And Another Thing... (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

8

The Tanngrísnir

Ford Prefect was also heading towards a beer moment. The Betelgeusean researcher was determined to enjoy the peace and quiet of dark travel for as long as it lasted. He draped blankets over the portholes in his room, replicated a tankard of Goggles Beer, then plugged himself into the ship’s computer. His Hitchhiker’s Guide had a pretty good Sub-Etha connection, but the Tanngrísnir’s system was so fast that it could run a real-time hologram from a hub a thousand light years away with no discernable delay.
Mega-lightning froody, thought Ford, who knew nothing about holograms apart from the fact that they were sparkly and you should never lick one.
Ford logged on to uBid and bet himself a second tankard of beer that he could not spend his entire projected lifetime’s earnings before blinking. It was an easy bet to win. He purchased a couple of luxury space yachts, three hundred gallons of Bounce-O-Jelly with garlic, a small continent on Antares for a favourite nephew and several potted Deadly When Watered mega flora for his least-favourite staffers at InfiniDim Enterprises, all charged to his limitless Dine-O-Charge credit card.
I might feel a twinge of guilt about sticking it to the Guide, thought Ford, if the editor, Zarniwoop Vann Harl, wasn’t a gutless stooge who took bribes from Vogons.
As a roving researcher, Ford had nothing against taking bribes on principle, but you had to draw the line somewhere and for Ford Prefect that line was drawn just above anybody trying to murder him in one of the nasty ways. Attempted murder through alcohol poisoning he was prepared to forgive and more than likely forget, but when someone tried to kill him with thermonuclear warheads Ford tended to nurse a grudge.
Retail therapy over, Ford blinked several times and leaned back in the chair.
Thank you, Doxy Ribonu-Clegg, he thought. Thank you for inventing the Sub-Etha.
Guide Note: Technically speaking, Doxy Ribonu-Clegg did not invent the Sub-Etha, rather he discovered its existence. The Sub-Etha waves had been around for at least as long as the gods, just waiting for someone to pump some data into them. The legend goes that Ribonu-Clegg had been lying on his back in a field on his home planet. As he gazed blearily up through the wedge of space suspended above him it occurred to the renowned professor that all this space was loaded with information and that perhaps it would be possible to transport some information of his own through the cosmic conduits if only he could make it small enough. So Ribonu-Clegg hurried back to his rudimentary lab and constructed the first ever set of Sub-Etha transmitters using pepper grinders, several live pinky rats, various cannibalized lab machines and some professional-standard hairdressing scissors. Once these components were connected, Ribonu-Clegg fed in the phot-o-pix from his wedding album and prayed they would be reassembled on the other side of the room. They were not, but the national lottery numbers for the following evening did show up, which encouraged the professor to patent his invention. Ribonu-Clegg used his winnings to hire a team of shark lawyers who successfully sued eighty-nine companies that invented actual working Sub-Etha transmitters, making the professor the richest man on the planet until he fell into his lawyers’ tank and they followed their instincts and ate him.
Ford was halfway through his fourth tankard when the door to his chamber slid open and a parallelogram of green light bleached his wall screen.
‘Hey. Come on. I’m trying to relax blowing company money here. Switch off that beam.’
‘Very funny,’ said a voice so sarcastic that even the auditorily challenged nut tree voles of Oglaroon could have detected its insincerity through their whiskers.
Ford swivelled on his chair and realized that the glow came from a person in the doorway.
‘You seem a little green,’ he commented.
Random scowled. ‘So would you, if you’d spent the past while sealed in a tube with a cloud of viridigenous gas that was trying to make you happy.’
‘Happiness? That would never do, would it?’
‘Not when your mother is making out with that horrible alien right under your nose. Disgusting.’
Ford nodded with a wisdom beyond his ears. ‘Ah, yes, the deBeouf Principle. I read about that in a thing with actual pages in it. A quaint thing where you flip the paper over.’
‘A book,’ said Random, and she may have glowered, it was hard to tell.
‘That was it. I’m guessing that you’re not too happy about this latest romantic development.’
Random stomped into the chamber, puff clouds of green dust rising from her shoulders with each footfall. ‘No. I am not happy. He is so arrogant. Such a…’
‘Pormwrangler?’ offered Ford helpfully.
‘Yes. Exactly.’
Ford’s fingers tapped the air impatiently, eager to wrap themselves around a tankard handle. ‘So, why don’t you talk to Arthur about it? He’s your biological patriarch.’
Random smiled bitterly. ‘Arthur? I tried, but he’s in love too, with his blasted computer.’
Even Ford was a little surprised by this. It wasn’t that people didn’t fall in love with machines – he had a cousin who once spent two years shacked up with a sandwich toaster – but Arthur was so uptight, so strait-laced, such a total Earthling.
‘Love is love,’ he said, falling back on his brochure knowledge from a peace spa he had once visited on Hawalius. ‘Don’t judge unless you want someone else to come along, possibly someone green, and judge you and you’ll say come on, what’s all this judging for, don’t judge unless you want someone else to come along and judge you and so on.’ Ford paused for breath. ‘I’ve had a few beers so I’m paraphrasing.’
He winced, expecting to be smacked about the chops with the wet fish of cynicism, but Random was suddenly all sweetness.
‘That’s really good, Ford. Wise, you know. I am going to go back to my room to wash some of this junk off and think really hard about not judging people.’
Ford waved her off gallantly. ‘No charge for that nugget, young missy. Any time you want a few words of wisdom, feel free to drop in on ol’ Fordy. I’ve got tonnes of advice on the more offbeat areas that most people wouldn’t have the first clue about. What to do just before a planet explodes, for example. I am the Universe’s expert on that particular subject, believe me.’
And he returned to his screen, satisfied that his sometime role as Ford Prefect, Nurturer of Youth, had been fulfilled for at least this lifetime.
Parenting. Nothing to it. I don’t know what all the fuss is about.
If Ford had been a little more tuned in and a little less zoned out, he might have remembered from his own youth that teenagers only ladled on the sweetness for one of three reasons. One: there was some shocking news that needed breaking, possibly involving pregnancy, substance abuse or a forbidden relationship. Two: they had developed a deeper level of sarcasm that was virtually undetectable except to another master of the form and that definitely wasn’t the adult being sarcastigated. And three: a bit of sweet talk was a handy distraction when there was something the sweet-talking teenager needed to steal.
By the time Ford might have realized that his limitless credit card was missing, it had already been put back. And shortly before that, Random Dent had utilized uBid’s retro-buy time window and purchased something from a long-dead seller. Something a little more sinister than three hundred gallons of Bounce-O-Jelly. With garlic.
Garlic in the jelly, not in the sinister item.
‘I am the unluckiest man in the Universe,’ Arthur Dent explained to the Tanngrísnir’s computer. ‘Bad things happen to me. I don’t know why, but it’s always been that way. My nan used to give me bull’s-eyes and call me her little trouble magnet. Only she was from Manchester so she didn’t say trouble.’
The sparkling hologram, which sat cross-legged at the foot of the bunk, squinted while she rifled Arthur’s memory.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Bull’s-eyes. For a nanosecond there I thought…’
‘Wherever I go, things get blown up or blasted by angry aliens.’
‘But not you,’ said Fenchurch.
‘What?’
‘You don’t get blown up or blasted. You’ve already had one long and healthy life, and now you’re having another.’
Arthur frowned. ‘Yes… but. There was the whole dressing gown and pyjamas period. How unlucky can you get? Not to mention being stranded on…’
‘Most of your species are dead,’ interjected the computer, just as Arthur’s memory assured it Fenchurch would have done. ‘It was a billion to one against you surviving, but you did. Twice. That seems pretty lucky. That’s, like, fictional hero lucky.’
‘I see your point, but still…’
‘And you have a beautiful daughter.’
‘True. But she’s moody.’
‘Really? That’s odd for an adolescent. You are truly cursed.’
Arthur was stumped. How was he supposed to feel, if not put-upon? Then the holographic Fenchurch unsettled him further with a non-sequitur. Nothing as bizarre as ‘Look! A monkey,’ but pretty surprising nonetheless.
‘Love can be a noun or a verb,’ she said.
‘I see,’ said Arthur, then: ‘What happened to luck?’
‘Oh, that conversation was just superficial; this is what you really want to know.’
‘What love is?’
‘Yes. And why you can’t seem to get over losing it.’
Arthur felt his heart beat faster on hearing this truth. ‘Do you know? Can you tell me? And no numbers please.’
Fenchurch scratched her earlobe and sparks crackled at the contact. ‘I can tell you what love means, dictionary-wise, all the synonyms and so forth. And I can tell you all about endorphins and synapses and muscle memory. But ardour’s resonance in the heart is a mystery to me. I’m a computer, Arthur.’
Arthur hid his disappointment with the traditional brisk rubbing of hands and stiffening of upper lip.
‘Of course. No problem.’
‘I am made to live for ever but you are made to live.’
‘Isn’t that a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation slogan?’ said Arthur, frowning.
Fenchurch heated two pixel clusters to affect a blush. ‘It might be. All that means is that an entire company of advertisers think you will believe it.’
‘Ah. No answers, then.’
‘Only questions.’
‘I thought we didn’t know the big question.’
Fenchurch examined her own fingers. ‘The big question is different for everyone. For me, it’s the half-life of this ship’s reactor. I’m not actually made to live for ever, that’s just a slogan.’
‘And what’s the answer to the half-life question?’
‘I don’t know. Bloody thing is touched by godly magic. It should have stopped ten thousand years ago.’
‘So no answers for you either?’
‘Nope.’
‘Talk is just talk, isn’t it?’
‘Sounds like it.’
‘It looks like everyone is relying on Thor. I know he was your boss, but he struck me as a terrible bore.’
Fenchurch stared dreamily into the past. ‘A bore? No. He was lovely. Divine.’
Arthur could not remember seeing that expression on the real Fenchurch’s face. ‘I think we’ll have to disagree on that one.’
‘Very well, Arthur Dent. Shall I select a random question from the lexicon of your memory?’
‘Good idea.’
The computer flicked through the files for a moment then asked: ‘Do you fancy a cup of tea?’
Arthur smiled. ‘Now there’s a question I can answer.’
Asgard

Guide Note: The Aesir have always made an enormous deal of the absolute wonderfulness of Asgard. Odin’s son Baldur is quoted as saying: ‘Everything is massive and huge and brilliant. You mortals with your puny stuff and things have no idea what real brilliant stuff is. We have stuff that would blow your little minds, and then other stuff in jars, sort of lotion, that would put your minds back together again. Then there’s this cosmic cow who, like, licked Valhalla out of the ice, and an old guy who sweated Odin’s father out of his armpit. That kind of stuff happens every day on Asgard.’
This is typical of the sort of standard vague, inconsistent party line that prompted Boam Catharsee, the charismatic leader of the Horrisonian Cult of Agnosticism, to smuggle himself into Asgard, in the belly of a goat, to see the planet for himself. The oft-sampled Catharsee recordings read as follows: ‘The smell from beyond my hiding place is almost unbearable, but I shall persevere for you, my people. I’m not surprised that no one believes in these gods any more, they really stink. I can hear a fire crackling so, whatever lies outside, I must take my knife and cut my way out before this carcass is tossed into the oven. I shall just take my knife… my knife… Where’s my nothingdamned knife? I know I had it, right here in the pocket of my linen trews. Oh, crap. Zark. I’m wearing my corduroys. The flames grow closer, I can feel their heat. Help! HELP! I believe. I believe. Don’t eat me. Please don’t…’ And there Boam Catharsee’s words become unintelligible, apart from two ‘my legs’ and a ‘mommy’. For ten years after Boam’s sacrifice, belief in the Aesir spiked on his home planet and the top-selling T-shirt had emblazoned across it in large easy-to-read letters: I BELIEVE. DON’T EAT ME.
The point being, mortals knew little of Asgard back in the days of Boam Catharsee, and we know even less now, for no living mortal has ever visited Asgard and survived to tell the tale, and any mortal who claims to have done just that is either Odin in disguise looking for some action or completely and utterly insane.
Zaphod Beeblebrox took a very plush cable car from the foot of the Rainbow Bridge to the surface of Asgard. Not only was the car comfortable, with its own helmet polisher and thoughtful cage of foot-warming lizards, but it was convenient too, docking as it did right in the centre of downtown Valhalla.
There was a ‘customs’ Viking in a reinforced booth, who seemed a little surprised to see a mortal coming on to the platform. In fact, he was so surprised that his eyes popped right out of their sockets.
‘Woah,’ said Zaphod. ‘That is truly disgusting. Can you do it again?’
‘No, I cannot,’ said the Viking, twisting the eyes back in. ‘Who the Hel are you?’
Zaphod responded in the time-honoured fashion of answering a question with a question, a tactic he favoured because of its wind-up factor.
‘What the hell are you?’
‘I’ll ask the questions here!’
‘What questions will you ask… here?’
The Viking rolled his eyes with a sound like a toothless old person sucking hot tea from a cup. ‘Are you winding me up?’
‘Is who winding you up?’
The Viking jumped to his feet. ‘Fine. I’m a reanimated dead Viking. Okay? We die in battle to get here and then they reanimate us as bloody civil servants. I was the captain of my own bloody longboat. We tore up England, kicked the stuffing out of those Saxons. And for that I get a desk job. A shagging desk job, if you can believe that. Me! Erik the Red Hand. Red because of all the blood that was dripping from it, you understand. Not my own blood either.’ Erik stopped shouting mainly because his eyes had wormed their way loose again.
‘Wow,’ said Zaphod. ‘You’ve really been carrying that around.’
‘It’s been festering for a while,’ admitted the Viking, wiping off one eye with his sleeve.
‘Do you feel better now?’
Erik sighed. ‘Yes. It’s good to vent, you know?’
Zaphod patted his shoulder. ‘You need to look after your mental health, buddy.’
‘Thanks. That’s the first nice thing anyone has said to me since I signed on for that big pillaging expedition in Brittany. I’d shed a tear if I could.’
‘You’re welcome. Zaphod Beeblebrox likes to spread joy to places other presidents cannot reach.’
Erik held a clipboard close to his face. ‘Oh, yes. Beeblebrox. I got a call about you from Heimy ski-boy. Of course, no mention that you were a mortal. Why spare Erik’s heart, he’s already dead. Typical.’
‘I’m looking for Thor.’
Erik tutted. ‘No problem finding him. Well of Urd. Go straight down to Yggdrasil, the giant ash tree, then left and don’t give any money to the unicorns, it just encourages them. And if you see a guy with, like, a hook nose, answers to the name Lief, tell him that I think we got our eyeballs mixed up.’
Even Zaphod had no trouble finding the golden tree, though he was distracted by hordes of zombie-like reanimated Vikings shuffling along the cobbled streets, clutching dry-cleaning in their bony hands, or trailing listlessly after tiny dogs.
‘This is ridiculous,’ he said eventually. ‘They all have hooked noses.’
The tree itself was massive, its glistening branches dipping low to the ground, weighed down by the swords and shields of fallen heroes and also advertising placards for ZugaNugget cereal, which according to the billboards sponsored the transportation by the Valkyrie of fallen heroes from their mortal plane.
Zaphod abandoned his mini-quest to find the guy known as Leif, and turned down a pretty crappy-looking alley that had crap flowing down the walls that was actually crap, and because it was a magical realm there was crap flowing up the walls too.
‘Crap,’ said Zaphod, and congratulated himself on making a statement that was not only an expletive, but also a declaration of fact and a warning to anyone who might be behind him in the alley.
‘You talking to me, Blondie?’ said a voice, and Zaphod realized that what he had taken for a stalagmite of sewage was actually a stained root from Yggdrasil, the ash tree, breaking through from the cobbles below.
‘Pardon me,’ said Zaphod, only feeling slightly ridiculous to be talking to a tree. He had talked to a lot worse things in the past few years. ‘I thought you were part of the sewage system.’
‘I might as well be,’ said Yggdrasil, through no mouth that Zaphod could discern. ‘The amount of junk they pour straight on to the ground here. It all comes up through my roots, you know. Is it any wonder I’m slipping a few IQ points? You are what you eat, and all that.’
‘I’m looking for Thor.’
‘Big Red? Straight on in through the door here.’
Zaphod squinted through the gloom, but the door was proving as difficult to spot as Yggdrasil’s mouth.
‘I don’t see any door.’
‘You have to say the magic words.’
Zaphod rubbed his temples and concentrated. ‘Okay. Don’t tell me. I feeling something, coming out of the ether. Is it Trees are froody?’
‘Flattery will get you everywhere,’ said the tree and parted a cluster of creepers on the damp wall, revealing a nicotine-yellow glow behind. ‘In you go, Blondie.’
Zaphod stepped inside. He did not need to bend down as the doorway behind the creepers had been built for a much larger person.
Nano

Hillman Hunter gazed out of his office window at the tropical majesty of this planet he had purchased at the nebula’s edge.
You did the right thing, Hillers, said his Nano’s voice in his head. If you hadn’t shifted these people from Earth, their atoms would be spread across the Galaxy by now. What do you think people would prefer, a little civil unrest or a whole lot of dead?
Hillman knew that his Nano was right, but he couldn’t help thinking that, somewhere along the line, he had been screwed. There had been a better deal to be had and somehow Zaphod Beeblebrox had kept it hidden from him, and it pained Hillman to think that he had been bamboozled by such an apparent moron.
The intercom box on his desk vibrated, dragging Hillman’s attention away from the view. He waved his hand over the sensor and a little hologram of his secretary appeared on his desk.
‘Yes, Marilyn?’
‘There’s a lady here to see you.’
‘Does she have an appointment?’
Marilyn mewed, as though this was a difficult question. ‘She says she will have.’
‘That’s a little cryptic, Marilyn. Could you ask for clarification?’
Before Marilyn could respond, a woman appeared in Hillman’s interview chair. From his recent interviews, Hillman had become accustomed to a flickering style of materialization, but this woman arrived like somebody had flicked a switch.
‘Jaysus!’ he yelped.
‘Actually, no. The name is Gaia, Hillman Hunter,’ she said, her voice sonorous and comforting.
‘Ah, yes. Gaia, the Earth Mother.’ Hillman sifted through the stack of résumés on his desk. ‘I wasn’t planning on interviewing female gods.’
Gaia trained her deep-brown eyes on Hillman. ‘No, but you would have made an exception for me, so I decided to hurry things along.’
The combination of eyes and voice was hypnotic and Hillman found himself very comfortable with this attractive lady.
‘That was probably… that was a reasonable course of action.’
Gaia’s face was heart-shaped with sensuous purple lips. ‘You’ve got time to talk to me, don’t you, Hillman?’
‘Yes. Jaysus, yes, begorrah.’
‘I am the Earth Mother, without an Earth, come to a new home. I could be happy here, Hillman. You could be happy too.’
‘Yes, Earth Mother. Happy as a pig in… very happy.’
‘There’s no need for any more interviews.’
‘No. Why would I need to interview anyone else?’
Gaia smiled and leaned forward. Hillman saw that her fingers were slim but strong. ‘I can nurture this earth. I can make anything grow.’
‘That’s grand. Growing stuff is a good thing.’
The Earth Mother spread her arms and Hillman could smell the summers of his youth. ‘The women will be broad-breasted and fertile, and the men will desire them.’
‘About fecking time too.’
‘All we need to do is clear up a few salary issues.’ Which was exactly the wrong thing to say to Hillman Hunter; the fog in his mind cleared and he suddenly felt the need to ask a few probing questions.
‘Salary issues? And what issues would they be?’
‘Well, the entire package is pitifully small. How can I be expected to support a retinue…’
‘A retinue, is it? I don’t recall advertising for a retinue. One position only.’
‘But surely a goddess of my stature…?’
Hillman was in like a shark. ‘What stature is that? You were no great shakes in your last job. As far as I remember, the planet was plagued with famine and most of the crops that did grow were riddled with pesticides.’
‘Things got a little out of control on Earth,’ admitted Gaia. ‘But that wouldn’t happen again.’
‘Oh really? Why don’t we explore that. Let’s say there’s an uprising, a surge in belief for another god. How would you handle it?’
Gaia smiled kindly. ‘I have dealt with problems in the past, you know. I can be tough when the situation demands it.’
‘Please elaborate.’
‘I remember once Uranus hid the Cyclops in Tartarus so he couldn’t see the light. This caused me considerable pain as – you may not know this about me – as Tartarus was my bowels in a reflexology kind of a way. So I fashioned a great flint sickle, and when Uranus entered my chamber for his weekly how’s-your-father, I had my son Chronos chop his doodle off with the sickle.’ Gaia clapped delightedly at the memory. ‘Oh, that was a night and a half. But I think I’ve answered your question. Firm but fair, that’s my motto. I still have that sickle somewhere – you never know when a few drops of dry divine blood will come in handy.’
Hillman crossed his legs, feeling a phantom loss that he fervently hoped never to experience.
Beside Gaia’s name on her résumé, he wrote four words:
Over my dead body.
Asgard

Zaphod stepped into as foul a den of broken dreams as he had ever been thrown out of and felt instantly at home.
This is my kind of place, he thought. Even the air in here is dangerous.
And it was. The germs huddled together and drifted through the murky air in coloured clouds, trying vainly to infect the ossified zombies and demi-gods. For once Zaphod was glad that Left Brain had jabbed him with A–Z inoculations while he slept. At least, LB had sworn they were inoculations.
A cloud buzzed Zaphod’s head, chanting ‘Open pores, open sores.’ But it was repelled by the scent of anti-virus in his perspiration.
If this had been a movie, everyone would have stopped what they were doing to glare at the handsome stranger, but most of the patrons in the Well of Urd were so inebriated that they had barely enough focus to find the tankards on their tables, never mind muster a glare for a newcomer. One drinker did yell ‘Happy Birthday, Mr President’, but it was likely that she was hallucinating. Zaphod clambered down three stone steps to the tavern floor, then side-stepped viscous steaming puddles until he reached the bar, which towered cliff-like above him.
A pale, reanimated Viking barman with half a dozen blond hairs pasted across his shiny pate peered down at him. ‘What can I do for you, junior?’
‘You can tell me where Thor is,’ replied Zaphod.
The barman whistled though a hole in his cheek. ‘Now why would you want to find Thor? You being so alive and all.’
‘He’s in a bad mood, then?’
‘You could say that,’ said the barman. ‘All he does is drink and play chess. And the more he loses, the more he drinks.’
‘Doesn’t he ever win?’
The barman sniggered. ‘Win? Nobody wins in here, junior.’
Zaphod peered up at the Viking. ‘Your name wouldn’t be Lief, would it?’
The barman was instantly enraged. He pulled a mini axe from a shoulder holster and began chopping the counter top.
‘You tell Erik to come down here if he wants to talk about eyeballs. You tell him that from me. Come down here and we’ll talk!’
‘I’ll tell him,’ said Zaphod, backing away. ‘If I survive this chat with Thor.’
‘It’s not Thor you should worry about,’ said the barman, jerking a thumb towards a dark alcove at the rear of the bar. ‘It’s those other little bastards.’
Zaphod winked with supreme confidence. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve been in showbusiness for years – I know how to handle bastards.’
The bar was cramped by Asgardian standards, but to Zaphod it felt like he had lost weight just walking briskly to Thor’s table. On the way he passed several brawls, a couple of magical rituals (one involving a heated skewer and a circle of wolves howling in unison), a funeral pyre piled high with bodies and also sausages, and a frozen lake with dwarves skating around on it being chased by a tree-footed monster.
I could live here, thought Zaphod.
The fun and games stopped shy of Thor’s alcove. There seemed to be an unwritten agreement that the Thunder God should be left in peace, which was probably due to the very clearly written message painted on a whitewashed wall in what looked like lumpy congealed blood, which read: Leave me in peace and I probably won’t kill you. No promises, mind. Probably is absolutely the best I can do.
Zaphod crossed the peace line and, for the first time since entering the bar, he felt scores of eyes on him.
Don’t fret, Zaphod, he told himself. What happened between you was ages ago. He’s probably forgotten all about it by now. I can barely remember it myself. Something to do with an interplanetary incident involving an umbrella with mythical powers and the secret formula for a prize-winning ice-cream. Zaphod frowned. Nope. The umbrella/ice-cream cock-up was a completely different god.
Zaphod could see his one-time friend now, sitting at a round table with his back to the crowd. And what a back it was, broader than the average glacier with knots of muscle the size of boulders and huge ridges of tension in the shoulders. His red hair hung down in a shabby ponytail and the horns of his helmet were stained yellow by long nights spent in this foul air.
Zaphod was just thinking he might open with a little joke, when the silence was filled with a sudden uproar of sharp, helium-squeaky voices.
‘What? That’s it?’
‘That’s the big move?’
‘How many years have we been doing this? You haven’t learned a thing.’
Zaphod stepped quietly into the alcove, sneaking a peek under the crook of Thor’s elbow.
The Thunder God was being harangued by a set of golden chessmen on the opposite side of the board. His own pieces were wooden and seemed cowed into silence.
The little golden knight was very belligerent. ‘Come on, Thor. We’ve talked about this. Never leave your king exposed. That’s fundamental stuff. Bloody kindergarten.’
‘Watch it,’ Thor rumbled and the sound sent shivers running along Zaphod’s spine. That voice, like a sleepy tiger growling from the bottom of a well; no wonder the ladies couldn’t get enough.
‘Or what?’ challenged the knight. ‘We are the ancient chess set of the Aesir. You can’t kill us, we’re as immortal as you are, and a lot older, I might add.’
‘I can melt you cheeky blighters down and make myself a little piss pot. How would you like that?’
The knight laughed. ‘You can threaten us all you want, thunder girl, it’s still checkmate.’
Thor drummed the table with his fingers. ‘You chaps set yourselves up again. I have a little unfinished business to take care of.’ And in a fluid motion he spun round on his stool and sent the very large war hammer that had been resting across his thighs spinning towards Zaphod’s head.
The hammer froze half an inch from Zaphod’s nose, then backed him into a corner like a hound herding a sheep.
‘Nice hammer action,’ squeaked Zaphod. ‘I knew you weren’t going to kill me.’
Thor turned his back. ‘Get out of here, Zaphod, before I let Mj?llnir do what he’s wanted to do since that first accursed day we met.’
Zaphod tried to move forward, but the hammer butted him back against the wall.
‘Come on, old friend. I’ve come a long way to talk to you.’
Thor grunted. ‘Do you even know why you’re here? Do you even remember?’
‘Not precisely,’ said Zaphod. ‘But in fairness there’s a gigantic hammer hovering in front of my face, and you know how much people love my face, so I’m a little distracted.’
Thor’s shoulders slumped and he sighed. ‘People used to love my face. I was adored until you came along.’
‘You can be adored again. That’s why I’m here, I remember now.’
‘Go away, Zaphod. Take your life and get out of mine. The only reason I’m not killing you is that you can’t fill the hole inside with bodies. That’s something that I learned in circle time.’ He clicked his fingers and Mj?llnir sprang into his fist. ‘Now leave, Beeblebrox. I need to call my anger management sponsor.’
‘You can talk to us, buddy,’ said a golden rook.
Thor rubbed his shining head. ‘I know that. I know I will always have you guys.’
‘Should we kill the mortal?’ asked a pawn. ‘Rookie can crawl down his throat and choke him.’
‘No. He’s not worth it. But I do appreciate the offer.’
Since Zaphod did not possess any better judgement, he didn’t even hesitate for the half-second it might have taken to ignore it. He climbed first on to a footrest, then a chair, then up the rungs of a wooden backrest until finally he was standing on Thor’s table.
The God of Thunder sat hunched over his beer like someone was going to steal it. His eyes were downcast and his face was clumpy with emotion. There was a storm brewing. And in Thor’s case this was not just a figure of speech; there was an actual miniature thundercloud boiling above his head, lightning bolts poking their heads from the vapour like lizards’ tongues.
‘Nice place,’ said Zaphod, perching on an ashtray. ‘It could do with a few big screens. Maybe a jacuzzi. Sometimes I like bubbles with my beer.’
Thor picked up his own beer and slammed it on the table so the head foamed over the rim.
‘Knock yourself out,’ he said. ‘Bubbles and beer.’
Zaphod took this suggestion, as he did most suggestions, at face value and quickly stripped down to his underwear, remembering just in time to pop out the batteries before vaulting into the tankard. He submerged himself to the larynx lump and spent several moments executing a three-armed backstroke while spouting amber spumes.
‘I like this place,’ bubbled Zaphod. ‘It has nice… what do you call it?’
‘Toilets?’
‘No. The other thing.’
‘Ambience?’
‘Yes. That’s the one.’
Thor growled and the cloud over his head churned with electricity. ‘This is the Well of Urd, Zaphod. Where the demi-gods and bottom feeders hang out. I come here so no one will bother me.’
‘Bottom feeders!’ said a golden bishop at Zaphod’s eye level. ‘That’s a bit strong. You want to keep your temper in check, mate.’
Zaphod’s attention was diverted by the flash of dozens of tanned, toned legs and hundreds of white teeth.
‘Look, I do believe that those athletic-looking ladies are waving at us.’
Thor peered surreptitiously across the bar room through his fingers. A group of statuesque Valkyrie were washing blood off their ZugaNugget chest plates in slow motion with barrels of water.
‘Forget it, Zaphod. They’re out of your reach.’
Zaphod clambered from the tankard. ‘Out of my reach? What are you talking about?’
‘I’m talking about practicalities. Look at those girls. You couldn’t reach past their shin plates with a trampoline. Come to think of it, they’re out of my reach too.’
Zaphod shook himself like a hound. ‘Come on! This is not the Thunder God that I know. I remember when my friend Thor disappeared for a weekend with a certain Miss Eccentrica Gallumbits and she ended up paying him.’
‘Leave it, Zaphod.’
Zaphod quick-stepped into his trousers. ‘This is just what you need, old pal. Me and you on a bender with a few beautiful ladies. I’m going over there.’
‘No.’
‘Oh, yes. I may be tiny, but I’ve got a certain je ne sais quoi.’
‘A certain what?’
‘I don’t know what,’ admitted Zaphod. ‘But that’s never stopped me before.’
Zaphod had a glint in his eyes that Thor knew well.
Guide Note: This glint was nothing to do with baby gloonts. Rather, it was a look of reckless romanticism which is similar to the one often found in the eyes of the Narcissifish of Flargathon, who are prepared to inflate themselves far beyond the elastic tolerance of their scales in pursuit of a mate. The male Narcissifish will cause himself to spectacularly explode if that is what it takes to impress the female. This is indeed an impressive feat and, in fairness to the female, she will appreciate the sacrifice and often be put out for several days before donning her best pearl necklace and heading back down to the reef.
Related Reading:
Love Will Tear Me Apart by Scaly Finnster (RIP)
‘Get back here, Zaphod. I’m warning you!’
Zaphod strode across the table, skirting a spittoon. ‘This is what you need, Thor. You’ll thank me later.’ He turned his hi-beams on the Valkyrie. ‘Hello, ladies. You may not know me yet, but you’re gonna miss me tomorrow.’
The Valkyrie’s puzzled semi-smiles were distorted suddenly by a curved wall of glass. Zaphod thought for a moment that a sudden rush of Valkyrie lust had superheated the air, but then realized that Thor had trapped him underneath a shot glass, which brought home quite forcefully just how tiny he was in this world. In fact, he seemed to be whatever size Thor felt like making him. Zaphod was sure he would not have fitted under the glass mere moments ago.
‘Come on, Thor,’ he cried, his voice bouncing back on him.
Strange, thought Zaphod. The acoustics in here make me sound whiny.
‘You’re supposed to be my wingman,’ he went on. ‘We’re a team. Remember those anti-grav dancers in Han Dold City?’
Thor dragged the glass towards him, skirting dangerously close to a complaining rook, and Zaphod was forced to dance along the table just to keep up.
‘I’ve never been to Han Dold.’
‘Really? I could’ve sworn… Must have been some other Asgardian. I’m flashing on a red beard. Are you sure it wasn’t you?’
‘I’m sure, Zaphod. I’m a god – we don’t forget stuff, which is part of the problem.’
Thor lifted the glass and, as it went up, Zaphod fancied he felt himself grow until he felt more like Thor’s equal and less like his pet.
‘Problem? What problem?’
Thor thumped the table, sending beer slopping across the planks.
‘What problem? What zarking problem, Zaphod? Are you serious? Are you actually asking me that?’
Zaphod frowned. ‘That was a lot of questions. What problem… What zarking problem… What was the third one again?’
‘Oh, there’s no point,’ said Thor, swallowing enough beer to drown a herd of mammaloids. ‘Zaphod Beeblebrox couldn’t give two buffa-biscuits about anyone but himself.’
This notion genuinely shocked Zaphod, as he believed that the act of sharing his personality with certain people was an act of love in itself.
‘That is a terrible thing to say. I was your closest friend for years.’
‘Until you persuaded me to post that video on the Sub-Etha,’ said Thor bitterly. Over his head the robust little thundercloud turned flaccid, releasing a light drizzle. It didn’t take a brainologist to work out the symbolism.
Zaphod found that he was now only a head shorter than the god. He plonked himself on a neighbouring stool, and thought he might offer a little joke to lighten the mood.
‘I can never pass a nice stool,’ he said, drumming the table. Boom boom.
Thor patted Mj?llnir’s head. ‘One more, Zaphod. One more.’
‘Can’t we forget that video? It’s in the past and let me tell you something about the past. That’s where it is, in the past. Remember that sentence about the past? That’s in the past already. I can barely recall it, except that it contained the phrase the past. The past is made up of memories, which are made up of dead stuff that can’t hurt you, like, say, a pointy stick could. Atoms and such. Quarks too, I shouldn’t wonder. But wasted ones, all lying there doing nothing to anyone.’
‘Do you have a point, Zaphod? Or is that in the past too?’
Zaphod draped an arm around Thor’s massive shoulders. ‘My point is that maybe I made a bad call with the video at the time, but ticket sales were down and we needed something to get your profile back on to the A list. The candid video thing was all the rage and, in fairness, some people did like it.’
‘Some people?’ growled Thor. ‘Like that cult on the party ship? Those weirdos certainly lapped it up. Unfortunately, the rest of the Galaxy, the normal mortals, didn’t fancy the idea of their god trussed up like a backstreet deviant.’
Zaphod shrugged. ‘There was some backlash, I admit it.’
Thor massaged his temples. ‘Backlash… Back… I know how shallow you are, Zaphod, but surely even you must have noticed the fallout. My dad blew up that entire planet where we filmed. My beautiful temples were all torn down. I went from number four favourite deity to number sixty-eight, behind Skaoi. Skaoi! The god of zarking snowshoes.’
‘Snowshoes are important. Come on, old friend, can’t you blot the whole thing from your mind? I have.’
Thor dragged eight fingers through his beard. ‘But that costume, Zaph? And those Pom Pom Squids.’
Zaph, thought Zaphod. I have him.
‘Miscalculations, perhaps.’
‘And the things I said,’ said Thor, shuddering.
‘You were acting. Playing a role.’
‘Odin shat a kitten. Actually crapped out a live tiger cub. My own mother can’t look at me. She told Loki that all she can see is that latex bustier.’
‘It was art – not everybody gets art.’
‘Do you know how many hits that clip has had? It’s been the number-one video on the entire Sub-Etha for the past five years.’
‘You said it. The past five years. That video is in the past. Next year there’s going to be a new Thor video, one that puts you right back in the game, where you need to be.’
‘Oh really,’ said Thor glumly. ‘What have you got planned for an encore? Should I break out the Bounce-O-Jelly?’
Zaphod leaned in close. ‘Oh no, my friend. No set-ups. This is the real thing. An old-school face-off. I have found the immortal who has your stolen ship and he’s challenged you to a showdown.’
Over Thor’s head the thundercloud spewed forth a cluster of vibrant lightning bolts.
‘Go on, Zaph,’ said the god. ‘I’m listening.’
Hillman Hunter

Hillman Hunter was more than just a stereotypical Irishman, he was a stereotype Paddy from a bygone era, as imagined by an ex-patriot Celt with emerald-tinted spectacles and a head full of whiskey and nostalgia. Atop Hillman’s head sat a nest of curly red hair, his face was scattershot with brass penny freckles, his bow-legged walk suggested a youth spent in the saddle of a thoroughbred, and a gold crucifix nestled in the V of his open collar. With regards to diddle-ee-aye Irishness, Hillman Hunter was the whole bag of potatoes. When Hillman walked into a room, it took real effort not to greet him with a hearty begorrah, thank God for the soft day and enquire after the health of U2. Even his voice conformed to expectations, and why wouldn’t it, since Hillman had based his accent on that of Barry Fitzgerald, a twentieth-century Irish actor who was old when television was young. The rest of the hackneyed package was equally studied. Hillman had been dying his hair since it turned grey at age eighteen. He’d also become quite the wielder of curling tongs and his fair complexion was freckled by long hours under the sun bed.
And the motive for all this subterfuge? Simple. Something his Nano had told him a long time ago.
‘People buy comfort,’ she had said, slitting a pig’s throat with a corn sickle. ‘If you make them comfortable, then they will buy whatever you are selling.’
The combination of wisdom and arterial blood spray was irresistible and Hillman never forgot his grandmother’s lesson.
Make people comfortable then sell them whatever you like.
So the young Hillman transformed himself into the beloved actor and set about selling expensive stuff to rich folk. He hawked cars and yachts, before graduating to horses and overseas property. He was a natural. Gifted. People loved his oldy-worldy spiel and were charmed by his gifts of miniature diamond-encrusted shillelaghs. By the age of forty, Hillman was a millionaire on commission alone. By fifty, he was halfway to being a billionaire and was commuting between residences in a Jaguar and walking around his estate with the help of two bio-hybrid hips that were better than the old ones and would call the manufacturer themselves if they broke.
There was more money to be had, Hillman realized, if a sharp person could figure a way to round up all the rich folk in one place and keep them shelling out for stuff on a daily basis. But how to achieve this? The answer came to him in a flash of TV news headlines. Times were hard and the short-staffed Sisters of Occasional Succour were being forced to auction off one of the church’s properties; specifically, the island of Innisfree.
Hillman got so excited that his left hip put in a call to Japan.
Innisfree. The island inspiration for Nano’s all-time favourite movie: The Quiet Man. The celluloid home of his own personality template. Fate was dropping him a wink, destiny was slipping him a brown bag, providence was beating him over the head with the hint hammer.
Hillman outbid a shadow corporation, which could have been traced back to a leisure group on Barnard’s Star by anyone with Sub-Etha capabilities, and purchased the island, complete with permission for a retreat that the nuns had been planning to build for weekend sherry parties.
And on that first misty morning, as he putted across the Sligo’s Lough Gill on an outboard-powered skiff, Hillman Hunter knew that he had found his crock of gold.
‘Bejaysus,’ he’d sworn softly and in character. ‘’Tis the promised land.’
Instead of a retreat, Hillman built Ireland’s most luxurious spa residence and, to ensure that he attracted only the richest patrons, he’d invented a religion and thrown that into the brochure too.
Guide Note: Though Hillman Hunter had no way of knowing at the time, Who’s What Where magazine had twinned him with Kar Paltonnle from Esflovian, another smooth talker who had managed to persuade several gated communities that it was simple logic that they would be chosen to survive when Armageddon arrived. His career was kick-started by extraordinary good fortune when Armageddon actually did visit Esflovian in the form of aggravated nuclear encounter therapy. Mr Paltonnle earned quite a few piles of currency as cult leader for hire, but he made his real fortune in software when he patented a program called God Guru, which allowed any would-be me-vangelist to type in a few facts about the community he intended to provide spiritual guidance for and the computer would think about it for a minute or two then spit out an appropriate catechism, complete with the desired number of commandments, justification for any prejudices and a divine hierarchy. The deluxe package gave the buyer the option of registering himself as an official god using a legal loophole to bypass the usual three-miracle requirement.
We shall be called Nanites, Hillman had decided without the aid of software. And we shall believe in the existence of the planet Nano, which has been prepared for the faithful by God. And, someday, these faithful will be collected in a spaceship and flown off, first class, mind you, to the aforementioned planet, so it would be just as well if the faithful were all gathered in one place awaiting collection by the spaceman. Because otherwise they could miss the flight and either be stuck on Earth for the apocalypse, or have to take a later spaceship, where there might not be so much as a business-class seat left.
Hillman had thrown the entire gospel together with a couple of locals one drunken weekend in Casey’s Bar in Skibbereen. The only significant problem they encountered was the correct spelling of apocalypse, which Hillman had been hitherto convinced contained an X.
No one will fall for this, scoffed the tourist board, highly improbable – which of course almost guaranteed that the entire venture would be a huge success.
The Irish super-rich landed first, followed by Russian and South African. Hillman cut a deal with some English royals for a bit of credibility and the floodgates opened, which really annoyed Hillman as those floodgates had been guaranteed for twenty years and he lost two-thirds of his reclaimed beachfront.
Three years later, Hillman was head shepherd of his own little mega-wealthy flock who were dying off at a rate of half a dozen per month and leaving sizeable chunks of the Earth’s wealth to Hillman so long as he promised to freeze their heads until the aliens arrived.
‘It works because it’s easy,’ Hillman often told Buff Orpington, his second-in-command. ‘You don’t have to do anything to be a Nanite. Nothing gets cut off, nobody holds you underwater, no scripture, no guilt, no commandments. All you have to do is be rich and wear a Nanite T-shirt on Tuesday to the lunch buffet. It couldn’t be easier.’
Guide Note: In point of fact, there was one religion that was even easier to belong to than Nanoism. The members of the Temple of Softly Softly, which was very popular in the Brequindan Mind Zones, realized that most of the Universe’s major wars had been caused by zealots aggressively spreading their own religion, so they decided that their own method of baptism would be completely painless and could be performed without the knowledge of the baptized. All it took was for one of the faithful to point his smallest digit in your direction for five seconds and softly say ‘Beep’, then as far as they were concerned, you were a member of the church. Within five Brequindan years, the Temple of SS was the fastest growing religion in the Mind Zones. Unfortunately, as there were no holy wars in the name of Softly Softly and not a single person was mutilated, the Temple was not recognized by the Galactic Council of Religions and did not qualify for charitable status and so disbanded in less than half a lunar cycle.
Hillman Hunter was proud of what he had created and was in negotiations with an Australian minister to build a second compound in the Antipodes. Then, one Thursday afternoon as Hillman sat on the toilet playing a game of pool on his touch-screen phone, a video call came through from an out-of-area number. This intrigued Hillman, as his phone was not a video phone. He took the call, making sure to angle the screen away from his exposed knees, half-thinking that maybe Nano was upset with him for misusing her name and was on the blower from the afterlife.
A face appeared on Hillman’s screen. It was not Nano’s face; not enough chins or bristles.
‘Top of the morning to you,’ said Hillman brightly, taking comfort in his persona. ‘And who might you be?’
‘I might be the answer to your prayers,’ said the face. ‘I might be the end of your rainbow.’
Hillman used a catch-all quote from his Nano library. ‘Oh really, O’Reilly?’
The face frowned. ‘What? What’s that? Please speak clearly. Your accent seems to be confusing my fish, which never happened with the other monkeys.’
Insane, thought Hillman, not unreasonably. Utterly delusional.
I agree, Hillers, whispered the voice of his dead grandmother.
‘The shapes your mouth is making don’t match the words coming out of it,’ noted Hillman. ‘And, anyway, this phone doesn’t do video.’
‘One of the marvels of me,’ explained the mysterious head in a vague manner Hillman would come to know well. ‘And the mouth–word thing is because you are without a Babel fish and so the ship is insta-translating. Okay? Get the picture, ape man?’
Enough of this larking about, thought Hillman.
‘Right-ee-o,’ he said. ‘Well done on the phone hacking, but I must toddle off now. I have a religion to lead.’ He hung up and stood to embark on the complicated fine motor task of buttoning the flies on his tweed trousers.
‘Not so fast,’ said the head, which had now appeared, magnified, on the bathroom door. ‘It takes more than disconnecting to cut me off, Hillman Hunter.’
Hillman dropped his trousers in shock, back-pedalling on to the toilet.
‘What in the name of all that’s sacred?’ he gasped. ‘How did you do that?’
The head scoffed. ‘This? You call this doing something? Here I am ready to hand you the ultimate power trip, and you think throwing a projection on a flat surface with a metal frame is doing something? Hillman, my friend, you are an ignorant pormwrangler. No offence.’
Hillman hadn’t been taking offence, until he heard the words ‘no offence’. A thought occurred to him.
‘Are you from Nano? Is that it? Was I bloody right all the time?’ Hillman had been selling the Nano line for so long that sometimes he half sold himself.
The head laughed so hard that he was forced to breathe into a paper bag.
‘No, you weren’t right, stupid monkey. There is no planet Nano.’ And then his mouth twitched in a sly grin. ‘Not yet, there isn’t.’
‘Go on,’ said Hillman, his nose for a deal completely overriding his profound scepticism.
‘I have been looking for an investment on your planet, which won’t be around for long, by the way. The Sub-Etha spat out this little compound, and it seems to me that all your elderly rich people would fork over every gold coin they possessed if someone could actually take them to Nano before the Earth explodes. And once they arrived at the mythical Nano, then they would surely need a supreme leader.’
Supreme leader, thought Hillman, and then: This is such a crock of cow shite.
Suddenly his Nano’s voice whispered to him, as it often did when his life was at an important crossroads: Take heed, Hillers. This fool can do more for you than he knows. The apoxy-lips is coming and it’s time to be off this planet.
I knew there was an x, thought Hillman. Aloud, he said: ‘It would take one bejaysus of a convincing argument for this scam to work.’
The face’s grin grew a couple of incisors wider. ‘How about a big spaceship just appearing out of thin air? Do you think that would persuade the other monkeys?’
Hillman let the monkey comment pass; this was business, after all. ‘Got any robots?’
‘I can do better than that,’ said Zaphod Beeblebrox, for of course it was he. ‘I can get you a floating head.’
Nano

So now Hillman Hunter was the big boss on the planetoid, presiding over eighty-seven elderly rich people and their staff. He was wealthy and powerful, but never seemed to have a minute to himself to enjoy it. Retired rich folk, he was quickly finding out, were the most demanding people in the Galaxy. Nothing was ever good enough or ready fast enough. It didn’t help that the Magrathean planet builders were dawdling over the snag list, making a big fuss over every detail as if no one had told them that the houses would need roofs or floors.
‘You want windows too?’ the foreman had said, eyebrows almost taking flight in shock. ‘You should’ve said that six months ago. My boys would’ve put them in had we only known. If you want windows now we have to hold off on the plumbers, who are already on site by the way. And that won’t please the painters, who are in after the plumbers. And some of the painters are married to the plumbers, which will cause tension in the household. And we’re short on workplace masseuses at the moment, so there’s going to be some nasty lactic acid build-up in some of my boys’ shoulders. At the end of the day, it’s your money and your decision. All I’m saying is that you should have said something earlier when it was convenient, instead of throwing the entire project into financial freefall with your wild demands.’
Guide Note: In all of recorded history, there is only one confirmed instance of a builder acceding to a change in the plans without lapsing into histrionics. This happened in the case of Mr Carmen Ghettim, a Betelgeusean auto dealer who sent plan revisions back in time to inform the builder of the changes before the project started. It should be pointed out that Mr Ghettim had the note delivered by a particularly vicious lantern-jawed terrier.
When he wasn’t negotiating with builders, Hillman spent his time trying to find a god suitable to rule the planet, a task which was not proving as enjoyable as he had envisaged. Hillman had imagined himself engaging in philosophical conversations on the nature of happiness, or being wowed by awesome displays of godly power. Instead he had been forced to grind his way through a sludge of padded résumés in which demi-gods tried to make themselves sound a lot more significant than they actually were.
Hillman quickly realized that when a god put in a line on page two about taking a sabbatical for divine contemplation, that actually meant that he had been unemployed for the past ten thousand years. When a god claimed to have gradual meteorological influence, it simply meant that he looked up the forecast and then claimed to be responsible for whatever weather happened. And if a god was making a big deal out of his omnipresence, there was a very good chance that he had a twin brother floating around somewhere.
Dross, thought Hillman dolefully. Dross and steamers. Not one nugget of quality.
He was just consigning the latest batch of applications to his desk incinerator when Buff Orpington stuck his head around the door.
‘Yep, Buff. Are we set?’
Buff’s jowly face wobbled. ‘All ready, Hillman. We’re of a mind to kick some ass.’
Hillman’s mood was not improved by these fighting words.
Kick some ass? Most of the colonists can barely move faster than a slow jog. Any asses they’re going to kick would have to be stationary, soft and low-slung.
The asses in question were the drooping buttocks of Nano’s western colonists, who had kidnapped Cong’s French chef for religious reasons, the reason being that they were Tyromancers who firmly believed in divination through the medium of semi-congealed cheese, and Jean Claude’s signature dish was a heavenly four-cheese quiche with capers and smoked salmon. The Tyromancers were fine with the capers and salmon, but had decided that the cheesy filling was heresy.
The Magratheans warned me things like this might happen, Hillman realized dolefully. Moving planet is the most traumatic thing that can happen to a being, other than being slathered in barbecue sauce and then dropped into a pit with the Bugblatter Beast of Traal, whatever that is. People become fanatical about what they left behind. This Tyromancy started out as a bit of a hobby on Earth but has become a huge obsession on Nano. Aseed Preflux has managed to convert his entire settlement.
Hillman followed Buff outside and it occurred to him that from the rear Buff looked like a grizzly bear squashed into plaid trousers and a windbreaker; a stout hairball of a man whose arm hair actually swished in the wind.
In the town square, the troops were lined up ready for inspection, and the line was even worse than Hillman had imagined. There were no staff left, not a single one.
He rounded on Buff Orpington. ‘Where are the personal trainers?’
‘Gone.’
‘Not Lewis?’
‘All of them.’
‘And the beauty therapists?’
‘We haven’t seen a beauty therapist for nearly a week. My Cristelle hasn’t had a manicure in ten days. She’s at her wits’ end.’
Hillman was shocked. ‘Ten days! That’s barbaric. Why didn’t someone tell me?’
‘You were busy with the interviews. This place is falling apart, Hillman. We have barely half a dozen chefs left for the entire town. People are being forced to –’ Buff took a deep breath to steady himself – ‘cook for themselves.’
Hillman’s Irish temper flared. ‘We did not pay several enormous fortunes to cook for ourselves. What about contracts? These people all signed contracts.’
Buckeye Brown, a Texan oilman, piped up from the line: ‘My guy, Kiko, told me to stick my contract where the sun don’t shine. He said that this is a new world and we should all be equal. He said we were treating the servants like slaves.’
Hillman was appalled. This was what happened without a divinely ordained chain of command.
‘This has got to end. First we rebuff the invaders, then we get our staff back from the wild for their own good. How can young, fit people with no business skills hope to survive on this verdant new world, bejaysus?’ The ‘bejaysus’ was almost an afterthought. Hillman was so agitated that he nearly forgot who he was pretending to be.
Buckeye glanced gloomily at the toes of his Ferragamo alligator moccasins, which he was almost certain would scuff in the wild. ‘You want us to go into the wild? My daddy told me about it, but I never done been there.’
You never done been to school neither, thought Hillman. ‘We’re not going into the wild, Mr Brown. Sure, that’s a game for the young people. No, we’ll tempt those rascals back with Premium Plus Apartments.’
Buff was horrified. ‘Not lagoon view Premium Plus?’
‘If necessary.’
‘With twenty-four-hour concierge service?’
‘I doubt it. The concierge’s team jumped ship a month ago. We’ll have to give the concierges apartments. Maybe gym memberships too.’
‘But the concierges can’t service themselves,’ wailed Buff. ‘That’s just insanity. Has the world gone mad entirely?’
Like all good salesmen, Hillman was in quick with the solution. ‘Robots, laddie. We’ll get robots. I hear the Sirius Corporation has service androids with genuine people personalities. It’s perfect, what could go wrong?’
‘I suppose that might work,’ said Buff, mollified. ‘Or maybe we could import aliens who actually enjoy labouring in the sun. They could pay us. You could look it up on your Hitchhiker book.’
‘I will do that, as soon as we send these jokers packing.’
Hillman looked around John Wayne Square and wondered how things had gone wrong so quickly. Six months ago this plaza had been a stunning centrepiece for their new society and now there were weeds sprouting through the flagstones and strange blue bugs eating holes in the glass.
We need a god. And fast.
Buckeye Brown cleared his throat. ‘How do we even know the Tyromancers will mount an offensive today?’
Buff addressed that one, happy to have solid information to relay. He spread his legs, bouncing slightly on the balls of his heels as though he were about to heft a barbell. ‘It’s the only day they can come. Monday through Wednesday is cheese-making. Friday is the actual reading of the cheese. Saturday and Sunday are for contemplation of the message in the cheese. Thursday is the only day when secular activities are permitted.’
‘And we know this how?’
‘Oh, Aseed subbed over a mail. In case any of us want to join up. Nice presentation, I have to say. A lot of floating cheese icons. Apparently, if we don’t join up, then we bring Edamnation on the entire planet.’
Hillman’s jaw flapped for a moment, then: ‘Edamnation? You’re not serious.’
Buff grinned. ‘Serious as a dry well, Hillman.’ He pulled a crumpled missal from his pocket. ‘Ah… here it is: “The day of Edamnation shall be visited upon the non-believers in a huge and terrifying form, possibly cheese-related, but any huge and terrifying form can be understood to have emanated from the Cheese.” ’
Hillman was getting pretty cheesed-off with the word ‘cheese’. ‘Huge and terrifying, bejaysus. Who writes this junk?’
‘Aseed does. The First Gospel of Tyromancy, he’s calling it.’
‘That jumped-up little ginger fartbollix,’ swore Hillman. ‘Who does he think he is?’
This question brought forth a determined round of not answering from the assembled troops, as Aseed was pretty much identical to Hillman, apart from some styling and sartorial issues. And it appeared that Hillman was the only one who didn’t recognize this.
Luckily they were spared any embarrassment as Buff’s phone jingled in his pocket.
‘Oh, my phone. What a pity – I was just going to answer that question about who Aseed thinks he is, but now my phone is ringing so I better answer that and not actually answer the question. A real shame.’
He fumbled the cell phone from his pocket and slid it open. ‘Yeah? You sure? Okay. We’re on the way.’ Buff closed his phone then held it aloft with great melodrama. ‘The Tyromancers approach.’
‘What? Really? Who was that?’
‘It was Silkie. She’s on lookout from the coffee shop in Book Barn.’
Book Barn was the mall’s highest building, with a glass-walled coffee shop on the third floor. From there, a lookout could keep an eye on the main road while browsing the latest releases. Silkie Bantam usually volunteered for the lookout’s job because she was an avid horror book fan and could get through a few ghoulish chapters while she watched.
‘How did she sound?’
‘Pissed off. She had to make her own coffee.’
Hillman felt everything slipping away from him. The Book Barn people too. This Tyromancer squabble had to end today.
‘Righto, me laddies,’ he said, stamping a foot to pump himself up. ‘How are we for weapons?’
This was Buff’s domain. He’d been quite the Kirk Douglas fan back on Earth and so had been put in charge of the weaponry.
‘Not too bad,’ he said, leading the ragtag brigade to the foot of the plaza’s Sean the Boxer statue. Their tools of battle were laid out on the plinth.
‘It’s mostly gardening stuff,’ admitted Buff. ‘This strimmer has nice weight to it and could give a person a nasty cut. We have a couple of rakes for poking and tripping, that kind of thing. I myself provided this nine iron – not my premium club, obviously, but it’s got a good swing. Pretty dangerous, in the right hands.’
Even though he himself had signed the agreement forbidding the transport of actual mechanical weapons from Earth, Hillman had hoped for a slightly more robust arsenal.
‘This is great!’ he said with hollow enthusiasm. ‘Let’s show these feckers how the men of Cong can fight.’ He selected the strimmer and was about to press the starter button when Buff tapped his elbow.
‘Better hold off on that until we need it. The charge is pretty low.’
‘I see.’
‘Usually José does all that, but he ran off with one of your maids.’
‘Right. Fine. Well, we can work with what we have.’
They strolled in a loose group towards the main gate. The compound had been designed along the lines of the original Innisfree, with a mall added in on the far side of the lagoon. There were pootle-tink birds standing in the shallow waters, some reading but most working on their tans and bemoaning the fact that a bird’s drive disappeared so quickly when someone handed it a lovely crocogator-free lagoon.
Guide Note: The pootle-tink birds have long been victims of their own attractiveness, that and relentless inbreeding. The pootle-tinks were, for centuries, respected throughout the Galaxy as weavers of fine feather tapestries, until a certain Galactic Council trade ambassador proclaimed their plumage to be exquisitely beautiful and a must for all fashionable lagoons. This effectively spelled the end for the pootle-tink way of life as the culture vultures moved in and began to aggressively breed and cull the pootle-tinks in the quest for the perfect plumage, which could then be shipped across the Galaxy to brighten some diplomat’s water feature. The pootle-tinks did not put up much of a fight as they are vain creatures who enjoy being stared at. Culture vultures, on the other hand, do not have a narcissistic feather in their wings and like to pass the time screwing over other species then spending their profits on booze and sugary desserts. ‘We are like opposite ends of the same spectrum,’ a culture vulture once remarked to a pootle-tink, to which the pootle-tink replied: ‘Yes, so long as one end of the spectrum is made of crap and that’s the end you’re at.’
‘I have a thesis due in two months,’ one pootle-tink lisped to a friend. ‘And I haven’t even started my research.’
Another spotted Buff on the bridge. ‘Hey, hey, Buffy. How’s the swing coming?’
‘Not bad, Perko. Not too bad at all. You finished writing that book yet?’
Perko rolled his eyes. ‘It’s all in my head, Buff. I just need to park my backside on a chair and start typing, you know what I mean?’
‘I know exactly what you mean,’ said Buff, who had no idea what the bird was talking about, but was in a mood for positive statements.
The fighting men of Cong followed Hillman across the asphalt to the main gate, which their leader was forced to crank open with a winch.
‘One of us should have learned the gate code,’ huffed Hillman as he laboured. ‘This is ridiculous. The Magratheans have subbed over the back-up codes, but there are hundreds of them. Electronic gates, cash registers, Sub-Etha vision. Nothing works without the codes.’
Once the gate was open enough to slip through, the men stood at the checkpoint and gazed across the fuzzy humps of purple grass to the tropical forest that divided the two compounds. The tree branches criss-crossed densely and hung heavy with fruit and wildlife, apart from a half-elliptic cylinder-shaped tunnel that had been laser bored through to the other side.
Hillman took out his phone and zoomed in on the tunnel mouth.
‘I see the misguided feckers,’ he snorted. ‘Coming over on golf carts. Jaysus, it’s hardly the Light Brigade now, is it?’
The assembled band laughed heartily as they had seen warriors doing in war movies, then used their phones to zoom in on the approaching convoy.
‘I count ten,’ said Buckeye, who had the most expensive phone with the best lens. ‘There are only eight of us.’
‘Yes, but we’re on top of a hill,’ countered Hillman.
‘So?’
‘So everyone knows being up a hill is vital… feckin’ vital, mind, in these situations.’
Buckeye was miffed. ‘I didn’t know it. So that’s not everyone, is it?’
‘Do you know it now?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Well, that is everyone then, isn’t it?’
Hillman took no joy from his victory in this little verbal spat. This was supposed to be a tranquil settlement. There were not supposed to be any spats.
‘I don’t see what’s so good about this hill,’ said Buckeye sulkily. ‘Some of us are wearing loafers. And there are a lot of sharp stones out here. The soles on these things are like paper.’
‘I wore my golf shoes,’ said Buff with a bloodthirsty grin. ‘So I can stomp on these bastards. Mash their brains.’
Guide Note: Buff Orpington happened to be a direct descendant of Sigurd, the noble Viking warrior. Mr Orpington was not aware of this; all he knew was that he often added honey to his beer and fantasized about chopping his wife’s pigtails off with an axe. He would later have his race memories extracted by a hybrid Babel fish and take to wearing sealskin leggings on the golf course.
Hillman realized then how quickly the coming confrontation could get out of hand. ‘Hold up there, boyo. There’ll be no brain mashing. For one thing, the theatre nurses are shacked up with a couple of caddies in the fifteenth bunker and, for another, we are not working class here. No fighting unless absolutely necessary.’
‘Okay, Hillman,’ said Buff, chastened. ‘What if they insult us? Or maybe our grandparents?’
Hillman’s cheeks lost their usual rosy hue. ‘If anyone insults my Na… eh… grandmother, then I crack his skull.’
The Nanites were not the only ones watching the highway. A small group of lithe, hungry carnivores squatted in the dense vegetation at the tunnel mouth, strong fingers curled, tendons tight in anticipation of the attack. One, a hulking creature, raised a crust of bread to his mouth, tearing it with strong teeth, only to have it grabbed from his hand by the pack’s leader.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ asked the leader, who was called Lewis Tydfil.
‘I need energy,’ replied his subordinate, who only used one name: Pex.
‘But that’s bread.’
‘So?’
‘Carbohydrates after three p.m.? Are you insane?’
‘It’s just one crust. That’s all.’
Tydfil held up the bread for all the personal trainers and beauticians to see. ‘One crust. That’s all it is. Do you know how many spoons of sugar there are in this one crust? Do any of you know?’
‘Two?’ ventured Pex.
‘Seven!’ shrieked Tydfil. ‘Seven. You eat this after three and you might as well shove a sugar pump up your arse.’
‘Come on, Lewis.’
‘Fifty push-ups, on your knuckles. Go.’
Pex scowled. ‘I was hungry. I’m fed up of picking fruit from the trees. I want something fresh-baked or cooked.’
‘That’s why we’re here. Now get going on those push-ups.’
Pex caught the eye of a manicurist that he’d taken a fancy to. Her nails looked like they had been dipped first in blood, then diamonds. He didn’t really like the idea of humiliating himself in front of her.
‘No, Tydfil. Go hump yourself. Who made you leader?’
Lewis Tydfil drew himself up to his full height, bending one knee to show off his gastrocnemius. ‘I made myself leader on account of my qualifications.’
‘I have qualifications.’
‘You’re a fitness instructor,’ said Tydfil in a tone usually associated with murderous dictators, serial killers or ex-girlfriends’ handsome boyfriends. ‘Any moron can spend a weekend in a crappy gym and become a fitness instructor.’
‘I have a diploma.’
‘I have a degree,’ thundered Tydfil.
‘I specialize in kettle bells.’
Tydfil trumped him again. ‘I am an expert in the Kinesis Wall and I can take GP referrals.’
Pex drew a rolled-up magazine from the front of his shorts, which was a bit of a let-down for the manicurist.
‘I did a Men’s Health pictorial. Look, there’s me on the front.’
Tydfil put the final nail in his rival’s coffin. ‘I was the fitness adviser on a reality show. We had soap stars!’
There was no recovering from that. Pex dropped to his knuckles and began counting off the push-ups in sets of ten.
‘Good,’ said Tydfil. ‘Now the rest of you, stay hydrated and do your stretches. They will be here soon.’ He checked a few of his comrades. ‘We’re fading here. Some camouflage, please.’
Two beauticians, with spray-tan tanks strapped to their backs, painted stripes along the trainers’ limbs.
A power walker emerged from the trees. ‘They’re coming down the highway. Jean Claude is in the last cart.’
‘Okay, everyone,’ said Lewis Tydfil. ‘This is it. All we need to do is snatch Jean Claude and it’s wholewheat crêpes for everyone. Let’s warm up with a slow jog and then charge on my signal.’
‘What is your signal?’ asked Pex, from the high point of a push-up.
‘I will shoot you in the head with my starter’s pistol.’
‘What?’
‘Or maybe I will just say charge. Any more questions?’
Pex’s chin dipped low to the ground. ‘Nope. I got it.’
Tydfil’s smile was wide and perfect. ‘Good. Now come on everybody, lift those knees. Push it out.’
The personal trainers seemed to come out of nowhere, ripping into the last golf cart as soon as it cleared the tropical forest’s fringe.
‘What the…’ yelped Buckeye. ‘Did you see that? Did everyone see what happened?’
No one replied, too focussed on the drama unfolding on the asphalt. The attack was not precise, but it was lightning fast and furious. A group of tanned and toned athletes exploded from the planted border, swarming all over the cart that held Jean Claude. In a flurry of biceps, they hustled the cart to the kerb, tipping it off the road and down the verge. Then, in a flash of leotard and hair gel, they were gone. The driver never even had the chance to press the Emergency Aid panic button hanging from a lanyard around his neck. The only evidence of the assault was a settling dust cloud and the trailing curses of a stocky trainer who had not warmed up properly. It was several moments before the rest of the convoy even noticed that their rearguard was missing.
‘Jaysus,’ whispered Hillman, meaning it for once. ‘That was… I can’t believe it. I didn’t know humans could move that fast.’
Buff, who had been to a talk about personal training once, nodded sagely. ‘Yep. That’s trainers for you. Extremely well-moisturized.’
‘They’ve turned savage,’ croaked Buckeye. ‘Nobody is safe. Do you think we could stop one of those with a strimmer? We’re doomed! Doomed!’
It was time for some leadership. ‘Pull yourselves together, you crowd of chickens,’ snapped Hillman. ‘We still have the Tyromancers to deal with.’
It was true. The Tyromancers had not turned back; if anything, they had increased their speed towards the Nanites’ compound. In all probability they were fleeing the scene of the ambush in case the trainers decided to strike again.
‘Should we run down the hill?’ asked Buckeye.
‘Just forget about the bloody hill,’ snapped Hillman, then remembered that Buckeye was technically a customer. ‘Don’t worry about the hill, sir. Just follow my lead.’
‘And crush their zarking skulls?’
‘Zarking, Buff? What the hell is “zarking”?’
‘Just a word I picked up from one of the merchants at the spaceport.’
‘Keep it to yourself, especially in front of the ladies.’
Buff shrugged. ‘No problem. I wish I had a sword in my hand now. A big zarker… sorry… a big two-hander with sheepskin on the handle. If I had a sword like that, I’d die happy and go straight to heaven.’
Buckeye tugged at his sleeve, a nervous tell. ‘When this is all over, you need to talk to my wife, the town psychiatrist, if we can tempt her back from the beach. She’s shacked up with a young lifeguard. According to her, it’s a clear case of projected reverse Oedipus. I tried everything, you know – took a course of bastard pills so she could have the good guy or the bad guy.’
‘Hopefully, I won’t live beyond today’s glorious battle,’ said Buff, blithely ignoring Buckeye’s tale of woe.
The Tyromancers’ golf carts putted along Nano’s only dual carriageway, a clear example of future proof overkill, and proceeded steadily up the hill to the compound.
‘You might be better off,’ muttered Buckeye.
Although he later claimed it to be accidental, at that precise moment the toe of Buff’s golf shoe nudged Buckeye Brown’s loafer, scuffing it badly.
Guide Note: This relatively innocuous incident would lead to a tit-for-tat vendetta that was to escalate over the centuries, culminating in the destruction of three planets, eighteen loafer-class battlecruisers and a small hotel on a neutral world. On the positive side, there was a forbidden love affair between two younger members of the families that was later turned into a movie, a series of books and a moderately successful stage play.
Related Reading:
Brown & Orpington: A New Breed by Bandera Brown-Orpington
The Tyromancers putted up the hill in a pretty cool semicircle formation that died a death when driver number four neglected to put on his brake and rolled back down the slope, crashing eventually into the foot of a bantally tree, which, luckily for the driver, was hibernating or it would definitely have put a hex on him.
‘Nice entrance,’ sneered Buff, swinging the nine iron nonchalantly.
Aseed Preflux stepped from the first cart, spent a moment broadcasting you’re an idiot eye beams down at the stumped driver, then turned his attention to the Nanites.
It was unnerving to see how much he looked like Hillman, right down to the widow’s peak and pointed chin, like an infernal leprechaun. In fact, if the Nanites had looked a bit closer at their nemeses, they might have noticed that there were several doppelg?ngers in the group.
‘The Cheese told me you would say that about our entrance,’ said Aseed.
‘A pity the Cheese didn’t mention anything about that ambush down the road, isn’t it, boyo?’ said Hillman quickly. His men rewarded the quip with a six on the laughter scale, one being a gentle chuckle and ten being uncontrollable guffaws. Hillman’s joke clearly rated no more than a four.
‘Do not mock the Cheese!’ said Aseed furiously. ‘You will bring Edamnation down on us all!’
Buff took a bead on Aseed’s forehead with the nine. ‘You’re about to be cream cheese.’
More laughter. A solid eight.
Red spots bloomed on Aseed Preflux’s cheeks. ‘Yeah, go on. Do all the cheese jokes. It’s so easy, isn’t it?’
‘Easy singles,’ muttered Buckeye.
‘Yes. That too. Let’s get them all out of the way so we can get down to business.’
Aseed’s men bunched threateningly behind him, looking as warlike as it was possible to look when armed with cheese-related instruments.
‘What is that?’ asked Hillman, pointing to one wooden implement. ‘Is that for cleaning drains?’
‘It is a churn plunger! As you well know!’
‘How would I know that, laddie? I have someone to make my cheese before I put it on a cracker.’
‘Blasphemer!’ shrilled Aseed, and his friends took up the cry.
‘Listen to that din,’ said Buff. ‘Oh, din.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing, Hillman. Why don’t you let me take out these pansies? There are only eight of them left.’
‘Not yet, Buff. Maybe our friends don’t want to fight. Maybe they’ve come to return Jean Claude to us.’
‘We have not!’ shouted Aseed, and then he ran out of bluster. ‘Actually, we don’t have him any more. Those trainers took him, off to their beach settlement I imagine.’
‘We saw. So you left one of the faithful in the ditch?’
Aseed made a triangle with his forefingers and thumbs, which he then touched to his forehead. ‘The Cheese demands sacrifices,’ he said.
The others copied his action.
‘Appease the Cheese,’ they intoned, with faces so solemn they could have hired them out to an advertising agency as the ‘before’ pictures in a Blam-O-Brain, Antidepressant for the Whole Family campaign.
Hillman and the Nanites quickly made the ‘after’ faces, laughing so hard that two of them farted.
‘Appease the cheese,’ spluttered Hillman. ‘Just when I think you can’t get any nuttier.’
Aseed sighed. ‘So you’re not going to join us?’
‘No. We’re not. Why don’t you join us, Preflux? Just go easy on the cheese stuff. We’re all laid back here. And together we could outwit the staff.’
‘No. All must bow down to the Cheese.’
‘Appease the Cheese.’
It was Hillman’s turn to sigh. ‘I suppose we have to fight, then.’
‘It is the only way. But no hitting in the face.’
‘Of course not. We’re not animals. And no goolies.’
‘We are forbidden to make contact with the goolies of non-believers, except through gloves of curd, which we haven’t managed to fabricate yet.’
‘So no face, no goolies.’
Buff was being held back by an invisible bungee. ‘Come on, let’s just go.’
‘One more thing,’ said Aseed. ‘I will be fighting, as will my disciples, with my churning hand in my pocket, so in the spirit of fair play…’
‘So one-handed, no face, no goolies?’
‘Agreed. If we win, then you will join our happy group; if you win, then we keep coming back until we win.’
Hillman closed his eyes and listened for the voice of his Nano.
What should I do, Nano?
The answer was immediate: Batter this crowd of steamers, Hillers. Give them a beating they won’t forget.
Righto, Nano, righto.
Aloud he said: ‘Okay, Buff, do your worst.’
Buff Orpington’s grin seemed to reveal more teeth than were usually found in a human mouth.
‘Aaaarghhh!’ he cried, beating his chest like a bear, images of burning monasteries flashing behind his eyes. ‘Death to the Tyromancers!’
‘Or at least a sound thrashing,’ said Hillman, thumbing the strimmer’s power button.
‘No goolies,’ squealed Aseed as the mammoth Buff Orpington bore down on him. ‘No g-o-o-o-o-o-lies.’
Then an enormous cheese wheel appeared in the sky, revolving over the combatants’ heads, emitting an ominous hum. This sudden and most unexpected apparition shifted the crowd’s focus faster than the appearance of Eccentrica Gallumbits wearing a neon T-shirt flashing the slogan ‘Freebie Friday’ would shift the focus of the crowd at a Virgin-Nerd convention on a Friday. Even Buff Orpington’s battle spasm drained from his skull, leaving a mist of disbelief behind it.
‘It can’t be!’ he said. ‘I don’t believe it.’
Aseed Preflux turned paler than a slice of double cream Cheddar.
‘Edamnation!’ he howled, touching his fingers to his forehead. ‘You have brought it upon us, Hillman Hunter!’
Hillman powered down the strimmer. ‘What? No. Surely not. This can’t be right. Seriously?’
Aseed and his band of Tyromancers, triangling furiously, backed away from the compound wall.
‘We won’t die for your sins, Hunter. Face the wrath of the Wheel alone.’
The Tyromancers turned on their heels and ran, which is not easy when bowing and making the sign of the Cheese, with the result that more than half their number took tumbles into the overgrown borders before eventually scrambling into the golf carts and whining back the way they came as fast as the electric motors would permit, quite prepared to run the personal trainer gauntlet. If the Cheese had wanted to catch and smite them, it shouldn’t have been a problem. But it seemed as though the Cheese was quite content to hover imperiously above the Nanites.
‘What do you think?’ asked Hillman, shooting the words out of the side of his mouth towards Buff.
Buff shrugged his meaty shoulders. ‘I’m not sure. Gouda maybe, or Cheddar.’
The Cheese decided that it had had enough of being a cheese and so, for a change, became a rolling eye, which was one of its favourites.
Hillman sighed massively and his entire body relaxed as though his bones had jellified. ‘Of course. I should have known.’
The enormous eye rolled madly then turned into a view screen which seemed to be playing some kind of reality show featuring a behemoth called Pinky. Pinky ran amok for a few seconds then the screen exploded in a cloud of small furry balls with teeth; teeth that ate their own fur to reveal a glowing white spaceship underneath. A spaceship so cool that it made other cool spaceships such as the Sirius All-Space Off-Worlder look about as cool as a cluster of pimples on the nose of a forty-year-old man who was riding a bicycle with stabilizers around his office during a presentation on more efficient ways to unblock sewage pipes.
Guide Note: This analogy works pretty well just about everywhere, except in the town of Shank near the famous Infinity Spools of Allosimanius Syneca. Shank is inhabited by Pshawrians, who are taught from infancy to defy expectations. In fact, anyone who meets expectations is given three chances and then hurled from the finger-shaped peaks of the Mooncliffs. In actuality, people rarely get three chances, because that’s what they expect. In Shank, a spotty forty-year-old man on a stabilized bike would be the epitome of unexpected coolness. The fact that the presentation was about sewage pipes would be seen as a nice touch, seeing as g on Allosimanius Syneca is only 1.2 metres per second squared and waste matter simply floats off into space.
The gleaming white spaceship wobbled a bit then solidified with a noise like a huge slice of lemon colliding with a giant gold brick. A section of the fuselage fizzled like a glass of soda then disappeared altogether, revealing a tall, helmeted figure whose aura seemed to contain a choir of angels singing ‘Thor’ in divine harmony.
‘Hallelujah,’ whispered Hillman.
Buff Orpington sank to his knees, weeping.