h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

And when is Al Jolson over there going to tell us where we are? asks Jazzme - sittin on top of the world? That would make us close to the North Pole? See any white bears out there?
And if it's Jolson just rollin along singin a song he ain't no fat lady.

The fat skink was worried again. She was often worried but more so just at the moment. 'I sing all the time. What if I've been randomly ending things?' She scuttled a little in the snow.

Speckly soothed the distressed reptile and listened with half an ear to the continued bickering. Pinniped stood a little way apart from the group, smirking and feeling superior. 'huh, he's a fine one to be calling people smug,' Speckly muttered.

Unnoticed by anyone a little bit of Nothing, which was quickly becoming Something, slipped down to the pier with the air of Someone who feels they are finally Somewhere. It watched the proceedings from behind a comfortable snow drift. And the bickering went on.

'Is this really Pinniped's pier, Orchid?' the hound asked.
'You'll have to athk the thpeak your weight mathine,' the whale replied.
Jazzme cast a fond and somewhat lecherous eye over Hypatia. He thought she would make a wonderful snow queen. She just needed a cape to keep her warm. He looked around for suitable material.
The sheep hopped across to an out of range iceberg. He'd seen that look in Jazzme's eye before when the recipe for mint sauce was under debate.
'How far have we travelled, Trout?' Waz was trying to update her journal. She plucked a superfluous feather from her wing and scratched a few words on an ice tablet. Trout went under the ice in search of...something.

'Excuse me,' the hound addressed the speak your weight machine or at least the strange object he presumed it to be. 'Are we really on Pinniped's pier? Or are we going round and round in circles?'

They waited.

Trout, Waz, Hypatia, Mog, Florida sailor, Speckly, Lizzard, the sheep the dog and the Alibaba basket.

They waited

Only the seal seemed content in this frozen wasteland. The others were in limbo.

The seal tore two pieces of wood from the deck and drove them into the snow some four feet apart. A third narrower piece of wood, just slightly longer, he balanced on top at a height of precisely three feet.

'Fancy a dance?'he asked.

Jazzme was back to the hypothetical questions again.
Are we going limbo dancing around a miniature stonehenge he asked?
What about my ageing back and knobbly knees?
And has this any pagan religious associatiopns?
And what about them as has a head start being closer to the ground?
Are you going to keep on putting that horizontal bit lower and lower?
Can I go back to the ship for a cloak for Hypatia?

The hound curled his upper lip into what most people considered a snarl. He knew he had a good poker face, no one could tell he was secretly grinning; he was born to limbo dance.

Trout Montague snorted at the bar. He had no interest in limbo, not, as in the case of the Jazzme, because of lack of suppleness in his joints, but because of his state of priapism. It just kept knocking the bar off ... a small price to pay for carrying such a grand reputation before him.

"I didn't think they had external genitalia", says Alberta in mild confusion.

"They don't", yawns Pinniped. "It's just an overdeveloped anal fin".

The seal isn't too sure about limbo either. Pretty pointless when you're circular in cross-section.

He slaps the ice. Is this stuff real? It's smooth enough and white enough, but it somehow doesn't feel cold enough.

"Theveral of my mathculine relativeth had their privateth made into golf-bagth", declares Orchid, and Pinniped scowls his disapproval. Trout is clearly corrupting the child.

"I suppose the limbo will prove whether it's the Pier or not", suggests the albatross, "when these unblubbered types get frozen to the pitch".

Pinniped smirks. "Trout's pride and joy is a better test, atch", he says. "The Pier came pretty cheap. Something to do with high levels of some pollutant or other. Probably only take a few days before we spot the difference".

http://www.studyworksonline.com/cda/content/article/0,,EXP667_NAV2-79_SAR916,00.shtml

They waited...

A disembodied voice began to boom across the glacier

'Every limbo boy and girl
All around the limbo world
Gonna do the limbo rock'

The seal deftly lifted the Alibaba basket with his nose and tossed it over the limbo rail.

'All around the limbo clock
Jack be limbo, Jack be quick'

Jassme grabbed the offending stick and tossed to far to the side so his beloved Hypatia could walk through unhindered.

'Jack go unda limbo stick'

Boots ran off with the most joy he had shown since re-joining the group. and came back at a full run dropping the stick at Pinniped's flippers.

'All around the limbo clock
Hey, let's do the limbo rock'

The sheep took a leap over the empty space where the bar had been, the rest noticed his glance at his flank to make sure a 'counting number' had not suddenly appeared there.

'Limbo lower now'

The lizard and spotted fish laughed as Orchid launched herself into a graceful leap (which the Jodan narrowly escaped from). Spider veins spread away from her landing site. Even the trout and shark avoided the fissures that might end in the freezing waters.

'Limbo lower now'

Waz swooped down a grabbed the stick carrying it far into the arctic waste before dropping it from a great height.

No one suspected that such an innocent gesture would carve an escape route for a frozen plasticine penguin.

'How low can you go'

Mother of God reached into her basket and produced a fine picnic for the group.

The voice quavered and slipped into a menacing accent...

'Vill you nefer learn to vollow zimple instruct-ionz? Nine? I vill destroy all uf ewe!'

Only the Speak Your Weight Machine noticed the evil profile resembled Illmar Smith.

'Oh pipe down' trout carped and the disembodied voice subsided to the occasional mutter. Trout was feeling tetchy and just a little tearfull and had the oddest craving for chocolate. Hypatia looked at him suspiciously. 'Trout dear,' she called over to him, 'have your gills always been so shapely and delicate? And your scales, they have such a lustrous sheen. Really old chap, you're glowing.'

While the librarian was exacerbating the gender crisis in the good fish montague Speckly and lizardy had strung some fairy lights about, set up a popcorn stand, a candy floss machine and a Punch and Judy stall. Deckchairs were set about and off to one side there was a cutout of a scene depicting a very fat woman in a tiny bikini eating ice cream next to a short bald man wearing a knotted handkerchief. There were holes cut where their faces would have been.

'That's more like it,' Lizardy hissed, 'it's just not a proper end of peir without a Punch and Judy show. I can be the crocodile.' Speckly sighed 'darling, you don't like sausages and if anyone hits you with a frying pan I shall be most annoyed. Best leave it to the puppets.'

Everyone settled into the deck chairs and the show began. Even the disembodied voice had stopped grumbling. But all was not well. Far below the puppet show the plasticine of the damned was making its way to the surface.

A low-flying Apache helicopter approached the unsuspecting travellers from the southeast. It hovered just long enough to allow several MI-5 operatives dressed in black to rappel over the side of the chopper to the pier below. They cautiously surrounded the fissure in the ice, cocked their fully automatic assault weapons and waited.

Hypatia took one look at Wolfgang, rolled her eyes and sighed deeply in annoyanced as only a repressed librarian can. The hound, noting her annoyance, trotted over to the obnoxious agent and peed on his leg.

'Thank you, boots' she whispered.
'What are they doing her?' Asked Nadia, finally tearing her way from Trout observation.

'Who cares?' Said Pin. 'Perhaps they want to dance.'

'Perhaps they've come to check out the Pier, Pin?' Trout sort of spat this out sideways in the hopes that the mivvies wouldn't hear.

Alas they did.............

The seal frowns. Those who now him best will understand his uncertainty. Is this really the Pier? There is a way to tell, he knows.

The sea-channel is open, riven by the ship’s passage. Pinniped regards these great blocks of wallowing ice. Sunlight glares at him from a thousand facets. The frozen oceans churns and grinds in its familiar spring-song, down at the lowest register of hearing.

The sea is never more dangerous than in this season of its consummate beauty. Half a mile distant, on the other shore of the sound, is Pinniped’s answer. Dare he seek it?

The ice-bound waters of a polar winter are no threat to a seal. Beneath the majesty of its crystal vault, there lies a shallow haven of the purest, crispest air. By high summer the ice will be banished, and a sky-span of eternal daylight will take its place.

But in this time between, the dying ice bears down, lumbering low in water-logged throes. To catch a breath, little seal, you must rise among these growling monsters and chance the ephemeral gaps between.

Pinniped can almost hear his mother chiding him for even considering the risk. And yet it has been so long. The lure of his perfect place is drawing him. Unnoticed by the revellers, he flops to the floe-edge. Staring wistfully for a moment into the glistening swell, he gathers himself before plunging into the chasm.

Heaven. Blackness one moment, radiance the next. The broken ice casts shafts of blistering whiteness into this womb of the deepest blue, luminescent beams that swivel and flare as the ice above writhes with numbing slowness. As in a moment of revelation, Pinniped’s heart brims at the rediscovery of his element.

There is no time to admire this dance. In his medium, the ridiculous and rotund creature is transformed into a lithe, sleek bolt of grace and sinew. A couple of reckless air-gulps amid the groaning blocks, and Pinniped explodes from the water at the other side of the sound, out through the shoreline rift that experience foretold.

After a few shuddering lung-fulls of the sharp air, his senses clear. Right before him stands instant proof of his conviction. The battered sign announces the long-forgotten Lapp-Dancing venture. This really is the Pier.

“Ahem…Hello, Pinniped”.

Speak’s anticipation of his arrival is no surprise. Pinniped has readied himself for a show of bored indifference, but now he cannot summon it. Instinct takes over, and instead he butts his huge companion’s quivering flank. Burrowing under the mighty flipper, he clenches himself there. His eyes are squeezed tight, fighting back tears.

Trout Montague observed distantly the frottage that was occurring between the seal and the machine and, without a copy of Fowler's to guide him, awkwardly dove in in order to traverse the passage. 'Fuggery-buck it was cold', he spoonerised uncertain whether the newly prescribed ambiguity toward his sexuality would remain in any doubt upon emergence from this chill azure. 'And strangely,' he thought, 'a nice piece of coal wouldn't go awry'.

True to form, the others followed with nary ado, the hound doing it doggy-style and the Jazzme rabidly keen to assist with the Hypatia's more than ample breast-stroking, while the diminutive welsh reptile just held her own ... the scene was sufficient to blow the Trout right of the water, whereafter he landed stickily but a few flipper-lengths from the whimpering Pin.

"You must be Trite", asserted the SYWM sternly and knowingly to the penily-challenged salmonid that lay fins-akimbo before it. A muffled seal could be heard sniggering through its pathetic tears.

"Er, yes. That's right. At your service ..."

The Trout offered a fin. SYWM preferred not to oblige, so did not.

"Pleased to meet you Trite, I'm sure", boomed the elephant-seal as convincingly as 'most unconvincingly' could be contrived to be.

The SYWM then turned its attention to the detritus that had strung along behind the fish, and recoiled.

"Ugh ... what in the name of Phileas Fogg is that ...?"

"Ooh sorry!" responded Trout Montague, reeling in the sticky strings that he'd left behind, revealing thereunder the motley menagerie that Pinniped had striven so hard first to muster and then to jettison. Much to the seal's chagrin, they were waving merrily, apparently oblivious to the fact that they'd just previously been incarcerated in an accidental web of salmonid semen.

The motley assemblage grows quiet as the mournful sound of a bugle is heard drifting across the ice.

Day is done, gone the sun,
From the hills, from the lake,
From the skies.
All is well, safely rest,
God is nigh.

A speck is seen on the horizon, growing larger as it slowly approaches the troop of players.

Go to sleep, peaceful sleep,
May the soldier or sailor,
God keep.
On the land or the deep,
Safe in sleep.

The giant Apache takes shape and the whirring blade begins to compete with the bugle. Wolfgang, Hypatia, Jazzme and the MI-5 agents gather at the far end of the pier. The seal has been safely escorted home.

Love, good night, must thou go,
When the day, and the night
Need thee so?
All is well. Speedeth all
To their rest.

Hypatia walks back to the small emotional seal and gives him a hug. She tries to speak, but the words won't come. She turns to Trout and shakes a rather sticky fin. "Take care of everyone, Trout. Pin is home, now it's time for me to go home, too."

Boots thumps his tail on the pier, and the sheep bahs - keeping time to the soulful bugle. Waz and Alberta land on the pier and stand next to Pinniped. Orchid interrupts her swimming long enough to watch the approaching helicopter. Speckly and Lizard scramble onto a railing for a better view as slowly the lid lifts on the Ali Baba basket.

Fades the light, and afar
Goeth day, and the stars
Shineth bright.
Fare thee well, day has gone,
Night is on.

The helicopter lands just long enough for Wolfgang and his party to board, then lifts into the air and flies into the sunset, leaving only the sound of the bugle and the sighing wind.

Thanks and praise, for our days,
'Neath the sun, Neath the stars,
'Neath the sky.
As we go, this we know,
God is nigh.

It looks as if the fat lady has sung?

Sung? Sung? Of course I've sung.

Can somebody help me with my foot?

Dear god in heaven! The fat lady hasn't even signed up for singing classes yet...not a hope of leaving the story. What a weekend! (that'll be another thread) ...Oh mi gosh! I do so love this special literary bondage...slightly controversial word...'bondage' As in 'bon', meaning very good or sweety...as in bon bon. Alternatively--bon as in bon(d ), him who was played by sean connery you know...'bond'...shaken not stirred.
S'cuse me I can do a couple of bondage songs (shaken and definately attempting the stirred) but I'm so not the fat lady...however could be soon...but we have more important issues to embark on...like...
email from local paper:
'Get a grip, I know we only do good news but this is terminal...why are we not paying you to be in antartica if you can't even get a quote from the travel agent or do salsa?'
PS George Clooney sends snogs for all, especially the real para medics
Hilda muses
'Hey ho thank goodness it's almost the weekend.'

Yes, it would truly be a weak-end if we all demurely boarded the black helicopter and returned to our mundane lives without even bringing Ben back into the fold. The shark notices a small multi-coulred plasticine figure drifting toward them in the ice strewn straight.

It's hard to discern the rising and falling of the waters, here where the shore itself is afloat.

It takes a creature of the sea to tell how the tide is running. Orchid knows for certain that it ebbs among these floes.

She has chosen her costume, and it was an easy choice. The sequins sparkle in eternal sunshine. Very carefully, Orchid shifts the basket out onto the expanse of ice. She positions it centre-stage, beneath the arch of the sky. The whole menagerie is watching her. One by one, they realise what is about to happen.

She feels supremely confident. Through this adventure, she has come of age. She pays no heed as a tear splashes on a keyboard, somewhere very far away. Orchid's voice is clear and strong as she begins to sing :

Thtarth thy-ining bright above you
Night breetheth theem to whithper 'I love you'
Birdth thinging in the thycamore tree...

And otherwhere, Ben waves a fond goodbye to the menagerie.

The lion may not be lying down with the lamb, but the dog and the sheep have formed a less biblical friendship. Ben smiles fondly at the thought of the priapic piscoid, the seal, the whale and the wereshark who worked so hard to keep the juices flowing. The librarian and her swain, who kept the show on the road have shown her another kind of loving. The lammagier saw horizons that none of the others imagined and made them realise that every horizon is only a wingtip away. The Agent Provocateur, who provokes nothing but good. The mother of the deity, who has left on missions of her own. There have been so many players, and all have played such extraordinary parts.

This has been strange and twisting tail with no sting in it, but a string of cans and baloons tied to it saying "Just Tarried".

Ben sits at her PC, smiling, and lights up a cigarette.

In the corner of the room a hand appears from the Ali Baba basket and reaches around to a notice from one of the handles.

The notice says:

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THE END

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