Title: Pour me one more
by Angel
HHGtG/B5: Ford Prefect & Alfred Bester
Rating: PG
Warning: alcohol abuse.


Bored, bored bored. Ford Prefect was bored. He was bored with this crummy world,
this lousy assignment and the thin cheap towel.  The fact that the last bar on the planet had
thrown him out with the local equivalent of “And STAY out!  Forever!” did nothing to
help his boredom.  

Primitive culture any way.  They’d barely discovered djynn’ntnix.to say nothing of a decent
pan-galactic gargleblaster.

Reaching into his satchel, he pulled out the Electronic Thumb and aimed it toward the sky.  Maybe
the next place would at least have decent beer.



“Reversion to normal space in ten seconds.”

Al Bester stared at the intercom before scrambling for his seat.  The reversion was unplanned and
barely announced.  He got his belt fastened just as the next announcement came.  He chewed an
antacid table, the second roll in two days since leaving Earth.  The assignment had soured his stomach
beyond the reach of anything over the counter.

“Reversion in three, two and mark.”

The ship lurched as it left hyperspace.  Those luckless enough to not be strapped down had been tossed
about the cabin.   The pilots began searching for the malfunction that had brought the reversion, and for
the nearest jump-gate to get them on their way.



Ford dusted himself off and looked about. The signs were in English, oddly enough, so he found his way
to a disused corner of the hold and made himself comfortable.

The intercom announced dinner would be served in twenty minutes. Ford got up and found his way to the galley.
Earther food wasn’t too bad, and he was really hoping for a beer.

He got a tray and sat down at an empty table. No beer outside the lounge, the cook had told him.  He stared at
the tray.  The sandwiches in Arthur’s pub had been more edible.   It was pure punishment to make a man eat the
culinary equivalent of Vogon poetry without a beer. He pushed the food around and looked up to find a small man
in a black uniform and gloves standing over him.

“May I join you? All the other tables are full.”

“Sure, whatever makes you happy. Ford Prefect. I’m from Guildford.”

“Al Bester.”

They pushed their food around in silence. Bester offered one of his antacids to his tablemate.  Ford ate what bits he
could identify, accepted the tablet and left to go to the lounge.

Bester sat and thought about the strange man. He had been almost unreadable, shielding with the natural instincts of
a telepath. Yet he was not Corps, nor did he show any of the usual fear that the unregistered did.

He would observe. Maybe this trip out to the hellhole of Babylon 5 would mean a double bust for the Corps.  The
Nightwatch had called him about a colony of unregistered that had taken up residence in the Brown levels.  He would
see if it was for real or just another wild goose chase.   Pity the Corps had decided this was the quarter to cut back
on travel expenses.

He found his odd dinner companion sitting in the lounge with a bottle in front of him and a glass beside it. Oddly
enough, although the bottle was open, he wasn’t pouring any drinks. Instead he stared at the bottle with fixed
concentration.

“Oh. Hey. Wanna play?” His smile seemed to show too many teeth.

“Play?”

“Sure. You sit there, I sit here, and we each try to tip the bottle into each other’s glass. The one who ends up with a
glassful has to drink it.  This stuff depresses telekinesis almost as well as Ol’ Janx Spirit.”

Bester watched, amazed.  “You are TK then?”  Telekinesis was extremely rare.  Even the Corps had found exactly
three reliable ones in the years of its existence.  They were still working on it though.

“Oh yeah.  Most folks are, you know?”   Ford continued staring at the bottle.  It tipped, pouring liquor into his own shot glass.

“Did you mean to do that?”  Bester was throughly intrigued.

Ford gave that unnerving grin of his again, and tossed off the shot.  He set the empty glass on the table and resumed
concentrating.  “You playing?”

“I am not a teke.”

“Give it a shot.  After three more of these I won’t be either.”

Bester concentrated on the bottle.  He knew he couldn’t move it, but the strange man seemed to think he might be able to. 
It stood, immobile.  Then it tipped, pouring liquor into Ford’s glass.  He drank it off.

“I did it?”  It was preposterous.  He’d never shown any teke ability.  He was only a P12, and that ability required more
than P-20.  As far he knew there were no living Psis above P14.

“Sure.”  Ford grinned again.  This time the bottle tipped, less steadily, into Bester’s glass.  The little man gave a wry
smile and drank it.

It went back and forth for a while, both staring at the bottle, it sitting resolutely between them Finally it tipped into Bester’s
glass again.  He drank it.

On the next round, the bottle did not move for a long time.  Then it went into Ford’s glass.  He mock-toasted his opponent
and drank.

So it went until Ford was seeing two of the bottle and three of Bester.  Bester, after the second shot, had faked drinking
the liquor.  He was mostly sober.  When the stranger passed out on the table, he dragged the man to his cabin and
secured him.

“Message to Psi Corps Headquarters, Al Bester, Top Priority.”  Hang the cost of sending a message while in hyperspace. 
He had important news, something that might salvage this whole nightmare trip.

He was put through and told his story half a dozen times to skeptical underlings until he reached the top.  “I have the rogue.
 He is secured.   I will be bringing him back for testing.  Also, I suspect I need recalibrating as well.  I managed to move
the bottle several times, mostly because I was not drinking.”

“Good work.”  Headquarters signed off and Bester sat next to the man until he awakened.

“Should have warned you,” whispered Ford.  “I play to lose.  I’m a terrible liar, and I cheat constantly.”

It was going to be a long bad trip.  Bester popped another antacid in his mouth.  He didn’t think he had enough to last.