No wonder Random was a little frosty.
President Random Dent sat cross-legged in a hovering egg chair onstage, chanting quietly.
‘Bicuspid lie behind canine behind lateral incisor behind central incisor. T-o-o-o-o-o-th, find your place.’
The curtain had not yet been drawn, but she could hear the hubbub of the crowd through the heavy material. The curtain was velvet, not holographic, an expense grudgingly borne by the university at Random’s insistence. While in no way anti-progress, the President believed that there was still room for tradition in the Galaxy.
She smiled softly as her mother was led on to the platform. From a distance a person could be forgiven for thinking that their roles were reversed and that Trillian was the President’s daughter, but up close the truth was plain. Surgery shine was written all over Trillian’s face.
The reporter’s step faltered as she caught sight of her daughter, but she recovered herself quickly.
‘You look well, Madam President,’ she said in that typical reporter’s accent, which was somewhere between Sector ZZ9 and Asgard.
‘As do you, Mother,’ responded Random.
Trillian settled into a second egg chair and consulted her notes.
‘President Random Frequent Flyer Dent. Still using too many names?’
Random smiled in the calm manner of one who has been tantrum-free for decades. ‘And you, Trillian Astra. Still using the wrong one?’
Trillian smiled tightly. This was not going to be an easy interview.
‘Why now, Random? We haven’t seen each other more than a dozen times in the past twenty years. Why now, when my career is on the wane? I go from beauty pageants on New Betel to the biggest interview of my life.’
Random smiled again, a gentle creasing of her outdoorsy face. Her grey-streaked hair was stiff with sunshine and salt water.
‘I know it’s been a while, Mother. Too long.’ She stroked a small ball of fur around her neck and it mewled softly. Trillian saw tiny teeth and a tail and her heart sank.
‘I’ve heard about that thing. Your constant companion. It’s some kind of little gerbil, isn’t it? Cute.’
‘More than a cute gerbil, Mother. Fertle is my companion. A flaybooz. Fully grown. A font of knowledge, all transmitted telepathically.’ And then she dropped the bomb. The career killer. ‘We were married yesterday.’
Trillian’s skin felt tighter than it had a minute ago. ‘You were married?’
‘It’s a mental bond, obviously. Though Fertle does like me to tickle his tummy.’
Keep it together, Trillian told herself. You are a professional.
‘Let me get this straight. You communicate telepathically with… Fertle?’
‘Of course. Communication is what keeps families together. Haven’t you heard?’
At this point, Trillian stopped being a reporter and started being a mother.
‘Less of the pay-back jibes, young lady. This is your life we’re talking about. You are Random Dent, the President of the Galaxy. You united the tribes of Earth. You oversaw the official first contact ceremony.’ Trillian was on her feet now. ‘You spearheaded the economic drive into space. You negotiated for equal rights for aliens.’
‘And now I want something for myself.’
Trillian strangled an imaginary Fertle, six inches in front of the real one. ‘Not a gerbil, though. Not a zarking gerbil. How is a gerbil going to give me grandchildren?’
‘We don’t want kids,’ said Random blithely. ‘We want to travel.’
‘What are you talking about? It’s a rodent.’
‘He,’ said Random pointedly, ‘is a flaybooz, as you well know. And I thought you, of all people, would understand our relationship. The formidable Trillian Astra. Champion of all people, except her daughter.’
Trillian thought she detected a chink of light in the gloom. ‘Wait. What? This is about me? You are going to destroy your life to get back at me? That’s one hell of a twisted revenge cocktail, Random.’
Random tickled her husband till he snickered. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mother. I wanted you here to introduce your son-in-law to the Galaxy. It will be your crowning moment as a journalist, and it will bring us together as a family.’
Trillian saw it all then, the genius of Random’s coup de grâce. If she announced this union in full 3-D Spectro-Vision, then she would be a laughing stock. If she did not, then her daughter was lost to her for ever and would probably milk the situation for enough sympathy to win another term in office. At the very least, the flaybooz would vote for her, and there were zillions of those.
Trillian’s frame jerked spasmodically. Married!
‘Forget it, Random, you’re not using me to put a spin on your relationship. As soon as I get out of here, I’m going to track down your father and he can deal with you.’
Random shook with laughter, frightening her husband. ‘Arthur! Do you have any idea how far he would go to avoid confrontation?’ She paused, cocking her head to one side. ‘Fertle says, and I agree, that you have to announce this, Mother. The Galaxy is expecting big news.’
‘Absolutely not. I refuse to be manipulated.’
‘You’d rather be controlled by the networks, like the robot you are. I can hear you buzzing from here. I can smell your circuits. Is there any part of you that’s real? Can you put me in touch with my human mother? Or perhaps you know where her backbone is buried.’
Trillian was almost relieved that the façade of civility was scorched away.
‘Screw you, Random.’
The President nodded. ‘Yes, Fertle. This is how she is. Are you surprised now that I am difficult to read? At all the defences I have erected around my brain?’
Trillian was almost shrieking. ‘You are talking to a bloody yo-yo!’
Fertle seemed to react to this.
Guide Note: Though flaybooz have no ears, they are extremely sensitive to vibration and can actually explode in extreme circumstances. Thor, the Asgardian and sometime rock god, held the record for spontaneous flaybooz detonation when he debuted his new tune ‘Let’s Get Hammered’ from a chariot in orbit around Squornshellous Delta. The record had previously been held by intergalactic rock band Disaster Area, who dropped a speaker bomb into a volcano crater where the flaybooz were enjoying a static electricity festival.
Fertle’s fur bristled and he opened a tiny mouth that now seemed to have a beak.
‘Battery,’ said Fertle in a voice of wire and claws.
‘What?’ said Trillian. ‘Did I just hear a flaybooz speak? Now that would be news.’
‘Battery,’ said Fertle again, this time with some urgency.
The velvet curtain rose slowly, but there was no audience behind it, just an auditorium of sky and two humanoid figures.
Random and Trillian stood and gaped, family resemblance clear for once in spite of the various surgeries and implants.
‘What’s happening?’ said the President, her voice higher suddenly. ‘Mother? What’s happening? Where are my journalists?’
‘Don’t panic,’ said Trillian, trying to keep the quaver from her voice. ‘Something is happening here.’
‘Something is happening?’ shrilled Random. ‘That’s it? All of your years in the field and all you can come up with is something is happening. This is a kidnap attempt, that’s what it is. We’ve been transported somewhere.’
Trillian squinted at the humanoid figures who seemed to be growing increasingly familiar, as though scales of forgetfulness were falling from her eyes.
‘Kidnapped. I don’t think so. Not by these two. They’re harmless… mostly.’
Random adopted her favourite presidential power position, feet planted, arms crossed.
‘You two men. What have you done? I demand to know where we are.’
The shorter man noticed the new arrivals; it was pretty likely that he would as one of them was shouting at him.
‘I think the question should be when we are, then possibly who put us here, followed b
y is there a drinks trolley?’
Random scowled. ‘Is there a drinks trolley indeed. Be flippant all you like, young man. I know that underneath you’re as scared as we are.’
The young man smiled. ‘I’m Betelgeusean, Random. We don’t do underneath.’
Random lost the urge to riposte when the sudden recognition of the second man hit her like a Surprise-O-Plasm pie in the face.
‘Father? Daddy? Dad?’
‘Pick one,’ suggested the Betelgeusean. ‘It will make conversations easier.’
Trillian took off across the room of sky, moving faster than she had in years.
‘Now, let’s see what your father has to say about this marriage.’
Random suddenly seemed a lot younger. ‘Daddy!’ she howled. ‘Daddy! My stupid mother hates my husband.’
The father figure dropped his head and wished for tea.
2
Ford Prefect explored the room of sky, breathing on the walls to see if the surface fogged, pulling horrible faces to check for a recoil factor and eventually touching it gingerly through his sleeve. When the material of his shirt did not have its electrons excited to a higher temperature, Ford deemed it safe to poke the wall with his finger. He did so and the wall rippled, sending images of flaybooz wedding ceremonies, beach huts and wild parties flitting across the room. When the ripples died, so did the residual memories and the wall was azure sky once more.
‘Do you mind?’ said a voice that seemed to come from everywhere. ‘My needles are on red as it is, to coin an archaic phrase. If you could just sit still I can hold this construct together a while longer.’
‘So, you’re saying that this whole room is a construct?’ said Ford, poking the wall again.
‘Would you… Didn’t I just say… Yes, yes, it’s a construct. This waiting lounge is all in your head. In all of your heads. It is a virtual room. Is there another way you would like me to impart this information?’
Ford scratched his chin and was disappointed to find that it was not as chiselled as it had been at Han Wavel. ‘How about a video?’
The sky walls disappeared altogether, replaced by several representations of a robotic bird, tapping a claw impatiently.
‘Ah,’ said Ford. ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Mk II. I thought as much. I haven’t seen you since…’ Ford flipped through his solidifying memories, ‘since you tried to get the Earth blasted to pieces.’
‘Not since then,’ said the bird. ‘Not since way back then. Imagine.’
‘You’ve upgraded your feathers to gold, I see.’
‘It’s a construct, Betelgeusean. I appear as I wish to appear. So did you, back at the resort. Remember the chin?’
Ford sighed wistfully. ‘I do. That was so froody. The shadows I could cast with that godlike chin.’
‘I’ve seen a few gods,’ remarked the bird. ‘Some of them are not so great in the chin department. Why do you think Loki cultivates that beard?’
Ford paced a little. ‘Back to my question. How about a video?’
H2G2-2 scowled, which is not easy with a beak. ‘Didn’t you hear me? The needles are on red. I can’t hold the waiting lounge together for much longer.’
‘Nothing fancy. Just some 2-D animation, old-school stuff. I know you can do it if you really want to.’
The bird rolled its eyes dramatically then disappeared from one of the walls. In its place a black screen opened and on the screen were four neon stick figures. One had rather outlandish boob circles and another hadn’t much in the way of chins.
‘Ha ha,’ called Ford to the sky. ‘Very humorous.’
A cartoon bird appeared on the screen and hovered above the four humanoids.
‘Welcome,’ said the bird, ‘to this video demonstration, which I like to call: Constructs for Idiots.’
Ford raised a finger. ‘Does that mean that the people in the constructs are idiots, or that you’re explaining it to idiots?’
The bird ignored him. ‘As a pan-dimensional, mega-advanced, omniscient travel guide, equipped with the very best Organ-O-Brain, capable of running over ten trillion simultaneous calculations…’
Ford rapped on the screen. ‘Could you keep it down and hurry it up? I feel pretty sure that there is bad news coming and it might be better if I get to grips with it first. Some people in this room don’t handle bad news so well. I’d like to have a chance to massage the truth a little before I present it.’
‘Well, if you’d stop wittering on…’
‘I am stopped. Go ahead, please…’
The bird cleared its throat in a wholly unnecessary manner. ‘As I was saying. As such an advanced bio-hybrid organism, it was a simple matter for me to poke a neuron beam into the dream centre at the back of each brain… yours was a little hard to find, by the way, Betelgeusean… and then link the neural networks through a central server, that is to say, myself.’
Ford frowned. ‘Show me some moving pictures,’ he said.
On-screen blue beams fanned from the bird’s wing-tips, entering the humanoids’ heads through one ear, then exiting through the other ear and converging on the H2G2-2’s forehead.
‘So you sent us to sleep and gave us a dream?’
‘I gave you life, for a long time.’
‘But it was virtual life, we didn’t go anywhere?’
‘Correct. Anywhere or anywhen.’
‘Which is not a word. Organ-O-Brain? Really?’
‘I was trying to be succinct.’
Ford poked the wall again, this time with two fingers, watching the memory ripples run around the walls and intermingle. ‘It’s all a dream then. And not just this room?’
‘No,’ said the voice coldly. ‘Not just this room.’
More poking. ‘How far back?’
‘Club Beta.’
‘Club Beta. That bongs a gong for some reason. Club dingly dangly Beta.’ Ford stopped pacing. ‘Holy shankwursters!’
‘I will thank you,’ said The Hitchhiker’s Guide Mk II, ‘to mind your language. I am fully programmed to take offence.’
‘Aren’t we all.’
Guide Note: This is literally true of the Cyphroles of Sesefras Magna, a gas giant in the Pleiades system. The Cyphroles are tiny invertebrate free-swimming gastrozoa who absorb the hostile energy emitted by their predators and use it to power their own systems. This makes the predators angry and so the Cyphroles swim faster through the gas ocean. Sesefras Magna gas dragons have learned to approach the Cyphroles casually, whistling a little tune or pretending to search for a few coins they have mislaid. The Cyphroles always fall for these tricks, as nature gave them large energy filters and tiny bullshit detectors.
Ford’s memory was still a little hazy. ‘Club Beta? In London? But that was… I have no idea long ago that was.’
‘It was then and it is now. My perception is unfiltered, so I see all points of my existence simultaneously.’
‘How about us impoverished beings with filtered perceptions?’ Ford didn’t like this bird much, and believed that he wouldn’t like it even with a few Gargle Blasters eating at his stomach lining.
‘You are still in the club. No time has passed.’
Ford grabbed clumps of his ginger hair. ‘Why? For zark’s sake, why?’
Mk II rolled its pixellated eyes. ‘You try to do someone a favour. Honestly.’
‘Favour?’ spluttered Ford, not giving a damn who heard. ‘If you wanted to do us a favour, you could have transported us away from the exploding planet.’
‘That would have been in direct contradiction with my program. I have prolonged your life by several decades.’
‘Who asked you to? Not me.’
‘Random Dent made the request. She is my secondary master. When the human minor realized that the entire planet was about to be destroyed, she expressed regret that she had not been allowed to live her life as she would have wished. Granting that wish did not conflict with my primary directive.’
‘What about the rest of us?’<
br />
‘Mistress Dent included her parents and their chinless, dim-witted friend in her thoughts.’
Ford was wounded. ‘Chinless? She thought that?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said the bird with obvious relish. ‘Several times.’
Something occurred to Ford. ‘Secondary master? Who is the primary?’
‘You are not entitled to interrogate me,’ snapped Mk II.
Ford borrowed a tactic from the Sesefras Magna gas dragons. ‘I know that. Of course a wondrous being like yourself doesn’t have to answer to a lowly Betelgeusean like myself. But it would be a lovely treat for me to understand the complexities of your plan.’
The bird cocked its head. ‘I know what you’re doing.’
‘Obviously.’
‘I experience every moment simultaneously.’
‘No point in arguing then, is there? You already know what you’re going to do.’
‘Good point. Very well. The Vogons created me so that I could cajole you back to Earth before the Grebulons destroyed it.’
‘Which is happening now.’
‘Now, as you know it. Yes.’
‘Will we be rescued?’
‘Probably not.’
‘So you gave us the lives we wanted?’
‘No. I gave you free will and a construct. You followed your own paths under my supervision.’
Ford winked at the bird. ‘I get it. I see now. You wanted to experience real time.’
Mk II dropped its beak slowly, crossing its wings across its breast. ‘I lived your lives with you, never knowing what was coming next. It was exhilaratingly… random.’
‘And now?’
‘Now? Now I know exactly what happens. A hundred years of maintaining four Universes has depleted my power source. I only lasted this long because I periodically combined two constructs for the past virtual twenty years. Perhaps I should have thought of that sooner, but linear time is so immediate. In five virtual minutes this room will disappear, and you will be left on Earth facing the planet-killer beams of the Grebulons.’