The Salmon of Doubt

“Holy dingo’s dos,” snarled Zaphod, “there are aorist rods on board ...!” Aorist rods were devices used in a now happily abandoned form of energy production. When the hunt for new sources of energy had at one point got particularly frantic, one bright young chap suddenly spotted that one place which had never used up all its available energy was—the past. And with the sudden rush of blood to the head that such insights tend to induce, he invented a way of mining it that very same night, and within a year huge tracts of the past were being drained of all their energy and simply wasting away. Those who claimed that the past should be left unspoilt were accused of indulging in an extremely expensive form of sentimentality. The past provided a very cheap, plentiful and clean source of energy, there could always be a few Natural Past Reserves set up if anyone wanted to pay for their upkeep, and as for the claim that draining the past impoverished the present, well, maybe it did, slightly, but the effects were immeasurable and you really had to keep a sense of proportion.

It was only when it was realised that the present really was being impoverished, and that the reason for it was that those selfish plundering wastrel bastards up in the future were doing exactly the same thing, that everyone realised that every single aorist rod, and the terrible secret of how they were made would have to be utterly and forever destroyed. They claimed it was for the sake of their grandparents and grandchildren, but it was of course for the sake of their grandparent’s grandchildren, and their grandchildren’s grandparents. The official from the Safety and Civil Reassurance Administration gave a dismissive shrug.

“They’re perfectly safe,” he said. He glanced up at Zaphod and suddenly said with uncharacteristic frankness, “there’s worse than that on board. At least,” he added, tapping at one of the computer screens, “I hope it’s on board.” The other official rounded on him sharply.

“What the hell do you think you’re saying?” he snapped.

The first shrugged again. He said “It doesn’t matter. He can say what he likes. No one would believe him. It’s why we chose to use him rather than do anything official isn’t it? The more wild the story he tells, the more it’ll sound like he’s some hippy adventurer making it up. He can even say that we said this and it’ll make him sound like a paranoid.” He smiled pleasantly at Zaphod who was seething in a suit full of sick. “You may accompany us,” he told him, “if you wish.”

He said the same thing as they passed holds containing chemical weapons so powerful that a teaspoonful could fatally infect an entire planet. He said the same thing as they passed holds containing zeta-active compounds so powerful that a teaspoonful could blow up a whole planet. He said the same thing as they passed holds containing theta-active compounds so powerful that a teaspoonful could irradiate a whole planet. “I’m glad I’m not a planet,” muttered Zaphod.

“You’d have nothing to fear,” assured the official from the Safety and Civil Reassurance Administration,

“planets are very safe. Provided,” he added—and paused. They were approaching the hold nearest to the point where the back of the Starship Billion Year Bunker was broken. The corridor here was twisted and deformed, and the floor was damp and sticky in patches. “Ho hum,” he said, “ho very much hum.”

“What’s in this hold?” demanded Zaphod.

“By-products,” said the official, clamming up again.

“By-products ...” insisted Zaphod, quietly, “of what?”

Neither official answered. Instead, they examined the hold door very carefully and saw that its seals were twisted apart by the forces that had deformed the whole corridor. One of them touched the door lightly. It swung open to his touch. There was darkness inside, with just a couple of dim yellow lights deep within it.

“Of what?” hissed Zaphod.

The leading official turned to the other.

“There’s an escape capsule,” he said, “that the crew were to use to abandon ship before jettisoning it into the black hole,” he said. “I think it would be good to know that it’s still there.” The other official nodded and left without a word.

The first official quietly beckoned Zaphod in. The large dim yellow lights glowed about twenty feet from them.

“The reason,” he said, quietly “why everything else in this ship is, I maintain, safe, is that no one is really crazy enough to use them. No one. At least no one that crazy would ever get near them. Anyone that mad or dangerous ring very deep alarm bells. People may be stupid but they’re not that stupid.”

“By-products,” hissed Zaphod again,—he had to hiss in order that his voice shouldn’t be heard to tremble—“of what.”

“Er, Designer People.”

“What?”

“The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation were awarded a huge research grant to design and produce synthetic personalities to order. The results were uniformly disastrous. All the “people” and