Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic (16 page)

L
eovinus was not in a good mood. Despite all the things he was good at — astrophysics, architecture, molecular biology, geophysics, painting, sculpture, mechanical design, physics, anatomy, music, poetry, crystallography, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, philosophy and canapé arrangement — he'd always been hopeless at languages. Consequently, when he found himself on an alien world, without a translation blister, he was understandably frustrated. Here he was — the Greatest Genius The Galaxy Had Ever Known and he couldn't even ask these aliens, in their strange blue suits, for a cup of tea.

'I definitely think he is, Sarge,' said Constable Hackett.

'What, gay?' asked Sergeant Stroud, who'd noticed the old man's eyebrows were stuck on with toupee tape.

'No, Lebanese,' said the constable.

'Do we know anyone in the Oxford area who speaks Lebanese?'

'Well, it's kind of Arabic, innit?'

'Yes, must be plenty of them in the University.' And so a call was made, and Leovinus shortly found himself confronted by a large man with a nose the shape of Africa who told him in Arabic that his name was Professor Dansak. But to no avail.

Leovinus was beginning to lose his temper by now. Not only was no one treating him as you would expect a race of clearly inferior minds to treat the Greatest Genius The Galaxy Has Ever Known, but everyone was treating him as if they actually wanted to get rid of him.

'I hereby charge you with being an illegal immigrant.' Sergeant Stroud was reading from a formal charge-sheet. 'I have to warn you that anything you may say will be held against you and that you will be held in a place of custody until such dine as Her Majesty's Government is able to repatriate you to your own country.'

'Assuming we can find out where that is,' muttered Constable Hackett.

Professor Dansak had recommended a Professor Lindstrom, who held the chair in Linguistic Studies. Professor Lindstrom listened carefully to the little that Leovinus was prepared to say to him, and concluded that the elderly gentleman in the white beard and false eyebrows was probably making the language up.

'It bears no resemblance,' said Professor Lindstrom, 'to any of the Indo-European branch of languages. If, indeed, it
is
a language, I am prepared to state categorically that it has no relation to Uralic, Altaic, or to the Sino-Tibetan language groups. Malayo-Polynesian is not my field, but I would be surprised if it had any affinity there. As for the Eskimo-Aleut and the Paleo-Asiatic I am convinced it is not. I suspect, in short, gentlemen, that you have here a confused old gentleman, talking that widely-spoken language: gobbledygook. He probably ought to be with his family at home or else being cared for in an institution.'

Leovinus at this point had decided to treat these inferior beings to a recitation of edited highlights from his recent work,
The Laws of Physics
, a radical reappraisal of the subject which had turned the entire science on its head. It was, perhaps, the single most important volume ever written in the Galaxy, and merely to hear it again gave the great man a sense of belonging and reminded him that he was an individual of immense importance — no matter how they treated him on this remote and primitive planet.

He was still reciting from his Tenth Law of Thermodynamic Stress, when Sergeant Stroud banged the door of his cell behind him. Leovinus looked around his new environment. His suspicion was that he was not in a hotel. Entry appeared to be regulated by a simple locking device, and defecation appeared to be in a bucket. What a savage world he had got himself stuck on.

If only he'd regained consciousness before the Starship crash-landed! But he hadn't. After his fight with Scraliontis, he'd remained unconscious throughout the entire launch, the SMEF (Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure) and the crash-landing on this godforsaken planet, wherever it was. He'd only come to when that wretched journalist had unrolled him from the curtain. Thinking it was still the morning before the launch and that Scraliontis must have returned home to gloat over his evil scheme, Leovinus had commandeered the service lift and charged off out of the Starship screaming for revenge. In the dark he had failed to notice that he was no longer on the launch pad at Blerontis. It was not until he was a good distance from the ship that he heard the sound of the great power-drive coming to life. He had spun round and, to his horror, he had watched his great masterpiece rise up into an alien night sky — leaving him stranded on an unknown, unidentifiable world.

In a state of shock, Leovinus opened the door of a small vehicle he happened to find parked nearby, and climbed in. The vehicle was, as it turned out, already occupied by a particularly dim-looking alien who nearly wet himself with terror when confronted by Leovinus. The Great Man himself was, for the first time in his life, unable to think of anything to say — aware that whatever he
did
say would not be understandable. He had therefore sat there, without speaking, and allowed the alien to drive him to the present building in which he found himself and which he was increasingly convinced was
not
a hotel.

What a complete and absolute mess.

'FOR GOD'S SAKE! I WANT TO SEE A LAWYER!' Leovinus screamed at the top of his voice, and he rattled the bars of his cell in the time-honoured manner.

Sergeant Stroud looked at Constable Hackett and they both shook their heads. He might be a harmless, confused old man, but, as far as they were concerned, it looked better in the station log if he were an illegal immigrant. They'd score a few points with the Home Office if they could get him sent back to somewhere or other… Maybe Chad or Zimbabwe…

L
ucy thrilled to the expert way The Journalist brought the landing craft down in what had been the garden of the old rectory. In the darkness, the ruined house looked even more desolate than it had on that fateful night: souvenir hunters had stripped it of everything movable including loose bricks.

The plan was to try and pick up Leovinus's trail, starting from the crash site. There was also the possibility that he might still be hanging around hoping that the Starship would return.

It was not a bad plan, as such, but as Dan jumped out of the landing craft a loudspeaker crackled across the old rectory lawns and a blinding searchlight hit him full in the face: 'Put your hands above your head! Do not make any sudden movements! You are surrounded by armed police!' They had not reckoned on the Oxfordshire Constabulary, who, flushed with their recent success in capturing an illegal immigrant, had set up a permanent watch around the landing site.

Dan instinctively did all the things the megaphone had told him not to. He didn't put his hands above his head. He leapt — very suddenly — back into the landing craft and screamed: 'Hit it!'

The Journalist fired the engine and the small craft leapt into the air, as a hail of gunfire exploded across the lawn. In a few seconds, the spacecraft had disappeared into the night, and the Oxfordshire Police were left staring at the empty sward.

'Calm down, everyone!' Nettie had taken over, although Lucy was contributing the most volubly to the discussion:

'Aaaarrrgh! Agggh!' She was choosing her words carefully.

The Journalist was concentrating on controlling the craft. Dan was shaking.

'OK,' continued Nettie. 'We've got twelve hours to find Leovinus. Our two chances are: one, picking up his trail around here and two, Nigel.'

'Nigel?' Dan's hackles were up — could this wonderful woman be still thinking about that schmuck?

'He's the one person we know was here at the site when Leovinus walked off the ship. He may have seen him — may even know where he is now!'

'Nettie! You're a genius!' said Dan.

'Aaaah! Ooooh!' Lucy added.

'I suggest you and Lucy investigate around here, while The, here, drives me to London to find Nigel.' Nettie had it all worked out. Within a few minutes, the landing craft had deposited Dan and Lucy in a quiet back lane near the hotel where they had been staying, and in another minute, Nettie and The Journalist were heading for the M40.

It began to get light as they approached the motorway. 'We don't want the police picking us up,' Nettie was thinking aloud. 'We'd better pretend we're an ordinary car — a Japanese copy of something Italian maybe. Can you drive this thing just a few inches above the ground?'

'Absolutely!' said The Journalist, and he swung the craft down onto the empty B road. It took him a few moments to pick up the knack of keeping it steady at such a low altitude, but he was getting it.

'And you'd better cut the speed down just a tad, The,' said Nettie, 'One hundred eighty miles an hour is a little fast for these bends.'

By the time they swung out into the fast lane of the M40, The Journalist had managed to get the craft down to a mere 80 mph. and was giving a pretty good impression of a perfectly ordinary (if flamboyantly designed) motorcar. Nettie just hoped nobody would notice their lack of wheels.

Being the rush hour, most drivers weren't looking where they were going, as they crawled their way towards Central London. The finest jam, however, was reserved for the picturesque stretch after the Uxbridge turnoff. There was road construction, and the rush hour simply ground to a deadening, inevitable halt.

'Purple Pangalin!' exclaimed The Journalist. 'What sort of a transportation system d'you call this? The more popular it is the slower it goes! What genius worked this out?!' He was really quite indignant.

'Well it's inevitable isn't it?' Nettie found herself being surprisingly defensive of her planet's right to have traffic jams.

'Of course it isn't!' exploded The Journalist. 'You have to devise a system that goes
faster
the more popular it is, so it can cope! It's perfectly obvious!'

Nettie was drumming her fingers on the dashboard of the landing craft, and smiling at anyone who happened to give them an odd look. Smiling was always the best way to make them look away. She was also glancing increasingly frequently at her watch. Time was running out.

The jam moved an inch nearer London.

'I mean a transportation system with an average speed of just above stationary is not really a transportation system at all!' The Journalist was raving by now. 'It's more like a storage system!'

'OK! Let's do it!' Nettie suddenly sounded decisive. 'I've always fantasized about this!'

'What?'

'Take her up! Nobody's watching!'

And sure enough, when The Journalist gunned the spacecraft up into the air and sped over the heads of the preceding traffic, nobody seemed to notice. He set the craft down again in an open space on the other side of the jam. The driver of the car they landed in front of was not a happily married man. He had been mulling over what would happen if his wife never returned from the skiing holiday she was currently enjoying. Perhaps she would run off with the instructor and breed Alpine sheep and serve English teas to walkers in the summer. But then there were the children. He'd have to get them to school every day on his own and he wouldn't be able to stay at the office after hours to chat up that new secretary… At this moment a sporty-looking car suddenly appeared in front of him. Jesus!' he exclaimed, swerving involuntarily, 'I didn't even notice it overtaking! God! The speed some people drive at!'

It was only as the sporty car sped away in the fast lane that he noticed it didn't seem to have any wheels. 'Concentrate!' he told himself. 'Otherwise you start seeing things.'

Another jam brought them to a resounding halt just as they reached the Westway overpass.

'Oh no!' groaned Nettie,

'We used to have traffic problems like this on Blerontin,' observed The Journalist. 'Several million years ago, before intelligent life developed.'

'Oh shut up!' said Nettie. She couldn't bear self-satisfied aliens who couldn't see any of the good things about Earth. 'This is hopeless. We've only got nine hours left!'

'Where have we got to get to?'

'The Earl's Court Road,' Nettie replied.

'Shall we take the short cut?'

Nettie looked around,There were no police cars as far as she could see, and the woman in the car behind was picking her fingernails.

'Go for it!' she said, and the craft left the overpass to the amazement of a couple of small children who were on their way to school.

'Look, Mum! That car's flying!'

'Well I never, dear,' said their mother, without taking her eyes off the
Hello
magazine she was reading. 'Whatever will we see next!'

Nettie and The Journalist swooped low over Notting Hill and effected a landing on the south side of Holland Park. Here they waited for their moment, hopped over a closed gate and filtered into the one-way system around Earl's Court.

'Eight-thirty!' said Nettie, leaping out of the 'car'. 'You stay here! If I know that sleazeball Nigel, he'll still be in bed!'

She used her door key to get in, and was soon racing up the stairs to Nigel's flat. She let herself in and immediately fell over a broken ironing board that was lying across the doorway.

'Who's that?' called a voice from the bedroom.

'It's me!' yelled Nettie, picking herself up and striding into the bedroom.

The young girl with whom Nigel was currently engaged tried to pretend she was merely sitting astride a pile of old laundry.

'Shit! Nettie!' exclaimed Nigel, making an effort to disguise himself as the pile of old laundry in question by pulling all the sheets around himself. 'I thought you'd been abducted by aliens!'

'This is important, Nigel!' Nettie was straight to the point.

'I can explain all this…' Nigel began. 'You see, this is Nancy, and her mother died recently and I've been looking after…'

'Think back, Nigel! After the spaceship took off, did you see anyone?'

You mean like going to a psychiatrist?'

'No! No!' Trust Nigel to be only thinking of himself, thought Nettie. 'Did you see an old man with a white beard, hanging around the wreckage?'

'I think I'd better go,' said Nancy, who was actually nineteen but looked younger.

'No! No! Hang on,' said Nigel instinctively. He could see that Nettie had other things on her mind than putting his balls in the toaster, and he half hoped he might be able to resume what he had been doing, once he'd sorted out whatever it was his ex-girlfriend actually
did
want of him. 'Did I see
what
?'

Nettie was suddenly overwhelmed by the hopelessness of it all. Here was a whole world — a whole civilization so much more advanced than her own — depending on her eliciting a sensible answer from this creep whom she'd once been in love with. What a hope in hell! She might as well try and teach Turkish to the cat!

'An old man with a white beard? He was in my car. I took him to the police station in Oxford.'

It took Nettie a moment to realize that this was exactly the information she had come all this way to extract. The moment she did, Nettie ran to the bed and gave Nigel a smacking kiss on the lips. Then she gave one to Nancy for good measure, and the next minute she was leaping down the stone stairs of the large Victorian mansion two at a time, whooping: 'The! The! The!'

'I think I'd better go,' said Nancy. She was just about to start a degree in Art History.