The boghog suddenly disengaged and limped backwards, dazed and forlorn. It turned anxiously in the corner of the room, its tail tucked up right under its back legs, and stood looking nervously up at Arthur, jerking its head awkwardly and repeatedly to one side. Its jaw seemed to be dislocated. It cried a little and scraped its damp tail across the floor. By the door, the fat man with Arthur’s suitcase was sitting and cursing, trying to staunch the flow of blood from his thigh. His clothes were already wet from the rain.
Arthur stared at the boghog, not knowing what to do. The boghog looked at him questioningly. It tried to approach him, waking mournful little whimpering noises. It moved its jaw pain- fully. It made a sudden leap for Arthur’s thigh, but its dislocated jaw was too weak to get a grip and it sank, whining sadly, down to the floor. The fat man jumped to his feet, grabbed the stick, beat the boghog’s brains into a sticky, pulpy mess on the thin carpet, and then stood there breathing heavily as if daring the animal to move again, just once.
A single boghog eyeball sat looking reproachfully at Arthur from out of the mashed ruins of its head.
`What do you think it was trying to say?’ asked Arthur in a small voice.
`Ah, nothing much,’ said the man `Just its way of trying to be friendly. This is just our way of being friendly back,’ he added, gripping the stick.
`When’s the next flight out?’ asked Arthur.
`Thought you’d only just arrived,’ said the man.
`Yes,’ said Arthur. `It was only going to be a brief visit. I just wanted to see if this was the right place or not. Sorry.’
`You mean you’re on the wrong planet?’ said the man lugu- briously. `Funny how many people say that. Specially the people who live here.’ He eyed the remains of the boghog with a deep, ancestral resentment.
`Oh no,’ said Arthur, ‘it’s the right planet all right.’ He picked up the damp brochure lying on the bed and put it in his pocket. `It’s OK, thanks, I’ll take that,’ he said, taking his case from the man. He went to the door and looked out into the cold, wet night.
`Yes, it’s the right planet, all right,’ he said again. `Right planet, wrong universe.’
A single bird wheeled in the sky above him as he set off back for the spaceport.
8
Ford had his own code of ethics. It wasn’t much of one, but it was his and he stuck by it, more or less. One rule he made was never to buy his own drinks. He wasn’t sure if that counted as an ethic, but you have to go with what you’ve got. He was also firmly and utterly opposed to all and any forms of cruelty to any animals whatsoever except geese. And furthermore he would never steal from his employers.
Well, not exactly steal.
If his accounts supervisor didn’t start to hyperventilate and put out a seal-all-exits security alert when Ford handed in his expenses claim then Ford felt he wasn’t doing his job properly. But actually stealing was another thing. That was biting the hand that feeds you. Sucking very hard on it, even nibbling it in an affectionate kind of a way was OK, but you didn’t actually bite it. Not when that hand was the Guide. The Guide was something sacred and special.
But that, thought Ford as he ducked and weaved his way down through the building, was about to change. And they had only themselves to blame. Look at all this stuff. Lines of neat grey office cubicles and executive workstation pods. The whole place was dreary with the hum of memos and minutes of meetings flitting through its electronic networks. Out in the street they were playing Hunt the Wocket for Zark’s sake, but here in the very heart of the Guide offices no one was even recklessly kicking a ball around the corridors or wearing inappropriately coloured beachware.
`InfiniDim Enterprises,’ Ford snarled to himself as he stalked rapidly down one corridor after another. Door after door magi- cally opened to him without question. Elevators took him happily to places they should not. Ford was trying to pursue the most tangled and complicated route he could, heading generally down- wards through the building. His happy little robot took care of everything, spreading waves of acquiescent joy through all the security circuits it encountered.