away the bodies, that's what I want to know. Look why don't you sit yourself down over there and let me plug you in?"
He gestured Arthur towards a chair which looked as if it had been made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus.
"It was made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus," explained the old man as he pottered about fishing bits of wire out from under tottering piles of paper and drawing instruments. "Here," he said, "hold these," and passed a couple of stripped wire end to Arthur.
The instant he took hold of them a bird flew straight through him.
He was suspended in mid-air and totally invisible to himself. Beneath him was a pretty treelined