by Doug Naylor
Twenty yards away Kochanski huddled with Lister behind a forklift truck. 'He's aiming for his light bee,' Lister croaked. 'If he hits it, it's curtains.'
Two more radiation bolts flared towards the advancing phoenix. Rimmer fumbled behind his back and angled left to avoid the first one and right to avoid the second; slowly but surely he was mastering the controls of the backward astro-stripper. Hell, he was almost beginning to enjoy it.
Almost.
He looked down at Michael, who stood behind a crate of burning almonds, his face blackened like a Caribbean red snapper, gazing adoringly up at him. Two more rad bolts hissed towards him; again he dodged left and right.
Lister's other self watched him bearing down. He steadied the pistol on the side of a crate and waited until Rimmer was almost on top of him.
Rimmer groped behind his back and searched for the flame control. He intended to increase it to maximum just as he passed overhead. That would give his jet another ten feet of flame and hopefully persuade Lister's doppelgänger to call it a day. He powered down once more and squeezed off the extra jet.
Lister's other self released his next two bolts; the first missed, the second hawked into Rimmer's shoulder, disrupting his hard-light transmission and causing his body to go into an electric spasm of blue light that ripped around his body like a frightened angel fish. Seconds later it fizzled out as the light bee fought to restore normal transmission.
When it cleared Lister's other self was crumpled on the floor, his rad pistol abandoned as he tried to put out the blaze that was engulfing his right arm. Rimmer had scored a direct hit.
He peered down and saw Michael standing in an aisle of flaming grates, waving up at him, wearing a giant grin. An avalanche of joy poured through him.
He'd done it. He'd damn well done it. He scorched around the cargo bay once more, banking right around a tight corner before loop-de-looping and levelling out again.
Three decades of misery were banished. The creature that had roamed the plains of his soul, devouring his confidence, paralysing his initiative and poisoning his self-esteem, was slain. His neuroses crumbled like banks of sugar candy as self-confidence began to drip-feed into his psyche.
At last he'd done something right. He was OK. He was an OK guy. Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
That's what he was. He was Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. And not only he thought so; his son Michael thought so too.
He caromed around the cargo bay a final time as Lister and Kochanski hollered up at him, jumping and waving.
Another flaming loop-de-loop. He could really drive this thing.
Crrrrrrrkkkkkk. He glanced at his shoulder, the shoulder the rad bolt had impacted against. The frazzled belt buckle had started to. shear.
Crrrrrrrrrkkkkkk. Again. Now it was only hanging to his body by five thin strands of cotton and he was sixty feet from the ground, screaming round the cargo bay at sixty miles an hour. Crrrrrrkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk. The astro-stripper slipped off his left shoulder. He dropped thirty feet before he managed to haul the shoulder harness back on again.
Crrrrrrrkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk. Three strands.
He had to land. He swivelled and managed to flick the boosters on to hover mode, but he couldn't land and hold the harness simultaneously.
Lister's other self sculled along the floor on his one good arm and grabbed hold of the discarded rad pistol. He balanced the barrel of the gun on the side of a crate and pointed it at his target hovering helplessly thirty feet off the ground.
There was no time to use the escape pod now. He needed that astro-stripper. It was the only means of escape.
He squeezed the trigger. The rad bolt hummed through the air and hit the light bee full on. It erupted in a sad blue flare. Rimmer's image corrupted and shut down, and what remained of the carcass of his bee fell to the ground with a hollow clunk.
McGruder staggered across to where Lister's other self was slumped against the crate and hit him over the head with his two bound hands. He sat on him; de-monized by fury, he started to bang his head against the floor. His screams and sobs swirled around the cargo bay before they were drowned by a new sound.
The sound of the Rage. It was upon them. Its wind seared though the cargo decks and began to engulf them.
They huddled behind the crates, which offered scant protection as the Rage bathed them in its waves of rancorous bile. Minutes later they were all baptized in hatred, saturated with the gestalt's malevolence, pulverized by a fury that whispered to each of them of some dreadful, intangible injustice that was never made clear. Then it was gone, swirling off the ship and continuing its cattle drive of virulence across the planet's surface.
Lister stood. 'We have to form a Circle of Sacer Facere.' His face was grey and hollowed, his mouth drained of all saliva, while a new set of facial expressions, driven by his darkest emotions, changed the character of his face. 'We have to form a circle. One of us will die.'
Kochanski, her eyes stabbed through with scintillas of fury, her lips bubbling spittle, said, 'No. There has to be another way. There has to be.'
'There is no other way,' McGruder thundered above the arguing voices. 'We're possessed by the Rage. It's only by channelling its poison into someone, and inviting it to consume them, that any of us will survive.'
Something caught Kochanski's eye. She turned to see Lister's other self making off across the deck, nursing his wounded arm. She stumbled after him, dragging her injured knee across the charred deck, and finally brought him down with a flying body check. She stood over him, her face engorged with venom. 'You caused this, you piece of scum. Without you we'd be out of here. History.' She started to pummel his chest with her white-knuckled fists until she was restrained by Lister. 'We've got to form the circle of Sacer Facere, before we all kill each other,' he said again.
The four of them sat in a tight circle and held hands. Lister gazed across at Kochanski and she returned his scared smile. One of the four would die, one of them would be taken by the Rage, one of them would be devoured by its fury.
Lister felt the clamminess of his other self's palm, straining to be released, straining to be no part of the circle. He held him on one side while McGruder held him on the other.
Then there was a sound. Almost indiscernible. But growing. Getting louder and louder until finally the banshee shriek of a plague of dying locusts emerged from within them. A chill wind riddled with the faces of demons started to swirl through the circle, entering their bodies by mouth or ear and leaving them in the same way.
Round it went. Faster and faster.
Lister's other self gazed at Kochanski; amused by her fear. His eyes dropped down her body, drawn by two small test tubes hanging round her neck.
The luck virus.
He thrust himself backwards to create some slack and then yanked himself forward; his tongue flicked over her skin before he scooped the tubes into his mouth and ripped the chain from around her neck. His teeth crunched triumphantly through the tube into the sweet tasting liquid.
The glucose gushed over his tongue. He had taken the luck virus. He felt its sparkling force twinkle through his body. Now he was safe. The Rage would choose another.
The Rage entered him, but he wasn't concerned, he knew it would pass him by. And so it did, as round it went; faster and faster, growing in power, growing in strength.
Now it was in McGruder and then Kochanski and then Lister and then back again.
It was in him once more. He felt its power, and tasted its awesome promises. Then it left him and entered McGruder. But he wanted it to stay, to possess him, to engorge him with its power.
He wanted the Rage.
They all wanted the Rage. Soon they were all screaming, pleading with it to choose them, to apotheosize them.
But only one of them had taken the luck virus.
And the luck virus made your dreams come true. The Rage chose him.
He let out a sob of ecstasy and felt the full onslaught of i
ts power before his body was seared by an acid wind that cleaned him of his flesh. His bones tumbled to the ground.
CHAPTER 19
Lister watched as McGruder stooped and picked up his father's devastated light bee. The minute holographic projection device rolled across his open palm, mutilated and corrupted beyond repair. He could tell from the way McGruder's face had surrendered into an expressionless grey mask, punctured by two tiny, hopeless eyes ringed with tear skids, what was going through his mind. He knew he was thinking he would have given anything to bring Rimmer back. He knew he was thinking he would have given anything to have had a few precious minutes with him to make his peace. Now it was too late. He was gone. Lister knew all this because he was thinking exactly the same thing.
He pulled himself upright. The pain in his groin had faded into a bearable ache. But he'd never have children now.
Never. His lungs drew in a huge breath of air as the shock of the news filtered into his brain.
Never.
It had always struck him as deeply ironic that someone who had specialized in dodging responsibility - someone who'd left his job as a Megamart shopping-trolley collector because he wanted to get off the career-rung rat-race - should wind up having the greatest responsibility of all: safeguarding the future of his species. In his early twenties he found it tough to write and post a letter. He'd ridden around on his first 250 cc motorbike and never even bothered to get a licence. Too much hassle. Strings would break on his guitar and he'd make do without them. Ironed shirts were for snobs. He had the drive and ambition of a sleeping hippy. He'd borrowed a book from the library called How to Get Your Life Together, forgotten to read it and didn't take it back for three whole years. And when he finally did he had to explain to the chief librarian why there was a piece of fossilized popadom preserved between pages forty-two and forty-three. A together guy he was not.
But whether he liked it or not, fate had chosen him.
He was the one. The last human.
He had to change. He had to get his smeg together. And with Rimmer's bureaucratic cajoling, somehow he did. He smiled. Rimmer's micro-minded mentality and love of order and routine had actually helped him. Forced him to grow up.
They'd headed back towards Earth.
Along the way they'd located Kochanski's ashes and her life was resurrected in a backwards reality. For a while he had thought he was going to pull it off. He thought, maybe he could do this, somehow, somewhere, bring about the restoration of the human race. Now that hope was dead.
The dull burn in his crotch told him that.
He'd failed. He'd blown it. He could feel the swamp of depression ready to engulf him.
Suddenly, the ground shook as a massive tremor ripped the planet and roused him from his dark brood-ings. Now was not the time to think about this.
The next ten minutes seemed to go in slow-motion. Slurred by grief and self-recrimination, he and McGruder hauled down the spare astro-strippers from the paint shop while Kochanski ran off in search of Kryten.
A second tremor rifled through the ship. The planet was minutes away from the event horizon. The gravitational allure of the ring of black holes was now close to irresistible.
They ran down the gantry refuelling the spare strippers and grabbing any supplies they could carry as Kochanski emerged with Kryten.
Minutes later they scrambled down the disembarkation ramp, cranked on the astro-stripper's back-boosters and were soon speeding across the planet's surface in search of the Cat, Reketrebn and the others.
They found them negotiating a mountain precipice, making their way down the valley towards the sanctuary of the caverns. The Cat scanned the group of three. 'Where's Goalpost head?' Lister placed a hand on the Cat's shoulder and shook his head. The Cat frowned, not understanding. McGruder held out Rimmer's broken light bee.
'Man,' was all the Cat was able to say. 'Oh, man.'
* * *
The night sky was ravaged by glowering thunder clouds driven across a whisky-sodden moon by the merciless gravity storm. Lister took out his unoculars and studied the entrance to the limestone caverns six hundred feet below. Above the entrance, like a guard dog, the Rage swirled in a tight protective circle. It was back in position.
Kryten checked the geiger reading on his psi-scan. 'According to the radiation read-out, we're six minutes, twenty seconds away from the event horizon.
'If we're not 1,500 feet below in five minutes' time we're all going to wind up with less life than a Cornish discotheque.'
'But how do we navigate our way past the Rage?' asked the Cat.
Kryten slipped off his backpack and started to unload a computer. 'I anticipated this, sir. Indeed, I intended to engage the Rage earlier but your other self locked me in the storage vault.' He unscrewed a vacuum-sealed flask and took out a small pink disk.
'The oblivion virus?'
'The Rage is an electrical energy force. In theory, the oblivion virus has the capability to disarm its electrical charge.'
'So if we can infect the Rage, we can incapacitate the gestalt...'
'Theoretically.'
'But how?' asked Kochanski. 'Someone would have to...'
'I volunteer, ma'am.'
'No way, Kryten,' said Lister.
'Then we will all die, sir.'
'No.'
'There are no alternatives, bud.'
'I don't care, man. We've already lost Rimmer. We're not losing Kryten too.'
'Sir, listen to me, I implore you. If you do not allow me to do this then all of us will be lost. My death will allow you to enter the caverns, where you have an eleven to four chance of survival.'
'What's that?' asked Reketrebn.
Lister shook his head. 'I don't care that it's illogical. I don't give a toss that it doesn't make sense. I'm not giving you permission to over-ride your programming and do this. We'll stay on the surface and take our chances.'
'What's that?' Reketrebn repeated.
'What's what?' asked Kochanski.
Reketrebn pointed to McGruder's pocket, where a tiny, faint orange glow was permeating the cloth. McGruder hauled the light bee from his pocket. A tired glow emanated from the bee in a series of flashes. Flash, flash, flash, flash, pause, flash flash, and again. Flash, flash, flash, flash, pause, flash flash.
'What's it doing?' asked McGruder.
Flash, flash, flash, flash, pause, flash flash.
'I don't know.'
Again. Flash, flash, flash, flash, pause, flash flash.
'My God,' said Kochanski. 'He's talking to us in Morse code.'
Flash, flash, flash, flash, pause, flash flash.
'She's right,' said McGruder. 'Look... Dah, dah, dah, dah, space dah dah. Four dashes followed by a space and two dashes. Four dashes is "H" followed by a space which means new letter, then two dashes, "I". H. I. Hi.'
The light bee started to flash again. Dot, dash, dash... 'W...' Dot...
'E...'
Dot, dash...
'A...'
Dash, dot, dash... 'K... W. E. A. K. Weak.' Dash, dot... 'N..'
Dash, dash dash...
'O..'
Dash.
'N. O. T. Not... '
Dash, dash... 'M...'
Dash, dot, dot, dash... 'U...'
Dash, dot, dash, dot... 'C...'
Dot, dot, dot, dot. 'H... Much. Not much...' Dash... T...'
Dot, dot... 'I...'
Dash, dash...
'M... Not much time...'
Dot...'
'E... Right, not much time.' Dash, dash, dot... 'G...' Dot, dot...
Dot, dot, dot, dash...
'V...'
Dot.
'E... Give...'
Dash, dash...
'M...'
Dot...
'Give me...'
'Give you what?' asked Lister.
Kochanski blinked away a lens of tears. 'I know what he's going to say.'
Rimmer's light bee, weakening by the second, stumbled on. Dot, dot, dot,
dash...
'V...'
Dot, dot...
'I...'
Dot, dash, dot... 'R...'
Dot, dot, dash... 'U...'
Dot, dot, dot...
'S...'
The light bee's projection beam flicked off. 'What's happened?' asked the Cat. 'It's stopped.'
'The power it needed to Morse code all that stuff must have been too much for it,' said Lister, pulling up the collar of his jacket to screen off the gravity storm.
Suddenly Rimmer's light bee fluttered unsteadily off McGruder's hand and buzzed into the air. A little shakily, almost as if it were being driven by a drunken driver, the bee chugged around their faces as it tried to demonstrate it could transfer the oblivion virus into the gestalt.
'It's transferred all its power to its flight programme,' said Kryten. 'It's proposing we use it to transfer the virus.'
The light bee did a tired little loop-deloop to signify that was exactly what it was proposing.
The virus was loaded into the computer and transferred into the bee. It hummed and squeaked as the deadly programme flooded into its system. Kryten explained to Rimmer that he'd stored the virus in his data base in a muffle programme. Once he accessed it it would destroy him and anything he came into contact with, but until that moment it was perfectly safe. 'Do you understand, sir?'
'Dash, dot, dash, dash.'
'Yes...'
Kryten held the bee in his hand. 'There's nothing more we can do now, sir.' He threw the bee into the air. 'God speed.'
The bee floated around in an unsteady circle before it straightened and headed off across the plain towards the malevolent gestalt.
* * *
They stood and watched as the light bee wended its way shakily across the tract of gnarled plain, over the blackened, holocaustic stumps of petrified woodlands, over the desiccated fingers of dead riverbeds, over a landscape that had once been lush and joyous but was now a shrivelled, embittered wasteland. Finally the bee hovered before the orange twister that spun in spiteful circles over the caverns, protecting them like a lioness might protect her cubs. The bee stopped, teetering on the edge of the Rage's bitter winds, almost as if it were having a change of heart.