11
Vogon Bureaucruiser Class Hyperspace Ship, the Business End
Hyperspace cleared its throat and hawked out a Vogon bureaucruiser into the clear swathe of satin space 0.01 parsecs beyond Nano’s thermosphere. Inside the Business End, three thousand members of the Bureaucratic Corps flopped out of their hypercradles and rubbed the belt dimples from their tummies.
Prostetnic Jeltz was first at his station, dispelling the unsettling daze of ersatz-evolution by pounding on buttons and shouting at his slacker subordinates.
‘Less sloth, you useless gallywragglers,’ he urged. ‘Show a little kroompst. We are on the clock, and it is an atomic clock that will never lose a second.’
The crew grunted kroompst and moaned their way to various posts, groggily redirecting their animosity towards the planet below.
‘Hyperspace is merely a holiday,’ said Jeltz, ‘not a place you can live. So forget its false comforts.’
There were few comforts, false or otherwise, on board the Business End. Soft furnishings of any kind were verboten for the crew, as they might take the edge off. And a Vogon without his hostile edge is about as much use as a pooh stick in a bartle-bodging contest.
Guide Note: An aging constant had once flouted the regulations and had two nice cushions implanted in his buttocks. Unfortunately he picked up a microscopic windborne parasite in the jungle city of Rhiis Bhuurohs and it ate him alive, foam first. The parasite knocked out six decks of the Vogon cruiser before the mess hall rations killed it.
Jeltz cranked open his jaw to holler for Mown, but saw from the corner of his eye that the little constant was already bobbing at his elbow.
Grrrmmmm, he thought (Vogons even think grunts). That boy moves pretty darned fast for one of us. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
It was, he decided, a consider it later thing. The first priority was to exterminate the Earthlings. Jeltz had filled up quite a sac of rancour over this particular species and had spent his hyperspace trance constructing overkill scenarios. This time there would be no survivors.
‘This time there will be no survivors,’ he assured Mown, in case the boy thought Daddy was leaking kroompst.
‘Badabingo,’ said Constant Mown.
Jeltz frowned, though with all the fleshy planes on his brow, only a close relative could read his expressions. ‘What did you say?’
‘Badabingo. It’s an expression. Used on Blagulon Kappa, I believe.’
‘Expression!’ warbled Jeltz, a full octave above his usual range. ‘We do not use expressions!’
Mown took two quick backward steps, but did not fall over.
‘Of course not. Thank you for reprimanding me, Da-Prostetnic. I am fortunate to have such a role model.’
Jeltz huffed, mollified. ‘Expressions, indeed slogans in general, are only acceptable in poetic or ironic contexts. For example, as I launched the torpedoes on the eco-planet Foliavintus, I said, “Remember to recycle electrical devices.” ’
‘Most diabolical, Prostetnic.’
Such is the tenuous grasp of the Vogon on the tenets of humour that Jeltz proceeded to explain: ‘This was funny in a mean-spirited way because “Remember to recycle electrical devices” was something of a government jingle on Foliavintus.’
‘Oh, I get it.’
‘And also, once these particular explosive electrical devices were used, they could not be recycled. In fact, no electrical devices would be recycled ever again.’
‘Bada– Nice one.’
‘There’s more.’ Jeltz swilled bile in his cheeks then swallowed. ‘In a very real way, my torpedoes were recycling the entire planet. Do you see?’
Mown’s skin was emerald pale. ‘Yes. I get all the levels.’
Jeltz bobbled his head experimentally and was pleased to find it completely clear of hyper-happy fugue.
‘Think bitter thoughts,’ he advised his crew over the intercom. ‘Find something to hate and soon you will be yourself. May I suggest the Earthlings on this tiny planet below us. Surely after all the bother their extermination order has caused, they are more than deserving of your ire.’
It seemed as though they were, and soon the Business End was clanking and ka-chunking with the ominous sounds of torpedo tubes being loaded and plasma cannons being brought to bear.
‘Twinkle twinkle,’ recited Jeltz, ‘Little planetoid.’
He glanced down at Mown.
‘Rhyme?’
Mown’s teeth clicked as he thought. He knew what was expected.
‘Ahm… Soon we commit you, To the void.’
‘Excellent, my son,’ burbled Jeltz. ‘Sometimes you almost make me happy.’
The Town of Cong, Innisfree, Nano
In the banquet hall, Thor and Zaphod were up to their armpits in a congratulatory buffet, totally oblivious to the utter annihilation bearing down from above, relatively speaking. Relatively speaking, that is, with regard to the term above. The annihilation would be utter no matter what it was related to.
‘You were wonderful, sir,’ said an Ameglian Major cow, tenderizing his own hindquarters with a mallet strapped to one hoof. ‘The way you handled that big hammer.’ The cow imitated Thor’s doomstrike with the meat tenderizer. ‘Honestly, I felt chills.’
Thor tugged on a beard plait. ‘Really? You don’t think I overplayed it? Maybe a modern god should hold back a bit on the melodrama.’
Zaphod emerged from a pitcher of Gargle Blasters. ‘Rubbish, Thor old man. You totally hammered that green guy. Then the mercy at the last minute. Total genius. Textbook god stuff.’
Thor cupped his mouth and whispered in case there was a microphone somewhere. ‘I have to admit it, Zaph. You were right. With all these people adoring me, I feel more real, more alive than I have since the music days. I honestly think I can start to put the bad old days behind me.’
‘We are back, baby. Religion is the new atheism. Once we have united all the colonists in faith, there’s a whole Universe out there. Imagine how many tiny hammers we could sell.’
‘I know a guy on Asgard. He’s got a whole bunch of elves in his forge. One call from me and he’s knocking those little Mj?llnirs out.’
Zaphod plunged his arm into what was either a soya-based soup or a half-full spittoon. Either way, he slurped on his fingers with great gusto. ‘Now you’re talking, Thor. Time is a wheel and the good old days have come around again.’
‘Nice proverbial blend, sir,’ said the cow. ‘Very appropriate. How about a nice steak to top yourself off? I can do mince if you don’t like chewing.’
Zaphod ignored the animal. ‘We have to put together a big event. Defeating Wowbagger is good for a colony or two, but for reviving your career across a few galaxies, we need something of umbilical proportions.’
‘I think you mean…’ began the cow, then stopped himself, intuitively realizing that correcting the diner was no way to get oneself butchered and devoured.
Zaphod was in full entrepreneurial flow. ‘I don’t know. Let’s say there’s a plague.’
Thor wasn’t convinced. ‘Come on, Zaph. I can’t stop a plague with a hammer.’
‘Okay. A drought. You could hammer through solid rock to an underground river.’
Thor picked up the cow and popped it into his mouth, barely giving the animal time to splutter its delighted thanks.
‘I don’t know. People have pretty good geologists these days. Underground rivers are not hard to find.’
‘Something with locusts then. Or volcanoes.’ Zaphod clambered on to the table so that he could look into Thor’s eyes. ‘This is the break we’ve been waiting for. You are going to be bigger than ever, I can feel it.’
‘Do you think so? Really?’
‘Absolutely.’
The banquet hall door opened and Hillman Hunter stuck his head in through a slice of outdoors.
‘How-de-do, my ventripotent benefactors,’ he lilted. ‘All boozed up to the eyeballs and ready for business? I have the official deity contracts here.’
Zaphod nodded reassuringly at his client. ‘It’s okay, I had a look. Standard god duties.’
‘Holy days?’
‘Thirty-two. And two more for each child conceived with a mortal.’
Thor was impressed. ‘That’s a sweet deal.’
Zaphod laid a hand on the god’s giant shoulder. ‘It’s a sweet deal for them and don’t you forget it.’
Hillman shallied forward, weaving from side to side, touching his temple every so often.
‘How does a fella approach his god?’ he wondered aloud. ‘I’m just trying out a few moves.’
‘I like the head-touching bit,’ said Thor. ‘But lose the wibbly-wobbly thing.’
‘You can do the wibbly-wobbly thing for me, if you like,’ said Zaphod. ‘Surely I deserve some adoration too?’
Hillman hoisted himself up on to the table, passing the contracts over.
‘You’re a great chap altogether, Mr Beeblebrox. Whatever we need, you bring it in your wonderful ship. Sometimes I think that if you’d never arrived, we wouldn’t need anything.’
Even Zaphod couldn’t miss the barb in that statement, but he decided to ignore it.
‘Hey, Hilly. What’s this in pencil at the bottom of the page? Did you just write this in?’
Hillman did his number-one leprechaun act. ‘Ah, sure bejaysus, don’t be worrying about that. It’s only a protection clause. It merely says that the presiding god, Thor in this case, is responsible for protecting the planet from alien attack. You know, big lasers or nukes or the like.’
‘Not a problem,’ said Zaphod magnanimously. ‘We’re not likely to need planet protection way out here in the nebula for a couple of hundred years, are we?’
Hillman’s fingers twiddled a jig and he rolled an eye skywards.
‘Oh, you never know,’ he said.
The Business End
Prostetnic Jeltz had his seat winched up to cup his behind, then let the hydraulic column take his weight. There was a hiss as he sat back, which he always claimed came from the chair.
‘My seat is a little damp,’ he grumbled.
‘I am so sorry, Prostetnic,’ burbled Constant Mown, as fixed a fixture at Jeltz’s elbow as the elbow itself. In fact, when Mown was not hovering at kidney level, Jeltz felt a vacuum of absence in the side of his head.
I am becoming too reliant on that boy, he thought. Time to ship him off somewhere unpleasant.
‘My chair is supposed to be extremely damp, if not downright sopping. You know how I hate to squeak.’
‘I shall see to it, at once.’
Jeltz stopped him with a raised finger. ‘Halt. Work first, damp chair later. I am prepared to chafe in order to get this job done.’
‘That’s the spirit, sir. You’re the kroompster.’
The bridge bubbled with slow, jerky activity as the Vogons geared up for business as quickly as their ungainly bodies would allow.
Guide Note: A recent Maximegalon poll rated Vogon agility on a par with the Ardnuffs of Razorhead IV. The Vogons were delighted to be on a par with anyone until they found out that the Ardnuffs were gigantic zygodactylous monopods who live on a moon with barely enough gravity to keep them from pogo-ing off into space. The Vogons were thrown a couple of consolatory bones by two other Maximegalon statistics which rated them in the top five for most travelled race and a clear number one for most recognizable silhouette.
Related Reading:
The Complete Maximegalon Statistix Volumes 1–15,000
and
The Quick Guide to the Complete Maximegalon Statistix Volumes 1–25,000
Jeltz fixed one eye on the main screen, allowing the other to roam the bridge, an oculogyric talent he had developed to keep tabs on his crew. A small blue world hung in space before him, wreathed in wispy clouds, possibly brimming with healthy species, revelling in the utter happiness of being allowed to live their simple lives on this unblighted planetoid.
Unblighted. Not for long.
‘Finally,’ murmured Jeltz. ‘Finally, at last and ultimately inevitably.’
‘Finally,’ echoed Constant Mown, and it was an echo; faint and wavering.
‘What is the ship telling us, Constant?’
The Vogon bureaucruiser was a marvellous vehicle, providing you worked on the inside. If you worked on the outside as a panel scraper or engine plunger, then it was possible to be driven blind or even mad by its sheer symmetrophobia. Most craft give a nod, however brief and unfriendly, towards beauty. Vogon ships did not nod towards beauty. They pulled on ski masks and mugged beauty in a dark alley. They spat in the eye of beauty and bludgeoned their way through the notions of aesthetics and aerodynamics. Vogon cruisers did not so much travel through space as defile it and toss it aside. But on the inside, a Vogon ship was packed with more hitech gizmology than you would find in your average hi-tech gizmology research facility. Even a well-kitted-out Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax battle bus would have pulled over to let a Vogon cruiser pass, and the Business End was top of the range, the sweetest ship in the pound. She might not win any pageants but she could tell you how many boghogs were biting each other’s thighs on the opposite side of the Universe. And also how many tics those hogs were ferrying around on their backs. And possibly the blood type of the tics. Then she could kill the tics with micro-smart bombs.
Constant Mown dragged himself away from his coveted position at the prostetnic’s elbow, and lurched towards the main instrument display panel. There was no need for him to lurch, he could easily have swanned gracefully, but Mown was reminded every day what the Vogons do to species who have the audacity to evolve.
As he lurched, Mown kept a careful watch on the bridge’s other constants in case any of them should try to usurp his position as chief groveller. Shafting one’s superiors was accepted practice in the corps. All it would take was one tasty sliver of information fed to the prostetnic and Mown could find himself stepped on and demoted to the plunger squad. Mown did not think he could handle a life in the mulligrubs looking at this ship from the outside.
The panel covered an entire wall on the ship’s port side and consisted of dozens of overlapping gas screens, all displaying constantly updating scan feeds. Mown searched the screens for something, anything, that could save the Earthlings. There was no point in lying as the readouts were pretty much idiot-proof, which was a prudent move on the part of the designer as many of the crew were idiots. It was easier to be a Vogon if you were an idiot.
There must be something, thought Mown. I don’t want to kill these people. I want to ask them about country music. And maybe hug an Australian lady. They’re so outdoorsy.
He glanced at the readings. The Earthlings were on Nano, no doubt about it. The computer registered over two thousand humanoids on the surface, at least ten per cent of them Earthlings. DNA and brain-wave scans confirmed their origin.
‘Well?’ huffed Jeltz. ‘Give me the good news, Constant.’
‘Earthlings. Two hundred plus. Five in utero.’
‘Twinkle twinkle,’ crooned the prostetnic. ‘Plot me a torpedo solution, gunner.’
‘Wait!’
Mown had blurted it out before he could stop himself.
An almost comical silence descended on the bridge. It seemed to Mown that even the instruments toned down their bleeping and squelching. From the corner of his eye, it looked as though the planet had stopped moving.
‘Wait? Did you say wait, Constant?’ Jeltz’s voice was smoother than a glassy ocean and more dangerous than a glassy ocean with a couple of spannerhead sharks lurking below the surface, really hungry sharks who had a thing about landlubbers coming into their environment.
Both of Jeltz’s eyes were drilling into Mown now. ‘Why would you say wait? Don’t you want us to complete our mission?’
Mown felt acid churn in his stomach, and not in a good way.
One word. He had said one word and his career, his life, was over.
‘I didn’t mean wait, as such.’
‘So you didn’t say wait?’
‘Yes. Yes, I said wait.’
‘So you said wait, but that was not what you meant?’
‘Yes, Prostetnic. Exactly.’
‘This is disturbing, Constant. I expect my crew to mean what I want them to say.’
‘I do mean what I say,’ said Mown miserably.
‘So you meant wait?’
‘No, Daddy! I didn’t.’
The ultimate transgression! Grasping at familial bonds for clemency. Vogons had only one loyalty: the job.
Prostetnic Jeltz’s torso bubbled with swallowed anger and his ear actually tooted.
‘Well then, my son. If you don’t mean what you say, and you will not say what you mean, I don’t have much use for you on this ship. Not inside it, at any rate.’
Mown fell to his knees and begged. ‘One chance, Prostetnic? One chance is traditional.’
Jeltz’s bottom lip jutted out like a sun-seal lying on its belly. One chance was traditional. He himself had been given one chance to redeem himself by his mentor, Field Prostetnic Turgid Rowls.
Guide Note: On Jeltz’s virgin voyage at the elbow, he had mistakenly obtained Turgid Rowls’s thumbprint on a BD140565 instead of a BD140664, which caused more of a furore than might be expected, as a BD140565 was a confiscation of atmosphere order and a BD140664 was a late movie rental charge. In essence, a student from Blagulon Gamma had a sleep-in and forgot to return King of the Firefly Warlords II, and the next thing he knew he was waking up on a dying planet with thirty seconds to live.
Old Turgid Rowls wasn’t too hard on me, thought Jeltz. In fact, we had a good laugh about the whole thing.
‘Very well, Mown. One chance.’
Mown’s blood pump slowed down a few sloshes per minute. ‘Qualifier?’
‘Yes. I need a rhyme for violent obsession. And not just an end rhyme, I want internal too.’
Mown tapped invisible words in the air. ‘Ah… soya rant… hessian…’
‘Quickly, boy. Quickly.’
‘Okay… violent obsession… um… cryo-plant impression.’
‘Explain.’
‘It’s an art form on Brequinda. A type of mime where the artist impersonates frozen shrubs.’
‘Not really? If you think you can… Really?’
‘Really. Look it up… If you like, Prostetnic.’
Guide Note: Cryo-Plant Impression was an actual competition category in the Brequindan Arts’ Fair. The record holder for consecutive wins was a young actor, Mr E. Mowt, who claimed his secret was to sleep in the foliage during the winter. He was denied an eighth title when wood poachers fed him into a shredder.
Jeltz digested this nugget and ran through the poem in his mind. It could work. It was probably buffa-pucky, but the poem was leaning towards the absurd anyway.
‘Very well, Constant, on your feet. You have your one chance. Now use it to tell me why you ordered my gunner to hold on the torpedoes.’
Mown’s blood pump cranked up again and he stumbled to the readouts. They hung over him like a crackling tidal wave. He searched for something, anything, that could justify his involuntary command.
There was nothing on the screens but heartbeats and blood pressure and tumours and calcium deficiencies. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then he noticed a strangely impenetrable blip inside one of the structures. Mown zoomed in and checked for vitals, but every ray he sent in was bounced back without so much as a smeg of information encoded in the beams.
Salvation.
Mown scuttled back to his sub-ulnar position with renewed confidence.
‘Prostetnic.’
‘This had better be good. Otherwise I have a dozen eager greebers who would gladly kill to stand at my side. Kill you, I might add.’
‘This is good, Prostetnic. I can explain my actions.’
‘That’s just fabby, Mown. So you ordered my gunner to hold the Unnecessarily Painful Slow Death torpedoes because…’
‘Because torpedoes won’t be enough, sir.’
‘You are milking this, Mown.’
‘They won’t be enough because we have an immortal on the surface. Class one.’
‘You’re certain?’
‘Absolutely. There can be no mistake. The scans are bouncing off him, sir.’
We will have to retreat, thought Mown, resisting the urge to skip with delight (delight being expressly forbidden on board the Business End and skipping being generally impossible). We have no defence against a god.
‘A god,’ said Jeltz, clapping his hands.
Clapping his hands in terror, Mown hoped.
‘This is the chance we have been waiting for!’
The chance to run away as quickly as we can get the drives fired up, thought Mown, the optimist.
‘Gunner, fire at will in the general direction of that immortal.’
Mown cleared his throat. ‘Sir. Our torpedoes cannot harm a god.’
Jeltz attempted a crafty grin, dousing Mown with half a jug of spittle. ‘Harm, no; distract, yes.’
‘Distract?’
Jeltz smugly indulged this parrotry. ‘Yes, son. Distract this god, whoever he is, from the secret experimental weapon we are about to carefully load into a tube.’
‘Experimental weapon?’ Mown squeaked.
Jeltz winked. ‘Secret experimental weapon,’ he said.
Nano
Arthur Dent had picked himself out a nice outfit from Nu Top Man and was quite enjoying the simple pleasure of wearing grown-up clothes, though he felt certain that with Random at his elbow the enjoyment of simple pleasures was destined to be short-lived.
‘This place is not exactly the political centre of the Galaxy,’ he told Random. ‘But at least there’s no running and screaming.’
‘Not yet, there isn’t,’ responded his daughter. ‘I’m sure you’ll bring doom down on us all presently. It’s your destiny to be a cosmic Jonah.’
Arthur didn’t argue. He didn’t have an argument to present.
Random and Arthur were seated at a bench in John Wayne Square eating home-made ice-cream in the shadow of a John Wayne in his ‘Sean the Boxer’ pose statue.
‘We can settle here. You can live with me, or with Trillian if you like, when she gets back from her honeymoon. Or both of us. Whatever you like. You have options now.’
Random could feel the glow of contentment warming her chest, but she fought it.
‘I don’t know if I should even be eating ice-cream,’ she said. ‘It’s dairy, isn’t it? That’s a bit close to cheese. The Tyromancers might not like it and I should respect their beliefs.’
‘So, all dairy products? That’s going to be difficult. The cows will be devastated.’
Random did not stop eating. ‘I think we need to draw up some sort of list. I mean, I can’t give up milkshakes. I just found them.’
Arthur leaned back, tilting his face towards the sun. ‘I saw Aseed Preflux coming out of a bakery with a four-cheese quiche this morning.’
Random spewed honeycomb vanilla. ‘What? After everything he fought for? That hypocrite!’
‘He said he was just holding it for someone. Wasn’t his, apparently.’
‘He and I are going to have a talk.’
‘Random. I hate to be the one to tell you, but you’re a teenager. It might be a few years before you can take over the planet.’
This was a good point, and the ex-Galactic President in Random’s memory acknowledged it, even if the teenager didn’t want to.
‘Maybe not yet, but I’ll get there, believe me.’
‘I do.’
The square was filling up with the lunchtime crowd, groups of ostensibly happy humans, not one making the slightest attempt to kill another.
How long will that last? wondered Arthur. Until someone decides that mushrooms are actually divine and we should stop chopping them into pieces.
Ford appeared on the opposite side of the square and barged through the thrumming crowds, making good use of his sharp elbows. As he drew closer, Arthur recognized the look on his friend’s face.
‘I don’t believe it,’ he said, hurling his ice-cream to the ground.
‘Daddy!’ said Random, shocked. ‘There’s a recycler just there.’
Arthur was unrepentant. He stood and stamped on the carton.
‘It doesn’t matter because I have a feeling this planet is about to be destroyed. Isn’t that right, Ford?’
Ford arrived huffing. He was a writer and unaccustomed to physical exercise.
Guide Note: The general limit of Ford Prefect’s exertion was hunting for the last clipper-clam in the bucket and yanking it from its shell with clam tweezers. The most exercise Ford had ever done was when he had attained an ultimate supremo rating in the offensive art of Wang Do during a sojourn in the Hunian Hills resort. Unfortunately Hunian Hills is a mind-surfing resort and so Ford had only done this exercise in his head, a fact that became painfully clear when he initiated a bar fight on Jaglan Beta with five journos from the gadget periodical Big Knobs.
‘Get your towel, Arthur. We have to leave.’
Arthur actually stamped a foot. ‘I knew it. Let me guess: the Vogons are early?’
Ford pulled his copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide from his satchel and checked the Sub-Etha imager. ‘Either it’s Vogons, or a very big Toblerone.’
‘This is never going to end, is it?’ Arthur wailed. ‘Those green sadists won’t stop until we are all dead.’
Ford tapped his lower lip. ‘You know, I don’t think they’re after me. Just you human types.’
Random shielded her eyes against the sun. ‘I can’t see anything.’
‘They’re up there, all right. The Guide never lies.’
‘That bloody guide lies all the time. It’s more lies than truth.’
Ford spouted the standard line: ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide is a hundred per cent accurate. Reality, however, is not as reliable.’
It seemed to Arthur that he spent a considerable percentage of his waking life listening to his friend waffling on, while one world or another was about to end.
‘Okay, Ford,’ he said urgently. ‘What should we do?’
The question seemed to puzzle the Betelgeusean. ‘Do?’
‘About the Vogons. How do we survive?’
‘Oh. Yes. That’s what I came here to tell you. Did you see me crossing the square? I was all charged up. Didn’t care who I knocked over.’
‘We saw you. Now, what do we do? Can we hitchhike?’
Ford laughed. ‘Are you kidding? The Vogons won’t fall for that again. Even their shields have shields.’
‘So what then?’
‘We need to run, quite quickly, to the spaceport. There might still be time to board the Heart of Gold.’
‘I see something,’ said Random, pointing skywards at what looked like a cluster of shooting stars heading their way, descending in synchronized loops through the atmosphere.
‘Or not,’ said Ford.
He plucked Random’s ice-cream from her fist and licked it slowly, savouring every drop.
The Business End
‘Missile holographs? said Jeltz. ‘What do you think, gunner?’
The gunner was hardly going to argue. ‘Why not, Prostetnic.’
Jeltz seemed almost jolly. ‘Why not indeed. Flying horses would be nice.’
‘Flying horses it is,’ said the gunner and ran the program.
‘Twinkle twinkle,’ burbled Jeltz.
Nano
Thor belched mightily and slapped the crumbs from his tunic. He clicked two fingers and Mj?llnir beeped, jumped from its charger on the wall and sped into his hand.
‘Who are these invaders?’ the god asked Hillman.
‘Vogons, my lord, according to the craft recognition software. Pretty tough buggers. They specialize in planet destruction.’
Zaphod was thrilled. ‘The Vogons are here already! This is going to be great. Epic. You will totally decimate those bastardos.’
Thor did a few practice twirls. ‘Decimate? Are you sure I should, Zaph? I’m telling you now, I will not sit still for more tribunals and we’re still not sure how the immortal bashing will go down on the Sub-Etha.’
Hillman smiled sweetly. ‘No tribunals, my lord. You were simply protecting your planet. It’s in the contract.’
‘Exactly,’ said Zaphod. ‘It’s brilliant PR. Taking out a Vogon bureaucruiser is just the thing to get you all over the major networks. BBS, Orbit, Nova, even Leviathan, though they’re a crowd of partisans. The great religicom love a bully-basher almost as much as they love a martyr.’
Thor did a few pre-flight exercises, working out the kinks. ‘I hope I can put on a bit of a show this time, I think, give the viewers some drama. Be a bit more like Dad. You know… godly. I think I’m actually feeling godly.’
Zaphod clapped him on the thigh. ‘That’s great. It’s us or them though, so maybe you should get a move on.’
Thor froze in mid-hamstring stretch. ‘Get a move on? That sounded like an order, Zaph. Gods don’t take orders from mortals.’
Zaphod was wounded. ‘I would never give you orders, mighty one. I wouldn’t dream of it. What I’m doing is manipulatering you, for your own good.’
Guide Note: The fact that Zaphod Beeblebrox was able to manipulate anyone tells us a lot about the fragile self-esteem of the person being manipulated. Especially since President Beeblebrox had only looked up the word ‘manipulate’ the previous month as part of his self-improvement ‘word a week’ programme. He had obviously not read past the root verb.
Thor chewed the tip of his moustache. ‘Is that…’
‘It’s a good thing, big boy. A positive and respectful thing.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Abso-zarking-lutely.’
‘Very well, mortal. I shall deliver this planet from evil.’
Zaphod punched the air. ‘Did you hear that, Hillman? Now that’s a sound byte. Someone should be videoing this guy.’
Thor selected the Mus-O-Menu on the hammer’s shaft and scrolled down until he reached ‘Let’s Get Hammered’. Anthemic power chords reverberated through the food hall.
‘Let’s get – You wanna get – Hammered!’ he sang, full-throatedly, then executed a high-speed vertical take-off, punching a star-shaped hole through the carbon-fibre energy-absorbent roof panels.
‘Go!’ Zaphod shouted after his client, wondering if Thor could tell the difference between fifteen and twenty per cent, then wondering if he himself could calculate the difference. Left Brain would have to do it.
Hillman Hunter was thinking about money too.
‘Jaysus, Zaphod. Have a chat with your man there. Those feckin’ panels are expensive. Could he not go out the door, the perfectly good door, and do the whole hammered rigmarole outside without causing any property damage?’
Zaphod tilted his single head. ‘Come on, Hillman. He’s a god. Gods do things big. Makes for a better story in the holy book when someone gets around to writing it.’
‘Now there’s a volume that would shift a few units,’ said Hillman thoughtfully.
Zaphod draped an arm around the Irishman’s shoulders. ‘I can give you exclusive rights.’
Hillman hugged the contract close to his chest. ‘You already did, bucko,’ he said.
Thor felt the wind in his hair and the bugs in his teeth.
‘Visor,’ he said, and a small blue force field crackled down from the brim of his helmet.
This sort of thing was what being a god was all about: the defying gravity, the hair, the big muscly legs. All good god stuff. This was what Thor thrived on. Flying and bashing, basically.
I like to be loved too, he thought, but he did not voice this notion.
Once upon a time, a god could straddle a mountain top and roar out any old rubbish, and the mortals below would interpret the distorted echoes as omniscience-based super wisdom. One of Odin’s favourite stories in the long hall was the time he’d abducted a mortal’s wife and piled insult on top of injury by shouting at the unfortunate man, with characteristic crudeness, that he could go screw himself.
Imagine my surprise, Odin would say in that holier than thou Olympus drawl that he liked to affect, when on my next visit I find a temple on that very spot with the inscription ‘Go Through Thineself’. Apparently it’s the path to wisdom and contentment.
And of course everyone would crack up, except Frigga who was not big on her husband bragging about his infidelities.
But these days there were recording devices everywhere. Whatever a god said was reported around the Universe verbatim. There was no more benefit of the doubt, because there was no doubt. If a god said arse, then everyone heard arse and probably with the background noise taken out. And if a god said I don’t know then everyone heard that too. Loki, who liked to sneak out of Asgard for a few tankards with the mortals on a weekend, had handed the Adiaphorists a gift-wrapped basket of mill grist when he had spent an entire drunken evening loudly complaining of his erectile dysfunction problems. Or, as he delicately put it, ‘My lightning rod has lost its lightning. Matter of fact, it’s lost its rod too.’
After this, the gods who were more brain than brawn were advised to keep their mouths shut and their hammers swinging when they were abroad in the Universe, because a pulverized asteroid says more than words can ever say.
And when I crush these Vogon guys, thought Thor, that’s going to be a picture that no fancypants talkie person will be able to spin into a bad thing.
Then Thor had another thought: Unless someone, somewhere, actually likes Vogons.
Before he could consider the ramifications of this and their possible effects on his celebrity rating, the first cluster of missiles was upon him and they looked a lot like horses.
The Business End
Constant Mown was falling to pieces, but not so as you’d notice. On the outside he was huffing and drooling just as much as the rest of the crew.
‘God status?’ demanded Jeltz.
‘What?’
‘Pardon me?’
‘What, sir?’
Jeltz’s eyelids fluttered, as did the loose flaps of flesh between his nostrils. ‘What is the status of the god?’
Mown forced his eyes to stop googling in their sockets and focus on the readouts in front of him.
‘Rising, fast. Coming up to meet us, Prostetnic.’
‘Excellent. Finally a legitimate chance to roll out the QUEST.’
Generally Mown loved a good acronym, but today every letter may as well be D for desperation. Also death, and more than likely damnation.
‘Go on, son. I know you’re dying to know.’
‘I’d like to know!’ said the gunner brightly.
‘QUEST stands for Quite Unwieldy Experimental Sublimation Torpedo.’
Mown did not think that having the word ‘experimental’ in a weapon’s name was very encouraging.
Mown managed to fish an idea from the mire of his despair.
They were about to kill a god. A god.
‘Prostetnic, sir. Don’t we have to issue a verbal declaration of intent?’
‘The Earthlings have had their declaration. Just because these stragglers weren’t around to hear it doesn’t mean I have to waste valuable Vog seconds issuing it again.’
‘But the immortal, sir. The special directive on Extraordinary Encounters states that communication should be attempted before firing upon an immortal.’
Jeltz was pleased with the challenge. You had to trounce these young pups when they threw down the by-the-book gauntlet.
That is what they will call me, he realized and felt instantly lighter. By-the-Book Jeltz. Perfect.
‘But this god is an aggressor,’ he declared. ‘Which negates the special directive.’
Inside, Mown quailed, but he forced himself to nod appreciatively.
‘Of course. Well spotted, Prostetnic.’
‘Well challenged, Constant,’ acknowledged Jeltz graciously, and then, over his shoulder, ‘Gunner, plot me a solution for the QUEST.’
‘It might be difficult, sir,’ admitted the gunner. ‘I don’t know what this being is made of, but the laser slides right off him.’
Jeltz shifted in his chair. ‘No, no. Target the Earthlings. Let’s see how much this god loves his people.’
Smart, thought Mown miserably. Very smart.
Thor was having the time of his life. The horse missiles thundered towards the planet’s surface in tight bunches, with horsy sound effects and everything.
Thor whinnied aloud, then thought Zark, satellite cameras and clamped his mouth shut.
Harrrummphhh, he thought, feeling a little subversive.
He switched tracks from ‘Let’s Get Hammered’ to the classic instrumental piece ‘Gathering of the Vindleswoshen’, broadcasting to every network within Mj?llnir’s range. Thor had always liked the ‘Vindleswoshen’ for battle scenarios, though lately its effect had been diluted somewhat when a carbonated drinks company had used it as backing music for their ‘guy sun-surfing while drinking a pouch of Bipzo Blaster while seducing a gaggle of groupies’ advert.
A lot of the younger gods liked to use targeting software when they were facing down a bunch of missiles, just let the computer do all the work for them. But Thor liked to conduct his business the old-fashioned way.
Nothing makes an impression on mortals like a bit of muscle and sinew, Odin liked to say. Break all you can break.
Listening to Odin speechifying could be about as much fun as a sword in the shank, but occasionally he came up with a worthy desideratum.
Break all you can break, thought Thor and swung Mj?llnir in a wide arc, peeling off to starboard and hitting the first bunch of missiles from below.
Wow. Those are some good holograms.
The horses thundered towards the surface of Nano, tossing their heads and even kicking up dust. Inside their transparent hides the red eye and steel glint of imminent death by nuclear fission was vaguely visible.
Thor went among them with incalescent eagerness, smashing their guidance systems with his bare fingers, delivering one massive recumbentibus after another, making shards of the casings. The torpedoes were shifting at massive speeds, but for the Asgardian they may as well have been sugar pears hanging from the sky on straw twine. He zipped among them, trademark thunderclap booming in his wake, excising detonators with sharp chops of his free hand. The horses froze, flickered, then dissipated, their pixels falling apart like electronic snowflakes.
Thor heard the fizzle of a detonation inside one warhead and he stuffed it into his belly, absorbing the nuclear blast, feeding his mitochondria, growing larger. From the ground it seemed as though Thor had swallowed the sun. The entire planet juddered and crepuscular rays flashed from between the god’s square teeth.
Nano
Hillman was impressed. ‘Now that’s a feckin’ god. None of your “dead but dreaming” shite with this fella.’
Zaphod was beginning to think he’d sold Thor a little cheap. ‘I think we should talk about some sort of bonus system. I mean, come on, Hillers, those are big torpedoes.’
Hillman didn’t even look at him. ‘One: don’t call me Hillers. My Na– grandmother used to call me Hillers and you and a thousand like you wouldn’t be fit to dip a soldier in her boiled egg. And two: bonus me arse.’
The Business End
Jeltz held one finger aloft, holding the crew enthralled, mesmerizing them.
I could break Daddy’s finger, thought Mown with suicidal desperation. Then stuff something in his mouth, one of my legs maybe. How then could he give the order?
Daddy would chew off my leg, he realized. Then write the order on the screen in blood.
The finger wavered to a collective rattled intake of breath.
Down went the digit. The order was given.
‘Kill that god,’ said Jeltz phlegmatically.
Now Mown’s finger went up, pointing at the for’ard camera display.
‘I think that’s Thor, sir. The Thor. Are you sure you want to…’
‘Kill that god,’ repeated Prostetnic Jeltz, grinding out the words.
The gunner span a ratchet three times, then honked down a voice tube. ‘QUEST away. God will soon be dead, sir,’ he said.
Nano
Ford Prefect had managed to hack on to several Galact-O-Map Sub-Etha sites and was watching the big blow-up from a dozen angles on his Hitchhiker’s Guide screen.
‘My bookie is giving me ten to one on the Vogons,’ he told Arthur. ‘I’m putting a few thousand on old Red Beard.’ He shrugged. ‘I might as well. If I win, I win big. If I lose, then none of you will be around to listen to me moaning.’
‘You don’t have a bomb-proof towel, I suppose?’ said Arthur.
‘Sure, I have a bomb-proof towel and a matter-converting pillow case.’
Arthur actually smiled. ‘Hey, sarcasm. Well done, mate, you’re learning.’
Something on Ford’s Guide pulled him out of the conversation. He pinched a section of screen and expanded it.
‘What the zark is that?’
Arthur shouldered in for a look. ‘Another horse?’
‘No. No holograms for this beauty. Look at the size of that torpedo. I’ve seen smaller asteroids.’
Arthur attempted to pull together the folds of a dressing gown that he wasn’t wearing.
‘Thor will swallow it though, won’t he? He’s a god. No problem, right?’
‘It’s not headed for Thor, Arthur.’
‘Let me guess.’
‘Don’t bother.’
‘Righto. Do you still have that joystick?’
Nano’s Upper Atmosphere
Truth be told, Thor was showing off a little in the twilight: throwing pirouettes into the routine, freefalling through the gauze of noctilucent clouds, exposing plenty of bronzed thigh for all the ladies watching. To ensure maximum dramatic effect, he smote the torpedoes in time to ‘Gathering of the Vindleswoshen’.
This is too easy, he realized. Much more of this and the viewing figures will dip.
Then his immortal tympanum detected a different engine whine. The low chug of a small jet pushing a big load. These Vogons were trying to slip something past him.
Thor dispatched the final horse/torpedo with a perfunctory hammer swipe then cast his gaze about the darkening sky. His God-O-Vision spotted an edged glint swooping in a pot-bellied curve towards the city of mortals below.
Those bastards are going after my pay cheque.
Up to this point, Thor judged that he had been pretty benevolent towards these bureaucratic invaders. Okay, he had shredded their hardware, but no one was floating in space sucking down lungfuls of vacuum. Well, after he’d clobbered this sneaky new bomb with considerable sangfroid, perhaps he would send Mj?llnir to punch a few holes in the Vogon hull.
Thor folded his arms across his chest and dropped through the aurora of Nano’s ionosphere like a rocket-charged stone through high g. While he could not actually be in two places at one time, Thor could most certainly move from one spot to another faster than almost any other being in the Universe.
Guide Note (brief so as not to ruin the flow): Thor was actually the fifth fastest being in the Universe. Eighth without Mj?llnir to steady him. Number one was Hermes who mainly used his divine speed to pinch Ares’s nipples and then run away.
Thor felt the frictional reaction with the air molecules curl the tips of his beard hair. He was going about ninety-five per cent flat out. There was a little more in the tank, but at those speeds there wasn’t a camera in the Universe that could capture his image.
The new torpedo curled in below him, a massive chunky series of rough cylinders with one small jet doing all the pushing. Thor sniffed but he did not recognize what kind of explosive he was dealing with. The smell reminded him a little of the stink from his own clothes after a night spent boozing past a black hole’s event horizon, but not quite the same.
What is this thing?
It didn’t matter. Even if there wasn’t a single bead of explosive inside, the impact crater alone would be far bigger than the city and the shock metamorphism would liquefy a good section of the continent. So if any mortals did survive the explosion, they would only live long enough to be engulfed by lava.
Thor touched down on the torpedo’s fuselage and clambered along the shaft towards the nose cone. There was no urgency now as he had several seconds before impact, an eternity of time for a god of his abilities.
Should I toss the payload into space, he asked himself, leaning into the wind. Or should I nudge the entire thing off course into the ocean? What would look best on camera?
Thor sucked on the tip of his moustache as he remembered something Zaphod had said.
I wonder…
The Business End
‘Detonate the QUEST,’ ordered Jeltz.
‘Yes, Prostetnic,’ said the gunner.
Forgive us, Mown broadcast to the Universe. We are Vogon.
Nano
By now the mammoth torpedo was clearly visible to the naked eye, swooping relentlessly towards Innisfree, laboured jet stream sputtering behind like Morse code.
‘Dot dash, dot dash dot,’ said Ford. ‘I think the whole thing reads: “Arthur Philip Dent is a jerk and complete arsehole.” ’
Arthur was too tired for his irritation to have much force. ‘Is this the time for jokes, Ford? Is it really?’
It seemed as though the entire population of Nano was crowded into John Wayne Square. All colours and creeds united, either by something that could be called the human soul or their paddle-less state in the creek of shite they were currently mired in.
Random sidled up to her father and linked his arm. ‘This planet could have had a future,’ she said. ‘I was going to represent the people.’
Arthur squinted at the huge column of destruction thrumming their way.
‘Your mother is going to kill me,’ he sighed, then lifted his eyes as a collective ‘oooooh’ rose from the crowd.
Now that’s something you don’t see every day, he thought, resorting to clichés in his amazement.
Thor was walking along the giant rocket. Underneath it.
Random put her head on his shoulder, for the first and possibly last time. ‘Are we saved, Daddy? How many times can one group of people be saved? Surely the Universe doesn’t have many more chances for the Dents?’
Ford squeezed between them. ‘One more, at least. So far as I know, nothing can kill a god.’
Then the QUEST exploded. Sort of.
This was not a conventional explosion, in the sense that if one was expecting the traditional blast, bang, kaboom favoured by movie directors and RPG writers the Universe over, then one would feel slightly cheated. There was no blast wave, no flame, no flying debris, just a loud whoomph and the ballooning of a perfect cuboid of green material. The material crackled and flexed, picked up a little cartoon interference from a local satellite network for a few seconds, then split into sixteen small cubes.
Ford said what most people were thinking: ‘Those cubes are pretty small. A lot smaller than Thor.’
The cubes popped one by one in rapid sequence, and what debris was inside them rained to the earth as grey ash. Thor was gone.
‘I’ve got that joystick here somewhere,’ said Ford, rummaging in his satchel. ‘And a couple of sea-dragon eggs. May as well go out singing.’
Something twinkled in the sky over Zaphod’s head.
‘Look! Do you see that?’
Hillman did not answer, as he had decided he was not talking to Zaphod feckin’ Beeblebrox.
Zaphod was off running across the city centre parking zone.
‘Souvenir!’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Souvenir!’
Zaphod placed himself under the falling object, jigging about for position.
Could I? he wondered. Is it possible?
‘Camera!’ he screamed, just in case. ‘Somebody get this.’
Of course, I could very well be killed.
But if he survived, how many votes would the video clip be worth? How many subscriptions to his Sub-Etha site?
The object did not fall as a normal object would.
Of course it doesn’t, thought Zaphod. Because it is a divine talisman made from godly stuff, mined from the places that you get metal in Asgard.
It floated and bloated, flipped and skipped. Chose a size, then changed its mind.
Zaphod stuffed his hands in his pocket so he wouldn’t be tempted to use them. This was a strictly hands-free trick.
Down it came, erratically, Zaphod dancing around on his heel-less boots, matching its jinks, then finally, incredibly, Thor’s helmet landed square on Zaphod Beeblebrox’s head, shrinking to fit snugly.
‘Yes!’ hooted Zaphod, punching the air. ‘Did you see that, Hillers? Did you bloody see that! And I had two heads until recently, so that took even more skillage than you would think… it would take. Tell me I am not special! Tell me!’
Hillman broke his vow of Coventry to call across the car park. ‘I told you not to call me Hillers, you gobshite. And as for special, there was nothing very special about that god you sold me.’
Zaphod was suddenly serious. ‘I will not hear a word against Thor,’ he said. ‘He died to save you.’
Hillman jerked a thumb at the Vogon bureaucruiser hovering above the city.
‘He didn’t do a great job of it then, did he?’
The Business End
Prostetnic Jeltz’s armpits were moist with delight. He was unfamiliar with the emotion, and for a moment wondered if the ship had somehow slipped back into hyperspace. But no, the world outside their window was in focus and ready for destruction.
‘Order a dozen more of those torpedoes!’ he called to no one in particular.
The Earthlings did not seem to have any artillery of their own and were defenceless now that their god had been dispatched to the afterlife. Jeltz chewed on the fat flesh of his lower lip. If gods already lived in heaven, then where did they go when they died? Were the gods autolatrous narcissists? Or did they perhaps worship their own über-gods and move on to a higher level of heaven after their deaths?
I have created a brand new conundrum, he thought, and the idea pleased him greatly.
‘What do you think of your father now, Mown?’ he said to the bobbing subordinate at his elbow.
Mown hesitated before answering and the slobber sheen of victory was absent from his lips. A prostetnic might be tempted to think that his constant did not revel in this conflict, even though it was perfectly legal. Jeltz felt certain that the gods would file a complaint, but he doubted that it would go past the strongly worded letter stage, not when the Galactic Government had the QUEST in their arsenal. Come to think of it, wasn’t it about time the gods paid a little tax? Those Asgardians had been sitting on prime real estate since shortly after the beginning of time and had never contributed so much as a spent battery to the government coffers.
‘Well, Mown? What say you?’
Mown was shaken to his jellied core. They had just killed a god. Removed an immortal from the Universe. Surely there would be consequences? An equal and opposite reaction must be on the way down the cosmic pipe. And even if there were no consequences, it was so utterly sad.
Mown took a gowpen of his own double chins, hoisting his head erect.
‘I am stunned, Prostetnic. You did it when no one else would have.’
‘Hmmm,’ quorbled Jeltz, finishing the quorble on a satisfied ‘m’. ‘I did, didn’t I? There were whispers back in Megabrantis that I was past it. Imagine that – By-The-Book Jeltz, past it.’
‘By the book?’
‘My new sobriquet. Like it?’
‘What happened to Utter Bastard?’
Jeltz laid an almost boneless hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘I am hoping that you will be Utter Bastard one day.’
Mown hung his head. ‘I already am. We all are.’
Jeltz felt his armpit glands squirt. ‘Well said, my boy. Well said.’
The gunner interrupted this almost tender moment. Well, if not tender at least not heavy with implied violence.
‘Sir. The Earthlings. We’re drifting.’
Jeltz was now suddenly loathe to deal with these Earthlings. It seemed such an anti-climax, but business was blood, so… He rolled his left eye towards the screen and saw that the Business End was indeed straying from its geo-stationary position above the planetoid’s main city.
‘Not that it matters,’ he mumbled. ‘My torpedoes can shoot around corners.’ He flapped a hand at the gunner. ‘Exterminate them. Resistance is useless and all that…’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the gunner, with unseemly glee. Being Vogon was about getting the job done, not about overtly whooping it up over the annihilation of another species, so that your crew members could brand you a sicko and vow to send their daughters to another star system before they would let them date you. ‘Half a dozen low yields should be enough to vaporize the Earthlings. If I could make a suggestion, Prostetnic, it would be within our remit to confiscate the planet these people purchased. I’m sure the criminal assets bureau would be very interested…’
Jeltz was impressed. ‘Why, gunner, that is a fine suggestion. Why don’t you pull your chair a little closer to me? I believe I would like to rub your head.’
‘My greasy crown would be honoured, sir. Just indulge me for a moment as I blow up these people.’
‘Now that’s how you green-nose,’ said Jeltz to his son, but Mown wasn’t listening because he’d had an idea that was doing its very best to knock him off his feet and evaporate his brain fluid with its very audacity.
Constant Mown unstrapped the drool cup from around his neck, raced across the bridge and clobbered the gunner across the brow just as the officer’s finger feathered the ‘fire’ button. The metal container sank through a layer of blubber then connected with cranium. The gunner’s eyes crossed, uncrossed, then closed.
Once again the crew froze to see what Mown’s fate would be. Casual violence was not unusual on a Vogon ship, but violent interruption of a prostetnic’s order being carried out certainly was.
Jeltz leaned back with a swish of abdominal liquid and a hiss of chair.
‘Constant Mown. This is the second time today. I am intr-i-i-i-i-gued.’
The elongation of this last word implied that Mown’s explanation had better be superlative in the history of explanations for seemingly insane actions. Better even than that of Jammois Totalle, the Kyrstian hemagogue who had accidentally brained his wife with his signet ring in his sleep and then claimed the bones of his ancestors had made him do it, even going so far as to have bones shipped from another planet, artificially aged and placed under the roots of his wango-pango tree.
Mown’s skin was sweating on the inside, a rare Vogon condition aggravated by anxiety or dust mites which causes the epidermal pores to leech moisture from the surrounding air and plump up the basal keratinocytes.
‘I thought you had that under control, Mown,’ said Jeltz with obvious disappointment as his son swelled in front of his eyes. ‘Go homeopathic, your mother said, and I listened, Zark help me. Next time it’s straight in the leech pit for you, my boy. Now, as I was saying: intr-i-i-i-i-gued.’
‘This is not right!’ Mown blurted.
‘How do you mean?’ asked Jeltz, puzzled. ‘Ethically? In a right and wrong sense? Please don’t tell me you have developed morals to go with those nimble feet of yours.’ Jeltz drew a horrified breath. ‘Do not tell me my son has evolved?’
Mown clenched his little fists and stood his ground. ‘Firstly, the dust filter must be broken in here, Prostetnic, because my pores are filling up. Secondly, I meant this is not right as in it is not by the book.’
Jeltz’s wattle wobbled. ‘Not by the book, you say? Not by the…’ He swivelled towards the com post. ‘Record this, would you? I may have to explain the execution to his mother.’
Mown forged ahead with his explanation, as his only other option was to lie down and sob for the state of his race. ‘Our order was to eliminate all Earthlings.’
‘I do hope your argument improves, because so far…’
‘These people bought a planet from the Magratheans.’
‘Ah. I see where you’re going, but the Galactic Government does not govern the Magratheans. They have their own little republic which is a terrible example for the colonies, if you ask me.’
‘You are correct, Prostetnic. Of course, you are, but the Magratheans are a registered business with the government. They have a trade agreement.’
‘I suppose.’
Mown ran to the nearest consol, neglecting to mask his agility. ‘Look!’ he said, quickly pulling up the planning application from the new worlds’ office in Megabrantis. ‘Nano’s planet status has been approved by central planning.’
‘It is difficult for a Vogon to find paperwork irritating, Twinkletoes,’ said Jeltz drily. ‘But I confess that unless you arrive at a point soon…’
‘Point on the horizon, Prostetnic. The central planning office approved Nano as a tax-paying member planet of the planetary union, as governed by the Galactic Government.’
‘Are you just saying the same thing in a different way? Is that why I sent you to university?’ Jeltz picked up a microphone and shouted into the PA. ‘We still need to eliminate the Earthlings.’
‘Look down here, the last paragraph. Megabrantis, as a matter of routine, also blanket approved the citizenship applications of the planet’s owners.’ Mown felt his swelling subside, and steam drifted in wisps from his pores, whistling gently. He was talking law now, and no Vogon would argue with the word of law. ‘Legally, the Earthlings are no longer Earthlings: they are Nano-ites. Or maybe Nanoshians or Nanolings? I’m not sure. But I am sure that if you zap these people, you zap a nice group of high-band taxpayers who have never filed a return. Imagine, By-The-Book Jeltz frying citizens who owe back tax. Wouldn’t Hoopz the Runaround, your old Hall of Kroompst buddy, love to hear about that?’
At this point Mown’s own supply of kroompst was completely exhausted and he stumbled backward into the monitors, his body temperature sending a rainbow arc flashing along the thermo-reactive gas screens.
‘Wow,’ said Jeltz, and it was not a word he used lightly or often. He winched himself out of his chair and allowed his abdominous torso to lug him forward. ‘Constant Mown. You have scuppered this mission.’ The Prostetnic loomed above his remarkable son, casting an amorphous shadow on Mown’s olive, pale face.
‘I did what had to be done.’
Jeltz reached out his hand, though this was more for the gesture than the actual practicality of grabbing on to it, as he may as well have tried to hang on to a rubber glove full of dairy-based spread. ‘You have seen the truth of the word. And through the word comes order. Stand, my son. Come stand at my elbow.’
Mown, who was expecting to be a splat scraper on the next hull detail, stood on wobbly legs and coughed up a quart of fluid and two of the symbiotic hairless flaybooz that all Vogons carry around in their bile sacs to break down concretions.
‘Oh, no. Poor Hanky and Spanky.’
Jeltz brushed the sopping balls aside with the side of his foot. ‘Forget those parasites. We have millions in the waste recyclers.’
He activated a bungee pulley from the bridge ceiling, one of several set into the gantry for just such Vogon falling-over emergencies. Mown still had the spark of craft left in him to pretend he needed it and hoisted himself erect.
‘Turgid would have been all over this,’ Jeltz confided to his son. ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he’s monitoring communications back in Megabrantis, waiting for me to make a boghog’s ear of this mission. There’s nothing worse than obliterating…’
‘The wrong people?’ offered Mown.
Jeltz chuckled wetly at his subordinate’s little joke. ‘The wrong taxpayers, Constant. You need to watch that sense of humour – other crew members don’t have as many levels as we do. Your sarcasms could be mistaken for actual sympathizings.’
‘Oh,’ said Mown, a handy non-committal syllable to have around when you haven’t the first clue as to what you are feeling.
Jeltz plopped backward into his seat. ‘Old Turgid was expecting me to arrive back at base with a big bagful of cock-up. Instead, thanks to you, we return heroes, with a god’s scalp under our belts and a heads-up for the tax office.’
‘Everyone wins… except Thor.’
‘What did I tell you, son?’
‘No… em… jokes.’
‘Precisely. Now squeeze on to this chair beside me and we shall enjoy the false hope of hyperspace together.’
Mown’s head spun and his hands shook. He had come to the Earthlings’ defence and somehow that had become a good thing.
It was the law, he realized. The law saved us. From now on, I must use the word.
He stood shell-shocked, arms raised, while two deck swabs greased him down for the chair.
Jeltz indulged in a moment of semi-fondness, which he permitted himself twice a year. Look at my son, all wide-eyed about his first time on the captain’s knee. I had thought that it would be better to send him away, but after his performance today, that boy stays at my elbow. He will be one of the greats. A destroyer of worlds. A confounder of petitioners. Some day my son will truly be an Utter Bastard.
Nano
The stereotypical depiction of a sentient species under threat of destruction from a hovering alien spaceship usually sees them running around panic-stricken, clutching their most treasured household appliances close to their breasts and arranging their automobiles in neat jams on bridges. (Except in the case of the Hrarf-Hrarf movie Dooshing of the Red Plong, where everyone is quite relieved just before complete annihilation because their lifespan flows backwards through time, so from the Hrarf-Hrarf point of view, they have just survived one humdinger of a dooshing unscathed.)
There was no running about on Nano and very few household appliances. The inhabitants stood in John Wayne Square, swaying slightly like reeds, their mouths open as they waited passively for death from above.
All except Aseed Preflux, who sat on a bench gorging himself on a tub of cottage cheese.
‘I was so wrong,’ he sobbed between fistfuls. ‘So utterly wrong. To understand the Cheese, the exercitant must consume the Cheese.’
Hillman Hunter stood in the shadow of the statue, trying not to attract too much attention to himself in case people decided to blame him for all their woes. Some things may flow downhill but blame flows to the top, and Hillman preferred not to be in pain until the big pain arrived, which he fervently hoped would be relatively painless.
‘See you soon, Nano,’ he whispered.
Not just yet, said Nano’s voice in his head.
While Hillman was contemplating this mysterious and hopefully prophetic phantom voice, a thrown blob of cottage cheese slopped against the side of his face, plugging one ear hole and dripping underneath his collar.
‘Nice work with the god, moron,’ called Aseed Preflux from across the square.
This could get ugly, thought Hillman.
A couple of rose shears were drawn and Hillman was sure he saw a letter knife.
Why is there always someone with a blade?
Fortunately the Vogon Bureaucruiser decided to absent itself from real space in a charming display of blue hyper-engine pyrotechnics. One second it was there, and the next whizz pop bang it was gone, leaving nothing but a short-lived cloud of exhaust plasma in its wake.
‘Awww,’ chorused the crowd.
Zaphod, with his innate sense of the theatrical, chose this moment to clamber atop the statue pedestal.
‘The Vogons have been vanquished,’ he called from the crook of John Wayne’s arm. ‘Thor has saved you.’
‘Thor saved us?’ said Hillman, puzzled. ‘Which Thor? The dead, disappeared one?’
Zaphod threw him a look which asked Hillman just how stupid he was exactly, and when Z. Beeblebrox thinks a person is stupid, then that person is by implication more stupid than Zaphod himself, which is very stupid indeed, but then again probably too stupid to interpret the look, or be insulted even if he did.
Hillman was not stupid, just momentarily demented and the moment had passed.
‘Of course!’ he cried, the first syllable a squeak. ‘Thor has saved us.’
Zaphod googled his eyes. ‘Yes. About time. Thor has saved us all.’
Hillman mounted the pedestal. ‘And he will come again when he is needed.’
‘Now you’re getting it,’ said Zaphod.
‘The Lord Thor will communicate with his people only through me!’
‘I can pretty much guarantee that. Whatever Hillers says, that’s what Thor, who saved us, wants you all to do.’
‘And if we don’t?’ asked Aseed.
Zaphod frowned and ballooned his cheeks as if the very idea was ridiculous. ‘Then Thor would be most unhappy. And so would his hammer.’
Hillman squinted at the crowd, hardly daring to hope that anyone would swallow this slapdash spackle of religi-babble. He was surprised to find not a single garden or household blade headed his way. Aseed had his hand in the cheese bucket, but even he was holding off for now, thinking about it.
They’re not going to kill me, realized Hillman. ‘Thanks be to God.’
‘Not God,’ said Zaphod pointedly. ‘Thanks be to Thor.’
Hillman smiled, then went for the big finish.
‘Nano called for a sacrifice,’ he said, balancing on the pedestal. ‘Nano called for a feckin’ martyr…’
The word ‘feckin” was subsequently bleeped from the video record of this little speech because, after Hillman’s martyrdom, everything he had said during his first life suddenly became infinitely more important and laden with wisdom.
The next thing Hillman said was: ‘Hurrkkkaarrrkshhhhhhh,’ though the ‘shhhhhhhh’ at the end may have been escaping gases, for at that moment a nose-cone of torpedo debris, that Thor had evidently missed, tumbled from the sky, striking the Sean the Boxer statue a glancing blow on the noggin, loosening the screw treads around the waistline of the two-part sculpture and sending the left glove spinning clockwise to deliver a devastating roundhouse blow that literally cut Hillman in two.
‘Oh, balls,’ grunted Hillman, followed by the last words of his current lifespan: ‘Coming, Nano.’
Historians deleted the first phrase but kept the second, which was misinterpreted so many times that fifteen thousand years later a third-grade student misspelled it and accidentally arrived at the correct meaning.