– We have questioned him, - continued Arthur, - or at least, you have questioned him - I, as you know, can’t go near him - on everything, and he doesn’t really seem to have anything to contribute. Just the occasional snippet, and things I don’t want to hear about frogs.
The others tried not to smirk.
– Now, I am the first to appreciate a joke, - said Arthur and then had to wait for the others to stop laughing.
– I am the first… - he stopped again. This time he stopped and listened to the silence. There actually was silence this time, and it had come very suddenly.
Prak was quiet. For days they had lived with constant manical laughter ringing round the ship, only occasionally relieved by short periods of light giggling and sleep. Arthur’s very soul was clenched with paranoia.
This was not the silence of sleep. A buzzer sounded. A glance at a board told them that the buzzer had been sounded by Prak.
– He’s not well, - said Trillian quietly. - The constant laughing is completely wrecking his body.
Arthur’s lips twitched but he said nothing.
– We’d better go and see him, - said Trillian.
Trillian came out of the cabin wearing her serious face.
– He wants you to go in, - she said to Arthur, who was wearing his glum and tight-lipped one. He thrust his hands deep into his dressing-gown pockets and tried to think of something to say which wouldn’t sound petty. It seemed terribly unfair, but he couldn’t.
– Please, - said Trillian.
He shrugged and went in, taking his glum and tight-lipped face with him, despite the reaction this always provoked from Prak.
He looked down at his tormentor, who was lying quietly on the bed, ashen and wasted. His breathing was very shallow. Ford and Zaphod were standing by the bed looking awkward.
– You wanted to ask me something, - said Prak in a thin voice and coughed slightly.
Just the cough made Arthur stiffen, but it passed and subsided.
– How do you know that? - he asked.
Prak shrugged weakly.
– ‘Cos it’s true, - he said simply.
Arthur took the point.
– Yes, - he said at last in rather a strained drawl. - I did have a question. Or rather, what I actually have is an Answer. I wanted to know what the Question was.
Prak nodded sympathetically, and Arthur relaxed a little.
– It’s… well, it’s a long story, - he said, - but the Question I would like to know is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know is that the Answer is Forty-Two, which is a little aggravating.
Prak nodded again.
– Forty-Two, - he said. - Yes, that’s right.
He paused. Shadows of thought and memory crossed his face like the shadows of clouds crossing the land.
– I’m afraid, - he said at last, - that the Question and the Answer are mutually exclusive. Knowledge of one logically precludes knowledge of the other. It is impossible that both can ever be known about the same universe.
He paused again. Disappointment crept into Arthur’s face and snuggled down into its accustomed place.
– Except, - said Prak, struggling to sort a thought out, - if it happened, it seems that the Question and the Answer would just cancel each other out and take the Universe with them, which would then be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable. It is possible that this has already happened, - he added with a weak smile, - but there is a certain amount of Uncertainty about it.
A little giggle brushed through him.
Arthur sat down on a stool.
– Oh well, - he said with resignation, - I was just hoping there would be some sort of reason.
– Do you know, - said Prak, - the story of the Reason?
Arthur said that he didn’t, and Prak said that he knew that he didn’t.
He told it.
One night, he said, a spaceship appeared in the sky of a planet which had never seen one before. The planet was Dalforsas, the ship was this one. It appeared as a brilliant new star moving silently across the heavens.
Primitive tribesmen who were sitting huddled on the Cold Hillsides looked up from their steaming night- drinks and pointed with trembling fingers, swearing that they had seen a sign, a sign from their gods which meant that they must now arise at last and go and slay the evil Princes of the Plains.
In the high turrets of their palaces, the Princes of the Plains looked up and saw the shining star, and received it unmistakably as a sign from their gods that they must now go and set about the accursed Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides.
And between them, the Dwellers in the Forest looked up into the sky and saw the sigh of the new star, and saw it with fear and apprehension, for though they had never seen anything like it before, they too knew precisely what it foreshadowed, and they bowed their heads in despair.
They knew that when the rains came, it was a sign.
When the rains departed, it was a sign.
When the winds rose, it was a sign.
When the winds fell, it was a sign.
When in the land there was born at midnight of a full moon a goat with three heads, that was a sign.
When in the land there was born at some time in the afternoon a perfectly normal cat or pig with no birth complications at all, or even just a child with a retrousse nose, that too would often be taken as a sign.
So there was no doubt at all that a new star in the sky was a sign of a particularly spectacular order.
And each new sign signified the same thing - that the Princes of the Plains and the Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides were about to beat the hell out of each other again.
This in itself wouldn’t be so bad, except that the Princes of the Plains and the Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides always elected to beat the hell out of each other in the Forest, and it was always the Dwellers in the Forest who came off worst in these exchanges, though as far as they could see it never had anything to do with them.
And sometimes, after some of the worst of these outrages, the Dwellers in the Forest would send a messenger to either the leader of the Princes of the Plains or the leader of the Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides and demand to know the reason for this intolerable behaviour.
And the leader, whichever one it was, would take the messenger aside and explain the Reason to him, slowly and carefully and with great attention to the considerable detail involved.
And the terrible thing was, it was a very good one. It was very clear, very rational, and tough. The messenger would hang his head and feel sad and foolish that he had not realized what a tough and complex place the real world was, and what difficulties and paradoxes had to be embraced if one was to live in it.
– Now do you understand? - the leader would say.
The messenger would nod dumbly.
– And you see these battles have to take place?
Another dumb nod.
– And why they have to take place in the forest, and why it is in everybody’s best interest, the Forest Dwellers included, that they should?
– Er…
– In the long run.
– Er, yes.
And the messenger did understand the Reason, and he returned to his people in the Forest. But as he
