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Douglas Adams. Life, the Universe, and Everything
For Sally
Chapter 1
The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent
waking up and suddenly remembering where he was.
It wasn't just that the cave was cold, it wasn't just that it was damp and
smelly. It was the fact that the cave was in the middle of Islington and there
wasn't a bus due for two million years.
Time is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in, as Arthur Dent could
testify, having been lost in both time and space a good deal. At least being
lost in space kept you busy.
He was stranded in prehistoric Earth as the result of a complex sequence
of events which had involved him being alternately blown up and insulted in
more bizarre regions of the Galaxy than he ever dreamt existed, and though his
life had now turned very, very, very quiet, he was still feeling jumpy.
He hadn't been blown up now for five years.
Since he had hardly seen anyone since he and Ford Prefect had parted
company four years previously, he hadn't been insulted in all that time
either.
Except just once.
It had happened on a spring evening about two years previously.
He was returning to his cave just a little after dusk when he became aware
of lights flashing eerily through the clouds. He turned and stared, with hope
suddenly clambering through his heart. Rescue. Escape. The castaway's
impossible dream - a ship.
And as he watched, as he stared in wonder and excitement, a long silver
ship descended through the warm evening air, quietly, without fuss, its long
legs unlocking in a smooth ballet of technology.
It alighted gently on the ground, and what little hum it had generated
died away, as if lulled by the evening calm.
A ramp extended itself.
Light streamed out.
A tall figure appeared silhouetted in the hatchway. It walked down the
ramp and stood in front of Arthur.
"You're a jerk, Dent," it said simply.
It was alien, very alien. It had a peculiar alien tallness, a peculiar
alien flattened head, peculiar slitty little alien eyes, extravagantly draped
golden ropes with a peculiarly alien collar design, and pale grey-green alien
skin which had about it that lustrous shine which most grey-green faces can
only acquire with plenty of exercise and very expensive soap.
Arthur boggled at it.
It gazed levelly at him.
Arthur's first sensations of hope and trepidation had instantly been
overwhelmed by astonishment, and all sorts of thoughts were battling for the
use of his vocal chords at this moment.
"Whh ...?" he said.
"Bu ... hu ... uh ..." he added.
"Ru ... ra ... wah ... who?" he managed finally to say and lapsed into a
frantic kind of silence. He was feeling the effects of having not said
anything to anybody for as long as he could remember.
The alien creature frowned briefly and consulted what appeared to be some
species of clipboard which he was holding in his thin and spindly alien hand.
"Arthur Dent?" it said.
Arthur nodded helplessly.
"Arthur Philip Dent?" pursued the alien in a kind of efficient yap.
"Er ... er ... yes ... er ... er," confirmed Arthur.
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"You're a jerk," repeated the alien, "a complete asshole."
"Er ..."
The creature nodded to itself, made a peculiar alien tick on its clipboard
and turned briskly back towards the ship.
"Er ..." said Arthur desperately, "er ..."
"Don't give me that!" snapped the alien. It marched up the ramp, through
the hatchway and disappeared into the ship. The ship sealed itself. It started
to make a low throbbing hum.
"Er, hey!" shouted Arthur, and started to run helplessly towards it.
"Wait a minute!" he called. "What is this? What? Wait a minute!"
The ship rose, as if shedding its weight like a cloak to the ground, and
hovered briefly. It swept strangely up into the evening sky. It passed up
through the clouds, illuminating them briefly, and then was gone, leaving
Arthur alone in an immensity of land dancing a helplessly tiny little dance.
"What?" he screamed. "What? What? Hey, what? Come back here and say that!"
He jumped and danced until his legs trembled, and shouted till his lungs
rasped. There was no answer from anyone. There was no one to hear him or speak
to him.
The alien ship was already thundering towards the upper reaches of the
atmosphere, on its way out into the appalling void which separates the very
few things there are in the Universe from each other.
Its occupant, the alien with the expensive complexion, leaned back in its
single seat. His name was Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged. He was a man
with a purpose. Not a very good purpose, as he would have been the first to
admit, but it was at least a purpose and it did at least keep him on the move.
Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged was --indeed, is - one of the
Universe's very small number of immortal beings.
Those who are born immortal instinctively know how to cope with it, but
Wowbagger was not one of them. Indeed he had come to hate them, the load of
serene bastards. He had had his immortality thrust upon him by an unfortunate
accident with an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch and a pair of
rubber bands. The precise details of the accident are not important because no
one has ever managed to duplicate the exact circumstances under which it
happened, and many people have ended up looking very silly, or dead, or both,
trying.
Wowbagger closed his eyes in a grim and weary expression, put some light
jazz on the ship's stereo, and reflected that he could have made it if it
hadn't been for Sunday afternoons, he really could have done.
To begin with it was fun, he had a ball, living dangerously, taking risks,
cleaning up on high-yield long-term investments, and just generally outliving
the hell out of everybody.
In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that
terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 2.55, when you know that
you've had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you
stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never actually read it, or
use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you
stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and
you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.
So things began to pall for him. The merry smiles he used to wear at other
people's funerals began to fade. He began to despise the Universe in general,
and everyone in it in particular.
This was the point at which he conceived his purpose, the thing which
would drive him on, and which, as far as he could see, would drive him on
forever. It was this.
He would insult the Universe.
That is, he would insult everybody in it. Individually, personally, one by
one, and (this was the thing he really decided to grit his teeth over) in
alphabetical order.
When people protested to him, as they sometimes had done, that the plan
was not merely misguided but actually impossible because of the number of
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people being born and dying all the time, he would merely fix them with a
steely look and say, "A man can dream can't he?"
And so he started out. He equipped a spaceship that was built to last with
the computer capable of handling all the data processing involved in keeping
track of the entire population of the known Universe and working out the
horrifically complicated routes involved.
His ship fled through the inner orbits of the Sol star system, preparing
to slingshot round the sun and fling itself out into interstellar space.
"Computer," he said.
"Here," yipped the computer.
"Where next?"
"Computing that."
Wowbagger gazed for a moment at the fantastic jewellery of the night, the
billions of tiny diamond worlds that dusted the infinite darkness with light.
Every one, every single one, was on his itinerary. Most of them he would be
going to millions of times over.
He imagined for a moment his itinerary connecting up all the dots in the
sky like a child's numbered dots puzzle. He hoped that from some vantage point
in the Universe it might be seen to spell a very, very rude word.
The computer beeped tunelessly to indicate that it had finished its
calculations.
"Folfanga," it said. It beeped.
"Fourth world of the Folfanga system," it continued. It beeped again.
"Estimated journey time, three weeks," it continued further. It beeped
again.
"There to meet with a small slug," it beeped, "of the genus ARth-Urp-Hil+
Ipdenu."
"I believe," it added, after a slight pause during which it beeped, "that
you had decided to call it a brainless prat."
Wowbagger grunted. He watched the majesty of creation outside his window
for a moment or two.
"I think I'll take a nap," he said, and then added, "what network areas
are we going to be passing through in the next few hours?"
The computer beeped.
"Cosmovid, Thinkpix and Home Brain Box," it said, and beeped.
"Any movies I haven't seen thirty thousand times already?"
"No."
"Uh."
"There's Angst in Space. You've only seen that thirty-three thousand five
hundred and seventeen times."
"Wake me for the second reel."
The computer beeped.
"Sleep well," it said.
The ship fled on through the night.
Meanwhile, on Earth, it began to pour with rain and Arthur Dent sat in his
cave and had one of the most truly rotten evenings of his entire life,
thinking of things he could have said to the alien and swatting flies, who
also had a rotten evening.
The next day he made himself a pouch out of rabbit skin because he thought
it would be useful to keep things in.
Chapter 2
This morning, two years later than that, was sweet and fragrant as he
emerged from the cave he called home until he could think of a better name for
it or find a better cave.
Though his throat was sore again from his early morning yell of horror, he
was suddenly in a terrifically good mood. He wrapped his dilapidated dressing
gown tightly around him and beamed at the bright morning.
The air was clear and scented, the breeze flitted lightly through the tall
grass around his cave, the birds were chirruping at each other, the
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butterflies were flitting about prettily, and the whole of nature seemed to be
conspiring to be as pleasant as it possibly could.
It wasn't all the pastoral delights that were making Arthur feel so
cheery, though. He had just had a wonderful idea about how to cope with the
terrible lonely isolation, the nightmares, the failure of all his attempts at
horticulture, and the sheer futurelessness and futility of his life here on
prehistoric Earth, which was that he would go mad.
He beamed again and took a bite out of a rabbit leg left over from his
supper. He chewed happily for a few moments and then decided formally to
announce his decision.
He stood up straight and looked the world squarely in the fields and
hills. To add weight to his words he stuck the rabbit bone in his hair. He
spread his arms out wide.
"I will go mad!" he announced.
"Good idea," said Ford Prefect, clambering down from the rock on which he
had been sitting.
Arthur's brain somersaulted. His jaw did press-ups.
"I went mad for a while," said Ford, "did me no end of good."
"You see," said Ford, "- ..."
"Where have you been?" interrupted Arthur, now that his head had finished
working out.
"Around," said Ford, "around and about." He grinned in what he accurately
judged to be an infuriating manner. "I just took my mind off the hook for a
bit. I reckoned that if the world wanted me badly enough it would call back.
It did."
He took out of his now terribly battered and dilapidated satchel his Sub+
Etha Sens-O-Matic.
"At least," he said, "I think it did. This has been playing up a bit." He
shook it. "If it was a false alarm I shall go mad," he said, "again."
Arthur shook his head and sat down. He looked up.
"I thought you must be dead ..." he said simply.
"So did I for a while," said Ford, "and then I decided I was a lemon for a
couple of weeks. A kept myself amused all that time jumping in and out of a
gin and tonic."
Arthur cleared his throat, and then did it again.
"Where," he said, "did you ...?"
"Find a gin and tonic?" said Ford brightly. "I found a small lake that
thought it was a gin and tonic, and jumped in and out of that. At least, I
think it thought it was a gin and tonic."
"I may," he added with a grin which would have sent sane men scampering
into trees, "have been imagining it."
He waited for a reaction from Arthur, but Arthur knew better than that.
"Carry on," he said levelly.
"The point is, you see," said Ford, "that there is no point in driving
yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad. You might just as well give in
and save your sanity for later."
"And this is you sane again, is it?" said Arthur. "I ask merely for
information."
"I went to Africa," said Ford.
"Yes?"
"Yes."
"What was that like?"
"And this is your cave is it?" said Ford.
"Er, yes," said Arthur. He felt very strange. After nearly four years of
total isolation he was so pleased and relieved to see Ford that he could
almost cry. Ford was, on the other hand, an almost immediately annoying
person.
"Very nice," said Ford, in reference to Arthur's cave. "You must hate it."
Arthur didn't bother to reply.
"Africa was very interesting," said Ford, "I behaved very oddly there."
He gazed thoughtfully into the distance.
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"I took up being cruel to animals," he said airily. "But only," he added,
"as a hobby."
"Oh yes," said Arthur, warily.
"Yes," Ford assured him. "I won't disturb you with the details because
they would -"
"What?"
"Disturb you. But you may be interested to know that I am singlehandedly
responsible for the evolved shape of the animal you came to know in later
centuries as a giraffe. And I tried to learn to fly. Do you believe me?"
"Tell me," said Arthur.
"I'll tell you later. I'll just mention that the Guide says ..."
"The ...?"
"Guide. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. You remember?"
"Yes. I remember throwing it in the river."
"Yes," said Ford, "but I fished it out."
"You didn't tell me."
"I didn't want you to throw it in again."
"Fair enough," admitted Arthur. "It says?"
"What?"
"The Guide says?"
"The Guide says there is an art to flying," said Ford, "or rather a knack.
The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss." He
smiled weakly. He pointed at the knees of his trousers and held his arms up to
show the elbows. They were all torn and worn through.
"I haven't done very well so far," he said. He stuck out his hand. "I'm
very glad to see you again, Arthur," he added.
Arthur shook his head in a sudden access of emotion and bewilderment.
"I haven't seen anyone for years," he said, "not anyone. I can hardly even
remember how to speak. I keep forgetting words. I practise you see. I practise
by talking to ... talking to ... what are those things people think you're mad
if you talk to? Like George the Third."
"Kings?" suggested Ford.
"No, no," said Arthur. "The things he used to talk to. We're surrounded by
them for heaven's sake. I've planted hundreds myself. They all died. Trees! I
practise by talking to trees. What's that for?"
Ford still had his hand stuck out. Arthur looked at it with
incomprehension.
"Shake," prompted Ford.
Arthur did, nervously at first, as if it might turn out to be a fish. Then
he grasped it vigorously with both hands in an overwhelming flood of relief.
He shook it and shook it.
After a while Ford found it necessary to disengage. They climbed to the
top of a nearby outcrop of rock and surveyed the scene around them.
"What happened to the Golgafrinchans?" asked Ford.
Arthur shrugged.
"A lot of them didn't make it through the winter three years ago," he
said, "and the few who remained in the spring said they needed a holiday and
set off on a raft. History says that they must have survived ..."
"Huh," said Ford, "well well." He stuck his hands on his hips and looked
round again at the empty world. Suddenly, there was about Ford a sense of
energy and purpose.
"We're going," he said excitedly, and shivered with energy.
"Where? How?" said Arthur.
"I don't know," said Ford, "but I just feel that the time is right. Things
are going to happen. We're on our way."
He lowered his voice to a whisper.
"I have detected," he said, "disturbances in the wash."
He gazed keenly into the distance and looked as if he would quite like the
wind to blow his hair back dramatically at that point, but the wind was busy
fooling around with some leaves a little way off.
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Arthur asked him to repeat what he had just said because he hadn't quite
taken his meaning. Ford repeated it.
"The wash?" said Arthur.
"The space-time wash," said Ford, and as the wind blew briefly past at
that moment, he bared his teeth into it.
Arthur nodded, and then cleared his throat.
"Are we talking about," he asked cautiously, "some sort of Vogon
laundromat, or what are we talking about?"
"Eddies," said Ford, "in the space-time continuum."
"Ah," nodded Arthur, "is he? Is he?" He pushed his hands into the pocket
of his dressing gown and looked knowledgeably into the distance.
"What?" said Ford.
"Er, who," said Arthur, "is Eddy, then, exactly?"
Ford looked angrily at him.
"Will you listen?" he snapped.
"I have been listening," said Arthur, "but I'm not sure it's helped."
Ford grasped him by the lapels of his dressing gown and spoke to him as
slowly and distinctly and patiently as if he were somebody from a telephone
company accounts department.
"There seem ..." he said, "to be some pools ..." he said, "of instability
..." he said, "in the fabric ..." he said ...
Arthur looked foolishly at the cloth of his dressing gown where Ford was
holding it. Ford swept on before Arthur could turn the foolish look into a
foolish remark.
"... in the fabric of space-time," he said.
"Ah, that," said Arthur.
"Yes, that," confirmed Ford.
They stood there alone on a hill on prehistoric Earth and stared each
other resolutely in the face.
"And it's done what?" said Arthur.
"It," said Ford, "has developed pools of instability."
"Has it?" said Arthur, his eyes not wavering for a moment.
"It has," said Ford with a similar degree of ocular immobility.
"Good," said Arthur.
"See?" said Ford.
"No," said Arthur.
There was a quiet pause.
"The difficulty with this conversation," said Arthur after a sort of
pondering look had crawled slowly across his face like a mountaineer
negotiating a tricky outcrop, "is that it's very different from most of the
ones I've had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.
They weren't like this. Except perhaps some of the ones I've had with elms
which sometimes get a bit bogged down."
"Arthur," said Ford.
"Hello? Yes?" said Arthur.
"Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very
simple."
"Ah, well I'm not sure I believe that."
They sat down and composed their thoughts.
Ford got out his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic. It was making vague humming noises
and a tiny light on it was flickering faintly.
"Flat battery?" said Arthur.
"No," said Ford, "there is a moving disturbance in the fabric of space+
time, an eddy, a pool of instability, and it's somewhere in our vicinity."
"Where?"
Ford moved the device in a slow lightly bobbing semi-circle. Suddenly the
light flashed.
"There!" said Ford, shooting out his arm. "There, behind that sofa!"
Arthur looked. Much to his surprise, there was a velvet paisleycovered
Chesterfield sofa in the field in front of them. He boggled intelligently at
it. Shrewd questions sprang into his mind.
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"Why," he said, "is there a sofa in that field?"
"I told you!" shouted Ford, leaping to his feet. "Eddies in the space-time
continuum!"
"And this is his sofa, is it?" asked Arthur, struggling to his feet and,
he hoped, though not very optimistically, to his senses.
"Arthur!" shouted Ford at him, "that sofa is there because of the space+
time instability I've been trying to get your terminally softened brain to get
to grips with. It's been washed out of the continuum, it's space-time jetsam,
it doesn't matter what it is, we've got to catch it, it's our only way out of
here!"
He scrambled rapidly down the rocky outcrop and made off across the field.
"Catch it?" muttered Arthur, then frowned in bemusement as he saw that the
Chesterfield was lazily bobbing and wafting away across the grass.
With a whoop of utterly unexpected delight he leapt down the rock and
plunged off in hectic pursuit of Ford Prefect and the irrational piece of
furniture.
They careered wildly through the grass, leaping, laughing, shouting
instructions to each other to head the thing off this way or that way. The sun
shone dreamily on the swaying grass, tiny field animals scattered crazily in
their wake.
Arthur felt happy. He was terribly pleased that the day was for once
working out so much according to plan. Only twenty minutes ago he had decided
he would go mad, and now he was already chasing a Chesterfield sofa across the
fields of prehistoric Earth.
The sofa bobbed this way and that and seemed simultaneously to be as solid
as the trees as it drifted past some of them and hazy as a billowing dream as
it floated like a ghost through others.
Ford and Arthur pounded chaotically after it, but it dodged and weaved as
if following its own complex mathematical topography, which it was. Still they
pursued, still it danced and span, and suddenly turned and dipped as if
crossing the lip of a catastrophe graph, and they were practically on top of
it. With a heave and a shout they leapt on it, the sun winked out, they fell
through a sickening nothingness, and emerged unexpectedly in the middle of the
pitch at Lord's Cricked Ground, St John's Wood, London, towards the end of the
last Test Match of the Australian Series in the year 198-, with England
needing only twenty-eight runs to win.
Chapter 3
Important facts from Galactic history, number one:
(Reproduced from the Siderial Daily Mentioner's Book of popular Galactic
History.)
The night sky over the planet Krikkit is the least interesting sight in
the entire Universe.
Chapter 4
It was a charming and delightful day at Lord's as Ford and Arthur tumbled
haphazardly out of a space-time anomaly and hit the immaculate turf rather
hard.
The applause of the crowd was tremendous. It wasn't for them, but
instinctively they bowed anyway, which was fortunate because the small red
heavy ball which the crowd actually had been applauding whistled mere
millimetres over Arthur's head. In the crowd a man collapsed.
They threw themselves back to the ground which seemed to spin hideously
around them.
"What was that?" hissed Arthur.
"Something red," hissed Ford back at him.
"Where are we?"
"Er, somewhere green."
"Shapes," muttered Arthur. "I need shapes."
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The applause of the crowd had been rapidly succeeded by gasps of
astonishment, and the awkward titters of hundreds of people who could not yet
make up their minds about whether to believe what they had just seen or not.
"This your sofa?" said a voice.
"What was that?" whispered Ford.
Arthur looked up.
"Something blue," he said.
"Shape?" said Ford.
Arthur looked again.
"It is shaped," he hissed at Ford, with his brow savagely furrowing, "like
a policeman."
They remained crouched there for a few moments, frowning deeply. The blue
thing shaped like a policeman tapped them both on the shoulders.
"Come on, you two," the shape said, "let's be having you."
These words had an electrifying effect on Arthur. He leapt to his feet
like an author hearing the phone ring and shot a series of startled glanced at
the panorama around him which had suddenly settled down into something of
quite terrifying ordinariness.
"Where did you get this from?" he yelled at the policeman shape.
"What did you say?" said the startled shape.
"This is Lord's Cricket Ground, isn't it?" snapped Arthur. "Where did you
find it, how did you get it here? I think," he added, clasping his hand to his
brow, "that I had better calm down." He squatted down abruptly in front of
Ford.
"It is a policeman," he said, "What do we do?"
Ford shrugged.
"What do you want to do?" he said.
"I want you," said Arthur, "to tell me that I have been dreaming for the
last five years."
Ford shrugged again, and obliged.
"You've been dreaming for the last five years," he said.
Arthur got to his feet.
"It's all right, officer," he said. "I've been dreaming for the last five
years. Ask him," he added, pointing at Ford, "he was in it."
Having said this, he sauntered off towards the edge of the pitch, brushing
down his dressing gown. He then noticed his dressing gown and stopped. He
stared at it. He flung himself at the policeman.
"So where did I get these clothes from?" he howled.
He collapsed and lay twitching on the grass.
Ford shook his head.
"He's had a bad two million years," he said to the policeman, and together
they heaved Arthur on to the sofa and carried him off the pitch and were only
briefly hampered by the sudden disappearance of the sofa on the way.
Reaction to all this from the crowd were many and various. Most of them
couldn't cope with watching it, and listened to it on the radio instead.
"Well, this is an interesting incident, Brian," said one radio commentator
to another. "I don't think there have been any mysterious materializations on
the pitch since, oh since, well I don't think there have been any - have
there? - that I recall?"
"Edgbaston, 1932?"
"Ah, now what happened then ..."
"Well, Peter, I think it was Canter facing Willcox coming up to bowl from
the pavilion end when a spectator suddenly ran straight across the pitch."
There was a pause while the first commentator considered this.
"Ye ... e ... s ..." he said, "yes, there's nothing actually very
mysterious about that, is there? He didn't actually materialize, did he? Just
ran on."
"No, that's true, but he did claim to have seen something materialize on
the pitch."
"Ah, did he?"
"Yes. An alligator, I think, of some description."
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"Ah. And had anyone else noticed it?"
"Apparently not. And no one was able to get a very detailed description
from him, so only the most perfunctory search was made."
"And what happened to the man?"
"Well, I think someone offered to take him off and give him some lunch,
but he explained that he'd already had a rather good one, so the matter was
dropped and Warwickshire went on to win by three wickets."
"So, not very like this current instance. For those of you who've just
tuned in, you may be interested to know that, er ... two men, two rather
scruffily attired men, and indeed a sofa - a Chesterfield I think?"
"Yes, a Chesterfield."
"Have just materialized here in the middle of Lord's Cricket Ground. But I
don't think they meant any harm, they've been very good-natured about it, and
..."
"Sorry, can I interrupt you a moment Peter and say that the sofa has just
vanished."
"So it has. Well, that's one mystery less. Still, it's definitely one for
the record books I think, particularly occurring at this dramatic moment in
play, England now needing only twenty-four runs to win the series. The men are
leaving the pitch in the company of a police officer, and I think everyone's
settling down now and play is about to resume."
"Now, sir," said the policeman after they had made a passage through the
curious crowd and laid Arthur's peacefully inert body on a blanket, "perhaps
you'd care to tell me who you are, where you come from, and what that little
scene was all about?"
Ford looked at the ground for a moment as if steadying himself for
something, then he straightened up and aimed a look at the policeman which hit
him with the full force of every inch of the six hundred light-years' distance
between Earth and Ford's home near Betelgeuse.
"All right," said Ford, very quietly, "I'll tell you."
"Yes, well, that won't be necessary," said the policeman hurriedly, "just
don't let whatever it was happen again." The policeman turned around and
wandered off in search of anyone who wasn't from Betelgeuse. Fortunately, the
ground was full of them.
Arthur's consciousness approached his body as from a great distance, and
reluctantly. It had had some bad times in there. Slowly, nervously, it entered
and settled down in to its accustomed position.
Arthur sat up.
"Where am I?" he said.
"Lord's Cricket Ground," said Ford.
"Fine," said Arthur, and his consciousness stepped out again for a quick
breather. His body flopped back on the grass.
Ten minutes later, hunched over a cup of tea in the refreshment tent, the
colour started to come back to his haggard face.
"How're you feeling?" said Ford.
"I'm home," said Arthur hoarsely. He closed his eyes and greedily inhaled
the steam from his tea as if it was - well, as far as Arthur was concerned, as
if it was tea, which it was.
"I'm home," he repeated, "home. It's England, it's today, the nightmare is
over." He opened his eyes again and smiled serenely. "I'm where I belong," he
said in an emotional whisper.
"There are two things I fell which I should tell you," said Ford, tossing
a copy of the Guardian over the table at him.
"I'm home," said Arthur.
"Yes," said Ford. "One is," he said pointing at the date at the top of the
paper, "that the Earth will be demolished in two days' time."
"I'm home," said Arthur. "Tea," he said, "cricket," he added with
pleasure, "mown grass, wooden benches, white linen jackets, beer cans ..."
Slowly he began to focus on the newspaper. He cocked his head on one side
with a slight frown.
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file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Life,%20the%20Universe,%20and%20Everything.txt
"I've seen that one before," he said. His eyes wandered slowly up to the
date, which Ford was idly tapping at. His face froze for a second or two and
then began to do that terribly slow crashing trick which Arctic ice-floes do
so spectacularly in the spring.
"And the other thing," said Ford, "is that you appear to have a bone in
your beard." He tossed back his tea.
Outside the refreshment tent, the sun was shining on a happy crowd. It
shone on white hats and red faces. It shone on ice lollies and melted them. It
shone on the tears of small children whose ice lollies had just melted and
fallen off the stick. It shone on the trees, it flashed off whirling cricket
bats, it gleamed off the utterly extraordinary object which was parked behind
the sight-screens and which nobody appeared to have noticed. It beamed on Ford
and Arthur as they emerged blinking from the refreshment tent and surveyed the
scene around them.
Arthur was shaking.
"Perhaps," he said, "I should ..."
"No," said Ford sharply.
"What?" said Arthur.
"Don't try and phone yourself up at home."
"How did you know ...?"
Ford shrugged.
"But why not?" said Arthur.
"People who talk to themselves on the phone," said Ford, "never learn
anything to their advantage."
"But ..."
"Look," said Ford. He picked up an imaginary phone and dialled an
imaginary dial.
"Hello?" he said into the imaginary mouthpiece. "Is that Arthur Dent? Ah,
hello, yes. This is Arthur Dent speaking. Don't hang up."
He looked at the imaginary mouthpiece in disappointment.
"He hung up," he said, shrugged, and put the imaginary phone neatly back
on its imaginary hook.
"This is not my first temporal anomaly," he added.
A glummer look replaced the already glum look on Arthur Dent's face.
"So we're not home and dry," he said.
"We could not even be said," replied Ford, "to be home and vigorously
towelling ourselves off."
The game continued. The bowler approached the wicket at a lope, a trot,
and then a run. He suddenly exploded in a flurry of arms and legs, out of
which flew a ball. The batsman swung and thwacked it behind him over the
sight-screens. Ford's eyes followed the trajectory of the ball and jogged
momentarily. He stiffened. He looked along the flight path of the ball again
and his eyes twitched again.
"This isn't my towel," said Arthur, who was rummaging in his rabbit-skin
bag.
"Shhh," said Ford. He screwed his eyes up in concentration.
"I had a Golgafrinchan jogging towel," continued Arthur, "it was blue with
yellow stars on it. This isn't it."
"Shhh," said Ford again. He covered one eye and looked with the other.
"This one's pink," said Arthur, "it isn't yours is it?"
"I would like you to shut up about your towel," said Ford.
"It isn't my towel," insisted Arthur, "that is the point I am trying to
..."
"And the time at which I would like you to shut up about it," continued
Ford in a low growl, "is now."
"All right," said Arthur, starting to stuff it back into the primitively
stitched rabbit-skin bag. "I realize that it is probably not important in the
cosmic scale of things, it's just odd, that's all. A pink towel suddenly,
instead of a blue one with yellow stars."
Ford was beginning to behave rather strangely, or rather not actually
beginning to behave strangely but beginning to behave in a way which was
file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Life,%20the%20Universe,%20and%20Everything.txt (10 of 86) [1/14/03 11:48:34 PM]
摘要：

file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Life,%20the%20Universe,%20and%20Everything.t\xtDouglasAdams.Life,theUniverse,andEverythingForSallyChapter1TheregularearlymorningyellofhorrorwasthesoundofArthur\Dentwakingupandsuddenlyrememberingwherehewas.Itwasn'tjustthatthecavewascold,itwasn'tjustthatitwasda\mpandsmelly....

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