Дуглас Адамс – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy / Руководство для путешествующих автостопом по Галактике (страница 4)
“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].
The only place they registered was on a small black device called a Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic which blinked quietly. It lay in the darkness inside Ford Prefect’s leather backpack. The contents of his bag were quite interesting, in fact, and would have made any Earth physicist’s eyes pop out of his head. Besides the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic he had an Electronic Thumb – a short black rod, smooth, with a couple of switches at one end; he also had a device which looked like a large electronic calculator. This had about a hundred small buttons and a screen on which any of a million “pages” could immediately appear. It looked very complicated, and this was one of the reasons why its plastic cover had the words
Besides that, in Ford Prefect’s bag there were a few pens, a notepad, and a large bath towel from Marks & Spencer[46].
A towel, it says, is the most useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly because it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you travel across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant sandy beaches of Santraginus V; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow river Moth; wet it for use in fighting; wrap it round your head to avoid the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a stupid animal, it thinks that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal[47], and of course dry yourself with it if it’s still clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has great psychological value. For some reason, if a non-hitchhiker (
Lying quietly on top of the towel in Ford Prefect’s backpack, the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic began to blink more quickly. Miles above the surface of the planet the huge yellow somethings began to spread out.
“You got a towel with you?” said Ford Prefect suddenly to Arthur.
Arthur, struggling through his third pint, looked round at him. “Why? No. Should I have?” He had given up being surprised any longer.
Ford clicked his tongue in irritation. “Drink up[48],” he said.
At that moment the dull sound of a crash from outside was heard over the low hum of the pub, over the sound of the jukebox, over the sound of the man next to Ford drinking the whisky Ford had eventually bought him.
Arthur jumped to his feet. “What’s that?” he yelled.
“Don’t worry,” said Ford, “they haven’t started yet.”
“Thank God for that,” said Arthur and relaxed.
“It’s probably just your house being knocked down,” said Ford, finishing his last pint.
“What?” shouted Arthur. Suddenly Ford’s spell was broken. Arthur looked wildly around him and ran to the window.
“My God, they are! They’re knocking my house down. What the hell am I doing in the pub, Ford?”
“It hardly makes any difference at this stage,” said Ford, “let them have their fun.”
“Fun?” yelled Arthur. “Fun?” He quickly looked out of the window again to check if they were talking about the same thing. “Damn their fun!” he shouted and ran out of the pub angrily waving an almost empty beer glass. He made no friends at all in the pub that lunchtime.
“Stop, you vandals!” yelled Arthur. “Stop!”
Ford had to go after him. Turning quickly to the barman he asked for four packets of peanuts.
“There you are, sir,” said the barman, putting the packets on the bar, “twenty-eight pence if you’d be so kind.”
Ford was very kind – he gave the barman another five-pound note and told him to keep the change. The barman looked at it and then looked at Ford. He suddenly shivered: he had a momentary sensation which he didn’t understand because no one on Earth had ever had it before.
In moments of great stress, every life form gives out a tiny signal. This signal simply means how far that being is from the place of his birth. On Earth it is never possible to be further than sixteen thousand miles from your birthplace, which really isn’t very far, so such signals are too tiny to be noticed. Ford Prefect was at this moment under great stress, and he was born 600 light years away in the vicinity of Betelgeuse.
For a moment the barman was hit by a shocking sensation of distance. He didn’t know what it meant, but he looked at Ford Prefect with respect.
“Are you serious, sir?” he said in a small whisper that made the whole pub silent. “You think the world’s going to end?”
“Yes,” said Ford.
“This afternoon?”
“Yes,” he said happily, “in less than two minutes.”
The barman couldn’t believe it, but he couldn’t believe the sensation he had just had either.
“Isn’t there anything we can do about it then?” he said.
“No, nothing,” said Ford, stufnif g the peanuts into his pockets.
Someone in the bar suddenly laughed at how stupid everyone had become. The man sitting next to Ford was a bit drunk by now. His looked up at Ford.
“I thought,” he said, “that if the world was going to end, we had to lie down or put a paper bag over our head or something.”
“If you like, yes,” said Ford.
“That’s what they told us in the army,” said the man and looked back down at his whisky. “Will that help?” asked the barman.
“No,” said Ford and gave him a friendly smile. “Excuse me, I’ve got to go.” With a wave, he left.
The pub was silent for a moment longer, failing to understand that in a minute and a half they would suddenly turn into hydrogen, ozone and carbon monoxide[49].
Then the barman cleared his throat. He heard himself say: “Last orders, please.”
The huge yellow machines began to go down and to move faster.
Ford knew they were there. This wasn’t the way he had wanted it.
Running up the road, Arthur had almost reached his house. He didn’t notice how cold it had suddenly become, he didn’t notice the wind, he didn’t notice the sudden rain. He didn’t notice anything but the bulldozers rolling over what had been his home.
“You barbarians!” he yelled. “I’ll sue the council!”
Ford was running after him very fast. Very, very fast.
“I’ll kill you!” yelled Arthur.
Arthur didn’t notice that the men were actually running away from the bulldozers; he didn’t notice that Mr. Prosser was staring into the sky. What Mr. Prosser had noticed was those huge yellow somethings that were moving through the clouds. Impossibly huge yellow somethings.
“And then I’ll do it again!” yelled Arthur, still running, “until I… until you…”
Arthur tripped and fell on his back. At last he noticed that something was going on. He looked up.
“What the hell’s that?” he shrieked.
Whatever it was moved across the sky and tore it apart with terrible noise.
It’s difficult to say exactly what the people on the surface of the planet were doing now because they didn’t really know what they were doing. None of it made any sense: running into houses, running out of houses, screaming at the noise. All around the world city streets filled with people, cars crashed into each other as the noise fell on them.