The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Page 6

  Zaphod started with fear and his blood seemed to turn to liquid helium.

  "Hey, what was that?" he muttered voicelessly.

  "A recording," said Gargravarr, "of the last man who was put in the Vortex. It is always played to the next victim. A sort of prelude."

  "Hey, it really sounds bad..." stammered Zaphod, "couldn't we maybe slope off to a party or something for a while, think it over?"

  "For all I know," said Gargravarr's ethereal voice, "I'm probably at one. My body that is. It goes to a lot of parties without me. Says I only get in the way. Hey ho."

  "What is all this with your body?" said Zaphod, anxious to delay whatever it was that was going to happen to him.

  "Well, it's... it's busy you know," said Gargravarr hesitantly.

  "You mean it's got a mind of its own?" said Zaphod.

  There was a long and slightly chilly pause before Gargravarr spoke again.

  "I have to say," he replied eventually, "that I find that remark in rather poor taste."

  Zaphod muttered a bewildered and embarrassed apology.

  "No matter," said Gargravarr, "you weren't to know."

  The voice fluttered unhappily.

  "The truth is," it continued in tones which suggested he was trying very hard to keep it under control, "the truth is that we are currently undergoing a period of legal trial separation. I suspect it will end in divorce."

  The voice was still again, leaving Zaphod with no idea of what to say. He mumbled uncertainly.

  "I think we are probably not very well suited," said Gargravarr again at length, "we never seemed to be happy doing the same things. We always had the greatest arguments over sex and fishing. Eventually we tried to combine the two, but that only led to disaster, as you can probably imagine. And now my body refuses to let me in. It won't even see me..."

  He paused again, tragically. The wind whipped across the plain.

  "It says I only inhibit it. I pointed out that in fact I was meant to inhibit it, and it said that that was exactly the sort of smart alec remark that got right up a body's left nostril, and so we left it. It will probably get custody of my forename."

  "Oh..." said Zaphod faintly, "and what's that?"

  "Pizpot," said the voice, "My name is Pizpot Gargravarr. Says it all really doesn't it?"

  "Errr..." said Zaphod sympathetically.

  "And that is why I, as a disembodied mind, have this job, Custodian of the Total Perspective Vortex. No one will ever walk on the ground of this planet. Except the victims of the Vortex--they don't really count I'm afraid."

  "Ah..."

  "I'll tell you the story. Would you like to hear it?"

  "Er..."

  "Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet--people, cities, shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the numbers of these shoe shops were increasing. It's a well known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the shops proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops. Result--collapse, ruin and famine. Most of the population died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic instability mutated into birds--you've seen one of them--who cursed their feet, cursed the ground, and vowed that none should walk on it again. Unhappy lot. Come, I must take you to the Vortex."

  Zaphod shook his head in bemusement and stumbled forward across the plain.

  "And you," he said, "you come from this hellhole pit do you?"

  "No no," said Gargravarr, taken aback, "I come from the Frogstar World C. Beautiful place. Wonderful fishing. I flit back there in the evenings. Though all I can do now is watch. The Total Perspective Vortex is the only thing on this planet with any function. It was built here because no one else wanted it on their doorstep."

  At that moment another dismal scream rent the air and Zaphod shuddered.

  "What can do that to a guy?" he breathed.

  "The Universe," said Gargravarr simply, "the whole infinite Universe. The infinite suns, the infinite distances between them, and yourself an invisible dot on an invisible dot, infinitely small."

  "Hey, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox, man, you know," muttered Zaphod trying to flap the last remnants of his ego.

  Gargravarr made no reply, but merely resumed his mournful humming till they reached the tarnished steel dome in the middle of the plain.

  As they reached it, a door hummed open in the side, revealing a small darkened chamber within.

  "Enter," said Gargravarr.

  Zaphod started with fear.

  "Hey, what, now?" he said.

  "Now."

  Zaphod peered nervously inside. The chamber was very small. It was steel-lined and there was hardly space in it for more than one man.

  "It... er... it doesn't look like any kind of Vortex to me," said Zaphod.

  "It isn't," said Gargravarr, "it's just the elevator. Enter."

  With infinite trepidation Zaphod stepped into it. He was aware of Gargravarr being in the elevator with him, though the disembodied man was not for the moment speaking.

  The elevator began its descent.

  "I must get myself into the right frame of mind for this," muttered Zaphod.

  "There is no right frame of mind," said Gargravarr sternly.

  "You really know how to make a guy feel inadequate."

  "I don't. The Vortex does."

  At the bottom of the shaft, the rear of the elevator opened up and Zaphod stumbled out into a smallish, functional, steel-lined chamber.

  At the far side of it stood a single upright steel box, just large enough for a man to stand in.

  It was that simple.

  It connected to a small pile of components and instruments via a single thick wire.

  "Is that it?" said Zaphod in surprise.

  "That is it."

  Didn't look too bad, thought Zaphod.

  "And I get in there do I?" said Zaphod.

  "You get in there," said Gargravarr, "and I'm afraid you must do it now."

  "OK, OK," said Zaphod.

  He opened the door of the box and stepped in.

  Inside the box he waited.

  After five seconds there was a click, and the entire Universe was there in the box with him.

  Chapter 11

  The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.

  To explain--since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation--every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.

  The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.

  Trin Tragula--for that was his name--was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.

  And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake.

  "Have some sense of proportion!" she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day.

  And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex--just to show her.

  And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.

  To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his sati
sfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.

  The door of the Vortex swung open.

  From his disembodied mind Gargravarr watched dejectedly. He had rather liked Zaphod Beeblebrox in a strange sort of way. He was clearly a man of many qualities, even if they were mostly bad ones.

  He waited for him to flop forwards out of the box, as they all did.

  Instead, he stepped out.

  "Hi!" he said.

  "Beeblebrox..." gasped Gargravarr's mind in amazement.

  "Could I have a drink please?" said Zaphod.

  "You... you... have been in the Vortex?" stammered Gargravarr.

  "You saw me, kid."

  "And it was working?"

  "Sure was."

  "And you saw the whole infinity of creation?"

  "Sure. Really neat place, you know that?"

  Gargravarr's mind was reeling in astonishment. Had his body been with him it would have sat down heavily with its mouth hanging open.

  "And you saw yourself," said Gargravarr, "in relation to it all?"

  "Oh, yeah, yeah."

  "But... what did you experience?"

  Zaphod shrugged smugly.

  "It just told me what I knew all the time. I'm a really terrific and great guy. Didn't I tell you, baby, I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox!"

  His gaze passed over the machinery which powered the vortex and suddenly stopped, startled.

  He breathed heavily.

  "Hey," he said, "is that really a piece of fairy cake?"

  He ripped the small piece of confectionery from the sensors with which it was surrounded.

  "If I told you how much I needed this," he said ravenously, "I wouldn't have time to eat it."

  He ate it.

  Chapter 12

  A short while later he was running across the plain in the direction of the ruined city.

  The dank air wheezed heavily in his lungs and he frequently stumbled with the exhaustion he was still feeling. Night was beginning to fall too, and the rough ground was treacherous.

  The elation of his recent experience was still with him though. The whole Universe. He had seen the whole Universe stretching to infinity around him--everything. And with it had come the clear and extraordinary knowledge that he was the most important thing in it. Having a conceited ego is one thing. Actually being told by a machine is another.

  He didn't have time to reflect on this matter.

  Gargravarr had told him that he would have to alert his masters as to what had happened, but that he was prepared to leave a decent interval before doing so. Enough time for Zaphod to make a break and find somewhere to hide.

  What he was going to do he didn't know, but feeling that he was the most important person in the Universe gave him the confidence to believe that something would turn up.

  Nothing else on this blighted planet could give him much grounds for optimism.

  He ran on, and soon reached the outskirts of the abandoned city.

  He walked along cracked and gaping roads riddled with scrawny weeds, the holes filled with rotting shoes. The buildings he passed were so crumbled and decrepit he thought it unsafe to enter any of them. Where could he hide? He hurried on.

  After a while the remains of a wide sweeping road led off from the one down which he was walking, and at its end lay a vast low building, surrounded with sundry smaller ones, the whole surrounded by the remains of a perimeter barrier. The large main building still seemed reasonably solid, and Zaphod turned off to see if it might provide him with... well with anything.

  He approached the building. Along one side of it--the front it would seem since it faced a wide concreted apron area--were three gigantic doors, maybe sixty feet high. The far one of these was open, and towards this, Zaphod ran.

  Inside, all was gloom, dust and confusion. Giant cobwebs lay over everything. Part of the infrastructure of the building had collapsed, part of the rear wall had caved in, and a thick choking dust lay inches over the floor.

  Through the heavy gloom huge shapes loomed, covered with debris.

  The shapes were sometimes cylindrical, sometimes bulbous, sometimes like eggs, or rather cracked eggs. Most of them were split open or falling apart, some were mere skeletons.

  They were all spacecraft, all derelict.

  Zaphod wandered in frustration among the hulks. There was nothing here that remotely approached the serviceable. Even the mere vibration of his footsteps caused one precarious wreck to collapse further into itself.

  Towards the rear of the building lay one old ship, slightly larger than the others, and buried beneath even deeper piles of dust and cobwebs. Its outline, however, seemed unbroken. Zaphod approached it with interest, and as he did so, he tripped over an old feedline.

  He tried to toss the feedline aside, and to his surprise discovered that it was still connected to the ship.

  To his utter astonishment he realized that the feedline was also humming slightly.

  He stared at the ship in disbelief, and then back down at the feedline in his hands.

  He tore off his jacket and threw it aside. Crawling along on his hands and knees he followed the feedline to the point where it connected with the ship. The connection was sound, and the slight humming vibration was more distinct.

  His heart was beating fast. He wiped away some grime and laid an ear against the ship's side. He could only hear a faint, indeterminate noise.

  He rummaged feverishly amongst the debris lying on the floor all about him and found a short length of tubing, and a non-biodegradable plastic cup. Out of this he fashioned a crude stethoscope and placed it against the side of the ship.

  What he heard made his brains turn somersaults.

  The voice said:

  "Transtellar Cruise Lines would like to apologize to passengers for the continuing delay to this flight. We are currently awaiting the loading of our complement of small lemon-soaked paper napkins for your comfort, refreshment and hygiene during the journey. Meanwhile we thank you for your patience. The cabin crew will shortly be serving coffee and biscuits again."

  Zaphod staggered backwards, staring wildly at the ship.

  He walked around for a few moments in a daze. In so doing he suddenly caught sight of a giant departure board still hanging, but by only one support, from the ceiling above him. It was covered with grime, but some of the figures were still discernible.

  Zaphod's eyes searched amongst the figures, then made some brief calculations. His eyes widened.

  "Nine hundred years..." he breathed to himself. That was how late the ship was.

  Two minutes later he was on board.

  As he stepped out of the airlock, the air that greeted him was cool and fresh--the air conditioning was still working.

  The lights were still on.

  He moved out of the small entrance chamber into a short narrow corridor and stepped nervously down it.

  Suddenly a door opened and a figure stepped out in front of him.

  "Please return to your seat sir," said the android stewardess and, turning her back on him, she walked on down the corridor in front of him.

  When his heart had started beating again he followed her. She opened the door at the end of the corridor and walked through.

  He followed her through the door.

  They were now in the passenger compartment and Zaphod's heart stopped still again for a moment.

  In every seat sat a passenger, strapped into his or her seat.

  The passengers' hair was long and unkempt, their fingernails were long, the men wore beards.

  All of them were quite clearly alive--but sleeping.

  Zaphod had the creeping horrors.

  He walked slowly down the aisle as in a dream. By the time he was halfway down the aisle, the stewardess had reached the other end. She turned and spoke.

  "Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen," she said sweetly, "Thank you for
bearing with us during this slight delay. We will be taking off as soon as we possibly can. If you would like to wake up now I will serve you coffee and biscuits."

  There was a slight hum.

  At that moment, all the passengers awoke.

  They awoke screaming and clawing at their straps and life support systems that held them tightly in their seats. They screamed and bawled and hollered till Zaphod thought his ears would shatter.

  They struggled and writhed as the stewardess patiently moved up the aisle placing a small cup of coffee and a packet of biscuits in front of each one of them.

  Then one of them rose from his seat.

  He turned and looked at Zaphod.

  Zaphod's skin was crawling all over his body as if it was trying to get off. He turned and ran from the bedlam.

  He plunged through the door and back into the corridor.

  The man pursued him.

  He raced in a frenzy to the end of the corridor, through the entrance chamber and beyond. He arrived on the flight deck, slammed and bolted the door behind him. He leant back against the door breathing hard.

  Within seconds, a hand started beating on the door.

  From somewhere on the flight deck a metallic voice addressed him.

  "Passengers are not allowed on the flight deck. Please return to your seat, and wait for the ship to take off. Coffee and biscuits are being served. This is your autopilot speaking. Please return to your seat."

  Zaphod said nothing. He breathed hard, behind him, the hand continued to knock on the door.

  "Please return to your seat," repeated the autopilot. "Passengers are not allowed on the flight deck."

  "I'm not a passenger," panted Zaphod.

  "Please return to your seat."

  "I am not a passenger!" shouted Zaphod again.

  "Please return to your seat."

  "I am not a... hello, can you hear me?"

  "Please return to your seat."

  You're the autopilot?" said Zaphod.

  "Yes," said the voice from the flight console.

  "You're in charge of this ship?"

  "Yes," said the voice again, "there has been a delay. Passengers are to be kept temporarily in suspended animation, for their comfort and convenience. Coffee and biscuits are being served every year, after which passengers are returned to suspended animation for their continued comfort and convenience. Departure will take place when the flight stores are complete. We apologize for the delay."

  Zaphod moved away from the door, on which the pounding had now ceased. He approached the flight console.