‘Which fat lady?’
‘Oh, nothing. It’s a Valkyrie expression.’
Wowbagger glanced at the sidelines. There were tears on Trillian’s face, but she was not taking one step to stop proceedings.
‘Okay, little man. It was me. I stole your ship.’
Thor drew a sharp breath, puffing out his tiny chest, trying not to look mortified by the script he was supposed to stick to. ‘You! My father gave me that interstellar longship, which I named after my beloved goat.’ (While broadcasting the thought: I hated that bucket of slime, which is why I sold it to a guy in a bar.)
‘Yes, I did steal it and I’d do it again.’
‘Oh, you would, would you? I may be a benevolent god, evil giant, but I can only forgive so much.’
Enough of this dire cabinotage, thought Wowbagger (cabinotage being a word he had picked up while preparing his global insult for the soap opera planet Sunny View, where the entire world was a television set with eighteen satellite suns for three-shift daylight shooting). Let’s speed things up a bit.
‘Cut the buffa-biscuit, you preposterous little Viking. Your daddy hates you, and your mommy pretends you’re someone else’s son.’
Thor involuntarily shrank an inch. This wasn’t in the script.
‘What? What did you say?’
Wowbagger ploughed on. ‘Everyone knows it. Thor the drunk, they call you. I think you should have stayed at the bar.’
A small thundercloud suddenly appeared overhead, spitting white lightning.
‘You stole my longship, evil giant,’ spluttered Thor, thinking: I’m spluttering. Gods shouldn’t splutter. This is a disaster; they’re going to hate me.
‘Sure. Whatever you say. And another thing everyone knows: you detest mortals.’
‘I do not… What? That was my father’s ship. Remember the longship?’
‘You think mortals are second-class individuals. You wouldn’t wipe your boot with a mortal.’
Thor grew taller, much taller. ‘Yes, I would.’
‘You would wipe your boot with a mortal?’
There were a couple of boos from the audience, maybe a hiss.
‘Yes. I mean no. I don’t know, maybe if my boot was dirty.’
Wowbagger tapped his chin. ‘And did I hear something about a video…’
That was as far as he got, because suddenly Thor was looming over him with Mjöllnir raised to strike.
What happened to back and forth? wondered Wowbagger, then the hammer came down so fast it blurred, crashing into his head with a noise like a meteor impacting on a field of ice.
Goodbye, Trillian, thought Wowbagger, then he was driven bodily fifty feet straight down into his grave.
Thor was in two minds about his performance. The up-and-over swing always made good television, but it was a pity he couldn’t have dragged it out a little longer. What choice did he have? The green guy was just about to mention the video and then the various browsers would have tagged the comment and before you know it everyone’s linked back to the old site.
He was about to turn to Zaphod to check his manager’s reaction when he picked up a faint thought from about fifty feet below his feet. And the thought was either:
Shark eye knothead
or
Zark. I’m not dead.
Zaphod whistled the first bar of ‘Blinko in the Baybox’, an old Betelgeusean epic shanty concerning a prickled mollusc and his time spent in captivity.
‘Whaddya think, Ford? Did he do enough?’
Ford whistled the second bar back at him. ‘I don’t know. I never felt like there was a threat. There was no drama.’
‘You’re right. It was all over too quickly.’ Zaphod looked around. ‘I wonder if there is anyone else in the market for a hammer in the head.’
Thor jogged across the field. ‘What do you think? Nice up-and-over, wasn’t it? I lost my temper a bit though, let the green guy rile me up. Don’t worry, Zaph, it won’t happen next time.’
‘Next time?’
‘Yes, next time. The green guy isn’t dead.’
‘What? Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure. He’s climbing out of that hole now, thinking nasty thoughts.’
‘How much did you give him?’
‘I don’t know, maybe fifty per cent, something like that.’
Zaphod whistled another few notes of ‘Blinko’. ‘Fifty? Really? Did anyone ever survive that before?’
‘No one that didn’t have a seat at the long table.’
Zaphod beckoned to his client to shrink himself down a little. ‘Tell me, Thor, honestly, can you finish Wowbagger off? Can you do it?’
Thor hunkered down. ‘Zaph, I can finish off this entire planet with seventy-five per cent.’ He stretched his rotator cuff. ‘You might want to move everyone back a little though.’
Wowbagger crabbed one elbow out of a crack in the earth.
My suit is ruined, he thought. And that big ape didn’t even break the skin.
Trillian felt broken. Her soul had been split by the hammer blow and she would never be the same.
We had one day together and it was the most important day of my life.
Had she done the right thing, Trillian wondered. Could she even pretend to herself that she had made the right choice?
Beside her, Random was perched on the fence, busily taking no notice of her mother’s sacrifice.
‘Hmmph,’ she grunted suddenly. ‘The bugger is still alive. I knew it.’
For only the third time in her life, Trillian Astra fainted.
A vast cone-shaped ship of white alloy poked through the nebula, its once-smooth fuselage pockmarked by two centuries of space debris impact. No more than one tenth of its eight hundred tripropellant rockets were functioning and there was barely enough life support to keep the crew breathing. The fresh food supply was utterly exhausted and there had been nothing but recycled fluids to drink for several months.
The entire crew was fatigued and starving. Their morale was low and none of them had ever known a home besides this gigantic ship they were contracted to voyage in until their mission was finally complete.
The captain, a once corpulent giant of a man, had shrunk to scarecrow proportions, but he was a hero to his people. His eyes flashed green fire when the day’s work was good, and deep red when a duty was neglected or an officer mistreated his men. The crew loved him and would follow him into hell if need be.
His name was Eddon Cho and today was the day when he could finally complete the mission entrusted to him by his father, and maybe live a little of his own life.
‘Navigator, tell me again,’ he called across the bridge to young Vishnal Li Senz, only seventeen and already an excellent pilot.
‘We’re here, Captain. There can be no doubt about it. The orbit is a little weird but the air is breathable.’
Cho nodded. It was just as well, because once they landed, they wouldn’t be taking off again, ever.
‘Very well, take us down. Careful with the compensator and send any extra spark of power we have to the Verifyer.’
Li Senz swallowed. ‘The Verifyer? My god. Are you certain, Captain?’
‘I’m certain,’ Eddon Cho responded grimly. ‘We only get one shot at this. Now take us down.’
Li Senz cracked his knuckles, then wrapped his fingers around the manual control.
‘May the Unbreakable Guarantee protect us,’ he said.
Around the ship, his prayer was echoed by over two thousand souls.
*
On the surface of Nano, the crowd was feeling a little cheated. Perko St Waring Speckle was showing a new and not altogether attractive side of his personality after a few coffees and a build-up of anticipat-o-acid in his wings.
‘Is that it?’ he called. ‘Is that the entire show? Lame-o. Pathetic.’
Hillman Hunter was none too impressed either.
‘I mean, it was a good hit, that up-and-over action, but the cheesers’ guy is getting back up. What g
ood is that to me?’
Buff Orpington had tears on his cheeks. ‘He’ll do it all right. Just you wait and see. Thor is just warming up, that’s all. Working out the kinks.’
‘He’d better work them out fast, or we’ll all be adoring the big Cheese.’
The surface chatter was abruptly halted by the sight of nearly a hundred spiralling rings of light descending through the atmosphere. The rings incrementally revealed themselves to be the rear engines of a gargantuan ship which eased itself earthwards, shedding shield panels as it dropped. Several of the engines sparked and burned out, dropping the ship in erratic jolts until it finally touched down in a nearby lake, flash-boiling it to a misty shroud.
‘Oooh,’ said Ford Prefect. ‘Spooky.’
There was almost complete silence for several moments until a slender robot arm, muscled with power cables, popped from a hatch in the strange ship’s belly. At the tip of the arm was a blinking sensor that moved rapidly towards the crowd, quickly circumventing the cows hoping for a meat-eater.
Further and further the arm went, telescoping from the body of the ship, over Wowbagger’s head, through Thor’s legs, dodging away from Zaphod, who made a lunge for it. Stopping finally in front of Random.
‘Random Dent?’ it asked in a real robotic voice, back from when robots were robots and didn’t have personalities of their own.
Random stood her ground. ‘Erm… Yes. I guess.’
A hollow opened on the probe’s tip. ‘Spit, please.’
Random dropped a bubble of saliva into the hollow, which immediately bathed it with a series of lasers. After several moments, a green light winked on.
‘Identity confirmed. Here is your package and thank you for purchasing with uBid.’
An envelope dropped from the robot arm into Random’s waiting hand.
‘Thank you,’ she said in a small, guilty voice.
‘Enjoy your product,’ said the probe. ‘And if you have any complaints, please feel free to write them on a bumpy log then hammer said log into your auditory canal.’ The probe swivelled back towards the ship. ‘Mission complete,’ it said. ‘That’s the last one.’
There was a muffled cheer from inside the gigantic ship, then its structure slumped and began the slow process of falling apart.
Random was young and her lungs were full of concentrated dark matter and so, without considering all the possible consequences, she tore open the envelope and ran along the fence to where Thor was patiently enduring a little pep talk from Hillman Hunter.
‘Put these on your hammer,’ she said, interrupting the Nanite leader.
The Thunder God frowned. ‘I thought I heard something. Sort of a squeak squeak squeaky squeak.’
‘Down here!’ shouted Random.
Thor bent over, elbows on knees. ‘Oh, look. A little girl. Oh, my gods, are you a fan? Do you want an autograph, is that it? I don’t usually do school appearances, but I could make an exception.’
Random wasted a second fuming, then: ‘Listen to me, weatherman. I researched immortals on the Sub-Etha, and out of the thousands of hits I found on the topic there was not a single tested and confirmed method of killing one.’
Zaphod chuckled. ‘But this is Thor, girly. You can’t test and confirm him. He’s the big time, big as he wants to be.’
‘Hmm, okay. Well, he is going to look big-time stupid in front of all these people when he can’t kill the green man.’
‘That’s not going to happen,’ said Thor, without much conviction.
‘It won’t happen if you put these on the head of your hammer.’
‘Nothing goes on the hammer, kid. Mjöllnir stays pure.’
Random spoke slowly, so the Thunder God would get the picture. ‘I did manage to find a theory by a little-known scientist on an unregarded world that said that an immortal can only be killed by an object that has come from the same transformational event.’
Even Zaphod could follow that. ‘So, what did transform Wowbagger?’
‘He fell into a particle accelerator trying to retrieve a couple of elastic bands. Bands that I bought on uBid from the high priest of the Temple of Wowbagger.’
Thor reached out a finger and thumb.
‘Why don’t I put those bands on my hammer?’ he said.
Bowerick Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged was feeling a little light-headed and it was a feeling he relished, as it reminded him of when he was mortal. He dragged himself from the crack in the earth and lay gasping in crisped curls of grass as the uBid ship fell to pieces behind him.
More intrigue, he thought. I can’t say that today hasn’t been interesting.
As he lay there prostrated in the dirt, thinking as usual about himself and his now unlikely death, he saw that there was someone else on the ground.
Trillian.
And this was the moment when Wowbagger knew for sure that he was in love, because at that moment he stopped thinking about how Trillian related to him and started to think about Trillian herself.
Is she harmed? What’s happened?
Wowbagger shook off his wooziness and jumped to his feet.
‘I’m coming!’ he called, leaning into a run. ‘I’m coming.’
A shadow fell across Wowbagger’s face. Something mountainous obscured his view of Trillian.
‘Time for the big one,’ said Thor, bending over, so his head appeared bizarrely upside-down.
How does his helmet stay on? wondered Wowbagger.
Then Mjöllnir hit him with such injurious force that it sent him straight into the stratosphere.
Arthur was deep in conversation with a pootle-tink bird when he saw Trillian keel over.
‘No,’ he was explaining. ‘The game is called cricket. A wicket is made up of stumps and uprights… Oh, good lord.’
‘Come on,’ said the bird. ‘It’s very confusing. So when a person runs, it’s called a run?’
But the oh, good lord was not directed at the bird; rather it was blurted involuntarily as Trillian fainted dead away. Arthur dropped the soya yogurt he had been enjoying and raced along the fence to where Trillian lay, unmoving.
This is disgraceful, he fumed. Her own daughter, our own daughter, is walking away. What has happened to Random? That child needs to be taken in hand.
This last was a statement oft repeated in the Dent household when Arthur was a boy. His father trotted it out at every opportunity, whenever Arthur strayed even minutely into proscribed behaviour. The taking in hand generally involved a stern talking to, which invariably featured the Second World War, garden sheds, philately and upper lips of the stiff kind. At the end of each lecture, young Arthur had been allowed a nip from his father’s brandy flask, just to put hair on his chest. So whenever Arthur thought about these disciplinary chats he felt sad, then merry, then sleepy, then woke up with a headache.
Arthur knelt beside Trillian and awkwardly cradled her head in the crook of one elbow.
‘There, there,’ he said. ‘If you can hear me, Trillian, I just want you to know that you look great. I know ladies spend a lot of time worrying how their outfits look, in car crash situations and so on.’
Giving comfort to females had never been one of Arthur Dent’s strong suits. In fact if comfort giving had been an actual advertised position, Arthur would never have made it past the first interview, especially if there had been a practical exam.
Guide Note: For the past three decades of real time, the human Arthur Dent had made his life infinitely more miserable than it needed to be by displaying a spectacular ability to say the right thing but at the wrong time. When Arthur Dent’s best friend from university, Jason Kingsley, had been dumped after three years by the love of his life, Stacey Hempton, Arthur assured him that he would not be lonely for long, as slappers like Stacey were easy to come by in any disco. When his Irish Aunt Maedhbhdhb (pronounced Hilda) had received a lethal blow from a falling church gargoyle, Arthur had whispered in her ear: ‘At least the cigarettes won’t kill you now, eh, Aunty?’ Arthur’
s tactlessness is only surpassed by that of Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox, who once presented PeeBee Anjay, the gelatinous king of Shivers City, with a leopardskin thong as a birthday present.
Arthur poked Trillian’s cheek with a finger.
‘Trillian,’ he said, softly but urgently. ‘Come on. Wake up.’ She did not respond, so Arthur thought back to the first-aid afternoon course he had been required to attend by the BBC. As far as he could recollect, most of the afternoon had been spent changing the plug on a coffee machine, but hadn’t there been some demonstration involving a plastic dummy with balloons for lungs? Mouth to mouth?
Arthur had no idea if what he was about to clumsily attempt was the correct course of action, but nevertheless it cheered him a little to have a course of action to attempt.
He placed Trillian’s head on the soft grass and leaned over her.
‘You gotta pinch the nose and tilt the head back,’ said a voice from behind his shoulder. It was the bird he had been talking to.
I met this bird downtown, thought Arthur, choking down a hysterical giggle.
He parted Trillian’s lips with his thumb and took a deep breath.
I’m nervous. Why am I nervous?
‘Go on, man. Do it!’
This bird was really pushy.
Arthur bobbed a little, then dived in. Their lips locked and Arthur sealed the corners with his thumbs, then blew. There was no reaction initially; it felt to Arthur like he was blowing into a tunnel. Then Trillian’s arms came up around his neck and she kissed him passionately.
What? Unexpected. Once upon a time this kiss would have been a dream come true.
Arthur pulled back and saw that Trillian’s eyes were open and glassy with tears.
‘Arthur… I thought…’
And Arthur immediately understood. ‘It’s Wowbagger. You love him.’
Once, this realization would have shattered Arthur’s world, if he’d had a world to shatter, but now all he felt was a deep empathy for Trillian, who was about to lose her love as he had lost his.