“I was a celebrity,” droned the robot sadly, “for a short while on account of my miraculous and bitterly resented escape from a fate almost as good as death in the heart of a blazing sun. You can guess from my condition,” he added, “how narrow my escape was. I was rescued by a scrap-metal merchant, imagine that. Here I am, brain the size of … never mind.”

He trudged savagely for a few seconds.

“He it was who fixed me up with this leg. Hateful, isn’t it? He sold me to a Mind Zoo. I was the star exhibit. I had to sit on a box and tell my story while people told me to cheer up and think positive. ‘Give us a grin, little robot,’ they would shout at me, ‘give us a little chuckle.’ I would explain to them that to get my face to grin would take a good couple of hours in a workshop with a wrench, and that went down very well.”

“The speech,” urged the mattress, “I long to hear of the speech you gave in the marshes.”

“There was a bridge built across the marshes. A cyberstructured hyperbridge, hundreds of miles in length, to carry ion-buggies and freighters over the swamp.”

“A bridge?” quirruled the mattress, “here, in the swamp?”

“A bridge,” confirmed Marvin, “here in the swamp. It was going to revitalize the economy of the Sqornshellous System. They spent the entire economy of the Sqornshellous System building it. They asked me to open it. Poor fools.”

It began to rain a little, a fine spray slid through the mist.

“I stood on the platform. For hundreds of miles in front of me, and hundreds of miles behind me the bridge stretched.”

“Did it glitter?” enthused the mattress.

“It glittered.”

“Did it span the miles majestically?”

“It spanned the miles majestically.”

“Did it stretch like a silver thread, far out into the invisible mist?”

“Yes,” said Marvin, “do you want to hear this story?”

“I want to hear your speech,” said the mattress.

“This is what I said. I said, ‘I would like to say that it is a very great pleasure, honor and privilege for me to open this bridge, but I can’t because my lying circuits are all out of commission. I hate and despise you all. I now declare this hapless cyberstructure open to the unthinking abuse of all who wantonly cross her.’ And I plugged myself into the opening circuits.”

Marvin paused, remembering the moment.

The mattress flurred and glurried. It flolloped, gupped and willomied, doing this last in a particularly floopy way.

“Voon,” it wurfed at last, “and was it a magnificent occasion?”

“Reasonably magnificent. The entire thousand-mile-long bridge spontaneously folded up its glittering spans and sank weeping into the mire, taking everybody with it.”

There was a sad and terrible pause at this point in the conversation during which a hundred thousand people seemed unexpectedly to say “whop” and a team of white robots descended from the sky like dandelion seeds drifting on the wind in tight military formation. For a sudden violent moment they were all there, in the swamp, wrenching Marvin’s false leg off, and then they were gone again in their ship that said “foop.”

“You see the sort of thing I have to contend with?” said Marvin to the gobbering mattress.

And suddenly, a moment later, the robots were back again for another violent incident, and this time when they left, the mattress was alone in the swamp. He flolloped around in astonishment and alarm. He almost lurgled in fear. He reared himself to see over the reeds, but there was nothing to see, no robot, no glittering bridge, no ship, just more reeds. He listened, but there was no sound on the wind beyond the now familiar sound of half-crazed etymologists calling to each other across the sullen mire.

Chapter 8

The body of Arthur Dent spun.

The Universe shattered into a million glittering fragments around it, and each particular shard spun silently through the void, reflecting on its silver surface some single searing holocaust of fire and destruction.

And then the blackness behind the Universe exploded, and each particular piece of blackness was the furious smoke of hell.

And the nothingness behind the blackness behind the Universe erupted, and behind the nothingness behind the blackness behind the shattered Universe was at last the dark figure of an immense man speaking immense words.

“These, then,” said the figure, speaking from an immensely comfortable chair, “were the Krikkit Wars, the greatest devastation ever visited upon our Galaxy. What you have experienced …”

Slartibartfast floated past, waving.

“It’s just a documentary,” he called out, “this is not a good bit. Terribly sorry, trying to find the rewind control …”

“ … is what billions upon billions of innocent …”

“Do not,” called out Slartibartfast, floating past again, and fiddling furiously with the thing that he had stuck into the wall of the room of Informational Illusions and that was in fact still stuck there, “agree to buy anything at this point.”

“ … people, creatures, your fellow beings …”

Music swelled — again, it was immense music, immense chords. And behind the man, slowly, three tall pillars began slowly to emerge out of the immensely swirling mist.

“ … experienced, lived through or — more often — failed to live through. Think of that, my friends. And let us not forget — and in just a moment I shall be able to suggest a way that will help us always to remember — that before the Krikkit Wars, the Galaxy was that rare and wonderful thing, a happy Galaxy!”

The music was going bananas with immensity at this point.

“A happy Galaxy, my friends, as represented by the symbol of the Wikkit Gate!”

The three pillars stood out clearly now, three pillars topped with two crosspieces in a way that looked stupefyingly familiar to Arthur’s addled brain.

“The three pillars,” thundered the man, “the Steel Pillar, which represents the Strength and Power of the Galaxy!”

Searchlights seared out and danced crazy dances up and down the pillar on the left that was made of steel or something very like it. The music thumped and bellowed.

“The Plastic Pillar,” announced the man, “representing the forces of Science and Reason in the Galaxy!”

Other searchlights played exotically up and down the right-hand, transparent pillar creating dazzling patterns within it and a sudden inexplicable craving for ice cream in the stomach of Arthur Dent.

“And,” the thunderous voice continued, “the Wooden Pillar, representing …” and here his voice became just very slightly hoarse with wonderful sentiments, “the forces of Nature and Spirituality.”

The lights picked out the central pillar. The music moved bravely up into the realms of complete unspeakability.

“Between them supporting,” the voice rolled on, approaching its climax, “the Golden Bail of Prosperity and the Silver Bail of Peace!”

The whole structure was now flooded with dazzling lights, and the music had now, fortunately, gone far beyond the limits of the discernible. At the top of the three pillars the two brilliantly gleaming bails sat and dazzled. There seemed to be girls sitting on top of them, or maybe they were meant to be angels. Angels usually are represented as wearing more than that though.

Suddenly there was a dramatic hush in what was presumably meant to be the cosmos, and a darkening of the lights.

“There is not a world,” thrilled the man’s expert voice, “not a civilized world in the Galaxy where this symbol is not revered even today. Even in primitive worlds it persists in racial memories. This it was that the forces of Krikkit destroyed, and this it is that now locks their world away till the end of eternity!”

And with a flourish, the man produced in his hands a model of the Wikkit Gate. Scale was terribly hard to judge in this whole extraordinary spectacle, but the model looked as if it must have been about three feet high.