Douglas Adams - Starship Titanic

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Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic

Terry Jones

Introduction

The idea for Starship Titanic first surfaced in the way that a lot of ideas originate, as a mere

couple of sentences out of nowhere. Years ago it was just a little digression in Life, the

Universe and Everything. I said that the Starship Titanic had, shortly into its maiden voyage,

undergone Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure. It's just one of those bits that you put in while

you are waiting for the plot to develop. You think, 'Well, I'll develop another quick plot while

I'm about it.' So it sat there as a couple of sentences in L, U & E and after a while I thought,

'Well, I think there is a little bit more to this idea,' and tossed it around for a while. At one

point I even considered developing it as a novel in itself and then thought, no, it sounded too

much like a good idea, and I'm always wary of those.

In the mid eighties I did a text-only computer game version of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide with a

company called Infocom. I had a lot of fun working on it. The player gets caught up in a virtual

conversation with the machine. In writing such a thing you are trying to imagine and prepare for

the reactions of a virtual audience.

There's a lot you can do with text, as several thousand years of human culture can attest, but it

seemed to me that what the computer enabled us to do was to reach back to the days before printing

and recreate the old art of interactive storytelling. They didn't call it interactive in those

days, of course. They didn't know of anything that wasn't interactive, so they didn't need a

special name for it. When someone stood up and recounted a story, the audience responded. And the

storyteller responded right back at them. It was the coming of print that took away the

interactive element, and locked stories into rigid forms. It seemed to me that interactive

computer-mediated storytelling might be able to combine some of the best of both forms. However,

while the medium was still in its infancy, along came computer graphics and killed it off. Text

may be a very rich medium, but it looks boring on the screen. It doesn't flash and hop about and

so it had to give way to things that did.

Early computer graphics, of course, were slow, crude and ugly. As a medium it didn't interest me,

so I thought I'd sit things out and wait till the graphics got good.

Ten years later they were good. But interaction had largely been reduced to pointing at things and

clicking. I missed the conversations that text games used to engage you in. Maybe, I thought, it

would be possible to combine both...

At about this time, I was involved with a group of friends in the setting up of a new digital

media company, The Digital Village (<http://www.tdv.com>). I began to cast around for a good

subject for our first big project, a CD-ROM adventure game that would combine state-of-the-art

graphics with a natural language parser which would enable the player to engage the characters in

conversation. Suddenly, Starship Titanic stood out from the pack.

As we embarked on what grew into a huge project, the subject of novelization came up. Now, writing

novels is what I normally do, and here was a peach because, in an amazing departure from my normal

practice, I had developed a story which not only had a beginning but also a middle and

(phenomenally enough) a recognizable end. However, the publishers insisted that the novel would

have to come out at the same time as the game to enable them to sell it. (This struck me as odd

since they had managed previously to sell books of mine without any attendant CD-ROM game at all,

but this is publisher logic, and publishers are, as we all know, from the planet Zog.) I couldn't

do both simultaneously. I had to accept that I couldn't do the novel except at the cost of not

doing what I had set out to do in the first place, which was the game. So who could possibly write

the novel?

About this time, Terry Jones came into the production office. One of the characters in the game is

a semi-deranged workman's parrot which had been left on board the ship, and Terry had agreed to

play the voice part. In fact it was clearly the part he had been born to play. When Terry saw all

the graphics and character animations we had been creating over the previous months he became very

excited about the whole project and uttered the fateful words,

'Is there anything else you need doing?' I said,

'You wanna write a novel?' and Terry said,

'Yeah, all right. Provided,' he added, 'I can write it in the nude.'

Terry is one of the most famous people in the known universe, and his bottom is only slightly less

well known than his face. It has, of course, only been displayed when strictly necessary on

artistic grounds, but such is the nature of his art that this has turned out to be extraordinarily

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often. From NakedMan Playing Organ and Man in Bed with Carol Cleveland from the Monty Python TV

show, to Naked Hermit in Pit in Monty Python's Life of Brian (a movie that he directed naked,

while the rest of the cast remained largely clothed), the creative life has been one long nudist

romp for Mr Jones. He is also renowned as a film and TV director, scriptwriter, medieval scholar,

author of children's books, including the award-winning The Saga of Erik the Viking, but none of

these activities provide quite enough sheer kit removal opportunities for him. Hence his

stipulation that he would write Starship Titanic in the nude. In comes all the freshness,

lightness, and lyrical vulnerability of a man sitting at his word processor butt-naked.

I've always wanted to collaborate on something with Terry ever since I first met him almost twenty-

five years ago, wearing a pretty floral dress and heaving a small tactical nuclear device on to

the back of a cart in a leafy suburban street in Exeter. As you are about to discover, he has

written an altogether sillier, naughtier and more wonderful novel than I would have done and in

doing so has earned himself an altogether unique credit -

Parrot and Novel by Terry Jones

- Douglas Adams

'Where is Leovinus?' demanded the Gat of Blerontis, Chief Quantity Surveyor of the entire North

Eastern Gas District of the planet of Blerontin. 'No! I do not want another bloody fish-paste

sandwich!'

He did not exactly use the word 'bloody' because it did not exist in the Blerontin language. The

word he used could be more literally translated as 'similar in size to the left earlobe', but the

meaning was much closer to 'bloody'. Nor did he actually use the phrase 'fish-paste', since fish

do not exist on Blerontin in the form in which we would understand them to be fish. But when one

is translating from a language used by a civilization of which we know nothing, located as far

away as the centre of the Galaxy, one has to approximate.

Similarly the Gat of Blerontis was not exactly a 'Quantity Surveyor' and certainly the term 'North

Eastern Gas District' gives no idea at all about the magnificence and grandeur of his position.

Look, perhaps I'd better start again.

'Where is Leovinus?' demanded the Gat of Blerontis, the Most Important and Significant Statesman

on the entire planet of Blerontin. 'The launch cannot proceed without him.'

Several minor officials were dispatched to search for the great man. Meanwhile the vast crowd

simmered with mounting impatience in front of the grand Assembly Dock, where the new Starship

stood veiled in its attractive pink silk sheeting. Not one member of the crowd had glimpsed even

so much as a nut or a bolt of the ship, but already its fame had swept the Galaxy from spiral arm

to spiral arm.

Back on the launch podium, the great Leovinus had still not been sighted. A minor official was

explaining yet again to the Gat of Blerontis why the 'fish-paste' sandwiches were essential.

'Normally, Your Stupendous And Most Lofty Magnificence, you would be quite right in supposing that

the mere launch of a Starship would not be marked out by such distinguished observances. But, as

you are aware, this Starship is different, This Starship is the greatest, most gorgeous, most

technologically advanced Starship ever built - this is the Ultimate Starship - the greatest

cybernautic achievement of this or any other age, and it is utterly indestructible. The Inter-

Galactic Council therefore thought it suitable to declare it a "fish-paste sandwich" event.'

The Gat's heart sank. His last line of defence shrivelled before his eyes and he knew he was

condemned to eat at least one 'fish-paste' canape´ before the launch was over. The taste, he knew,

would endure for months.

And a Blerontin month was equivalent to several lifetimes if you happened to come from Earth.

Which, of course, nobody there did.

In fact nobody, in that entire throng of some fifty million Blerontinians who had turned up to see

the launch of the Greatest Starship in the History of the Universe, had ever even heard of the

Earth. And if you'd asked them they wouldn't have been able to understand you because translation

blisters were not allowed to be worn on a 'fish-paste' event. It was another of those stupid

little traditions that made the Gat furious.*

- - - - - -

* The Blerontins insist on serving so-called 'fish-paste' sandwiches during Festivals and

Important Book Launches, despite the fact that all Blerontins find them disgusting. It is a

tradition that dates back to a time when Blerontin was an impoverished planet living on the edge

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of starvation. Having run out of every other kind of food, the Blerontin team were reluctantly

forced to offer up 'fish-paste' sandwiches as their entry for the Centennial Inter-Galactic

Canape´s Championship. For some unaccountable reason, the 'fish-paste' appealed to the jaded

palates of the judges, clinched the championship for Blerontin, and paved the way for Blerontinian

domination of the entire Galactic Centre for aeons to come.

- - - - - -

And still Leovinus did not appear.

'Everyone here is holding their breath and keeping their fingers crossed,' whispered the Head

Reporter of the Blerontin News Gathering Bureau into his invisible microphone. 'No one has yet

even caught so much as a glimpse of the fabulous Starship, but everyone is certain that it will

not only be the most technologically advanced but also the most beautiful Starship ever to have

been created. It is, after all, the brain-child of Leovinus, to whose architectural genius we owe

the great North - South bridge that now links our two polar caps, to whose musical inspiration we

owe the Blerontin National Anthem "Our Canape´s Triumph Daily", and to whose unsurpassable mastery

of ballistics and biomass energetics we owe our third sun that now shines above us with its own

famous on-off-switch... But there's news just coming in that... what's that?

Ladies and gentleman and things, it appears that the great Leovinus has gone missing! Nobody has

seen him all day. Surely they can't start the launch without him... but the crowd are beginning to

demand some action... And uh-oh! What's that?'

A sour note had swept through the crowd, as a band of short individuals, dressed in ragged

overalls and flat caps, suddenly forced their way into the spectators' area. They were shouting in

a language no one could understand (because of the ban on translation blisters) and they were

brandishing indecipherable placards.

'It looks as if the Yassaccan delegation has managed to gain entry!' An edge of alarm had entered

the Head Reporter's voice. This was mainly because he had his entire commentary written down in

advance - as he always did. The thought that an unforeseen turn of events might now force him to

look at what was actually going on and then improvise was a nightmare that had dogged his sleep

for all the years that he had been in the reporting business.

'Um!' said the Head Reporter. He felt his head going light. 'Er!' He fought for breath, as he felt

his bowels starting to move. 'Oh! Ahm! What can I say?' He was praying that the words would come

to him. In his recurring nightmare - the one that he always had after eating snork chitterlings -

he was in this very situation - something unforeseen had occurred - his script was whisked away by

some unseen hand - and the words just never came.

It has to be explained, in defence of the Head Reporter, that unforeseen circumstances seldom

occurred during public events on Blerontin, owing to the fact that the authorities exerted a

pretty tight control over these things.

'It coming yust out who!' exclaimed the Head Reporter. At that moment an unseen hand whisked away

his script, and the Head Reporter felt a warm sensation all over his lower abdomen.

'I've done it! I mean! It's definitely Yassaccans! I can see them now!' That was practically two

whole sentences! He could do it! 'They've purpley pinchburps! Oh damn!' It was one thing not to be

able to think of anything - but how could he possibly come out with utter nonsense? That hadn't

been in his nightmare. It was worse!

The truth is that this personal disaster for the Head Reporter was just one in a string of

disasters that had dogged the building of the Starship. There had been rumours of corners cut: the

cybernet pigeon cursors had been below-spec, the great engine had been mislaid, Leovinus himself

had quarrelled with the Chairman of Star-Struct Inc., there had been arguments between Leovinus

and his manager, Brobostigon, there had been quarrels between Brobostigon and Leovinus's

accountant, Scraliontis, there had been arguments between Scraliontis and Leovinus and so on and

so on.

The fact of the matter was that the construction of the Starship had brought financial ruin on

almost everybody involved, including one entire planet. Yassacca had been, hitherto, a flourishing

resort of industrious folk, with the most efficient and dependable construction industry in the

Central Galaxy. Yassacca had enjoyed centuries of quiet prosperity and a high reputation. They

never over-charged. They always delivered on time. They never cut corners. They were a race of

proud craftsmen who had nothing to do with Inter-Galactic Canape´s Competitions, and thus were

able to devote their wealth to the well-being of their own people.

That was until they undertook the construction of Leovinus's masterpiece - the crowning

achievement of his career - the Starship that even now stands hidden from sight in its launching

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bay, awaiting the unveiling ceremony.

'Give us back our happy life-style!' shout the Yassaccan demonstrators unintelligibly to the

Blerontinian onlookers.

'Planets not Starships!' roar their placards - to the baffled crowd.

'Get those bastards out of there,' growls Flortin Rimanquez, the Chief of Police and Rabbits.

'Where is Leovinus?' groans the Gat of Blerontis.

Could it be only the day before that Leovinus had held his press conference? He had felt so

powerfully complacent as he stepped up onto the platform. His white beard had been specially

groomed by Pheronis Pheronisis, the greatest hairdresser on Blerontin, and his eyebrows had been

stuck back on with a new toupee tape that was guaranteed absolutely undetectable, In many ways

this was the greatest moment in his life.

'What is it like to be not only the greatest architect the Galaxy has ever known but also the

greatest sculptor, the greatest mathematical genius as well as a world-class gamisher and canape´s

arranger?' Exactly the kind of question Leovinus enjoyed.

There had been times in his younger days, when he might have retorted: 'Go lick someone else's

arse, hack! I'm only interested in Truth and Beauty!' But somehow, he found that the more wrinkles

he counted on his forehead and the more problems he had with his continence and his seven-times

table, the more he found a little flattery most welcome.

'I loved your Pandax Building with the interchangeable rooms and total reassembly potential!'

shouted a young cub reporter with soft eyes and a delightful cleavage.

'Thank you.' Leovinus beamed in his most venerable and yet at the same time approachable manner.

'You look terrific!' shouted another.

Leovinus was just trying to decide which of the two cub reporters with delightful cleavages he

should ask backstage for a little drink, or whether he should invite them both and then see how

things worked out, when a male voice cut across:

'Exactly what was the scientific experiment you were working on when you had your recent accident,

sir? And is it true that your eyebrows have still not grown back?' Leovinus fought off a panic

attack, and told himself his eyebrows looked perfectly OK. This hardboiled journalist was merely

trying to wind him up. Then he had to fight off a panic attack about the fact that he'd just had a

panic attack. 'It's perfectly normal to get panic attacks at my age!' he told himself severely,

while at the same time noting, thankfully, the ripple of embarrassment that had swept through the

assembled media. 'I'm lucky I don't have angina and a sagging bottom at my age!' Leovinus had

always counted his blessings.

But something had definitely gone wrong with the press conference.

A journalist, from the back, was asking a question in a tone of voice that didn't sound in the

least bit ingratiating. In fact there was something so uningratiating about the inflection of the

voice that Leovinus could barely understand what was being said.

'I said,' repeated The Journalist in that same uncajoling voice, 'how do you answer the

allegations that corners have been cut on the construction of the Starship and that there have

been financial improprieties involving your manager, Antar Brobostigon, and your accountant, Droot

Scraliontis?'

'Such insinuations,' replied Leovinus, forming his toupeed eyebrows into the most formidable

frown, and drawing his shoulders back into what he knew was his most dignified and intimidating

posture, 'are beneath contempt. Mr Brobostigon is a man of unblemished reputation and with the

highest regard for correct procedure. Droot Scraliontis has been my accountant for the last thirty

years and his behaviour has been unimpeachable throughout that time.'

He could feel one of his eyebrows starting to come loose. Funny that - he always imagined that as

he got older and more confident he would stop sweating whenever he had to tell a bare-faced lie.

But he still did.

'But isn't it true that the standard of workmanship on the Starship has dropped since the building

was moved from Yassacca to Blerontin?'

'Absolute poop!' declared the Great Genius, in his best how-dare-you-waste-the-time-of-a-great-

genius-like-me voice (which he had been practising recently and now had down to a tee). 'I am

personally checking the standards of craftsmanship on every facet of the ship, and I can guarantee

that standards have - if anything - gone up since the transferral to Blerontin.' He felt his other

eyebrow pop loose from his forehead.

'What do you say about the collapse of the Yassaccan economy, Mr Leovinus?' It was the same

dreadful journalist going on. Why couldn't someone ask him whether he preferred architecture to

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quantum physics or whether he felt painting should be considered a higher art-form than canape´

arrangement? Those were the kind of questions he was a whizz at dealing with these days. 'Do you

feel personally responsible at all for the present sufferings of the Yassaccan people?'

Leovinus went for the last-goal-keeper-at-the-net* defence: 'I am an Artist, Mr Journalist,' he

said, with that voice of his that made grown men cringe behind their stomachs and young cub

reporters with delightful cleavages feel deliciously damp all over. 'Of course, I deeply regret

the terrible destruction of an entire culture that their economic mismanagement has brought upon

themselves, and I hereby offer my heartfelt condolences to the people of Yassacca, I am deeply

concerned that it should have been the construction of my vision that should have been the

catalyst of their monetary downfall. But I am an Artist. My responsibility is to my Art. And I

would be betraying the sacred trust of my genius were I to compromise my vision for the sake of

fiscal expediency!'

- - - - - -

* Blerontin football is played with anything up to six balls, and consequently a large number of

goal-keepers is sometimes allowed.

- - - - - -

'Oh! Oooooh! Ahh!' breathed one of the cub reporters, and shifted onto her other buttock.

Leovinus, nevertheless, got the feeling that the entire press conference had spiralled out of

control and was now plunging towards some catastrophic conclusion that he must at all costs avoid -

even if it meant forgoing a delightful drink with the delightful cub reporters who were even now

gazing at him with increasingly delightftil eyes and increasingly delightful cleavages. In any

case, he knew how any such assignation would end: he would soon find their smiles begin to grate,

their soft gazes would become tiresome, probing arc-lights of banality and he would flee from the

two young reporters in despair and disappointment. That was what always happened. For deep down,

inside him, Leovinus knew that no one was good enough for him. Why go through it all again?

Leovinus rose unsteadily to his feet. 'Thank you,' he said and was gone.

The greatest genius of his age - gone without even so much as a nod in the cub reporters'

direction. It was hardly to be believed.

Despite his age, brilliance and genius, Leovinus was not always a sensible individual. He had

passions. Passions that would rise up the inside of his being and take over his magnificent brain

like cholera taking over a city. And not all these passions revolved around cub reporters. At

present his one over-riding passion was the Starship. That magnificent creation. That crowning

glory of his life's work.

Ever since his recent accident, Leovinus had been reluctant to go abroad, partly because his

joints had stiffened up somewhat and partly because he didn't want to be seen without his

eyebrows. Leovinus was not without personal vanity. He had therefore got into the habit of

supervising the construction of his Starship by virtual reality and telepresence - both brought to

such a pitch of perfection by Blerontinian scientists that it was sometimes hard to remember which

was the real thing - particularly if you were getting on a bit and your mind was on cleavages.

For that is what Leovinus's mind had been preoccupied with for many months now - but not the

cleavages of the young cub reporters. No. Leovinus's obsession was the cleavage of data-streams as

they separated out into random thought fields; the cleavage of neuroconnectors as they bifurcated

into the memory bank and the sensation retrieval system, the cleavage of separators and trans-

joiners linking and distinguishing those two vital processes: thought and feeling. His obsession

was the heart of his Starship. He called her Titania.

Titania was the heart, the mind, the spirit, the soul of the ship.

A massive cyber-intelligence system was required to run the ship, of course, but, as we now know,

intelligence devoid of emotion is non-functional. However smart a robot or computer may be, it can

only do exactly what you tell it to do and then stop. To keep thinking, it has to want to. It has

to be motivated. You can't think if you can't feel. So the ship's intelligence had to be imbued

with emotions, with personality. And its name was Titania.

The Starship was Leovinus's creation. So was Titania.

It had suited Leovinus, while he concentrated on this vital heart of the ship, to work from home,

but now he suddenly realized that he hadn't actually been on the ship itself for... well he really

didn't know how long!

Thus it was that night, after the press conference, the great man put on a long snork-hair coat,

and made his way towards the Assembly Dock, where his masterpiece stood, awaiting tomorrow's

launch.

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Earlier he had received tele-calls from the project manager, Antar Brobostigon and the chief

accountant, Droot Scraliontis. They had both been so full of gratitude for his defence of them

during the press conference, and so reassuring about the prospects of the launch, that Leovinus

found a vein in his right thigh beginning to twitch, and he kept thinking of the phrase 'parrot-

droppings' without any viable context.

He slipped unseen down the service entrance, and waited in the shadows until he saw the security

robot stop to take its scheduled rest-break (as laid down by Blerontin law). He then hurried

across the open forecourt and disappeared into the shadow of the temporary construction workers'

sheds. It was not as if he didn't have a perfect right to be there - it was just he wanted to do

this without the usual fanfare and the welcoming party and the official guided tour and all the

usual commotion that accompanied his public visits. He wanted to commune with his creation alone.

He looked up. There was the Assembly Dock, looming up into the night sky far, far above him. It

stretched a good mile up, and the Starship - his Starship - his baby - rose up another half mile

above that - ready for blast-off at midday tomorrow - precisely.

The silk coverings flapped in the breeze that swept across the Observation Arena, over the

Administration buildings and around the Dock Structures. Leovinus felt a surge of emotion sweep

through his body and engulf his magnificent brain, His heart missed several beats. His knees

turned to jelly. But it was not his pride in that stupendous structure that gave him butterflies

in the tummy. Nor was it the exaltation that, after all these years, it was finally complete that

made him feel like a schoolboy on his first date. No, what made his hand shake as he sleeked it

through his greying locks was the thought that in there - in those vast halls and state rooms

Titania was waiting for him.

As Leovinus leaned towards the Starship, the wind picked up, blasting dead leaves, old snack-

wrappings, torn religious journals, pages of sentimental verse, knitting patterns and all the

other usual detritus left behind by construction workers, across the Servicing Area. The sheeting

that covered the Starship flapped frantically, like the Great Ghoul in the ancient filmed

entertainment The Great Ghoul Frightens A Lot Of Folk. Leovinus shuddered with a childhood memory

of fear. Then he shuddered again as he suddenly saw a figure slip from the base of the launching

gantry into the shadows opposite the main steps of the Starship.

The moment he saw that figure, he knew, deep in his bones, with that certainty that comes of being

absolutely without any doubt whatsoever, that everything was about to go terribly, fearfully

wrong.

Cautiously he edged round into the shadows where he had seen the figure disappear.

'So?' a voice spoke to him out of the darkness. It was a voice that made his stomach relocate

itself around his knees - a voice that made him want to be sick - to be anywhere but where he was.

Leovinus looked around for a means of escape, but it was too late. 'Last minute check-ups, eh?'

The figure stepped out of the shadow and confronted him. It was that dreadful Journalist from the

press conference.

'Haven't you tormented me enough? Haven't you already ruined a day that was meant to be one of the

greatest days of my life?' That's what Leovinus wanted to say, but he merely mumbled: 'Oh. It's

you.'

'Are you afraid something's going to go wrong with the launch?'

'Of course not!' Leovinus adopted just the right cold tone that gave nothing away. 'I've merely

come to pay my regards.' He liked to be thought of as a bit of a sentimentalist as well as a great

brain.

'But come on! You must be a bit worried. Everyone knows that the workmanship here on Blerontin has

not been a patch on the Yassaccans - in fact, you know and I know, Blerontin craftsmanship is

nowhere near good enough to finish a ship of this sophistication.'

'Just because the Blerontin Government chooses to employ the Amalgamated Unmarried Teenage

Mothers' Construction Units there is no reason to think that the work is in any way slipshod,'

retorted old Leovinus. 'I have every confidence in their work.'

'I don't believe you,' replied The Journalist.

'Very well! I'll show you!' The Great Man saw his private tête-a-tête with Titania being blown

away on the wind that now buffeted them, as a small unlit work platform carried them up one of the

service gantries that surrounded the great Starship.

It was only when you started getting this high up, thought The Journalist, that you really began

to appreciate the full scale of the enterprise. The launch area below receded into darkness and

silence, as they rattled their way up the side of the vast Starship - higher and higher - until

the great keel broadened out and they reached the main body of the ship. A short walk across

another gantry and they were at the main doors of the spacecraft. An entry-coder received

Leovinus's fingerprint and cross-checked it with a blood sample, recent hair-loss estimate, and

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favourite recreational activity. The doors slid open and the two entered.

The Journalist had, of course, often been in Starships, but he had never been in a Starship like

this. It was magnificent, astonishing. It was built with luxury star-travel in mind. It was built

to last. It was built to impress. What's more, it was still being built! Two workmen were slipping

into the service elevator, as Leovinus and The Journalist entered the Embarkation Lobby.

'Just some last-minute adjustments,' one of them mumbled to Leovinus and they were gone.

'Hm,' said Leovinus in a way that The Journalist freely translated as: 'I wonder what those two

could have been up to? They surely can't still be making adjustments this near to launch? And why

didn't I know about them? I'd better check everything.' It was, you understand, a very free

translation.

'Donkey-Data-Bases!' exclaimed the Greatest Living Genius in the Galaxy. 'Look at that!'

The Journalist looked. He saw a smartly dressed robot wearing headphones, and standing on the

polished marble floor of one of the most elegant rooms he had ever stood in. The design was

typical Late Leovinus and yet it was imbued with a spirit that was new. It had a lightness that

some critics had thought lacking in much of his earlier work, and the colours were vibrant and yet

warm and welcoming. Perhaps Leovinus had at last got in touch with the feminine side of his nature

- or perhaps the gentler, more approachable feel of the Starship's interior owed something to the

many little finishing touches introduced by Titania.

The Journalist was at a loss to see why the great man was so angry, but Leovinus was already

striding across to the far wall. There he yanked at a decorative panel. 'Upside down!' he yelled.

'I sometimes think I have to build the entire ship with my own hands!' And he produced a

screwdriver and proceeded to replace the panel in the correct position. 'Can't they see the entire

ambient structure of the room is destroyed by exactly that sort of inattention to detail?'

The Journalist made a note in his thumb-recorder.

'Welcome to the Starship Titanic.' The smart robot was now addressing a light-fitting that

protruded from the wall. 'Allow me to show you the facilities available to Second Class

Travellers.' The thing then turned smartly on its heels and walked straight into the nearest

closed door. There was a clang and the robot fell backwards onto the highly decorative marble

floor. 'Here you may see the Grand Axial Canal, Second Class!' it announced proudly and extended a

whitegloved hand at the ceiling.

The Journalist made another note in his thumb-recorder.

Leovinus's reaction to the robot's minor mishap was also noted down in The Journalist's thumb-

recorder. It started off as 'blank disbelief' and ended up as 'cold fury'. In between it went

through a fascinating range of adjustments all of which were noted down by The Journalist:

'surprised dissatisfaction' was rapidly replaced by 'stupefied indignation' which in turn quickly

became 'bitter resentment' which equally quickly was transformed into 'burning thirst for

vengeance' and so to 'cold fury'.

'Brobostigon!' murmured the Great Man, 'That bastard has been skimping on the syntho-neurones!'

The Journalist made another note, but Leovinus turned on him so suddenly that he stuck his thumb

in his mouth and pretended to be sucking at it.

'This can't happen on this ship,' explained Leovinus, as he picked up the fallen robot. 'Every

Doorbot has a fail-safe neuron embedded in its circuitry that cancels out any non-rational

activity such as we just witnessed. They are expensive items, but, I think you will agree, well

worth the money.'

The Journalist nodded and pretended that he had a splinter in the end of his thumb.

'Except that that BASTARD BROBOSTIGON HAS OBVIOUSLY LEFT THEM OUT! When I see him I'll...' But

Leovinus stopped in mid sentence.

'He's probably wondering what else is wrong with the ship,' thought The Journalist with mounting

excitement he could feel a story materializing in front of him - a big story - a humungous story,

and the great thing was he wouldn't have to do anything - it was all going to unfold in front of

him. He knew it. And, sure enough, before The Journalist could pretend to find the non-existent

splinter, Leovinus had given the Doorbot a quick adjustment, the door had opened and the Great Man

had been bowed through into the corridor beyond.

'Enjoy your honeymoon, you lucky couple!' called the Doorbot cheerfully. The Journalist noted this

down, and hurried after the great architect and ship-builder, who had just turned right into one

of the most astounding architectural spaces The Journalist had ever entered.

It was an oval space, marked out by columns. Around the perimeter wall was painted a frieze

depicting the favourite recreational pastime of the Founding Fathers of Blerontin: posing for

frieze-painters. Leovinus was standing staring up at a huge statue of a winged female that stood

at the other end. But The Journalist's eye went down... down and down into what seemed like an

infinity of descent, for there at his feet was the great Central Well that occupied the gigantic

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keel of the Starship. It was the spine of the ship, and around it, like nerve impulses,

illuminated elevators constantly went up and down servicing the living quarters that were stacked

below them - tier after tier. At the very bottom, far far down below near the bilges of the ship,

the Super Galactic Traveller De Luxe Suites; above them, the Second Class Executive Duplexes; and

above them, far above them, the fabulously appointed First Class State Rooms.

But The Journalist scarcely had time to take all this in, for Leovinus was off - striding through

the many-columned hall towards the far vestibule - through which he disappeared.

By the time The Journalist had caught up with him, Leovinus was standing on the jetty of an even

more extraordinary and beautiful feature of the Starship Titanic: the Grand Axial Canal, Second

Class.

From the Central Well of the Starship ran two great canals - one to the fore and one to the aft.

These partly had the effect of cooling the engines, but were also elegant recreational facilities.

Up and down the canal, gondolas plied their way, the automated gondoliers each singing their own

personal selection of Blerontinian folk-songs - but particularly the one about the beautiful young

female acrobat who fell in love with a gondolier and gave him six pnedes (approximately one

million pounds sterling) as a tip.

Leovinus was doing his from-blank-disbelief-to-cold-fury routine again. The Journalist took note.

'They are not supposed to sing unless they've got passengers!' Leovinus seemed to be choking as he

clambered down into the nearest waiting gondola. The singing immediately stopped.

The Journalist joined him and said: 'Perhaps they're doing a test? Reversing everything?' It was

the only thing he could think of that was in any way cheery.

'Don't talk pigeon poop!' snapped Leovinus. He was clearly in no mood to be cheered. 'Promenade

Deck Elevator!'

'Si! House-proud and Religious Mother of Twins!' said the automated gondolier. Leovinus flinched,

and felt the vein twitching in his thigh.

Leovinus allowed the irritation to mount within himself, as he straightened one of the priceless

NO-Art Masterpieces that decorated the elevator lobby.

'Good day to you, sir, madam or thing. And how may we assist you in your vertical transportation

requirements today?' The Liftbot was half-embedded in the wall of the lift - its free hand rested

on the lever that came out of its chest.

'Just to the Promenade Deck and no back-chat!' snapped Leovinus. He sometimes regretted the

characters that these robots seemed to acquire, but there it was: if the ship's intelligence were

to be allowed emotions - and certainly no one could doubt that Titania had strong emotions - then

you had to allow her to choose robot-characters she got on with. It was no good forcing the issue.

Although Leovinus had, on occasion, spoken to Titania quite forcibly about some of the characters

with whom she surrounded herself. But then Titania was so tolerant, so understanding of people's

failings and mistakes that she could get on with practically anybody. He had made her like that.

The giant Promenade Deck was Leovinus's particular little favourite. Under its vast transparent

canopy, passengers could stroll and marvel at the mind-erupting brilliance of the Galaxy through

which they were passing. The vari-spex composition glass, of which the canopy was made, had the

effect of intensifying the radiant brightness of the stars, while at the same time making it

possible for the observer, by a mere twist of the head, to see - in the detail of a powerful

telescope - any particular star that caught his, her or its fancy. Around the perimeter, the

pellerator (a sort of horizontal lift of Leovinus's design) enabled the less active travellers to

tour the Deck without stirring an unnecessary muscle.

That was the theory. That was what Leovinus had viewed, with great complacence, on his

telepresence and in his Virtual Reality Viewer at home. But that was not what he now saw in front

of him. Real Reality was different.

What he now saw was what is referred to architecturally as a 'shambles'. The vast glass canopy

stretched above, as it should, displaying the immense stretches of pink silk sheeting which

covered the ship. But below all was confusion. The beautiful polished parquet floor was

approximately one tenth beautiful polished parquet floor - the rest was exposed girders and cable-

work, gaping holes, protruding wires and polystyrene cups. Where the large, sprawling brasserie

for Second Class Passengers should have sprawled, there was only a large, sprawling empty space

littered with builders' rubble and more polystyrene cups. How could this be? They didn't even use

polystyrene cups on Blerontin! And yet there they were! There was no disguising the ghastly,

unthinkable fact that the Promenade Deck was not finished - nor likely to be before the launch

tomorrow morning.

The Journalist turned to see that Leovinus had fallen to his knees. He suddenly looked like the

old man that he was. The swagger and gallantry that usually marked his public appearances seemed

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to have been sucked out of him - leaving him like a crumpled empty bag.

'It can't be true...' he was mumbling into his beard. 'Even Brobostigon... even Scraliontis

couldn't lie so... I mean... Only this morning they told me it was all...'

'Good morning, sir, would you like to cut your nasal hair?' A Doorbot had suddenly activated

itself and was apparently trying to usher them into a cement mixer.

Leovinus cracked at last.

'BASTARDS!' he screamed at the flapping silk sheets beyond the canopy. 'BASTARDS!' he yelled at

the unfinished works.

Suddenly a movement behind one of the pillars caught his eye. Taking The Journalist totally by

surprise, Leovinus seemed to regain all his vitality in an instant, and had sprinted across the

parquet flooring and pounced behind the pillar. A solitary worker, in drab overalls, was crouching

down, trying to lose himself in a crevice of the unfinished floor.

'What the devil are you doing here?' screamed Leovinus.

The worker stood up shiftily and pretended to be adjusting a loose end of wire. 'Just making

good,' he said.

'Making GOOD?' yelled Leovinus. 'You call this GOOD?' He threw his arm around the vast unfinished

reaches of the Promenade Deck. 'We launch the ship tomorrow and there's months more work to do

here!'

'Yeah... It's... bin a bit... slow...' The worker was edging towards the sleek, stainless-steel

lift that offered him his only means of escape from this elderly lunatic.

'What were you doing just now?' demanded the elderly lunatic.

'Me? Just now?' replied the worker.

'Yes! I saw you doing something!'

'Me? No, I wouldn't do nothing, I only came to collect my parrot.' The words fell out of his mouth

and seemed to freeze in the air, and then like lumps of solid ice they hit Leovinus, one after the

other, and he reeled from their impact.

'Parrot?' he said. 'Parrot!!! What parrot?'

'It's... er... just a parrot... you know... couple of wings... that sort... you know...'

'What is a PARROT doing on board my beautiful ship?' demanded the outraged genius.

'Oh! There's the lift!' said the worker, and the next moment he was in it with The Journalist hard

on his heels; the door closed and they were both dropping to the lower floors.

'A parrot! On my Starship! What the hell has been going on?' Suddenly the great, the magnificent,

the envied Leovinus was hunched up in a corner, weeping over a statue of a winged female.

'Titania!' he was sobbing. 'Titania! What has happened? What shall we do?'

Titania! The genius of Leovinus was nowhere so evident as in this - his last and best-loved

creation; Titania was the brains of the ship and her statue appeared everywhere on board - serving

as the eyes and ears and communicating essence of the ship's intelligence. But the ship's

intelligence was also imbued with emotional life as well. And this is where Leovinus had excelled

himself. Titania was not only the brains but also the heart of the ship.

Titania's emotional intelligence had to be carefully crafted to match her task. To run a gigantic

ship of such bewildering complexity, to manage its crew, and to look after an enormous complement

of passengers of different races, species, mentalities and bodily functions and make them all feel

happy, safe and cared for required that Titania be hugely intelligent, kind, wise, caring, serene,

warm... and she was all these things.

Like her image - all those giant brooding angels in every room on every deck - Titania's spirit

should also have been imbuing the entire ship. Quite clearly, it wasn't.

'Antar Brobostigon, please.' Leovinus spat the name into the phone.

'I'm afraid Mr Brobostigon is not here. Would you like to speak to Mrs Brobostigon?'

Leovinus had always felt secretly sorry for the project manager's wife. He could not imagine what

it must be like living with such a duplicitous, cold-bloodied egomaniac as Antar Brobostigon - his

pity was only slightly modified by the knowledge that Crossa Brobostigon herself was, if anything,

marginally more duplicitous, cold-blooded and egoistical. Perhaps the two cancelled each other out

and the Brobostigons lived a warm, intimate and caring family life. It was a mystery to the Great

Inventor.

'So nice to hear from you, Leo,' said Crossa Brobostigon. Leovinus hated it when people called him

that, and he knew she knew he knew she knew it. 'How is the family?'

'I don't have any family, Crossa,' said Leovinus with what he hoped she could hear was strained

patience. 'Where is Antar?'

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'I think... in fact I'm sure he's at the ship. He went there with Droot a couple of hours ago.

Some panic about something or other - you know how those guys worry themselves sick over your

ship.'

He knew: about the same way an anaconda does over a goat it's just eaten.

'Is there somewhere they can reach you when they get back?'

Leovinus flicked the phone off. A deep sense of foreboding spread from his thighs, up to his

abdomen and across his chest into his heart.

'Brobostigon and Scraliontis on the ship! What the devil are they up to?' The deep sense of

foreboding suddenly changed into sharp stabbing pain in his stomach. He felt cold. He felt sick.

He had to talk to the only person that could help: Titania.

He made his way down onto the canal level, along the Grand Axial Canal, Second Class, towards the

Central Dome. When he reached the vast statue of Titania that dominated the Central Dome and the

head of the Central Well, he disappeared into a doorway under one of her wings. A long staircase

led up to the vital heart of the ship: the secret chamber of Titania herself.

Leovinus had long enjoyed his reputation as the originator of Ironic Architecture. There was the

famous house he designed for Gardis Arbledonter, the Professor of Mathematical Implausibilities at

Blerontis University, in which the doors were actually radio sets and entrance and egress was

gained via the bath. But here, on the Starship, he believed he had constructed one of his most

satisfying constructional ironies: Titania's Secret Chamber, her central intelligence core, was

located in the very middle of the great Central Dome; it formed the giant chandelier that hung

above the Central Well. The secret heart of the ship was hidden in full view of every passenger

and every member of the crew.

The chamber itself hung upside-down, but it had been surrounded by an inverted gravity field so

that, when you entered it, it appeared the right way up. The serrated ribs that transversed the

Great Dome were, once you had entered the inversion field and submitted to the disorienting

process of gravity reversal, in fact long upside-down staircases leading up to the chamber, and

the Great Dome itself was a vast concave floor at the bottom of the immense Central Well that

stretched up above, topsy-turvy, in an arrangement that bewildered and astonished the first-time

visitor.

Leovinus sprinted up the staircase, two steps at a time. His mind focused on one thought: Titania!

The love of his old age. The obsession of his ageing heart:

intelligent, kind, wise, caring, serene, warm .. Titania!

He burst into the secret chamber and gasped. His head went into a spin - and, when you have a mind

the size of Leovinus's, a spinning head is a formidable sensation. He vomited. He could scarcely

bring himself to look at the horror before him and yet he could not take his eyes off it: Titania -

his Titania - his darling creation - his joy - had been dismembered. She lay there in the centre

of the chamber, her hair and wings spread out in their perfect circle around her. But her

beautiful, gracious head was grotesquely disfigured: her mouth had been ripped away, her eyes

gouged out, and her nose torn off, leaving a gaping cavity of raw microcircuitry...

But before he could even so much as mutter the word 'Fiends!' Leovinus became aware of someone

else in the room. A figure was crouching behind the Vac-U-Bus console.

'Brobostigon!' Leovinus ground the word out like a piece of gristle. 'What in the name of Darkness

are you playing at?' Without thinking, Leovinus found himself lunging at the project manager. A

small glowing silver shard fell from Brobostigon's grasp and tinkled to the floor. Leovinus

glanced down and realised that one of Titania's incredibly delicate cerebral arteries - the

central intelligence core of Titania's brain - was lying against his foot. 'You're destroying

her!'

Brobostigon pushed Leovinus off him, and the old man staggered back and fell onto the floor across

the outspread wings of his beloved creature.

'You're blind, Leovinus! You sit up there in your ivory tower, thinking you're too high-minded and

pure to deal with grubby things like business and finance! Well, this whole thing's gone way out

of control thanks to you!'

'What d'you mean? What are you talking about?' Leovinus was almost crying.

'This whole project is a financial catastrophe! Didn't you realise that? We're on the brink of a

major fiscal meltdown!' Brobostigon was trying to get to the door, but Leovinus, with surprising

agility, was back on his feet and cutting off the exit.

'So what are you trying to do?' But even as he asked the question, Leovinus suddenly saw - with

total clarity - the whole plot 'The insurance!' he gasped. 'You were going to scuttle my priceless

ship and claim the insurance!'

'Grow up!' growled Brobostigon. 'This is the real world...' But he never got any further. The aged

genius had hurled himself upon him, hitting the manager squarely on the chin with a remarkably

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Douglas Adams - Starship Titanic

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