by Doug Naylor
Lister's neck craned round the door as she jogged up the metal staircase. 'Kochanski, you say her name is? What a little raver. Tell me everything you know about her?'
'Sir, you've just spent the last fifty years of your life with her.'
A look of total incredulity spilled on to Lister's face. 'You mean, she's my girlfriend?'
Kryten nodded.
'Un-be-smegging-lievable. But why's she dating a jerk like me? What am I, the last human being alive or something?'
Kryten busied himself with the enhancer. 'The drug shouldn't take too long now, sir. Perhaps I could run you a nice hot bath.'
Lister shook his head. 'I mean, she's a touch of cut glass, no doubt about it. Educated, posh accent. I mean, she is somebody. Whereas what you've told me about me, man, well, quite honestly, I sound like scum. What's the attraction?'
'Oh, don't be so self-deprecating, sir.' Kryten smiled. 'You have your saving graces.'
'I do? Like what?'
Kryten uttered a little scoffing laugh that scudded across the room. 'I wouldn't dream of embarrassing you.' 'Embarrass me,' said Lister emphatically.
'Well, you have a certain amiability.'
'Amiability,' said Lister, unimpressed.
'Also, you have a streak of sentimentality that some people find attractive. And sometimes between curries you've been known to be quite romantic.'
'Amiable, sentimental, romantic curry-eater,' said Lister, in a voice close to monotone. 'Cut the crap, Kryten, what's the real reason?'
'I think she likes a bit of rough, sir.'
'Fair enough,' said Lister, finally convinced. 'How about that bath?'
'I'll just get Mr Rimmer on line, sir, and then I'll run it straight away. Follow me.'
* * *
Lister followed Kryten down the steps that led from the obs deck into the mid-section.
A man in a black stretch PVC body suit with a yellow flannel under-jacket and a coat made of acrylic zebra-print fur sat at the scanner table sipping a glass of milk. His black hair was swept up in a pompadour and he had two long eye-teeth that twinkled when he smiled. 'Who the hell's this?' he said, gesturing at Lister.
'This is Lister,' said Kryten. 'The other human one.'
'Ugle-e-e-e.'
'And you are?' said Lister.
'Apparently, I'm descended from cats,' said the Cat. 'And according to jello head, here, I'm incredibly vain, self-obsessed and only interested in myself. Boy,' he said, suddenly catching sight of his reflection in a spoon, 'I'm good-looking though, aren't I?'
Lister turned and addressed Kryten. 'How long is it going to be before I get full recall?'
Kryten typed a pass-code into the wall comp. 'Within the hour, sir.' A hatch cover flipped open and the mechanoid took out an object the size of a marble.
'Mr Rimmer, sir,' said Kryten in reply to Lister's look. 'He's a hologram, sir. This is his light bee.' He placed the bee on the floor.
'Rimmer?' said Lister. 'He's my best mate, isn't he?'
Kryten's face dissolved into a look of distaste, as if he'd just sampled his first goat kebab. 'You are sick, sir. Maybe you need another boost of synaptic enhancer.' He syringed Lister a second time, and then tapped the boot-up sequence into the computer and watched as the light bee gently lifted off the floor and hovered three feet from the ground.
'Download physical form,' he said to the voice-command unit and watched as Rimmer's black-and-white image crackled into existence rippled with white noise. Six feet tall and square-shouldered he stood, with a small embossed H imprinted across his forehead under a scoop of brown hair fastened down tighter than rigging in a storm; his face was pointy, his lips thin, his nostrils so cavernous that if they'd been bound in leather and turned upside down they could have been used by a leprechaun as a drum kit.
'Access personality banks,' Kryten murmured into the VC unit. A series of bar charts appeared on the screen. 'Download characteristics. Load arrogance.' The first bar, a tall one, was slowly filled with a green liquid, as if it were being poured from a vial to the accompaniment of a mounting scale sound effect. 'Load charisma.' A second bar, a very short one, was filled with a single blip. 'Load neuroses.' The next bar, by far the longest, slowly began to fill up.
'No point waiting, sir, loading the neuroses lasts longer than Gone With the Wind. I'll run that bath.'
'Oh, that Rimmer,' said Lister as the memory enhancer suddenly hit the spot. 'Oh, God. That Rimmer.'
* * *
The five crew members of the Jupiter Mining Corporation ship-to-transport vehicle sat around the scanner scope as Kryten began to outline the situation as best he could. He began by explaining why Starbug's computer had brought them out of Deep Sleep even though they were still some way from Red Dwarf. Obeying Space Corps directive 3211 it had spotted a crashed Star Fleet ship in a nearby asteroid belt and it recommended they go in and investigate. The reasons were two-fold: to rescue any surviving crew members and, almost more importantly, to scavenge for supplies.
'So, where are we exactly?' said Lister, now fully restored to normal working order and tucking into a second breakfast of black pudding and chips. 'Have we gone through the Omni-zone yet?'
'The Omni-zone?' said the Cat.
'The point in space time where all the different realities converge,' said Kochanski. 'Hit him with another memory booster.'
As Kryten discharged a third syringe into the Cat's neck, he explained how every decision in life creates a time fork; one line of reality goes down the pathway of the decision that was taken, while the other pathway -the rejected time line - is saved and stored in the Omni-zone. The Omni-zone is home to all the rejected timelines and the entrance to all seven Universes.
'But,' the Cat insisted, 'what I'm asking is, what part of Deep Space are we in, and am I suitably dressed?'
'We successfully traversed the Omni-zone, sir, some time ago. In fact, according to my latest calculations we're only six or seven weeks away from rendezvousing with Red Dwarf.'
'So why all the heat to go into the asteroid belt?'
Kryten swivelled and addressed Lister. 'Sir, we've been away from Red Dwarf for many years now.'
Lister nodded. It was true. He and Kochanski had spent thirty-six years in Backwards World following his heart attack in his own reality. Buried there in his sixties, he'd un-died and de-aged until he'd reached his present age of twenty-five. Kochanski too had arrived in Backwards World in less than A1 shape; in fact, she had been nothing more than her own cremated ashes. Holly had performed some miracle to equalize their ages, and then reverse time had done the rest.
Kochanski continued. 'We don't know for sure that Red Dwarf will even be there, or, if it is, if the onboard supplies will be intact. So this derelict may be our last chance of stocking up with fresh supplies.'
'How long's it going to take? Two, three days?'
Kryten nodded.
'But we can't fly into an asteroid belt without deflectors,' said Rimmer. 'What about Space Corps directive 1742?'
'1742? "No member of the Corps should ever report for active duty in a ginger toupee"? Is that regulation really pertinent in this particular situation, sir?'
'1743, then'
'Oh, I see. "No registered vessel should attempt to traverse an asteroid belt without deflectors. "'
'Yes! God, you're pedantic.'
Lister shook his head. 'Rimmer, check out the supply situation. Your hologram's on battery back-up. We've only got oxygen for three months. Water, if we drink re-cyc, seven weeks. And, worst of all, we're down to our last two thousand popadoms. We can't rely on Red Dwarf. We've got to go in.'
'But you know how unstable those clusters are,' Rimmer whined. 'One direct hit on that Plexiglass view-screen and our innards will be turned inside-out quicker than a pair of your old underpants.'
'Look, man, this is maybe our last chance to stock up for months. I say we take her in.'
'For pity's sake, one breach in that hull and we're people pate.'
'There's an old Cat proverb,' said the Cat, starting to feel more like himself. "It's better to live one hour as a tiger, than a whole lifetime as a worm. "'
'There's an old human saying,' said Rimmer.' "Whoever heard of a worm-skin rug?"'
Kochanski poured herself a cup of water from the recyc dispenser. 'Perhaps this'll settle it,' she said, turning away from the bank of monitors. 'We've just logged on to the ship's ident computer.'
'And?' said Lister, getting to his feet. 'What have we got?'
She downed her cup of water and balled the paper cup into the recyc chute. 'That ship out there is Starbug.'
'Another Starbug?'
'No, this Starbug. We've just shaken hands with their mainframe and look what happened when we exchanged serial numbers.' She tapped the monitor. '"STA 7676-45-327—28V" - the exact same registration number.' Lister squinted at the figures. 'How's that possible?' She shook her head. 'It isn't.' 'Any sign of the crew?' 'Not so far.'
'That settles it. We'd better take a look.'
CHAPTER 2
The air-lock door purred open and the five figures stepped aboard the dead ship. Kochanski inhaled the heavy musk as the rash of torch beams swirled around the decom-chamber. Walking alongside Kryten she signalled with her torch and started wading through the knee-deep mix of oil and water that covered the floor.
If Kristine Kochanski's parents had still been alive, they would not have approved of the company she was presently keeping. They had not sent their eldest, most cherished and talented daughter to the finest schools money could buy so she could knock about the Universe with people like this. They had not paid for piano lessons from the age of four, or Esperanto classes from the age of six, they had not paid for jujitsu training at twelve or flying lessons and extra classes in quantum mechanics at sixteen; in fact, they had not done any of these things — which had finally contributed to her winning a place at the European Space Academy where she graduated with honours as flight coordinator first class — so that she could wind up in the far reaches of Deep Space with a bunch of degenerate half-wits and hardly any clean knickers. And her father — her poor, long-dead father — would have had more seizures than a ward of epileptics if he had ever clapped eyes on the object of her affections. The man she had spent the last half-century with, the man whose picture presently hung around her neck in a silver locket he'd given her to celebrate the anniversary of the first week they had been dating — the silver locket that always seemed to leave a purple tide-mark around her neck that was next to impossible to wash off without medicinal alcohol.
Lister waded to her side. 'Hey.'
'Hey.' She returned their ritual greeting.
'Want to show me some more of your scars?'
She looked at Lister's Grand Canyon grin. 'So, know who I am now?'
'Hey, I was still groggy and, hell, there you were, suddenly naked. It didn't seem right to ask you for your driver's licence.'
'So when did you remember?'
'Well, before it was over, let me tell you.'
'When exactly?'
'When?'
'Yes, when?'
Lister paused and looked at her seriously. 'Look, I remember who you are, Kublouski, OK? Relax, would ya?'
Kochanski kicked out with her foot and sent a torrent of water over Lister's snigger-hunched features.
Suddenly, the Cat's voice cut in. 'What's this?' His torch pointed to a matted fur island, about a foot across, floating on the water. He transferred the torch from his right hand to his left. 'What is it?' He started to pick it up. 'It's heavy.' The Cat hauled it out of the water and flipped it round to look at it. He stared into familiar brown eyes and his scream slammed around the chamber like a berserk squash ball.
It was a head. It was the head of a humanoid. The head of a humanoid who was identical to the Cat.
The head fell from his grasp and dropped back into the water with a splash.
Lister waded across to where the Cat was standing, his heart beating out a carioca on his ribs.
'You OK?'
'For a dude who's just picked his own head out of a swamp, I'm doing great,' falsettoed the Cat.
Kryten ran his psi-scan over the dismembered skull.
Kochanski waded across. 'Well?'
'It says, "Organism incomplete".'
'What a truly remarkable machine,' said Rimmer. 'And it knows all that from just seeing a dismembered head. Absolutely incredible.'
'Give it another minute, sir.' Kryten peered at the analysis machine as it birred and beeped, quietly processing all the variables.
Lister leaned in. 'Well, what does it think?'
'It thinks we should get the hell out of here in case the headless look is the fashion around here,' said the Cat.
'Here it comes now.' Kryten read the print-out. 'Head decapitated by laser. Victim possesses same DNA structure as the crew member known as the Cat. Advice: vacate ship immediately. Extreme danger.'
'Right, let's go,' said Rimmer.
'Maybe there're survivors, Mr Rimmer,' said Kochanski. 'We can't go until we've carried out a thorough search of the ship.' 'Says who?' Rimmer laughed softly.
'Says a flight coordinator in the Star Fleet, and your superior officer. Any other questions?'
There was a long pause.
'Wilful disobedience, Mr Rimmer? A full court martial if we ever make it back to Star Fleet? Is that what you want?'
Rimmer returned a reluctant salute. 'No, ma'am.'
The Cat's laugh echoed down the chamber. 'This bitch is good.'
Lister stood in front of the closed hatchway and jabbed the door-release button repeatedly with his index finger. 'No electrics.'
Kryten adjusted the medical bag under his arm. 'Suggest we go back to Starbug and return with the halogens and the mobile generator.'
Lister shrugged. 'I'm going to stick around here, take a look round the decom-chamber.'
Kochanski nodded. 'Mr Rimmer, stay with him.'
'Me?'
'Yes.'
'Why can't I come back with you guys?'
'You're a hologram. You can't help with the MG or the lamps. It's just a waste of your battery.'
Rimmer's eyelashes fluttered like a cartoon cow's. 'But I could still come back and help somehow, advise how best the lamps should be carried... what sort of grip to use... how many to...'
'Stay here.'
'You don't like me, do you? It's because I'm dead, isn't it? You living people hate us deadies.'
'Rimmer!'
'Right, OK, I'm staying. Just don't be long.'
He watched as Kryten, the Cat and Kochanski waded off back down the decom-chamber and disappeared through the outer hatchway. A hologram he might be, a computer-generated image of his former dead self he indeed was, but now he had a three-dimensional 'solido-gram' body that Kryten had ransacked from a derelict while the crew was in Deep Sleep, he intended to keep it in one piece. It was his proudest posession — his hard-light drive - and he wasn't going to risk it for anyone. For years he'd been soft light — unable to touch or interact properly because he lacked that all-important third dimension, but now, thanks to Kryten, it was different. His mind flicked back to the days following the mechanoid's discovery of the science on board the Lagos, a lost scout ship they'd come across frozen into the tundra of an arctic moon. As Kryten had pointed out, in terms of technology, the ship was generations beyond anything they'd seen before: they even had yoghurt cartons that were easy to open. After several failed attempts Rimmer's personality was successfully siphoned into a new bee-housing with a hard-light capability. It was like taking delivery of his first car all over again. The joy, the glory, the unbridled ecstasy. While the others returned to Deep Sleep, Rimmer strutted around Starbug like a male model from a mail-order cardigan catalogue. For weeks no mirror was safe, and no sunbed could be passed without topping up his quiz-show-host tan, but gradually the novelty wore off, and after a while he found it difficult to remember what being 2D was like. Dead he
still was, but now - in some respects at least - he was whole again.
Death had had a profound effect on Rimmer. In some ways he felt he was better for it. At first he'd been angry. No, more than angry, he'd been apoplectic with rage. A rage that roared through his being, like an out of control forest fire.
It wasn't fair. How could he have died? He'd never really lived. He knew goldfish who'd led more interesting lives. He'd met washing machines who'd had better sex lives. Then, next thing he knew, it was over. He was a hologram; a light-generated ghost, his personality stored on disc and revived by the ship computer to help keep Lister sane.
What had happened in his life? A miserable childhood was followed by a boring, sulky adolescence, which was then overtaken by his attempts to become an officer in the Space Corps. He'd spent eleven years of his adult life trying to achieve that goal; desperately trying to mimic his three brothers, who had each passed successfully through the ranks of the academy and had gone on to command their own vessels in the Star Fleet.
Frank, John and Howard. The blue-eyed boys. Bronzed and tall, with golden hair and coruscating smiles.
Rimmer had longed to be like them, had longed to be one of them, but that was something else that wasn't fair. Academically his brothers had never been more than average, but his parents, like many well-to-do families living on Io, had paid for them to have an Encyclo implant chip installed in their long-term memories. Suddenly a whole vista of knowledge was there just waiting to be accessed. What are molecular genetics? Ping! The answer would spring fully formed into the owner's mind.
When Rimmer was eighteen, when it was his turn to have his Encyclo implant chip, his father's business had gone bust. For him there was no short cut to the top. He was forced to enlist with the Space Corps as a menial technician, to work his way up the ranks to officerhood. If an officer he was ever to be.
And so countless evenings were spent grappling with the pages of mind-knotting incomprehensica that made up the engineering exam. And on no less than eleven occasions he had received that heart-scorching pink slip that informed him of his failure.
