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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 management? When did they take over? I . . . oh, never mind,' he added, as the little robot started to gibber 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 expensive 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?'
