by Rob Grant
And nothing happened.
Rimmer wrinkled his brow, straightened, flexed his muscles and bent to the rail again. And pulled.
And nothing happened.
Disgorging a primal yell, he redoubled his efforts, straining up and up, his neck bones jutting out like the struts on a whalebone corset. His face reddened, then purpled, then turned marble white. With a final hissing grunt, like a steam train pulling into a station, he flopped limply over the rail, arms dangling, lungs scorched and pumping for air.
The horse rail hadn't budged a single millimetre.
'When you's done with all your squealin' and strainin', friend,' Pestilence grinned, 'I believe I have an open invitation to beat your stinkin' brains out.'
Rimmer looked over to the Cat and rasped, 'What the smeg is going on?'
'Don't look at me, buddy,' he said, delight illuminating his features. 'You're the one who promised to make this handsome dude French kiss your butt-hole.'
Pestilence advanced.
Rimmer backed away. 'For smeg's sake, shoot him,' he squealed.
The Cat took out his harmonica and started to play.
Rimmer's voice hit the falsetto range: 'Shoot the ugly goitre-faced gimboid! Shoot him! Now!'
Reluctantly, the Cat decided Rimmer had suffered enough, and dropped his hand to his pistol, aiming to put six shots through the wooden strut, severing it at just the right angle to collapse back on to Pestilence's head and plant him out cold.
Only it didn't exactly work out like that.
What happened, exactly, was the gun went off while it was still in its holster, drilling a neat hole through the centre of the Cat's boot. He froze, his eyes wide, staring in disbelief at the street through his foot, then threw his head back and yowled like a B-movie wolfman.
'Oh smeggy pudding,' Rimmer chittered, 'we've lost our special skills.'
The Cat grabbed his wounded foot and started hopping and howling.
Pestilence came on, relentlessly. 'Your compadre don't dance so fancy no more,' he giggled.
Rimmer kept on backing away, holding out the palms of his hands, his eyes flitting from his menacer to the Cat and back again. 'Does it hurt?' he screeched dry-mouthed, hoping against hope that the Cat was wailing because his footwear had been ruined.
'No!' the Cat yelled. 'It's fun! I'm having a good time.' He tumbled on to his back and started thrashing around in the dirt, thick spurts of blood geysering over his hands through the sole of his boot.
Rimmer's brain was screaming. This was an electronic reality. They shouldn't be able to feel pain. What in the name of the merciless nothing that spawned the universe had gone wrong? Then it hit him with a jolt: the virus had spread to the Artificial Reality unit!
He glanced behind him: he was fast running out of retreating space. All things considered, now would be a most propitious time to leave. He called out to the struggling Cat. 'Time to go! Clap, clap!' He clapped his hands together.
And absolutely nothing happened.
He clapped again.
And still he was stuck in Kryten's fever nightmare. Still his rot-faced tormentor was bearing down on him with murderous intent. He looked over at the Cat, who had temporarily released his wounded foot and was clapping with the dedicated fury of an audience at a special all-nude version of a Lily Langtree revue.
The virus had sealed them in.
Rimmer had only two options: make a stand and slug it out with this maniacal demon from hell, or plead and beg for mercy like a quivering, spineless jellyfish.
Rimmer daringly plumped for mimicking a marine coelenterate of the class Schyphozoa. From deep down inside himself, he dredged up his most winning smile. 'Uh, Mr Pestilence, sir, it would appear that, due to circumstances completely beyond my control, there's been a bit of a cock-up in the bravado department. I may have come across as being slightly more brave than I, in fact, am.'
Pestilence swung the strut. Rimmer leapt backwards, barely getting out of the arc of the swing in time. He staggered, regained his balance and was retreating again before Pestilence had the chance to raise the weapon back to his shoulder.
'Now I may have given the impression that I held you in low esteem, particularly in regard to some rather thoughtless remarks I passed in relation to various features of your appearance, which were not only childish and peevish, but also highly inaccurate, and which, on mature reflection, I utterly withdraw. I ask you now, in the spirit of brotherly harmony and world peace...'
'Shut your sissy bitchin', you worthless son of a filthy whore,' Pestilence said.
'Fair enough,' Rimmer said, and Pestilence brought the strut swinging down on to his left shoulder.
There was a thump and a sickening snap of bones. Rimmer tried to black out before the pain hit him, but he didn't make it. The faces of the onlookers loomed and waned in his eyes. He sagged to his knees. He twisted his flopping head and drove his blurry vision over to the struggling Cat. Step by satisfied step, Pestilence was advancing on him. Rimmer tried to persuade the screaming in his shoulder to shut the smeg up, but it kept on screeching, and through the throbbing swelling his eyesight had become he watched the huge wooden strut rise up over the struggling Cat and fall, and saw the Cat lay still.
Rimmer pitched head forward into a pile of dung thoughtfully dropped for him by the funeral horses. Then everything went blissfully black.
TEN
Lister stared at the blood on his hand like it was a Rorschach ink-blot test. Pulsing thickly through the small nick on his palm, it spread slowly, becoming a butterfly, then a bat, then a huge ugly dragon, its head reared, its wings spread.
He slipped a cream kerchief from the breast pocket of his tailored jacket and mopped up the dragon. He was thinking how oddly unfamiliar his hand looked to him, and how strangely inept the expression 'to know something like the back of your hand' was. He doubted he could pick out the back of his hand in a police line-up if it had stolen his cattle and burnt down his ranch.
Lister tugged the kerchief in a tourniquet to stem the blood flow. He shouldn't really have been thinking about hands. What he should have been thinking about was why he'd cut himself at all. He'd been whittling away at a chunk of wood, carving a fairly elaborate rendition of Venus on the half shell, when his knife had slipped and sliced into the soft skin of his palm. And if he'd been thinking what he should have been thinking, he'd have been thinking that shouldn't have happened. In this electronic reality, he was supposed to be perfect with knives. Impeccable.
If he'd been thinking that thought, it could have saved him a lot of pain. A lot of pain.
He flicked his eyes over to Kryten, who was bent over his dove guns, trying to make sense of the senselessness of them.
Outside, the sound of the funeral procession started up again. Lister had no idea why it had stopped in the first place. He'd toyed with the idea of stepping out to investigate, but reasoned that Rimmer and the Cat could probably handle anything that came at them, and he'd decided against leaving Kryten alone.
He set down the unfinished, blood-stained sculpture on the desk and stretched. 'Getting anywhere?' he asked. Kryten didn't even hear him. Good. At least he was concentrating. Lister prodded around the office, in case there was anything, just some small thing, that might help the cause.
He flicked his forefinger abstractedly over the wanted posters on the notice-board, tooting a tuneless song in a kind of quiet half-whistle. Finding nothing of interest, he strolled into the jail cell.
The jail section was about twelve feet square, split by bars, so that the cells took up about two thirds of the room, enough to accommodate a dozen or so desperadoes, so long as nobody cared to lie down. The rest of the room was a corridor. There was an old wooden rocker, a rack of rifles, and something Lister hadn't seen before: a stand-alone closet. Where had it come from? He tried the handle. Locked.
'Have you got a key to this thing?' he called, but if Kryten heard him, he didn't reply. Lister looked around. There was an enormous bunch
of keys dangling from a hook on the wall. He took the bunch down, and quickly flipped through the dozens of keys, but couldn't find one that looked as if it might fit.
He shrugged, sighed, raised his spurred boot and kicked through the closet door panel.
A huge shard of freshly bared wood slashed a gully of flesh six inches up his shin. He stared down at the wound in astonished disbelief and saw the whiteness of his exposed shinbone suddenly flush deep red as the pain blossomed to its exquisite fullness; then he launched into the babbled litany of expletives he reserved exclusively for cursing his own clumsiness.
'Stupid smegging farty stupid shitty shit shit smeg fart poo shit...'
And again, he failed to make the essential connection: that in this reality, he should not have been able to feel pain.
He hopped to the rocker, carrying his wounded leg stiffly, so that every time he landed it brought a fresh burst of pain, which he accompanied with his mindless cant. He flopped down in the chair and squeezed its arms till his knuckles went white, though how this was supposed to help the pain he had no idea. Eventually, the pain did subside to a pulsing throb, and Lister managed to bring himself to look down at the leg again. His pinstriped trousers were split neatly up his left leg, from the top of his boot to just below the knee. The blood was just beginning to coagulate. With luck, he'd only need four or five stitches. He closed his eyes and clutched his thigh.
Then his eyes blinked open again. On the periphery of his vision, he glimpsed the closet. The shattered door had swung open, and inside was a magnificent suit of clothes. Gleaming, unreal white, it was a fantasy gunslinger's outfit. Dangling from a hook, there was a gun belt, the metal buckle burnished blinding bronze in the shape of a dove.
Lister stood and walked over to the closet, barely noticing his dragging right leg. Kryten stepped into the room. 'Are you OK, friend?'
'What are these threads for, man?'
'Them? Them's my fancy gunslinging duds, partner. Ain't seen 'em in a mule's age.'
'Check out the gun belt.'
Kryten reached in and took out the belt. 'Fine piece of leather work, no question.'
'The bullets! Look at the bullets!'
But before Kryten could comply, they heard the creak of the office doors and a heavy footfall on the naked boards. Kryten turned to the office, but Lister laid a hand on his shoulder and nodded towards the back of the cell corridor. Kryten stepped aside. Lister ran his fingers over his jacket to check his arsenal of throwing knives, and, trying his damnedest to pass his limp off as a macho swagger, he Lee Van Cleefed into the sheriffs office.
It was the fat Apocalypse boy, Famine. He'd parked his double-dirigible-sized ass on the sheriff's chair and slung his tapered legs on the desk. The chair was creaking fit to bust apart.
His greasy fingers were toying with Kryten's shooting irons.
Lister twitched his chin and set his face in a don't-screw-with-me sneer. 'I'm thinking maybe you'd like to put those guns down, friend.'
Famine looked up at him and smiled an oily smile. Dried spittle and chicken fat glistened on the pork of his chin. 'Well, now. If'n I'm figurin' this rightly, you don't got no call barkin' orders at the newly appointed sheriff of this burgh in his own jailhouse.' He wiped a sticky mitt over the badge on his breast, and grinned big enough for Lister to itemize every component of his last four meals from the gristle and gunk lodged between his teeth.
Despite the gnawing in his leg, Lister was actually enjoying this little scenario. 'Is that a fact? Now, tell me. Who in their right mind would appoint an obnoxious tub of stinking lardy effluence as sheriff?'
'I was duly elected, Hopalong, by an overwhelming majority of one. Me.'
'Well, much as I respect the democratic process, flab face, I'm here to tell you: you just got unelected. So why don't you just squelch yourself into a huge ball and roll out of here like the pink, soggy blob you are?'
Famine replied with a huge bellowing fart.
'When you say that...' Lister kept his face impassive '... smile.'
The fat boy smiled, and ripped off another one.
Lister half-turned his face in disgust, and that was all the leeway Famine needed to make his move. With a speed Lister couldn't have predicted in one so porcine, his chubby fingers dropped to the handle of his gun. With his legs on the desk, he wouldn't even have to clear his holster to squeeze off a shot.
Lister slid his hand inside his jacket to grab a knife and hurl it in the same move, but his movements seemed strangely sluggish and inept. Still, he was obviously faster than the Apocalypse boy, because there was no gunshot before his hand cleared the jacket and he threw.
Something wet and harmless plopped against Famine's forehead, and slid down his face, leaving a thin red trail down his features.
Lister looked at his hand. His right forefinger was missing. He held the hand up, incredulous as it pumped its little bloody geyser spasmodically.
He looked over at Famine, who looked like he was laughing, but Lister must have been in shock, because he heard nothing. Famine dipped into the top of his waistcoat and pulled Lister's finger out of his fatty cleavage. He held it up for Lister to see, then popped it in his mouth. Lister's hearing must have returned, because he could definitely make out the obscene crunch as Famine chewed on his severed digit.
Famine belched and slapped his quintuple-deckered belly with both hands. 'Fine appetizer, friend.' He stood, and the chair splintered and collapsed behind him. 'I'll be coming back later for the main course.'
Still in shock, Lister didn't move as the blancmange mountain wobbled towards him, arms held out as if to hug.
He was suddenly aware of being surrounded by the sweaty stench of Famine's body. He felt his legs leave the floor and then blinding pressure all over his torso as Famine enveloped him and squeezed. He heard sounds like bulbs popping. The fat man crushed him as, one by one, each and every rib in Lister's body cracked. Then he was tumbling to the floor, every part of him bellowing with agony. He hit the floorboard, doubling his pain, and bounced, redoubling it. He looked up to see Famine tip his hat, hitch up his denims and push through the double doors out on to the street.
He must have slid momentarily out of consciousness, because the next thing he knew, Kryten was by his side, examining his injuries. 'Looks like you got banged up pretty good, friend. You got more broke in you than a bankrupt's prison.'
Lister snorted a laugh, and almost killed himself.
'Easy, friend. Yes sir. Good and proper damaged. You ain't gonna be bustin' no broncos in quite an age.'
In fact, there were only three discernible bits of Lister that didn't hurt: his nose, his left leg and his penis.
He was just thanking heaven for small mercies, when there was the tremor of hoof beats, so loud they rattled the floorboards of the jail, each thud squeezing new pain from Lister's racked body. Kryten stood and crossed to the doorway. Before he reached it, the opaque office window shattered, blasting the office with glass and debris, followed immediately by two bodies. The Cat landed on Lister's face, crushing his nose, and Rimmer thumped down on Lister's left leg, snapping it cleanly.
When the Cat rolled off his face, Lister saw, with an almost amused detachment, that a huge shard of glass was jutting out of his pinstriped groin. He thought, 'Well, gambling man, you've got yourself a full house,' and giggled insanely.
The giggle brought the sharp edge of a snapped rib brushing against his lung, and the pain drove him out of consciousness.
ELEVEN
The Cat was staring into a broken hand mirror, barely able to believe what he was seeing. 'Hot damn!' he said, for the eighth or ninth time. His face was flat. His nose had been squashed squat against his cheek, as if someone had swatted a huge ugly death's head moth and left its corpse rotting on his face. He turned the hand mirror over, again, just to check once more that it wasn't some kind of optical illusion trickery, and then flipped it back to study the horror again. 'Hot damn!' he said, for the ninth or tenth time.<
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'For God's sake!' Rimmer squealed, 'Must you go on and on about it?' He swivelled round, so he faced the Cat. He couldn't move his neck, because it was secured in a plaster cast, along with his shoulder and most of his arm. His head was tilted at an odd angle, so what he saw of the world came at him sideways. 'We've all been injured you know. You don't hear the rest of us bleating about it.'
'I ain't talking about injured, buddy. I'm talking about ugly. Look at me. At least you have to turn to see your profile in a mirror. I can see mine straight on.' The Cat got up and limped to the tiny washroom, to see if the mirror in there gave better results. 'Hot damn!' he said, for the tenth or eleventh time.
Lister lay quietly on the bench as Kryten gingerly bound his ribcage. Lying quietly was about the top of his action potential right now. Even thinking about the slightest movement filled him with dread, and when Kryten's ministrations accidently brought two edges of raw rib bone together, he had to fight back the impulse to wince or scream, either of which would have induced still more agony.
Rimmer stood and hobbled over to the boarded window, his left arm bent in a triangle inside the cast, so he looked as if he was permanently leaning on some invisible bar top. He peered sideways through a knot hole out on to the street's twilight. There was no movement outside. Candlelight flickered through windows over the stores opposite, occasionally silhouetting a watching form. Everybody was waiting for the showdown.
'All right.' Rimmer twisted to face Lister and Kryten. 'It's time for some serious questions to be answered. The virus has spread to the Artificial Reality unit from Kryten. It's robbed us of our special abilities, and rendered us capable of feeling' — Rimmer winced as his collar-bone sent a bolt of agony down his left side — 'pain. Which eventuality, as a matter of interest, I was assured was non-feasible.' He shot a look of pure hate at his prone shipmate.
Lister just moaned, softly.
