The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (15 page)

Rolling slowly round the floor between the sarcophagi was a heavy, oily white gas which Arthur at first thought might be there to give the place a little atmosphere until he discovered that it also froze his ankles. The sarcophagi too were intensely cold to the touch.
Ford suddenly crouched down beside one of them. He pulled a corner of his towel out of his satchel and started to rub furiously at something.
"Look, there's a plaque on this one," he explained to Arthur, "It's frosted over."
He rubbed the frost clear and examined the engraved characters. To Arthur they looked like the footprints of a spider that had had one too many of whatever it is that spiders have on a night out, but Ford instantly recognized an early form of Galactic Eezeereed.
"It says `Golgafrincham Ark Fleet, Ship B, Hold Seven, Telephone Sanitizer Second Class' - and a serial number."
" A telephone sanitizer?" said Arthur, "a dead telephone sanitizer?"
"Best kind."
"But what's he doing here?"
Ford peered through the top at the figure within. "Not a lot," he said, and suddenly flashed one of those grins of his which always made people think he'd been overdoing things recently and should try to get some rest.
He scampered over to another sarcophagus. A moment's brisk towel work and he announced:
"This one's a dead hairdresser. Hoopy!"
The next sarcophagus revealed itself to be the last resting place of an advertising account executive; the one after that contained a second-hand car salesman, third class.
An inspection hatch let into the floor suddenly caught Ford's attention, and he squatted down to unfasten it, thrashing away at the clouds of freezing gas that threatened to envelope him.
A thought occurred to Arthur.
"If these are just coffins," he said, "Why are they kept so cold?"
"Or, indeed, why are they kept anyway," said Ford tugging the hatchway open. The gas poured down through it. "Why in fact is anyone going to all the trouble and expense of carting five thousand dead bodies through space?"
"Ten thousand," said Arthur, pointing at the archway through which the next chamber was dimly visible.
Ford stuck his head down through the floor hatchway. He looked up again.
"Fifteen thousand," he said, "there's another lot down there."
"Fifteen million," said a voice.
"That's a lot," said Ford, "A lot a lot."
"Turn around slowly," barked the voice, "and put your hands up. Any other move and I blast you into tiny tiny bits."
"Hello?" said Ford, turning round slowly, putting his hands up and not making any other move.
"Why," said Arthur Dent, "isn't anyone ever pleased to see us?"
Standing silhouetted in the doorway through which they had entered the vault was the man who wasn't pleased to see them. His displeasure was communicated partly by the barking hectoring quality of his voice and partly by the viciousness with which he waved a long silver Kill-O-Zap gun at them. The designer of the gun had clearly not been instructed to beat about the bush. "Make it evil," he'd been told. "Make it totally clear that this gun has a right end and a wrong end. Make it totally clear to anyone standing at the wrong end that things are going badly for them. If that means sticking all sort of spikes and prongs and blackened bits all over it then so be it. This is not a gun for hanging over the fireplace or sticking in the umbrella stand, it is a gun for going out and making people miserable with."
Ford and Arthur looked at the gun unhappily.
The man with the gun moved from the door and circled round them. As he came into the light they could see his black and gold uniform on which the buttons were so highly polished that they shone with an intensity that would have made an approaching motorist flash his lights in annoyance.
He gestured at the door.
"Out," he said. People who can supply that amount of fire power don't need to supply verbs as well. Ford and Arthur went out, closely followed by the wrong end of the Kill-O-Zap gun and the buttons.
Turning into the corridor they were jostled by twenty-four oncoming joggers, now showered and changed, who swept on past them into the vault. Arthur turned to watch them in confusion.
"Move!" screamed their captor.
Arthur moved.
Ford shrugged and moved.
In the vault the joggers went to twenty-four empty sarcophagi along the side wall, opened them, climbed in, and fell into twenty-four dreamless sleeps.
Section 23
"Er, captain ..."
"Yes, Number One?"
"Just heard a sort of report thingy from Number Two."
"Oh, dear."
High up in the bridge of the ship, the Captain stared out into the infinite reaches of space with mild irritation. From where he reclined beneath a wide domed bubble he could see before and above them the vast panorama of stars through which they were moving - a panorama that had thinned out noticably during the course of the voyage. Turning and looking backwards, over the vast two-mile bulk of the ship he could see the far denser mass of stars behind them which seemed to form almost a solid band. This was the view through the Galactic centre from which they were travelling, and indeed had been travelling for years, at a speed that he couldn't quite remember at the moment, but he knew it was terribly fast. It was something approaching the speed of something or other, or was it three times the speed of something else? Jolly impressive anyway. He peered into the bright distance behind the ship, looking for something. He did this every few minutes or so, but never found what he was looking for. He didn't let it worry him though. The scientist chaps had been very insistent that everything was going to be perfectly alright providing nobody panicked and everybody got on and did their bit in an orderly fashion.
He wasn't panicking. As far as he was concerned everything was going splendidly. He dabbed at his shoulder with a large frothy sponge. It crept back into his mind that he was feeling mildly irritated about something. Now what was all that about? A slight cough alerted him to the fact that the ship's first officer was still standing nearby.
Nice chap, Number One. Not of the very brightest, had the odd spot of difficulty doing up his shoe laces, but jolly good officer material for all that. The Captain wasn't a man to kick a chap when he was bending over trying to do up his shoe laces, however long it took him. Not like that ghastly Number Two, strutting about all over the place, polishing his buttons, issuing reports every hour: "Ship's still moving, Captain." "Still on course, Captain." "Oxygen levels still being maintained, Captain." "Give it a miss," was the Captain's vote. Ah yes, that was the thing that had been irritating him. He peered down at Number One.
"Yes, Captain, he was shouting something or other about having found some prisoners ..."
The Captain thought about this. Seemed pretty unlikely to him, but he wasn't one to stand in his officers' way.
"Well, perhaps that'll keep him happy for a bit," he said, "He's always wanted some."
Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent trudged onwards up the ship's apparently endless corridors. Number Two marched behind them barking the occasional order about not making any false moves or trying any funny stuff. They seemed to have passed at least a mile of continuous brown hessian wall weave. Finally they reached a large steel door which slid open when Number Two shouted at it.
They entered.
To the eyes of Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent, the most remarkable thing about the ship's bridge was not the fifty foot diameter hemispherical dome which covered it, and through which the dazzling display of stars shone down on them: to people who have eaten at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, such wonders are commonplace. Nor was it the bewildering array of instruments that crowded the long circumferential wall around them. To Arthur this was exactly what spaceships were traditionally supposed to look like, and to Ford it looked thoroughly antiquated: it confirmed his suspicions that Disaster Area's stuntship had taken them back at least a million, if not two million, years before their own time.
No, the thing that really caught them off balance was the bath.
The bath stood on a six foot pedestal of rough hewn blue water crystal and was of a baroque monstrosity not often seen outside the Maximegalon Museum of Diseased Imaginings. An intestinal jumble of plumbing had been picked out in gold leaf rather than decently buried at midnight in an unmarked grave; the taps and shower attachment would have made a gargoyle jump.
As the dominant centrepiece of a starship bridge it was terribly wrong, and it was with the embittered air of a man who knew this that Number Two approached it.
"Captain, sir!" he shouted through clenched teeth - a difficult trick but he'd had years during which to perfect it.
A large genial face and a genial foam covered arm popped up above the rim of the monstrous bath.
"Ah, hello, Number Two," said the Captain, waving a cheery sponge, "having a nice day?"
Number Two snapped even further to attention than he already was.
"I have brought you the prisoners I located in freezer bay seven, sir!" he yapped.
Ford and Arthur coughed in confusion.
"Er ... hello," they said.
The Captain beamed at them. So Number Two had really found some prisoners. Well, good for him, thought the Captain, nice to see a chap doing what he's best at.
"Oh, hello there," he said to them, "Excuse me not getting up, having a quick bath. Well, jynnan tonnyx all round then. Look in the fridge Number one."
"Certainly sir."
It is a curious fact, and one to which no one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85% of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian "chinanto/mnigs" which is ordinary water server at slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan "tzjin-anthony-ks" which kills cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds.
What can be made of this fact? It exists in total isolation. As far as any theory of structural linguistics is concerned it is right off the graph, and yet it persists. Old structural linguists get very angry when young structural linguists go on about it. Young structural linguists get deeply excited about it and stay up late at night convinced that they are very close to something of profound importance, and end up becoming old structural linguists before their time, getting very angry with the young ones. Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy discipline, and a large number of its practitioners spend too many nights drowning their problems in Ouisghian Zodahs.
Number Two stood before the Captain's bathtub trembling with frustration.
"Don't you want to interrogate the prisoners sir?" he squealed.
The Captain peered at him in bemusement.
"Why on Golgafrincham should I want to do that?" he asked.
"To get information out of them, sir! To find out why they came here!"
"Oh no, no, no," said the Captain, "I expect they just dropped in for a quick jynnan tonnyx, don't you?"
"But sir, they're my prisoners! I must interrogate them!"
The Captain looked at them doubtfully.
"Oh all right," he said, "if you must. Ask them what they want to drink."
A hard cold gleam came into Number Two's eyes. He advanced slowly on Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent.
"All right, you scum," he growled, "you vermin ..." He jabbed Ford with the Kill-O-Zap gun.
"Steady on, Number Two," admonished the Captain gently.
"What do you want to drink!!!" Number Two screamed.
"Well the jynnan tonnyx sounds very nice to me," said Ford, "What about you Arthur?"
Arthur blinked.
"What? Oh, er, yes," he said.
"With ice or without?" bellowed Number Two.
"Oh, with please," said Ford.
"Lemon??!!"
"Yes please," said Ford, "and do you have any of those little biscuits? You know, the cheesy ones?"
"I'm asking the questions!!!!" howled Number Two, his body quaking with apoplectic fury.
"Er, Number Two ..." said the Captain softly.
"Sir?!" "Push off, would you, there's a good chap. I'm trying to have a relaxing bath."
Number Two's eyes narrowed and became what are known in the Shouting and Killing People trade as cold slits, the idea presumably being to give your opponent the impression that you have lost your glasses or are having difficulty keeping awake. Why this is frightening is an, as yet, unresolved problem.
He advanced on the captain, his (Number Two's) mouth a thin hard line. Again, tricky to know why this is understood as fighting behaviour. If, whilst wandering through the jungle of Traal, you were suddenly to come upon the fabled Ravenous Bugblatter Beast, you would have reason to be grateful if its mouth was a thin hard line rather than, as it usually is, a gaping mass of slavering fangs.
"May I remind you sir," hissed Number Two at the Captain, "that you have now been in that bath for over three years?!" This final shot delivered, Number Two spun on his heel and stalked off to a corner to practise darting eye movements in the mirror.
The Captain squirmed in his bath. He gave Ford Prefect a lame smile.
"Well you need to relax a lot in a job like mine," he said.
Ford slowly lowered his hands. It provoked no reaction. Arthur lowered his.
Treading very slowly and carefully, Ford moved over to the bath pedestal. He patted it.
"Nice," he lied.
He wondered if it was safe to grin. Very slowly and carefully, he grinned. It was safe.
"Er ..." he said to the Captain.
"Yes?" said the Captain.
"I wonder," said Ford, "could I ask you actually what your job is in fact?"
A hand tapped him on the shoulder. He span round.
It was the first officer.
"Your drinks," he said.
"Ah, thank you," said Ford. He and Arthur took their jynnan tonnyx. Arthur sipped his, and was surprised to discover it tasted very like a whisky and soda.
"I mean, I couldn't help noticing," said Ford, also taking a sip, "the bodies. In the hold."
"Bodies?" said the Captain in surprise. Ford paused and thought to himself. Never take anything for granted, he thought. Could it be that the Captain doesn't know he's got fifteen million dead bodies on his ship?
The Captain was nodding cheerfully at him. He also appeared to be playing with a rubber duck.
Ford looked around. Number Two was staring at him in the mirror, but only for an instant: his eyes were constantly on the move. The first officer was just standing there holding the drinks tray and smiling benignly.