A/N: I am aware that there are some timeline problems re the canon versions of who should be on the Heart of Gold at this point, but since Douglas himself never seemed to worry unduly about continuity, I'm going to bravely ignore them!
Chapter 11 - Piracy
Arthur woke up with a sigh of contentment. He was warm and comfortable...if a little sticky, and he found, much to his relief, that he really, truly didn't have any morning-after-the-night-before type regrets.
Ford was snuggled into his back, snoring unpleasantly, but that didn't seem to matter very much either. All around them, the little sounds of the ship filtered into Arthur's head, jogging his memory about things he had thought he'd forgotten. That little ticking sound was the secondary heating pipes warming over for their testing cycle (as far as he could work out). That thunking sound coming from somewhere down the other end of the ship was the flap on the water-storage venting pipes banging against its housing as the pressure changed, and that stomping sound coming along the corridor was...
Zaphod.
The door sighed open,
'Thank-you for making a simple door very happy!' it said. Zaphod kicked it with the heel of his boot and marched up to the bed.
'Ford!' he yelled. The snoring stopped and Ford jerked awake, turning to look sleepily at Zaphod who stood over him, hands on his hips, third hand pointing its finger at him,
''Wha?' asked Ford. Zaphod opened his mouth, but his right head had spotted Arthur,
'Oh, so you are doing the monkey,' he said, distaste dripping from every syllable. Arthur frowned at him,
'Oh, really,' he said, and pulled the covers huffily up over his shoulders and turned away.
Ford heaved himself up in the bed and propped himself up with his elbows. He looked at Zaphod questioningly. There was about the two-headed man an aura of impatience and irritation that sat uneasily with his usual calm ignorance of galactic events.
'What?' Ford tried again.
Zaphod folded his arms and drummed his fingers restlessly on his thigh,
'The ship seems to be under attack. By a trading ship. You wouldn't happen to know anything about this, would you?'
'Me? No,' said Ford unconcernedly, 'Why? Don't you recognise it?'
Zaphod shook his heads,
'As a matter of fact, I do, but that's no reason for me to assume it's not your problem. For a start, he started his first message, (before I told him to zark off and die, which perhaps didn't actually help,) with the useful bit of information that we were carrying a stolen live mattress.'
Ford gaped, then pulled his face into a hoopier kind of expression and shrugged,
'I can't help that he's a galloping story-teller, can I Zaph? It's our mattress, he agreed to bring it along, under duress, I might add. If he's suddenly found he can get a good price for it, that's his problem, not ours.'
'Uh uh. No Ford. I'm telling you, I don't need the hassle. Look kid, I've been chased half way across the Galaxy by various law-enforcement agencies, and I've had a ball, but I'm getting just a little bit bored with it now, and I certainly don't intend to be pursued for something that's nothing to do with me. Hell, if someone's chasing my ship, it had better be me they're after. Besides, he's liable to recognise me if we do meet, and that's another reason I'd rather keep this strictly business, yeah?'
'Of course,' said Ford, realising, 'He's one of the traders you pulled a fast one on with the food...'
'He was away before I noticed and could rectify my mistake,' corrected Zaphod warningly. Ford nodded, unconvinced,
'So what do you want me to do about it?'
'I want you to go and persuade your mattress to go across to his ship. I already tried, but it wedged itself behind the console and I'm not sweating my shirt off to get it out.'
'Zaphod, if it doesn't want to go, I am not going to waste my morning sweet-talking a zarking great mattress into volunteering for a fate worse than death,'
'Hey, are you okay Ford baby? This is a mattress we're talking about. I hardly think it's going to suffer any indignity by going with slug-man out there.'
'I'm not doing it,' Ford closed his eyes defiantly, 'You didn't hear him talking to this guy he was going to sell it to. Arthur and I brought it along and we're not going to abandon it now.'
'You really have spent too long with the primates Ford, you've developed some seriously un-froody points of view. I mean, it sounds like you've got a conscience man!' He turned, unsmiling, and stalked off out of the room, calling over his shoulder,
'You're gonna get us out of this one, and quick.'
Ford sat up, swung his legs out of the bed, wrapped the sheet around his waist and hobbled after him, wading through the excess material gathered around his feet.
'Hey!' cried Arthur after him, but Ford wasn't listening as he sped off after Zaphod and the door shut behind him.
Arthur drew his bared knees up to his chin and sat there in the denuded bed, getting colder and colder, until he decided he really couldn't wait for the return of the sheets any longer. He got up and trudged heavily across the room, his eyelids drooping. Cold and apparently under attack he might be, but given the chance, he would just as happily have gone back to bed as anything else. Unfortunately, since all the bedding had gone with Ford, that option was closed to him, and he headed for the heap of clothes on the floor by the chair.
The heap turned out to be not only untidy, but foul-smelling and distinctly unpleasant to the touch. There was nothing for it, the clothes would have to be washed. Undoubtedly, if he tried hard, he could find the laundry on board this ship. On the other hand, as things stood, such an effort would involve wandering naked through the corridors where Trillian might easily happen across him, and somehow, he didn't fancy that. He picked up the pile, holding it as far away from him as he could, and walked with a wrinkled-up nose to the bathroom. The shower kicked off memories in his head that made him gulp and lower the pile of clothes to waist level, but the heap was too unpleasant to retain for the purposes of modesty, so he dumped them under the shower and pressed the button.
The shower did its spiel and Arthur groaned, it was amazing how quickly those innocent words became unbearable. Looking back at the clothes, however, he watched with a fair helping of pleasure as the dirt and slime started to leap off them and into the grilles. Within minutes Ford's blazer, trousers and sweater had regained their former colours and textures, and he pulled them out, saying to himself that his dressing gown was chunkier and would need more time. In the meanwhile, he could just fold Ford's garments neatly and hold onto them...just keep them nice and flat by pressing them up close to his chest like so...
He walked back to the bedroom, leaving his own clothes in the shower, and placed Ford's pile down slowly on the bed. He patted them down, just to make sure that they weren't going to leap into creases the moment his back was turned, and walked back to the bathroom.
He hauled out the dressing gown and shook it. No mud cascaded down from it, and when he held it to his nose, all he could smell was the clean, grandmother's spare-room smell of good wool. His pyjamas too were linen fresh and bright and his underwear no longer disgraced him.
He looked down at himself. He had been clean last night, and strictly speaking he shouldn't need another shower, but then, things had happened last night and he was a little sticky around the midriff. He stepped into the shower, and the tingling which had still felt so alien and unusual when he had entered it last night, felt friendly and comforting, as if it had been irreversibly linked to something wonderful in his mind. Which it had.
He closed his eyes and rolled his head from side to side, enjoying the relaxing quasi-water. Then suddenly received a vigourous poke in his side. It was irritating to be poked when he was so relaxed and contented. Nevertheless, a slight smile escaped his lips as he muttered,
'Don't poke me Ford. I've washed your clothes by the way.'
The poke came for a second time.
'Ow!' said Arthur, and opened his eyes.
Then he staggered back into the wall in shock, before recovering himself as a wave of indignation rushed through him, rallying defences on all sides and drawing him up to his fullest, and not inconsiderable height.
'What are you doing in my shower?' he asked. A lesser being would have quailed under the look it received from Arthur Dent at that moment. An outraged Englishman who has just been apprehended in the shower knows more about dignity than the stuffiest royal who ever ruled on any planet in the entire Galaxy. If his love of cricket had taught Arthur anything, it was how to stand naked in the shower afterwards, and still retain the mien of a gentleman, even when flicked with wet towels or subjected to the hundred and one other sundry inconveniences which it is the purpose of school games lessons to teach their pupils to inflict upon one another.
Such training naturally meant that Arthur, even in his slightly drowsy and incommoded state, was well up to holding his ground before a mattress trader masquerading as an outsize gastropod.
Kelp blinked slowly at him, unfazed by Arthur's cool response,
'You got something of mine. I come over to get it back, only it don't choose to co-operate, see? So I've come to ask you to get it to shift itself on over to my ship.' Arthur's eyebrows nearly hit the ceiling,
'I beg your pardon?! Now look here,' he started to advance on the massive form of the intruder who, to give him credit, did take a couple of wobblingly-hidden steps back, 'I suppose you think that just because you're bigger than us, you can come on board and take whatever you want, but on my planet,' he paused to grab his pyjama top from the shelf next to him and put it on, blissfully unconcerned about the fact that most people would have gone for the benefits of the trousers first, 'We called that 'piracy'.'
He stopped, directly facing Kelp, who was now pressed up against the tiled wall, a small amount of greenish slime running down the tiles behind him. Arthur reached behind him for his underpants and pyjama bottoms, which he drew on as he continued his tirade,
'It is the sort of behaviour we expect only from cowards and low, mendacious wretches with no self-respect or any sort of respect for the property of others and I, for one, will not stand for it.' He pulled the drawstring of his pyjama bottoms savagely and stood inches from the mildly confused trader, his finger out, prodding him in the stomach to punctuate every word,
'That mattress came with us in good faith, and having agreed to let us on board with it, it assumed the same status as ourselves. It was hiking with us. We made that perfectly clear. You cannot,' he prodded the amorphous belly so hard that it rippled and swayed, 'Now claim that it is in any way your property, or indeed that you have any claim to it whatsoever. I don't care what the two-headed gentleman might have said to you, he is really nothing to do with this matter. You have been extremely rude by coming into my bathroom, and I have no intention of making allowances for you just because you exhibit reduced levels of intelligence and social skills. If you would be so good as to leave now, I will say no more about it and you can go on your way...' He was forced to stop by the large, slimy arm, which wrapped itself around his head, while the other one got him by the waist and lifted him bodily off the floor. Arthur raised his hands and pulled at the arm covering his face. He managed to pull it down far enough for him to breath,
'Eugh!' he said, 'Put me down!
'Sorry fellow, no can do. Heh, but you talk enough, don't you?''
'This is absolutely intolerable,' said Arthur in the voice he might once have used to moan at Ford for leaving empty bottles all over his living room, 'Wait! At least bring my dressing gown, I'll get cold.'
'Shoulda thought of that while you was taking your own sweet time getting dressed, shouldn't you?'
'You are hardly in a position to criticise me,' returned Arthur, his feet bumping along the floor behind them,
'No? I'd say it was your position that was the worst, but it could be that I'm wrong, let's look shall we?'
He stopped and looked down at Arthur, trapped firmly under his arm,
'No, I'm still pretty sure I got the benefit of you fellow.' Arthur glared at him,
'You will be very sorry for this. If you force me to do something I don't want to I will make life very difficult for you.'
'Oy! And I thought my mother-in-law was hard work... You ever had a mother-in-law, guy?' he asked, more conversationally. Arthur sighed,
'No, I have not yet been afforded that pleasure, nor, given my current circumstances, does it look as if I will ever have one in the future.' Kelp looked down at him, slightly non-plussed,
'You telling me you ain't serious with the curly-headed guy?' Arthur wrinkled his brow,
'What's that got to do with it? Besides, it's none of your business.'
'Sure, sure. But don't he got a mother?'
'Several, from what I've heard...'
They crashed through a door-frame that caught Arthur a glancing blow on the head, and he was unable to continue his sentence, or, indeed, any thoughts at all.
Ford pursued Zaphod all the way down the corridor to the bridge, where Zaphod flopped into a console chair and regarded Ford shrewdly,
'You've got to do it Ford. I don't mind you freeloading on my ship, but not if you're going to bring extra trouble down on my head. I mean, I just want a quiet life for a while, you know?'
Ford pulled up the chair next to him and sat down,
'Arthur would be bothered by it if we handed it over.'
'Oh Zarquon's stinking laundry! You're not going to be governed by what the ape-man thinks? I mean, that is so un-cool it could fry eggs!'
'For once Zaph, I don't care. He may not be ideal in your eyes, but he's improved a lot since he spent all that time on his own. He's a bit more space-wise, and he's kind of nice to have around, you know?'
'No, I don't know,' said Zaphod, 'Personally I'd be happy to dump him on the nearest habitable planet and get his moaning, whinging backside off my ship. But...' he continued hastily, 'You're my semi-cousin, and however weird you get, you are at least someone to have a drink with and I'll go along with your warped judgement. But I'm not kidding Ford, if the mattress doesn't leave with slug-guts, it leaves with you, pronto.'
Ford considered for a moment: another extended period without a decent alcohol supply loomed in his imagination, so he sat back in his seat looking resigned,
'Where is it?'
'Pretty much where you left it, only it's folded itself down behind the electrics...which is a bit dangerous, what with it being so wet and everything...'
'Can you get it up on the cameras? See what it's up to. I mean, if it's come out, I can probably take it unawares. It sort of trusts me.'
Zaphod yelled across the room,
'Hey! Computer!'
Ford groaned and hid his face in his hands,
'Hi! Eddie the ship board computer here! What's the problem guys? Whatever your problem I ca...'
'Yeah, yeah, just can it, will you?' said Zaphod, wincing, 'Just give us visuals on the Embarkation Area, like now.'
'You got it!' said Eddie, chirpily, and the screen before them brightened to a view of the room in question, where a large, damp, pocket-sprung mattress lay in the middle of the floor, with a very unconscious Arthur Dent sprawled on top of it.
'Zarquon's teeth!' cried Ford as the edge of Kelp's lower body obscured the right-hand side of the mattress. Then he looked across at Zaphod who had just raised his eyebrows in a look of utter scorn. Ford took a steadying breath and removed all traces of mild panic from his face, before looking back at the screen, and watching a very sophisticated special effect carry Kelp, Arthur and the mattress off the ship.
Ford sat back in his chair, his eyes wide, and his hands started to fiddle with the edge of the sheet wrapped around him. He unconsciously pulled the excess up to cover his shoulders, so that the corner came up to wrap around his chin. He chewed thoughtfully on his lip until Zaphod spoke,
'So the chimpanzee has gone off with the mattress huh?' Ford turned his head towards him. He looked utterly calm and even vaguely happy, but if you looked carefully, you could not find the twinkle in his blue eyes.
'Not 'gone off with', Zaph. I think 'been kidnapped' is the term you're looking for.'
'Does it bother you?'
'Why in Zarquon's name should it?' asked Ford, sounding completely unconcerned, 'Still,' he went on, sounding just a little less confident, 'I think I ought to try to rescue him. After all, I brought him off Earth in the first place.
'Right, yeah. Sure Ford. The more you have, the more you want, right?'
'You're not going to stop me are you?'
'Uh, Ford, you're not having my ship to go wandering off on some risky mission to save your monkey.' Ford ignored him and pressed a button on the panel in front of him,
'Trillian?' he called. There was a pause, then Trillian's voice came eerily clearly across the speakers,
'Yes?'
'Can you come up to the bridge, we need to you to mediate something for us,'
'Hey!' broke in Zaphod, but Ford shot him a warning look,
'Can you come now? It's important.'
'Two minutes. I'm just finishing something,' said Trillian and Ford let go of the button.
'Ford...' started Zaphod.
'No. Wait for Trillian.'
'But Ford...'
'No.'
Five minutes later, Trillian appeared on the bridge looking slightly irritated,
'I hope this is important.'
'Of course it's important. Arthur's been kidnapped.'
'Oh no! Who by?' Trillian had the decency to look suitably upset.
'That mattress trader we escaped from. Seems he wanted the mattress back, well, he's taken Arthur with it. I want to go and rescue him, and Zaphod says no way. What do you think?'
Trillian looked at Ford, then at Zaphod,
'Zaphod, you can't abandon Arthur. He's all on his own. We've got one of the best ships in the universe here, we can outrun anything. Let's go after him.'
'I said no. I don't want to get involved.'
'Neither do I,' said Ford, and Trillian looked at him sharply, until she saw the look in his eyes, 'But I'm zarking well going to. I abandoned him once and it made him all...independent, he's only just starting to get over it. I can't risk what might happen to him if I abandon him again.'
'You mean you like him clingy,' stated Zaphod with a smirk. Trillian glared at him,
'That's in very bad taste Zaphod.'
'Sorry baby,' said Zaphod and got up.
'Where are you going?' she asked,
'I'm going to find a drink,' said Zaphod, 'Then I am going to find a nice quiet room to lie down in. Do what you like. Just don't involve me.'
Trillian sighed and watched him leave the bridge,
'Okay, Eddie, plot a course to follow that trader.'
'Yes ma'am!' bubbled the computer, and all around them faint whirrings and bleeping erupted from the control panels.
Ford closed his eyes. They were gaining on Arthur. The ship ahead of them was fast, but not fast enough. Soon they would catch up. Minutes passed: fifty, forty, thirty, twenty, ten, locked on. The hatchways lined up, the ship-to-ship corridor sprung from the side of the Heart of Gold and Ford was there in seconds, racing down the flimsy link-way. The air-lock at the other end was sealed, so Ford battered on it with his hands and then yelled into the com-link. Kelp would listen, or he would pay. The door slid grudgingly open, and the last five days of tension were a tight ball in Ford's throat. He coughed to relieve it and heard a low call from the other end of the hold. He peered into the darkness and saw the shadowy form of Arthur, sitting imprisoned in a harness, his arms and legs dangling through the straps. Ford hastened forward and broke into a run as he approached the harness. He reached it and watched a watery smile fight the tears of pure relief in Arthur's eyes. Ford found that he couldn't smile, couldn't make any expression appear on his face, but he could reach for Arthur, so he did. As his arms slipped around him and his fingers splayed tightly on his back, he felt Arthur's effort as he struggled to bring his own arms round through the lethargy and discomfort caused by the topical constriction of the harness. Then Arthur's hands were on his back, and Arthur's face was in his neck, and the Galaxy was as small as the circle of their arms, and Ford breathed relieved sobs into Arthur's neck, and ruffled his hair and held him...
He opened his eyes. It was five days since the trader had run off with Arthur and the mattress. It was inconceivable that his clapped out old crate should still evade the Heart of Gold, but somehow a combination of an obvious lifetime of evading capture on Kelp's part, and some horrifically bad luck regarding the requirement to shake off other of Zaphod's more tenacious pursuers on theirs, had led to some diverging detours that had put him ahead by several light years. Ford had a pretty good idea where he was headed. A quick search of the sub-ether wave-bands had given him a fairly accurate picture of the present movements of the mattress trader fleets, but it was like Zaphod said: sure, the Heart of Gold could put you down anywhere in the known universe, but you had to know where you wanted to go, and calculate the probabilities of turning up in that particular spot. Trillian had done the maths, with Eddie's help, but with Kelp's erratic movements, there was no telling from which direction he would approach, or whether his current trajectory was worth following at all.
Ford rubbed at his face. He hadn't really slept very much, though he was damned if he was going to admit it. It took all his effort to keep a happy, carefree face on when Zaphod was in the room, but his cooler-than-thou relative was not going to find out what he was really going through. He'd let quite enough slip just to initiate the search successfully. He got up and wandered to the galley for a drink. Furnished with a strong coffee, since Zaphod seemed to be hoarding all the alcohol in his room, whence he absolutely refused to stir, he returned to the bridge and sat back down.
There was blip on the edge of the screen once more. Ford looked at it with burgeoning disinterest, after all, he had seen that same blip appear at least twelve times during the chase, each time choosing a thoroughly unexpected time to disappear once more. Well this time, Ford wasn't going to get his hopes up. He reached down beside him and picked up the Guide. Pulling it out of his case he considered what it was he actually wanted to research. No ideas sprang readily to mind, so he changed tack: what would Arthur look up? Now that was easy.
What to do when a being of whom you are absurdly fond, and with whom you would like to get back into a compromising position as soon as possible, is kidnapped by an irate mattress trader with no legal claim to the property he has ostensibly reclaimed along with said favoured being, and all your best efforts to catch up with him are not succeeding, and your insides feel all wobbly when you think about possibly having lost him for ever.
He checked what his input. Yes, that was what Arthur would ask. Against all the accumulated knowledge of the Galaxy regarding search terms, Arthur would enter that, and he would get results. Ford pushed the button and the Guide's screen flickered,
Go for the flying with I say you for them always to be extremely well aware of how did you eat that whale you fought what? Thou art in a mess, panic, panic, panic, who did what you thought they did, only it might be better if you were together we can touch the memory of tea, for leaving you behind is the pan galactic equivalent of forty-two ningis to the birds in my ear for good heavens is that the time when the Asgoths of well I thought I had explained it to the fish in my ear to the ground calling GSS Suicidal Insanity is all we need, stop snivelling when you need peanuts doubly so and anyway, I never knew why you liked him so much as to say that when you hold me round the waist and it feels like my soul is about to explode into ash, elm, willow, fifteen of your Earth years before I even knew the atoms fly to be in the sub-ether is to be with my towel and there is no towel, there is no towel, there is no stream we cannot ford, not ford, nor anyone
Ford dropped theGuide in shock.
Arthur sat miserably in his little cupboard. Here he was, to all intents and purposes on his own again. He wouldn't exactly call the being who had chosen to incarcerate him thus as 'company', nor did he expect that wherever Kelp chose to put him down, it would be within easy reach of the authorities and/or any form of communications device. He didn't have a copy of the Guide, he had no idea where Ford might be found, and he was stuck in a dark hole on his own.
'Ah well, feels familiar,' he said, 'Morning door, morning strut one, morning strut two...' He trailed off. There was an ache deep inside him that didn't feel like the groan of social atrophy he had experienced the last time. He leaned back against the warm metal wall and sighed. This time was different. The last time he had missed Ford, as one misses anything with which one has become familiar, but it had been peaceful, in its own way. Now he missed him specifically. At least, the last time, Ford had been an occasional intruder into his thoughts: an intruder who popped up during those long nights in his cave when Arthur had been trying to visualise well-proportioned young ladies to help him along with a little personal project, and had discovered, with a jolt of something approaching horror, that the face and body he had managed to conjure up was distinctly more Fordish than cover-girlish. Then it had been a slightly disturbing, but acceptable fantasy; one that would never come to pass, and was therefore harmless. It was unfocused, generalised, and bore no link to anything he really knew. This was different. This time he knew exactly what he was missing, and he also knew that, were he not stuck in a dark cupboard, far away from his favourite Betelgeusian, he would be getting what he wanted. The thought did not make him feel any better and he slumped even further down the wall, letting his knees fall to the sides, until they hit the walls on either side of him. His mind was swimming, disjointed thoughts flooded through him. Everything he had learnt since Ford had rescued him from the Earth mingled in a flood of miserable remembrance. He reached to pull his dressing gown around him, then remembered he didn't have it. If only he had his towel; but his towel was in his dressing gown pocket, and his dressing gown was in the bathroom on the Heart of Gold, which was a very long way away.
What will happen to Arthur? Will Ford be able to catch up with him? What has happened to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to make it talk such rubbish? A night spent wrapped up in a sheet with Ford or Arthur to anyone who reviews ;-D
