by Grant Naylor
They sat there in silence. One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes. Bitter, accusing silence. They were both masters at using silence, and right now they were using it in a bitter, accusing way. After twenty minutes of stonewalling, Rimmer could take no more.
'Look ...' he began, 'I want to apologise for ...' Rimmer faltered, uncertain as to precisely what he was supposed to apologise for. 'I want to apologise for everything.'
'Ohhhhh, shut up,' his double said dismissively.
Rimmer's eyes shrank, weasel-small. 'You don't like me, do you? Even though I'm you, you don't actually like me. Even though we're the same person, you actively dislike me.'
His double turned from the window. 'We're not the same person.
'But we are. You're a copy of me.'
The double shook his head. 'I'm a recording of what you were, what you used to be. The man you used to be before the accident. You've changed. Lister's changed you.'
Lister? Changed him? Preposterous.
'I haven't changed. In what way have I changed?'
'Well, for a start, you've just apologised.'
What was it his father used to say? 'Never apologise never explain.'
'I'm sorry,' Rimmer apologised again; 'it's just - I want us to get on.'
'Oh, don't be pathetic.'
Rimmer closed his eyes and leaned back on his chair. Was it just him? Was it some dreadful flaw in his personality that prevented him from having a successful relationship even with his own self? Or would it be the same for most people? Would most people find their own selves irritating and tiresomely predictable? When he saw his face in the mirror in the morning, that was the face he carried around in his head: he never saw his profile; he never saw the back of his own head; he didn't see what other people saw. It was the same with his personality. He carried around an idealised picture of himself; he was the smart, sensitive person who did this good thing, or that good thing. He buried the bad bits. He covered up and ignored the flaws. All his faults were forgiven and forgotten.
But now he was faced with them; all his shortcomings, personified in his other self.
Rimmer had never been aware how awesomely petty he was. How alarmingly immature.
How selfish. How he could, on occasion, be incomprehensibly stupid. How sad he was; how screwed-up and lonely.
And he was seeing this for the first time. It was like the first time he'd heard his own voice on an answering machine. He expected to hear dulcet tones, clear, articulate and accentless, and was embarrassed and nauseated to discover only incoherent mumblings in some broad Ionian accent. In his head he sounded like a newsreader; in reality, he sounded nasal and dull and constantly depressed. And meeting himself was the same, only worse, raised to the power 1000.
And there were other things. He was at least thirty per cent worse-looking than he thought. He stooped. His right leg constantly jiggled, as if he wanted to be somewhere else. He snored! Not the loud buzz-saw hunnnk-hnnnunk of Lister; his own snore was, if anything, more irritating - a high pitched whiny trill, like a large parrot being strangled in a bucket of soapy water. It was a terrible thing to admit, but he was reaching the devastating, inescapable conclusion that he, as a companion, was the very last person he wanted to spend any time with.
Was this the same for everybody? Or was it just him? He didn't know.
So lost was he in this train of thought that he was only vaguely aware of Lister coming into the room and announcing that Nova 5 could only sustain one hologram, and so one of the Rimmers would have to be switched off. Who was it going to be? he was asking.
'Who what?' asked Rimmer.
'Who's going to come on Nova 5, and who's going to be turned off?'
'Well, obviously I'm coming,' said Rimmer.
'Why "obviously"?' said his double.
'Because I'm the original. I was here first.'
'So what? We should toss for it.'
'Nooo,' said Rimmer through a disparaging laugh. 'Why should I want to toss for it? I might lose.'
Lister took out a coin. 'Heads or tails?'
'What?' said Rimmer.
'Fair's fair. You call.'
'You expect me to call heads or tails as to whether or not I get erased?'
Rimmer's features fled to the perimeter of his face. 'No way. I stay.'
'You're the same person. It's only fair. Call.' Lister flipped the coin, caught it, and covered it with his hand.
'I'm not calling.'
'I'll call,' said the double.
'I'll call,' Rimmer said firmly. 'Heads ... no, tails. Tails, I mean. NO, wait, heads, heads.'
'It's tails,' said Lister. 'You get erased.'
'I haven't finished deciding yet. I think I was going to choose tails. Yes, I was. "Tails," in fact.'
'Too late,' said the double. 'Erase him.'
'But I was here first,' protested Rimmer. 'In a way, I created you.'
'What difference does it make? You're identical,' Lister said; 'you're the same person.'
'But we're not,' Rimmer whined balefully. 'Not any more, we're not.'
THIRTY-TWO
It was four in the morning and Rimmer sat on the bunk, his long arms wrapped around his spindly knees, his brain fighting off sleep. It was ironic, he thought, that he'd just about come to terms with having died, and now here he was, about to be erased forever.
On the toss of a coin.
But that was life, he thought. Life was the toss of a coin. You're born rich; you're born poor. You're born smart; you're born stupid. You're born handsome; you're born with a face like a post office clerk.
Heads you are, tails you aren't.
Rimmer felt that most of his life had come up 'tails'. Relationships with women: tails. Career success: tails. Friendships: tails. His life, best out of three: tails, tails and tails.
He'd never been in love, and now he never would be. He'd never been an officer, and now he never would be. He'd never be anything, because he was about to be erased.
All right, there still would be an Arnold Rimmer, but it wasn't him, it was his so-called double. But he wasn't a double - they were different.
He allowed himself an ironic snicker. He couldn't even succeed at being Arnold Rimmer - there were two of them and he'd come second. Unbelievable.
Unbe-smegging-lievable.
What had he learned from his life? What? Except 'keep your face out of the way of atomic explosions'? Nothing.
He'd learned nothing. What had he achieved? Again, nothing. His life was a goalless draw.
In his entire life, thirty-one years alive and one year dead, he'd made love with a real live woman once. One time only. Uno. Ein. Une. Once. One raised to the power of one. What Plarick's Constant can never be more than. Pi divided by itself.
We are talking one here, me old buckeroo, he thought. Once.
Yvonne McGruder. A single, brief liaison with the ship's female boxing champion. 16th March, 19.31 hours to 19.43 hours.
Twelve minutes.
And that included the time it took to eat the pizza.
In his whole life he'd spent more time vomiting than he ever spent making love.
Was that right? Was that fair? That a man should spend more time with his head down a lavatory than buried in the buttocks of the woman he loved?
He'd always deluded himself that the problem was he hadn't met the right girl yet. Now, given that the human race probably no longer existed, coupled with the fact that he had passed on, even he had to admit there was more than a possibility he was leaving it a little bit on the late side.
He'd never had a break. Never. And so much of life was luck.
Luck.
If Napoleon had been born Welsh, would his destiny have been the same? If he'd been raised in Colwyn Bay, would he have been a great general? Of course he wouldn't. He'd have married a sheep and worked in the local fish and chips shop.
But no - he'd had the luck to be born in Corsica, just at the right moment in history when the French were looking for a
short, brilliant Fascist dictator.
Luck.
Van Gogh. Wasn't it sheer good fortune that Van Gogh was born raving mad? Wasn't that why his cornfields looked like they did? Wasn't that why he did several hundred paintings of his old boots? Wasn't that why his paintings were so innovative? Because he had the happy chance to be born with a leak in the think tank?
Luck!
And what about John Merrick? The jammy bastard - born looking like an elephant.
How can you fail? You just stand around while people goggle at you, and you rake it in.
He was too normal, that was his problem. Too ordinary, and normal, and healthy and bland. A bit of madness, a spot of deafness, the looks of an elephant, a birthplace like Corsica, and he could have been somebody. He could have been the deaf, mad, elephant Frenchman for a start.
He stood up and paced around the room. His body wanted to sleep, but his mind wanted to rant. This was torture. It was Death Row. It was Hell. If it was going to happen, he wanted to get it over with. He couldn't tolerate the agony of a day knowing everything he did he would be doing for the last time.
Forget tomorrow, he wanted to be erased now.
'Forget tomorrow,' he said, 'I want to be erased now.'
'It's half past four in the morning,' croaked Lister, scraping the fuzz off his tongue with his top teeth.
Rimmer's duplicate sprang, out of his bunk. 'Great! Let's get it over with.'
'What d'you think you're doing?' Lister asked.
'I'm coming to watch.'
Lister shook his head. 'It's not a freak show.'
The double forced air through his teeth disappointedly. 'There's precious little entertainment on this ship. If you can't attend the odd execution, what've you got left?'
Lister started to get dressed. 'I'll see you in the disc library in ten minutes.'
Rimmer nodded and left.
***
When Rimmer arrived Lister was already there, sitting in front of the generating console clutching a mug of steaming black coffee and a jam doughnut brushed with sugar.
Great, thought Rimmer. Come to my execution. Light refreshments available.
'Fancy a drink?' said Lister, sipping at his rum-laced coffee.
Rimmer grunted in the negative. He was wearing his best blue First Technician boiler suit, with a row of worn-looking medals dangling over the spanner pocket.
'I didn't know you had any medals. What are they?'
Rimmer pointed to the first medal with his forefinger: 'Three years' long service.' He tapped the second: 'Six years' long service.' He touched the third: 'Nine years' long service, and ...' he hesitated, his finger over the final medal, as if remembering, 'and ... uh ... twelve years' long service.'
Lister didn't smile.
'Come on - one drink.'
Rimmer capitulated. 'I'll have a whisky.'
Holly simulated a large shot of Glen Fujiyama, and Rimmer took it in one belt.
'Another?'
Rimmer nodded, unable to speak, feeling as if the lining of his larynx had been stripped like wallpaper.
A second malt arrived in a hologramatic glass. He tipped it into his mouth.
Rimmer was totally unused to drink. His face glowed brightly. His hair seemed to uncoil and hang onto his face. He swept it back with both his hands, and sighed a long, world-weary sigh. A sigh that had been inside him, trying to get out, for thirty-one years.
'Gaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.'
He unfurled himself into a spare monitor seat andjiggled his right leg impatiently. 'Come on - let's go! Let's do it! Come on - turn me off. Let's do it! Erase me. Wipe me clean. Let's go.'
Lister finished his doughnut and dusted the sugar off his hands. 'So what's this big thing about gazpacho soup?' he said, casually taking a throatful of coffee.
'How do you know about gazpacho soup?'
'I heard the end of the argument. And you've been yelling about it in your sleep ever since I joined up. I just wondered what it was.'
'Aahh! Wouldn't you like to know?'
'Yeah. I would like to know.'
'I bet you would, Listy. I bet you would.'
'Are you going to tell me?'
Rimmer wagged his finger. 'Secret.'
'Go on - tell me.'
'I can't. It's too terrible.' Rimmer clasped his hands and rested them between his splayed knees, his back hunched, his eyes fixed on the rubber-matting floor.
He shook his head.
'I can't tell you. I'd like to tell you but I can't.'
'Why?'
Rimmer's eyebrows plaited. 'You're right. What's the difference? What does it matter now? Now I'm going to be erased? You want to know about gazpacho soup?
I'll tell you.' He flung his head back and closed his eyes, and started to tell Lister about the greatest night of his life.
THIRTY-THREE
'It was the greatest night of my life,' he began. 'Every Friday evening the Captain held a formal dinner in her private dining room, in her quarters. just a few of the top officers and their partners, and one, maybe two, of the boys and girls to watch. The young Turks. The up-and-comers. The people who were happening. I'd only been with the company five months and the invitation hit the mat. I knew what it was before I opened it.
`The Captain requests the pleasure of the company of Mr A. J. Rimmer and guest. 8.30 for 9.00. Black tie, evening dress. RSVP.”
'We were in orbit round Ganymede; it was a long-term dock for repairs. I didn't know what to do - I didn't have a partner, and I didn't know any women well enough to ask them. So, on the Friday morning, I caught the shuttle, found the best escort agency on Ganymede, and hired...'Rimmer's eyes milked over 'She was gorgeous. Nothing I can say now can begin to indicate how truly dynamite this girl was. She made Marilyn Monroe look like a hippo. She was at the university, doing a Ph.D. in stellar engineering, and did the escort thing for extra money. She had four degrees. One of the degrees was in something I couldn't even pronounce, that's how smart she was. I paid the agency fee, which was a lot. I mean, a lot lot. And then I tipped her double to pretend we were dating on a regular basis, and to act as if she was crazy about me. Only in public,' Rimmer waved his hand, as if to ward off evil thoughts, 'there was no funny business.
Oh, how I longed for the funny business! But that wasn't the deal. It was all above board.
'We went shopping, and I bought her a dress. Not just a dress.
'A drrrrrrrrrrresssssssssssssss.
'It probably cost about, the same as the entire NASA budget for the twenty-first century. I had to write extra small to fit all of the numbers into the box on my chequebook. Then,' he made a trilling sound with his tongue, 'then we went out and picked a tuxedo for me.
'She went home to get changed, and we arranged to meet at the shuttle port at six.
'Seven o'clock, she still hasn't shown up. I phone the escort agency, which in the meantime has turned into a Chinese restaurant. I try the university. What do you know? There is no university on Ganymede. I've been had. I've been taken. I've blown three months' salary and I haven't even got a date. I can't believe it. I catch the seven-thirty shuttle back to Red Dwarf. I ask all five air hostesses, but they say they're all on duty and can't come. So there's nothing for it: I have to go on my own. I'm humiliated before I walk in the door.
'So, I turn up at the Captain's quarters completely by myself. Everyone else has got partners. The table is all set with place cards. I have to spend the whole evening sitting opposite an empty chair. They ask me where my date is, and I panic and tell them she was killed in a road accident earlier in the evening, but I'm over it now.
'We sit down, and dinner begins. I'm feeling like I've got off to a really bad start, so I'm trying desperately to be charming as smeg, but no one's warming to me. Then I remember the joke. Ledbetter had told me this joke about a bear trapper in Alaska. It was funny, it was clean; it was perfect for the dinner party. Originally I was going to save it for the mints and coffee, b
ut by this time I'm feeling I might not even make it to the mints and coffee; the empty chair's staring back at me, and the rest of the guests are convinced my girlfriend's lying in some morgue somewhere while I go out to a dinner party. So I decide now is the time to tell the joke. And I'm telling the joke, and it's a long joke, and I'm suddenly aware no one's talking and everybody's watching me telling the joke, and I'm very self-conscious all of a sudden, and I can feel my ears - I'm suddenly really aware of my ears - and the back of my neck's starting to prickle. Suddenly, for no reason at all, I forget the end. I forget the punch line. I forget how it finishes. I just stop talking, and everyone's still looking at me. I have to say: "I'm very sorry, but that's as much as I remember." There's this pause. Horrible pause. Horrible. Horrible. And I can see the Captain's boyfriend looking at me with pity in his eyes, because he thinks Im half-crazy with grief. And everyone starts talking. But not to me. Then the stewards wheel in the first course.
'It's soup.
'Gazpacho soup.
'While they're serving, I'm studying the cutlery. I'd bought this etiquette book, and I know two things. One: never wear diamonds before lunch, and two: with cutlery, start from the outside and work your way in. I start from the outside.
I start so far from the outside, I inadvertently take the spoon of the woman sitting next to me. Eventually we sort it out, and start to eat.
'My soup is cold. I mean, stone cold. I look up. Everyone else's appears to be fine. Here's my chance to make a mark. I call over the steward and very discreetly tell him my soup is cold. He looks at me like I'm something he's just scraped off his shoe. He takes the soup away and brings it back hot. Everyone starts laughing. I start laughing too. And the more I laugh, the more they laugh.'
He stopped, and turned his closed eyes to the ceiling. He smiled through clenched teeth and then, as if every word were punctuated by the pulling of a dagger from his heart, inch by agonizing inch, he said: 'I ... didn't ... know ... gazpacho ... soup ... was meant ... to ... be ... served ... cold.'
His head slumped forward again, and he carried on.
