The Restaurant at the End of the Universe - Douglas Adams [6]
At last he let out a cry of anger, snatched back his hands from Trillian and Ford and stabbed at the light switch.
“Ah, I was beginning to think you’d never turn the lights on,” said a voice. “No, not too bright please, my eyes aren’t what they once were.”
Four figures jolted upright in their seats. Slowly they turned their heads to look, though their scalps showed a distinct propensity to try and stay in the same place.
“Now. Who disturbs me at this time?” said the small, bent, gaunt figure standing by the sprays of fern at the far end of the bridge. His two small wispyhaired heads looked so ancient that it seemed they might hold dim memories of the birth of the galaxies themselves. One lolled in sleep, the other squinted sharply at them. If his eyes weren’t what they once were, they must once have been diamond cutters.
Zaphod stuttered nervously for a moment. He gave the intricate little double nod which is the traditional Betelgeusian gesture of familial respect.
“Oh… er, hi Great-granddad….” he breathed.
The little old figure moved closer toward them. He peered through the dim light. He thrust out a bony finger at his great grandson.
“Ah,” he snapped, “Zaphod Beeblebrox. The last of our great line. Zaphod Beeblebrox the Nothingth.”
“The First.”
“The Nothingth,” spat the figure. Zaphod hated his voice. It always seemed to him to screech like fingernails across the blackboard of what he liked to think of as his soul.
He shifted awkwardly in his seat.
“Er, yeah,” he muttered. “Er, look, I’m really sorry about the flowers, I meant to send them along, but you know, the shop was fresh out of wreaths and…”
“You forgot!” snapped Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth.
“Well…”
“Too busy. Never think of other people. The living are all the same.”
“Two minutes, Zaphod,” whispered Ford in an awed whisper.
Zaphod fidgeted nervously.
“Yeah, but I did mean to send them,” he said. “And I’ll write to my great-grandmother as well, just as soon as we get out of this….”
“Your great-grandmother,” mused the gaunt little figure to himself.
“Yeah,” said Zaphod, “er, how is she? Tell you what, I’ll go and see her. But first we’ve just got to…”
“Your late great-grandmother and I are very well,” rasped Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth.
“Ah. Oh.”
“But very disappointed in you, young Zaphod….”
“Yeah well…” Zaphod felt strangely powerless to take charge of this conversation, and Ford’s heavy breathing at his side told him that the seconds were ticking away fast. The noise and the shaking had reached terrifying proportions. He saw Trillian’s and Arthur’s faces white and unblinking in the gloom.
“Er, Great-grandfather…”
“We’ve been following your progress with considerable despondency…”
“Yeah, look, just at the moment you see…”
“Not to say contempt!”
“Could you sort of listen for a moment… ?”
“I mean what exactly are you doing with your life?”
“I’m being attacked by a Vogon fleet!” cried Zaphod. It was an exaggeration, but it was his only opportunity so far of getting the basic point of the exercise across.
“Doesn’t surprise me in the least,” said the little old figure with a shrug.
“Only it’s happening right now, you see,” insisted Zaphod feverishly.
The spectral ancestor nodded, picked up the cup Arthur Dent had brought in and looked at it with interest.
“Er… Great-granddad—”
“Did you know,” interrupted the ghostly figure, fixing Zaphod with a stern look, “that Betelgeuse Five has now developed a very slight eccentricity in its orbit?”
Zaphod didn’t and found the information hard to concentrate on what with all the noise and the imminence of death and so on.
“Er, no… look,” he said.
“Me spinning in my grave!” barked the ancestor. He slammed the cup down and pointed a quivering, sticklike see-through finger at Zaphod.
“Your fault!” he screeched.
“One minute thirty,” muttered Ford, his head in his hands.
“Yeah, look Great-granddad, can you actually help because…”
“Help?” exclaimed the old man as if he’d been asked for a weasel.
“Yeah, help, and like, now, because otherwise