Life, the Universe and Everything

– 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.

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.

– Why, - he said, - is there a sofa in that field?