by Doug Naylor
Two nails went pinging off in different directions across the Persian flat-weave carpet. 'How in God's sweet name am I ever going to recover from this? When a president kills a solar system, Bob, that's something the electorate doesn't forget in a hurry. The bastards hold that against you for your entire career. Not even my great-great-great-great-great-great-uncle got himself in this deep. What the hell am I going to do?'
'Follow me, sir.'
'Where are we going?'
'Hilo, sir, in Hawaii.'
'Hawaii?'
'If you recollect, sir, we have a bio-tech institute there. They've been doing some pretty exciting things just lately.'
* * *
Nixon shook hands with the series of scientists whose names he instantly committed to oblivion, then made his way along the aisle of the viewing theatre and sat down in one of the luxuriously upholstered leather seats.
McGruder, Sabinsky's wheat-haired bodyguard, clicked off the lights and a film started to play on the projector screen. At first it was a series of molecular profiles of some new type of virus that Sabinsky seemed inordinately excited about. Some virus that one of Sabinsky's bio-designers had created here at the institute. Most of the details eluded the president and his mind had started to wander when phrases such as 'plasmids', 'Avogadro's law' and 'nuclear magnetic resonance' started to reoccur regularly.
'Bob, start again and make it simple — remember, it's the president you're talking to.'
'Sorry, sir. Let me come at it from a new angle.'
'And no charts or graphs or those spirally-bally things on sticks - what are they called?' Sabinsky failed to capture an inner rebuke, which escaped on to his face.
'Let's review. We've killed the sun. In four hundred thousand years, maybe sooner, the lights go out. Unless we can find a cure to repair all those hydrogen molecules, the solar system will effectively be dead. So what do we do?' He paused for effect. 'As far as I can see, there is only one solution, and that is for the human race to call in the removal men and start packing the crockery.'
'Are you seriously suggesting we should move?'
'Not our generation, or even the generation after that, but moving has definitely got to be on the human race's agenda.'
'To another solar system?'
'I think we may have to move to a new galaxy.'
'A new galaxy?'
'Sir, whenever you move home you accrue a huge number of stress points. That's unavoidable. However, I think we can make this move as painless and as anxiety-free as possible. Just hear me out.'
A new slide appeared on the screen.
'I believe I've found a new solar system, in a new galaxy, that is absolutely perfect. Somewhere you'll be proud to invite the human race to stay. Take a look at this.'
A series of fuzzy slides were projected, one after the other, all involving a sprinkling of stars with a blurry blue spiral in the centre. 'Mr President, meet our new home. It's called the Andromeda galaxy.' There was a smattering of applause from the tweed of scientists.
Nixon peered at the screen. 'Where the hell is this?'
'Not far at all. In fact, in terms of galaxies, it's practically just around the corner.'
'How far?'
'Just 2. 2 million light years. Also, there are other benefits.'
'Like?'
'Well, for a start it's bigger than the Milky Way, being 130,000 light years across, giving us an extra 30,000 light years to play with.' A snort of laughter - trumpeted out of his nose. 'And if we have guests, that extra room might be real handy.' He ringed a small area, off to the right. 'I think this could well turn out to be our new solar system right here.'
The President peered at a smudgy blur. 'So does this solar system include a planet with a breathable atmosphere, with trees and lakes and sunsets and everything?
And has the atmosphere got all the required spirally-bally things on sticks?'
'No, sir. This particular planet, in fact, is awash with molten lava and volcanic ash, and its temperature is about 300° Centigrade, but that's why it's such a find.'
He was mad. It was quite clear to Nixon now: his senior scientific adviser was madder than one of those New York bag ladies who pull around stuffed dogs on leads.
'Which brings us back to the virus we were talking about earlier.'
'The virus that you created here?'
'Precisely.'
The door opened and three men wearing identical brown suits entered the viewing theatre. 'Mr President, meet the gentlemen who are responsible for a very remarkable discovery in the field of viral research.'
The president extended his hand as Sabinsky introduced them one by one.
'Professor Michael Longman.'
A man with watery brown eyes and a small black beard stepped forward and shook the president by the hand.
'Good to meet you, Professor.'
The second man stepped forward. He also had watery brown eyes and a small black beard.
'Professor Michael Longman's assistant; Professor Michael Longman.'
Nixon nodded. 'Good to meet you, Professor.'
'And thirdly, and by no means first, Professor Michael Longman's other assistant, Professor Michael Longman.'
A third man with watery brown eyes and a small beard stepped forward and shook Nixon by the hand.
'Good to meet you too, Professor.'
The first Longman spoke. 'Without my two clones working alongside me, I don't believe this breakthrough would have been possible in my lifetime.'
The other two Longmans nodded vigorously in agreement.
Sabinsky gestured for them to be seated, the lights dimmed and a film started to play of Kilauea, one of Hawaii's two active volcanoes. Sabinsky started to explain that the volcanoes had been a source of great consternation to everyone on the island. Over the last ten years their eruptions had become more frequent and their massive lava flows had got longer and longer, some extending as far as 120 miles from the summit all the way down to the edge of some of the villages. The footage, shot from a helicopter, suddenly cut to Kilauea's gigantic crater with its massive molten lava lakes.
'The three Professor Longmans have created a virus which is quite remarkable. Basically, it eats lava,' Sabinsky began. 'Or, rather more accurately, it corrupts its cell structure. Naturally we wanted to find out if this virus actually worked outside of the lab. So we injected the virus into a strain of self-replicating bacteria; then we sealed off the area and sent some crop-spraying planes over Kilauea. Obviously this act was completely illegal, and, uh, maybe even a little irresponsible, but, uh, we thought it was an illegal, irresponsible act worth taking. Take a look at this.'
Nixon watched as a fleet of bi-planes swooped over Kilauea and dropped huge rain sheets of the virus into the volcano's crater.
Sabinsky pointed to the screen. 'Five and a half weeks later.'
The President stared, slack-jawed, at the screen as the film cut to new footage of the crater. Its lava lakes had gone, so had the eruptions and lava fountains. Instead all that remained was a dark, thick toxic sludge, like burnt treacle. Heavy black smoke spiralled off its surface.
'The virus eats the lava and reduces it to this kind of mulch, which, as you see, is pretty unpleasant stuff. But if we now introduce a second strain of genetically engineered viral bacteria, a strain which is programmed to eat the mulch — this happens.'
The film cut to new footage, again taken from a helicopter. The camera swooped up the side of the giant volcano. As it reached the top of the crater, the whole screen was suddenly awash with a mustard yellow.
The crater was a desert basin. Dunes of fine soft sand rippled and undulated across its entire breadth. It was almost unrecognizable as Kilauea. Only the shape of the basin itself distinguished it as the same location.
'The second virus turns the mulch into desert, and also secretes a mix of oxygen and nitrogen as a byproduct. We also have a third virus which can turn the mulch into ocean. These viruses, working in harmony, can ter
raform planets for us.'
There was almost complete silence as the implications of the discovery percolated into the president's brain.
Nixon started to applaud. 'You sons of bitches, you clever sons of bitches!' He turned to the Longmans. 'How long before the new world is inhabitable?'
'After the planet has been terraformed...'
'The world will still be wild and inhospitable . . .'
'We will need creatures of great strength, resourcefulness and durability to build our new civilization.'
'We will need to create life forms — creatures who will make our new home for us, whose lives are expendable and who will be able to brave the forces of the New World.'
'And that's all possible?'
Sabinsky started to stammer. 'Wuh-wuh-we've already made quite, some progress in that direction, actually, sir. Wuh-wuh-we didn't want to trouble you with the details until all the relevant...' He faded himself out.
Nixon eyed him narrowly. 'You mean, you've already created some new life forms?'
The three biodesigners stood in line, shame-faced. 'Nothing that we're really proud of...' they said, remembering the Snugiraffe.
'Permission to speak, sir?' McGruder, Sabinsky's bodyguard, stood to an over-starched attention, his broad shoulder snapped into an enthusiastic salute.
'Permission granted.'
'I wish to volunteer, sir, to travel with the genetically engineered pioneers, sir. To sacrifice my life, if that is required, sir, to help save the human race, sir.'
The Longmans smiled benignly. 'The crew will certainly need human supervisors.'
'Permission to speak again, sir?'
'Permission granted.'
'Graduated West Point, sir. Top of my year, sir. Fought on Hyperion, sir. Decorated, sir. Single, sir.'
Nixon spoke. 'Why so keen?'
'My mother, sir, told me many great stories of my father's feats of daring in the wastes of Deep Space, sir. They were never married, sir. He died before my mother was able to inform him she was pregnant. His ship, sir, Red Dwarf, sir, was lost to a radiation leak.'
Sabinsky nodded. 'Didn't the ship's black box touch down in the Pacific a couple of years back?'
'Confirmed everything my mother told me, sir. Details are sketchy, but it appears that out of the entire crew, my father was chosen by the on-board computer, sir, to be revived as a hologram. We believe he received that honour because he was such an awesome soldier, sir, and the computer deemed him the only crew member capable of steering the ship to a safe part of Deep Space and averting a major disaster.'
Nixon nodded. 'What was his name, son?'
'His name was Rimmer, sir.' McGruder beamed proudly. 'Arnold J. Rimmer, sir.'
'And a part of you believes he's still out there somewhere?'
'Yes, sir, I do, sir. But that won't interfere with my mission, sir.'
Nixon grinned. 'Although, if he is out there, you'd sure as hell love a chance to meet him.'
'You bet, sir, he's been an icon of mine since I was three years old, sir. If I hadn't had him as my role model I don't believe I would have amounted to anything, sir.'
The President's face cracked into a smile. 'Start preparing McGruder. You're on that ship.'
Michael R. McGruder cracked his arm into a perfect salute. 'Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. God bless you, sir. ' He gazed through the window of the viewing theatre up into the sky. He'd always believed that somewhere out there was his old man. Old Iron-balls himself. The guy he'd looked up to his whole life. If only he were still around, and somehow they could meet.
What a day that would be.
CHAPTER 2
A dolorous rain sprinkled its melancholia over the strip of low-life peon which stretched into an infinity of billboards, movie houses and restaurants, as his shambling frame picked its way through the crowds. For the fifth time in as many minutes a speeding vehicle sluiced through a puddle of stinking rainwater and soaked him from the top of his sunburnt head to the bottom of his ill-fitting shoes. The hyena screeches of laughing passers-by spiralled into the night as he dripped past them, navigating his way through the minefield of garbage.
Cyberhell reminded Lister of 12th Street on Triton, with its ravaged sea of mournful faces and its choking air; it was like living inside the mouth of a senile dog after it had smoked a pack of Turkish cigarettes.
His mind went back twenty-nine weeks, to the night of the campfire in the desert, when his other self had burnt off his bonds and laid him out with a piece of desert rock. He'd come round to discover he was being buried alive as Starbug landed in a neighbouring dune basin. His other self had thrown a last spadeful of dirt over his struggling frame and run to the peak of the dune, twirling a jacket over his head. The craft touched down, took his other self on board and was gone in a belch of dust. For three hours he shivered under a blanket of sand until a buggy full of Cyberguards drove past later that morning.
He explained the situation. He was not Lister the inmate, he was from an alternative reality. He hadn't done anything wrong if you didn't count ringleading the break-out and helping half the inmates to escape from the penal colony, semi-destroying the complex and single-handedly setting out to destroy the system of justice that controlled the entire asteroid belt. If you didn't count any of that they had nothing on him. Sadly for Lister, they did count that. All of it. They shipped him to Arranguu 12 for trial, where he defended himself, and several weeks later, due to the incompetence of his legal team, he was sentenced to eighteen years hard thought in Cyberia, which, unhappily for him, they'd finished rebuilding.
So Lister had returned to Cyberia - this time on a dilapidated class three transport ship as a prisoner of the Gelf State.
He began to serve his sentence plagued by the thought that his other self had replaced him on board Starbug, knowing they were heading for the Omni-zone so they could return to their own Universe. In all likelihood he'd never see any of them again. His other self had stolen his girlfriend, his crew and his life.
He'd settled into hell as best he could, he'd cleaned and tidied his apartment, re-tailored his clothes and gone looking for work. But everything about this whole landscape was designed to sap his spirits, everything he saw, everything he smelt, everything he heard. On every block there seemed to be a Kochanski lookalike wrapped around some beefy sailor type. Billboards all over the city had pictures of him with taunting slogans, usually about how he had been abandoned as a newborn child and didn't know who his parents were or that he was the last human male of his Universe. And here he was incarcerated in Cyberia, watching the prime years of his life dribble away.
On the last day of the third week he'd got a job. It was a part-time evening job at a dentist's. The hours were lousy but at least it paid OK. He had to work from six until ten having his fillings replaced by student dentists who-needed someone to practise on. It paid ten dollar-pounds a day, which was enough to buy a cup of sprout soup and the price of a ticket to one of the movie houses, which were usually playing Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang. That killed time until his neighbours went to bed and turned off their drum solo music.
He trudged past the usual group of deadbeats who seemed to be on every street corner: hookers, pimps, drug dealers and, for some reason, here in his Cyberhell, encyclopedia salesmen. Why his imagination had chosen encyclopedia salesmen he wasn't quite sure, but they sure as hell were irritating — chasing him down the street waving introductory super-special offers and insisting that he signed now rather than going away and thinking about it.
He paused to peer into a TV shop, half watching a Czechoslovakian documentary about fifteenth-century cloud formations when he was suddenly plucked out of Cyberhell. The needles were removed from his skull, the cyberfoam washed off his body and he was dressed and strapped to a trolley which was wheeled to the commandant's office.
Lister lay strapped to the operating trolley. The Snugiraffe loomed over him, leaking its unspeakable juices. 'There's someone here to see you.'
List
er tried to sit upright, straining against the restraint straps.
A Dolochimp leaned over him too. Heavy-set, and glistening with the sweat of the overweight. 'I am Kazwa. I work for the Reco Programme.'
'No kidding.'
'You have been in Cyberhell now for five months. Your sentence is eighteen years. Eighteen years of the same kind of life-demeaning futility and anguish.'
'Yeah, but I'm up before the parole board in just twelve.'
'Are you familiar with the Reco Programme?'
'Aren't they a rock band? Big with teenage girls?.'
'Reco Programme. Recombinant DNA.'
Lister slouched his 'You got me' look.
'The same technique that created all the creatures of the belt,' the Snugiraffe interjected. 'Splicing gene cocktails into the host cell of a different species, then allowing them to replicate to create wholly original organisms.'
'What about it?'
'As you may know, this galaxy is being Hoovered clean by the Omni-zone. Stars, planets, asteroids - everything is destined to be devoured by the spiralling ring of black holes that surround its entrance. Only objects of great mass can survive the crossing.'
'And that's why you've quit your diet, right?'
The Dolochimp punched him hard on the top of the head. 'Like planets.'
'Oh, I see.'
'If we are to survive we need to terraform one of the planets, here in this galaxy, before they're all lost to the ring. Use it as a kind of ship to make the crossing to the other dimensions.'
Lister scratched his stubble. 'The planet may survive, but the guys on it are still going to wind up as ravioli.'
'Not if they're underground. If they're in the bowels of the planet when it passes through the ring we believe they will survive.'
Lister's head angled in semi-agreement. 'Maybe. But first you've got to find an inhabitable planet.'
'Or create one.'
'Which is what the Reco Programme is all about, right?'
'In years past we have pardoned Cyberian inmates if they agreed to donate their bodies for reco surgery and become part of the primordial soup of the new planet. A kind of protoplasmic broth from which all things evolve - the ecosystem, animal and marine life: everything.'
