That was all it took. Now the robot would be happy whatever
happened.
Ford quickly stood up and whisked the towel away. The
robot rose ecstatically into the air, pursuing a kind of wriggly
path.
It turned and saw Ford.
`Mr Prefect, sir! I'm so happy to see you!'
`Good to see you, little fella,' said Ford.
The robot rapidly reported back to its central control that
everything was now for the best in this best of all possible
worlds, the alarms rapidly quelled themselves, and life returned
to normal.
At least, almost to normal.
There was something odd about the place.
The little robot was gurgling with electric delight. Ford hurried
on down the corridor, letting the thing bob along in his wake
telling him how delicious everything was, and how happy it was
to be able to tell him that.
Ford, however , was not happy.
He passed faces of people he didn't know. They didn't look
like his sort of people. They were too well groomed. Their
eyes were too dead. Every time he thought he saw someone
he recognised in the distance, and hurried along to say hello,
it would turn out to be someone else, with an altogether neater
hairstyle and a much more thrusting, purposeful look than, well,
than anybody Ford knew.
A staircase had been moved a few inches to the left. A
ceiling had been lowered slightly. A Lobby had been remodelled.
All these things were not worrying in themselves, though they
were a little disorienting. The thing that was worrying was the
decor. It used to be brash and glitzy. Expensive - because the
Guide sold so well through the civilised and post-civilised Galaxy
- but expensive and fun. Wild games machines lined the corridors.
Insanely painted grand pianos hung from ceilings, vicious sea
creatures from the planet Viv reared up out of pools in tree-filled
atria, robot butlers in stupid shirts roamed the corridors seeking
whose hands they might press frothing drinks into. People used
to have pet vastdragons on leads and pterospondes on perches in
their offices. People knew how to have a good time, and if they
didn't there were courses they could sign up for which would put
that right.
There was none of that now.
Somebody had been through the place doing some iniquitous
kind of taste job on it.
Ford turned sharply into a small alcove, cupped his hand
and yanked the flying robot in with him. He squatted down
and peered at the burbling cybernaut.
`What's been happening here?' he demanded.
`Oh just the nicest things, sir, just the nicest possible things.
Can I sit on your lap, please?'
`No,' said Ford, brushing the thing away. It was overjoyed
to be spurned in this way and started to bob and burble and
swoon. Ford grabbed it again and stuck it firmly in the air a
foot in front of his face. It tried to stay where it was put but
couldn't help quivering slightly.
`Something's changed, hasn't it?' Ford hissed.
`Oh yes,' squealed the little robot, `in the most fabulous
and wonderful way. I feel so good about it.'
`Well what was it like before, then?'
`Scrumptious.'
`But you like the way it's changed?' demanded Ford.
`I like everything,' moaned the robot. `Especially when you
shout at me like that. Do it again, please.'
`Just tell me what's happened!'
`Oh thank you, thank you!'
Ford sighed.
`OK, OK,' panted the robot. `The Guide has been taken over.
There's a new management. It's all so gorgeous I could just melt.
The old management was also fabulous of course, though I'm not
sure if I thought so at the time.'
`That was before you had a bit of wire stuck in your head.'
`How true. How wonderfully true. How wonderfully, bub-
blingly, frothingly, burstingly true. What a truly ecstasy-induc-
ingly correct observation.'
`What's happened?' insisted Ford. `Who is this new man-
agement? When did they take over? I... oh, never mind,' he
added, as the little robot started to gibbet with uncontrollable
joy and rub itself against his knee. `I'll go and find out for myself.'
Ford hurled himself at the door of the editor-in-chief's office,
tucked himself into a tight ball as the frame splintered and
gave way, rolled rapidly across the floor to where the drinks
trolley laden with some of the Galaxy's most potent and expen-
sive beverages habitually stood, seized hold of the trolley and,
using it to give himself cover, trundled it and himself across the
main exposed part of the office floor to where the valuable and
extremely rude statue of Leda and the Octopus stood, and took
shelter behind it. Meanwhile the little security robot, entering at
chest height, was suicidally delighted to draw gunfire away from
Ford.
That, at least, was the plan, and a necessary one. The current
editor-in-chief, Stagyar-zil-Doggo, was a dangerously unbalanced
man who took a homicidal view of contributing staff turning up in
his office without pages of fresh, proofed copy, and had a battery
of laser guided guns linked to special scanning devices in the door
frame to deter anybody who was merely bringing extremely good
reasons why they hadn't written any. Thus was a high level of
output maintained.
Unfortunately the drinks trolley wasn't there.
Ford hurled himself desperately sideways and somersaulted
towards the statue of Leda and the Octopus, which also wasn't
there. He rolled and hurtled around the room in a kind of random
panic, tripped, span, hit the window, which fortunately was built
to withstand rocket attacks, rebounded, and fell in a bruised and
winded heap behind a smart grey crushed leather sofa, which
hadn't been there before.
After a few seconds he slowly peeked up above the top of the
sofa. As well as there being no drinks trolley and no Leda and
the Octopus, there had also been a startling absence of gunfire.
He frowned. This was all utterly wrong.
`Mr Prefect, I assume,' said a voice.
The voice came from a smooth-faced individual behind a
large ceramo-teak-bonded desk. Stagyar-zil-Doggo may well have
been a hell of an individual, but no one, for a whole variety of
reasons, would ever have called him smooth-faced. This was not
Stagyar-zil-Doggo.
`I assume from the manner of your entrance that you do not
have new material for the, er, Guide, at the moment,' said the
smooth-faced individual. He was sitting with his elbows resting
on the table and holding his fingertips together in a manner
which, inexplicably, has never been made a capital offence.
`I've been busy,' said Ford, rather weakly. He staggered
to his feet, brushing himself down. Then he thought, what the
hell was he saying things weakly for? He had to get on top of
this situation. He had to find out who the hell this person was,
and he suddenly thought of a way of doing it.
`Who the hell are you?, he demanded.
`I am your new editor-in-chief. That is, if we decide to
retain your services. My name is Vann Harl.' He didn't put his
hand out. He just added, `What have you done to that security
robot?'
The little robot was rolling very, very slowly round the ceiling
and moaning quietly to itself.
`I've made it very happy,' snapped Ford. `It's a kind of
mission I have. Where's Stagyar? More to the point, where's
his drinks trolley?'
`Mr zil-Doggo is no longer with this organisation. His drinks
trolley is, I imagine, helping to console him for this fact.'
`Organisation?' yelled Ford. `Organisation? What a bloody
stupid word for a set-up like this!'
`Precisely our sentiments. Under-structured, over-resourced,
under-managed, over-inebriated. And that,' said Harl, `was just
the editor.'
`I'll do the jokes,' snarled Ford.
`No,' said Harl. `You will do the restaurant column.'
He tossed a piece of plastic on to the desk in front of
him. Ford did not move to pick it up.
`You what?' said Ford.
`No. Me Harl. You Prefect. You do restaurant column. Me
editor. Me sit here tell you you do restaurant column. You get?'
`Restaurant column?' said Ford, too bewildered to be really
angry yet.
`Siddown, Prefect,' said Harl. He swung round in his swivel
chair, got to his feet, and stood staring out at the tiny specks
enjoying the carnival twenty-three stories below.
`Time to get this business on its feet, Prefect,' he snapped.
`We at InfiniDim Enterprises are...'
`You at what?'
`InfiniDim Enterprises. We have bought out the Guide.'
`InfiniDim?'
`We spent millions on that name, Prefect. Start liking it
or start packing.'
Ford shrugged. He had nothing to pack.
`The Galaxy is changing,' said Harl. `We've got to change
with it. Go with the market. The market is moving up. New
aspirations. New technology. The future is...'
`Don't tell me about the future,' said Ford. `I've been all over
the future. Spend half my time there. It' s the same as anywhere
else. Anywhen else. Whatever. Just the same old stuff in faster
cars and smellier air.'
`That's one future,' said Harl. `That's your future, if you
accept it. you've got to learn to think multi-dimensionally.
There are limitless futures stretching out in every direction from
this moment - and from this moment and from this. Billions of
them, bifurcating every instant! Every possible position of every
possible electron balloons out into billions of probabilities! Bil-
lions and billions of shining, gleaming futures! you know what
that means?'
`You're dribbling down your chin.'
`Billions and billions of markets!'
`I see,' said Ford. `So you sell billions and billions of Guides.'
`No,' said Harl, reaching for his handkerchief and not finding
one. `Excuse me,' he said, `but this gets me so excited.' Ford
handed him his towel.
`The reason we don't sell billions and billions of Guides,'
continued Harl, after wiping his mouth, `is the expense. What we
do is we sell one Guide billions and billions of times. We exploit
the multidimensional nature of the Universe to cut down on
manufacturing costs. And we don't sell to penniless hitch hikers.
What a stupid notion that was! Find the one section of the market
that, more or less by definition, doesn't have any money, and try
and sell to it. No. We sell to the affluent business traveller and
his vacationing wife in a billion, billion different futures . This is
the most radical, dynamic and thrusting business venture in the
entire multidimensional infinity of space/time/probability ever.'
`And you want me to be its restaurant critic,' said Ford.
`We would value your input.'
`Kill!' shouted Ford. He shouted it at his towel.
The towel leapt up out of Harl's hands.
This was not because it had any motive force of its own,
but because Harl was so startled at the idea that it might.
The next thing that startled him was the sight of Ford Prefect
hurtling across the desk at him fists first. In fact Ford was just
lunging for the credit card, but you don't get to occupy the sort
of position that Harl occupied in the sort of organisation in
which Harl occupied it without developing a healthily paranoid
backwards, and striking his head a sharp blow on the rocket-proof
glass, then subsided into a series of worrying and highly personal
dreams.
Ford lay on the desk, surprised at how swimmingly every-
thing had gone. He glanced quickly at the piece of plastic he
now held in his hand - it was a Dine-O-Charge credit card with
his name already embossed on it, and an expiry date two years
from now, and was possibly the single most exciting thing Ford
had ever seen in his life - then he clambered over the desk to
see to Harl.
He was breathing fairly easily. It occurred to Ford that he
might breathe more easily yet without the weight of his wallet
bearing down on his chest, so he slipped it out of Harl's breast
pocket and flipped through it. Fair amount of cash. Credit tokens.
Ultragolf club membership. Other club memberships. Photos of
someone's wife and family - presumably Harl's, but it was hard
to be sure these days. Busy executives often didn't have time
for a full-time wife and family and would just rent them for
weekends.
Ha!
He couldn't believe what he'd just found.
He slowly drew out from the wallet a single and insanely
exciting piece of plastic that was nestling amongst a bunch of
receipts.
It wasn't insanely exciting to look at. It was rather dull in
fact. It was smaller and a little thicker than a credit card and
semi-transparent. If you held it up to the light you could see
a lot of holographically encoded information and images buried
pseudo-inches deep beneath its surface .
It was an Ident-i-Eeze, and was a very naughty and silly
thing for Harl to have lying around in his wallet, though it was
perfectly understandable. There were so many different ways in
which you were required to provide absolute proof of your iden-
tity these days that life could easily become extremely tiresome
just from that factor alone, never mind the deeper existential
problems of trying to function as a coherent consciousness in an
epistemologically ambiguous physical universe. Just look at cash
point machines, for instance. Queues of people standing around
waiting to have their fingerprints read, their retinas scanned, bits
of skin scraped from the nape of the neck and undergoing instant
(or nearly instant - a good six or seven seconds in tedious
reality) genetic analysis, then having to answer trick questions
about members of their family they didn't even remember they
had, and about
their recorded preferences for tablecloth colours.
And that was just to get a bit of spare cash for the weekend. If
you were trying to raise a loan for a jetcar, sign a missile treaty
or pay an entire restaurant bill things could get really trying.
Hence the Ident-i-Eeze. This encoded every single piece of
information about you, your body and your life into one all-
purpose machine-readable card that you could then carry around
in your wallet, and therefore represented technology's greatest
triumph to date over both itself and plain common sense.
Ford pocketed it. A remarkably good idea had just occurred
to him. He wondered how long Harl would remain unconscious.
`Hey!' he shouted to the little melon-sized robot still slobbering
with euphoria up on the ceiling. `You want to stay happy?'
The robot gurgled that it did.
`Then stick with me and do everything I tell you without fail.'
The robot said that it was quite happy where it was up
on the ceiling thank you very much. It had never realised
before how much sheer titillation there was to be got from a
good ceiling and it wanted to explore its feelings about ceilings
in greater depth.
`You stay there,' said Ford, `and you'll soon be recaptured
and have your conditional chip replaced. You want to stay