Текст книги "The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

Автор книги: Douglas Noel Adams

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Chapter 30

The stars came out that night, dazzling in their brilliance and clarity. Ford and Arthur had walked more miles than they had any means of judging and finally stopped to rest. The night was cool and balmy, the air pure, the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic totally silent.

A wonderful stillness hung over the world, a magical calm which combined with the soft fragrances of the woods, the quiet chatter of insects and the brilliant light of the stars to soothe their jangled spirits. Even Ford Prefect, who had seen more worlds than he could count on a long afternoon, was moved to wonder if this was the most beautiful he had ever seen. All that day they had passed through rolling green hills and valleys, richly covered with grasses, wild scented flowers and tall thickly leaved trees; the sun had warmed them, light breezes had kept them cool, and Ford Prefect had checked his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic at less and less frequent intervals, and had exhibited less and less annoyance at its continued silence. He was beginning to think he liked it here.

Cool though the night air was they slept soundly and comfortably in the open and awoke a few hours later with the light dewfall, feeling refreshed but hungry. Ford had stuffed some small rolls into his satchel at Milliways and they breakfasted on these before moving on.

So far they had wandered purely at random, but now they struck out firmly eastward, feeling that if they were going to explore this world they should have some clear idea of where they had come from and where they were going.

Shortly before noon they had their first indication that the world they had landed on was not an uninhabited one: a half-glimpsed face among the trees, watching them. It vanished at the moment they both saw it, but the image they were both left with was of a humanoid creature, curious to see them but not alarmed. Half an hour later they glimpsed another such face, and ten minutes after that another.

A minute later they stumbled into a wide clearing and stopped short.

Before them in the middle of the clearing stood a group of about two dozen men and women. They stood still and quiet facing Ford and Arthur. Around some of the women huddled some small children and behind the group was a ramshackle array of small dwellings made of mud and branches.

Ford and Arthur held their breath.

The tallest of the men stood little over five feet high, they all stooped forward slightly, had longish arms and lowish foreheads, and clear bright eyes with which they stared intently at the strangers.

Seeing that they carried no weapons and made no move toward them, Ford and Arthur relaxed slightly.

For a while the two groups simply stared at each other, neither side making any move. The natives seemed puzzled by the intruders, and while they showed no sign of aggression they were quite clearly not issuing any invitations.

Nothing happened.

For a full two minutes nothing continued to happen.

After two minutes Ford decided it was time something happened.

“Hello,” he said.

The women drew their children slightly closer to them.

The men made hardly any discernible move and yet their whole disposition made it clear that the greeting was not welcome – it was not resented in any great degree, it was just not welcome.

One of the men, who had been standing slightly forward of the rest of the group and who might therefore have been their leader, stepped forward. His face was quiet and calm, almost serene.

“Ugghhhuuggghhhrrrr uh uh ruh uurgh,” he said quietly.

This caught Arthur by surprise. He had grown so used to receiving an instantaneous and unconscious translation of everything he heard via the Babel fish lodged in his ear that he had ceased to be aware of it, and he was only reminded of its presence now by the fact that it didn’t seem to be working. Vague shadows of meaning had flickered at the back of his mind, but there was nothing he could get any firm grasp on. He guessed, correctly as it happens, that these people had as yet evolved no more than the barest rudiments of language, and that the Babel fish was therefore powerless to help. He glanced at Ford, who was infinitely more experienced in these matters.

“I think,” said Ford out of the corner of his mouth, “he’s asking us if we’d mind walking on around the edge of the village.”

A moment later, a gesture from the man-creature seemed to confirm this.

“Ruurgggghhhh urrgggh; urgh urgh (uh ruh) rruurruuh ug,” continued the man-creature.

“The general gist,” said Ford, “as far as I can make out, is that we are welcome to continue our journey in any way we like, but if we would walk around his village rather than through it it would make them all very happy.”

“So what do we do?”

“I think we make them happy,” said Ford.

Slowly and watchfully they walked around the perimeter of the clearing. This seemed to go down very well with the natives who bowed to them very slightly and then went about their business.

Ford and Arthur continued their journey through the wood. A few hundred yards past the clearing they suddenly came upon a small pile of fruit lying in their path – berries that looked remarkably like raspberries and strawberries, and pulpy, green-skinned fruit that looked remarkably like pears.

So far they had steered clear of the fruit and berries they had seen, though the trees and bushes were laden with them.

“Look at it this way,” Ford Prefect had said, “fruit and berries on strange planets either make you live or make you die. Therefore the point at which to start toying with them is when you’re going to die if you don’t. That way you stay ahead. The secret of healthy hitchhiking is to eat junk food.”

They looked at the pile that lay in their path with suspicion. It looked so good it made them almost dizzy with hunger.

“Look at it this way,” said Ford, “er …”

“Yes?” said Arthur.

“I’m trying to think of a way of looking at it which means we get to eat it,” said Ford.

The leaf-dappled sun gleamed on the plump skins of the things which looked like pears. The things which looked like raspberries and strawberries were fatter and riper than any Arthur had ever seen, even in ice cream commercials.

“Why don’t we eat them and think about it afterward?” he said.

“Maybe that’s what they want us to do.”

“All right, look at it this way.…”

“Sounds good so far.”

“It’s there for us to eat. Either it’s good or it’s bad, either they want to feed us or to poison us. If it’s poisonous and we don’t eat it they’ll just attack us some other way. If we don’t eat, we lose out either way.”

“I like the way you’re thinking,” said Ford. “Now eat one.”

Hesitantly, Arthur picked up one of the things that looked like pears.

“I always thought that about the Garden of Eden story,” said Ford.

“Eh?”

“Garden of Eden. Tree. Apple. That bit, remember?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

“Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like guys, oh, but don’t eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting ‘Gotcha.’ It wouldn’t have made any difference if they hadn’t eaten it.”

“Why not?”

“Because if you’re dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won’t give up. They’ll get you in the end.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Never mind, eat the fruit.”

“You know, this place almost looks like the Garden of Eden.”

“Eat the fruit.”

“Sounds quite like it too.”

Arthur took a bite from the thing which looked like a pear.

“It’s a pear,” he said.

A few moments later, when they had eaten the lot, Ford Prefect turned round and called out.

“Thank you. Thank you very much,” he called, “you’re very kind.”

They went on their way.

For the next fifty miles of their journey eastward they kept on finding the occasional gift of fruit lying in their path, and though they once or twice had a quick glimpse of a native man-creature among the trees, they never again made direct contact. They decided they rather liked a race of people who made it clear that they were grateful simply to be left alone.

The fruit and berries stopped after fifty miles, because that was where the sea started.

Having no pressing calls on their time they built a raft and crossed the sea. It was relatively calm, only about sixty miles wide and they had a reasonably pleasant crossing, landing in a country that was at least as beautiful as the one they had left.

Life was, in short, ridiculously easy and for a while at least they were able to cope with the problems of aimlessness and isolation by deciding to ignore them. When the craving for company became too great they would know where to find it, but for the moment they were happy to feel that the Golgafrinchans were hundreds of miles behind them.

Nevertheless, Ford Prefect began to use his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic more often again. Only once did he pick up a signal, but that was so faint and from such enormous distance that it depressed him more than the silence that had otherwise continued unbroken.

On a whim they turned northward. After weeks of traveling they came to another sea, built another raft and crossed it. This time it was harder going, the climate was getting colder. Arthur suspected a streak of masochism in Ford Prefect – the increasing difficulty of the journey seemed to give him a sense of purpose that was otherwise lacking. He strode onward relentlessly.

Their journey northward brought them into steep mountainous terrain of breathtaking sweep and beauty. The vast, jagged, snow-covered peaks ravished their senses. The cold began to bite into their bones.

They wrapped themselves in animal skins and furs which Ford Prefect acquired by a technique he once learned from a couple of ex-Pralite monks running a mind-surfing resort in the Hills of Hunian.

The Galaxy is littered with ex-Pralite monks, all on the make, because the mental control techniques the Order have evolved as a form of devotional discipline are, frankly, sensational – and extraordinary numbers of monks leave the Order just after they have finished their devotional training and just before they take their final vows to stay locked in small metal boxes for the rest of their lives.

Ford’s technique seemed to consist mainly of standing still for a while and smiling.

After a while an animal – a deer perhaps – would appear from out of the trees and watch him cautiously. Ford would continue to smile at it, his eyes would soften and shine, and he would seem to radiate a deep and universal love, a love which reached out to embrace all of creation. A wonderful quietness would descend on the surrounding countryside, peaceful and serene, emanating from this transfigured man. Slowly the deer would approach, step by step, until it was almost nuzzling him, whereupon Ford Prefect would reach out to it and break its neck.

“Pheromone control,” he said it was. “You just have to know how to generate the right smell.”

Chapter 31

A few days after landing in this mountainous land they hit a coastline which swept diagonally before them from the south-west to the northeast, a coastline of monumental grandeur: deep majestic ravines, soaring pinnacles of ice – fjords.

For two further days they scrambled and climbed over the rocks and glaciers, awestruck with beauty.

“Arthur!” yelled Ford suddenly.

It was the afternoon of the second day. Arthur was sitting on a high rock watching the thundering sea smashing itself against the craggy promontories.

“Arthur!” yelled Ford again.

Arthur looked to where Ford’s voice had come from, carried faintly in the wind.

Ford had gone to examine a glacier, and Arthur found him there crouching by the solid wall of the blue ice. He was tense with excitement – his eyes darted up to meet Arthur’s.

“Look,” he said, “look!”

Arthur looked. He saw the solid wall of blue ice.

“Yes,” he said, “it’s a glacier. I’ve already seen it.”

“No,” said Ford, “you’ve looked at it, you haven’t seen it. Look.”

Ford was pointing deep into the heart of the ice.

Arthur peered – he saw nothing but vague shadows.

“Move back from it,” insisted Ford, “look again.”

Arthur moved back and looked again.

“No,” he said, and shrugged. “What am I supposed to be looking for?”

And suddenly he saw it.

“You see it?”

He saw it.

His mouth started to speak, but his brain decided it hadn’t got anything to say yet and shut it again. His brain then started to contend with the problem of what his eyes told it they were looking at, but in doing so relinquished control of the mouth which promptly fell open again. Once more gathering up the jaw, his brain lost control of his left hand which then wandered around in an aimless fashion. For a second or so the brain tried to catch the left hand without letting go of the mouth and simultaneously tried to think about what was buried in the ice, which is probably why the legs went and Arthur dropped restfully to the ground.

The thing that had been causing all this neural upset was a network of shadows in the ice, about eighteen inches beneath the surface. Looked at from the right angle they resolved into the solid shapes of letters from an alien alphabet, each about three feet high; and for those, like Arthur, who couldn’t read Magrathean there was above the letters the outline of a face hanging in the ice.

It was an old face, thin and distinguished, careworn but not unkind.

It was the face of the man who had won an award for designing the coastline they now knew themselves to be standing on.

Chapter 32

A thin whine filled the air. It whirled and howled through the trees, upsetting the squirrels. A few birds flew off in disgust. The noise danced and skittered round the clearing. It whooped, it rasped, it generally offended.

The Captain, however, regarded the lone bagpiper with an indulgent eye. Little could disturb his equanimity; indeed, once he had got over the loss of his gorgeous bath during that unpleasantness in the swamp all those months ago he had begun to find his new life remarkably congenial. A hollow had been scooped out of a large rock which stood in the middle of the clearing, and in this he would bask daily while attendants sloshed water over him. Not particularly warm water, it must be said, as they hadn’t yet worked out a way of heating it. Never mind, that would come, and in the meantime search parties were scouring the countryside far and wide for a hot spring, preferably one in a nice leafy glade, and if it was near a soap mine – perfection. To those who said that they had a feeling soap wasn’t found in mines, the Captain had ventured to suggest that perhaps that was because no one had looked hard enough, and this possibility had been reluctantly acknowledged.

No, life was very pleasant, and the great thing about it was that when the hot spring was found, complete with leafy glade en suite, and when in the fullness of time the cry came reverberating across the hills that the soap mine had been located and was producing five hundred cakes a day it would be more pleasant still. It was very important to have things to look forward to.

Wail, wail, screech, wail, howl, honk, squeak went the bagpipes, increasing the Captain’s already considerable pleasure at the thought that any moment now they might stop. That was something he looked forward to as well.

What else was pleasant? he asked himself. Well, so many things; the red and gold of the trees, now that autumn was approaching; the peaceful chatter of scissors a few feet from his bath where a couple of hairdressers were exercising their skills on a dozing art director and his assistant; the sunlight gleaming off the six shiny telephones lined up along the edge of his rock-hewn bath. The only thing nicer than a phone that didn’t ring all the time (or indeed at all) was six phones that didn’t ring all the time (or indeed at all).

Nicest of all was the happy murmur of all the hundreds of people slowly assembling in the clearing around him to watch the afternoon committee meeting.

The Captain punched his rubber duck playfully on the beak. The afternoon committee meetings were his favorite.

Other eyes watched the assembling crowds. High in a tree on the edge of the clearing squatted Ford Prefect, lately returned from foreign climes. After his six-month journey he was lean and healthy, his eyes gleamed, he wore a reindeer-skin coat; his beard was as thick and his face as bronzed as a country-rock singer’s.

He and Arthur Dent had been watching the Golgafrinchans for almost a week now, and Ford had decided it was time to stir things up a bit.

The clearing was now full. Hundreds of men and women lounged around, chatting, eating fruit, playing cards and generally having a fairly relaxed time of it. Their track suits were now all dirty and even torn, but they all had immaculately styled hair. Ford was puzzled to see that many of them had stuffed their track suits full of leaves and wondered if this was meant to be some form of insulation against the coming winter. Ford’s eyes narrowed. They couldn’t be interested in botany all of a sudden could they?

In the middle of these speculations the Captain’s voice rose above the hubbub.

“All right,” he said, “I’d like to call this meeting to some sort of order, if that’s at all possible. Is that all right with everybody?” He smiled genially. “In a minute. When you’re all ready.”

The talking gradually died away and the clearing fell silent, except for the bagpiper who seemed to be in some wild and uninhabitable musical world of his own. A few of those in his immediate vicinity threw some leaves to him. If there was any reason for this then it escaped Ford Prefect for the moment.

A small group of people had clustered round the Captain and one of them was clearly preparing to speak. He did this by standing up, clearing his throat and then gazing off into the distance as if to signify to the crowd that he would be with them in a minute.

The crowd of course were riveted and all turned their eyes on him.

A moment of silence followed, which Ford judged to be the right dramatic moment to make his entry. The man turned to speak.

Ford dropped down out of the tree.

“Hi there,” he said.

The crowd swiveled round.

“Ah, my dear fellow,” called out the Captain, “got any matches on you? Or a lighter? Anything like that?”

“No,” said Ford, sounding a little deflated. It wasn’t what he’d prepared. He decided he’d better be a little stronger on the subject.

“No, I haven’t,” he continued. “No matches. Instead I bring you news …”

“Pity,” said the Captain. “We’ve all run out you see. Haven’t had a hot bath in weeks.”

Ford refused to be headed off.

“I bring you news,” he said, “of a discovery that might interest you.”

“Is it on the agenda?” snapped the man whom Ford had interrupted.

Ford smiled a broad country-rock singer smile.

“Now, come on,” he said.

“Well, I’m sorry,” said the man huffily, “but speaking as a management consultant of many years’ standing, I must insist on the importance of observing the committee structure.”

Ford looked around the crowd.

“He’s mad, you know,” he said, “this is a prehistoric planet.”

“Address the chair!” snapped the management consultant.

“There isn’t a chair,” explained Ford, “there’s only a rock.”

The management consultant decided that testiness was what the situation now called for.

“Well, call it a chair,” he said testily.

“Why not call it a rock?” asked Ford.

“You obviously have no conception,” said the management consultant, now abandoning testiness in favor of good old-fashioned hauteur, “of modern business methods.”

“And you have no conception of where you are,” said Ford.

A girl with a strident voice leaped to her feet and used it.

“Shut up, you two,” she said, “I want to table a motion.”

“You mean boulder a motion,” tittered a hairdresser.

“Order, order!” yapped the management consultant.

“All right,” said Ford, “let’s see how you’re doing.” He plunked himself down on the ground to see how long he could keep his temper.

The Captain made a sort of conciliatory harrumphing noise.

“I would like to call to order,” he said pleasantly, “the five hundred and seventy-third meeting of the colonization committee of Fintlewoodlewix.…”

Ten seconds, thought Ford, as he leaped to his feet again.

“This is futile,” he exclaimed. “Five hundred and seventy-three committee meetings and you haven’t even discovered fire yet!”

“If you would care,” said the girl with the strident voice, “to examine the agenda sheet—”

“Agenda rock,” trilled the hairdresser happily.

“Thank you, I’ve made that point,” muttered Ford.

“ … you … will … see …” continued the girl firmly, “that we are having a report from the hairdressers’ Fire Development Subcommittee today.”

“Oh … ah—” said the hairdresser with a sheepish look, which is recognized the whole Galaxy over as meaning “Er, will next Tuesday do?”

“All right,” said Ford, rounding on him. “What have you done? What are you going to do? What are your thoughts on fire development?”

“Well, I don’t know,” said the hairdresser. “All they gave me was a couple of sticks.…”

“So what have you done with them?”

Nervously, the hairdresser fished in his track suit top and handed over the fruits of his labor to Ford.

Ford held them up for all to see.

“Curling tongs,” he said.

The crowd applauded.

“Never mind,” said Ford. “Rome wasn’t burned in a day.”

The crowd hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about, but they loved it nevertheless. They applauded.

“Well, you’re obviously being totally naive of course,” said the girl. “When you’ve been in marketing as long as I have you’ll know that before any new product can be developed it has to be properly researched. We’ve got to find out what people want from fire, how they relate to it, what sort of image it has for them.”

The crowd were tense. They were expecting something wonderful from Ford.

“Stick it up your nose,” he said.

“Which is precisely the sort of thing we need to know,” insisted the girl. “Do people want fire that can be fitted nasally?”

“Do you?” Ford asked the crowd.

“Yes!” shouted some.

“No!” shouted others happily.

They didn’t know, they just thought it was great.

“And the wheel,” said the Captain, “what about this wheel thingy? It sounds a terribly interesting project.”

“Ah,” said the marketing girl, “well, we’re having a little difficulty there.”

“Difficulty?” exclaimed Ford. “Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It’s the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!”

The marketing girl soured him with a look.

“All right, Mr. Wiseguy,” she said, “you’re so clever, you tell us what color it should be.”

The crowd went wild. One up to the home team, they thought. Ford shrugged his shoulders and sat down again.

“Almighty Zarquon,” he said, “have none of you done anything?”

As if in answer to his question there was a sudden clamor of noise from the entrance to the clearing. The crowd couldn’t believe the amount of entertainment they were getting this afternoon: in marched a squad of about a dozen men dressed in the remnants of their Golgafrinchan 3rd Regiment dress uniforms. About half of them still carried Kill-O-Zap guns, the rest now carried spears which they struck together as they marched. They looked bronzed, healthy and utterly exhausted and bedraggled. They clattered to a halt and banged to attention. One of them fell over and never moved again.

“Captain, sir!” cried Number Two – for he was their leader—“Permission to report, sir!”

“Yes, Number Two, welcome back and all that. Find any hot springs?” said the Captain despondently.

“No, sir!”

“Thought you wouldn’t.”

Number Two strode through the crowd and presented arms before the bath.

“We have discovered another continent!”

“When was this?”

“It lies across the sea …” said Number Two, narrowing his eyes significantly, “to the east!”

“Ah.”

Number Two turned to face the crowd. He raised his gun above his head. This is going to be great, thought the crowd.

“We have declared war on it!”

Wild abandoned cheering broke out in all corners of the clearing – this was beyond all expectation.

“Wait a minute,” shouted Ford Prefect. “Wait a minute!”

He leaped to his feet and demanded silence. After a while he got it, or at least the best silence he could hope for under the circumstances: the circumstances were that the bagpiper was spontaneously composing a national anthem.

“Do we have to have the piper?” demanded Ford.

“Oh yes,” said the Captain, “we’ve given him a grant.”

Ford considered opening this idea up for debate but quickly decided that that way madness lay. Instead he slung a well judged rock at the piper and turned to face Number Two.

“War?” he said.

“Yes!” Number Two gazed contemptuously at Ford Prefect.

“On the next continent?”

“Yes! Total warfare! The war to end all wars!”

“But there’s no one even living there yet!”

Ah, interesting, thought the crowd, nice point.

Number Two’s gaze hovered undisturbed. In this respect his eyes were like a couple of mosquitos that hover purposefully three inches from your nose and refuse to be deflected by arm thrashes, fly swats or rolled newspapers.

“I know that,” he said, “but there will be one day! So we have left an open-ended ultimatum.”

“What?”

“And blown up a few military installations.”

The Captain leaned forward out of his bath.

“Military installations, Number Two?” he said.

For a moment the eyes wavered.

“Yes, sir, well potential military installations. All right … trees.”

The moment of uncertainty passed – his eyes flicked like whips over his audience.

“And,” he roared, “we interrogated a gazelle!”

He flipped his Kill-O-Zap smartly under his arm and marched off through the pandemonium that had now erupted throughout the ecstatic crowd. A few steps was all he managed before he was caught up and carried shoulder high for a lap of honor around the clearing.

Ford sat and idly tapped a couple of stones together.

“So what else have you done?” he inquired after the celebrations had died down.

“We have started a culture,” said the marketing girl.

“Oh yes?” said Ford.

“Yes. One of our film producers is already making a fascinating documentary about the indigenous cavemen of the area.”

“They’re not cavemen.”

“They look like cavemen.”

“Do they live in caves?”

“Well …”

“They live in huts.”

“Perhaps they’re having their caves redecorated,” called out a wag from the crowd.

Ford rounded on him angrily.

“Very funny,” he said, “but have you noticed that they’re dying out?”

On their journey back, Ford and Arthur had come across two derelict villages and the bodies of many natives in the woods, where they had crept away to die. Those that still lived seemed stricken and listless, as if they were suffering from some disease of the spirit rather than the body. They moved sluggishly and with an infinite sadness. Their future had been taken away from them.

“Dying out!” repeated Ford. “Do you know what that means?”

“Er … we shouldn’t sell them any life insurance?” called out the wag again.

Ford ignored him, and appealed to the whole crowd.

“Can you try and understand,” he said, “that it’s just since we’ve arrived here that they’ve started dying out!”

“In fact that comes over terribly well in this film,” said the marketing girl, “and just gives it that poignant twist which is the hallmark of the really great documentary. The producer’s very committed.”

“He should be,” muttered Ford.

“I gather,” said the girl, turning to address the Captain who was beginning to nod off, “that he wants to make one about you next, Captain.”

“Oh really?” he said, coming to with a start. “That’s awfully nice.”

“He’s got a very strong angle on it, you know, the burden of responsibility, the loneliness of command.…”

The Captain hummed and hahed about this for a moment.

“Well, I wouldn’t overstress that angle, you know,” he said finally. “One’s never alone with a rubber duck.”

He held the duck aloft and it got an appreciative round from the crowd.

All this while, the management consultant had been sitting in stony silence, his fingertips pressed to his temples to indicate that he was waiting and would wait all day if it was necessary.

At this point he decided he would not wait all day after all, he would merely pretend that the last half hour hadn’t happened.

He rose to his feet.

“If,” he said tersely, “we could for a moment move on to the subject of fiscal policy …”

“Fiscal policy!” whooped Ford Prefect. “Fiscal policy!”

The management consultant gave him a look that only a lungfish could have copied.

“Fiscal policy …” he repeated, “that is what I said.”

“How can you have money,” demanded Ford, “if none of you actually produces anything? It doesn’t grow on trees you know.”

“If you would allow me to continue …” Ford nodded dejectedly.

“Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich.”

Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed.

“But we have also,” continued the management consultant, “run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut.”

Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The management consultant waved them down.

“So in order to obviate this problem,” he continued, “and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and … er, burn down all the forests. I think you’ll all agree that’s a sensible move under the circumstances.”

The crowd seemed a little uncertain about this for a second or two until someone pointed out how much this would increase the value of the leaves in their pockets whereupon they let out whoops of delight and gave the management consultant a standing ovation. The accountants among them looked forward to a profitable autumn.

“You’re all mad,” explained Ford Prefect.

“You’re absolutely barmy,” he suggested.

“You’re a bunch of raving nutters,” he opined.