6
The Planet Nano
Far out in the fringes of the Dark Nebula of Soulianis and Rahm there is a small planetoid that hangs on one of the nebula’s curling tendrils like a Christmas tree decoration. This dwarf planet, catalogue number MPB-1001001, ignores the universal law of gravitation to maintain a spinning position 150 million kilometres from the surface of Rahm. At these particular coordinates, the nebula’s clouds of interstellar dust, hydrogen and plasma have been parted by gas streams and magnetic fields to reveal an oasis of clear space devoid of debris and bathed in a nourishing solar wind.
The tiny planet, Nano, succeeds in defying the pull of its star chiefly because of its huge mass, composed mainly of super-dense matter excreted from white holes, but also because of the revolving dynamic core powering over five thousand servo-mechanical thrusters. This discrete positioning ensures consistently temperate weather conditions and encourages life to flourish in its fertile vastitas, azure oceans and abundant number of fjords… an abundance that is unusual in a planet which had never known an ice age.
Nano’s geography is a cartographer’s dream: a single pangaeaic continent spread along the equator, surrounded by unpolluted seas which are brimming with fish literally waiting to be caught.
Guide Note: In this case the word ‘literally’ is not simply a misrepresentation of the word ‘figuratively’. The Ameglian Major Steelback fish are reared with stories of paradise at the other end of the line and hang around fjords just waiting to be saved. The inaccuracies of these stories would be obvious to most the moment they were dragged from their natural habitat by a hook and tossed whole into a sizzling pan, but such is the faith of the Steelbacks that they simply flap their way through the Twelve Psalms of Deliverance and wait for their promised golden ball of plankton to appear.
The registered name of this continent is Innisfree, after the lake isle in Sligo, Ireland, on the recently vaporized planet Earth, where the movie The Quiet Man was set. The larger of two towns on the continent is called Cong, after the village where The Quiet Man was actually shot. These names have been selected by Nano’s registration officer, a certain Mr Hillman Hunter.
Hillman Hunter is not a particularly religious man, but he does have faith in the traditional order of things, when the traditional order is stacked in favour of the entrepreneur. Hillman Hunter believes in money, and it is very difficult to make money in times of anarchy. How is a fellow to put a few bob together when the little men do not respect their betters and there’s no Big Man to tell everyone how to behave? Men need some god or other to show them their place in the world and ideally that place would be far below Hillman Hunter’s.
Guide Note: The notion that religions can be useful tools for keeping the rich rich and the poor abject has been around since shortly after the dawn of time, when a recently evolved bipedal frogget managed to convince all the other froggets in the marsh that their fates were governed by the almighty Lily Pad who would only agree to watch over their pond and keep it safe from gurner pike if an offering of flies and small reptiles were heaped upon it every second Friday. This worked for almost two years until one of the reptile offerings proved to be slightly less than dead and proceeded to eat the gluttonized bipedal frogget followed by the almighty Lily Pad. The frogget community celebrated their freedom from the yoke of religion with an all-night rave party and hallucinogenic dock leaves. Unfortunately they celebrated a little loudly and were massacred by a gurner pike who, for some reason, hadn’t noticed this little pond before.
Hillman Hunter has come to believe that this new world should have a god to issue commandments, smite sinners and declare which forms of conjugality are pleasing in his eyes and which forms are just wrong and gross. Because Nano has been undeniably made by the planet-building Magratheans and not God, it does not have a deity to rule over it, which is causing some debate in the community. The natural order is falling apart and all sorts of people are beginning to consider themselves equal to those who obviously are equal, which is not what religion is about at all. Hillman has decided that a presiding god is needed to restore the pecking order, so on this particular Thursday, in a small conference room beside the town’s municipal building, he was holding interviews for the position.
The Town of Cong, Innisfree, Nano
A huge anthropoid was seated uncomfortably in the interview room’s office chair, its grotesque, scaled torso squirming in the confines of the small seat. Tentacles dripped from its chin like fleeing slugs and hard black eyes glittered from the depths of a pulpy face.
Hillman Hunter shuffled the pages of the creature’s résumé.
‘So, Mr Cthulhu, is it?’
‘Hmmm,’ said the creature.
‘Good,’ said Hillman. ‘A bit of the ineffable, I like that in a deity.’ He winked conspiratorially. ‘Still, it wouldn’t be much of an in-depth interview if we couldn’t get a few facts out of you, eh, Mr Cthulhu?’
Cthulhu shrugged and dreamed of days of wanton genocide.
‘Anyway, let’s get the show on the road,’ continued Hillman brightly. ‘Or as my Nano used to say, let’s get the steamers on the shovel, which was a reference to cleaning cow doings off the driveway after the herd had been driven through. That’s how I started, Mr Cthulhu, selling dried cow biscuits for people to burn on their fires. And look at me now, bejaysus, I’m running a planet.’
Hillman laughed suddenly with a noise like a rusty machine being fired.
‘Sorry, Mr Cthulhu. I smoked like a train back in the old country and I haven’t had a minute to check in for the new lungs. Being in charge of this crowd of bloody eejits is running me ragged.’ He danced his fingers down the pages of Cthulhu’s résumé. ‘Let me see. What do we have here? What calibre of a deity am I dealing with? Ah… I see here you were in people’s minds a lot a century ago thanks to Love-craft. Not much since then?’
Cthulhu spoke in a voice of meat and metal. ‘Well, you know. Science and all that. Put a bit of a kibosh on the god business.’ Clear gel dripped from his tentacles as he spoke. ‘I kicked around Asia Minor for a while, trying to drum up a little fear. But people have penicillin now, even poor people have reading material. What do they want gods for?’
Hillman nodded along, with Cthulhu all the way. ‘You are so right, sir. So right. People think they are too good for gods. Too smart. But not here on Nano. We are the last outpost of Earth and we will not be destroyed because we have driven away our protector.’ By the time he had finished his little speech, Hillman’s chubby cheeks glowed a proud red. ‘Next question. Our last god was a less is more kinda guy. Sent his son down, but didn’t show up too often himself. I think, and no disrespect to the man himself, that was probably a mistake. I honestly believe that he would put his hand up to that himself now if we could ask him. What I’m asking you, Mr Cthulhu, is: are you going to be a hands-on god or an absentee landlord?’
Cthulhu was ready for that one; he had been practising his answer for that very question with Hastur the Unspeakable only the previous night.
‘Oh, hands-on, absolutely,’ he said, leaning forward to make clear eye contact as Hastur had advised. ‘The days of blind faith are over. People need to know who is blighting their crops or demanding virgin sacrifice. And now I am going to look away, but only because prolonged eye contact will drive you insane.’
Hillman shook the sudden torpor from his head. ‘Good. Good. Quite a stare you have there, Mr Cthulhu. Handy weapon to have in the arsenal.’
Cthulhu accepted the compliment with a flap of one prodigious tentacle.
‘Let’s move on, shall we? Where do you stand on the whole Babel fish argument? Proof denies faith and so forth.’
‘My subjects will have proof and faith,’ rasped Cthulhu agitatedly. ‘I will bind them to slavery and trample the weak underfoot.’
‘I seem to have hit a nerve there,’ chuckled Hillman. ‘Again, I think you’re on the right track – maybe you might want to pull back a little on the slavery and the trampling. We have quite a lot of weak people here but they are big supporters of the church, whatever church we eventually pledge to. Money builds temples, or – as my Nano used to say – many mickles make a muckle.’
‘Mickles?’ said Cthulhu, confused, and it is not easy to confuse a Great Old One.
Hillman scratched his chin. ‘I never knew what a muckle was, or a mickle, for that matter. But it takes many of one to make the other, if you see what I mean.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Cthulhu.
‘So. An old standard next. Presuming your application is successful, where do you see yourself in five years’ time?’
Cthulhu brightened. Thank you, Hastur, he beamed into space.
‘In five years I will have razed this planet, eaten its young and stacked your skulls high in my honour.’ He sat back, satisfied. Succinct and informative, a textbook answer.
A spluttering cough blurted from Hillman’s lips. ‘Skull stacking! Come on, Mr Cthulhu. Really? Do you think that’s what gods do today? These are interstellar times we’ve got here. Space travel, time travel. What we need on Nano is what I like to call an Old Testament god. Strict, sure. Vengeful, fantastic. But indiscriminate eating of young? Those days are gone.’
‘Shows what you know,’ muttered Cthulhu, crossing his legs.
Hillman tapped the résumé. ‘I have something highlighted here. Under current status it reads: “dead but dreaming”. Could you elaborate on that? Are you dead, sir?’
‘It could be said that I’m dead,’ admitted the oozing anthropoid.
‘You don’t seem dead.’
‘Ah, yes, but this tiny form is not me.’ Cthulhu poked his body as if he were not familiar with its workings. ‘This is my dream of me made substantial by dark and terrible forces. I wear this form until my true self is called back to service. My true self is quite a bit bigger.’
‘Sorry to harp on about this, but you are dead?’
‘For the moment. Yes. I would have to say yes.’
‘But gods cannot die. That’s the whole point.’
Cthulhu wished Hastur could be with him. Hastur was always quick with the comebacks.
‘Well… That’s true. But I suppose, technically – and I stress that technically – I am not actually a god. I am a Great Old One. A demi-god, you might say.’
Hillman closed the file. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I see.’
‘It’s more or less the same thing,’ persisted Cthulhu. ‘I do all the same things: apparitions, impregnating, you name it. I have cards for the lounges in Asgard and Olympus. Gold cards.’
‘These things are all well and good, but…’
‘Don’t bother,’ said Cthulhu disgustedly, gel splattering the desk. ‘You people are all the same. Never give the little guy a chance.’
‘It’s not that, sir. I have nothing against your kind, but the advertisement did specifically say grade-A god. I’m sure you can do lots of things, but we’re looking for someone with a bit of substance. Someone who’s in it for the long haul. Certainly not someone who can die.’
Cthulhu rose from his chair in a furious rage. ‘I will crack open your skull,’ he thundered. ‘I will visit pestilence on your land.’ But he was not needed and was already fading. ‘I will tear your head from your torso and drink your…’
And then he was gone, leaving nothing behind but the smell of a harbour at low tide.
Drink my what? wondered Hillman Hunter, scribbling the words NO CALLBACK in highlighter on the cover of Cthulhu’s résumé.
Blood probably. Unless it was my cerebrospinal fluid.
He leaned back in his chair and turned on the back massager. Hillman was a positive kind of guy, always willing to look on the bright side, but this hunt for a god was getting depressing. Not one of the interviewees had met his standards. Excello, the robot god. Vladirski, the vampire lord. Hecate had a few useful skills, but she was female. Goddess of Nano? Not bloody likely.
And as if the god-hunt wasn’t trouble enough, he had to deal with all the strife from the other colony. Killing people over cheese, did you ever hear anything more ludicrous? A bit of Cheddar was lovely on some crusty bread, but hardly worth dying for. And there was the problem of the staff, who were deserting the town in droves. Some days Hillman Hunter felt like just staying in bed.
‘All you need is a nice cup of tea and a few biscuits!’ Hillman said in a squeaky impersonation of his grandmother, a voice he often used to motivate himself. ‘Then you’ll be grand.’
Even the thought of tea made him feel better. What was an Irishman without tea?
‘Get up off your backside, Hillers,’ he said in Nano’s tones. ‘Those people need you.’
It was true. The colonists did need him, especially after the kidnapping of Jean Claude. What Nano needed was a real live god to thunderbolt a bit of discipline into its residents. But how did you attract a grade-A god to the unfashionable fringe of the Western Spiral Arm of the Dark Nebula of Soulianis and Rahm? It would take one hell of a benefits package, that was for certain.
Hillman took a note of Cthulhu’s Sub-Etha address, just in case.
Guide Note: The gods came into existence a few millionths of a second after the Big Bang, which basically means that they did not create the Universe; rather, the Universe created them. This is a sore subject in the halls of the holy and is totally off-limits around the dinner table. If a journalist has the temerity to broach the topic he could find himself punished in a strange and imaginative way. Most of the gods have been alive for so long that they have assembled entire libraries devoted to the topic of strange and unusual punishments. As recently as ten thousand years ago there were seminars on Olympus devoted to the subject. These seminars were discontinued as an increasing number of the minor deities were treating the gathering as an excuse to drink and fornicate, which resulted in a glut of new hybrid godlings who had no mythology to go home to. While the seminar ran, it handed out a yearly award in the shape of a Spiked Puffer Fish in honour of Loki’s famous stroke of turning a sex addict into a puffer fish who would poison anything he tried to embrace. Among the more memorable Puffies awarded was the one given to Heimdall who, in a fit of pique, turned a gang of builders who were overcharging him into the wall that they had refused to complete. Another one went to Dionysus for his punishment of Sir Smoog Nowtall, the Blagulon Kappan actor, who performed the one-man show Playing to the Gods, which was slightly critical of its subject matter. Dionysus, whose area was theatre, was a liberal fellow and would have let the play run had it not been for a scene where he himself was depicted as a flatulent, bingeing fool. So enraged was Dionysus by the scene and the positive notes it garnered that he condemned Nowtall to an eternity of being the rear end in a pantomime donkey suit where the bum cheeks before him were the heads of his two fiercest critics, forever reciting their most scathing reviews. Classic.
Gods had a great time of it for millions of years, swanning across the sky in their chariots, showing up in different places at the same time, being all-wise and stuff, but then science developed to the point where it could duplicate many of their tricks. Blighting a crop was no longer as big a deal as it used to be. There were virgin births all the time; in fact, many societies preferred virgin births, as they cut out the need for in-laws, and parents didn’t have to imagine their children doing anything nasty with strangers. The last straw for godkind came when Fenrir, the giant son of Loki, tried to impress his dwindling flock by driving his space cycle into a white hole. The only part of Fenrir intact after the jump was one of his molars, which is now a glowing asteroid orbiting Sagar 7, and can do nothing but influence the tides and communicate vague messages to clairvoyants. The gods were horrified (all except Odin, as it was foretold that Fenrir would devour him at the time of Ragnar?k, so he had a little giggle into his fist) and they retreated to their home worlds, vowing nevermore to consort with mortals (the actual sentence was: ‘Mortals, screw ’em,’ which does not read as godly as a sentence containing the words ‘vowing’, ‘nevermore’ and ‘consort’). So serious were the Aesir about this vow that they surrounded their world, Asgard, with a shell of ice, leaving only one point of access, Bifrost the Rainbow Bridge, which was guarded by the all-seeing god Heimdall.
Visitors were not encouraged.
In fact, visitors were actively discouraged from attempting to dock by ravenous flesh-eating dragons, soul-sucking siren succubae and Flyting, a scurrilous Norse technique of insulting a person which focussed on genitalia and parentage.
The gods wanted nothing to do with mortals. Especially investigative journalists, more especially holy people looking for some kind of heavenly reward. But the most unwelcome person in Asgard was Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox, and each of the dragons had been given one of his old shirts to sniff.
The Heart of Gold
The Heart of Gold flew through the multicoloured and vari-textured space of everywhere. With the Infinite Improbability Drive engaged, the ship became part of the Universe itself until the coordinates slotted into their tumblers and popped the craft out at the correct destination with the interstellar travel equivalent of a ‘ta-dah’, scaring the hell out of the person parked in the next bay. But until that moment, anything could happen, especially anything that was highly improbable, which of course then made it probable, which rendered it improbable again, repeating ad infinitum.
Most people preferred to shut their eyes during improbability flights to shield their psyches from the impossibilities occurring around them, but Zaphod often taped his eyes open so that he wouldn’t miss a thing.
During the trip to Asgard, Dionah Carlinton-Housney, one of Zaphod’s favourite singer/prostitutes, broke through from the afterlife to sing possibly prophetic lyrics in hysterical falsetto.
‘Oh, Zaphod, b-a-a-a-by, the fist is gonna fall.’
Hey, thought Zaphod. My name in a song. Froody.
‘Zaphod, my b-a-a-a-by,’ sang Dionah. ‘You gotta climb that wall.’
Zaphod tried to clap along, but his hands were miles away, arms stretching into space.
‘You look good, Dionah. Great, in fact. No decomposition or anything. I always hoped the afterlife would be like that.’
Dionah placed three hands on her hips, using a fourth to hold the microphone stalk.
‘You’re not listening to me, Mr President.’
‘I don’t want to listen. I want to ask stuff. Do you get many Sub-Etha channels where you are? I love CelebStalk. Do you get that?’
Dionah waved away this talk of entertainment, continuing with her song. ‘Zaphod, b-a-a-a-by. You gotta walk across that bridge.’
‘How about alcohol?’
‘You tell him what his secret name is, Zaph, b-a-a-a-by, and he’s gonna let you in.’
‘Yeah, okay. Bridges, whatever. But, seriously, have you had something done, because I think you look better now?’
Dionah’s eyes flashed. ‘Your grandfather told me not to come. “That boy is an idiot,” he said. “He won’t listen, he never does.” ’
‘It was cryptic,’ protested Zaphod. ‘Cryptic is hard.’
‘Cryptic! It was a goddamn nursery rhyme. Any fool could figure it out.’
Zaphod frowned. ‘Something about a wall and a bridge.’
‘And the secret name. Come on, Mr President. This is important.’
‘Wasn’t there a fist in there somewhere? I like things with fists, especially when the thumb is sticking up. I saw a cartoon once where the stupid guy sticks his thumb into his own eye and…’
‘Oh, for zark’s sake,’ said Dionah, and turned into an ice-sculpture of herself, which then proceeded to melt, dripping upwards into the ceiling. As each drop touched the panels, it exploded with a tinkling oh.
‘That girl always could sing,’ murmured Zaphod, then settled back and waited for probability to reassert itself.
He could see two incredible new colours that his brain could only describe as dangerous and shifty, and jagged indents were being hammered into the spaceship walls as though the Heart of Gold was being rammed by a colossal spiked creature.
‘Whoa,’ yelped Zaphod as a spike shot up between his legs. ‘How soon for normality, Left Brain?’
Left Brain popped up from an electrolytic gel flask on the main console.
‘Who knows in an environment like this,’ he said, gel dropping in blobs from his frictionless orb. ‘In actual time, five seconds, but not necessarily in the order or regularity that we are accustomed to.’
Normality returned with a whinny of tiny ponies and a procession of animated, chanting skeletons across the bridge.
‘I can see right through you,’ they chanted. ‘Can you see right through me?’
Then ponies and skeletons were gone and the bridge was as normal as it was ever likely to get, considering the ship’s navigator was the captain’s disembodied head.
Zaphod blinked. ‘Are we normal, LB?’
Left Brain zoomed around the main cabin, touching base with the various infra-red sensors set into the instruments.
‘Affirmative, Zaphod. The Improbability Drive has spiralled down and we are in real space.’
‘Excellent,’ said Zaphod, unstrapping himself from his flight seat. ‘I have trouble telling the difference sometimes, between what and what-not.’
He leaped to his feet, gangling across to the wraparound view screen, his silver boot heels tinging on the ceramic floor.
‘Okay. So what do we got here? A planet covered with ice. That’s exactly what I did not expect to see. Or rather I expected to see it from the inside. Why are we outside the barrier, LB? Oh why, oh why?’
Left Brain screwed one eye shut, the face he made when analysing streamed data.
‘The Aesir have installed a new shield since our last visit.’
Zaphod pounded the air like a frustrated philosopher trying to force an Existentialist concept into a Pragmatist mind.
‘Those crafty immortals with their little beards and horny helmets. I thought shields didn’t work on Improbability Drives.’
Left Brain hung momentarily wordless, running millions of calculations a second, refining his syntax, paring away any superfluous language until he arrived at:
‘You thought? Don’t make me laugh.’
Zaphod executed a misconceived Du-Bart’ah spinning kick which missed the hovering orb by several feet and made his groin tendon sing like a violin.
Guide Note: President Beeblebrox’s kick was misconceived because the ancient art of Du-Bart’ah had been developed by the Shaltanacs of Broop Kidron Thirteen, who were a happy and peaceful race. The spinning kick was employed to knock Joopleberries from their shrubs with minimal disturbance to the plant itself. Any attempt to use Du-Bart’ah for aggressive reasons would activate the subliminal conditioning in the training chants and turn the attacker’s body on itself. Zaphod did not know this, as he learned the technique from a hologram on the back of a ZugaNuggets box.
‘Really, Zaphod,’ said Left Brain, hovering to a safe altitude. ‘We have a task to complete; there is not time for your usual petty antics.’
‘There is always time for antics,’ moaned Zaphod from his foetal position around a chair stem. ‘Antics get me out of bed in the morning.’
Left Brain knew this to be true, but he had never understood why. ‘Is that why we are here, Zaphod? So that you have something to do?’
Zaphod twanged his tendon gently. ‘I am Zaphod Beeblebrox, LB, and with the life I’ve had, it’s only a matter of time before I run into a humongous anti-climax. I aim to put that off as long as possible.’
Left Brain unscrewed his eye. ‘I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. Not with the amount of firepower pointed at us.’
‘Excellent,’ proclaimed Zaphod, strained tendon forgotten. ‘It seems like ages since we’ve been up against impossible odds with no reasonable chance of survival.’
‘Not long enough,’ said Left Brain, and transferred the incoming call on to the main screen.
‘No,’ said Heimdall, God of Light, emphatically.
‘But I haven’t…’
‘No!’ repeated Heimdall, his huge bald head filling the screen, his eyes boiling red like gas giants.
Zaphod tried again. ‘You don’t even know what…’
‘No. No. No. I don’t care what it is, Beeblebrox. No, is the answer. Now improbable yourself off somewhere else before I set the dragons on you.’
‘Just hear me out,’ pleaded Zaphod.
‘Nope.’
‘Five seconds, what could it hurt?’
‘No. Any question you could ask me, the answer would be no.’
Zaphod spat it out quickly. ‘Is Thor home?’
‘No, he bloody isn’t!’ roared Heimdall, the tips of his waxed moustache quivering.
‘Really?’
The Asgardian god bared his teeth. ‘Actually, yes. Yes, he is home. You’re in bloody Asgard, aren’t you?’
‘He is! Could I…’
‘No. It’s back to negatives again, my friend. And when I say my friend, I actually mean my hated enemy who I would like to see disembowelled and then sprinkled with salt.’
‘Come on, Heimdall. Forget all those misunderstandings and negotiate a little. This is important.’
Heimdall’s cheeks were so red that it seemed quite possible that his head would explode.
‘Misunderstandings? Misunder– zark me. You have a lot of nerve, Crap-prod. You have enough sheer bloody gall for an entire bucket of Gall Stones.’
Guide Note: Gall Stones – Light grey pebbles found on Damogran. Very cheeky.
‘What say we put the past behind us, where it belongs, and just start again? We can do that, can’t we? We’re both rational adults.’
‘We’re both rational adults, but you should see Thor now. He’s just a bag of nerves with a helmet on top after what you did to him.’
‘That’s why I want to talk to the boy. To explain.’
Heimdall took a moment for some breathing exercises, blowing into the gloved fingers of one hand which he wiggled before his face.
‘Explain?’ he said finally. ‘You want to explain?’
‘Yes, that’s all I want from you wonderful gods,’ said Zaphod in tones that would have the Sucky Crawlers of Sycophantasia reaching for their sick-bags. ‘A chance to explain, and possibly make amends for, my previous mistakes.’
‘Amends, eh?’ Heimdall said. ‘I suppose you do need to make amends.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course I do. I repent and I deserve penance.’
‘I know what you’re doing there,’ said Heimdall, scowling. ‘Pushing my god buttons. Who do you think you’re fooling?’
‘I’m serious. Look at this face.’
Heimdall leaned in until his eyes filled the screen. These were eyes that could slice through the fat of a normal person’s lies and find the bone of truth within.
‘Very well, Zaphod Beeblebastard. Come outside and let’s talk about amends.’
‘Come outside? Into space? Won’t that be cold?’
‘Fear not, mortal. I will extend a bubble of atmosphere to you.’
‘Just step outside, then?’
‘Out you come, Zaphod. Alone. You have one minute to decide.’
Left Brain hovered at Zaphod’s shoulder.
‘I think you should probably go,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine here inside the ship. I’m sure the atmosphere bubble will hold its integrity.’
‘Can you check it?’
Left Brain squinted for a moment, then spasmed as lightning flashed inside his dome.
‘The Asgardian computer doesn’t share information, apparently.’ Little spider-bots clicked along the glass, nipping at the scorch marks. ‘There isn’t a line out from the entire planet. If you go out there, you are on your own.’
Zaphod sighed and straightened his coat. ‘People like me, LB, the truly great ones… we are always alone.’
LB nodded. ‘That was good, but I wasn’t ready with the lighting. Give me a second, then try it again.’
‘Okay. Something warm. And not directly overhead. Makes my hair look thin.’
Left Brain interfaced with the ship’s illuminations, putting a yellow spotlight on Zaphod’s face.
‘Ready?’
‘What would you say my motivation was?’
‘Greatness. Pure, undiluted greatness.’
Zaphod nodded gravely, accepting the truth of this. He steepled his fingers and spoke slowly.
‘People like me…’ he began, then Left Brain opened a tube and shot him into space.
Guide Note: As divine dynasties go, the Aesir, the gods of Asgard, are not exactly the biggest pseudopods on the amoeboid. Adored on less than a thousand worlds, they can fairly be classed as middle-tier gods. Zeus, the father of the rival Olympians, has often publicly claimed that he has ‘pulled fluff balls from his navel that were bigger than Asgard’, but this is more than likely simply an attempt to exacerbate Odin’s legendary planet envy. Odin and Zeus have had a ‘bit of a thing’ going for several thousand years, ever since Zeus accidentally turned Odin into a wild boar during one of his ‘take human form and plant some wild oats’ visits to the planet Earth. But even though the gods of Asgard have not achieved the same level of penetration as the Olympians, or even some of the novelty gods such as Pasta Fasta, who began his career as a restaurant chain icon, they are significant for what they have contributed to popular culture, most notably the horn, which they use to decorate their ceremonial helmets, create music and, most importantly, fill with beer. Scientists have postulated that without the phrase ‘do you fancy a horn of beer?’ in their lexicon, several worlds would never have emerged from their cataclysmic planetary war phase.
Heimdall, God of Light, left Zaphod thrashing in the inky void for twenty-nine seconds before lobbing out an atmosphere yo-yo to reel him to safety. In those twenty-nine seconds Zaphod Beeblebrox was forced to think on the inside of his head rather than transmitting his thoughts directly to the Universe as he preferred. His tangent-ridden reflection resulted in the oft-quoted ‘Beeblebrox’s Inner Monologue’, of which there are two published versions: the official one, which Zaphod produced after a weekend on the writer Oolon Colluphid’s estate, and the unofficial version, which was picked up telepathically by Left Brain and included in his memoirs, Life in a Fishbowl. Both accounts will be presented and you can make up your own mind which is more accurate.
The Official Version
And so, the moment has arrived. I grieve bitterly, not for myself, but for those who have been denied the ecstasy of knowing Zaphod Beeblebrox. People will recognize the name, I suppose. Beeblebrox has done a few small things in his short existence. How will I be remembered? As a supernova perhaps, a celestial body that blazes in the night sky, a light in the darkness, granting those that felt its heat on their faces a moment of wonder and perhaps hope. This would be enough. There are those who heap praise upon my shoulders, lauding me as a prophet, a revolutionary, or a great satisfier of women. I accept the praise with gracious modesty, but if I could choose my own epitaph, I would simply say that Zaphod Beeblebrox surprised everyone. In a good way.
And the Unofficial Version
Oh, zark. Big… Big… B-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-G. Space everywhere, but no air! My hair will collapse. And I always bloat in zero g. Heimdall, you total bastard. Look, a ball of ice. Smoothie, shiny, wish I could lick it. What underpants am I wearing? For the autopsy, you need to think about these things. New ones with drainage, I hope. Ford, dude. You were froody, we were froody together. But I was slightly more froody. I bet this gets big coverage. It’s not every day a Galactic President gets dumped out of an airlock by his own head.
There was a third version, that flickered just below the surface of Zaphod’s consciousness. Left Brain didn’t hear it and Zaphod didn’t remember it.
So, Zaphod’s buried personality monologued internally, as I did not hold my breath there will be no lung damage, but that does mean I have less than half a minute before oxygen-deprived blood reaches my brain. I could have done so much more with my time…
Asgard
The Light God watched Zaphod spasm, with no little satisfaction in his all-seeing eyes. He stood on the lip of Bifrost, the portal between Asgard and the rest of the Universe, counting down the seconds until he would have to choose between rescuing Thor’s old manager or letting him die.
It hardly seemed like a choice at all, since Heimdall hated mortals in general (except the noble Sigurd of legend) and Beeblebrox in particular, but letting men die in the vicinity of Asgard was definitely frowned on by Odin, as martyrs had a tendency to live for ever. Which was ironic, as they were dead. Or maybe it was paradoxical, not ironic; one of those tricky terms that Loki bandied around to fluster him. Heimdall was a soldier and didn’t crowd his brain with extraneous vocabulary. Hunt, kill, burn, flay. Those were the kind of words he liked. Especially flay, but it was difficult to work into everyday conversation.
Heimdall pouted for a moment, then sent a gloopy plasma string undulating from the tip of the Gjallarhorn, the legendary harbinger of Ragnar?k. Gjallarhorn might seem to the casual observer like your typical twenty-foot, old Norse yelling horn but in the hands of a god it became a tool of great power and a handy vessel for beer-drinking games.
At the tip of the plasma string there was a bubble of atmosphere which Heimdall fly-fished in space until he managed to snare Zaphod. The plasma shell would gave the Betelgeusean quite a shock when he jittered through to the breathable air inside, but Heimdall was not in the least worried about that. The god’s only concern about Zaphod Beeblebrox’s pain was to ensure that there was plenty of it in his immediate future; his immediate past too, if he could get a time pass from Odin.
He reeled Zaphod in and landed him on the Rainbow Bridge.
Guide Note: The term Rainbow Bridge is an example of how gods in general are given to rhetoric and aggrandizement. Osiris did not just have a flu which knocked him sideways for a few weeks, he died and rose again. Aphrodite did not just have a wardrobe full of low-cut blouses and an inexhaustible supply of dirty limericks, she was irresistible to all males everywhere. And the Rainbow Bridge was not just a spectacularly engineered suspension bridge of ice and steel, it was – according to the Aesir – an actual bridge of rainbows.
Zaphod jittered for a minute while the plasma evaporated, then moaned as he realized that his silver boot heels had melted while passing through the charged shell.
‘Oh, come on,’ he moaned. ‘Do you realize how many Silver-Tongued Devils’ tongues went into those heels? This is the worst day of my life.’
Heimdall loomed over him, his grin several yards wide.
‘I am delighted to hear it.’
‘That rainbow bridge is made of ice and steel,’ said Zaphod in petulant revenge for the boot heels.
‘Silence!’ roared Heimdall. ‘Or you shall be flayed!’
‘I’m already afraid.’
‘No, not afraid.’
‘Not afraid. Afraid. Make up your mind.’
‘I said flayed. Flayed! The skin peeled from your body!’
Zaphod gulped comically. ‘Now I am afraid. Is that allowed?’
Heimdall pinched his nose and quietly recited the first verse of the V?lsunga saga, which generally calmed him down, but this time even Sigurd’s exploits could not soothe his pounding heart.
While Heimdall was reciting, Zaphod processed the loss of his heels and decided he had bigger porms to wrangle. He jumped to his feet, immediately fell over, tried to cover the embarrassing fall with a backwards tumble, stood upright once more, tottered around for a second until he found a gait that worked with no-heeled high heels, then treated himself to a three-sixty spin.
‘Wow,’ he concluded. ‘I have to say, Heimdall, this is one hoopy world you guys have here. I mean, wow. Is that a waterfall? How big is that?’
Heimdall tried one last verse before replying. ‘It’s the fountain of youth, if you must know. Frigga fancied a water feature.’
‘That’s great. Landscape gardening – it’s the future.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ said Heimdall gloomily. ‘Ragnar?k is the future. The gods will perish and the Universe will drown in blood.’
Zaphod nodded. ‘Now that would be a fountain worth seeing. But for now, let’s stay positive, eh, big fella? We’re not drowning in blood yet.’
Heimdall was indeed a big fellow, especially seen from directly below. Gazing up at a god’s crotch can do wonders for a person’s lack of low self-esteem. Especially when the crotch contours are tightly bound by the leggings of a red and neon blue striped ski jumpsuit. Heimdall spent his days and nights on the ice and so apparently had decided to dress the part. He had eschewed the traditional mammaloid leggings in favour of snowboarding boots and there was a pair of orange-tinted ski goggles perched on his forehead and a stripe of sun block on his nose.
‘So. Hate to hurry things along, but you know, my old buddy, Thor. Any chance you could see your way clear to letting me in to see him…?’
Heimdall’s vision of the apocalypse faded and he peered down at Zaphod.
‘Amends, you said. You wanted to make amends.’
Zaphod pasted on his most disarming smile. ‘Well, I would say that, wouldn’t I? In my defence, I didn’t mean a word of it. I was under duress.’
‘You know the drill, Zaphod.’
‘Not tasks! Come on, Heimdall. That’s so oldy-worldy. I thought you guys were getting with the times.’
‘Asgard does not change.’
‘What about that water feature? That wasn’t there on my last visit.’
‘Significantly. Asgard does not change significantly. Three tasks, Beeblebrox, if you really want to talk.’
‘Three! I don’t have time for three. Your tasks take for ever. I’ll do one.’
‘Three,’ insisted Heimdall, eyes bulging in their sockets.
‘One!’ repeated Zaphod.
‘I’m just going to kill you, screw it.’
Zaphod rocked back on his biological heels, then rocked forward a step. ‘You’re bluffing, big boy. I know the rules here. No one gets struck off the coil on Asgard without the Big O’s say so.’
‘Don’t push me, because I’ll call him.’
‘Yeah? What’s stopping you? Maybe Odin doesn’t give out his number to gatekeepers.’
Heimdall shook his massive head. ‘Don’t do it, Beeblebollocks. Don’t make me call the guy. He’s no fan of yours.’
‘Call him, go ahead. You won’t though, because he’s number one and you’re… you don’t even have a number. Odin could be enjoying a nice horn of honey mead and your call might make him drop it, then holy zark, it’s Ragnar?k.’
Heimdall pointed a finger the size of a torpedo. ‘Right. That’s it. I am calling.’
‘Are you? Looks like you’re talking to me. Lot of flapping lips, not much number punching.’
‘Be this on your own head, Zaphod,’ muttered the god. ‘All I wanted was three tasks. Four, tops.’ He waggled his horn in a certain way and it collapsed into itself until it fit neatly into the god’s palm. ‘This is it. No turning back.’
‘Of course there is, if you’re full of buffa-biscuit.’
‘Buffa!’ croaked Heimdall in the choked tones of a Folfangan Phlegm Ferret having its throat tickled for the precious pharmacopeia in its mucus. ‘Buffa, you say!’ He punched in a number on the horn’s keypad and hummed his way through a few seconds of ringing.
‘Yep, hello. Odie, it’s me,’ he said into the horn.
Heimdall closed one eye and endured a few seconds of abuse from the father of the gods.
‘Okay. Sorry, I do realize that you have a lot of golden plankton balls to churn out, and I know mead stains. Freeze your shirt, then the mark comes right out. Listen, I got someone here, a mortal. I just want the go-ahead to kill him.’
More abuse. Zaphod could easily catch the tone from ten feet below phone level.
‘I know we don’t… I am aware of policy… Of course I read the document… the bullet points anyway.’
Zaphod drifted away from the conversation, already impatient with a situation that did not feature him. As a child, Zaphod had been diagnosed with ADHDDAAADHD (ntm) ABT which stood for Always Dreaming His Dopey Days Away, Also Attention Deficit Hyperflatulence Disorder (not to mention) A Bit Thick. Even as an adult, Zaphod could not manage the condition because he could never remember what he suffered from.
A couple of Ds, he had told his pill guy on Eroticon VI, maybe an H, and was prescribed ointment for DDH, which was Double Dose Haemorrhoids. Zaphod stopped using the ointment after a couple of days because he couldn’t keep it down.
So even though Heimdall and Odin were discussing his immediate future and the amount of discomfort contained therein, Zaphod found himself distracted by the twinkly lights of Asgard. It was an amazing sight, even for one accustomed to the shiny shiny of wide, wonderful space.
Size-wise, Asgard was no Megabrantis Delta, but what was there made a big impression. For a start, there was the whole encased in ice thing, which cast a flickering silver-blue light show over the entire surface. The surface itself was littered with the kind of dramatic topographic features that would drive a Magrathean to industrial espionage: mighty gushing rivers, high snow-peaked mountains and fjords as intricate as a twitterflitter’s electrocardiogram readout. Glistening ice fields coexisted impossibly alongside tracts of golden corn, all bathed by sunrays that could not be traced back to any star. Towering castles breached the clouds, dragons coiled around their turrets. It was a dream world, if the dreamers were testosterone-fuelled males who were never forced to behave like adults.
Heimdall was saying something.
‘Hmm?’ said Zaphod.
‘I got the green light,’ said the god, smiling happily.
‘What green light? What do you want a green light for?’
‘It’s a saying. The green light means go.’
‘Go where?’
‘Nowhere. I’m not going anywhere.’
‘Then why do you need a green light?’
Heimdall pinched his nose. ‘Forth Sigurd fides till he comes to the dwelling of a mighty chief called Heimir; he had to wife a sister of Brynhild, who was known as Bekkhild, as she had bided at home, and learned woman’s work, whereas Brynhild followed unto the wars, so was she called Brynhild.’
‘I see,’ said Zaphod, wondering if he might use the craziness as cover to nip across the bridge.
As if reading his mind, which he probably could, Heimdall blocked Zaphod’s path with a massive fur-trimmed boot.
‘I told Odin it was you.’
Zaphod was suddenly a little more nervous than he had been. ‘And what did he say?’
‘He said that you were a well-known public figure, so to make your death confusing.’
‘Confusing?’
Heimdall bent double, shaking Gjallarhorn to its original length.
‘You’re shaking your horn to its original length,’ noted Zaphod.
‘I’m going to summon the dragons.’
‘So that they can kill me in a confusing way,’ Zaphod surmised.
Heimdall’s grin seemed wide as a crescent moon. ‘That’s right, Beetlepox. I’m going to instruct them to kill you by accident but make it look like murder.’
‘Oh,’ said Zaphod. ‘What about the tasks? There must be a golden axe somewhere you guys need me to find.’
‘You wanted one task,’ said Heimdall. ‘That’s exactly what you’re getting.’
Zaphod blew into his hands. ‘Good. Great. Can we get on with it then? I am freezing. My spare neck hole really feels the cold, which incidentally is the title of my next album.’
‘It’s a simple task,’ said Heimdall innocently. ‘All you need to do is cross the bridge.’
Cross the bridge, Zaphod thought. That sounds familiar. Then again, ‘bridge’ is a common enough word. And often used in a metaphorical sense.
‘Which bridge?’
‘This bridge!’ roared Heimdall, his beard quivering. ‘This bloody bridge that you’re standing on.’
‘Okay. Just trying to get the details straight. Cross this bridge I’m standing on. Anything else?’
‘There’s a tube of false atmosphere, so you won’t drift off. If you make the first wall, you need to climb it.’
I gotta climb that wall. Familiar. But the word ‘wall’ is even more common than ‘bridge’.
‘So, cross and climb. Got it. And no hidden tricks?’
‘Apart from the dragons trying to tumble you into the abyss? No.’
Zaphod frowned. ‘So the dragons are not friendly dragons, singing songs and stuff, like in the kiddy stories?’
‘They do sing death dirges.’
‘Really? What rhymes with “flay”?’ A rare flash of perceptive wit from Zaphod at the worst possible moment.
‘Oh, very good. You just cut ten seconds off your head start.’
Heimdall adopted a heroic stance, which is not easy when one is clad in a garish ski suit, but in fairness the god carried it off. He raised his horn and blew a long, undulating series of notes that sounded suspiciously like the old Betelgeusean nursery rhyme ‘Arkle Schmarkle Sat on a Schmed’, but with a semitone more implied violence.
Zaphod felt a sudden chill in the scar tissue where his second neck used to be. He turned on the spot where one of his silver heels until recently had twinkled and ran like blazes through the tube of false atmosphere across the so-called Rainbow Bridge.
Vogon Bureaucruiser Class Hyperspace Ship, the Business End
Constant Mown sat in the hyperspace cradle in his home office, shivering, as the Business End lurched out of hyperspace in much the same way as a drunken Betelgeusean reporter might lurch out of a convenient bush with an empty bladder. (The reporter being the one with the empty bladder not the bush, unless the bush happened to be a Howhi shrub, which expels its seed in a slightly acidic solution when its foliage detects moisture. In essence, you pee on it and it pees on you.)
Eight more jumps to go, thought Mown. And then we get to wipe out another species.
And, in truth, the idea did not give him as much satisfaction as it should. Surely there was no greater pleasure for a Vogon than to close the file on an enforcement order, but Constant Mown was perhaps not as much of an utter bastard as his father liked to think. In fact, in recent months when Mown searched inside himself for that tough Vogon core necessary to carry out some of his more distasteful duties, instead of steel and kroompst he found sensitivity and even empathy. It was horrible, awful. How was a constant ever to become a prostetnic with wishy-washy emotions like those swilling around in his thinking gourd?
I don’t want to be a prostetnic. I don’t even want to be an enforcement bureaucrat.
Oh sure, Mown gave good Vogon on the bridge – threw his little spaghetti arms around saluting Daddy, waxed euphoric about the Unnecessarily Painful Slow Death torpedoes – but his blood pump wasn’t in it.
I don’t want to kill anyone, even with the right paperwork.
Mown had to take a few deep breaths before composing the next thought.
There are things more important than paperwork.
He said it aloud.
‘There are things more important than paperwork!’
Suddenly there was bile in Mown’s throat, but the little Vogon was so worked up that he couldn’t enjoy it. Mown tumbled from the hyperspace cradle and scrabbled along his bedside draining board until he found a drool cup to spit into.
That was better.
Had he really said that aloud? What was happening to him?
Mown lowered himself gently on to his cot, an act that would have surprised the hell out of his shipmates. Vogons did not generally have the wherewithal to lower themselves gently on to anything. Plonking awkwardly or collapsing ignominiously were the main options open to the Vogon race. Getting up again was even worse than sitting down. Rising from anything lower than a bar stool generally involved a bruised coccyx, a complicated system of weights and pulleys and several pints of splutter. But Mown possessed something heretofore unheard of among the Vogons. Mown possessed a modicum of grace.
Mown wiggled a couple of fingers beneath the mattress board and pulled out a small pink piece of plastic contraband. He slipped the item underneath a soft thigh and quorbled nervously for a few moments, building up the kroompst to bring it out into the open.
‘This is the last time,’ he promised himself. ‘One look, then I’ll get rid of it. Never again. The absolute last time.’
Look at me, said the pink thing, warm through the fabric of his trews. Look at me and see yourself.
Mown’s fingers tip-tapped on the frame and then, with a sudden surge of courage, he grabbed the plastic handle and yanked it out.
The item was a plastic Barbie mirror, purchased in a cheapo knick-knack market on Port Brasta. Authentic Earth memorabilia. Mirrors were forbidden on-board ship, because Vogons got depressed enough without looking at their own mugs in polished glass.
Guide Note: Vogons survived through determined extrospection. Apart from disdainful dabblings in the poetic arts, most Vogons try to focus their attentions very much on other species in order to avoid dwelling on their own various physical and psychological shortcomings. Vogons rarely spend time in flotation tanks, they never meditate in steam lodges and they most certainly do not gaze at their misshapen warty faces in mirrors. The only race to ever have successfully perverted a Vogon planetary demolition order were the Tubavix of Sinnustra, who sent a reformatting screen virus to the Vogon fleet which turned all their monitors into mirrors. Five minutes after the virus had uploaded, the Vogon ships turned their torpedoes on each other.
Mown looked at himself in the mirror and felt no revulsion whatsoever. In fact, he liked what he saw.
Oh my god, he thought. What’s happening to me?
Something had happened to Mown. A few months previously, his block of breakfast gruel had been cross-contaminated with the tip of a toadstool mandarin tentacle, which released just enough entheogens into Mown’s system to prompt him to acknowledge something he had already suspected.
I do not hate myself.
This was a revolutionary, if not heretical, thought for a Vogon to construct, and would surely have had Mown expelled from the bureaucratic corps had he admitted to it on his psych test. If the bureaucratic corps had a psych test.
Constant Mown had been doing more than just having the thought lately.
‘I do not hate myself,’ he whispered to the mirror. ‘In many ways I am not altogether too bad.’
And if Mown did not hate himself, what did he have to project on to the Universe? If not love, then certainly an affable, diluted version.
I like myself so maybe, perhaps, others could like me too.
‘Not if I kill them first,’ said Mown morosely to his own reflection.
It had pained him to see the Earthlings eradicated once; if it happened again, he might just come to hate himself.
Mown closed his fingers around the tiny mirror.
Why did I tell father about the colony?
But Mown knew the answer to this one.
I told him because it’s common knowledge and he would have found out, then I would have been the one who didn’t tell him. And without me, the Earthlings have no chance.
Mown smiled weakly at his reflection, then tucked the mirror under his mattress board.
There must be a way, he thought. A way to save the humans and not get myself flushed out of a torpedo tube.