The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy / Руководство для путешествующих автостопом по Галактике

© Шитова А. В., адаптация, сокращение, словарь, 2018

© ООО «Издательство «Антология», 2018

Very far in the unfashionable end of the Galaxy lies a small yellow sun. Orbiting this sun at a distance of about ninety-two million miles is a tiny blue-green planet whose ape-descended [1] life forms are so primitive that they still think digital watches are a great idea.

This planet has – or had – a problem, which was this: most of the people on it (even the ones with digital watches) were unhappy most of the time. Many thought that they had all made a big mistake coming down from the trees. And some even said that no one should have ever left the oceans.

Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of them involved the small green pieces of paper. And so the problem remained.

And then, one Thursday, almost two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change[2], one girl sitting alone in a small cafe suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terribly stupid catastrophe happened, and the idea was lost forever.

This is not her story. But it is the story of that terribly stupid catastrophe.

It is also the story of a book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the terrible catastrophe, never seen or heard of by any Earthman). It is a remarkable book. In fact, it was probably the most remarkable book ever published by the great publishing houses of Ursa Minor [3].

It is also a very successful book – more popular than Oolon Colluphid’s philosophical bestsellers Where God Was Wrong, Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes and Who Is This God Person Anyway?

In many of the more relaxed civilizations of the Galaxy, The Hitchhiker’s Guide has already beaten the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the main source of all knowledge and wisdom. Why? There are two reasons. First, it is a bit cheaper. Secondly, it has the words DONT’T PANIC written in large friendly letters on its cover.

But the story of this terrible, stupid Thursday, the story of its extraordinary consequences, and the story of this remarkable book begins very simply.

It begins with a house.

Chapter 1

The house stood alone on the edge of the village and looked over the farmland. It was not a remarkable house – it was about thirty years old, small, made of brick, with four windows in the front that failed to please the eye[4].

The only person for whom this house was special was Arthur Dent, and that was only because he was the one who lived in it. He had lived in it for about three years, ever since he had left London because it made him nervous. He was about thirty as well, with dark hair, and never quite comfortable with himself. What used to worry him most was the fact that people always used to ask him what he was so worried about. He worked in local radio, and he always used to tell his friends that his job was a lot more interesting than they probably thought.

On Wednesday night it had rained very heavily, the road was wet and muddy, but the Thursday morning sun was bright and clear as it shone on Arthur Dent’s house for the last time.

Arthur hadn’t quite realized that the local council was planning to demolish his house and build a bypass[5] instead.

At eight o’clock on Thursday morning Arthur didn’t feel very good. He woke up, got up, walked round his room, opened a window, saw a bulldozer, found his slippers, and walked to the bathroom to wash.

He put toothpaste on the brush and looked at himself in the mirror. For a moment it reflected a second bulldozer outside the bathroom window. Arthur Dent shaved, washed, dried, and walked to the kitchen to find something pleasant to put in his mouth.

Kettle, fridge, milk, coffee.

The word bulldozer went through Arthur’s mind for a moment, trying to find something to connect with. The bulldozer outside the kitchen window was quite a big one. He stared at it. “Yellow,” he thought and walked back to his bedroom to get dressed.

Passing the bathroom, he stopped to drink a large glass of water, and another. He suspected that he had a hangover. Why? Had he been drinking the night before? Maybe. “Yellow,” he thought again and went to the bedroom.

There he stood for a while[6] and thought.

The pub, he thought. Oh dear, the pub.

He remembered being angry about something that seemed important. He’d been telling people about it. Telling people about it for too long, he suspected, remembering the looks on other people’s faces. Something about a new bypass he had just found out about. No one had heard about it. Ridiculous. It wouldn’t work, he had decided, because no one wanted a bypass.

God, what a terrible hangover it had brought him though. He looked at himself in the mirror. “Yellow,” he thought. The word yellow went through his mind, trying to find something to connect with.

Fifteen seconds later he was out of the house and lying in front of a big yellow bulldozer that was going up his garden path.

Mr. L. Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a life form descended from an ape. More specifically he was forty and fat, and worked for the local council.

Mr. L. Prosser was a nervous, worried man. Today he was especially nervous and worried because something had gone seriously wrong with his job – which was to see that Arthur Dent’s house was cleared out of the way before the end of the day.

“Come on, Mr. Dent,” he said, “you can’t win, you know. You can’t lie in front of the bulldozer forever.”

Arthur lay in the mud and looked at him.

“I’m staying here,” he said, “and we’ll see who rusts first.”

“I’m afraid,” said Mr. Prosser, “this bypass has to be built, and it’s going to be built!”

“First time I’ve heard of it,” said Arthur. “Why does it have to be built?”

Mr. Prosser shook his finger at him. “What do you mean, why does it have to be built?” he said. “It’s a bypass. We’ve got to build bypasses.”

Bypasses help some people drive from point A to point B very fast, while other people drive from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C – right in between – often wonder what’s so great about point A that so many people of point B want to get there, and what’s so great about point B that so many people of point A want to get there. They often wish that people would just finally decide where the hell they wanted to be.

Mr. Prosser wanted to be at point D. Point D was just any point a very long way from points A, B and C. He would have a nice little cottage at point D and have a good time at point E, which would be the nearest pub to point D. His wife, of course, would be against it.

Now Mr. Prosser sweated under the grins of the bulldozer drivers. Obviously somebody had been terribly incompetent, and he hoped to God it wasn’t him.

Mr. Prosser said: “You had a chance to make any suggestions or protests at the appropriate time, you know.”

“Appropriate time?” asked Arthur. “Appropriate time? The first I knew about it was when a workman came to my home yesterday. I asked him if he’d come to clean the windows and he said no he’d come to demolish the house. He didn’t tell me straight away[7], of course. Oh no. First he cleaned a couple of windows and made me pay for it. Then he told me.”

“But Mr. Dent, the plans have been in the local planning ofcif e for the last nine months.”

“Oh yes, well, as soon as I heard I went there to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t really tried to call people’s attention to them[8], had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or anything.”

“But the plans were on display…”

“On display? I had to go down to the cellar to find them.”

“That’s the display department.”

“With a flashlight.”

“Ah, well the lights had probably gone.”[9]

“So had the stairs[10].”

“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes, I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked cabinet in an old lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard.”

A cloud passed in the sky. Its shadow fell over Arthur Dent as he lay in the cold mud.

Mr. Prosser frowned. “It’s not a very nice house anyway,” he said.

“I’m sorry, but I happen to like it.”[11]

“You’ll like the bypass.”

“Oh shut up,” said Arthur Dent. “Shut up and go away, and take your bloody[12] bypass with you!”

Mr. Prosser’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times while his mind showed him pleasant visions of Arthur Dent’s house burning. He pulled himself together.[13]

“Mr. Dent,” he said.

“Hello? Yes?” said Arthur.

“Some information for you. Have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll over you?”

“How much?” said Arthur.

“None at all,” said Mr. Prosser, and walked nervously of.f

By a curious coincidence, “none at all” is exactly how much suspicion the ape-descendant Arthur Dent had that one of his closest friends was not an ape-descendant from Guildford[14] as he used to tell people, but was in fact from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse[15].

Arthur Dent had never, ever suspected this.

This friend had first arrived on the planet about fifteen Earth years before, and he had worked hard to join the Earth society – with, it must be said, some success. For example, he had spent those fifteen years pretending to be an out-of-work actor, which was true enough.

He had made one mistake though. He had chosen the name “Ford Prefect[16]” for himself, thinking it was totally ordinary.

He was neither tall nor dark or handsome[17]. His hair was ginger. There was something a bit strange about him, but it was difficult to say what it was. Maybe it was that his eyes didn’t blink often enough. Or maybe it was that he smiled a bit too much.

Most of the friends he had made on Earth thought he was eccentric but harmless – a boozer with some unusual habits. For example, he would often join university parties, get badly drunk and start making fun of any astrophysicist he could find till they threw him out.

Sometimes he would get into a strange mood and stare into the sky, hypnotized, until someone asked him what he was doing.

Then he would relax and smile. “Oh, just looking for flying saucers[18],” he would joke and everyone would laugh and ask him what kind of flying saucers he was looking for.

“Green ones!” he would reply with a grin, laugh wildly for a moment and then suddenly run to the nearest bar and buy a round of drinks[19].

Evenings like this usually ended badly. Ford would get drunk on whisky. Then, walking down the night streets, he would often ask passing policemen if they knew the way to Betelgeuse. The policemen would usually say something like, “Don’t you think it’s time you went home, sir?”

“I’m trying to, I’m trying to,” was what Ford usually replied.

In fact what he was really looking for when he stared into the night sky was any kind of flying saucer at all. The reason he said green was because green was the traditional space uniform color of the Betelgeuse scouts.

Ford Prefect hoped to see any flying saucer at all because fifteen years was a long time to spend anywhere, especially somewhere as dull as the Earth. Ford wished he would see a flying saucer soon because he knew how to flag them down[20] and get a lift from them. He knew how to see the Marvels of the Universe for less than thirty Altairan[21] dollars a day.

In fact, Ford Prefect was a researcher for that remarkable book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Human beings[22] adapt very well, and by lunchtime life around Arthur’s house had turned into a routine. It was Arthur’s role to lie in the mud, sometimes asking for his lawyer, his mother, or a good book. It was Mr. Prosser’s role to give Arthur yet another For-the-Public-Good talk, the March-of-Progress talk, the They-Knocked-My-House-Down-Once-You-Know, Never-Looked-Back talk. And it was the bulldozer drivers’ role to sit around drinking coffee and trying to see how they could turn the situation to their financial advantage.

The Earth moved slowly in its course, and the sun was beginning to dry the mud Arthur lay in.

A shadow moved across him.

“Hello, Arthur,” said the shadow.

Arthur looked up and was surprised to see Ford Prefect standing above him.

“Ford! Hello, how are you?”

“Fine,” said Ford, “look, are you busy?”

“Am I busy?” exclaimed Arthur. “Well, I’ve just got all these bulldozers and other things to lie in front of because they’ll demolish my house if I don’t, but other than that… well, no, not especially, why?”

They don’t have sarcasm on Betelgeuse, and Ford Prefect often failed to notice it.

He said, “Good, is there anywhere we can talk?”

“What?” said Arthur Dent.

For a few seconds Ford seemed to ignore him, and stared into the sky. Then suddenly he sat down beside Arthur.

“We’ve got to talk,” he said.

“Fine,” said Arthur, “talk.”

“And drink,” said Ford. “It’s very important that we talk and drink. Now. We’ll go to the pub in the village.” He looked into the sky again, nervously.

“Look, don’t you understand?” shouted Arthur. He pointed at Prosser. “That man wants to demolish my house!”

Ford looked at him, puzzled. “Well, he can do it while you’re away, can’t he?” he asked.

“But I don’t want him to!”

“Ah.”

“Look, what’s the matter with you, Ford?” said Arthur.

“Nothing. Nothing’s the matter. Listen to me – I’ve got to tell you the most important thing you’ve ever heard. I’ve got to tell you now, and I’ve got to tell you this in the pub.”

“But why?”

“Because you are going to need a very strong drink.”

Ford stared at Arthur, and Arthur suddenly felt that his will was weakening.

He didn’t know that this was because of an old drinking game that Ford learned to play in the hyperspace[23] ports of the star system of Orion Beta. The game was played like this: two contestants would sit at a table, with a glass in front of each of them. Between them would be placed a bottle of Janx Spirit[24]. Each contestant would then concentrate their will on the bottle and try to pour spirit into the glass of his opponent – who would then have to drink it. The bottle would then be refilled. The game would be played again. And again. If you started to lose, you would probably keep losing, because one of the effects of Janx Spirit is to block telepsychic power[25]. Ford Prefect usually played to lose.

Ford stared at Arthur, who began to think that maybe he really wanted to go to the Horse and Groom pub after all.

“But what about my house..?” he asked.

Ford glanced at Mr. Prosser, and suddenly had an idea.

“He wants to knock your house down?”

“Yes, he wants to build…”

“And he can’t because you’re lying in front of the bulldozers?”

“Yes, and…”

“I’m sure we can do something about it,” said Ford. “Excuse me!” he shouted.

Mr. Prosser (who was arguing with the bulldozer drivers’ representative about whether or not Arthur Dent was a mental health hazard[26], and how much they’d get paid if he was) looked around. He was surprised and a bit worried to see that Arthur had company.

“Yes? Hello?” he called. “Has Mr. Dent changed his mind[27] yet?”

“Can we for the moment,” called Ford, “assume that he hasn’t?”

“Well?” asked Mr. Prosser.

“And can we also assume,” said Ford, “that he’s going to be staying here all day?”

“So?”

“So all your men are going to be standing around all day, doing nothing?”

“Could be, could be…”

“Well, if you’re okay doing that anyway, you don’t actually need him to lie here all the time, do you?”

“What?”

“You don’t,” said Ford patiently, “actually need him here.”

Mr. Prosser thought about this.

“Well no…”, he said, “not exactly need…”

Prosser was worried. He thought that one of the two of them wasn’t making a lot of sense.

Ford said, “So if you could just pretend that he’s actually here, then he and I could go off to the pub for half an hour. How does that sound?”

Mr. Prosser thought it sounded perfectly crazy.

“That sounds perfectly reasonable,” he said, wondering who he was trying to convince.

“And if you later want to go for a quick one[28] yourself,” said Ford, “we can always cover up for you[29].”

“Thank you very much,” said Mr. Prosser who didn’t know how to play this game anymore, “thank you very much, yes, that’s very kind…” He frowned, then smiled, then tried to do both at once, and failed.

“So,” continued Ford Prefect, “now you could come here and lie down…”

“What?” said Mr. Prosser.

“Ah, I’m sorry,” said Ford, “maybe I hadn’t made myself clear. Somebody has to lie in front of the bulldozers, or there won’t be anything to stop them driving into Mr. Dent’s house, right?”

“What?” said Mr. Prosser again.

“It’s very simple,” said Ford, “my client, Mr. Dent, says that he will stop lying here in the mud if you come and lie instead of him.”

“What are you talking about?” said Arthur, but Ford kicked him with his shoe to be quiet.

“You want me,” said Mr. Prosser, “to come and lie there…”

“Yes.”

“In front of the bulldozer?”

“Yes.”

“Instead of Mr. Dent.”

“Yes.”

“In the mud.”

“In, as you say it, the mud.”

Mr. Prosser sighed. This was more like the world as he knew it. “And in return you will[30] take Mr. Dent with you to the pub?”

“That’s it,” said Ford. “That’s it exactly.”

Mr. Prosser took a few nervous steps forward and stopped.

“Promise?” he said.

“Promise,” said Ford. He turned to Arthur. “Come on,” he said to him, “get up and let the man lie down.”

Arthur stood up, feeling as if he was in a dream.

Ford gestured to Prosser who sadly sat down in the mud. He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it. The mud was all round his bottom and his arms and even got into his shoes.

Ford looked at him and frowned.

“And no knocking down Mr. Dent’s house while he’s away, all right?” he said.

“The thought about the possibility of it,” said Mr. Prosser, “hadn’t even begun crossing my mind.”

He saw the bulldozer drivers’ representative, let his head sink into the mud and closed his eyes. He was trying to find arguments to prove that he was not now a mental health hazard himself. He wasn’t sure about it though. Mr. Prosser shook slightly and sobbed. What a day!

What a day! Ford Prefect knew that it didn’t matter now if Arthur’s house was knocked down or not.

Arthur was still very worried.

“But can we trust him?” he said.

“I’d trust him to the end of the Earth,” said Ford.

“Oh yes,” said Arthur, “and how far is that?”

“About twelve minutes away,” said Ford, “come on, I need a drink.”

Chapter 2

Here’s what the Encyclopedia Galactica has to say about alcohol. It says that alcohol is a colorless liquid made by the fermentation of sugars that has an intoxicating effect on some life forms.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink ever is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster[31]. It says that the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like your brains are smashed by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.

The Guide also tells you on which planets the best Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters are mixed, how much you’ll have to pay for one, and what organizations will help you recover afterwards.

The Guide even tells you how you can mix one yourself.

Take the juice from one bottle of that Janx Spirit, it says. Pour into it some water from the seas of Santraginus V. Add three cubes of Arcturan Mega-gin and four liters of Fallian marsh gas into the mixture. Add a drop of Qualactin Hypermint extract, smelling of all the dark Qualactin Zones, sweet and mystic. Drop in the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger. Watch it dissolve in the drink. Sprinkle it with Zamphuor. Add an olive. Drink… but… very carefully…

Now you see why The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy sells much better than the Encyclopedia Galactica.

“Six pints of beer,” said Ford Prefect to the barman of the Horse and Groom. “And quickly please – the world’s about to end[32].”

The barman of the Horse and Groom was an old man. He pushed his glasses up his nose and looked at Ford Prefect. Ford ignored him and stared out of the window, so the barman looked instead at Arthur who shrugged and said nothing.

So the barman said, “Oh yes, sir? Nice weather for it,” and started pouring pints. Then he tried again, “Going to watch the match this afternoon?”

Ford glanced at him. “No, no point[33],” he said, and looked back out of the window.

“Why is that, sir?” said the barman. “Arsenal[34] has no chance?”

“No, no,” said Ford, “it’s just that the world’s about to end.”

“Oh yes, sir, so you said,” said the barman, looking this time at Arthur. “Lucky escape for Arsenal if it did.”[35]

Ford looked back at him, surprised. “No, not really,” he said and frowned.

The barman sighed. “There you are, sir, six pints,” he said.

Arthur smiled at him and shrugged again. He turned and smiled at the rest of the pub just in case any of them had heard what was going on.

None of them had, and none of them could understand what he was smiling at them for.

A man sitting next to Ford at the bar looked at the two men, looked at the six pints, and grinned a stupid hopeful grin at them.

“Get off[36], they’re ours,” said Ford, giving him a look that would scare an Algolian Suntiger. Ford put a five-pound note on the bar. He said, “Keep the change.[37] You’ve got ten minutes left to spend it.”

The barman simply decided to walk away for a while.

“Ford,” said Arthur, “would you please tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Drink it,” said Ford, “you’ve got three pints.”

“Three pints?” said Arthur. “At lunchtime?”

The man next to Ford grinned again and nodded happily. Ford ignored him. He said, “Time is an illusion, especially lunchtime.”

“Very deep thought,” said Arthur, “you should send it to the Reader’s Digest[38].”

“Drink it.”

“Why three pints?”

“Muscle relaxant.[39] You’ll need it.”

“Muscle relaxant?”

“Muscle relaxant.”

Arthur stared into his beer. “Did I do anything wrong today,” he said, “or has the world always been like this?”

“All right,” said Ford, “I’ll try to explain. How long have we known each other?”

“How long?” Arthur thought. “For about five years, maybe six,” he said. “Most of it seemed to make some sense at the time[40].”

“All right,” said Ford. “What if I said that I’m not from Guildford, but from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse?”

Arthur shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, drinking beer. “Why?”

Ford gave up. It really wasn’t important at the moment when the world was about to end. He just said: “Drink it. The world’s about to end.”

Arthur gave the rest of the pub another smile. The rest of the pub frowned at him. A man waved at him to stop smiling at them and mind his own business[41].

“This must be Thursday,” said Arthur over his beer. “I never liked Thursdays.”

Chapter 3

On this particular Thursday, something was moving quietly through the ionosphere[42] many miles above the surface of the planet located near star Sol[43]; several somethings in fact, several dozen huge yellow somethings, huge as office buildings, silent as birds. They moved easily, taking their time[44], grouping, preparing. The planet beneath them didn’t know of their presence, which was just how they wanted it to be. The huge yellow somethings went unnoticed even over Cape Canaveral[45].