“Thanks a bundle grandad,” he added to himself under his breath.
“So, how are you?” he said aloud.
“Oh, fine,” said Marvin, “if you happen to like being me which personally I don't.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Zaphod as the elevator doors opened.
“Hello,” said the elevator sweetly, “I am to be your elevator for this trip to the floor of your choice. I have been designed by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation to take you, the visitor to the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, into these their offices. If you enjoy your ride, which will be swift and pleasurable, then you may care to experience some of the other elevators which have recently been installed in the offices of the Galactic tax department, Boobiloo Baby Foods and the Sirian State Mental Hospital, where many ex-Sirius Cybernetics Corporation executives will be delighted to welcome your visits, sympathy, and happy tales of the outside world.”
“Yeah,” said Zaphod, stepping into it, “what else do you do besides talk?”
“I go up,” said the elevator, “or down.”
“Good,” said Zaphod, “We're going up.”
“Or down,” the elevator reminded him.
“Yeah, OK, up please.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Down's very nice,” suggested the elevator hopefully.
“Oh yeah?”
“Super.”
“Good,” said Zaphod, “Now will you take us up?”
“May I ask you,” inquired the elevator in its sweetest, most reasonable voice, “if you've considered all the possibilities that down might offer you?”
Zaphod knocked one of his heads against the inside wall. He didn't need this, he thought to himself, this of all things he had no need of. He hadn't asked to be here. If he was asked at this moment where he would like to be he would probably have said he would like to be lying on the beach with at least fifty beautiful women and a small team of experts working out new ways they could be nice to him, which was his usual reply. To this he would probably have added something passionate on the subject of food.
One thing he didn't want to be doing was chasing after the man who ruled the Universe, who was only doing a job which he might as well keep at, because if it wasn't him it would only be someone else. Most of all he didn't want to be standing in an office block arguing with an elevator.
“Like what other possibilities?” he asked wearily.
“Well,” the voice trickled on like honey on biscuits, “there's the basement, the microfiles, the heating system… er…”
It paused.
“Nothing particularly exciting,” it admitted, “but they are alternatives.”
“Holy Zarquon,” muttered Zaphod, “did I ask for an existentialist elevator?” he beat his fists against the wall.
“What's the matter with the thing?” he spat.
“It doesn't want to go up,” said Marvin simply, “I think it's afraid.”
“Afraid?” cried Zaphod, “Of what? Heights? An elevator that's afraid of heights?”
“No,” said the elevator miserably, “of the future…”
“The future?” exclaimed Zaphod, “What does the wretched thing want, a pension scheme?”
At that moment a commotion broke out in the reception hall behind them. From the walls around them came the sound of suddenly active machinery.
“We can all see into the future,” whispered the elevator in what sounded like terror, “it's part of our programming.”
Zaphod looked out of the elevator – an agitated crowd had gathered round the elevator area, pointing and shouting.
Every elevator in the building was coming down, very fast.
He ducked back in.
“Marvin,” he said, “just get this elevator go up will you? We've got to get to Zarniwoop.”
“Why?” asked Marvin dolefully.
“I don't know,” said Zaphod, “but when I find him, he'd better have a very good reason for me wanting to see him.”
Modern elevators are strange and complex entities. The ancient electric winch and “maximum-capacity- eight-persons” jobs bear as much relation to a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Happy Vertical People Transporter as a packet of mixed nuts does to the entire west wing of the Sirian State Mental Hospital.
This is because they operate on the curios principle of “defocused temporal perception”. In other words they have the capacity to see dimly into the immediate future, which enables the elevator to be on the right floor to pick you up even before you knew you wanted it, thus eliminating all the tedious chatting, relaxing, and making friends that people were previously forced to do whist waiting for elevators.
Not unnaturally, many elevators imbued with intelligence and precognition became terribly frustrated with the mindless business of going up and down, up and down, experimented briefly with the notion of going sideways, as a sort of existential protest, demanded participation in the decision-making process and finally took to squatting in basements sulking.
An impoverished hitch-hiker visiting any planets in the Sirius star system these days can pick up easy money working as a counsellor for neurotic elevators.
At the fifteenth floor the elevator doors opened quickly.
“Fifteenth,” said the elevator, “and remember, I'm only doing this because I like your robot.”
Zaphod and Marvin bundled out of the elevator which instantly snapped its doors shut and dropped as fast as its mechanism would take it.
Zaphod looked around warily. The corridor was deserted and silent and gave no clue as to where Zarniwoop might be found. All the doors that led off the corridor were closed and unmarked.
They were standing close to the bridge which led across from one tower of the building to the other. Through a large window the brilliant sun of Ursa Minor Beta threw blocks of light in which danced small specks of dust. A shadow flitted past momentarily.
“Left in the lurch by a lift,” muttered Zaphod, who was feeling at his least jaunty.
They both stood and looked in both directions.
“You know something?” said Zaphod to Marvin.
“More that you can possibly imagine.”
“I'm dead certain this building shouldn't be shaking,” Zaphod said.
It was just a light tremor through the soles of his feet – and another one. In the sunbeams the flecks of dust danced more vigorously. Another shadow flitted past.
Zaphod looked at the floor.
“Either,” he said, not very confidently, “they've got some vibro system for toning up your muscles while you work, or…”
He walked across to the window and suddenly stumbled because at that moment his Joo Janta 200 Super- Chromatic Peril Sensitive sunglasses had turned utterly black. A large shadow flitted past the window with a sharp buzz.
Zaphod ripped off his sunglasses, and as he did so the building shook with a thunderous roar. He leapt to the window.
“Or,” he said, “this building's being bombed!”
Another roar cracked through the building.
“Who in the Galaxy would want to bomb a publishing company?” asked Zaphod, but never heard Marvin's reply because at that moment the building shook with another bomb attack. He tried to stagger back to the elevator – a pointless manoeuvre he realized, but the only one he could think of.
Suddenly, at the end of the corridor leading at right angles from this one, he caught sight of a figure as it lunged into view, a man. The man saw him.
“Beeblebrox, over here!” he shouted.
