Chapter 7 – Five Pin Plug
Ford lay back, sulking a little. He had rather hoped that Arthur would be furtively looking up something related to their current little problem, i.e. what to do about each other and the fact that everyone else was drawing what Ford had to admit were probably correct conclusions about them. He picked up the thumb that was lying next to him on the mattress, still in pieces. He blew down the empty tube once more for luck, then carefully slipped the battery back into the case, poised and ready to slap his hands back over his ears if the appalling wailing recommenced. It didn't, and he slid the cover thankfully back into place and pressed the maintenance button. The thumb blooped dully and let out a low hum,
'Service lines are out of order,' he said to Arthur, who grunted disinterestedly, studying the diagram currently gracing the screen of the Guide with more absorption than Ford thought was strictly necessary.
'Green to the terminal nearest to the wire entry point on the left. Purple through the channel next to it...'
'Arthur,' said Ford warningly,
'Blue to the bottom terminal on the right, but not before you've pulled the red and the yellow through the channel that runs underneath it. The purple to the...'
'Arthur, stop it,' said Ford, shivering. The sun was starting to go down and the stars were appearing in the sky, seeming to make the wind stronger and colder, and giving Ford an itchy tingle in his hitchhiker's nerves. He wanted to be on the move, and the prospect of a night spent with an Arthur Dent who not only refused to speak to him, but who was also determined to read him the Hitchhiker's Guide to How to do Just About Anything was not appealing. Especially if he was going to be cold as well.
'...Top left terminal, the red through the groove in the yellow to the right top terminal, then connect the yellow.'
Ford sighed dramatically and tried to pull the book out of Arthur's hands. Arthur gripped so tightly that his knuckles turned a yellowish white in the diminishing light, and his eyes never moved from the screen.
'Swing the cable grip over the top of the first fuse bank, taking care not to snag it in the yellow cable, which will still be slightly loose until the cable grip has been secured. Make sure the red pin is well bedded and is in contact with the end of the second fuse bank before tightening the cable grip. Holding the cable in one hand, using the thumb to hold the grip in place, and gripping the pins securely in their sockets with the other hand, tighten the screws in the grip evenly on both sides by using two screwdrivers at once, or a ScrewPro Double-Headed Driver ®.
'I've run out of hands,' said Arthur mournfully, and for the first time since the awkward moment had been averted, looked at Ford.
Ford was shivering hard and looking fairly peeved. His hair had now dried in the breeze, but large clumps of it were still stuck with gungey black mud to the sides of his face. Arthur supposed that he himself probably didn't look all that much better, but short hair works better with the whole mud look, and at least he probably didn't have that faint bluish tinge of cold about his lips.
Ah. Yes. Probably worth doing something about that actually. Ford had wrapped his towel about his shoulders, but frankly, in its present, mud-crackly condition, its powers of insulation were demonstrably severely diminished. The fact that Arthur was not suffering similarly had largely to do with the fact that, unlike a towel, his dressing gown had been made out of wool, which was designed to keep sheep, even muddy sheep, nice and warm in the middle of highland winters. It, therefore, retained its powers of heat-preservation under these extreme conditions and was large enough to wrap him warmly and leave plenty over for air-spaces and other things that he had been taught were good for keeping warm. Or indeed, for wrapping up a friend who is suffering from inadequate towelage on an alien planet where towel-shops are few and far between. Arthur's own towel, stuffed in his dressing gown pocket, was probably in an even worse state than Ford's, not having had the benefit of being waved vigorously in the air as a signal to passing ice-cream vans, so any thought of offering that as an alternative was useless. There was nothing else for it, he would have to offer Ford a space in his gown, and that would mean being very close to Ford and that was a situation which would require a lot of will-power to control. Ford was stuffing his thumb back into his satchel, and looking at Arthur in a hurt sort of way out of the corner of his eye. Arthur cleared his throat and tried to find a satisfactory way to phrase his suggestion, without it sounding too suggestive. The longer he thought, the less suitable any of the possibilities sounded, and the more irritable Ford appeared to become. In fact, if he carried on like this, thought Arthur, Ford would be in such a bad mood, he wouldn't have to worry about this leading anywhere...inappropriate. Nevertheless, looking at the state of his companion, Arthur felt it would be mean in the extreme to hold out just in order to create this eventuality. Having dismissed 'Would you like to get inside my dressing gown?' and 'You look cold, come and snuggle up to me,' as being on the wrong side of mis-interpretable, he eventually settled for,
'You're shivering, get in here.'
Actually, it probably lacked the finesse he would have liked, but perhaps that was just as well. Ford gave him a look that said 'About time, too,' and shuffled closer. Arthur held his gown open and held himself in a reserved huddle of which a Victorian British Gentleman stuck in a crowded railway carriage would have been proud. Ford tucked himself in under Arthur's right arm and hauled the dressing gown front over him. Arthur hung in suspense for a couple of moments, uncertain what to do with his right arm, but then he realised that it was pointless attempting to keep it in the air all night, and brought it down to rest on Ford's side. Ford shivered against him, and Arthur's natural instinct made him hold him tighter, trying to stop the vibrations by sheer force.
'Arthur,' said Ford at last, when his teeth had stopped chattering enough for him to get coherent words out, 'You are going to start talking to me again soon, aren't you.' He sounded matter-of-fact rather than querulous. Arthur tilted his head to look down at Ford, whose head was resting on his shoulder in a very familiar way. In fact, Ford's head had physically rested on his shoulder like this on a number of occasions in the past, notably when Ford had been fairly drunk and Arthur had also been in a great enough state of inebriation not to care what Ford did, but it had never had the overtones that it seemed to have acquired tonight. The sun had now gone down completely and they were lying in the pale light of the stars and an obliging moon which was climbing steadily up from behind a hill, shedding more and more silvery light onto their faces.
Arthur grunted.
'Holy Zarquon!' said Ford in frustration, and turned away from Arthur, pulling the gown more tightly over his shoulder as he rolled into it. It didn't reach over his back where it pulled away from the left-hand front of the gown, and Arthur could almost see the cold start to seep into Ford's back. He grasped the left front panel in his hand and tucked it over them both, covering the gap. Ford shuffled a little, but didn't say anything. Arthur bit his cheek pensively. He couldn't spend the whole night like this. For one thing, having Ford turned on his side like this was cutting off the circulation in his arm, and for another...well, it was a little lonely. In fact, though he didn't want to think about it, given that they were all alone, in the semi-darkness, on an alien and therefore potentially dangerous planet, with a live mattress whiffling slightly under them, a hug might be nice.
'Sorry, Ford,' he whispered. Ford twitched, then rolled over and it seemed as if his blue eyes shone their colour through the greys and blacks of everything else,
'Zarking uncomfortable like that anyway,' he said with a slight grin that made the warning hairs on the back of Arthur's neck ready themselves for action. Arthur felt a slight lump grow in the back of his throat. Instinctive little impulses were firing off all over his brain and down his spine. In his head, over and over again, all he could hear was 'just kiss him, just kiss him...'
Ford untangled his arm and laid it across Arthur's chest,
'You don't mind, do you?' he asked, and Arthur shook his head, not really sure what he was agreeing with. Ford was fiddling with Arthur's collar, which seemed a strange thing to do unless he meant something by it. Arthur wondered whether he wanted Ford to mean something by it or not. It seemed that Ford didn't know either, because after a minute or two, he stopped fiddling and seemed to be scratching round for something to say, when he could have just gone to sleep.
Ford's face turned up towards Arthur's, and for a long time they were trapped, staring into each other's eyes, and something had to give. Ford took an uneven breath,
''Night Arthur,' he said. Arthur blinked and Ford's gaze was gone, his head was lying on his chest, and his eyes were closed. He couldn't bear it. Nothing was going to get him to sleep in this state and he had a feeling that Ford wasn't going to find it that easy either.
'Ford?' he asked quietly,
'What?' said Ford, without opening his eyes,
'I just wondered...um...' he stopped. He couldn't think of a single thing he needed to ask Ford. His brain scuttled off to hide in an embarrassed huddle in the corner of his skull while he cursed it for being so uninventive. Luckily, the unfinished question was enough to attract Ford's attention. He opened his eyes and twisted his head to look up at Arthur again. The look on Arthur's face made him raise his head and push himself back to get him more in focus. It was the expression of a man who desperately wants to take some action, but whose brain, and will, have gone into hiding. Ford looked confusedly at him,
'Arthur? Are you alright?' he asked. Arthur's mouth dropped open vacantly. Ford smirked and lifted his hand to Arthur's chin to push his mouth shut. The hand stayed on Arthur's chin. It refused to be taken away. It guided Arthur's chin closer to Ford. He felt his head move forward and his lips push out and touch Arthur's and lay the gentlest of kisses on his mouth. Then his brain regained control and he let go and laid his head back down on Arthur's chest, doing his best to pretend that nothing had happened.
Arthur lay rigid, with his eyes wide open and his mouth returned to its bemused-cod gape. There had to be something you did at moments like this. He was sure of it. He had read it in books...not quite like this of course...most of the books Arthur read, when they touched on the subject at all, involved a man and a woman. And it was usually the man who did the unexpected, or at least unannounced, kissing, and Arthur didn't want to be classed as a woman. And the man usually spoke to the woman afterwards – at least, he did not lay his head down upon her ample bosom and start to make sounds like he was going straight off to sleep. He jolly well followed it up with a little light caressing, some sweet-talking into her ear. Just a bit of gazing into each other's eyes would have been better than nothi...
Arthur gasped lightly to himself and squeezed his eyes shut again. He hadn't meant that. He definitely hadn't meant that. And neither, it appeared, had Ford, since he was still making little preparatory grunting noises into Arthur's chest. Arthur flicked his eyes open and looked down at the silver-black shadow of Ford's head. He was going to sleep. He was actually going to sleep. He had kissed Arthur, and now he was going to sleep. Well ,dash it all, Arthur was not going to stand for that. A peeved sort of emotion was taking hold of his brain. It wasn't the fact of the kiss, which, let's face it, had been sort-of in the air for a while now, however much he had tried to ignore it. It was the fact that Ford had done it and was now letting them slip back to square one, if not worse.
'Well,' thought Arthur, 'I'm not having it.'
He pulled his left hand out of his dressing gown pocket and poked Ford hard in the shoulder. Ford gave a pained grunting sound and buried his head further into Arthur's chest. Arthur poked him again,
'Ow!' said Ford, 'Stop poking me!' Arthur let a little premonition stumble briefly across his mind before he spoke,
'Ford. I refuse to let you do that to me and then just go off to sleep.'
His brain ran out of words at the same moment that it realised he had been speaking coherently without its permission. Ford opened one eye and looked warily up at him,
'Do what?' he asked menacingly. Arthur wasn't quite certain what the menace was for, but suspected it had something to do with embarrassment. Everything he could think of doing certainly did. He thought of all the things he could say, all the things he could do. In the stories, the party occupying Arthur's position would let out a tirade of righteous anger at his treatment. They would sit up, expelling the other party from the warmth of their dressing gown and refuse to help them any more until an apology had been forthcoming. Or, alternatively, and depending very much on the sort of book it happened to be, they would grab said other party on each side of their face, and ravage them with two pages worth of steamy kissing and perhaps (if the book had a pink or pale blue cover with a soft-focus photo of a sickly sweet couple on the front,) more.
Arthur felt, not for the first time, that his brain was chickening out on him.
'Nothing,' he said, and looked down hopelessly at Ford. Ford's expression softened, and he said, with a little less enthusiasm and barely a hint of the previous menace, but perhaps a little hopefulness,
'Are you sure?' Arthur looked at him oddly. Was he sure, what? No, he wasn't sure. He was on a live mattress on an alien planet with no possessions in the world but a couple of sandwiches, a towel, and the clothes he stood in, and his best friend had just kissed him. Certainty was out of the window...if there had been a window...which there wasn't.
His confusion seemed to trigger something in Ford, who looked at him with what the pink covered book would almost certainly describe as 'a hungry expression, full of lust and latent passion', but which Arthur found, frankly, terrifying. Ford's eyes burned into him and the warning hairs that had been standing at the ready for some time now, hauled themselves to attention as he prepared to be eaten (and not at all in the way the pink covered book might have it). Ford was edging closer, very much as if he couldn't actually help it, and the result was electrifying. Arthur whimpered and felt his eyes start to close, and damned the heroine of the cheap pink book for choosing him as her avatar.
When Ford's lips touched his once more, however, it was different. He was not the heroine; he was the dashing hero with slick, glossy brylcreem hair and a smile that really gave off starlight twinkles when he smiled. He wrapped his arms tightly around Ford and allowed himself to kiss him back. Ford swung his leg over Arthur's, lying on his chest and grasping madly at his hair, ignoring the clumps of mud he dislodged in the process. Under them, the mattress giggled happily and curled up its edges to stop them rolling off, and the most almighty racket of throbbing engines and displaced air swept over them and they broke apart, breathing rather heavily.
'Zark it,' said Ford, wiping his mouth. The he looked down at Arthur, his expression unreadable,
'Towel, Arthur. Time to hitch a ride.'
Arthur felt like his favourite toy had just been confiscated by an adult who had every right so to do and with whom he could not, therefore, reasonably be angry. He sighed as Ford heaved himself off him and stood, towel poised, wobbling on the mattress. He held out a hand to Arthur, who used it to pull himself up. Arthur pulled his own towel out of his pocket and gingerly unfurled it. It dropped a heap of slime onto the ground in front of them, and lay dripping limply in his hand.
On the horizon, dark shapes lost behind bright headlights were swarming over the horizon. They fanned out across the landscape and slowed, scanning the ground in a well practised pattern. Three of them were heading straight for where Ford and Arthur stood on their towel island.
'Wave your towel!' shouted Ford over the increasing engine noise. He started to wave his own wildly about. It had lost all its projectile mud in its first use, but Arthur's was a virgin flag and sprayed a liberal coating of mud and slime across them and the mattress. The middle ship flew straight towards them, coming in low over their heads, and they were dazzled by its bright searchlight. Ford grabbed Arthur around the waist and pulled him down just as the ship blasted its engines one, sending a shock-wave that would have knocked them over. He grabbed his satchel and started towards the ship, pulling Arthur up by his right hand and dragging him after him.
Arthur stumbled up and grasped the hand as tightly as he could. So when the hatch in the side of the ship opened, the being inside was confronted with the apparently fascinating spectacle of two humanoids, covered in dryish mud and slime, with only one satchel between them and a towel each, held in the hands that were not clutching each other as if the universe would end if they let go.
What kind of being has come to Ford and Arthur's rescue, or disturbed what could have been the pinnacle of slushy/slashy pink-covered book romantic liaisons? Have they come to collect mattresses or are they are sinister group of galactic Hell's Angels out on a jolly? Will Ford and Arthur get a lift, and will it have a private room where they can put the interruption aside?
Thanks for the lovely reviews. I'm working away for a few weeks now, but I'll do my best to update soon when I get back :-D
