iii. secret secret, I've got a secret
There are places in the galaxy practically made for clandestine conversations. Dangrabad Beta, for example, where the sandstorms howl and rage for weeks on end, and you can be assured that no-one but you and your fellow conversationalist is bonkers enough to be out-of-doors. (You can also be assured of finding sand everywhere you'd expect, later on, and everywhere you wouldn't. Yes, even there.) Or Squornshellous Gamma, where the native cushions have a memory spanning just five seconds, so any sentence they happen to overhear ends up forgotten before it even reaches the full stop.
The interior of a semi-sentient time-and-space ship that is in constant telepathic contact with her owner/partner/pilot is notably nowhere to be found on a list of such places. But luckily for Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent, the Doctor was far too busy to pay them any mind; he was currently up to his ears in a clandestine conversation of his own.
"He thinks Earth was destroyed in 1978," Rose said. "So we're going to go save it, yeah?"
The Doctor sighed. "Oh, Rose. You didn't tell him. . ."
"No!"
"Had to ask, didn't I?" Rose glared, but the Doctor, who had been glared at by things with a lot more eyes than a female human, kept talking. "So, no nasty paradoxes lurking, good. What does that planet of yours need saving from this time?"
"Vogons, he said."
"Oh, hoo-bloody-ray. The Vogons. Get ready, Rose, for the most excruciatingly mind-numbingly dull bit of planet-saving you'll ever be involved in."
"What, why? What're we going to do?"
"How are you at filling in forms?"
Elsewhere:
"I said, he's a Time Lord." This time, Ford spoke slowly and enunciated his words very carefully. He was, after all, talking to a human.
"I'm trying to sleep." Arthur spoke in much the same manner, curiously enough.
"A Time Lord," Ford repeated, mostly for his own benefit. Out of the Doctor's presence, doubts were sneaking in. Logic and reason, with whom he'd previously been on quite good terms, were callously crashing a party to which they hadn't been invited. Thoughts like, 'Recreational Illusions are bigger on the inside too' and 'just because he says it's a TARDIS doesn't mean it's a TARDIS' were scarfing up bacon-wrapped prawns and cracking open the best booze.
It would have been splendidly affirming if Arthur's immediate response had been something like, 'oh yes, I spotted it as well,' but, Ford reminded himself, he was a product of a civilization that had actually coined - and worse, held onto - a phrase as staggeringly demented as 'ignorance is bliss.'
"A Time Lord? Good, he can give me the last quarter of an hour back," Arthur said. He settled a pillow over his face with some emphasis.
Ford flicked it away, and proceeded to do what he often did in situations like this. It was partly a matter of authorial pride, partly an issue of company loyalty, and partly a result of the Imperial Galactic Government's successful Wellness for Everything That Moves! campaign (Ford was well aware of how dangerous constantly explaining things to Arthur might be for his blood pressure). He had a hunt-round in his satchel, then dropped an open electronic book squarely onto Arthur's blanket-covered middle.
It lay there, rising and falling with disinterested human breath after disinterested human breath.
Hissing between his teeth, Ford took it back, typed in two words, and pressed a red button. He then held the book in the vicinity of Arthur's ear, keeping his finger on a button marked with a little picture of a megaphone.
Some information was lost during the yelling that followed (which started out as wordless noise and shifted into some of the gentlest profanity to be found in the Ultra-Complete Maximegalon Dictionary of Every Language Ever, words which indeed on many progressive planets would be deemed suitable for the ears of infants and grandmothers alike), so Ford repeated the process.
"Time Lords," said the book, in tones which were deep, important, and on the awed side. "A race of near-immortal and near-omnipotent beings, who, if they did indeed exist, can be considered a case study for the importance of qualifying words such as 'near;' and if they didn't, are a well-developed figment of the galactic imagination. Whichever, you won't run into one the next time you go down the shops.
"Time Lords may or may not have lived on the planet Gallifrey, which may or may not have been located at the galactic coordinates of 1001100 by 02. . . ."
"You see?" Ford asked. He closed the book with a click.
Arthur didn't. However, as most of his attention was focused on breathing in a deep, relaxing manner and ignoring the existence of both Ford and Ford's bloody book, no clarification was requested.
"Just imagine it, being the one to re-write that article," Ford said.
"What, to strike through all the mays and may nots?" said Arthur, proving he would win no major awards for either deep breathing or ignoring.
Ford Prefect rarely detected sarcasm, since they didn't have it where he came from. Arthur Dent often fell back on sarcasm when he was worried, confused, upset, puzzled, distressed, and a host of similar adjectives which, particularly since he'd been forced to take up space travel, pertained to him with depressing frequency. Their continued friendship proved that whichever Earthman had first applied physics to social philosophy with the words 'opposites attract' had significantly fewer flies on him than that 'ignorance is bliss' fellow.
"Exactly," Ford said.
"And the bit about not seeing them down the shops?"
"To tell the galaxy what they look like, how they dress, what they eat, what they do of an evening. . ." Ford was on a roll. "That kind of scoop could be just the thing for someone's career - there could be a pay rise in it, and possibly an all-expenses-paid mini-break at a resort on Eroticon Six. . . ."
"Just imagine it, him finding out what you're up to, then tossing us out into the vacuum of space. . . Which, by the way, I've decided is not among the experiences I enjoy."
Lost in a personal vision of the happenings of an excitingly mature nature waiting on Eroticon Six, Ford offered no response to these dark mutterings.
"Where is this Time Lord taking us?" Arthur asked, ramping his volume up a notch. "If my asking doesn't put you out?"
Ford gave Arthur one of his good, long stares, the sort that had been known to make many a human's train of thought derail quietly and without fuss, crowded emergency rooms, or press conferences by rail authorities. Unfortunately for his purposes, Arthur still had his eyes contrarily closed.
"Where is he taking us?" Arthur repeated. "Back to Beeblebrox? Or did you choose some lovely planet for us to stop off and probably get killed on?"
"Ah," said Ford.
"Erm," said Ford.
"I don't think it works like that," said Ford.
"I don't think I should much mind if we were to never see Beeblebrox again, but I would feel quite rude not saying farewell to Trillian. . . what do you mean, it doesn't work like that?"
"Don't worry," Ford said in his best trust-me voice, "when Zaphod comes back to pick us up, the fact that we aren't where he dropped us off won't be any problem. Not for the Heart of Gold."
Arthur gave up his quest for blissful delta sleep and the restorative properties thereof (which the Galactic Government tended to downplay in its attempts to improve the health of its citizens, because it's hard to raise gross global products - and, similarly, the taxes responsible for paying salaries of duly hired government officials - when the populace is asleep all the bloody time). He sat up.
"Ford," Arthur said as sternly as possible, "exactly where are we going?"
iv. it's five o'clock somewhere
If anyone had asked (and of course, no-one did), Arthur would have told them that he'd assumed it would be breakfast. That seemed to be the meal to offer after you'd sent people off to a room to, quote, kip down out of the way. And if they'd asked, he would have told them that when humans slept for a while, once they'd finally got rid of their non-question-answering alien so-called friends, they woke up programmed to want very specific things. Things that came from chickens, and pigs, and leafy plant matter. It was biological, and probably highly scientific.
Surely, Arthur thought at the time, surely there would have been tea, if there'd been breakfast.
(Later Arthur would think, in tones of the righteous just, that there would have been a lot less drunkenness and associated unpleasantness if there'd been tea.)
Ford set the tone for the proceedings, opening and closing cabinets til he found a large and dusty bottle of Ol' Janx Spirit. The suspected Time Lord watched this invasion of his kitchen with an expression that might have been sardonic amusement, or might have been the prelude to Arthur and Ford's re-introduction to the cold dead blackness of space. Arthur stood close to Rose, because he thought she seemed the type to raise objections to that sort of thing.
The Doctor's eyes lit upon the bottle, and he grinned a huge, mad, somewhat unsettling grin. "Fantastic!" he proclaimed.
Rose rolled her eyes. "If it's all the same to you lot," she said, "I'll have my dinner before I burn my tastebuds off."
"Sure it won't be an improvement?" the Doctor asked. "Seeing what you've got for us and all?"
"Shut it, you," Rose said, giving him a good bump with her shoulder.
Arthur watched them, trying to work things out. So the Doctor was a member of an almost immortal and omnipotent species that didn't exist, and Rose was one of those people who followed you round a department store because you couldn't be trusted looking through the racks on your own? And together they knocked around the universe in a bizarrely large police box?
Well, Arthur thought, feeling a puff of pride at just how much broadening he'd done over the course of all this travel, well all right, fair enough.
They ate. The aliens talked about the TARDIS, Ford fishing for information like a world-class angler who doesn't want the fish to figure out just how little he knows about, well, whatever fish know about. The Doctor gobbled up every morsel of bait, taking full advantage of the opportunity to expound upon his ship's wonderfulness. At the other end of the table, Arthur was trying to figure out where Rose and the Doctor had got the pie and mash and parsley sauce from, because that planet would be worth a visit; Rose said it was hard to say, but she was very glad he liked it.
When they were finished, Arthur, being both polite and deviously ingratiating, offered to do the washing up. Rose laughed.
"Best thing about living on a space ship," she said, opening a door to reveal stacks of plates and glasses. "The cupboards are sonic dishwashers."
Ford wasted no time on being impressed. "I don't need another glass," he said, waving vaguely toward Rose and her cupboard. He drained his cup of water in one gulp and waved it as well. "This'll do fine."
Alcohol is, of course, the cause of more effects than almost anything else in the universe. On a small, easily-overlooked planet which Arthur Dent held in some regard, a civilization that once spanned two million square miles and five hundred toga-wearing years went to bits because the people who were supposed to be running things found drinking fermented fruit juices and engaging in a variety of moistly interpersonal activities far more interesting than all that governing business. Something quite similar occurred in the Omega Centauri cluster, seventeen thousand light-years away; that empire stretched across three star systems, and their activities had rather different ins and outs, but on the whole your average galactic history student would have a hard time telling the two societies apart on a multiple-guess quiz.
(It can be argued that the activities mentioned in the previous paragraph have propelled along more of history than have fluid spirits; but since so often they really only get going because of alcohol anyway, it's not worth mithering about.)
Ford did the honours for everyone, snapping his towel out of his bag and wrapping it carefully round his hand before pouring out. Arthur assumed this was simply because he was Ford. This was a mistake. If Arthur had known it was a measure taken to keep the skin safe from any contact with the alcohol, as suggested on the friendly little warning label, he probably wouldn't have had as much as he did.
Which was about half a sip: Arthur touched the tip of his tongue to the wicked-looking contents of his glass, coughed, went bug-eyed, and announced that water would do him just fine, thanks. Unless, of course, there happened to be any t. . .
But at that moment Rose tried her own glass, sputtered, flailed, and flushed red up to her hair.
"Could've told you so," the Doctor said, then added something unflattering about apes that reminded Arthur strongly of Beeblebrox.
Rose lifted her chin and shot the Doctor a Look, one with a capital letter. Clearly, she wanted to see him do better.
The Doctor grinned back. Clearly, he could.
And so the aliens began showing the humans how it was done. The first drink was knocked back easily by the suspected Time Lord; his lips pulled back into the barest of grimaces. Ford followed. His shoulders twitched in the tiniest shudder before he put his empty glass back on the table.
"Well aged," Ford said, after a moment.
"Like him, you mean?" Rose said. She pushed back her chair and headed for the door.
Arthur watched her go and wondered if it would be all right to follow her out. Given the choice between sitting round with a couple of drunk aliens or chatting with a nice sympathetic girl from his own planet, well, there was no choice. But she might be headed somewhere that company would not be welcome, like the loo, or where company might be suggestive of things that Arthur actually wouldn't mind suggesting if he thought it wouldn't be hazardous to his health, like her bedroom.
As Rose crossed the room (which was one of the largest kitchens Arthur had ever been in; if he had been more domestically inclined, he would have done some envious slobbering over the yards of cupboards and countertops built in to the curving golden walls), Arthur found himself pondering two very important questions.
One, did alien doctors take oaths not to deliberately harm any other lifeforms?
And two, did the alien with his own flash ship always have to get the girl?
"What, time for Footballer's Wives?" the Doctor asked.
"Should've seen him when Tanya swapped the babies and hers got smothered by Amber's dog," Rose commented to the room at large. "Stroppy for days, he was." She turned to the Doctor. "No, I'm going to get something to make watching you two slosh yourselves a little less boring."
The something was playing cards, and Rose returned with them a few minutes later. "Here," she said. "Some for you," she dropped one pack in front of the Doctor, giving him a light smack on the head at the same time, "and some for us." She settled down with the other at Arthur's end of the table.
"Don't want to play with me?" the Doctor asked.
"You cheat."
"If using the brain in your head is cheating in your century. . . ."
Rose rolled her eyes and turned her back. "What do you want to play?" she asked Arthur. "I gave him psychic cards, but ours are regular."
"Rummy?" Arthur said. He'd always known where he was with rummy.
"Rummy it is."
When events are related in a narrative fashion, there are always choices to be made. From here, should the focus be Arthur's ten-game winning streak? If so, should his every hand be recounted, and his strategic card-playing decisions? Or the ways in which Rose ensured his success, card by card?
A valid option, but a boring one. Even Arthur, flush in his victory, would agree.
Drunkenness and associated unpleasantness it is.
Because Ford had a great deal of practise at this sort of thing, and because no-one quite knew exactly how the Doctor's physiology worked, including the microscopic alcohol particles zipping around in his bloodstream, it took a lot of drinks. And a lot of time, too, if you can say that time passes when you're hanging out in something known as a vortex of it.
But it did happen, and finally Ford decided that the moment was right. Mostly he decided this because the Doctor was, to his eyes, now manifesting in the form of a large, intense glowworm, radiating black everywhere except his head, which shone a sort of peachish-tan. The fact that the Doctor felt comfortable enough to show himself in what could only be the natural state of all Time Lords struck Ford as encouraging. Nothing about it struck Ford as odd, not one thing, which could just go to show that Ford was a seasoned galactic traveller. . . or more likely, could indicate that the bottle of Janx Spirit had done its work, and could retire peacefully back to its cupboard, content in a job well done.
"'s true you know," Ford said, bobbing his head. "This," he waved an arm expansively, "this is boring. But secrets are interesting, want to tell secrets?"
"Go ahead," the glowworm said, gesturing politely.
"Ah." Ford was more or less blindsided. He pondered. He was meant to be cleverly extracting information, he'd known that a minute ago, but he was also, as has been alluded, very drunk. Searching his soggy, suggestible brain cells, he finally came up with a secret to tell. "Ah!" he said, and this time it was a triumphant ah. "My dad survived the collapse of the Hrung. Only one."
The glowworm was impressed. Ford could tell. He glowed, darkly.
"Doctor, what's a Hr-?" Rose's attention had been captured by the word 'secrets.'
"You're from Betelgeuse Seven?" the Doctor asked.
"Been there?"
"Think so. Very rocky? Lot like a quarry?" Ford nodded. "Yeah," the Doctor said, "think I've been there."
"Zarking Hrung," Ford said, shaking his head. He poured enough liquor in his glass to lay Arthur out for a week, then drank it down.
Arthur's own drink was abandoned, and his jaw had dropped so far it was in danger of disconnecting from his skull. He'd always assumed that Ford was from a really happening sort of planet, kind of like Los Angeles with spaceships. Rocks had not heavily featured in any story he'd ever heard from Ford Prefect or Zaphod Beeblebrox. Granted, Arthur had never listened all that carefully to any story, either. Bypassing tact in favour of clarity, he said, "You grew up in a wasteland?"
"No," Ford said, with an extravagant, tangible patience, "the society of Betelgeuse Five is very advanced. Lightyears ahead of your lot in all respects. Well," he added after some consideration, "ahead of where you were before, you know. . . ." Also zipping past tact, Ford made a popping sound and an exploding sort of gesture.
Arthur frowned. "But you said-"
Ford waved a hand at Rose, and addressed the twinkling Time Lord. "Is yours the same?"
"Rose? No. She's got a sharp little mind." The Doctor's grin was proud, but a careful observer would have noted that it did not reach his eyes.
Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent are not to be confused with careful observers.
"You're lucky she's at this end of the table," Rose said. Not letting indignation get in the way of pride, she sat up a little taller, and said helpfully to Arthur, "His dad moved to Betelgeuse Five before he was born." She turned to Ford. "Have you ever been there?"
He shook his head. "Dead planets give me the creeps."
"Bit depressing, I should imagine," Arthur said. "Seeing your planet like that, just. . . just. . . ."
"Dust and rocks," the Doctor said. And here, a careful observer would have noted that his tone would not have been out of place in a graveyard, and might have wondered if Time Lords had a tendency towards substance-induced melancholy.
Arthur was grateful for the Doctor's sepulchral input, because he was finding it strangely difficult to string words together on his own. He had got used to carrying around a certain level of planet-related (or more accurately, lack-of-planet-related) angst and woe, and knew how to keep his head above it, but he suddenly found himself hit with a wave that would have drowned all but the best surfers.
Seeing as he was surrounded by telepathic aliens with chemically-muzzied brains and serious planetary issues of their own, he was lucky to still be breathing.
There was a long silence, in which some furniture moved, Ford continued to gently hallucinate, and Arthur pulled himself together and realised he was really rather peeved. Not only did Ford not give a toss about the Earth's destruction, he apparently didn't care about the destruction of his own planet either. Arthur decided that this just went to show that there was something deeply flawed at the very center of Ford. He never considered the hypothesis that there was nothing wrong with Ford's center, at least nothing more than usual for your average sentient lifeform, and that perhaps Ford simply had a very thick outer crust.
It was, Arthur further decided, typical. Just typical. Why was it that aliens had no proper feelings? And why had Rose scooted her chair away from his and very close to the Doctor's?
Rose broke the silence. She did it quite suddenly, as if she'd just become aware of a terrible wrong that had to be righted without delay. She did it with exclamation points. "You two haven't seen the swimming baths yet!"
"Well, no, but -" Arthur began.
"You'll love 'em! The water's gorgeous, really perfect."
"No, really, it's not a problem -"
"Oh, you'll be sorry if you don't," Rose said firmly. "Go on, out that door, fourth right, second left, then just past the boot cupboard on the right."
Arthur goggled. Was she going to give him paper? A biro? Anything?
Ford obediently scraped back his chair and wobbled to his feet. "Well, come on, Arthur," he said. Humming what Arthur failed to recognise as a traditional Praxilbetan bathing song, he began weaving a path toward the door.
Arthur looked at Rose. She said, "Go on," again, and made a shooing motion with her hands. Arthur looked at the Doctor, and realised that he really did want to be somewhere else. Anywhere would do.
He hustled out the door, catching Ford up in the corridor just outside. Which was good, because as places to stagger to alone and intoxicated went, bodies of water sludged around at the bottom of the list. Arthur hoped that he was up to an aquatic rescue, should the need arise. They'd be all right, he thought, as long as his feet could touch.
As Arthur Dent has never been known to go in for descriptive flights of fancy or extended metaphors, it will have to be said for him that the Doctor, in the moment that Arthur looked at him, was dark and deep, a bottomless pool; and it will further be observed that Rose, though not of infinite height, has in the past proven herself a very good swimmer.
So they should be all right, too.
Will Ford Prefect enjoy an all-expenses-paid mini-break on Eroticon Six? If so, will galactic decency standards allow his adventures there to be recounted? When will this promised unpleasantness occur, and just how unpleasant will it be? Where are our travellers headed, anyway? You've no chance of finding out if you don't come back for part three.
