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It wasn’t the moors and valleys of the Essex Downs, not by a long, long shot, but the Midhondo forests of Lamuella would do just fine. He had a map, a compass (or, rather, a retrofitted electronic thumb), a packed bag, and a compressed hitchhiker’s tent stuffed in his back pocket. All that was missing was birdsong and good spirit among his crew; the former simply didn’t exist on this planet, and the latter would only exist if the crew in question wasn’t made up of a moody teenager and a spaced-out Betelgeusian.
“This sucks,” Random Dent muttered, loud enough for Arthur to hear. “You’re telling me you do this for fun? Just walk around lost somewhere?”
“We’re not lost. I have a map,” Arthur replied, though he realized the moment the words left his mouth that they would add nothing to the conversation at hand. “It’s a pastime. You do it when you feel like it. Some people don’t. I do. Ford does.”
“What do I do?” Ford said. He was a few paces behind Random, walking slowly with his head tilted up.
“I said you like hiking.”
“Hitchhiking, sure. Say, Arthur, did you ever go to California?”
Arthur bit his tongue to prevent a snide remark from slipping out. “No, Ford, I didn’t. Other than that one vacation I barely ever left the British Isles. Will you keep up?”
“Sorry. The trees here are just wonderful, though. I only got to see them once, when I went backpacking through California. D’you know people used to die cutting them down, on account of getting crushed by a million pounds of tree?”
Random moved closer to her father, whispered in his ear, “Is he alright?”
“Ford’s fine, sweetie,” Arthur whispered back. “I think he took a bit of that special stuff before he joined us.” Then, to Ford, “There’ll be plenty of trees to admire at the camp, now will you come on?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ford trailed off. He spent another few seconds staring before he settled into a slightly faster pace behind the Dents.
As she walked, Random asked, “Don’t you have better things to do?”
“Who, me?” Arthur said.
“Either of you.”
“By better, do you mean more enjoyable or more worth doing?”
“Either. Anything’s better than just walking around or smoking zithek.”
“Now, Random, I don’t go around talking about you and your hobbies like that. Ford’s an adult, by some definitions. He can do what he wants to with his time.”
“He can do better things than this. So can I.”
Arthur stopped, turning around to face Random. “If you think this is so boring, then tell me: what are your hobbies?”
Random gave him one of her classic Mean Looks. “Hob-bees?”
“Right. Er… it’s a word for activities you like doing. You know, like I like to make sandwiches and travel around the galaxy, and you…?” He trailed off.
She thought about it for a moment. “I listen to music sometimes.”
“What kind?”
“Nothing you’d like.”
“Ah,” Arthur nodded. “Noxo-punk and plutonium rock.”
“No!” Random turned away for a moment, letting her hair fall over her face. “Plutonium rock is for old tixters who still go to Disaster Area concerts even though Hotblack Desiato’s been dead for, like, twenty years or something. I’m not that lame.”
“So they’re Deadheads. Got it.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Anyway, I didn’t say you were lame. So what kind of music isn’t lame amongst the galactic youth?”
“You wouldn’t get it.”
“You know, I was young once. Young and, some might even say,” he said with a punch-worthy grin, “a little cool.”
Random squinted. “I thought you said your planet was heating up.”
“Forget it. How about we keep walking, and when we set up our tents you can get my Guide out and show me some of your music, alright?”
“Alright.” She sighed, but didn’t look to be either on the verge of tears or violence, which, as far as Arthur was concerned, was a steep improvement from last week, when he’d asked a rancher to teach her how to ride a keroc (a horse-like animal) and she’d had a panic attack. He didn’t blame her, of course, but the experience had been as mentally taxing for him as for her. Ford had been at least a little help in comforting her then, unlike now. Maybe Random was right to point out his recent zithek usage.
Aside from that, Arthur felt as though he’d been making a little progress with the girl. She ate more often than not, and in recent days he’d been able to coax conversations longer than thirty seconds out of her. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless.
“Well, come on then,” he said, tilting his head in the direction of the path. “You too, Ford. We’ve got to set up before sunset.”
They walked in silence for some time, each taking in the scenery. Ford kept his gaze solely on the trees, watching as their dark bluish-green leaves swayed in the breeze and let little specks of light down onto the forest floor. Random took the opposite approach, as her slightly slouched posture kept her eyes on the ground. She counted little pebbles as she walked over them, felt stalks of tiri grass as they brushed the skin of her legs exposed by the rips in her jeans. Arthur simply faced forward, straight ahead, watching the immediate horizon as it rolled up and down while they walked over and between gentle hills.
Slowly, the sky began to shift from teal to pink, and rays of orange double-sunlight cut through tree trunks like distant spotlights. The planet’s only silvery moon had just begun its ascent when the trio came upon a grassy clearing. Craggy rocks jutted out from a flat, rippling pond, and empty spots of dirt marked where other adventuring parties had previously laid their belongings out.
Arthur shrugged his pack off, rolling his shoulders as he did. He’d stressed himself about overpacking the night before, knowing it would be a surefire way to kill his upper back, but realized halfway through the process of packing that a man with very few belongings anyway would have some difficulty taking too many of them with him. As it was, the only really unnecessary thing he’d brought was the two extra sets of underwear; he’d gotten a bit attached to the new clothes the Lamuellans had given him after going so many years in the same awful bathrobe.
While he set about putting up his and Random’s tent[1], Random herself threw her pack on the ground and moped over to the pond, sitting down at its edge with her legs curled up into her chest.
Ford walked over to Arthur, admiring the little work he’d done to set up camp, and asked, “How’s she doing?”
“Better,” Arthur said. He kept his voice low so Random wouldn’t overhear them talking. “I think she’s having nightmares, though.”
“What about?”
“Beats me.” While he spoke, Arthur opened up his pack and began taking out some cookware and tins of food. “I hear her scuffle around in the night, get up, walk around. I think she cries before she goes to sleep.”
Ford nodded. “Separation.”
“See, I’m not so sure about that, if what she’s told me about Trillian is true.”
“How’s she, by the way?”
“Again, beats me. Won’t so much send me an IPM. Not like I care.”
“No?” Ford quirked an eyebrow.
“No.”
“You sure?”
“What, because I used to be in love with her? Give me a break, Ford. Much as I hate to admit it, she ditched me as much as she ditched Random. Gave us both an equally short section of the shaft, so to speak.”
“But you did love her.”
“And I also loved Fenchurch, but things have changed. Do you mind getting some firewood?”
“Sure.” Arthur looked up to see Ford giving him one of his signature smiles, the kind that might have unnerved him if he hadn’t seen it as often as he had over the last who-knew-how-many years. Ford pulled something out of his backpack before walking off in an unclear direction, head pointed up at the trees and, Arthur noted, not down at the ground for branches or dry twigs.
“Bugger,” Arthur muttered.
He spent a few minutes arranging the most essential supplies so that they were readily accessible before sitting down cross-legged on a bit of grass. By his estimates, they had about an hour before the sun fell below the horizon. Enough time to eat, if Ford came back with the firewood instead of getting lost.
It was strange, Arthur thought, that a man who’d spent this long traveling could suddenly find himself at a loss on a little backwater planet like this. The village he lived in was small, though it sprawled across a few hills and valleys, but compared to any one of the dozens of cities he’d occupied over the years (London included) this was the one that got Ford turned around. Then again, Ford clearly seemed more adept in urban areas. Arthur had read his old reviews of Earth; a lot more attention was placed on restaurants than topography.
In the meantime, he sat by the newly constructed fire pit and waited in content silence. Silence broken by Random’s arrival.
“So what’s your guys’ thing?” she asked, taking a seat beside Arthur.
“Ford and I?” She nodded. “We met a long time ago, back on my old home planet.”
“But he’s not from there.”
“No. I don’t suppose you’ve heard any of his stories of the old days, but no, he’s from another planet that doesn’t exist anymore, for different reasons than mine.”
“Why was he on Arth?”
“Earth,” Arthur corrected, “and because he was studying it for the Guide. He never finished his report, though, because the Vogons blew it up. Anyway, I met him one night at a pub because he was shouting about UFOs and I, out of the kindness of my heart, carried him out so he wouldn’t be thrown out otherwise.”
Random frowned. “Why?”
“I find myself asking that from time to time. Maybe because I have some need to do good things that crops up at the least convenient times. And because I like to talk about space.”
“But you didn’t know he was an alien.”
“Not for years, no. He didn’t tell me until I was getting teleported into a Vogon transport ship flying through the vaporized bits of Earth.”
“So what?” Random asked. “You hung around him for all those years in between just because you liked to talk about space?”
“We talked about a lot of things in six years, Random. Space, not so much after the first few months. I don’t know. He’d go on some tangent about something and I’d just listen. He’d tell me a lot of ‘travel’ stories about his hitchhiking exploits, with the names of far-off planets barely disguised as foreign cities.” Arthur’s gaze flicked between the circle of dirt he’d cleared and Random’s disgusted expression. “What’s that face for?”
“That doesn’t sound at all like the guy getting your firewood.”
“Why not?”
Random shrugged. “The way you talk about him makes him sound weird and interesting and adventurous. Ford’s all mellow and lame and doesn’t look at me when he talks. Not that anyone else does.”
“He wasn’t like that back then.”
“What, he got all boring because you asked him to settle down with you?”
A thin flare of anger passed through Arthur. “He used to play drinking games just to lose, Random. He’s a different man– er, person now. I think, more than anything, he’s just gotten older and matured. So have I. I’m not the thirtysomething with a half-night shift that I used to be.”
“Whatever. You still didn’t answer my question.”
“Which is…?”
“Why do you keep him around?”
“Hm.” Arthur chewed on his lip. “He’s a friend. What can I say? It used to be that I hung around him just so he wouldn’t drink himself to death, but eventually he started calling me, not the other way round, and, well, I found that I didn’t mind it much.”
“Was he a skurry[2], back then, too?”
“I could never tell.” He smiled. “You’re chatty tonight.”
As if on cue, Random returned to her usual scowl. “S’only because there’s nothing better to do.” She turned away from Arthur, staring at the sunset streaming through the trees. Arthur took the opportunity to lose himself in thought again, as he’d tried to earlier. Random’s question nagged at him. How did he come to have a rogue Betelgeusian as his best friend? Somehow he knew that any answer to that question would make as much sense as anything else that had happened to him over the last decade and a half. If only they had psychoanalysts on Lamuella.
As the sun made its last appearances for the night, tinting the pond’s water a beautiful golden-brown, and as Arthur awaited the return of his friend and the ever-promised firewood, he had a realization nearly thirty years in the making.
Camping was a bit dull, actually.
When Ford did finally return with little fanfare, Arthur took the wood from him as fast as possible without injuring the other man and lit it up almost immediately. He did his best not to give Ford a severe side-eye, but such things are simply inevitable when your companion spends forty minutes in pursuit of an armful of sticks.
“What’s there to eat?” Random asked, watching sparks fly as Arthur tended the fire.
“Check my bag.”
Random unzipped the main compartment of Arthur’s pack: several shrink-wrapped packets of meat and vegetables, along with a new, full-size edition of the Guide that had been sent to him as condolences for the mess with the Mk. II. She took out some of the food packets and used the rest to cover up the Guide; just the sight of it instilled some guilt in her.
She handed them off to Arthur and sat back on the grass beside Ford.
“So, what’s new for you?” he asked.
“Not much,” Random replied, “aside from getting dragged out to the middle of nowhere.” She cast a brief glance at his face, trying to determine if his pupils were any less dilated than they had been half an hour before.
“Ah, don’t think of it like that. It’s like you’re on a little adventure. Today, sure, might be boring, but tomorrow Arthur might let you have a dip in the lake if you ask him nicely.”
“I can’t swim.”
Ford bit his lip. “Never too late to learn, is it?”
Random gave him a blank stare.
“We’ll put a pin in that one, alright?” Ford looked over at Arthur. “So, what’s there to eat?”
“I told you to– nevermind,” Arthur muttered. He turned over a chunk of meat inelegantly in the cookware. “I think this thing was called a dorble, right?”
“Yeah, something like that. You said it was a bit like beef when that farmer gave you some.”
“Beef?” Random asked.
“Meat from an Earth animal called a cow. Your dad used to say nothing in the world was quite as good as a slab of it with melted butter and a sprig of oregano.”
“And it’s alright if I eat it?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Ford looked at Arthur. “Is she allergic?”
“Trillian’s a bit of a health nut now,” Arthur replied. “Back when I knew her she was dipping her toes into vegetarianism. Lentil stew, and all that. What did she usually feed you?”
“Anything,” Random shrugged. “Sometimes it was takeaway. If we stayed with someone they cooked for us. I don’t think she’d do it willingly.”
“Well, I do.” Satisfied with the searing on the dorble cutlets and stalks of various veggies he hadn’t yet learned the names of, Arthur took out two plastic plates and handed them to the other two. Ford bit into it immediately, earning him another look from Arthur, while Random took a bite with more hesitancy.
“What do you think?”
“It’s good,” she said.
Ford was about to say something but then remembered his manners and instead held up a finger while he finished chewing. “Say, have you met the other kids in the village? I saw a few of them running ‘round the town square the other day.”
“They all think I’m weird.”
“So you have?”
“Yeah, and all they ask me about is what life off-world is like. They always want to see the Guide. I don’t know what they do all day. They don’t even have a school here.”
“Are you in schooling of some kind?” Arthur asked. It was one of the many things Trillian hadn’t mentioned the last time around.
“Stupid correspondence courses,” Random huffed. “The teachers don’t even talk to you, they just IPM you a lesson, and you send it back, and then they send it back with all the things you did wrong. I wish I could learn things without having to be judged for it.”
“If only,” Arthur and Ford said in unison.
“I don’t care. It’s not like I’m going to do anything useful with my life.”
Arthur set his plastic fork down. “Now, that isn’t true.”
“It’s not like you two do much.”
“Well.” He looked over at Ford, who was doing his best ‘those fingerprints aren’t mine’ face. “Ford’s in between jobs, and the village employs me as their sandwich maker. That surely counts for something.”
“But it’s not what you want to be doing.”
“I can’t say I dislike making sandwiches all day.”
“But it’s–”
“It’s better than running aimlessly around the galaxy wondering where my next meal will come from. And the meat’s fresh.”
Random thought about that. She finished off her dinner and sat back.
“Tell you what,” Ford said. “I’m banned from the Guide, but I recently sent an application to Encyclopaedia Galactica over long-distance StarNet. If I get a new position, I might be able to scrounge up some cash for the two of you to get some better living.”
“They banned you?” Arthur said.
“I didn’t exactly leave on the best of terms. It was a long time coming, anyway, after the mess with Earth and not sending in any reports for, what, six years?”
“You had an excuse for that, didn’t you?” Arthur gestured with his fork. “You know, getting stranded three million years ahead of the Guide’s founding. Dealing with those idiotic Golgafrinchans.”
“Nope. Time travel hasn’t been a viable work excuse since the Davros incident. Took out half the staff and retroactively made the Head Editor at the time a dictator on Polen-2.”
“When was this?”
“Twenty years from now. And you were the one with the Golgafrinchans, weren’t you?”
“Unfortunately,” Arthur laughed. “God, I put up with their shit for far too long. I vainly hoped for a while that one of them would get smart and try to fix their spaceship, but that, of course, never happened, because they were trying to build Eden with a cocktail bar and a gentleman’s club.”
“Is that that thing you told me about that one time?” Ford asked, very unclearly.
“Which one?”
“Gentleman’s clubs.”
“Right. They’re just” – Arthur looked over at Random – “ahem, adult lounges for middle-aged losers. Went out of style long before you landed in Bath. The first mate would come around to my cave every now and again and make me go ‘cause he was trying to pair me off with one of the ladies. Never worked, of course, because they were all ditzy and willing to overlook my lack of hygiene.”
“They overlooked your hygiene and you still turned them down?”
“That’s not a compliment, Ford. I lived in a cave. It was more for their sake than mine.”
“Maybe they were looking beyond that. I certainly would.” Ford smirked.
“Oh, shut it,” Arthur said without any real malice.
“Come on, Arthur. You act like you’re some utterly pathetic loser who can’t get a date, but, you know, you’ve got a lot more going for you than against. And you finally ditched the dressing gown, which, per galactic beauty standards, increased your attractive factor tenfold.”
“Am I being insulted or complimented?”
“Whichever you want.” Ford winked.
Something fluttered in Arthur’s chest as he looked at Ford, face aglow with orange in the light of the crackling fire, and all at once a million memories of the last fifteen years came flooding back to him. Lying on a dingy floor with a towel under his head, staring at the only other person who’d survived the death of his planet and species. Sipping drinks at too many parties on too many worlds, leaning on one another's' shoulders for support. A hand grasping his wrist while the other fiddled with an Electronic Thumb, before being whisked away together like two helicopter seeds falling in unison.
The only other person in the universe who’d actually been there for him, and now he was sitting three feet away flirting.
“Goddamnit,” Arthur muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing. Er, Ford, the fire’s getting a bit dim. Not as hot.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get more wood.” Ford stood up a little awkwardly, forcing Arthur to avert his eyes. “I will return, don’t you worry.”
“I won’t.”
That left him and Random, who’d been silently staring at the dwindling fire for most of the conversation. Arthur bit his lip. Of all the things to be thinking about, this wasn’t what he had in mind for tonight. Or ever, really. Ford could be an optimist at the strangest of times, but his sudden playing-up of Arthur’s love made him reconsider, for the first time in his life, if he’d actually been misjudging himself the entire time and going after the wrong kind of women. Or wrong people entirely.
“Random,” he said, “I hate to ask this, but, does Trillian ever talk about me?”
“Sometimes.” Random shrugged. “If she brings you up, it’s to ask what I think of you. She used to tell me some things about your adventures.”
“Like what?”
“You ate at some underwhelming restaurant one time. You didn’t like her boyfriend. You always cared more about Ford than anything. You upended her life. All that.”
“So that’s how she saw it.” Oh god, had he really…? No, that can’t have been what she meant. That was back during the period when he was actually trying to win Trillian back. Maybe that’s why she never believed him.
“Random,” Arthur said tentatively, “I’d like to tell you something.”
“Okay.”
“I think… I think I’m in love.”
“What.”
“There’s someone who, as I’m realizing now, has been the one constant in my hectic life. He knows–”
“He?”
“Yes, and I’m as shocked as you. But he’s the reason I’ve survived all these years, and he–”
“Wait. You’re in love with him?” Random interjected. She pointed to the trees in vaguely the direction that Ford had wandered off in. “That guy? The one with the sweater vest and the stupid haircut?”
“It looked a bit different when we met.”
“Still!”
“Yes! Yes, I’m in love with him! I have been for…” Arthur slumped forward slightly as the sudden rush of adrenaline fueling his confession dissipated just as quickly. “For a while now, I guess.” He’d heard it said in so many movies and books before that whenever someone finally admits their love for another person out loud, it comforts them. Reassures them, even. Arthur only felt a little sicker and sadder now that the words were out of his brain.
Random didn’t pick up on his emotional turmoil, of course. “You’re gonna pick that guy over Trillian.”
“Well, it’s– it didn’t work with us. And, you know, the whole thing about how you exist and all.”
“But you don’t want to try again.”
“I can be your father without being her wife, Random. Why do you think I brought you out here?”
“To torture me,” Random muttered. “Anyway, why him? Of all people in the known universe – my mother included – why him?”
“He’s the only person who’s ever been there for me, through everything. You know,” Arthur said, laughing bitterly, “I’ve had my life reset so many times. I’ve woken up on that same day multiple times, watched the yellow bulldozer come down on my house while the Vogons wreak havoc. I’ve ended up back on Earth, only without the bulldozers and without Ford and without a whole lot of other things that I remembered anyway. You know, you never existed up ‘till now, and now I realize I’ve missed the opportunity to have a semblance of a regular life, and I can, now, and I want to. With you. And Ford, and whoever else wants to be a part of it. You know, Random, you’re the only family I have left.”
“But there’s–”
“Ford’s not family. He’s close, but not all the way there. Trillian, I don’t know anymore. You are.”
“I am.” She chewed on her lip. Arthur wondered if his nervous tic had somehow been passed down to her genetically. “Arthur, why do I exist?”
Arthur balked. Experience had taught him that Random was more receptive to people taking the time to process her questions as opposed to asking ‘What?’ and making her restate them. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I wanna know.” The answer came with an unspoken, but nonetheless implied, duh at the end. “You act like it’s a stupid question.”
“I don’t. Do I?”
“You gave me some real pants about it the last time I asked, which means there’s something you don’t want to tell me for some reason.”
“Random…” Arthur sighed. He noted the tension building in her face. He had to be very deliberate about his words. “You exist because your mother wanted you to, and because I also wanted you to. She made this decision for the both of us. That’s why you’re with me now.”
“That’s only ‘cause she left me here.”
“It’s because I care about you.”
Random took a sudden, shuddering breath in. “You really think I’m worth anything.”
“Of course I do. Your mother seems to think so, anyway.”
“She doesn’t care about me.”
“That’s– that’s not what I said, but that’s not true either.”
Random shot up. “Yes it is! If it weren’t, she wouldn’t have dropped me on this stupid planet with you, now would she?”
“Hey, hey, calm down.” Arthur also stood, trying to match Random’s body language. Where she was rigid, fists clenched at her sides, he held his hands out, palms forward, eerily similar to the time he’d had to play matador against a blind Chirrokak on Alat-9. “Listen, I don’t want you to think–”
“I don’t want to hear it!” She snapped. “All you’re going to do is give me some pants about how you really secretly do care that I exist, and not oh, I’m only doing this because you showed up one day and I’ve got to be nice!” She turned on her heel, and a second later was gunning it down the dirt path, kicking up clouds of dust in her wake.
“Hey– wait!” Arthur called after her, to no avail. With a disgruntled noise, he dashed after her.
Unfortunately for Arthur, who’d given up on counting his age some four galactic years ago and just assumed he was perpetually 40, he was much slower and less nimble than his own teenage daughter, who seemed to have the stamina of an Aurellian inox. Random dodged low-hanging branches and thick, overgrown roots with ease, each footfall quick yet deliberately landed, while Arthur, several paces behind, stumbled on the alternately soft and sharp ground, tearing a hole in his not-khakis-but-very-similar-in-texture-and-fiber that matched Random’s ripped not-jeans-but-again-rather-similar. The darkness only made the whole mess more difficult; some minutes in, Arthur realized he didn’t hear a second set of footsteps ahead of him, and he’d run aimlessly into the complete wrong direction and lost her.
“Shit,” he muttered, because if there was a time to say it, it was now.
Arthur patted his pockets, expecting to find a thumb, or his pocket guide (a gift from Ford when they’d reunited; it was about a third of the size of a typical guide, but not any more convenient), or, hell, a flashlight like he used to carry back in the days of the radio station when he’d be going home in the middle of the fucking night cold and wet and–
Home.
The thought struck him as he stood alone in the forest. All this time he’d been searching for one of his own, never considering how Random felt about the whole thing. What was home to her? Daycare, hotel rooms, transport ships? A mother who hardly looked the girl’s way?
Why do I exist?
Random asked him that once before, a few days after Trillian left again. Trillian blamed work, but the girl blamed an argument she’d overheard between the two people who were ostensibly her parents. Arthur had given her an answer, the cold, clinical kind: he’d made some money off his precious genetic material and her mother happened to buy some of it. Biological processes ensued.
Arthur thought about it again now, his lack of a proper answer clawing at the back of his head. Why did Trill go through all the business of motherhood if this is how she figured it’d end up one day? Trillian, Tricia MacMillan, Mrs. President of the Galaxy, whoever she was now, had been a career woman long before his ill-fated meet cute with her at that party a lifetime ago. Back then, she’d had a rather small and empty apartment; as a galactic reporter, she was a woman in a suitcase. No fixed address. For Zark’s sake, she hadn’t even bothered to name the girl she went through labor to have, assuming she hadn’t displanted her uterus in some clinic.
A chill ran up Arthur’s spine, partially from the steadily cooling night but mostly from the thought of his ex-lover and her negligence.
Perhaps that’s why they never worked out, he thought. She wanted to travel, lose herself in crowds and break a thousand hearts. Well, alright, perhaps that was a bit cruel, he scolded himself, but you don’t fall in love with someone like Zaphod expecting a standard relationship afterwards. For all Arthur’s jealousy at Zaph for his more appealing bad boy attitude, he felt some satisfaction knowing that neither of them had won in the end.
Why do I exist?
Why do I exist?, he asked himself.
No. No, now wasn’t the time to kick off his midlife crisis. He had a daughter, and she needed him.
Arthur turned in a circle and began to make his way back in what felt like the right direction. If he retraced his steps, he’d eventually come upon the part of the woods where Random deviated from him. Or, at the very least, he’d get back to his gadgets and get Ford to help him. Every now and again as he walked he stepped in what felt like a fresh divot in the dirt, which he assumed were his own footprints, and thus kept up in that direction despite it empirically not being the way he came.
This continued on for several minutes (“this” being Arthur stumbling through a dark forest and only twice running directly into a tree) until he heard a noise to his left. The snapping of twigs, or maybe a shuffle in a pile of dead leaves. Arthur, as a still rather skittish man, jumped and let out a noise that would have been embarrassing if anyone was around to hear it.
He stood perfectly still, ears straining to hear anything else over the sound of his pounding heart.
There was another shuffling sound, this one very definitely on his eight o’clock. He turned to face it. By now, his eyes had mostly adjusted to the near-total darkness, and he could just make out a lumpy shape a few paces away that wasn’t the color of the grass around it. He wondered if it could see him back.
“Random?” he whispered into the darkness.
The lump looked up from having its face buried in its knees. “What are you doing here?”
Arthur resisted the urge to ask if she meant in the forest or here, fifteen feet from her. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“It’s just ‘cause I ran off and now you’ve got to prove to yourself and everyone else that you’re actually a responsible person, isn’t it?”
“I’d being doing this if–”
“If what? If you’d always had me around? If you’d actually loved mother, and had some kind of regular life like regular people do, where you were around me all the time and didn’t leave me behind every day of my fucking life?”
“Language!”
“See? You don’t care!” Random was close to shrieking now, and Arthur could hear the tears in her voice. “I’m just the next weird thing to happen in your weird life, right after your weird crush walking around high on zithek because even he couldn’t care about me for five seconds!”
“Random!” Arthur immediately cringed at himself. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled like that.”
“Shut up.”
“Listen to me,” Arthur said gently. He crouched beside Random, dirt staining the knees of his pants. “I’m doing the best I can right now, given the circumstances. I’ve been on this planet for four months. Ford’s been here for two, you for one. It’s not where I expected to end up, and I’m sure it’s the last place in the galaxy you want to be, but I’m at least a little happy right now. You’re here, and he’s here, and we’re not in any kind of danger.”
Random swiped a hand over her face. “So what?”
“So I’m happy, for the first time in god-or-whoever knows how long. I want to make you happy. I want to be the father you didn’t have. Be better than my old man, who, now that I think about it, was a lot like how your mum is now.”
Neither of them spoke.
“Why?” Random whispered.
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to be my father?”
“Because I love you, Random. That’s what makes us human. We love each other.”
“Ford’s not–”
“Not the point. You and I and Trillian are, as far as I know, the last of our kind. All we have is each other, and all I have is…” Arthur held out a hand, vaguely gesturing to Random. “You. I always hoped that one day I’d settle down, get a real job, have a nice couple of kids of my own and, like you said, be a responsible person. This is the closest I’ll ever get to that. I want so badly to see you be happy, Random.”
For a moment, the harsh look in her eyes softened. It passed just as quickly as it had some, and she buried her face in her knees. “You don’t really care about me.”
Arthur sat back on his heels. “You don’t get it. It hurts when I see you like this.”
“You’re just mad because–”
“I want to help you.”
“You want to go back to having adventures with your stupid hitchhiking buddy, and you need me to be stable enough that you can leave me behind again, don’t you?”
“Random, please–”
“Please what?” Random turned to face Arthur, tears streaking down her cheeks. “I don’t know what the hell you want from me! Sometimes it’s oh, come on, daughter, why don’t we do all these stupid things together because somehow it’ll make you like me, and sometimes I sit around and help you make your zarking sandwiches, and then I mess up and it all goes back to square one because you only like me when I’m perfect and doing things the right fucking way!” Her voice was breaking now. “You’re just like her!”
“Random.”
“What?!” She took in sharp, heaving breaths. “Why do you keep trying to do anything for me when all I’m gonna do is fuck it up again?”
“You haven’t, er, fucked anything up.”
“I almost got you killed! I ruin everything I touch! Don’t you get it?” Random shrieked. “I’m a failure! I was supposed to make everything right, and all I do is screw up and worse and bad and stupid!”
“I’m not mad at you,” Arthur said.
She sniffled. “Why not?”
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
At least she knows, Arthur thought. “Do you know what’s special about being human and sixteen?”
“What, it’s the age when you’re supposed to be old enough not to break down crying all the time?”
“It’s the awful period where everyone thinks they’re the single worst person to ever live. I know I’m old and stupid, but trust me, Random, I was there once. You’re hormonal–”
“Am not.”
Arthur, unaware that ‘hormonal’ was what the village kids called her because they had it confused for ‘homosexual,’ ignored her outburst. “You’re going through an unbelievably difficult time in your life. You’re not accustomed to change, you’re emotionally sensitive – not an insult – and the person who should have been there for you never was. I know what all of that feels like.”
Random looked up. “You do?”
“I do. I never really got over my brother’s death, and unlike my sister, I couldn’t turn my grief into expressionist dance. My dad, whenever he was around, just told me to be a man. When I was old enough, he told me to just grow up and leave.” Despite how long it had been since he’d last thought of his own father, Arthur felt tears welling up in the back of his throat. “I know why you hurt. It’s because I see my teenage self in you every time you run off.”
He braced himself for the retort. Any second now she’d yell back that he was only helping her in order to deal with his own problems, which he really should have dealt with by now, or something like that. Instead, Random relaxed slightly. She dropped her arms, no longer hugging her knees as tightly as she was, and sat up a little straighter. She was still tense, trembling with anger and anxiety, but she allowed Arthur to move closer to her and place his hands on her shoulders.
“Is this alright?” he asked.
Random nodded. Then, in a flash, she threw her arms around Arthur, burying her face in the space between his neck and shoulder. Arthur froze for half a second until he realized that she wasn’t about to strangle him, and gradually he wrapped his own arms around her. She shook with the force of unrestrained sobs, tears staining his sweater, and in return he made gentle circles on her back with his palm. He felt himself shed silent tears which disappeared into her hair.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed into Arthur’s neck. “I’m sorry about everything, I’m sorry…”
“No need,” Arthur muttered.
“I want to be sorry, though.”
“Listen.” Arthur pulled back so that he could look her in the eyes. “I will never, ever be mad at you for what happened. What matters is that we can pick up the pieces afterwards and move on. I’m going to help you do that. Alright?”
“Alright… dad.”
Arthur smiled. “That’s my girl.”
Random, still crying, albeit not as heavily as before, gave him the smallest smile back. She made a move to stand up, but only got halfway there before she hissed in pain and doubled over. Arthur caught her before she could fall and guided her back to the ground.
“What is it?”
“I think I sprained my ankle.” She prodded the spot that hurt the most and hissed again.
Arthur, having figured out how, when, where, and other important first aid questions, decided against inspecting it any further until he had a light source other than the moon to work with. He thought for a moment, then turned to Random. He put one arm under her knees and one around her back, and then, with a renewed sense of vigor that had replenished from his sprinting earlier, he picked her up in one fell swoop. She let her head fall against his shoulder.
“Do you remember where our stuff is?” Random asked.
“Mostly,” Arthur said. “Don’t swing your legs too much.”
It took another half hour of wandering and nearly tripping, but eventually Arthur ran into Ford, whose zithek had finally worn off, and was guided back to camp. Ford was, for once, some help; he coached Random on how to breathe to calm down while Arthur bandaged her ankle. It turned out to only be sprained, which was good, but it meant that they’d probably have to go home tomorrow instead of doing more hiking. Also good in the long run.
Some time around three a.m. galactic standard time, after tensions had simmered and clouds dispersed, the camping trio sat back to admire the stars.
Ford pointed at a cluster of stars and nudged Arthur with his elbow. “What’s that one?”
“You know very well I don’t know the constellations in this sector,” Arthur replied.
“You used to.”
“From a completely different angle, sure.”
“That’s the Gellotto,” Random said.
Arthur and Ford turned to look at her. “The what?” asked Ford.
“The Gellotto,” she repeated. “Daebert told me about it. He lives in that hut by your sandwich stand.”
“So you have been–”
Arthur elbowed Ford in the ribs. “Not now. Anyway, go on.”
Random shrugged. “That’s it. It’s this species of bird that passes through during the cold months. See, if you see that one big star as an eye,” she said while pointing, “and that line of stars as a long wing, and that little bit right there as the legs, then you get the picture.”
“Hm. Rather a bit like a stork, isn’t it?”
“A what?”
“Old Earth bird. Long necks and big wings. People used to think that they brought children to couples, instead of, you know, people having sex.”
“And people actually believed that?”
“No, it was more like a fantasy thing. Stories you’d tell your children to make them go to sleep, or, in my case, that you told your alien friends because they couldn’t tell when you were joking.”
“Hey now,” Ford said, “earthlings still thought that the Norse gods were all a fairy story when I got there.”
“What, they aren’t?”
“You met Thor, personally! Don’t you remember you told him to bugger off at a party?”
"Right, that," Arthur grinned. He said to Random, “I convinced him for two years that Harold Wilson[3] was a confidant sent from Neptune – that’s another planet in Earth’s star system – to monitor the state of Earth and provide political information for the Neptunians.”
“What’s so strange about that?” Random said.
“Earth was the only habitable planet in the star system. There weren’t any Neptunians. Of course, Ford, like you, was accustomed to vibrant galactic life and totally believed me, until the day he actually met Wilson and asked him about his spacecraft.”
“And do you know what the man said to me?” Ford snapped. “He asked me if I was a bloody Russian trying to give him some codewords! He got about this close to calling the opps before I snuck off.”
“And then came home and raided my liquor cabinet, right?”
“Sure, earthman.”
Arthur looked at Ford, contently watching the stars slowly trail by, and figured well, they’d be here for a while. He had time. After all the excitement of the night he wasn’t in a mood to rile up any more tempers. On his other side, his daughter was yawning, losing her battle with consciousness for the night. He put one arm around her shoulders. “I love you.”
“You too,” Random and Ford said in unison.