The Restaurant at the End of the Universe [73]
"Ford," he said suddenly, "look, if that Question is printed in my brain wave patterns but I'm not consciously aware of it it must be somewhere in my unconscious."
"Yes, I suppose so."
"There might be a way of bringing that unconscious pattern forward."
"Oh yes?"
"Yes, by introducing some random element that can be shaped by that pattern."
"Like how?"
"Like by pulling Scrabble letters out of a bag blindfolded."
Ford leapt to his feet.
"Brilliant!" he said. He tugged his towel out of his satchel and with a few deft knots transformed it into a bag.
"Totally mad," he said, "utter nonsense. But we'll do it because it's brilliant nonsense. Come on, come on."
The sun passed respectfully behind a cloud. A few small sad raindrops fell.
They piled together all the remaining letters and dropped them into the bag. They shook them up.
"Right," said Ford, "close your eyes. Pull them out. Come on come on, come on."
Arthur closed his eyes and plunged his hand into the towelful of stones. He jiggled them about, pulled out four and handed them to Ford. Ford laid them along the ground in the order he got them.
"W," said Ford, "H, A, T ... What!"
He blinked.
"I think it's working!" he said.
Arthur pushed three more at him.
"D, O, Y ... Doy. Oh perhaps it isn't working," said Ford.
"Here's the next three."
"O, U, G ... Doyoug ... It's not making sense I'm afraid."
Arthur pulled another two from the bag. Ford put them in place.
"E, T, doyouget ... Do you get!" shouted Ford, "it is working! This is amazing, it really is working!"
"More here." Arthur was throwing them out feverishly as fast as he could go.
"I, F," said Ford, "Y, O, U, ... M, U, L, T, I, P, L, Y, ... What do you get if you multiply, ... S, I, X, ... six, B, Y, by, six by ... what do you get if you multiply six by ... N, I, N, E, ... six by nine ..." He paused. "Come on, where's the next one?"
"Er, that's the lot," said Arthur, "that's all there were."
He sat back, nonplussed.
He rooted around again in the knotted up towel but there were no more letters.
"You mean that's it?" said Ford.
"That's it."
"Six by nine. Forty-two."
"That's it. That's all there is."
Chapter 34
The sun came out and beamed cheerfully at them. A bird sang. A warm breeze wafted through the trees and lifted the heads of the flowers, carrying their scent away through the woods. An insect droned past on its way to do whatever it is that insects do in the late afternoon. The sound of voices lilted through the trees followed a moment later by two girls who stopped in surprise at the sight of Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent apparently lying on the ground in agony, but in fact rocking with noiseless laughter.
"No, don't go," called Ford Prefect between gasps, "we'll be with you in a moment."
"What's the matter?" asked one of the girls. She was the taller and slimmer of the two. On Golgafrincham she had been a junior personnel officer, but hadn't liked it much.
Ford pulled himself together.
"Excuse me," he said, "hello. My friend and I were just contemplating the meaning of life. Frivolous exercise."
"Oh it's you," said the girl, "you made a bit of a spectacle of yourself this afternoon. You were quite funny to begin with but you did bang on a bit."
"Did I? Oh yes."
"Yes, what was all that for?" asked the other girl, a shorter round-faced girl who had been an art director for a small advertising company on Golgafrincham. Whatever the privations of this world were, she went to sleep every night profoundly grateful for the fact that whatever she had to face in the morning it wouldn't be a hundred almost identical photographs of moodily lit tubes of toothpaste.
"For? For nothing. Nothing's for anything," said