-
36
"Good luck," he added, and walked out of the door, disappearing from
Zaphod's life as mysteriously as he had entered it.
Zaphod leapt up and tried the door, but Roosta had already looked it.
He shrugged and returned to the corner.
Two minutes later, the building crashlanded amongst the other wreck-
age. Its escort of Frogstar Fighters deactivated their force beams and
soared off into the air again, bound for Frogstar World A, an altogether
more congenial spot. They never landed on Frogstar World B. No one
did. No one ever walked on its surface other than the intended victims
of the Total Perspective Vortex.
Zaphod was badly shaken by the crash. He lay for a while in the silent
dusty rubble to which most of the room had been reduced. He felt that he
was at the lowest ebb he had ever reached in his life. He felt bewildered,
he felt lonely, he felt unloved. Eventually he felt he ought to get whatever
it was over with.
He looked around the cracked and broken room. The wall had split round
the door frame, and the door hung open. The window, by some miracle
was closed and unbroken. For a while he hesitated, then he thought
that if his strange and recent companion had been through all that he
had been through just to tell him what he had told him, then there
must be a good reason for it. With Marvin's help he got the window
open. Outside it, the cloud of dust aroused by the crash, and the hulks
of the other buildings with which this one was surrounded, effectively
prevented Zaphod from seeing anything of the world outside.
Not that this concerned him unduly. His main concern was what he saw
when he looked down. Zarniwoop's office was on the fifteenth floor. The
building had landed at a tilt of about forty-five degrees, but still the
descent looked heart-stopping.
Eventually, stung by the continuous series of contemptuous looks that
Marvin appeared to be giving him, he took a deep breath and clambered
out on to the steeply inclined side of the building. Marvin followed him,
and together they began to crawl slowly and painfully down the fifteen
floors that separated them from the ground.
As he crawled, the dank air and dust choked his lungs, his eyes smarted
and the terrifying distance down made his heads spin.
The occasional remark from Marvin of the order of "This is the sort of
thing you lifeforms enjoy is it? I ask merely for information," did little
to improve his state of mind.
About half-way down the side of the shattered building they stopped to
rest. It seemed to Zaphod as he lay there panting with fear and exhaus-
tion that Marvin seemed a mite more cheerful than usual. Eventually
he realized this wasn't so. The robot just seemed cheerful in comparison
with his own mood.
A large, scraggy black bird came flapping through the slowly settling
clouds of dust and, stretching down its scrawny legs, landed on an in-
37
clined window ledge a couple of yards from Zaphod. It folded its ungainly
wings and teetered awkwardly on its perch.
Its wingspan must have been something like six feet, and its head and
neck seemed curiously large for a bird. Its face was flat, the beak under-
developed, and half-way along the underside of its wings the vestiges of
something handlike could be clearly seen.
In fact, it looked almost human.
It turned its heavy eyes on Zaphod and clicked its beak in a desultory
fashion.
"Go away," said Zaphod.
"OK," muttered the bird morosely and flapped off into the dust again.
Zaphod watched its departure in bewilderment.
"Did that bird just talk to me?" he asked Marvin nervously. He was
quite prepared to believe the alternative explanation, that he was in
fact hallucinating.
"Yes," confirmed Marvin.
"Poor souls," said a deep, ethereal voice in Zaphod's ear.
Twisting round violently to find the source of the voice nearly caused
Zaphod to fall off the building. He grabbed savagely at a protruding
window fitting and cut his hand on it. He hung on, breathing heavily.
The voice had no visible source whatever - there was no one there.
Nevertheless, it spoke again.
"A tragic history behind them, you know. A terrible blight."
Zaphod looked wildly about. The voice was deep and quiet. In other
circumstances it would even be described as soothing. There is, however,
nothing soothing about being addressed by a disembodied voice out of
nowhere, particularly if you are, like Zaphod Beeblebrox, not at your
best and hanging from a ledge eight storeys up a crashed building.
"Hey, er ..." he stammered.
"Shall I tell you their story?" inquired the voice quietly.
"Hey, who are you?" panted Zaphod. "Where are you?"
"Later then, perhaps," murmured the voice. "I am Gargravarr. I am the
Custodian of the Total Perspective Vortex."
"Why can't I see ..."
"You will find your progress down the building greatly facilitated," the
voice lifted, "if you move about two yards to your left. Why don't you
try it?"
Zaphod looked and saw a series of short horizontal grooves leading all
the way down the side of the building. Gratefully he shifted himself
across to them.
-
38
"Why don't I see you again at the bottom?" said the voice in his ear,
and as it spoke it faded.
"Hey," called out Zaphod, "Where are you ..."
"It'll only take a couple of minutes ..." said the voice very faintly.
"Marvin," said Zaphod earnestly to the robot squatting dejectedly next
to him, "Did a ... did a voice just ..."
"Yes," Marvin replied tersely. Zaphod nodded. He took out his Peril
Sensitive Sunglasses again. They were completely black, and by now
quite badly scratched by the unexpected metal object in his pocket. He
put them on. He would find his way down the building more comfortably
if he didn't actually have to look at what he was doing.
Minutes later he clambered over the ripped and mangled foundations of
the building and, once more removing his sunglasses, he dropped to the
ground.
Marvin joined him a moment or so later and lay face down in the dust
and rubble, from which position he seemed too disinclined to move.
"Ah, there you are," said the voice suddenly in Zaphod's ear, "excuse
me leaving you like that, it's just that I have a terrible head for heights.
At least," it added wistfully, "I did have a terrible head for heights."
Zaphod looked around slowly and carefully, just to see if he had missed
something which might be the source of the voice. All he saw, how-
ever, was the dust, the rubble and the towering hulks of the encircling
buildings.
"Hey, er, why can't I see you?" he said, "why aren't you here?"
"I am here," said the voice slowly, "my body wanted to come but it's a
bit busy at the moment. Things to do, people to see." After what seemed
like a sort of ethereal sigh it added, "You know how it is with bodies."
Zaphod wasn't sure about this.
"I thought I did," he said.
"I only hope it's gone for a rest cure," continued the voice, "the way it's
been living recently it must be on its last elbows."
"Elbows?" said Zaphod, "don't you mean last legs?"
The voice said nothing for a while. Zaphod looked around uneasily. He
didn't know if it was gone or was still there or what it was doing. Then
the voice spoke again.
"So, you are to be put into the Vortex, yes?"
"Er, well," said Zaphod with a very poor attempt at nonchalance, "this
cat's in no hurry, you know. I can just slouch about and take in a look
at the local scenery, you know?"
"Have you seen the local scenery?" asked the voice of Gargravarr.
"Er, no."
39
Zaphod clambered over the rubble, and rounded the corner of one of
the wrecked buildings that was obscuring his view. He looked out at the
landscape of Frogstar World B.
"Ah, OK," he said, "I'll just sort of slouch about then."
"No," said Gargravarr, "the Vortex is ready for you now. You must
come. Follow me."
"Er, yeah?" said Zaphod, "and how am I meant to do that?"
"I'll hum for you," said Gargravarr, "follow the humming."
A soft keening sound drifted through the air, a pale, sad sound that
seemed to be without any kind of focus. It was only by listening very
carefully that Zaphod was able to detect the direction from which it
was coming. Slowly, dazedly, he stumbled off in its wake. What else was
there to do?
The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place,
a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore.
Many would happily move to somewhere rather smaller of their own
devising, and this is what most beings in fact do.
For instance, in one corner of the Eastern Galactic Arm lies the large
forest planet Oglaroon, the entire "intelligent" population of which lives
permanently in one fairly small and crowded nut tree. In which tree they
are born, live, fall in love, carve tiny speculative articles in the bark on
the meaning of life, the futility of death and the importance of birth
control, fight a few extremely minor wars, and eventually die strapped
to the underside of some of the less accessible outer branches.
In fact the only Oglaroonians who ever leave their tree are those who are
hurled out of it for the heinous crime of wondering whether any of the
other trees might be capable of supporting life at all, or indeed whether
the other trees are anything other than illusions brought on by eating
too many Oglanuts.
Exotic though this behaviour may seem, there is no life form in the
Galaxy which is not in some way guilty of the same thing, which is why
the Total Perspective Vortex is as horrific as it is.
For when you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary
glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere
in it a tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which
says "You are here."
The grey plain stretched before Zaphod, a ruined, shattered plain. The
wind whipped wildly over it.
Visible in the middle was the steel pimple of the dome. This, gathered
Zaphod, was where he was going. This was the Total Perspective Vortex.
-
For further relevations everyone, please buy the book or borrow it from your local library. :)
