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THE HOUSE stood on a slight rise just on the edge of the village.
It stood on its own and looked out over a broad
spread of West Country farmland. Not a remarkable house
by any means—it was about thirty years old, squattish,
squarish, made of brick, and had four windows set in the
front of a size and proportion which more or less exactly
failed to please the eye.
The only person for whom the house was in any way
special was Arthur Dent, and that was only because it happened
to be the one he lived in. He had lived in it for
about three years, ever since he had moved out of London
because it made him nervous and irritable. He was about
thirty as well, tall, dark-haired and never quite at ease
with himself. The thing that used to worry him most was
the fact that people always used to ask him what he was
looking so worried about. He worked in local radio which
he always used to tell his friends was a lot more interesting
than they probably thought. It was, too—most of his
friends worked in advertising.
On Wednesday night it had rained very heavily, the
lane was wet and muddy, but the Thursday morning sun
was bright and clear as it shone on Arthur Dent’s house
for what was to be the last time.
It hadn’t properly registered yet with Arthur that the
council wanted to knock it down and build a bypass instead.
AT EIGHT O’CLOCK on Thursday morning Arthur didn’t feel
very good. He woke up blearily, got up, wandered blearily
round his room, opened a window, saw a bulldozer, found
his slippers, and stomped off to the bathroom to wash.
Toothpaste on the brush—so. Scrub.
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Shaving mirror—pointing at the ceiling. He adjusted
it. For a moment it reflected a second bulldozer through
the bathroom window. Properly adjusted, it reflected
Arthur Dent’s bristles. He shaved them off, washed, dried
and stomped off to the kitchen to find something pleasant
to put in his mouth.
Kettle, plug, fridge, milk, coffee. Yawn.
The word bulldozer wandered through his mind for a
moment in search of something to connect with.
The bulldozer outside the kitchen window was quite a
big one.
He stared at it.
“Yellow,” he thought, and stomped off back to his bedroom
to get dressed.
Passing the bathroom he stopped to drink a larger glass
of water, and another. He began to suspect that he was
hung over. Why was he hung over? Had he been drinking
the night before? He supposed that he must have been. He
caught a glint in the shaving mirror. “Yellow,” he thought,
and stomped on to the bedroom.
He stood and thought. The pub, he thought. Oh dear,
the pub. He vaguely remembered being angry, angry about
something that seemed important. He’d been telling people
about it, telling people about it at great length, he
rather suspected: his clearest visual recollection was of
glazed looks on other people’s faces. Something about a
new bypass he’d just found out about. It had been in the
pipeline for months only no one seemed to have known
about it. Ridiculous. He took a swig of water. It would sort
itself out, he’d decided, no one wanted a bypass, the council
didn’t have a leg to stand on. It would sort itself out.
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God, what a terrible hangover it had earned him
though. He looked at himself in the wardrobe mirror. He
stuck out his tongue. “Yellow,” he thought. The word yellow
wandered through his mind in search of something to
connect with.
Fifteen seconds later he was out of the house and lying
in front of a big yellow bulldozer that was advancing up
his garden path.
MR. L. PROSSER was, as they say, only human. In other
words he was a carbon-based bipedal life form descended
from an ape. More specifically he was forty, fat and
shabby and worked for the local council. Curiously
enough, though he didn’t know it, he was also a direct
male-line descendant of Genghis Khan, though intervening
generations and racial mixing had so juggled his genes
that he had no discernible Mongoloid characteristics, and
the only vestiges left in Mr. L. Prosser of his mighty ancestry
were a pronounced stoutness about the tum and a
predilection for little fur hats.
He was by no means a great warrior; in fact he was a
nervous, worried man. Today he was particularly nervous
and worried because something had gone seriously wrong
with his job, which was to see that Arthur Dent’s house
got cleared out of the way before the day was out.
“Come off it, Mr. Dent,” he said, “you can’t win, you
know. You can’t lie in front of the bulldozer indefinitely.”
He tried to make his eyes blaze fiercely but they just
wouldn’t do it.
Arthur lay in the mud and squelched at him.
“I’m game,” he said, “we’ll see who rusts first.”
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“I’m afraid you’re going to have to accept it,” said Mr.
Prosser, gripping his fur hat and rolling it round the top of
his head; “this bypass has got to be built and it’s going to be
built!”
“First I’ve heard of it,” said Arthur, “why’s it got to be
built?”
Mr. Prosser shook his finger at him for a bit, then
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Mr. Prosser said, “You were quite entitled to make any
suggestions or protests at the appropriate time, you
know.”
“Appropriate time?” hooted Arthur. “Appropriate time?
The first I knew about it was when a workman arrived at
my home yesterday. I asked him if he’d come to clean the
windows and he said no, he’d come to demolish the house.
He didn’t tell me straight away of course. Oh no. First he
wiped a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he
told me.”
“But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the
local planning office for the last nine months.”
“Oh yes, well, as soon as I heard I went straight round to
see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone
out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I
mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.”
“But the plans were on display . . .”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar
to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the
bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory
with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.’ ”
A cloud passed overhead. It cast a shadow over Arthur
Dent as he lay propped up on his elbow in the cold mud. It
cast a shadow over Arthur Dent’s house. Mr. Prosser
frowned at it.
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“It’s not as if it’s a particularly nice house,” he said.
“I’m sorry, but I happen to like it.”
“You’ll like the bypass.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Arthur Dent. “Shut up and go away,
and take your bloody bypass with you. You haven’t got a
leg to stand on and you know it.”
Mr. Prosser’s mouth opened and closed a couple of
times while his mind was for a moment filled with inexplicable
but terribly attractive visions of Arthur Dent’s
house being consumed with fire and Arthur himself running
screaming from the blazing ruin with at least three
hefty spears protruding from his back. Mr. Prosser was
often bothered with visions like these and they made him
feel very nervous. He stuttered for a moment and then
pulled himself together.
“Mr. Dent,” he said.
“Hello? Yes?” said Arthur.
“Some factual information for you. Have you any idea
how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it
roll straight over you?”
“How much?” said Arthur.
“None at all,” said Mr. Prosser, and stormed nervously
off wondering why his brain was filled with a thousand
hairy horsemen all shouting at him.
BY A CURIOUS coincidence, “None at all” is exactly how
much suspicion the ape-descendant Arthur Dent had that
one of his closest friends was not descended from an ape,
but was in fact from a small planet somewhere in the
vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from Guildford as he usually
claimed.
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Arthur Dent had never, ever suspected this.
This friend of his had first arrived on the planet Earth
some fifteen Earth years previously, and he had worked
hard to blend himself into Earth society—with, it must be
said, some success. For instance, he had spent those fifteen
years pretending to be an out-of-work actor, which
was plausible enough.
He had made one careless blunder though, because he
had skimped a bit on his preparatory research. The information
he had gathered had led him to choose the name
“Ford Prefect” as being nicely inconspicuous.
He was not conspicuously tall, his features were striking
but not conspicuously handsome. His hair was wiry
and gingerish and brushed backward from the temples.
His skin seemed to be pulled backward from the nose.
There was something very slightly odd about him, but it
was difficult to say what it was. Perhaps it was that his
eyes didn’t seem to blink often enough and when you
talked to him for any length of time your eyes began involuntarily
to water on his behalf. Perhaps it was that he
smiled slightly too broadly and gave people the unnerving
impression that he was about to go for their neck.
He struck most of the friends he had made on Earth as an
eccentric, but a harmless one—an unruly boozer with
some oddish habits. For instance, he would often gate-crash
university parties, get badly drunk and start making fun of
any astrophysicists he could find till he got thrown out.
Sometimes he would get seized with oddly distracted
moods and stare into the sky as if hypnotized until someone
asked him what he was doing. Then he would start
guiltily for a moment, relax and grin.
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“Oh, just looking for flying saucers,” he would joke,
and everyone would laugh and ask him what sort of flying
saucers he was looking for.
“Green ones!” he would reply with a wicked grin, laugh
wildly for a moment and then suddenly lunge for the
nearest bar and buy an enormous round of drinks.
Evenings like this usually ended badly. Ford would get
out of his skull on whisky, huddle in a corner with some
girl and explain to her in slurred phrases that honestly the
color of the flying saucers didn’t matter that much really.
Thereafter, staggering semiparalytic down the night
streets, he would often ask passing policemen if they
knew the way to Betelgeuse. The policemen would usually
say something like, “Don’t you think it’s about time you
went off home, sir?”
“I’m trying to, baby, I’m trying to,” is what Ford invariably
replied on these occasions.
In fact what he was really looking for when he stared
distractedly into the sky was any kind of flying saucer at
all. The reason he said green was that green was the traditional
space livery of the Betelgeuse trading scouts.
Ford Prefect was desperate that any flying saucer at all
would arrive soon because fifteen years was a long time to
get stranded anywhere, particularly somewhere as mindbogglingly
dull as the Earth.
Ford wished that a flying saucer would arrive soon because
he knew how to flag flying saucers down and get
lifts from them. He knew how to see the Marvels of the
Universe for less than thirty Altairian dollars a day.
In fact, Ford Prefect was a roving researcher for that
wholly remarkable book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
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HUMAN beings are great adapters, and by lunchtime life in
the environs of Arthur’s house had settled into a steady
routine. It was Arthur’s accepted role to lie squelching in
the mud making occasional demands to see his lawyer, his
mother or a good book; it was Mr. Prosser’s accepted role
to tackle Arthur with the occasional new ploy such as the
For the Public Good talk, or the March of Progress talk, the
They Knocked My House Down Once You Know, Never
Looked Back talk and various other cajoleries and threats;
and it was the bulldozer drivers’ accepted role to sit
around drinking coffee and experimenting with union
regulations to see how they could turn the situation to
their financial advantage.
The Earth moved slowly in its diurnal course.
The sun was beginning to dry out the mud that Arthur
lay in.
A shadow moved across him again.
“Hello, Arthur,” said the shadow.
Arthur looked up and squinting into the sun was startled
to see Ford Prefect standing above him.
“Ford! Hello, how are you?”
“Fine,” said Ford, “look, are you busy?”
“Am I busy?” exclaimed Arthur. “Well, I’ve just got all
these bulldozers and things to lie in front of because
they’ll knock my house down if I don’t, but other than
that . . . well, no, not especially, why?”
They don’t have sarcasm on Betelgeuse, and Ford Prefect
often failed to notice it unless he was concentrating.
He said, “Good, is there anywhere we can talk?”
“What?” said Arthur Dent.
For a few seconds Ford seemed to ignore him, and stared
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fixedly into the sky like a rabbit trying to get run over by a
car. Then suddenly he squatted down beside Arthur.
“We’ve got to talk,” he said urgently.
“Fine,” said Arthur, “talk.”
“And drink,” said Ford. “It’s vitally important that we
talk and drink. Now. We’ll go to the pub in the village.”
He looked into the sky again, nervous, expectant.
“Look, don’t you understand?” shouted Arthur. He
pointed at Prosser. “That man wants to knock my house
down!”
Ford glanced at him, puzzled.
“Well, he can do it while you’re away, can’t he?” he
asked.
“But I don’t want him to!”
“Ah.”
“Look, what’s the matter with you, Ford?” said Arthur.
“Nothing. Nothing’s the matter. Listen to me—I’ve got
to tell you the most important thing you’ve ever heard.
I’ve got to tell you now, and I’ve got to tell you in the saloon
bar of the Horse and Groom.”
“But why?”
“Because you’re going to need a very stiff drink.”
Ford stared at Arthur, and Arthur was astonished to
find his will beginning to weaken. He didn’t realize that
this was because of an old drinking game that Ford
learned to play in the hyperspace ports that served the
madranite mining belts in the star system of Orion Beta.
The game was not unlike the Earth game called Indian
wrestling, and was played like this:
Two contestants would sit either side of a table, with a
glass in front of each of them.
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Between them would be placed a bottle of Janx Spirit
(as immortalized in that ancient Orion mining song, “Oh,
don’t give me none more of that Old Janx Spirit/No, don’t
you give me none more of that Old Janx Spirit/For my
head will fly, my tongue will lie, my eyes will fry and I
may die/Won’t you pour me one more of that sinful Old
Janx Spirit”).
Each of the two contestants would then concentrate
their will on the bottle and attempt to tip it and pour
spirit into the glass of his opponent, who would then have
to drink it.
The bottle would then be refilled. The game would be
played again. And again.
Once you started to lose you would probably keep losing,
because one of the effects of Janx Spirit is to depress
tele-psychic power.
As soon as a predetermined quantity had been consumed,
the final loser would have to perform a forfeit,
which was usually obscenely biological.
Ford Prefect usually played to lose.
FORD stared at Arthur, who began to think that perhaps he
did want to go to the Horse and Groom after all.
“But what about my house . . . ?” he asked plaintively.
Ford looked across to Mr. Prosser, and suddenly a
wicked thought struck him.
“He wants to knock your house down?”
“Yes, he wants to build . . .”
“And he can’t because you’re lying in front of his bulldozer?”
“Yes, and . . .”
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“I’m sure we can come to some arrangement,” said
Ford. “Excuse me!” he shouted.
Mr. Prosser (who was arguing with a spokesman for the
bulldozer drivers about whether or not Arthur Dent constituted
a mental health hazard, and how much they
should get paid if he did) looked around. He was surprised
and slightly alarmed to see that Arthur had company.
“Yes? Hello?” he called. “Has Mr. Dent come to his senses
yet?”
“Can we for the moment,” called Ford, “assume that he
hasn’t?”
“Well?” sighed Mr. Prosser.
“And can we also assume,” said Ford, “that he’s going
to be staying here all day?”
“So?”
“So all your men are going to be standing around all
day doing nothing?”
“Could be, could be . . .”
“Well, if you’re resigned to doing that anyway, you
don’t actually need him to lie here all the time do you?”
“What?”
“You don’t,” said Ford patiently, “actually need him
here.”
Mr. Prosser thought about this.
“Well, no, not as such . . .” he said, “not exactly
need . . .”
Prosser was worried. He thought that one of them
wasn’t making a lot of sense.
Ford said, “So if you would just like to take it as read
that he’s actually here, then he and I could slip off down to
the pub for half an hour. How does that sound?”
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Mr. Prosser thought it sounded perfectly potty.
“That sounds perfectly reasonable . . .” he said in a reassuring
tone of voice, wondering who he was trying to
reassure.
“And if you want to pop off for a quick one yourself
later on,” said Ford, “we can always cover for you in return.”
“Thank you very much,” said Mr. Prosser, who no
longer knew how to play this at all, “thank you very much,
yes, that’s very kind . . .” He frowned, then smiled, then
tried to do both at once, failed, grasped hold of his fur hat
and rolled it fitfully round the top of his head. He could
only assume that he had just won.
“So,” continued Ford Prefect, “if you would just like to
come over here and lie down . . .”
“What?” said Mr. Prosser.
“Ah, I’m sorry,” said Ford, “perhaps I hadn’t made myself
fully clear. Somebody’s got to lie in front of the bulldozers,
haven’t they? Or there won’t be anything to stop
them driving into Mr. Dent’s house, will there?”
“What?” said Mr. Prosser again.
“It’s very simple,” said Ford, “my client, Mr. Dent, says
that he will stop lying here in the mud on the sole condition
that you come and take over from him.”
“What are you talking about?” said Arthur, but Ford
nudged him with his shoe to be quiet.
“You want me,” said Prosser, spelling out this new
thought to himself, “to come and lie there . . .”
“Yes.”
“In front of the bulldozer?”
“Yes.”
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“Instead of Mr. Dent.”
“Yes.”
“In the mud.”
“In, as you say, the mud.”
As soon as Mr. Prosser realized that he was substantially
the loser after all, it was as if a weight lifted itself
off his shoulders: this was more like the world as he knew
it. He sighed.
“In return for which you will take Mr. Dent with you
down to the pub?”
“That’s it,” said Ford, “that’s it exactly.”
Mr. Prosser took a few nervous steps forward and
stopped.
“Promise?” he said.
“Promise,” said Ford. He turned to Arthur.
“Come on,” he said to him, “get up and let the man lie
down.”
Arthur stood up, feeling as if he was in a dream.
Ford beckoned to Prosser, who sadly, awkwardly, sat
down in the mud. He felt that his whole life was some
kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was
and whether they were enjoying it. The mud folded itself
round his bottom and his arms and oozed into his shoes.
Ford looked at him severely.
“And no sneaky knocking Mr. Dent’s house down while
he’s away, all right? he said.
“The mere thought,” growled Mr. Prosser, “hadn’t even
begun to speculate,” he continued, settling himself back,
“about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.”
He saw the bulldozer drivers’ union representative approaching
and let his head sink back and closed his eyes.
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He was trying to marshal his arguments for proving that
he did not now constitute a mental health hazard himself.
He was far from certain about this—his mind seemed to
be full of noise, horses, smoke and the stench of blood.
This always happened when he felt miserable or put upon,
and he had never been able to explain it to himself. In a
high dimension of which we know nothing, the mighty
Khan bellowed with rage, but Mr. Prosser only trembled
slightly and whimpered. He began to feel little pricks of
water behind his eyelids. Bureaucratic cock-ups, angry
men lying in mud, indecipherable strangers handing out
inexplicable humiliation and an unidentified army of
horsemen laughing at him in his head—what a day.
What a day. Ford Prefect knew that it didn’t matter a
pair of dingo’s kidneys whether Arthur’s house got
knocked down or not now.
Arthur remained very worried.
“But can we trust him?” he said.
“Myself I’d trust him to the end of the Earth,” said
Ford.
“Oh yes,” said Arthur, “and how far’s that?”
“About twelve minutes away,” said Ford, “come on, I
need a drink.”