by Doug Naylor
The figure was human. A human man.
Sensing Lister's mood change, Reketrebn shape-shifted into its neutral form as Lister stared into the face of another member of his species. The man held out his hand and grinned. 'Mr Lister, I presume.'
'Yes,' said Lister, dumbfounded.
'Lieutenant-Colonel Michael R. McGruder, sir,' said Lieutenant Colonel Michael R. McGruder, still holding out his hand. 'I believe you know my father.'
'Your father? No, I don't think so.' Lister shook his head. 'Who is he?'
'He's one of the greatest soldiers ever to serve the Star Fleet, sir, a man of such bravery and resourcefulness that he alone was revived by the on-board computer to protect your life. My father, sir, is Arnold J. Rimmer.'
Lister groped for some means of support to keep his balance. Finding nothing, he slowly concertinaed down on to his knees.
CHAPTER 10
Kryten gazed through the binocular eyepiece of the virion microscope in the middle of the sea of vials as the Cat and Kochanski staggered into the chamber carrying two large oxygen tanks and clanged them noisily on to the floor under the hatchway.
'We've got enough oxygen for a month and the Cat's even sniffed out some more battery back-up for Rimmer.'
A smile of relief slalomed down Rimmer's face.
'We've found something rather interesting too.'
Kryten looked up from the microscope. 'We've found some more ident coded vials, and their contents have turned out to be quite extraordinary.'
Kochanski took off her boots and tiptoed across the carpet of glass tubes as Kryten began to outline the discovery. 'One of the side-bars of the DNA research was the discovery that all viruses fall into two categories: negative and positive. The negative we're very much aware of.'
The Cat craned over his shoulder, trying to get a view down the microscope. 'What? Like smallpox, flu, measles, rabies, that stuff?'
Kryten nodded. 'But they also discovered that there were positive viruses. Viral infections that actually improve the human condition.'
'Such. as?'
'Well, at the very basic level, they predicted a kind of reverse flu, a strain of virus that promotes a feeling of unaccountable well-being and euphoria and can last for years. According to these notes, twentieth-century DJs were constant sufferers.'
The Cat inspected the tray of vials. 'So what's in the tubes?'
'Isolated strains of positive viruses that cause retro-infections.' He picked a blue vial and held it to the light. 'Inspiration.' They cooed appreciatively. He held up another. 'Sexual magnetism.'
The Cat's eyebrows crash-landed into the bridge of his nose. 'Sexual magnetism is a virus? Get me to a hospital — I'm a terminal case!'
Kryten held up a third vial. 'But perhaps this is the most intriguing of all. This vial contains the positive virus they named felicitus populi. More commonly known as Luck.'
'Luck is a virus?' asked Kochanski.
Kryten poured a minute amount of the liquid into a neck-blast syringe. 'A positive virus which most humans contract at some point in their lives. Usually the period of infection ends all too quickly. And here it is: Lady Luck, in liquid form. Want to try some?'
Kochanski said, 'Is it safe?'
'Perfectly. And this is such a minute dosage, it shouldn't last more than a few minutes.' Kochanski pulled her collar aside and the syringe hissed into her neck.
She rotated her head and straightened. 'So, what now?'
Kryten handed her a pack of cards. 'Shuffle these cards and then pick out the four aces.'
She shuffled, cut, re-cut, shuffled again and laid the cards on the lab bench and fanned them out, face down.
Her hand moved along the line and flicked over a card. The ace of hearts.
'The odds of you picking out that card correctly,' Kryten informed her, 'are thirteen to one.'
Kochanski's hand went down the line again and picked out a second card. She turned it over. Ace of diamonds.
'221 to one.'
Kochanski turned over a third card. It was a club. The ace.
'5,525 to one.'
The fourth card. Ace again. This times in spades.
'The odds on you picking out four aces from a pack of unmarked cards are 270,725 to one.'
They stood in a semi-circle, gawping. Kryten flipped over the other cards, to prove the pack wasn't fixed. 'Have you any conception of what this means?' he said quietly.
Kochanski nodded. 'It means we're playing poker, that's what it means. OK, twenty dollar-pounds a stake, dukes are wild.'
Rimmer chipped in. 'I don't think that's exactly what Kryten had in mind, actually.'
'Gin rummy?'
Kryten interjected. 'I mean, ma'am, that if you've contracted the luck virus, it may be possible to detect the terra-forming viruses out of the hundreds of thousands of samples that are strewn around the chamber.' Kochanski nodded. 'OK, but then we play poker.'
* * *
For several minutes she strolled across the lab, carefully studying the floor. She stopped and thrust her hand into a mountain of tiny vials and emerged with one. 'That one?' 'I think so.' 'Has it got a number.'
She rotated the vial and read off the viral ident code. 'ZCSBFD6577GJG93857JJJJJ43767737837FHDKWOPIW53.'
Rimmer smiled. 'That's the first virus. That's it. You've done it.'
Kochanski grinned. 'Luck be a lady tonight.' She waded into another mound of vials, thrust her hand into a stack and pulled out three more. 'OK, I'll put money that the second virus we need is this one. Here we go: KDNIUJVIURNVOENV984398404IUFN98HR998SSC.'
Kryten gasped in dismay. 'It's not "C", it's "J".' Kochanski grinned. 'Just joshing. "J" it is.' 'What about the other two, why did you choose them?' 'I'm pretty sure this one is another vial of the luck virus.' Kryten examined the serial number and nodded. 'And this one,' Kochanski held it up to the light, 'is going to help me sometime, but I don't know how.' She read out the serial number.
Ninety seconds later the computer flashed 'Trace complete', and a description of the vial punched up on to the screen.
'Name: Brassica 2. Function: creates fast-growing broccoli.' Kochanski shrugged. 'Don't ask me.'
* * *
Two hours later they released the virus into the molten lava and watched anxiously for signs of cell corruption in the magma. Thirty minutes into the vigil they received a positive analysis from the Mayflower's mainframe. The report anticipated mulch within five days and predicted it would be possible to drive through the mixture of thinning lava and half-formed mulch within thirty-six hours.
Rimmer glanced at his watch. 'We haven't got much time to complete the salvage operation. I suggest we get cracking.'
Six hours later, after three muscle-pummelling round-trips from Starbug to the Mayflower and back again, Kochanski's body hit the springs of her bunk. She was asleep in seconds. Noiselessly, Kryten slipped on his diving suit and set the air-lock for remote. Within minutes he was striding back across the ocean bed in the direction of the Mayflower.
He passed under a lead archway and stepped into a large horseshoe-shaped crypt. He knew how to operate the DNA modifier now, the operation was really quite simple. He punched in the pattern of the new gene formation and a glass cylinder wooshed down from the ceiling. The modification began, and the cylinder whited out. When it rose back into the roof and the smoke had cleared, Kryten was no longer there. Instead there was a man.
A naked man.
A Homo sapiens.
CHAPTER 11
'What did you say your name was?'
'McGruder, sir.'
Lister's brow knitted in concentration. 'McGruder - your mother must have been Yvonne McGruder.'
A white smile neoned across McGruder's face. 'Ever since I was a small child she's regaled me with tales of his astounding feats. She said I'd probably never meet him because his ship was lost in Deep Space. Then the ship's black box touched down in the Pacific and I just knew he was still around. I also knew I had to find him an
d I've kind of built my career around that search. Was he really as truly astonishing as my mother made out?'
'Well,' said Lister, uncertain how to answer. 'Uh... obviously, uh... you know... uh.'
McGruder looked at him expectantly. 'Was he really the greatest soldier who ever lived, sir? Better than Patton, better than anyone? All those tales of sacrifice and valour. Sometimes, I have to confess, I wondered if my mother wasn't exaggerating, just a little. Tell me, what was he really like?'
Lister paced around the cave, his back to McGruder. Then he turned, his face sheathed in seriousness. 'What was he like?'
'Yes, sir.'
'He was... he was... a truly great man.'
McGruder melted. 'I knew it.'
'A fine soldier, a good friend — and a hell of a great man.'
'I just knew it,' McGruder sparkled. 'Is it true, that story about how he saved six officers when they were trapped inside the hold and he...'
'It's true,' Lister interrupted. 'It's all true.'
McGruder's eyes lit up, like two star clusters. 'And what about the time he...'
'That's true too. Everything's true. It's just a crying damn shame you'll never get a chance to meet him.'
'The last I heard was he was a hologram. What became of him?'
'We got split up. He's with my girlfriend and a mechanoid and this guy who evolved from cats. They could be in one of a gazillion realities.' A sad smile pinched at Lister's mouth. 'We won't find them now even if we spend the rest of eternity looking.'
Suddenly, there was a flurry of activity and a party of volunteers entered the cave. 'Nwaki, sire, the Rage is coming.'
McGruder nodded. 'Split into three groups as always. Divide the men.'
The Gelf turned quickly and left.
'The Rage? Is that what destroys the land?'
'It's a gestalt that was created by using the DNA of innocent penal colony internees.'
'I know. But why do you call it the Rage?'
'The Rage of innocence. All those internees imprisoned unfairly were forced to sacrifice their lives to help create the gestalt. All those entities, railing against the injustice of their punishment, furious at the inequity and corruption of the system, were then thrown together and moulded into one giant organism, a seething tornado of fury. That's why it attacks the lush green planet it created - it wants to make it uninhabitable for the Gelfs. So they can't use it to traverse the Omni-zone.'
Lister nodded.
McGruder continued. 'Its fury is contagious. All who inhale its wind become consumed with such wrath, such bilious resentment, they destroy one another — husband kills wife, brother kills brother, parent kills child.'
Lister remembered the snarling bodies twisted in combat in the carcass of the volunteer ship. 'And this makes the planet totally uninhabitable?'
'The Dingotangs put me on the first volunteer ship. Two thousand of us. Now there are scarcely forty left.'
'How come you guys made it?'
'We discovered a way of surviving the wind. All those who hate come together in a Circle of Sacer Facere and one must be sacrificed. The full fury of the Rage enters one of the group and he is immolated on the spot. But the others live.'
A Gelf stood in the entrance to the cave. 'Nwaki, sire, it is time. You must delay no more.'
McGruder nodded.
'Come, Mr Lister, you will travel with me. You can tell me more stories of my father's remarkable deeds.'
'Yeah,' said Lister uncertainly. 'Uh, sure thing.'
* * *
Lister, Reketrebn, McGruder and the party of Gelfs headed south towards a fan of mountains, while the other two groups headed west and east. The Rage swept in from the north. The direction each party had taken had been decided by drawing straws and it became clear to Lister two hours later, as his group navigated its way along a mountain pathway thick with sludge, that it was their group that was going to be hit.
He stared into the valley below and watched as the electric orange twister scythed its way across the countryside, devouring the land like a greedy bird eating a line of grain. Three times the party changed tack and three times the Rage changed with them. It was moving at a speed close to four hundred miles an hour, roaring a demonic seal bark.
There was no place to hide on the mountain pathway, no place of protection. McGruder signalled in dumb show for them to stop and make their preparations. The party divided into three groups, each bound together by a rope that was secured to the rock face with climbing hooks.
Then they waited.
Less than five minutes later it was upon them.
* * *
Lister buried his head in the side of the mountain and hung on to his climbing rope as the Rage scoured the mountainside, stripping it of its plant life and vegetation. He watched helplessly as the power of the gestalt hauled the hooks out of the rock face and tossed one of the other two parties off the mountain.
Then the Rage entered him.
Its warm, nauseating breath reached inside him and started to explore his being. A tidal wave of anger thrashed through him. Pure, mindless, undiluted fury. It made him feel powerful. He had been wronged. Terribly wronged. Wronged by someone or something he couldn't quite recall. But that didn't matter, what did matter was that he had been dreadfully betrayed by someone or something and that was why this foaming lather of anger was gushing about inside him. And it felt good. So good. This anger, this fury was a great gift.
Suddenly he had something he could believe in, something that couldn't be challenged, something that was pure and true, something he would gladly have died to defend, because this anger was the fury of the righteous, it was the fury of the wronged, the fury of the indignant, the fury of the innocent and they must have their revenge. Then the Rage passed over them and the funnel-shaped winds spiralled off into the distance, leaving the denuded rock face behind.
Lister watched it go. All that remained was his hatred. His hatred of some formless adversary.
Why had McGruder led them here, why had they not stayed in the valley? Why had he trusted him? He wanted to kill him. He wanted to rip off his face and stamp on it.
And the Gelfs, he loathed the Gelfs too. Why had they not warned him? Why?
McGruder untied himself from the climbing hooks, his lips drought-thin and humourless, his eyes black and dead.
Lister picked up a climbing hook and launched himself at him; the marine slammed him to the ground and stamped his foot down hard on Lister's throat. 'We have to form the Circle of Sacer Facere to banish the Rage. One of us will die.'
* * *
The eight survivors sat in the Circle of Sacer Facere and joined hands. Seconds passed before slowly, quietly, but growing in volume, a sound like ten thousand dying locusts started to vibrate into existence. And then a howling red wind, patterned with the faces of demons, came into being and rotated around the group, entering each of them by mouth or ear and exiting by the same. And the sound grew as the wind sluiced through them.
Round and round it went. Faster and faster. Louder and louder. Each time the Rage passed through Lister his whole body became energized. Even though it possessed him for scarcely a nano-second, every nerve-ending in his being pleaded for more; more of the fury, more of the power, more of the undiluted pure-white rage that lifted him beyond himself and made him a God.
Round and round it went.
All he wanted was for it to possess him so that for one brief second of time he would have the fury all deliriously, blissfully to himself. That it would take his life as a consequence was a price he would have paid tenfold.
He screamed out and begged it to destroy him. He implored it to possess him. And soon they were all shouting, all pleading, all screaming, and the red wind bansheed through them before gradually, almost unnoticeably, it began to slow down. Round it went, through Reketrebn, through McGruder, through the Gelfs, through Lister. Slower and slower. It was stopping. Through Reketrebn, through McGruder, through the Gelfs. Then it stopped,
teetering between Lister and the last Gelf. Both were screaming for it to possess them, both crying helplessly for it make them Gods for just a tiny fraction of a fraction of a fraction of time; back and forth it rocked between them before it paused over Lister and then returned to the Gelf. The Gelf's body was consumed with the full impact of the Rage. He screamed out in ecstasy before his flesh aged in an instant and fell off his bones in a curtain of dust.
Lister wept helplessly. It was over.
For now at least.
CHAPTER 12
Kochanski opened her eyes and stared at the man standing at the end of her bunk. Somehow this man had stolen Kryten's voice and was imparting an urgent message to her, using precisely the mechanoid's tones. Was she dreaming? Was this some kind of surreal nightmare?
Gradually, her ears tuned into what the figure was saying.
'... and now I'm human.'
'What?' said Kochanski. 'You did what?'
Kryten beamed. 'I haven't felt this good since I accidentally welded my groinal socket to a front-loading washing machine. I just wanted you to be the first to know...' A blush pinked his new human face. '... Kriss.' He chuckled like a naughty school-boy. 'See you in the morning.'
She let him get halfway down the staircase before she called him back. 'Kryten.'
'Yes, Kriss?'
'Now you're a human,' she smiled amiably, 'I want to give you a bit of advice.'
'Yes?'
'Wear clothes.'
Kryten looked down at his naked body. 'I completely forgot. You humans, how on earth do you do it?' He cradled his temples with the flats of his hands. 'There's just so much to remember.'
* * *
At first light the Cat slunk into Starbug's mid-section and sat next to Rimmer, who was logging their current supply inventory in a dizzyingly complex array of colour codes, in preparation for their flight through the mulch. Next to him, eating breakfast, was a man the Cat had never seen before.
'Ah! Fellow humanoid! Greetings!' The man pointed to his breakfast plate. 'My very first meal. Boiled chicken ovulations! Dee-licious.'