Last Human

by Doug Naylor

  Rimmer watched as Lister's face etiolated with shock as he realized the rad pistol was nearer Rimmer than him.

  Rimmer grinned. This was his moment. All he had to do was pick up the rad gun, stick it in his ear and march him out of the cave. He'd be a hero. He'd have saved the day. And wouldn't that be sweet.

  Then a voice. Somewhere inside Rimmer's head.

  Hero? Who the hell was he kidding? Any jerk could do what he was about to do. He was just lucky enough to chance along at the right time and find himself standing next to the pistol. It was hardly the stuff of the SMCs; he wasn't exactly uzi-ing the door in and walking behind a blazing bazookoid.

  Then he would have been a hero.

  But this? This was kiddy stuff. And anyway, why should he have to prove himself to Michael? His son would have to learn that there's more to life than being a great soldier. If they were to have any kind of relationship he'd have to learn to care for Rimmer for what he was, with all his failings. And if he couldn't do that unless his old man turned out to be Tommy Testosterone, Space Marine, that was just tough.

  Lister's other self's foot lanced into Rimmer's solar plexus and he hammered backwards into the cave wall, still enraptured by his own thoughts. A punch sent him caroming sideways and a second kick to his temple forced him backwards on to the hard stone floor. Lister's doppelgänger picked up the rad pistol, twirled the rad setting to neuter and pointed it at Rimmer's groin. 'On your feet.' He jabbed a look at McGruder. 'You too.' The two men got to their feet.

  McGruder's eyes stood on tiptoe above an oblong of masking tape and drilled into Rimmer. Why hadn't he grabbed the gun? He'd had a chance to take the guy out and he'd botched it. What the hell else could you expect from a mookle who fixed chicken-soup machines for a living?

  He'd botched it.

  His bloody father had botched it.

  * * *

  Kryten stared down at the four dead Kinitawowi tribes-people. They'd never left the ship. Lister's other self had regained consciousness at some point during the walk through the decom chamber and had managed to overpower all four of them. Now he was out there somewhere and the Rage was only fifteen — perhaps twenty — minutes away. He tapped the pink disk of the oblivion virus on his open palm, the disk that was utterly useless while he was still locked in here.

  A syringe of air signalled the wheel on the vault door was being spun open. The door yawned wide and Rimmer was shoved inside. It closed again.

  Rimmer started to explain. 'He didn't leave Kryten stopped him with a nod of the head. 'I know. I found the Kinitawowis.'

  'He's got Michael.'

  Kryten's eyes closed softly in sympathy.

  'And I had a chance to nail the son of a bitch and I blew it. It was all there - the pistol, my moment to make everything OK — and I blew it.'

  Kryten knelt by his side and patted him softly on the back.

  'I blew it.'

  'Sir, I...'

  'I blew it, Kryten.'

  'Sir, it's imperative we get out of here. I suggest we cover every inch of the storage vault to see if there's any possible escape route.'

  'Haven't you already done that?'

  'Twice, sir.' Kryten shrugged. What else was there to do?

  Rimmer mopped his face with the flat of his hand and nodded.

  They began their search, first examining the locking mechanism on the vault door and then following the walls round the room, looking for air vents.

  'I'm a father, you know. I still can't believe it.'

  'I heard, sir.' Pause. 'You must be very proud.'

  'He's not. He's about as thrilled as Edward II when they started to heat up the poker. Understood I was some kind of one-man army.'

  'Resenting their parents is the human way, sir. Black widow spiders eat their mates after sex, humans blame their parents for all their failings. It's the characteristic which makes you lovably idiotic to all the other species.'

  'What are you saying, Kryten?'

  'I'm saying, why are you surprised your son resents you, sir? He can't help it, he's a human.'

  'But I don't want him to resent me, I want him to think I'm OK. I've missed the first forty years of his life. Now I want him to... like me.'

  'Look!'

  'Yes?' Rimmer waited for him to make his next point.

  'Look!' Kryten repeated. Rimmer swivelled. Kryten was pointing to the four-inch-wide oxygeneration outlet pipe that surfaced by the pump-housing in the corner of the vault.

  'It's an oxygeneration outlet pipe — so what?'

  'Sir, if I turned your light bee off and set it to delay-timer mode, then brought it back on-line again, say sixty seconds later, we could push your light bee down the outlet pipe and it'd drop through to the quarters below.'

  'Or, alternatively, it could wind up in the oxygeneration unit itself.'

  'That is a possibility.'

  'Where I'd get minced.'

  'The plan does have a down side, I must confess.'

  'A down side? Is that what it is?'

  'However, if the scheme were to succeed, you'd re-materialize on the deck below and be able to sound the alarm. We could attempt to rescue your son Michael.'

  'No. I'm sorry. It's too risky.'

  'Very well, sir.'

  'And don't try and change my mind. It won't work.'

  'No, sir.'

  They walked along in silence for almost twenty seconds. 'You're doing it on purpose, aren't you?'

  'Sir?'

  'Creating this incriminating silence. Stop it.'

  'Sir?'

  'I'm warning you, Kryten, if you continue this voiceless, unspoken disapproval, you're on charge.'

  'Sir?'

  'You know what I'm talking about; now just quit it. Talk, or hum, or whistle, or something. But no more accusing silences. Got it?'

  'Yes, sir.'

  Pause.

  'You're doing it again!'

  'I can't think of anything to say, sir.'

  'Hum, then.'

  'Yes, sir. Permission to hum, sir?'

  'Granted.' Rimmer sighed impatiently.

  Kryten began humming a plaintive version of 'Danny Boy'.

  Eventually Rimmer caught on.

  '"Oh Dannyboy, the pipes the pipes are calling... " I've seen mud guards on boy racer Mustangs that weren't as low as you.' He exhaled and contemplated the floor. After several seconds he looked up. 'Right, very well, OK. I must have less brains than the offspring of a village idiot and a TV weathergirl - I'll do it.'

  Kryten beamed munificently. 'Good decision, sir.' He clicked on the pressure point at the back of Rimmer's neck and turned off his hard-light drive. His form faded away with an electronic sigh arid all that was left of Red Dwarf's third technician was his light bee, which hovered three feet off the ground, moving in tiny unsteady circles. Kryten took hold of the bee, flipped open its top and started to examine its workings.

  Several minutes later he unscrewed the outlet pipe's gauze cover and dropped the delay-timered bee down the tube.

  The bee clanged down the pipe, slaloming round corners, ricocheting down the colon of tubing, pinging back and forth across the narrow passageways as it fell through the oxygeneration system until, almost forty seconds later, it bounced out of an outlet valve and rolled across the grilled flooring of E-deck's gantry. It rolled across the five-foot walk-way before plummeting over the edge and smacking on to D-deck's gantry one hundred feet below. Again it rolled across the walkway and teetered on the edge of the grille overlooking the small sewage plant on C-deck. Spinning like a drunken room, it hugged the very edge of the walkway before it waltzed back into the middle of the gantry and slowly spun to a halt. Finally the light bee toppled on to its side and rocked back and forth on its axis. Seconds later Rimmer burgeoned back into existence, and found himself on the paint-shop gantry on D-deck. He went to find the others.

  * * *

  Kochanski and Lister piled the palettes of freeze-dried fruits on to the loading truck. She was just fi
nishing her account of what had happened on the Mayflower: the Longmans, discovering the vials of the luck virus, when she heard the soft hum of ionizing radiation being pumped into an IR pistol's discharge tube. They looked up.

  Lister's other self gestured for them to drop the peaches as he yanked McGruder on a wire garrotte across F-deck. 'Better put me back on your Christmas-card list, kids.'

  Lister frowned disbelievingly. 'You left the ship with the Kinitawowis. Kryten saw you.'

  'No, he saw me enter the decom-chamber.'

  'You've been around since then?' asked Kochanski. 'When we were on the Mayflower? All that time?'

  Lister's other self cheesed a grin. 'Got a mite messed up when I had my altercation with the Kinitawowis. Couldn't make my comeback until I'd healed up a little.'

  Lister's other self ripped the gaffer tape off McGruder's mouth and yanked the garrotte around his neck. 'Tell them what I want.'

  'He wants the escape pod,' McGruder wheezed through the choking wire noose.

  'What escape pod?' asked Kochanski, deadpan.

  Lister's other self tightened the noose around McGruder's neck. 'Back in the days when I had a craft our Starbug had an escape pod.'

  'Yeah?' said Lister.

  'Powered by solar energy. I don't suppose you guys'd possess such a thing? No point in all of us dying. You got one?'

  They said 'no' in unison.

  'Thought so. Used to be on C-deck. Grab the supplies and let's take a look.'

  'Look, you want to take it,' Kochanski spat, 'go and take it. There's no time to screw around. The gestalt is going to be here in less than fifteen minutes and if that doesn't wipe us out, the crossing into the Omni-zone will. Take the damned pod and get the hell out of here, and let us get the hell out of here too.'

  Lister's other self grinned. ' You can come with me, doll. Plenty of room for you if we scrunch up.'

  'Thanks for the offer, but sadly I'm sane.'

  He tugged again on McGruder's garrotte. 'I'm serious.'

  'So am I.'

  'Stay here, sweetheart, and you're going to get wiped.'

  Lister interjected, Take the EP and vamoose, OK?'

  His other self continued, 'And if you get wiped, what happens to the human race?'

  Kochanski eyed him narrowly. 'I wouldn't go with you if you were the last guy in the Universe.'

  'I'm going to be.' Lister's other self smiled. 'Certainly the last guy around here who can have children.' Without warning he pointed the rad pistol at Lister's crotch and fired a volley of radiation into his groin. Lister folded like an origami figure and hit the floor, clutching himself.

  'Because from this moment on your boyfriend's as sterile as a surgeon's scalpel.'

  Kochanski fell by his side.

  'Bambinos for you guys? Sadly, no longer possible.' Lister's other self tugged McGruder over to the moaning Lister who was now gently being comforted by Kochanski. 'So how about it? Me and you - what do you say?'

  Slowly, Kochanski clambered to her feet and ran at him, screaming. He spun the rad setting and put two volleys of laser into her: one in her shoulder, the other in her left knee. She stumbled but didn't fall as she staggered towards him, vainly trying to get within kicking distance of his head. A third beam struck her left thigh and she flailed and fell.

  Lister's other self stood over her and pointed the rad pistol into the middle of her forehead. 'I'm going to ask you one last time for a date. If the answer's still no, something really tragic is going to happen. So whaddayasay? Want to be my Eve? I'll buy you a fig leaf.'

  'Go screw a dog.'

  Lister's other self shook his head sadly as he re-cocked the pistol.

  Kochanski sucked her right index finger. 'You evil bastard,' she said quietly.

  'Say "hi" to Jesus for me.' He pulled the trigger.

  * * *

  Rimmer hurried along the paint-shop gantry, past the shelves stacked with giant cans of green emulsion lined with river drips of dried paint and moved towards the bulkhead wall. Several floors above he could make out a vague mix of voices.

  He reached the hatchway and discovered it was locked. He doubled back and tried the hatchway at the opposite end of the gantry. That was locked too.

  He was trapped.

  He spun round, looking for another exit point. There wasn't one. He was a prisoner.

  For several minutes he ransacked the shelves of equipment looking for help. Then he turned up one of the Mayflower's old astro-strippers Kryten had bought from the Kinitawowis. He unhooked it from the shelf and laid it out on the floor. Astro-strippers were used for mining ore and burning old paint off ships or research centres before they were repainted. The harness was intended to be worn over the shoulders; the front had a brutal-looking torch-gun funnel that jetted flame sixty feet, while the back had a second funnel that threw out a power jet so the pilot could transport himself around the outside of the ship when preparing the metal for new paintwork. Rimmer checked the tanks: both booster and flame tank were a quarter full, more than enough for him to torch his way through the hatchway lock. He hauled the harness over his head and tried to click the buckles closed.

  The harness webbing wouldn't reach. Five, maybe six inches short. Who'd last worn this? A hugely overweight pigmy? He adjusted the straps to their maximum length and tried again. Still he couldn't press the stud key into its buckle. Maybe if he did just the top one that would hold it.

  It did. Just.

  He looked for the control stick; it was behind his back, near the booster funnel. Why put it there?

  Who had designed this thing?

  He twisted to examine the facia. He'd seen Lister use one once when he'd been put on punishment detail and had to strip and paint a hundred-yard section of Red Dwarf's hull.

  He swivelled the joystick and clicked on the stripper flame, but instead of a controlled jet of flame pouring out of the funnel on his chest plate his rear booster flared into life and propelled him twenty feet backwards across the gantry corridor, over the railing and into the 300-yard drop before it politely clicked off, leaving him to plummet groundwards.

  He had the damned thing on backwards. That's why the straps were so tight. As he plunged towards the sewage tank below he swivelled and tried desperately to refire the booster jet. His fingers groped blindly across the controls before he engaged the twin stripper/booster auto switch whereupon both funnels flared into life.

  Three feet from the sewage tank the flame hit the methane of the raw sewage and powered him back into the air like an old Apollo space rocket. Blindly he groped and fumbled about with the joystick, trying to guide the human fireball he'd now become as he ricocheted off the hull walls and powered upwards.

  * * *

  Lister's other self stood over the motionless body of Kristine Kochanski as she lay on the floor. Her lagoon-blue eyes were open, wide and defiant. She licked her right index finger, called him a bastard and watched him pull the trigger. Lister was helpless, nauseated and feeble from his radiation blast, and McGruder, his hands bound and his neck leaking blood from the garrotte, was equally powerless.

  The barrel of the gun rested on a cobbled street of perspiration that ran across Kochanski's brow. Lister's other self pulled the trigger. There was a hollow click as the rad pistol's chamber jammed.

  Kochanski stroked the neck of the tube that hung around her neck and licked her finger again.

  He fired. Hollow click. Jammed again. He fired a third time. Same. And again and again. Each time his pistol jammed.

  She licked her finger and looked up at him, almost smiling. Then he realized. He'd heard them talk about the luck virus as he crawled about the vent shafts waiting to heal, but he'd never seen it. That's why she kept licking her finger. The bitch was taking the luck virus and making the pistol jam. He held her hand down by her side. 'No luck virus this time, sweet pea.'

  He started to squeeze the trigger again. Inch by inch he pulled it back until one inch away from discharging the deadly bolt of rad
iation into Kochanski's head — something happened.

  A noise. A strange roaring noise that distracted him from his task. Lister's doppelgänger swivelled left and looked out over the gantry rail. The sound grew louder until suddenly, in a roasting typhoon of dust, a mighty bird rose, phoenix-like, into view, vomiting flame.

  Lister's doppelgänger shielded his eyes from the light and peered into the blinding dust storm as the twin jets of flame powered over the group in a sting of singed hair. The phoenix screamed off along the length of the gantry before it turned and, to the accompaniment of a screaming man, strafed them a second time. Lister's other self dived headlong behind a pile of freeze-dried almond crates, dragging McGruder with him.

  Once again the fireball dressed in an impenetrable coat of smoke and flame ping-ponged down the length of the deck. Lister's other self watched it go. 'What the hell is that?'

  McGruder turned to look at his captor. 'What the hell is that? I'll tell you what the hell that is — that's my Pop.'

  'Your what?'

  'And you better look out, Mister,' said McGruder in his best western drawl, 'because he's come for his boy.'

  Rimmer's wails of terror were buried under the booster's roar as he ricocheted off three cargo-bay walls, flattened out and scorched the gantry floor with a new orange carpet of fire.

  A banshee wail, a deafening whoosh and the four almond crates imploded in a series of pretty blue-and-red mushrooms. McGruder whooped in delight. Lister's doppelgänger dropped the garrotte and dived for cover.

  Rimmer cannoned down the deck, smacked into the far wall, scraped a ceiling joist and started to make the return journey.

  Lister's other self walked to the middle of the gantry floor. He placed both his hands on the butt of his pistol to steady it and took careful aim. The Rimmerteer powered towards him.

  He squeezed the trigger and two rad bolts sizzled past the astro-stripper and exploded in muffled yelps in the far hull wall.

  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.