The Restaurant at the End of the Universe - Douglas Adams [73]
“You know what this means,” said Ford.
“Not entirely.”
“Forty-two is the number Deep Thought gave as being the Ultimate Answer.”
“Yes.”
“And the Earth is the computer Deep Thought designed and built to calculate the Question to the Ultimate Answer.”
“So we are led to believe.”
“And organic life was part of the computer matrix.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so. That means that these natives, these apemen are an integral part of the computer program, and that we and the Golgafrinchans are not.”
“But the cavemen are dying out and the Golgafrinchans are obviously set to replace them.”
“Exactly. So you do see what this means.”
“What?”
“Cock up,” said Ford Prefect.
Arthur looked around him.
“This planet is having a pretty bloody time of it,” he said.
Ford puzzled for a moment.
“Still, something must have come out of it,” he said at last, “because Marvin said he could see the Question printed in your brain wave patterns.”
“But…”
“Probably the wrong one, or a distortion of the right one. It might give us a clue though if we could find it. I don’t see how we can though.”
They moped about for a bit. Arthur sat on the ground and started pulling up bits of grass, but found that it wasn’t an occupation he could get deeply engrossed in. It wasn’t grass he could believe in, the trees seemed pointless, the rolling hills seemed to be rolling to nowhere and the future seemed just a tunnel to be crawled through.
Ford fiddled with his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic. It was silent. He sighed and put it away.
Arthur picked up one of the letter stones from his homemade Scrabble set. It was a T. He sighed and put it down again. The letter he put it down next to was an I. That spelled IT. He tossed another couple of letters next to them. They were an S and an H as it happened. By a curious coincidence the resulting word perfectly expressed the way Arthur was feeling about things just then. He stared at it for a moment. He hadn’t done it deliberately, it was just a random chance. His brain got slowly into first gear.
“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 leaped 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 towel full 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