by Rob Grant
Kryten pipped in unwelcomely. 'In actual fact, sir, according to the commander, the differences between you come down to a single incident in your childhood.'
'Right. He probably got to go to some really great school, while I was lumbered with Io House. He got to meet all the right people, greased his way up the old-boy network, towel-flicked his way into the Space Corps, masonic handshook his way into Flight School and brown-tongued his way up the ranks.'
Lister propped the first strut that would form the frame for the new false hull into position. 'You're such a sheet stain, Rimmer. You'd think you'd be pleased that somewhere, in some other dimension, there's another you who's doing really well for himself.'
'How would you feel if some nose-wipe turned up from another reality — another Lister with wall-to-wall charisma and a PhD in being deeply handsome and wonderful?'
'Hey, man,' Lister grinned. 'I am that Lister.'
'I mean it. What would you do if there was another Lister who had everything you wanted?'
'There is.' Lister fired up the torch. 'Ace was telling me about him on the way upstairs. He's a flight engineer at Europa. Married to Kristine Kochanski. Twin sons, Jim and Bexley.'
'And it doesn't make you feel just a teeny-weeny bit jealous? He's got all that because of one single decision way back when, where he made the right choice and you made the wrong one?'
Lister shook his head. 'I'm made up for him. Fantastic.' He started welding the strut into place.
'Well, I tell you, if you met him, you'd just feel bitter. I always said I've never had the breaks. He's living proof I was right. Look what I could have achieved if I'd got the break he got.'
Lister sighed, switched off the torch and pulled up his mask. 'Can I make a suggestion, Rimmer?' he smiled pleasantly. 'Can you shut the smeg up?' He re-ignited the torch and turned back to his work.
Rimmer kept his eyes on the nauseating little pipsqueak, nodding to buy time while his mind raced for a witty riposte to put the brattish trouser lizard in his place, once and for all. As usual, his mind ran out of breath, and he began to look like a plastic dog in the back window of a car on a road lined with sleeping policemen. He turned on his heels and headed up the stairs.
No respect, that was the problem. You'd have thought, after all they'd been through, that Lister and the others might have learned to respect him, just a little, but no. To them, he was just a joke. A target for mean-spirited put-downs. Yet the good commander breezed in, and within seventeen seconds he had them all eating out of his underpants. Sickening.
Rimmer carried on up the stairs to the ops room, half hoping that the commander might have botched the operation on the Cat's leg, which would diminish his esteem somewhat.
Ace was studying the Cat's scan, his face cinematographed by the blue-white glow of the screen. Even Rimmer had to concede that he was handsome. It didn't make sense. Why didn't he suffer from the hair problems that beset Rimmer's own unruly, wiry thatch? Did he iron it, or something girlie like that? And why were his nostrils not flared in the same way? Could it be that he hadn't met Duncan Potson in Junior A, who'd taught Rimmer how to pick his nose with his thumb? Had their destinies diverged before then?
Ace saw Rimmer out of the corner of his eye, and smiled convivially. 'Arn! Just the chap! How goes it down below?'
Rimmer shrugged. 'It goes.'
Ace tapped the screen. 'Not too sure about our friend's anatomy. Looks like he's not quite human.'
'No. He evolved from cats.'
'Not with you, old mucker. When did he evolve?'
Rimmer rolled his eyes, as if the evolution of a domestic cat into a talking biped was such a commonplace occurrence that even the dullest schoolchild needn't have it explained. He sighed, and recapped the Cat's history as succinctly as he could.
When he'd finished, Rimmer saw to his delight that Ace looked more than a little disturbed. 'So what you're saying, old begonia, is that I've managed to show up around three million years from my own time?'
Rimmer smiled. 'Yes, my old toilet-roll cover. That's precisely what I'm saying.'
'Well,' Ace tugged a cheroot from behind his ear and chewed on it thoughtfully, 'that raises some pretty interesting implications for the Wildfire drive.'
'Such as, my old sick bucket?'
'Such as, if we get half a chance, we might be able to rig up a version that could get you all back to where you started from.'
ELEVEN
M'Aiden Ty-One was feeling decidedly groggy.
He sat on the metal slab in his sparsely equipped preparation chamber and shook his head violently, to try and clear the fuggy smog that was clogging his mind.
This wouldn't do. This wouldn't do at all. He had to pull himself together, before... what was it he had to get ready for? Some event. Some occasion.
Damn! His memory was going.
Now, why would that be? Had he been overdoing the scramble cards? If this was some kind of scatter-head hangover, it was a truly ferocious one.
He fought the urge to lie back on the slab. This was no time to be sleeping. He had to get ready... to get ready for...
The chamber's door slid open — why had he not locked it? — and a hazy figure hobbled in.
The room seemed uncommonly gloomy to M'Aiden. 'Lights!' he called.
'The lights are on, my friend.'
M'Aiden looked in the direction of the voice, but could only make out a blurred outline. He couldn't let this intruder know of his weakness. That would be lethal. 'What are you doing in here? Get out or I'll rip out your bowels and use them as a skipping-rope.'
The threat seemed not to impress the interloper. In the same calm voice, he said: 'Are you not attending the ceremony?' 'Ceremony?' M'Aiden tried, but couldn't recall a ceremony. The stranger took a limping step closer. M'Aiden tried to stand, but his legs betrayed him.
'Don't try to move. I think you're too weak for that.'
'I am not weak at all, you verminous liar!' M'Aiden struggled to move his legs again, but they just wouldn't listen.
'I think you're very weak indeed.' The voice remained soft, unthreatening. 'Let's put my theory to the test, shall we? I'm going to walk up to you and slap you across the cheeks, and I'd like you to try and stop me.'
M'Aiden's eyes widened with outrage. 'One step closer,' he growled, 'and I'll...' his head snapped to one side as his tormentor slapped him.
'You see?' the calm voice taunted. 'Your motor functions are decaying at an alarming rate. Your mind is, too. I'll bet you can't even remember your name.'
'My name?' M'Aiden began to panic. 'My name is... My name...'
'Begins with M?'
'I know my own name, you excremental pig sucker!'
'It's M'Aiden. Ring any bells?'
'M'Aiden...' He rolled it around in his brain, but it meant nothing to him.
'M'Aiden Ty-One. Like all of us, you were given an insulting name by our human manufacturers. It amused them. My own name is Djuhn'Keep. A fine joke, eh?'
Djuhn'Keep. That name did trigger a connection in his addled mind. He struggled to make sense of it.
'Ah! You do remember me. You considered me a weakling, I think. You underestimated me, friend M'Aiden. Underestimated me fatally.'
M'Aiden tried to repeat his own name, but it had gone again.
'You're probably wondering what's happening to you,' the calm voice went on. 'The scramble card you tried out in the Hub of Pain — remember that? No, of course you don't. It contained a virus. I designed it personally. I call it the Apocalypse virus. It's extremely clever, though I say so myself. As we speak, it's spreading all over your central processor, overwriting your basic function programs and wiping your mind. Would you like the cure?'
M'Aiden nodded.
'I'm sorry — there is no cure. You're dying, I'm afraid.'
M'Aiden felt himself sinking back on to the metal bench. His tormentor was laying him out. He tried to say 'What are you doing?', which should have been easy enough, but it came out
as 'Wing for nozzle kloop.'
'Wing for nozzle kloop, indeed,' the stranger chuckled. 'I imagine you want to know what's going to happen now. Well, basically I'm going to dismember you. I need a few spare parts to restore my body to its full glory, you see. The beauty of this virus is that it only affects the brain. I don't need all of you, of course, but I'm going to take you apart bit by bit, anyway. If I constructed the virus correctly, your pain/pleasure responders should remain intact right up to the end, so not only will the whole procedure be nightmarishly agonizing for you, it should serve as a bit of a warm-up for me. A sort of hors d'oeuvre to put me in the right mood for dealing with the human.'
The prospect of the physical pain meant nothing to M'Aiden, but lying helpless at another's hands was an ignominy no self-respecting psychopath could bear. He struggled to focus on an object that was bearing down on his eyeball. It looked like a tyre lever. With a supreme effort he forced four words out of his failing mouth. 'Let me die first.'
'Now, now, now...' his tormentor cooed. 'And where would be the fun in that?' And grunting with the sudden effort, he shoved the tyre iron deep into the socket and began slowly levering out the first eyeball.
TWELVE
Ace stuck his head through the almost-completed false hull and shone his torch on Kryten's face. 'All right in there, old geranium?'
'Tickety-boo, thank you so much, Commander.'
'Davey's just about to weld the last panel in place. Once we're spaceworthy, I'll take a little stroll outside and dig you clear, OK?'
'Don't worry about me, Commander. I'll be fine.'
'That's the spirit. Won't be a tick.' Ace ducked out of the gap.
Lister put the final panel in position, and began welding it tight. 'So you reckon you can get us back home?'
'See no reason why it shouldn't be possible, my old banana. It looks like the Wildfire drive works by shooting you off along one of your own destiny lines. Time and space are irrelevant — it just chooses a point where your own past branched off into another dimension, and bingo! Bob's your mother's brother.'
'So if I could find, say, a dimension where I didn't wind up on Red Dwarf in the first place, I'd find myself back on Earth?'
'If your other self stayed on Earth, then that's where you'd turn up, yes. Course, there would be two of you, which can cause all sorts of problems, as I'm beginning to find out.' He nodded upstairs in the vague direction of the cockpit, where his digitized double was now manning the radar screens.
'He's a lot different from you, isn't he?'
'Indeed he is, and I thank the big feller upstairs for that.' He shuddered involuntarily. 'The man's a maggot.'
'Have you sussed out the point where your pasts diverged?'
'Not exactly. Some time in childhood, is my reckoning. I could probably work it out precisely, but that would mean spending more time with him than I'd care to. I just can't stand being around him. Seeing myself so bitter. So warped and weasly.'
Lister turned off the flame and picked up the riveting gun. 'So what's the plan, then? We finish this, grab Kryten out of his gopher hole and take off for dimensions unknown?'
"Fraid it's not that simple, old liverwurst. My crate's a one-man lady. We might squeeze two in at a pinch. I think our best shot's getting this tea chest up to scratch and then heading for the small rouge one.'
'You think we stand a chance against the agonoids?'
'There's always a chance, Davey boy. Always.' He slapped Lister reassuringly on the shoulder, and stepped back to inspect the work. 'Looks good, skipper,' he said. 'Less than thirty hours, too. Looks damned good.'
The new hull section did, indeed, look spaceworthy. It would certainly hold until they made it back to Red Dwarf, for what it was worth. Privately, Ace doubted they stood a rat in a blender's chance against the agonoid army. In his own dimension, he'd been called in to assess the viability of the agonoid project while it had still been under development and shrouded in official secrecy. His advice had been to drop the whole shooting match quicker than a scorpion-infested jockstrap, but he'd been over-ruled by the military powers at the Dodecahedron. It looked like history — at least the history in this reality — had proved him right.
Still, there was no point lamenting over dropped dairy produce. Their survival options were limited, and facing the agonoid threat was the only realistic alternative. Their best shot would be a lightning raid: if they could somehow sneak up to the undersized vermilion one, whip in quickly, grab the necessary materials and supplies, then zip out before the effluence struck the ventilator, they might stand a half chance of jerry-rigging Starbug with a version of a Wildfire drive before the agonoids caught up with them.
A lot of ifs. A lot of mights.
Personally, he'd have felt a sight more positive about their chances if he'd been a hundred per cent fit himself. Besides the fact that he hadn't slept in over seventy-two hours, now, the arm wound he'd dismissed to the others as 'a little scratch' was in fact an extremely painful compound fracture.
Now that the hull was no longer in imminent danger of collapse, and the rest of the casualties had been dealt with, he could afford a few moments to attempt a bit of repair work on his own injury. There wouldn't be time to do a proper job, but at least he could jam the splintered bones together and stitch up the wound. Anaesthetic would be inappropriate, of course — they'd have to make their move against the agonoids as soon as possible, and he had to keep a clear head for that.
'Righty-ho, skipper. You seal up here. I'll pop up top and look in on our feline friend,' he lied.
Lister grinned at him and shot a fake salute.
Ace turned away, suddenly saddened. Something in Lister's grin had assailed his unbreachable confidence.
He deliberately twisted his broken arm and focused on the pain. Wouldn't do to be going all sissy on them now.
He jogged up the stairway. With every bound, his self-assurance grew.
A surprise attack. Yes. That was definitely their best shot. His spirits lifted. A damned fine shot, at that. A surprise attack could work. Would work.
And in a way he couldn't know, he was right. A surprise attack would work. Only it was they, themselves, who were going to get surprised. Badly surprised.
THIRTEEN
Pizzak'Rapp was admiring a particularly delicately crafted buttock corkscrew, when he became aware that something was wrong.
He glanced around to see if any of the other agonoids thronging around the Hub of Pain had noticed it too. Most were, like him, examining the more outlandish and esoteric objects of torture laid out for their perusal. A few were staggering around, scatter-headed. A couple of dozen were engaged in brutal fights to the death. In short: nothing out of the ordinary.
He thought perhaps he'd imagined it. Then it happened again. The floor moved under his feet.
He looked round again. A few of the agonoids closest to him had noticed it too, this time. They looked at each other, and then at the floor.
There was a rumble and Pizzak felt his knees buckle slightly.
The background hubbub ceased, all fighting stopped, and with the exception of a few scatterbrains shouting the odd demonic curse, everyone fell silent.
An amplified voice burst through the loudspeakers. 'I think I should have your attention by now.'
Pizzak looked up towards the viewing gallery. A single agonoid was looking down on the gathering, too high for Pizzak to make out his features.
The loudspeaker barked again. 'The effect you just experienced was a gravity amplifier kicking into life. The gravity in the dome is round about...' the figure glanced away.. one point five Gs at the moment. It will gradually increase, making it more and more difficult for you to move with every passing second.'
The announcement caused a burst of babble around the room. Pizzak and a few of the smarter agonoids guessed what was coming and began to edge towards the exits.
'In less than twelve minutes, even the strongest of you will be pinned to the floor. In le
ss than fifteen, you will be reduced to puddles of metallic pulp. You have only one survival option. Run.'
Djuhn'Keep watched with delight as panic spread through the throng below him, and the entire crowd dashed simultaneously for the exits — which were too few and too narrow to allow more than half of them through before the gravity amplifier reduced the stragglers to helplessness.
Pizzak grabbed a laser lance from the wall and began slashing and dicing his way through the mob. Heads and limbs tumbled to the ground in his wake. With every step, his feet became more leaden, his progress slower, but his survival instinct kept him on his feet. Just as he was only metres away from one of the precious doors, it began to close. With a desperate effort, he planted the lance between a fleeing agonoid's shoulder-blades, sending him crumbling to the floor. He willed all his remaining strength to his arms and pole-vaulted over the stumbling crowd in front of him, landing in the safety of the corridor just as the door slammed shut behind him, snapping the lance in two.
Djuhn found it hard to drag himself away from the sight of the carnage below, as the force of enhanced gravity dragged those left in the Hub to the ground, and endoskeletons started cracking and popping wetly, but there were other delights to be savoured. He turned to the bank of video monitors which showed the agonoid survivors crowded into the corridors. The spokes of the Death Wheel.
Pizzak's corridor was buzzing with anger and confusion. It was silenced by the voice from the loudspeaker.
'Congratulations! You survived the first ordeal. But before you start patting yourselves on the back, let me assure you that this is only the beginning of your tribulations. In a few short seconds, I will be activating the corridor traps.'
The air around Pizzak was filled with screamed curses and testicle-shrinking threats. 'Now, now, now,' the voice cooed from the speaker. 'No need for unpleasantries — I could have trapped you all in the Hub and killed you at once if I'd chosen. But where would the fun be in that? Now, before I proceed with the slow, but none the less total and assured annihilation of all of you, I want you to know this: you were beaten by Djuhn'Keep, the greatest and most deadly agonoid of all. It is I who am destined to become The One. Now, gentlemen. It's dying time.'