The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

  Their journey northwards brought them into steep mountainous terrain of breathtaking sweep and beauty. The vast, jagged, snow-covered peaks ravished their senses. The cold began to bite into their bones.

  They wrapped themselves in animal skins and furs which Ford Prefect acquired by a technique he once learned from a couple of ex-Pralite monks running a Mind-Surfing resort in the Hills of Hunian.

  The galaxy is littered with ex-Pralite monks, all on the make, because the mental control techniques the Order have evolved as a form of devotional discipline are, frankly, sensational--and extraordinary numbers of monks leave the Order just after they have finished their devotional training and just before they take their final vows to stay locked in small metal boxes for the rest of their lives.

  Ford's technique seemed to consist mainly of standing still for a while and smiling.

  After a while an animal--a deer perhaps--would appear from out of the trees and watch him cautiously. Ford would continue to smile at it, his eyes would soften and shine, and he would seem to radiate a deep and universal love, a love which reached out to embrace all of creation. A wonderful quietness would descend on the surrounding countryside, peaceful and serene, emanating from this transfigured man. Slowly the deer would approach, step by step, until it was almost nuzzling him, whereupon Ford Prefect would reach out to it and break its neck.

  "Pheromone control," he said it was, "you just have to know how to generate the right smell."

  Chapter 31

  A few days after landing in this mountainous land they hit a coastline which swept diagonally before them from the south-west to the north-east, a coastline of monumental grandeur: deep majestic ravines, soaring pinnacles of ice-fjords.

  For two further days they scrambled and climbed over the rocks and glaciers, awe-struck with beauty.

  "Arthur!" yelled Ford suddenly.

  It was the afternoon of the second day. Arthur was sitting on a high rock watching the thundering sea smashing itself against the craggy promontories.

  "Arthur!" yelled Ford again.

  Arthur looked to where Ford's voice had come from, carried faintly in the wind.

  Ford had gone to examine a glacier, and Arthur found him there crouching by the solid wall of blue ice. He was tense with excitement--his eyes darted up to meet Arthur's.

  "Look," he said, "look!"

  Arthur looked. He saw the solid wall of blue ice.

  "Yes," he said, "it's a glacier. I've already seen it."

  "No," said Ford, "you've looked at it, you haven't seen it. Look!"

  Ford was pointing deep into the heart of the ice.

  Arthur peered--he saw nothing but vague shadows.

  "Move back from it," insisted Ford, "look again."

  Arthur moved back and looked again.

  "No," he said, and shrugged. "What am I supposed to be looking for?"

  And suddenly he saw it.

  "You see it?"

  He saw it.

  His mouth started to speak, but his brain decided it hadn't got anything to say yet and shut it again. His brain then started to contend with the problem of what his eyes told it they were looking at, but in doing so relinquished control of the mouth which promptly fell open again. Once more gathering up the jaw, his brain lost control of his left hand which then wandered around in an aimless fashion. For a second or so the brain tried to catch the left hand without letting go of the mouth and simultaneously tried to think about what was buried in the ice, which is probably why the legs went and Arthur dropped restfully to the ground.

  The thing that had been causing all this neural upset was a network of shadows in the ice, about eighteen inches beneath the surface. Looked at it from the right angle they resolved into the solid shapes of letters from an alien alphabet, each about three feet high; and for those, like Arthur, who couldn't read Magrathean there was above the letters the outline of a face hanging in the ice.

  It was an old face, thin and distinguished, careworn but not unkind.

  It was the face of the man who had won an award for designing the coastline they now knew themselves to be standing on.

  Chapter 32

  A thin whine filled the air. It whirled and howled through the trees upsetting the squirrels. A few birds flew off in disgust. The noise danced and skittered round the clearing. It whooped, it rasped, it generally offended.

  The Captain, however, regarded the lone bagpiper with an indulgent eye. Little could disturb his equanimity; indeed, once he had got over the loss of his gorgeous bath during that unpleasantness in the swamp all those months ago he had begun to find his new life remarkably congenial. A hollow had been scooped out of a large rock which stood in the middle of the clearing, and in this he would bask daily whilst attendants sloshed water over him. Not particularly warm water, it must be said, as they hadn't yet worked out a way of heating it. Never mind, that would come, and in the meantime search parties were scouring the countryside far and wide for a hot spring, preferably one in a nice leafy glade, and if it was near a soap mine--perfection. To those who said that they had a feeling soap wasn't found in mines, the Captain had ventured to suggest that perhaps that was because no one had looked hard enough, and this possibility had been reluctantly acknowledged.

  No, life was very pleasant, and the greatest thing about it was that when the hot spring was found, complete with leafy glade en suite, and when in the fullness of time the cry came reverberating across the hills that the soap mine had been located and was producing five hundred cakes a day it would be more pleasant still. It was very important to have things to look forward to.

  Wail, wail, screech, wail, howl, honk, squeak went the bagpipes, increasing the Captain's already considerable pleasure at the thought that any moment now they might stop. That was something he looked forward to as well.

  What else was pleasant, he asked himself? Well, so many things: the red and gold of the trees, now that autumn was approaching; the peaceful chatter of scissors a few feet from his bath where a couple of hairdressers were exercising their skills on a dozing art director and his assistant; the sunlight gleaming off the six shiny telephones lined up along the edge of his rock-hewn bath. The only thing nicer than a phone that didn't ring all the time (or indeed at all) was six phones that didn't ring all the time (or indeed at all).

  Nicest of all was the happy murmur of all the hundreds of people slowly assembling in the clearing around him to watch the afternoon committee meeting.

  The Captain punched his rubber duck playfully on the beak. The afternoon committee meetings were his favourite.

  Other eyes watched the assembling crowds. High in a tree on the edge of the clearing squatted Ford Prefect, lately returned from foreign climes. After his six month journey he was lean and healthy, his eyes gleamed, he wore a reindeer-skin coat; his beard was as thick and his face as bronzed as a country-rock singer's.

  He and Arthur Dent had been watching the Golgafrinchans for almost a week now, and Ford had decided to stir things up a bit.

  The clearing was now full. Hundreds of men and women lounged around, chatting, eating fruit, playing cards and generally having a fairly relaxed time of it. Their track suits were now all dirty and even torn, but they all had immaculately styled hair. Ford was puzzled to see that many of them had stuffed their track suits full of leaves and wondered if this was meant to be some form of insulation against the coming winter. Ford's eyes narrowed. They couldn't be interested in botany of a sudden could they?

  In the middle of these speculations the Captain's voice rose above the hubbub.

  "Alright," he said, "I'd like to call this meeting to some sort of order if that's at all possible. Is that alright with everybody?" He smiled genially. "In a minute. When you're all ready."

  The talking gradually died away and the clearing fell silent, except for the bagpiper who seemed to be in some wild and uninhabitable musical world of his own. A few of those in his immediate vicinity threw some leaves to him. If there was any reason f
or this then it escaped Ford Prefect for the moment.

  A small group of people had clustered round the Captain and one of them was clearly beginning to speak. He did this by standing up, clearing his throat and then gazing off into the distance as if to signify to the crowd that he would be with them in a minute.

  The crowd of course were riveted and all turned their eyes on him.

  A moment of silence followed, which Ford judged to be the right dramatic moment to make his entry. The man turned to speak.

  Ford dropped down out of the tree.

  "Hi there," he said.

  The crowd swivelled round.

  "Ah, my dear fellow," called out the Captain, "Got any matches on you? Or a lighter? Anything like that?"

  "No," said Ford, sounding a little deflated. It wasn't what he'd prepared. He decided he'd better be a little stronger on the subject.

  "No, I haven't," he continued, "No matches. Instead I bring you news..."

  "Pity," said the Captain, "We've all run out you see. Haven't had a hot bath in weeks."

  Ford refused to be headed off.

  "I bring you news," he said, "of a discovery that might interest you."

  "Is it on the agenda?" snapped the man whom Ford had interrupted.

  Ford smiled a broad country-rock singer smile.

  "Now, come on," he said.

  "Well, I'm sorry," said the man huffily, "but speaking as a management consultant of many years' standing, I must insist on the importance of observing the committee structure."

  Ford looked round the crowd.

  "He's mad, you know," he said, "this is a prehistoric planet."

  "Address the chair!" snapped the management consultant.

  "There isn't chair," explained Ford, "there's only a rock."

  The management consultant decided that testiness was what the situation now called for.

  "Well, call it a chair," he said testily.

  "Why not call it a rock?" asked Ford.

  "You obviously have no conception," said the management consultant, not abandoning testiness in favour of good old fashioned hauteur, "of modern business methods."

  "And you have no conception of where you are," said Ford.

  A girl with a strident voice leapt to her feet and used it.

  "Shut up, you two," she said, "I want to table a motion."

  "You mean boulder a motion," tittered a hairdresser.

  "Order, order!" yapped the management consultant.

  "Alright," said Ford, "let's see how you are doing." He plonked himself down on the ground to see how long he could keep his temper.

  The Captain made a sort of conciliatory harrumphing noise.

  "I would like to call to order," he said pleasantly, "the five hundred and seventy-third meeting of the colonization committee of Fintlewoodlewix..."

  Ten seconds, thought Ford as he leapt to his feet again.

  "This is futile," he exclaimed, "five hundred and seventy-three committee meetings and you haven't even discovered fire yet!"

  "If you would care," said the girl with the strident voice, "to examine the agenda sheet..."

  "Agenda rock," trilled the hairdresser happily.

  "Thank you, I've made that point," muttered Ford.

  "... you... will... see..." continued the girl firmly, "that we are having a report from the hairdressers' Fire Development Sub-Committee today."

  "Oh... ah--" said the hairdresser with a sheepish look which is recognized the whole Galaxy over as meaning "Er, will next Tuesday do?"

  "Alright," said Ford, rounding on him, "what have you done? What are you going to do? What are your thoughts on fire development?"

  "Well I don't know," said the hairdresser, "All they gave me was a couple of sticks..."

  "So what have you done with them?"

  Nervously, the hairdresser fished in his track suit top and handed over the fruits of his labour to Ford.

  Ford held them up for all to see.

  "Curling tongs," he said.

  The crowd applauded.

  "Never mind," said Ford, "Rome wasn't burnt in a day."

  The crowd hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about, but they loved it nevertheless. They applauded.

  "Well, you're obviously being totally naive of course," said the girl, "When you've been in marketing as long as I have you'll know that before any new product can be developed it has to be properly researched. We've got to find out what people want from fire, how they relate to it, what sort of image it has for them."

  The crowd were tense. They were expecting something wonderful from Ford.

  "Stick it up your nose," he said.

  "Which is precisely the sort of thing we need to know," insisted the girl, "Do people want fire that can be applied nasally?"

  "Do you?" Ford asked the crowd.

  "Yes!" shouted some.

  "No!" shouted others happily.

  They didn't know, they just thought it was great.

  "And the wheel," said the Captain, "What about this wheel thingy? It sounds a terribly interesting project."

  "Ah," said the marketing girl, "Well, we're having a little difficulty there."

  "Difficulty?" exclaimed Ford, "Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It's the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!"

  The marketing girl soured him with a look.

  "Alright, Mr. Wiseguy," she said, "you're so clever, you tell us what colour it should have."

  The crowd went wild. One up to the home team, they thought. Ford shrugged his shoulders and sat down again.

  "Almighty Zarquon," he said, "have none of you done anything?"

  As if in answer to his question there was a sudden clamour of noise from the entrance to the clearing. The crowd couldn't believe the amount of entertainment they were getting this afternoon: in marched a squad of about a dozen men dressed in the remnants of their Golgafrincham 3rd Regiment dress uniforms. About half of them still carried Kill-O-Zap guns, the rest now carried spears which they struck together as they marched. They looked bronzed, healthy, and utterly exhausted and bedraggled. They clattered to a halt and banged to attention. One of them fell over and never moved again.

  "Captain, sir!" cried Number Two--for he was their leader--"Permission to report, sir!"

  "Yes, alright Number Two, welcome back and all that. Find any hot springs?" said the Captain despondently.

  "No sir!"

  "Thought you wouldn't."

  Number Two strode through the crowd and presented arms before the bath.

  "We have discovered another continent!"

  "When was this?"

  "It lies across the sea..." said Number Two, narrowing his eyes significantly, "to the east!"

  "Ah."

  Number Two turned to face the crowd. He raised his gun above his head. This is going to be great, thought the crowd.

  "We have declared war on it!"

  Wild abandoned cheering broke out in all corners of the clearing--this was beyond all expectation.

  "Wait a minute," shouted Ford Prefect, "wait a minute!"

  He leapt to his feet and demanded silence. After a while he got it, or at least the best silence he could hope for under the circumstances: the circumstances were that the bagpiper was spontaneously composing a national anthem.

  "Do we have to have the piper?" demanded Ford.

  "Oh yes," said the Captain, "we've given him a grant."

  Ford considered opening this idea up for debate but quickly decided that that way madness lay. Instead he slung a well judged rock at the piper and turned to face Number Two.

  "War?" he said.

  "Yes!" Number Two gazed contemptuously at Ford Prefect.

  "On the next continent?"

  "Yes! Total warfare! The war to end all wars!"

  "But there's no one even living there yet!"

  Ah, interesting, thought the crowd, nice point.

  Number Two's gaze hovered undisturbed. In this respect his eyes were like a couple of mosq
uitos that hover purposefully three inches from your nose and refuse to be deflected by arm thrashes, fly swats or rolled newspapers.

  "I know that," he said, "but there will be one day! So we have left an open-ended ultimatum."

  "What?"

  "And blown up a few military installations."

  The Captain leaned forward out of his bath.

  "Military installations, Number Two?" he said.

  For a moment the eyes wavered.

  "Yes, sir, well potential military installations. Alright... trees."

  The moment of uncertainty passed--his eyes flickered like whips over his audience.

  "And," he roared, "we interrogated a gazelle!"

  He flipped his Kill-O-Zap gun smartly under his arm and marched off through the pandemonium that had now erupted throughout the ecstatic crowd. A few steps was all he managed before he was caught up and carried shoulder high for a lap of honour round the clearing.

  Ford sat and idly tapped a couple of stones together.

  "So what else have you done?" he inquired after the celebrations had died down.

  "We have started a culture," said the marketing girl.

  "Oh yes?" said Ford.

  "Yes. One of our film producers is already making a fascinating documentary about the indigenous cavemen of the area."

  "They're not cavemen."

  "They look like cavemen."

  "Do they live in caves?"

  "Well..."

  "They live in huts."

  "Perhaps they're having their caves redecorated," called out a wag from the crowd.

  Ford rounded on him angrily.

  "Very funny," he said, "but have you noticed that they're dying out?"

  On their journey back, Ford and Arthur had come across two derelict villages and the bodies of many natives in the woods, where they had crept away to die. Those that still lived were stricken and listless, as if they were suffering some disease of the spirit rather than the body. They moved sluggishly and with an infinite sadness. Their future had been taken away from them.

  "Dying out!" repeated Ford. "Do you know what that means?"

  "Er... we shouldn't sell them any life insurance?" called out the wag again.