Life, the Universe and Everything

It did something which mattresses very rarely bother to do. Summoning every bit of its strength, it reared its oblong body, heaved it up into the air and held it quivering there for a few seconds whilst it peered through the mist over the reeds at the part of the marsh which Marvin had indicated, observing, without disappointment, that it was exactly the same as every other part of the marsh. The effort was too much, and it flodged back into its pool, deluging Marvin with smelly mud, moss and weeds.

– I was a celebrity, - droned the robot sadly, - for a short while on account of my miraculous and bitterly resented escape from a fate almost as good as death in the heart of a blazing sun. You can guess from my condition, - he added, - how narrow my escape was. I was rescued by a scrap-metal merchant, imagine that. Here I am, brain the size of… never mind.

He trudged savagely for a few seconds.

– He it was who fixed me up with this leg. Hateful, isn’t it? He sold me to a Mind Zoo. I was the star exhibit. I had to sit on a box and tell my story whilst people told me to cheer up and think positive. “Give us a grin, little robot,” they would shout at me, “give us a little chuckle.” I would explain to them that to get my face to grin wold take a good couple of hours in a workshop with a wrench, and that went down very well.

– The speech, - urged the mattress. - I long to hear of the speech you gave in the marshes.

– There was a bridge built across the marshes. A cyberstructured hyperbridge, hundreds of miles in length, to carry ion-buggies and freighters over the swamp.

– A bridge? - quirruled the mattress. - Here in the swamp?

– A bridge, - confirmed Marvin, - here in the swamp. It was going to revitalize the economy of the Squornshellous System. They spent the entire economy of the Squornshellous System building it. They asked me to open it. Poor fools.

It began to rain a little, a fine spray slid through the mist.

– I stood on the platform. For hundreds of miles in front of me, and hundreds of miles behind me, the bridge stretched.

– Did it glitter? - enthused the mattress.

– It glittered.

– Did it span the miles majestically?

– It spanned the miles majestically.

– Did it stretch like a silver thread far out into the invisible mist?

– Yes, - said Marvin. - Do you want to hear this story?

– I want to hear your speech, - said the mattress.

– This is what I said. I said, “I would like to say that it is a very great pleasure, honour and privilege for me to open this bridge, but I can’t because my lying circuits are all out of commission. I hate and despise you all. I now declare this hapless cyberstructure open to the unthinkable abuse of all who wantonly cross her.” And I plugged myself into the opening circuits.

Marvin paused, remembering the moment.

The mattress flurred and glurried. It flolloped, gupped and willomied, doing this last in a particularly floopy way.

– Voon, - it wurfed at last. - And it was a magnificent occasion?

– Reasonably magnificent. The entire thousand-mile-long bridge spontaneously folded up its glittering spans and sank weeping into the mire, taking everybody with it.

There was a sad and terrible pause at this point in the conversation during which a hundred thousand people seemed unexpectedly to say “wop” and a team of white robots descended from the sky like dandelion seeds drifting on the wind in tight military formation. For a sudden violent moment they were all there, in the swamp, wrenching Marvin’s false leg off, and then they were gone again in their ship, which said “foop”.

– You see the sort of thing I have to contend with? - said Marvin to the gobbering mattress.

Suddenly, a moment later, the robots were back again for another violent incident, and this time when they left, the mattress was alone in the swamp. He flolloped around in astonishment and alarm. He almost lurgled in fear. He reared himself to see over the reeds, but there was nothing to see, just more reeds. He listened, but there was no sound on the wind beyond the now familiar sound of half-crazed etymologists calling distantly to each other across the sullen mire.

Chapter 10

The body of Arthur Dent span.

The Universe shattered into a million glittering fragments around it, and each particular shard span silently through the void, reflecting on its silver surface some single searing holocaust of fire and destruction.

And then the blackness behind the Universe exploded, and each particular piece of blackness was the furious smoke of hell.

And the nothingness behind the blackness behind the Universe erupted, and behind the nothingness behind the blackness behind the shattered Universe was at last the dark figure of an immense man speaking immense words.

– These, then, - said the figure, speaking from an immensely comfortable chair, - were the Krikkit Wars, the greatest devastation ever visited upon our Galaxy. What you have experienced…

Slartibartfast floated past, waving.