Of Mice and Men . . . And Vogons

Andrea 2a

"What?!" a high, squeaking voice blurts out.

Squeeky is the perfect term to describe the owners (two) of the voice; one of the two mice (pets of Trillian she brought with her from Earth), did the talking. Some of the eyes are staring, showing surprised. My group isn’t surprised.

We’d been briefed by Cuthbert, both verbally and with his "cheat sheets" so talking mice (so fitting in this wacky reality) doesn’t raise an eyebrow.

Everyone now has their eyes, surprised or not, are now trained on the mice.

"Hold that thought," Cuthbert advised the representatives of the most intelligent race upon this reality’s Earth. "Here, chew on this while we get the Heart of Gold fixed.

"With your permission, Mr. President?" the gunslinger asks.

Zaphod, officeholder of a government position that has no real purpose than to distract attention away from the real holder of power, still is no fool. He’s a LOT of things, but not foolish enough to delay us any further when he hears just HOW we’d gotten the Vogons to aid them. Especially when he figure out that with what the Heart of Gold means to the Vogons’ career and with that in mind their "guest’s" presence (the Vogon Captain) won’t keep them safe much longer.

The blob is magically thrown bodily back into the transport vehicle moments later and the Heart of Gold does the space equivalent of "popping the clutch" (i.e. flying out of there like a bat out of Hell).

Marvin, the paranoid android comes up (grumbling) up to command because (according to Cuthbert) he can read the electrical impulses within the mind. In Arthur's case (though not Trillian's case for some reason) the question resides in that mind of his. Hopefully, he can vouch for our answer.

We first have to settle with the mice before, it appears, we can go anywhere. Somehow they'd manipulated (only a guess but it fits) Zaphod into heading to the planet builder's place, either to inspect the progress so far on Earth 2 initially but to cancel (as in the book) when Arthur (the last apparent human) came into the picture with the question to the universe in his head. They'd decided to instead cancel the rebuilding project and instead pull apart Arthur's brain (literally) to get the information.

An old fashioned revolver (Cuthbert's) placed meaningfully on the negotiation table (along with a less than suitable hint against certain attempts) should get the point across to these hyper-intelligent mice that such tactics . . . here and now won't fly. Perhaps primitive compared to the high tech rayguns, but the loud noise it makes sure gets attention!

Surely we don't need to go this far, right? Though I won't gainsay the party leader in front of the others I feel, as a friend I should take her aside later and...

BANG!

....

Well, apparently the mice aren't as smart as we'd hoped. Some "Jedi" mind tricks on my friends prove to ratchet up the stress. For some reason while the mice seems to be able to freeze the native human's in their tracks, but not my human friends.

Can see now that Arthur had been in good hands when he'd opted to let us represent him (or in this case more like "watch his back") in these negotiations. Of course, I'd known it but . . . Would you have ever thought mice would be so . . .

Nevermind.

The smoking gun and the screaming mice makes a interesting counterpoint, I guess. No blood was drawn but the little furry rodents sure felt the bullet streak by them, I wager!

.....

Why do they always have to make it difficult?! I mean, really! It's not like we'd asked for much, really. The money would be split evenly amongst all parties, including Arthur. He had the product in his head so that was only fair because I'm sure that the means the mice would have been able to use verify the question through less messy means than what they'd just tried . . . though it would probably be a bit painful (thus the fee). Surely would have been only a pitance compared to what the mice were shelling out for Earth 2, but no!

Well, at least we had made jolly well sure that the hulls of the ship were up to flying bullets before we start something! We'd have used plain phasors if that had been the case, but we'd been sure that an old fashioned lead slug thrower would have done it much more suitably than an alien "raygun" would have.

Oh well...

"The price has just gone up," Cuthbert says softly, coldly. "Do something like that again and you . . . not live to see your next cheese meal, mice. I said before that Arthur's mind is off limits to your scalpels! I shall not repeat myself."

1. Of course, up until the revolver's discharge Zaphod had been perfectly calm, what with those special sunglasses of his going totally black.

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