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“Arthur?” It was Ford’s voice at the door to Arthur’s cabin, which meant Ford was yet again interrupting him. Interrupting while Arthur was just trying to enjoy not being yanked around by the galaxy for a little while while the Heart of Gold travelled to what Zaphod claimed was an exclusive resort planet only for the rich and famous (and certain ex-galactic presidents). That was never a good sign.
“Oh, please, not again,” Arthur pleaded as the cheerful doors slid open on Ford’s cheerful face. “How hard is it to get some peace and quiet around here? All I want is for the galaxy to leave me alone for five sodding minutes, is that too much to ask?” He could feel his temper building, but he didn’t care. “First the Vogons, then your friend Zaphod…”
“Semi-cousin,” Ford corrected, which was just what Arthur needed.
“And then the Golgafrinchems, and then prehistoric Earth,” he went on, punctuating his words with angry swings of his hand, “and then the Krikkit war, not to mention the dozen other misadventures you’ve somehow gotten us entangled in…”
“Arthur…” Ford tried again, but Arthur wasn't in the mood to listen
“Quite frankly, I have had enough! I am taking a holiday! I don't know where yet, or how I'm going to get there, but I promise you I am looking for it. But the point remains that I am busy, my social calendar is booked for the foreseeable future, and I will not be drawn into any more ludicrous universe-saving adventures, because so far, they have usually not ended very well!” He drew himself up, facing Ford with all the injured fury he could manage as an emotionally-stalid Englishman. “So what in all possible universes could possibly warrant you insisting I jump right back into whatever it is you seem intent on doing?”
Ford thrust out his hands. “...I brought you a cup of tea.”
“Oh.” Arthur finally looked down at the item in Ford’s hands. It was, indeed, a cup of something that looked like tea. He picked it up. It was hot. He sniffed it. It smelled like tea. He took a sip.
The taste of civilization filled his mouth and ran down his throat, warming him down to his slipper-clad toes.
For a moment he wondered if he was imagining it, but then, his imaginings were rarely so pleasant. This was reality. One of them, anyhow. And for once it was a reality Arthur didn't mind.
He wanted to say something, but he decided not to risk the universe getting wind of the fact that he was happy and content for the first time in years. For all he knew, it was very eager to take that happiness away again.
He sighed and took another sip. Ford smiled at him.
“Where did you find a cup of tea?” he asked when the mug was half-empty and he figured it was safe to question the source of his good fortune.
“I didn’t,” Ford said with a small smile. “I grew it.”
Arthur stared. “But how?”
“You remember when the Infinite Improbability Drive filled the Heart of Gold’s luxury gymnasium with the contents of a small forest?”
“Yes?” How could he forget? It was all anyone could talk about for a week. Until Arthur had threatened to punch both of Zaphod’s heads after he'd suggested Arthur go find a tree to climb like his monkey ancestors.
“It turned out, one of those plants matched the Guide’s botanical fingerprint for tea leaves. So I researched the right growing conditions and set it up in a time enhancer slash duplication machine, and bingo, perfectly grown and aged tea. Just add some hot water and there you go.”
Arthur stared. “You did all that for me?” Ford was the sort of man - the sort of Betelgeusen - who never stuck to any one thing for long. He flitted from topic to topic like a tipsy bee, clinging to something for as long as it interested him and no longer.
Ford shrugged. “You seemed quite keen on the idea, so I thought, why not? If you don’t like it, it won’t take much work to dismantle the machine. I think Trillian will appreciate having the gym back.”
“Ford, this is the most thoughtful gift anyone’s ever given me.”
“Hey, there’s no need for insults now. I take pride in not thinking very hard about anything.”
“Well, I must say I’m glad you thought about this.” Arthur sighed and took another deep drink from the mug. It was warm and solid in his fingers, just like good solid tea mugs were supposed to be. “I’m sorry I’ve been so difficult. I just find it hard to cope with, you know, all this.” He gestured vaguely into space. The Earth being destroyed, Ford being an alien, and how nobody in any corner of this suddenly very large galaxy seemed to have the faintest notion of common sense or good taste.
Ford gave him what he supposed was a sympathetic look. Or maybe a faintly amused look. It was hard to tell with Ford. “Arthur, I would be very surprised, and not a little alarmed, if you could cope with it. The mortal brain just isn’t built to handle these sorts of things, never mind human brains.”
Arthur decided not to argue on that last point. He'd grown accustomed to his hardy, proud race being seen as one of the less evolved in the galaxy. He'd met Zaphod Beeblebrox; if that was what higher evolved beings were aiming for, then evolution could go hang itself for all Arthur was concerned.
“Anyway,” Ford went on, “from the looks of it I believe we’ll have enough leaves to keep you in tea for quite some time. And I might take some for myself. I suppose I developed a taste for it during my time on your planet. It’s a strange custom, but one I learned to appreciate. I was sad to see it go.”
“I’ll admit I’m proud to hear that,” Arthur said when the shock wore off. He’d never seen Ford drinking tea. Usually it was some sort of beer, or on special occasions, a gin and tonic. Or several gin and tonics.
“I told you, I liked Earth!” Ford said, with a grin that threatened to lift Arthur’s sullen heart. “Sure, I wasn’t exactly happy to be stuck there for ten years, but it wasn’t a bad place. A bit rustic, but the beer was good. And I met you there.”
“That has been one good thing in what was generally a rather dreary life,” Arthur agreed. “At least for me.” He took another long drink from the cup. “It wasn’t all bad, though. I rather liked some parts of it. I always wanted to travel more. I thought I’d go to Holland and see the flowers. No chance of that now.”
“I’ve been there,” Ford said. “It wasn’t very impressive. Nothing to write home about. And I mean that seriously. I didn’t even mention it in the article I wrote for the Guide.” He considered. “Even if I had, it would have gotten edited out, I suppose.”
“Probably,” Arthur agreed.
“I know a planet with even better flowers, if you wanted to go. Would only take an afternoon with the Infinite Improbability Drive.”
Arthur shook his head, staring into the amber depths of the teacup. “It wasn’t about the flowers, really. It was about going somewhere else, doing something different with my life. Seeing the world.”
Ford grinned. “Well, you’re doing a lot of that now, aren’t you? Seeing things no ape-descended lifeform has ever had the pleasure of seeing before.”
“I don’t think I’ll call most of what we’ve seen pleasant , ” Arthur said. “But yes, I’ll say it’s been a unique experience.”
“Take it from a seasoned hitchhiker, Arthur, it isn’t all bad.”
“I suppose you’re right about that. At least there’s tea now. And what are you smiling about?” He squinted at Ford’s suspiciously cheery expression.
“I’m just thinking about how easy it is to make humans happy.”
“And I suppose I should take that as a compliment?”
“Have you ever heard of the Sorrowbeast of Galaphon Aquatica?” Ford said.
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t.” Where was Ford going with this? It was as if the man could never give a straight answer.
“So the Sorrowbeast of Galaphon Aquatica is this massive great whale-shaped thing that lives in the sea.”
“I figured that when you said ‘whale’,” Arthur said.
“Ah, but I might have meant the land-whales of Haricon Beta. This whale, now, this whale lives most of its life in the freezing arctic, spending every day being absolutely miserable in the cold, without much food to eat. But in the summer, it migrates to the equatorial islands, where it then spends every day being absolutely miserable in the heat, and eating itself sick on fish it doesn’t really like the taste of much anyway.”
Arthur frowned. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to migrate to the warm place in the winter and the cold place in the summer?”
“Ah, now that’s exactly the point. You would have thought! You really, really, would have thought. And there’s a legend on Galaphon Aquatica that says that if the Sorrowbeast ever does change its migratory patterns, it would no longer be a tragic miserable Sorrowbeast, but a happy and satisfied Joybeast. And that joy would spread across the cosmos, heralding a golden age for all.”
“So why doesn’t it do that?”
“Because it’s never done that before, and why would it change its life now, just when it’s gotten settled?”
“Hmm.” Arthur nodded. “I see your point.”
“You do?”
“Yes.” It made quite a lot of sense. “You’re telling me that I should be pleased to be a human, because unlike the Sorrowbeast of wherever it was-“
“Galaphon Aquatica,” Ford supplied.
“Because unlike that beast, I’ve changed my life. I’ve changed my life quite a lot in the past few… however long it’s been. And even if it doesn’t make me happy all the time, I at least have the opportunity to find things that make me happy.”
Ford was looking at him with a curious expression. “Oh no, actually what I meant was it’s hard to make a cup of tea big enough for a Sorrowbeast.”
It was no use arguing with Ford. “I suppose that’s also true,” Arthur said, and drained the cup. He handed it over to Ford. “Do you have any more?”
Ford smiled. “Come on, I’ll show you the machine.”
They headed down the gleaming while hallways of the Heart of Gold. “Hopefully it’s nicer than that stubborn Nutrimatic device.”
“Don’t worry, this one wasn’t made by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. So it doesn’t have a Genuine People Personality installed.”
“Oh, that’s a relief.”
“Lucky machine,” grumbled Marvin, who was moping in a corner.
“If only there was a way to make him happy,” Ford said, shaking his head. “He makes the Sorrowbeast look positively euphoric by comparison.”
“Wretched cheery creature,” Marvin put in. “Swimming about all day without a care in the world except for the temperature. It should try being owned by people who won’t even bother to change the diodes down its left side, no matter how much they ache…”
The interminably-cheerful door closed behind them with a little reminder about how happy it was to open for them and close again with the knowledge of a job well done, and Marvin’s voice faded into a distant metal droning.
Arthur sighed. “If I ever meet an executive from the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation, I’m going to make him try living here for a day, and then see what he thinks about this whole Genuine People Personalities thing.”
Ford snorted. “No need. I heard the entire executive committee got thrown into the Total Perspective Vortex last week. Everyone’s saying it was a massive cock-up with spa booking,” he added, eyes glittering with delight, “but I think it was intentional.”
“Oh, really? Glad to hear it.”
“Yeah, something about a company retreat gone wrong. Saw the article in the Siderial Daily Mentioner. You wouldn’t believe the psychiatric bills the resort has to cover. I heard they’re about to go bankrupt.”
Arthur paused. “Hold on, is this the resort we’re going to right now?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. I figure that’s how Zaphod managed to get discounted tickets. I’ll admit I’m a bit surprised, though. The only news Zaphod usually reads is the sort that’s all about him.” Which was about as much of a shocking revelation as the news that something called a Sorrowbeast wasn’t very happy.
“You know,” Arthur said as the door to the gymnasium came into view before them, “that’s one thing I don’t miss about Earth.”
“Company retreats?”
“Newspapers. Every day it was some more bad news about somewhere or other. People getting murdered, governments collapsing, people getting murdered when their governments collapsed… and that’s before you even get to the economy. It was always collapsing too, but it never seemed to get there.”
Ford nodded. “Hard to have an economic collapse when you’ve been blasted into atoms by the Vogons. Complete destruction does simplify things wonderfully.”
“Never thought I’d agree with a Vogon on anything,” Arthur mused.
“The universe,” Ford said sagely, “is always stranger than you expect it to be. That’s why it’s good to set your expectations low. That way, the world doesn’t have to work as hard to fail them. And you never know, it might get bored and take a lunch break halfway through, allowing you to sneak under its nose and get what you wanted all along.”
“I’ll take that under advisement.” It was as nonsensical as the rest of Ford’s advice, at least, which probably meant it was actually rather good to know.
“Here we are,” Ford announced, waving open the door to what once had been the luxury fitness center of a playbeing’s dream and was now draped, stuffed, filled, and overgrown with vines, flowers, shrubs, and trees.
“Wow,” Arthur said. “It’s gotten bigger since I last saw it.”
“Tends to happen with plants,” Ford said. He pushed his way through the dangling curtains of greenery, revealing a narrow path through the jungle. “This way.”
Arthur followed, craning his neck to look at all the flowers. They were unlike anything he’d ever seen on Earth, though he had to admit that his experience mostly extended to the tulips he’d tried to plant in his garden that had died halfway through the season and he hadn’t had the heart to try again. Mostly because he didn’t want to sentence another crop of innocent flowers to their doom, but also because the woman at the garden shop had been rather rude to him and he couldn’t stomach the idea of going back and admitting how badly it had gone.
Something caught his eye. “Oh, now that’s rather nice,” he said, reaching up towards a huge purple blossom the size of his fist, its dark velvety petals edged with a paler pink and speckled with gold and white flecks.
“I wouldn’t-“ Ford warned, but he didn’t manage to get all the words out before the flower reared back on its stem and snapped at Arthur with thorns like teeth.
Arthur grabbed his and back and swallowed nervously. “Right. Don’t touch the scenery.”
“Sorry, I should have warned you,” Ford said. “That’s a Prinprinar Night-Blooming Speckled Daisy. Carnivorous and very hungry. In the Prinprinar jungles you get whole bushes of them working together to bring down large prey.”
Arthur edged away from the flower and hurried down the path.
“Almost there,” Ford said, sweeping aside a bundle of yellow vines.
Arthur squinted in the damp air and could just barely see the blinking of electronic lights in the distance, and the white curve of what he thought was a wall.
“Ta-da!” Ford gave a little flourish and swept a sheet off a table, revealing… something.
Ford’s tea machine did not look anything like what Arthur had expected. He knew he couldn’t assume anything in this bizarre galaxy, especially when the Infinite Improbability Drive was involved. But he had thought there would at least be a kettle somewhere.
This was an otherworldly tangle of pipes, glass beakers, metal boxes with hoses coming out, and little blinking lights. It looked like an underfunded theater group had tried to build a pantomime horse using the contents of the school science lab.
“…and this machine makes tea, does it?” Arthur asked, squinting at a bulb that looked to be full of honey or something very much like it, with bubbles lazily floating up to stretch on the surface before popping.
Ford grinned. “Just watch.” He grabbed a shallow basket of leaves from a table behind the device and dumped them into a chute on top. Then he pressed a combination of buttons on the side panel. The machine rumbled like a sleeping tiger that was just woken up by a very inexperienced zookeeper, the lights along its length flashing in patterns too complex for organic minds to grasp.
It hummed, and it buzzed, and it whistled, and finally, just when Arthur was about to ask Ford what exactly he was waiting for, the machine gave a cheerful little ding and a hatch opened in the side, revealing a steaming cup of tea.
“See? I told you it worked,” Ford said.
“I’ll be the judge of that.” Arthur reached for the teacup. He sniffed it, felt it all over - it was the perfect temperature, steeped for just the right amount of time. In fact, it looked exactly like the cup Ford had given him earlier.
He sipped, and sighed deeply.
Ford grinned at him. “Success?”
Arthur nodded. “Success.”
“Great. My next project is to install a miniature version in the aft dining hall.”
“A breakfast cuppa, no job to go to, no bulldozers, our only concern being what mad scheme Zaphod’s going to come up with next.” Arthur chuckled. “I think I might come to enjoy this, Ford.”
“The life of an itinerant space hitchhiker does have its charms,” Ford said. He keyed another sequence into the tea machine and ran it again. After another run of rattling and beeping, it presented him with another identical cup of tea.
They sat together on what used to be a weight bench and was now twisted with vines and sweet-smelling purple flowers and drank their tea. Arthur didn’t know whether to thank the Infinite Improbability Drive for picking the right plants or Ford for blending them properly, but it was possibly the best cup of tea he’d ever had.
“I wonder how long this is going to last,” Arthur said after a while.
“How do you mean?”
“I know I shouldn’t tempt fate, but…” Arthur shook his head. “The next time we run the Infinite Improbability Drive, all this might go poof.”
“Or we might all get eaten by the Bugblatter Beast of Trall.”
“Or we might fall into a sun.” Arthur laughed. “It seems so silly to worry about the little things when there’s all this out there. You know, life, the universe… everything, really.”
“Arthur,” Ford said, lounging back in his seat, “if there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years traveling the galaxy working for the Guide, it’s that life is all the little things. And when you consider the massive, overwhelming, unimaginable size of the universe, everything’s little when you think about it.”
Arthur nodded. “You know, I think you’re right.”
“So what do you say, another cup? Or, I think I can find something even nicer to put in it.” Ford pulled a flask out of an inside pocket and waggled it in front of Arthur’s face. “Arcturan brandy. Been saving it for a special occasion.”
“Yes, please.” Arthur held out his cup. “Let’s enjoy this while it lasts.”