Mostly Harmless [39]
Sixteenth floor. Sub-editors. Bastards. What about all that copy of his they'd cut? Fifteen years of research he'd filed from one planet alone and they'd cut it to two words. "Mostly Harmless." V-signs to them as well.
Fifteenth floor. Logistical Administration, whatever that was about. They all had big cars. That, he thought, was what that was about.
Fourteenth floor. Personnel. He had a very shrewd suspicion that it was they who had engineered his fifteen-year exile while the Guide metamorphosed into the corporate monolith (or rather, duolith — mustn't forget the lawyers) it had become.
Thirteenth floor. Research and development.
Hang about.
Thirteenth floor.
He was having to think rather fast at the moment because the situation was becoming a little urgent.
He suddenly remembered the floor display panel in the elevator. It hadn't had a thirteenth floor. He'd thought no more about it because, having spent fifteen years on the rather backward planet Earth where they were superstitious about the number thirteen, he was used to being in buildings that numbered their floors without it. No reason for that here, though.
The windows of the thirteenth floor, he could not help noticing as he flashed swiftly by them, were darkened.
What was going on in there? He started to remember all the stuff that Harl had been talking about. One, new, multi-dimensional Guide spread across an infinite number of universes. It had sounded, the way Harl had put it, like wild meaninglessness dreamed up by the marketing department with the backing of the accountants. If it was any more real than that then it was a very weird and dangerous idea. Was it real? What was going on behind the darkened windows of the sealed-off thirteenth floor?
Ford felt a rising sense of curiosity, and then a rising sense of panic. That was the complete list of rising feelings he had. In every other respect he was falling very rapidly. He really ought to turn his mind to wondering how he was going to get out of this situation alive.
He glanced down. A hundred feet or so below him people were milling around, some of them beginning to look up expectantly. Clearing a space for him. Even temporarily calling off the wonderful and completely fatuous hunt for wockets.
He would hate to disappoint them, but about two feet below him, he hadn't realised before, was Colin. Colin had obviously been happily dancing attendance and waiting for him to decide what he wanted to do.
"Colin!" Ford bawled.
Colin didn't respond. Ford went cold. Then he suddenly realised that he hadn't told Colin his name was Colin.
"Come up here!" Ford bawled.
Colin bobbed up beside him. Colin was enjoying the ride down immensely and hoped that Ford was, too.
Colin's world went unexpectedly dark as Ford's towel suddenly enveloped him. Colin immediately felt himself get much, much heavier. He was thrilled and delighted by the challenge that Ford had presented him with. Just not sure if he could handle it, that was all.
The towel was slung over Colin. Ford was hanging from the towel, gripping to its seams. Other hitch hikers had seen fit to modify their towels in exotic ways, weaving all kinds of esoteric tools and utilities and even computer equipment into their fabric. Ford was a purist. He liked to keep things simple. He carried a regular towel from a regular domestic soft furnishings shop. It even had a kind of blue and pink floral pattern despite his repeated attempts to bleach and stone wash it. It had a couple of pieces of wire threaded into it, a bit of flexible writing stick, and also some nutrients soaked into one of the corners of the fabric so he could suck it in an emergency, but otherwise it was a simple towel you could dry your face on.
The only actual modification he had been persuaded by a friend to make to it was to reinforce the seams.
Ford gripped the seams like a maniac.
They were still descending, but the rate had slowed.
"Up, Colin!" he shouted.
Nothing.
"Your name," shouted Ford, "is Colin. So when I shout ""Up, Colin!''