7
The Tanngrísnir
Wowbagger’s ship red-shifted from the real Universe into the mysterious omni-layer of dark space. The view through the portholes was so utterly exotic that an average being could only handle a few seconds of it before either lapsing into catalepsy or replacing the actual view with some pleasant imagining that revealed a lot about the person doing the imagining.
Ford Prefect actually blushed.
‘Goosnargh!’ he squeaked, covering one porthole with his satchel. ‘I’ve seen a few things in my day and in my night too, but that right there… that is…’ And he fled the bridge, deciding that there were times in a man’s life that it was better to be alone rather than discuss the view, which he had a sneaking suspicion originated in the recesses of his own mind, particularly the recess that had been conceived one winter afternoon during the meat festival of Carni-val when he’d been dressed as a pollo-bear and had become entangled in a tower of stacked chairs, only to be rescued by a gaggle of three-legged student liposuckers who demanded a very curious reward.
‘What’s his problem?’ wondered Random. ‘All I see is nothing and more nothing. An eternity of nothing to see.’
‘You are lucky,’ said Bowerick Wowbagger. ‘There are worse things to see than nothing. Nothingness, for example.’
‘Wow, that’s cheery. You should write greetings card messages.’
‘Listen, odd child. You may learn something.’
‘From you? No thanks. I think I’d rather stay stupid.’
‘Your wish has already been granted.’
Random bristled a tad more than she was already bristling, which was a shade more than the average berry-snouted spikehog that has just smelled a hunting dog.
‘How dare you, don’t you know who I am?’
‘A member of the Cult of Ridiculousness from the Stammering Mud Flats of Santraginus V?’ offered Bowerick.
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘Oh, my mistake. The Cult of Ridiculous from the Stammering Mud Flats of Santraginus V.’
Guide Note: This conversation had similar elements to the exchange that precipitated the collapse of the actual Cult of Ridiculousness from Santraginus V. The COR at their zenith had several dozen names on their mailing list, but the entire organization self-destructed following a particularly contentious Friday Q&A session when Committee Treasurer T’tal Ychune challenged Chairman Oloon Yjeet as to the validity of the society’s name. The minutes read as follows:
Yjeet: The chair recognizes Treasurer Ychune.
Ychune: Of course you recognize me. I’m your cousin. We shanked vorkle dumplings together, or would you prefer to forget about that?
Yjeet: Please, T’tal…
Ychune: That’s Treasurer Ychune.
Yjeet: (sigh) Please, Treasurer Ychune, can we try to keep this civil?
Ychune: You’d know all about civil, wouldn’t you? Very civil it was of you to drop around with some spare contraceptives to my betrothed last week. Most civil.
Yjeet: I explained that.
Ychune: (bark of bitter laughter) Oh yes, the water balloon story. How could I forget.
Yjeet: Was there something official you wished to present?
Ychune: There certainly was. I move that the society’s name be changed from the Cult of Ridiculousness to the Cult of Ridiculousity.
Yjeet: Are you serious?
Ychune: Totally. Ridiculousness is a little dated, a little slapstick. I think Ridiculousity gives us more gravity.
Yjeet: Gravity? We’re a society that celebrates the history of absurdist comedy as portrayed on cereal box cards. Gravity. That’s ridiculous.
Ychune: Aha! You’re making my point for me.
Yjeet: (stands abruptly) Yjenean loves me, not you. Get over it. And you can keep this stupid society.
Ychune: (also standing and pulling out a large machete that he had somehow concealed in his regulation striped comedy shorts) It’s not stupid, it’s ridiculous. There’s a difference.
The rest of the transcript is rendered illegible as blood streaks have dissolved the ink. Only three phrases can be deciphered in the final lines, and these are: ‘electronically tested’, ‘call those comedy shorts’ and ‘of course elephants dream’. Draw your own conclusions.
Random crossed her arms and shifted her weight as if leaning into a strong wind. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Bowerick. You’re thinking that any second now I’ll run out of things to say and resort to “I hate you” and a stomping exit.’
‘I was rather hoping our exchange would end in the traditional way.’
‘You don’t get off that easily a second time. I’ve got the gripes of a pensioner and the energy of a teenager, so I can argue all day if that’s what you want.’
Bowerick Wowbagger pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘That is so removed from what I want, you have no idea.’
Trillian actually wrung her fingers as the exchange escalated. She was so far in the red as regards good-parenting credits that she had no idea where the high moral ground was. Even if she could occasionally glimpse it, as a myopic hiker glimpses a mist-sodden hill at night, she had no idea who currently occupied it or how to scale its slopes, should she accidentally bump into them.
‘Random,’ she snapped, then reeled it back in. ‘I meant to say Random. Softly, like that. R-a-a-a-ndom.’
‘What are you babbling about, Mother?’
Trillian felt the old virtual animosity building up, but she choked it back down. ‘I want to be gentle with you, understanding. But babbling? Babbling, Random honey? I’m more than a mother, I’m your friend. But I don’t babble, darling.’
Random turned her Goth lasers on Trillian. ‘Really? Seems to me like you’re babbling now. Babbling and hovering. Shouldn’t you be off covering a dog fair or something? Leaving me alone again with some perfect stranger, perhaps?’
Before Trillian could choose a reply then temper it with compassion born of guilt, Bowerick Wowbagger decided that he’d had enough for the moment.
‘Ship,’ he said. ‘Tube the younger female.’
The mouth of a transparent tube popped down from the suddenly liquid ceiling and wavered over Random’s head. It mimicked her movements, then whoomped down as soon as its predictive software reckoned it knew where the target was going next.
Random was enclosed in a soundproof tube and sent to sleep with a shot of twinkling green gas. Her face twitched and then assumed a strange expression that it took Trillian a moment to identify as a smile.
‘Now I’m going to cry,’ she said, gazing fondly at her drugged and imprisoned daughter. ‘I haven’t seen a smile like that for years. Not since Random was appointed Junior Judge in pre-school. She loved handing out those demerits.’
‘The child is dreaming. I can show you the recording if you like,’ offered the green ship’s captain.
There was a ball of anger clogging Trillian’s throat and now she had a legitimate reason to cough it up.
‘How dare you!’ she cried, eyes wide, chin thrust forward. ‘You sedated my daughter.’
Wowbagger picked up a small pink sliver from the floor. ‘And I cut off her index finger.’
Trillian gagged on her ball of anger. ‘You what? You bloody what?’
‘Technically, the ship did it. That tube has sharp edges – she must have stuck her finger out at the last second. Possibly to deliver some obscene gesture.’
‘My girl, my little girl. You sliced…’
Wowbagger tossed the digit towards the ceiling, which absorbed it into the plasma. ‘Now, now. Not sliced. Sliced implies deliberate intent. It was an unfortunate accident at worst.’
Trillian hammered on the tube with her palms. ‘Arthur! This lunatic is cutting up our daughter.’
‘Hardly cutting up,’ said Wowbagger, consulting his wafer computer. ‘The computer has already grown a new finger for her.’
Trillian checked. It was true – a brand-new pink index finger was steaming gently on the end of Random’s metacarpal. There was no blood and the teenager did not seem in the least uncomfortable.
‘Your daughter is relaxed and dreaming,’ continued Bowerick Wowbagger. He winced at whatever was on-screen. ‘Though perhaps it’s better if I don’t show you the dreams. They’re a little matricidal.’
‘Wake her up!’ demanded Trillian.
‘Absolutely out of the question.’
‘Wake her up immediately.’
‘Not likely. She is insufferable.’
‘And you’re not, I suppose.’
Wowbagger considered this, rubbing a thumb with his forefinger to focus his thoughts as was traditional among his people.
Guide Note: Wowbagger’s people had believed this action to be an old number-one concubines’ tale until scientists discovered pockets of natural adenosine blocker secreted below the thumb pads. A brisk thumb scratch unleashes as much energy as five medium cups of a caffeine beverage. Many people become addicted to the little highs and spend all day on the couch twiddling their thumbs.
‘I think some people find me insufferable,’ he concluded. ‘But I would bet that no one likes that child, unless they are blinded by familial bonds.’
‘So now I’m blinded?’
‘I can’t think of another reason why you would tolerate this person. She is vile, grant me that much.’
‘I will not grant you a thing!’
‘Have you heard how she talks to me? How she talks to you?’
Trillian’s cheeks were on fire. ‘We’ve had our problems. They are our problems. Now release my daughter.’
Wowbagger winced at the thought. ‘How about I put her in storage for a while? I can have the computer melt some of that nicotine from the walls of her lungs.’
‘Don’t you dare put her in storage!’ shouted Trillian, resisting a strong urge to stamp her foot. Then: ‘Nicotine? Has she been smoking?’
‘For a few years, according to my readings.’
‘Smoking! Where did Random find time to smoke? I don’t think I’ve ever seen her breathe in with all the complaining she does.’
‘Storage? Go on.’
Trillian was tempted. ‘No. No, but maybe a lung scrape.’
Bowerick waved his fingers over a few sensors and Random’s tube was suffused with flickering laser waves.
‘Random will have to sweat that tar out over the next few days. She may experience some nausea.’
‘Good. That should teach her a lesson. Smoking.’
Bowerick reached his hand into an amorphous gel table and pulled out a mug of tea.
‘I think we should leave her in there until we reach the nebula. Nobody suffers, everyone’s a winner.’
Wowbagger had a charming way about him, and Trillian found herself forgetting the severed digit. After all, Random was perfectly fine. In fact, she was better than fine. She was mint.
‘No… I couldn’t. Could I?’
Wowbagger shrugged. ‘From what I’ve gathered, you’re hardly mother of the century, so what’s a few more days apart?’
And right there the charmingness ended.
‘How bloody dare you! You uncouth green alien.’
‘We are in open space, so technically there are no aliens here.’
‘You have no idea what I’ve been through. You are in no position to judge me!’
This was the stage of the conversation where Arthur would have sidled from the room in search of some vital but unnamed object in an unspecified and hard–to-reach location. Even Ford would have taken one look at Trillian’s face and known to shut his cocktail hole, but Wowbagger, having nurtured a death wish for several millennia, instinctively pointed his green prow towards dangerous situations.
It’s unlikely, his subconscious said. But perhaps this Earth woman, this undeniably attractive Earth woman, could do me some grievous bodily harm.
Wishful thinking.
‘Actually, I do have an idea what you’ve been through. The computer mined your memories. I have it all on file.’
‘You perused my memories?’
‘Of course. I was taking you on board my ship. You might have been a mass murderer. With any luck.’
‘You had no right.’
‘Oh, here we go with the journalist speak. What happened to “We’ll be no trouble, Mr Wowbagger”?’
‘I asked you to take a few hitchhikers on board, not to dig our memories out of our heads.’
‘Again, you’re using the wrong verb. There were no digging implements involved.’
Trillian clenched her fists so fiercely that her phalanges creaked.
‘You pedantic, smarmy ass!’
‘Ah yes. I had forgotten how fond you people are… were… of lower-life-form-based insults. What’s next? Cheeky monkey?’
‘Oh, I can do better than that.’
‘Really? I’ll get my notebook. I’m always on the lookout, you know.’
Trillian thrashed like a combatant being restrained by invisible arms. ‘That’s right, Wowbagger. Make a list of insults, so you can while away your meaningless life making people miserable.’
‘As opposed to spending your life away from your child, reporting on other people’s misery?’
‘At least I’m not making them miserable.’
‘Really? Why don’t you ask the girl in the tube?’
They were well matched and Bowerick was warming to the contest. He tossed his mug into the ceiling and gave the human female his full attention.
‘Go on then, Trillian Astra. Give me something new I haven’t heard a million times before.’
‘Zark you, Bowerick.’
‘What do you think? New?’
‘Do you think I’d waste my time trying to impress someone who mutilated my daughter?’
‘I think so. You media personalities are always trying to impress the Universe. Think of me as a viewer.’
Trillian might have smiled; there were teeth involved. ‘A viewer? I never tried to cater to viewers in your demographic.’
‘And which demographic would that be?’
‘The lunatic fringe. The sad loner brigade.’
‘A loner brigade?’ said Bowerick, smirking.
‘You’re hiding, Wowbagger. In this ship, behind words. You are a sad, lonely, stupid man, wasting the incredible gift you’ve been given. Imagine the things you could have done.’
Wowbagger could not hold her eyes. ‘I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannh?user Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.’
‘You are pathetic.’
‘That was one of my favourites movies. I’ve watched a lot of movies.’
‘And insulted a lot of people.’
‘That too.’
‘All over a couple of elastic bands.’
‘Zarking bands. We know now that the whole elastic band doctrine was buffa-biscuit.’
‘You had eternity and you wasted it.’
Bowerick leaned hard against the wall, disappearing up to the shoulder. ‘I did. I did and I want to die.’
‘So do I.’
Bowerick was surprised at this, and by how much it upset him. ‘You want to die?’
Trillian placed a hand on his smooth green cheek. ‘No, stupid. I want you to die.’
‘Finally, we agree on something.’
Trillian stared into Wowbagger’s emerald eyes.
‘How soon do you have to die?’ she asked.
Bowerick had been around long enough to spot an opening when he heard one.
‘Not immediately,’ he said and leaned down to kiss Trillian Astra.
She was shaking a bit, but not as much as the girl in the tube who had just regained consciousness.
Asgard
It tickled the Aesir’s divine fancy to set impossible tasks for mortals then pull up a bar stool to the view pool and watch the unfortunate prince or suitor burst a gut trying to do his god’s bidding. Slaying the fiercest dragon was a favourite, as was climbing the tallest tower or crossing the widest desert. Anything with a superlative in it. The best impossible tasks were the ones that were so close to possible that the poor eejit being run around in circles could almost touch victory when failure crept up behind and administered a fatal dose of gruesome death.
Tasks were generally handed down in groups of three, so the one being tested could taste success on the first two and even develop a bit of a cocky swagger, which made for much higher high fives when the testee god delivered his killer blow on task three. Odin insisted on wildcard rules so that in theory the mortal always had a chance at success, but in the history of task-setting, only one man had successfully completed three tasks without dying somewhere in the process. Truth be told, that man had actually been Odin himself in one of the human disguises that he was so proud of.
‘Oooh,’ all the other gods were forced to coo. ‘What an amazing mortal who looks nothing like Odin.’ And pretend that it was totally non-ridiculous that a mortal could move faster than the speed of cameras and change size whenever it suited him.
You would think he’d have made an effort with the fake name, Loki had mental-brained to Heimdall. I mean, Wodin. Come on.
Zaphod Beeblebrox had managed to negotiate from three tasks down to one, which in effect meant that he would fail and perish two tasks early, a fact that would have a devastating trauma-inducing effect on absolutely no one inside the ice shell except Zaphod Beeblebrox.
The Galactic President found himself listing to one side as he pelted along the Rainbow Bridge.
My balance is all off without Left Brain, he realized. And my breathing too.
He was sucking down big breaths, but only a fraction of the air was making it to his lungs.
There’s a leak somewhere.
In actuality there was no tracheal leak, it was simply that Zaphod’s lungs were accustomed to a pair of windpipes feeding them, but now there was only one and it was struggling to do the job. It did not help that the carbon dioxide-oxygen mix was a little too CO2 heavy for most mortals, so the closer Zaphod got to the planet’s surface, the woozier he became.
‘Compliments to the under-brazier!’ he yelled, because it seemed appropriate.
And though this may seem like a nonsense sentence hodgepodged together by a doped and dopey brain, this particular phrase happened to be that day’s password for the Helheim pressure cannons located below the Asgardian iron mines. Which would have mattered not at all, had not Zaphod’s delirious utterances been picked up by the fading beams of Heimdall’s call to Odin and transmitted to the wireless earpiece of Hel, the mistress of Helheim. Even then, no action would have been taken without the failsafe bong-o-code, a complicated series of taps known only to the big-knob gods, which had to be physically hammered into the vein of iron that ran through the stone of Hlidskjalf, Odin’s gigantic watchtower and throne, all the way down to Helheim. However, as the iron of Asgard has a little divine magic in its molecules, there is a certain amount of communication between the vein and any metal that has been removed from the vein, the bridge for instance. And as Zaphod tore across Bifrost, the corrugated nubs of his melted heels sent a flurry of pings and bongs vibrating into the bridge with every footfall; pings and bongs that perfectly matched the failsafe bong-o-code for the Helheim pressure cannons.
Highly unlikely. Forty-seven million to one against. Piddling odds for anyone or anything inside the footprint of an Infinite Improbability Drive’s spooldown corona of coincidence and serendipity.
Zaphod’s sense of balance was further discombobulated by the mini-cyclones burrowing through the tube of false atmosphere and thrumming about his head and shoulders.
Dragon wash, he realized. The beasties are close.
If Zaphod’s sense of balance was a little discomfited, then his other senses were positively assaulted by the approach of the dragons to his rear. They soared through the true atmosphere, improbably graceful, long necks undulating with each wing beat, fire snuffles playing around their nostrils. Several scaly heads poked into Zaphod’s peripherals but the creatures didn’t seem to be in any hurry to nudge him off the bridge.
They’re toying with me. Bloody flying rodents.
‘Evening, gents,’ he called breathlessly. ‘You can’t be bought off, I suppose? I have a really good replicator on the ship. Whatever you guys want. Name it.’
The dragon with most horns swooped in close to act as spokesman for the group.
‘Whatever we want?’ it said in a voice like meat being sucked through a bottleneck. ‘Wow. Okay. Let me think. We could spare him, couldn’t we boys?’
‘Sure.’
‘Could do.’
‘Why not?’
It was an encouraging start, Zaphod thought.
‘So what do you want? Tell me what I can do for you.’
The horned dragon chewed on a flap of skin hanging from its nose.
‘Could you fit us all on your ship?’
‘Of course I could,’ huffed Zaphod, without for a second considering whether this was true.
‘And you could transport us to a new world? A young world brimming with life?’
‘That is not a problem. Off the top of my head I can think of a dozen, and this is my stupid head.’
The dragon inched closer, so the blue flames at its sala-mandroid nostrils singed Zaphod’s hair.
‘And could we kill every last being on the planet?’ it said in a growled whisper.
‘And the trees,’ called one of his mates. ‘We want to burn down the trees, for a laugh.’
‘And the trees,’ said spokesdragon. ‘Even dragons need to relax.’
Zaphod was amazed that he could run and talk at the same time. ‘What was the bit before trees?’
‘Kill everyone, oh and lay eggs in their corpses. That’s very important to us. Can you arrange this, little mortal?’
‘Whereabouts in their corpses?’ asked Zaphod, just to make conversation.
‘Oh, you know. Hollows, crevices. Eye sockets are good.’
And though he didn’t think he had it in him, Zaphod ignored the pain in his lungs and picked up the pace.
Why do you always do these things, stupid? he silently berated himself. Do you even know why you are here?
He didn’t. The reason would come back to him when he had a second to think. If he had a second.
Deep in the bowels of Asgard there mouldered a magma-powered deep-sink sewage treatment megacube. Below this and to the left a bit, in what might reasonably be called the rectum of Asgard, sat the region known as Niflheim. At the lowest extreme of Niflheim, on what might be fairly referred to as the interior sphincter of Asgard, sat Helheim.
Hel, the mistress of said sphincter, lounged on the pile of inflated serpent-intestine cushions that littered her throne, stroking the baby dragon stole around her neck.
‘What do you think of my new stole?’ she asked Modgud, her corpse-eating familiar, who was currently wearing the form of a giant eagle.
Modgud squinted. ‘I think it’s still alive, sweetness.’
Hel wrung the little dragon’s neck with a perfunctoriness that suggested much experience.
‘What do you think now?’
‘I don’t know,’ mewed Modgud, who had always been a bit petty for a corpse eater. ‘It seems so… lifeless.’
Suddenly Hel sat bolt upright in a flurry of squeaking cushions.
‘I just got the… It’s the th-th-thing,’ she stammered, twisting a communicator earpiece deeper into her ear hole.
Modgud rose up on his claws. ‘What, sweetness? You just got what?’
‘The password, phrase, from Odin.’
‘Which one? The change the sewage filter one?’
‘No. No, you stupid bird. Compliments to the under-brazier. That’s the password for the pressure cannons. We’re under fire.’
Modgud was wounded by the personal attack, but decided for the good of the planet that he would let it fester for the moment.
‘Now, now, sweetness. Hold up there. No call for hysterics. Don’t you need some kind of confirmation?’
Hel dabbed her brow with a hairy forearm. ‘Yes. Yes, of course I do, dear friend. The failsafe bong-o-code. Sorry about the stupid bird comment.’
‘Oh, forget it,’ said Modgud, good-naturedly. ‘You’re in a high-pressure job.’ Inside, he swore to up the daily doses of poison. Maybe he couldn’t kill this witch, but he could have her writhing on the toilet for half the day.
Hel’s relieved smile froze as the failsafe bong-o-code vibrated up through her torso from the iron throne she sat upon.
‘What is it?’
‘Shut up, idiot. I’m counting bongs.’
Modgud preened for a few moments while his mistress counted.
‘War!’ she said at last, springing to her feet. ‘Asgard is at war. Finally my chance to get out of this dump and back to the surface. If my defences save the day, then it’s so long, loser craphole.’
‘Loser?’
Hel rolled her eyes. ‘You are so sensitive for a corpse eater. Warm up the cannons.’
‘Which ones? Not all of them?’
‘Yes, all of them.’
‘What am I shooting at?’
‘Not the bridge, Heimdall’s on the bridge. But anything else that moves!’ snapped the she-devil. ‘We might lose a few dragons but there are aliens inside the shell.’
Loser craphole, thought Modgud sulkily, opening a window on his wrist computer. At least we acknowledge the existence of technology down here. At least we’re not relying on archaic phone calls and bong-o-codes.
‘I can mental-brain what you’re thinking!’ screeched Hel. ‘Something about tents and cake!’
Modgud activated the cannons with a few taps on his screen.
God help us, he thought. But not the gods we have here. Some other ones that are a bit less…
The corpse eater did not finish the thought, just in case Hel got her mindreading spot on for once.
Zaphod was running out of breath and what little he did have left sprinkled his lungs with pins and needles. The dragons swirled around the bridge now, at least a dozen of them, shunting each other with playful shoulders, nipping at tails. They loosed fireballs close to their target, stripping chunks of ice from the bridge.
Still, thought Zaphod. Killed fighting dragons in Asgard. Not a bad way to go. Better than slipping on a wet spot and tumbling into a boring hole. A pity I couldn’t reach that wall.
Wall. Hadn’t Dionah Carlinton-Housney said something about a wall?
I shall make reaching that wall my new short-term goal, decided Zaphod with the same full tank of foundation-free reasoning that characterized most of his life-changing decisions. If it’s the last thing I do, I will reach that wall.
Two lurches later his legs gave out and he was reduced to dragging himself along the bridge in a three-handed scrabble.
‘Wall, damnit,’ he croaked. ‘Wall.’
The dragons thought this was hilarious and one of them even pulled a cell phone from under a scale to call his weekend buddies.
‘Honestly, you have to see this idiot, Burnie. You remember that guy with the wooden legs? Remember we lit him up like a torch? This guy is even funnier. Get up here now.’
More dragons. Froody.
The beasts’ wings dipped inside the atmosphere tube, tugging at Zaphod’s clothing with their sharp little claws.
‘Come on. This is an official presidential jacket. Don’t you lizards know who I am?’
Bifrost jumped with the impact of giant footsteps as Heimdall jogged leisurely along the bridge, grin wider than the crooked Mayor of Optimisia with dental implants who has just won the planetary lotto on his birthday and discovered that his chief love rival from high school was recently cuckolded and that the prosecution’s case against him has collapsed.
‘You didn’t make it,’ said the god, eyes magnified by the orange lenses of his ski goggles.
‘Are those prescription?’ wondered Zaphod.
‘You didn’t complete your task, Babblepox.’
‘It’s Beeblebrox,’ shouted the frustrated Galactic President. ‘You may not realize this, but every time you mispronounce my name I feel bad. I’m a positive kind of person, but for some reason that really hurts. It’s not funny.’
‘I think it’s funny, Feeblejocks,’ said Heimdall, using his godly voice-projection powers to broadcast his comments to the dragons, who chuckled fireballs and smacked wings. ‘What do you think, my beautiful pets?’
‘I think it’s a buffa-bucket of hilariousness,’ answered a red striped alpha male hovering above the bridge, his rear legs dangling, which is harder than it looks. ‘If you ask me, boss, mispronouncing this mortal’s name is as close to…’
More sounds came out of his mouth, but they weren’t words as such, just shrieks and a few initial consonants which were probably on their way to being swearwords before the pain blotted out any commands from the dragon’s parietal lobe.
‘What the…’ said Heimdall before his jaw dropped. The red striped alpha had simply burst into plasma flame, taken from behind by some sort of missile.
‘Wow,’ said Zaphod. ‘I’ve often wondered what would happen if a dragon held its breath.’
Another dragon was hit, in the shoulder, sending it spinning towards the surface of the planet, leaking ink blots of blue-black smoke.
‘Aren’t you going to react?’ asked Zaphod. ‘Don’t you have the whole super-speed reaction thing? Or is that just the major gods?’
Heimdall was goaded into action.
‘Fly, my beauties,’ he called. ‘Hide on the surface.’
The dragons dropped out of their hovering pattern and scattered for cover as far away as they could get from whatever was attacking their comrades. Fast as the dragons were, many could not outrun the slew of spiralling missiles that were hugging the bend of the planet, breaking from the pack when they locked on to a target.
Heimdall collapsed his horn and put an emergency call in to Helheim.
‘Hel? We are under attack here!’
‘I know,’ said the she-devil. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve sent a few dozen shells your way. Can you see the enemy?’
Heimdall was known for being so alert that he needed no sleep. They used to say in the taverns of Scandinavia that he could see grass grow and hear a leaf fall on the other side of an ocean. But that was a long time ago, and these days Heimdall often snuck off for a snooze after his latte and had been known to miss the sound of Autumn altogether.
‘I don’t see them. Just missiles coming up from the southern hemisphere.’
Hel hmmmed. ‘The southern hemisphere, you say. Not through the Bifrost arch?’
‘Nope. I’m looking at the arch. Up from the south definitely.’
‘And you can’t see any aliens? Maybe green chaps, with lasers or some such?’
Heimdall squeezed Gjallarhorn’s shaft until it squeaked. ‘No. No zarking aliens, okay? Just groups of blue torpedoes with pinkish trails. A bit like ours, if I remember.’
‘No, no,’ said Hel in the tone of a guilty teenager blocking her mother at the door to a bedroom which is full of boys and drugs, stolen jewellery and possibly music playing backwards. ‘They couldn’t be like ours. Ours have red trails. A light red, some would call it puce.’
Heimdall growled as another of his dragons took a hit. ‘I don’t care what some would call it. Shoot them down, Hel. Can you do that?’
‘Erm, yes. I should think so. The computer has… eh… isolated their frequency, so we should be able to send a self-destruct signal, which I am doing… now.’
The remaining missiles exploded in flashes of pink and electric white, gears and pistons thunking into the ice shell.
‘Well done,’ said Heimdall, tears of relief on his tanned cheeks. ‘Odin shall hear of your labours this day.’
‘Will he? Would you? That’s marvellous. Of course, I could have destroyed those missiles much sooner had they actually been our missiles, because I already have those frequencies. So obviously they weren’t our missiles and why would they be, but in case anyone asks, they weren’t. Anyone like Odin, for example. Not ours. Got it?’
Heimdall was about to answer when he noticed that Zaphod Beeblebrox had discovered new reserves of energy and was racing just as fast as he could towards the wall.
If he gets over that wall, I am bound to parlay.
In spite of this truth and the recent losses to his dragon brigade, Heimdall’s face was smeared with a grin. Beeblebrox had nearly reached the wall, but nearly was about as much use as a flaybooz in any activity involving thumbs – bottle-opening, for example, or playing the lute or perhaps hitching a ride. The Betelgeusean may as well have been standing still for all the good it would do him. Nothing could outrun a god in real space. Even with one footfall to go, Beeblebrox may as well have been a light year away from the wall, wearing a lead jacket and neutronium boots.
Catch Beeblebrox, Heimdall thought and, before the electrical impulses containing this notion had time to fade, he had Zaphod by the throat and pinned to the wall.
‘I don’t know what you did to my lovely dragons. Whatever it was, it won’t help you now.’
Zaphod felt as though a mammaloid was squatting on his chest. Not a nice vegetarian mammaloid either, who had probably sat down by accident and would lumber off as soon as it heard Zaphod’s voice. No, a vicious mutant carnivore mammaloid who had gone against the advice of its parents and the herd in general in making the decision to tenderize its prey with buttock bounces before consuming it.
‘Stupid mutant mammaloid,’ huffed Zaphod, woozy with all the running and CO2 inhalation.
Heimdall’s grip tightened a knuckle. ‘Is that it? Are those the last words of the famous President Needlefrocks?’
Zaphod remembered something. ‘I’m not the only one with a nickname, am I?’
The god twitched nervously. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Don’t bother denying it. You guys all have, like, a secret pet name. A name of power. Thor told me all about it one night on tour, after an open-air gig in a quarry on Zentalquabula. We were so hammered, you have no idea. I kissed a Silagestrian.’
‘Liar,’ hissed Heimdall.
Zaphod was hurt. ‘I’m not proud of it, but I kissed that Silagestrian all right and its handler.’
‘No mortal can know our monikers. It is forbidden. You lie.’
Heimdall’s huge, smooth face was inches away from Zaphod. His anger shimmered in the air around them and Gjallarhorn glowed red with godly power. Zaphod took all of this in and said: ‘Lie? Me? That’s a bit strong, isn’t it? I’m just repeating what Thor told me. Don’t kill the messenger and so forth.’
‘Don’t say it. I am warning you, mortal.’
Even Zaphod saw the absurdity of that warning. ‘Or what? You’ll do something nasty like send dragons after me or squeeze my head off?’
It occurred to Heimdall that he should get on with the head squeezing before Zaphod could get the name out, but a sudden nervousness gagged him for a vital moment. And instinctive exploitation of vital moments was one of Zaphod’s few areas of expertise, the others being his much-reported Big Bang technique, three-handed preparation of Gargle Blasters and a system of inverted blow-drying that gave his quiff that extra bounce.
‘Come on, Bent Stick,’ he said. ‘Let me up.’
And Heimdall did. He had no choice once his divine moniker had been invoked. The god took a dozen steps backwards then turned his back in a sulk.
‘Someone… anyone… calls me Bent Stick on Asgard and I am bound to civility. Bloody Bent Stick? What sort of a divine name is that?’ he grumbled, kicking loose lumps of ice through the wall of the atmosphere tube, creating localized rainfall on the planet’s surface below. ‘Loki suggests it and, of course, Odin thinks it’s hilarious. Loki says, he says, “Look at Heimdall out there on his ski slope with that old bent stick of his.” And the bossman nearly swallows his beard laughing. So from that day on it’s Bent Stick this and Bent Stick that. I used to have a great name. I was Asgard’s Eye. But apparently that’s too tricky to pronounce after a few tankards, so now I’m Bent bloody Stick.’ The giant god’s shoulders hitched repeatedly and he looked from the back very much like someone who might be having a little self-pitying sob.
‘Hey, come on,’ said Zaphod, picking himself up. ‘Why the long face? You’ve got stuff going for you.’
‘What do I have going for me? I’m stuck out here on this stupid bridge with a bunch of reptiles for friends.’ He stamped a foot, sending tremors rippling across Bifrost. ‘Do you know what they’re doing in there now? Do you know?’
‘Well, no I…’
‘Orgies!’ shouted Heimdall. ‘Old-school orgies. And look at me, out here chasing mortals. I could be in there, covered in jartle resin, up to my neck in…’
‘Okay, big fellow, there are a few pictures that even I don’t need floating around in either of my heads.’
‘Loki has got two palaces. Two! After all the stunts he’s pulled. And he sits at Odin’s table. And why? Why? Because he can remember jokes.’ Heimdall turned, his moustache wet, his eyes despairing. ‘Bloody jokes! I am guarding the planet here. Hello.’
Zaphod tucked his third hand into a pocket. ‘You know what I see?’
‘What?’ said Heimdall, his jutting bottom lip casting a shadow.
‘I see a hero.’
‘Don’t you patronize me, Feeb– Beeblebrox.’
Zaphod punched the god’s thigh. ‘I’m not patronizing you, silly. What you are is a genuine hero. And there are only a dozen of those in the Universe. Me, you and four others.’
Heimdall’s nod was barely perceptible, even for a chin as big as his. ‘Maybe. Odin doesn’t see it like that.’
Zaphod stood on tiptoes. ‘Can Odin hear me now?’
‘Probably not, inside the tube. Unless he’s specifically listening.’
‘Well then, forgive me for saying it, but Odin doesn’t deserve you. In fact, I’ll go further. Maybe Odin needs to take a look at himself and ask: Who should be sitting beside me now? A gutless trickster? Or my loyal guardian? I think a lot of people would like to hear that question answered.’
‘Gutless? You think so? A lot?’
‘We may be mortal, but we’re not stupid. People like you, Heimdall. They adore you.’
‘Maybe once they did.’
‘Now. Still. Did you know that they have a Heimdall cult on Algol? Those sun simians can’t get enough of you.’
‘Really? Algol, you say?’
‘And on Earth you were, well, a god. Statues all over the place.’
Heimdall chuckled. ‘Yes, Earth. They loved the whole horn thing.’ His eyes misted and for a moment the Light God was doing encores in Scandinavia, until he realized that Zaphod was playing on his weaknesses.
‘No,’ snapped the god, wiping his nose. ‘It’s over. We’re over. No parlay with mortals.’
‘You have to. I know your secret name.’
‘Oh sure, spring that one on me. That’s low, even for you.’
Zaphod placed two of his hands on his hips. ‘I invoke your secret name and demand my right to entry, Heimdall God of Light, also known as Asgard’s Eye.’
Heimdall snorted, not unhappily, and hefted Gjallarhorn. He tapped a section of the wall and the entire edifice crumbled to dust, dust that flittered into the atmosphere squeaking: ‘Free. Free at last. Heimdall, you bastard.’
‘I have to let you in’ said the God of Light. ‘Thor is probably in the Well of Urd drowning his sorrows; he more or less lives there these days. You can have one beer with him, if he will permit it.’
‘One beer,’ said Zaphod. ‘I’ll just sip.’
If Left Brain could have intercepted this thought, he would have laughed bitterly and proclaimed that there was about as much chance of Zaphod Beeblebrox just sipping as there was of a mouse giving a straight answer to a simple question.