The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams Page A

nothing.’
    “ ‘But,’ says Man, ‘the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It
could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore,
by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’
    “ ‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly
vanishes in a puff of logic.
    “ ‘Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove
that black is white and gets himself killed on the next pedestrian crossing.
    “Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of
dingo’s kidneys, but that didn’t stop Oolon Colluphid making a small
fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book,
Well That about Wraps It Up for God.
    “Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused
more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”
    Arthur let out a low groan. He was horrified to discover that the kick through hyperspace hadn’t killed him. He was now six light-years from the place that the Earth would have been if it still existed.
    The Earth.
    Visions of it swam sickeningly through his nauseated mind. There was no way his imagination could feel the impact of the whole Earth having gone, it was too big. He prodded his feelings by thinking that his parents and his sister had gone. No reaction. He thought of all the people he had been close to. No reaction. Then he thought of a complete stranger he had been standing behind in the queue at the supermarket two days before and felt a sudden stab—the supermarket was gone, everyone in it was gone. Nelson’s Column had gone! Nelson’s Column had gone and there would be no outcry, because there was no one left to make an outcry. From now on Nelson’s Column only existed in his mind. England only existed in his mind—his mind, stuck here in this dank smelly steel-lined spaceship. A wave of claustrophobia closed in on him.
    England no longer existed. He’d got that—somehow he’d got it. He tried again. America, he thought, has gone. He couldn’t grasp it. He decided to start smaller again. New York has gone. No reaction. He’d never seriously believed it existed anyway. The dollar, he thought, has sunk for ever. Slight tremor there. Every Bogart movie has been wiped, he said to himself, and that gave him a nasty knock. McDonald’s, he thought. There is no longer any such thing as a McDonald’s hamburger.
    He passed out. When he came round a second later he found he was sobbing for his mother.
    He jerked himself violently to his feet.
    “Ford!”
    Ford looked up from where he was sitting in a corner humming to himself. He always found the actual traveling-through-space part of space travel rather trying.
    “Yeah?” he said.
    “If you’re a researcher on this book thing and you were on Earth, you must have been gathering material on it.”
    “Well, I was able to extend the original entry a bit, yes.”
    “Let me see what it says in this edition then, I’ve got to see it.”
    “Yeah, okay.” He passed it over again.
    Arthur grabbed hold of it and tried to stop his hands shaking. He pressed the entry for the relevant page. The screen flashed and swirled and resolved into a page of print. Arthur stared at it.
    “It doesn’t have an entry!” he burst out.
    Ford looked over his shoulder.
    “Yes, it does,” he said, “down there, see at the bottom of the screen, just above Eccentrica Gallumbits, the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon 6.”
    Arthur followed Ford’s finger, and saw where it was pointing. For a moment it still didn’t register, then his mind nearly blew up.
    “What?
Harmless?
Is that all it’s got to say?
Harmless!
One word!”
    Ford shrugged.
    “Well, there are a hundred billion stars in the Galaxy, and only a limited amount of space in the book’s microprocessors,” he said, “and no one knew much about the Earth, of course.”
    “Well, for God’s sake, I