Zarniwoop Vann Harl - Frankie and Benjy Mouse

Frankie and Benjy Mouse

Frankie and Benjy are the mice that Arthur (et al.) encounter on Magrathea. Frankie and Benjy wish to extract the final readout data from Arthur's brain to get the Ultimate Question. Frankie and Benjy are, after all, part of the pan-dimensional race that created the Earth as a supercomputer successor to Deep Thought in order to find out the question to which the answer was 42.

In the first version, the radio series, they offered Arthur and Trillian a large amount of money if they could tell them what the Question is. In later versions this was changed — unfortunately for Arthur, they claim the only way to do this is to remove his brain and prepare it, apparently by dicing it. They promise to replace it with a simple computer brain, which, suggested Zaphod, would only have to say things like "What?", "I don't understand" and "Where's the tea?". Arthur objects to this ("What?" he says. "See!" says Zaphod), and escapes with the help of his friends. Frankie says:

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 multi-dimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs; and if it comes to a choice between spending 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

In the 2005 movie The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, they are in fact the manifestations of Lunkwill and Fook, the pan-dimensional beings who designed and built Deep Thought, and were squashed flat by Arthur Dent when they attempted to remove his brain.

Appear in:

• the novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

On radio, David Tate played Benjy Mouse and Peter Hawkins voiced Frankie Mouse. They appeared in fit the fourth of the radio series. They also appeared in episode 4 of the TV series, where they were voiced by David Tate and Stephen Moore.