46. INT. HALLWAY, DEEP INSIDE MAGRATHEA
SLARTIBARTFAST: Come, you are to meet the mice. Your arrival on the planet has caused considerable excitement. It has already been hailed, so I gather, as the third most improbable event in the history of the Universe.
ARTHUR: What were the first two?
SLARTIBARTFAST (Carelessly): Oh, probably just coincidences.
Slartibartfast and Arthur enter a waiting room full of glass-topped tables and Plexiglas awards. A light flashes above the door at the other side of the room. They enter.
TRILLIAN: Arthur! You're safe!
ARTHUR (Startled): Am I? Oh, good.
Ford, Trillian, and Zaphod are sitting around a large table decked with dishes of food. They are stuffing their faces.
ARTHUR: What happened to you?
Zaphod eats with one head, and with the other he says:
ZAPHOD: Well, our guests here have been gassing us and zapping our minds and being generally weird and have now given us a nice meal to make it up to us. Here, (passing a bowl of meat to Arthur): Have some Vegan Rhino's cutlet. It's delicious!
ARTHUR: Hosts? What hosts? I don't see any ...
Two mice appear at the head of the table.
BENJY MOUSE (Played by Rizzo the Rat): Hey! Welcome to lunch, Earth creature!
ARTHUR: Ugh! There are mice on the table!
FRANKIE MOUSE (Played by Pepe the King Prawn): I think the costume I am wearing resembles that remark, okay?
TRILLIAN: Let me introduce you. Arthur, this is Benjy Mouse.
BENJY: Hi.
TRILLIAN: And this is Frankie Mouse.
FRANKIE: Hola.
ARTHUR: But, aren't they ...
TRILLIAN: Yes, they are the mice I brought with me from the Earth.
Slartibartfast coughs slightly.
SLARTIBARTFAST: Er, excuse me.
BENJY: Yes, thank you, Slartibartfast, you may go.
SLARTIBARTFAST: What? Oh ... er, very well. I'll just go and get on with some of my fjords then.
FRANKIE: Ah, well, in fact that won't be necessary. It looks very much as if we won't be needing the new Earth any longer. Not now that we have found a native of the planet who was there seconds before it was destroyed.
SLARTIBARTFAST (Agast): What? You can't mean that! I've got a thousand glaciers poised and ready to roll over Africa!
FRANKIE: Well, maybe you can go on a quick skiing holiday before you dismantle them.
SLARTIBARTFAST: Skiing holiday! Those glaciers are works of art! Elegantly sculpted contours, soaring pinnacles of ice, deep majestic ravines! It would be sacrilege to go skiing on high art!
BENJY (Firmly): Thank you, Slartibartfast. That will be all.
SLARTIBARTFAST (Coldly): Yes, sir, thank you very much. (To Arthur): Well, goodbye, Earthman, hope the life-style comes together.
Nodding to the rest of the company, Slartibartfast turns and walks sadly away. Arthur stares after him, not knowing what to say.
BENJY: Now, to business.
Ford and Zaphod clink their glasses together and say "To business!" After a short silence:
FORD: Sorry, we thought you were proposing a toast.
BENJY: Now, Earth creature, the situation we have in effect is this. We have, as you know, been more or less running your planet for the last ten million years in order to find this wretched thing called the Question to the Ultimate Answer.
ARTHUR (Sharply): Why?
FRANKIE: No -- we already thought of that one, but it doesn't fit the answer. Why? Forty-two ... you see, it doesn't work, okay.
BENJY: Oh, I see, well, eventually just habit I think, to be brutally honest. And this is more or less the point -- we're sick to the teeth with the whole thing, and the prospect of doing it all over again on account of those darned Vogons quite frankly gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies, you know what I mean? It was by the merest lucky chance that Benjy and I finished our particular job and left the planet early for a quick holiday, and have since manipulated our way back to Magrathea by the good offices of your friends.
FRANKIE: Magrathea is a gateway back to our own dimension.
BENJY: Since then, we have had an offer of a quite enormously fat contract to do the 5D chat show and lecture circuit back in our own dimensional neck of the woods, and we're very much inclined to take it.
ZAPHOD: I would, wouldn't you, Ford?
FORD: Oh yes, jump at it, like a shot.
FRANKIE: But we've got to have product, you see? I mean, ideally we still need the Question to the Ultimate Answer in some form or other.
ZAPHOD (To Arthur): You see, if they're just sitting there in the studio looking very relaxed and, you know, just mentioning that they happen to know the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, and then eventually have to admit that in fact it's Forty-two, then the show's probably quite short. No follow-up, you see.
BENJY: We have to have something that sounds good.
ARTHUR: Something that sounds good? A Question to the Ultimate Answer that sounds good?
FRANKIE: Well, I mean, yes idealism, yes the dignity of pure research, yes the pursuit of truth in all its forms, but there comes a point I'm afraid where you begin to suspect that if there's any real truth, it's that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs. And if it comes to a choice between spending yet another ten million years finding that out, and on the other hand just taking the money and running, I for one could do with the exercise.
BENJY: Oh yeah, for certain me too, okay?
ARTHUR (Hopelessly): But ...
ZAPHOD: Hey, will you get this, Earthman? You are a last generation product of that computer matrix, right, and you were there right up to the moment your planet got the big bang, yeah?
ARTHUR: Er ...
FORD: So your brain was an organic part of the penultimate configuration of the computer program.
ZAPHOD (With both heads, for emphasis): Right?
ARTHUR: Well ...
BENJY: In other words, there's a good chance that the structure of the question is encoded in the structure of your brain -- so we want to buy it off you.
ARTHUR: What, the question?
FORD and TRILLIAN: Yes.
ZAPHOD: For lots of money.
FRANKIE: No, no, it's the brain we want to buy.
ARTHUR: What?
BENJY: Well, who would miss it?
FORD (Protesting): I thought you said you could just read his brain electronically.
FRANKIE: Oh yes, but we'd have to get it out first. It's got to be prepared.
BENJY: Treated.
FRANKIE: Diced.
ARTHUR (Shouting): No thanks!
BENJY: It could always be replaced if you think it's important.
FRANKIE: Yes, an electronic brain, a simple one would suffice.
ARTHUR (Wailing): A simple one!
ZAPHOD (Laughing): Yeah, you'd just have to program it to say What? and I don't understand and Where's the tea? Who'd know the difference?
ARTHUR (Backing away from the table): What?
ZAPHOD: See what I mean?
ARTHUR: I'd notice the difference.
FRANKIE: No, you wouldn't. You'd be programmed not to.
Ford makes for the door.
FORD: I'm sorry, mice, old lads, I don't think we've got a deal.
FRANKIE: I rather think we have to have a deal.
TRILLIAN: Oh, yeah? Well, deal with this, mice!
Trillian screams "Hi-yaaah!" and karate chops the mice off the table. They fly across the room and crash into the wall, then down onto the floor.
TRILLIAN: Let's get out of here!
ARTHUR: I'm with you. Let's go!
Trillian, Arthur, Ford and Zaphod bolt through the door and disappear. The mice pick themselves up off the floor with a groan.
FRANKIE: Hey, you didn't say this scene was going to get all violent, okay.
BENJY: Never mind that, what are we going to do about the Question to the Ultimate Answer? We still need one.
FRANKIE: Difficult. How about What's yellow and dangerous?
BENJY: No, no good. Doesn't fit the answer.
FRANKIE: All right. What do you get if you multiply six by seven?
BENJY: No, no, too literal, wouldn't sustain the viewer's interest.
FRANKIE: Here's a thought, okay? How many roads must a man walk down?
BENJY: Ah! Aha, now that does sound promising! Sounds very significant without actually tying you down to meaning anything at all. How many roads must a man walk down? Forty-two. Excellent, excellent, that'll fox 'em. Frankie, baby, we are made!
The two mice dance a little victory dance to celebrate.
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