The next morning, Gormlean had a quick moment of panic. The first thing that was wrong was she was sleeping in a bed. Then she realized, she was clean, and not really that hungry. Last, she noticed that her arms and legs were bandaged up. Although this might have been construed as a good thing to most people, it was different, and to Gormlean, different meant alarming. Eventually, she remembered that she was on the Heart of Gold. She remembered, although vaguely, meeting Arthur, Ford, Zaphod and Trillian.
She stood up and looked around. That's when she spotted the first clue, which looked as if it had been slipped under her door. Upon closer examination, it was a dog collar. A small silver tag was hanging from it. She squinted her eyes and managed to make out the word "Bingo." With a quiet snort, she continued to examine it. On the other side of the tag, she discovered, it read in very small but clear engravings, "If found, please return to owner: Ford Prefect." Disgusted, she threw it aside.
The first person she found after leaving her room was Arthur, which was a relief. Arthur was the only one she really found she could relate to, and of course, anything was better than Ford. She had a hazy idea that finding her way straight into a brick wall would be better than finding her way directly to Ford, but of course, it was far too early for her to actually know what that meant.
"Glad you're not a brick wall, Arthur," was all she managed to get out. It made quite a bit more sense in her head than it did when she said it out loud.
"I'm rather glad about that too," he assured her with a nod. He hadn't remembered her getting any alcohol the night before. It might be cleared up to him that she, in fact, was not drunk, because she wasn't. However, he could see absolutely no reason to believe that she was not drunk, because it completely contradicted how she was stumbling down the hall and comparing him to brick walls.
This was about the time when Ford walked by, rubbing at his eyes. He stopped to look at the two people who were already occupying the space which he had been planning on walking through. "Erm... morning, Arthur. Bingo." He nodded to each of them in turn, eyeing the empty air behind them with interest.
"People are slaves to their pets, you know," Gormlean remarked, tottering on her heels dangerously. Arthur quickly took her arm and regained her balance for her.
Ford's eyes focused on her. "Not all people," he commented offhandedly, then looked past her again.
"They made animal abuse laws for people like you." She snorted lightly.
Ford opened his mouth to speak, but before any sound came out, Arthur interrupted him. "If you're just going to interrupt us, could you please go away?" he said with a sudden burst of self righteousness.
This caused a sullen, tired Ford to become a cross, frustrated Ford. "Although I don't understand why I am the one getting scolded when she was clearly the one causing the issue, I would be more than happy to go away if the both of you would just kindly move. In fact, if you hadn't been in my way in the first place, I wouldn't be here engaged in this idle chit-chat anyhow." He said all of this very fast and he said it in one breath. Gormlean and Arthur both stepped to the side, letting Ford storm through without another word.
She stared after him, blinking a few times, before she was pulled back to her senses by Arthur tapping on her shoulder. "Well, that was exciting," she confided to him.
He shrugged, then nodded, then shrugged again. "Actually, I was about to go see if you were up. I was a bit anxious to talk to you."
"Okay, let's talk."
He sat down, and a moment later, she sat across from him. He took a few seconds to compose his thoughts, then asked the first question, and the one that was bothering him the most. "Why did you lie?"
"Lie?" She looked genuinely confused, and slightly offended. "I don't lie."
"But you told us you were from Earth, but then you told Ford you were from his planet!" It seemed to Arthur that there was a large misunderstanding going on. He very much hoped he wasn't bearing the blunt of the misunderstanding because he was getting extremely tired of being the one who didn't know what they were talking about.
"Yes, the question was worded in a misleading way," she agreed, then realized how little this cleared up and decided to continue. "Let me put it this way. If you were born in Bristol, but moved to London when you were young and stayed there, and somebody asked you as an adult where you were from, what would you say?"
This question blew Arthur's mind a little. "London." The answer was easy enough, but he thought that the conversation was quickly moving out of his control.
"Yes, exactly. Now, let's say you had lived in London for many years and called it home, and then suddenly had to move away very quickly, and while you were in the process of moving, someone asked you were you were from. What would you say then?"
"Probably still London," admitted Arthur sheepishly, although he didn't quite understand why he felt sheepish. "If there's a point, please make it."
She grinned sympathetically at him. "Yes, I'm almost there," she assured him. "That's exactly what happened to me. Just substitute Bristol with Betelgeuse Three and London with Earth." As an afterthought, she thoughtfully added, "Liverpool, actually. And unless I'm very wrong, I believe Ford was from... Five, yes? I never shared a planet with him. Except Earth, I suppose."
Suddenly, the line of questions Arthur had come up with became irrelevant. This was okay, as they were almost instantaneously replaced with twice as many new ones. The first one spilled out of his mouth before he had time to contain it. "Why'd you live on Earth?" He immedietly thought he sounded foolish, but it made sense in that every other character he'd met so far seemed to dislike Earth with a passion.
"I got tired of Betelgeuse in my twenties and decided to leave home. Didn't have a cent to my name, so I hid in the back of some ship that I had no idea where it was going, and thus I was started. I explored for years before I finally decided the Universe was getting too dangerous for a stowaway and went on a mission to find a planet that I could fall in love with enough to stay. I lived on Earth for I don't know how long." She was vaguely surprised at the fact that she could sum up her life into four sentences.
Arthur took a moment to absorb that, and was pleasantly surprised at how well it settled with him. "But then why are you..."
"Here?" she finished for him. "I knew about Earth's fate a tad before the rest of the population and I've been ship hopping since then."
That actually made sense to him. "One thing I don't understand," he said after a few moments. "Is the timing. You left when you were twenty- something, spent x years as an explorer, spent x years on Earth, but you still look about twenty-something."
"Yes, I'm actually one hundred and sixty-four."
His eyes nearly bugged out of his head. "That old?" he managed.
She shrugged. "Yeah. I must be younger than your Ford and Zaphod, though."
This most definitely blew Arthur's mind. In this regard, it was a nice coincidence that Ford strode into the room at that very moment. This was the only regard that it was particularly nice in.
Gormlean saw him and quickly leaned in very close to Arthur. "Please give me permission to stick up for myself without having to worry about my neck," she whispered urgently to him.
It took him a moment to understand this statement. He soon realized she was afraid of getting kicked off the ship if she said anything to Ford, and almost laughed out loud. "Don't worry, he's much closer to getting booted than you are. I think you'd be doing us all a favour if you put him in his place."
This seemed like an intelligent thing to say at the time. In retrospect, it probably caused a lot of problems.
"Hey Bingo," he called out, grinning madly. "Are you too old for me to teach you new tricks?" He clearly gained pleasure from this.
She didn't even seem to hear him. Looking in the exact opposite direction of where he was standing, she spoke in a tone that was slightly more than slightly condescending. "So, did you hitch a lift on this ship?"
He blinked, just once. "No, not this one," he admitted, unsure as to where she was taking the conversation.
"Oh, it's a nice ship. The computer seems very eager to help." There was a very odd way about her words that made them seem like a threat.
Arthur broke the silence nervously. "I was wondering why it didn't want to admit there was anyone else on board."
"Not too bright though. I just told it to keep a secret and it did."
Ford finally determined where the conversation was going and decided he didn't like it. "I assume you already know the basics," he said, matter- of-factly. When Arthur looked very confused, he added, "You know... sit, stay, lie down, speak, play dead..."
Gormlean spun around to face him and made a gesture Arthur didn't understand. By the way Ford reacted, however, he gathered that it was quite offensive. "Go zark yourself," she spat at him, fuming. When she spun back around to Arthur, her face was turning red. He was amazed at how quickly her mannerisms could change. When she had been talking to him, he could have sworn she was really from Earth originally. When she started talking to Ford, it seemed incredible that she could have ever passed off as an Earthling. The characteristics were so different, yet she had them both perfected, and the most impressive part was how smoothly she could switch between them.
"What did you like so much about Earth, anyhow?" Ford asked, largely ignoring her previous comment. Arthur bristled slightly but kept quiet.
She thought for a moment before answering. "The humanity. Other planets are too perfect." If she had been talking to Arthur, she might have explained that it had the right ratio of good things and bad things, that everywhere else she'd been seemed too much like a movie, and that only Earth seemed real to her. Unfortunately, she was talking to Ford, so most of her philosophical moment remained unsaid.
"Well, it's the only planet with humanity, I'll give you that," Ford commented, much more civilly than anything else he had previously said. Her answer made him realize she belonged on Earth, he felt a slight pang of sympathy, and then it was gone. He scowled. "But I don't understand how that's a good thing."
Arthur bristled again, and cleared his throat. "Excuse me."
He was ignored. "Well then it was very dense of you to ask," Gormlean replied haughtily, and there was some truth to her words.
"I was curious to see if you had some mind-blowing reason that would give me a new respect for Earth, but apparently not."
"Excuse me," Arthur said again, more loudly this time.
"Yeah, Ford, you're offending Arthur. Go away."
"Why don't you go away?" he snapped, getting angry. "You don't belong here anyway."
She snorted, in a manner that was not at all unlike a bull. "Maybe I will!"
"Good!" he countered. "Do it!"
She did. And on her way out, she did something to Ford that made him let out a long string of curses, in several different languages.
These kinds of exchanges continued happening for almost a week before the plan was hatched.