by Grant Naylor
***
When he arrived breathless in the Navicomp Chamber, Rimmer was staring, still in shock, at the Drive panel.
'What was that?' shouted Lister.
Slowly Rimmer turned his head and looked up.
'Brace yourself for a bit of a shock: I just saw you die.'
'You saw what??'
'Well, I did warn you to brace yourself.'
'What? When? You didn't give me much of a chance.'
'I gave you ample bracing time.'
'No you didn't. You didn't even pause.'
'Well, I'm sorry. I've just had a rather disturbing experience. I've just seen someone I know die in the most hideous, hideous way.'
'Yeah! Me!'
'It was horrible.' Rimmer screwed up his face and shuddered in distaste. 'You were standing by the navicomp.'
'I don't want to know!'
'You don't want to know how you die?'
'No. 'Course I smegging don't.'
Suddenly the room seemed very dark and cold to Lister. 'Was it quick?' he asked quietly.
'We-ell. I wouldn't say it was super fast. Not if you count the thrashing about and the agonised squealing.' He shuddered again.
'You're enjoying this, aren't you?'
'What a horrible thing to say.'
'It was definitely me?'
'Yup!' Rimmer grinned.
'I don't want to know about this.' He sucked absently at one of his locks. 'How old did I look?'
'How old are you now?'
'Twenty-five. How old did I look?'
'I'd say...' Rimmer clicked his tongue '... mid-twenties.' 'Smeg!' Lister got up and kicked the navicomp. 'I'm not ready.' He kicked it again. 'I'm not smegging ready!'
'Yes, you did seem surprised. Especially when the arm came off.'
'So you saw my face? You got a good look at my face? It was actually me? It was my face?'
'Yes, you were wearing your stupid leather deerstalker with the furry earmuffs.'
Lister snatched off his leather deerstalker with the furry earmuffs. 'OK. I'll never wear a hat. I'll. never wear it again. Then it can't happen.' He flung the cap across the navicomp, and it scudded along the floor.
Rimmer smiled. 'But it has happened. You can't change it, any more than you can change what you had for breakfast this morning.'
'But it hasn't happened, has it? It has will be have going to have happened, but it hasn't actually happen happened.'
'The point of it is, it has happened. It's just it hasn't taken place yet.'
Lister stared blankly into space, playing with his hair, while Rimmer tried to wrestle back the smirk that was making a break for his face.
'All right. OK. OK. The Cat, right?' Lister got to his feet. 'The Cat broke his tooth in a future echo, right?'
'I'm listening.'
'If I can stop him breaking it.'
'Can't be done.'
'... then I can stop me from dying!'
'Can't be done. Unfortunately.'
'So ... how would the Cat break his tooth?'
Lister sat quietly, tugging at a loose piece of rubber on the toecap of his boot.
Rimmer watched him, whistling a Dixieland jazz version of Death March in Saul.
'Eating something ...'
'Can't be done, me old buckeroo. Your number is up'.
'Eating something hard...'
'Can't be done-a-roonied. Sadly.'
Lister stood up, his eyes alive, and pelted out of the navicomp chamber.
Where are you going?' Rimmer got to his feet.
My goldfish!' Lister's voice echoed from the corridor. 'Trying to eat my robot goldfish!'
***
Plop.
Plop, kerplop, plop ...
The Cat lay listlessly on Rimmer's bunk. Several of his shirts were slung on a line across the sleeping quarters, dripping noisily into receptacles.
Plop.
Plop, kerplop, plop ...
He hated laundry day. It always made him tired. Wearily he picked up another dirty shirt, unfurled his tongue and started cleaning it with long, methodical, rough, wet licks, stopping occasionally to top up his tongue with washing-up powder.
When it was finished, he hung the shirt on the line with the others.
Plop, kerplop, plop ...
He really didn't feel like attacking his sock pile right now, so he got up and started mooching around the quarters, looking for something else to do.
He picked a book from Rimmer's shelf and ran his nose across one or two pages, but he couldn't make any sense of it. It appeared to be covered in funny little blobs, which didn't smell of anything.
Cats didn't communicate by writing. They communicated by smell. To 'read' a piece of Cat literature, you ran your nose along a line, which released various impregnated scents from the page.
There were two hundred and forty-six smell-symbols in the Cat lexicon. Each could be qualified by smaller, subtler smells which altered the meaning. Symbols could also mean completely different things in different contexts. For instance, the smell for 'fear' in a different setting could also mean 'very bad', 'noxious', 'toilet' or sometimes even 'estate agent'.
The Cat decided to amuse himself by trying to read the contents of Lister's dirty laundry basket. Much to his surprise, some of it translated quite well into Cat prose. In fact one T-shirt contained a sentence about a fearful, very bad estate agent going to a noxious toilet.
Then he noticed the goldfish.
He watched them for a while. One of them was swimming backwards. He'd never actually seen a live fish, but he was aware of some primal instinct they stirred deep within his stomach.
Even though he'd eaten less than an hour ago, he found a little hunger pain squeaking 'Let's eat the fish'. He had a small, half-hearted dialogue with the hunger pain, but it was fairly insistent.
'Come on, let's eat the fish!'
'I'm not hungry.'
'Eat it, eat it, come o-o-o-on.'
The Cat put his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out an already buttered roll. He usually kept one handy.
He began his food ritual by singing mockingly at the snack.
I'm gonna eat you little fishie ...
I'm gonna eat you little fishie ...
I'm gonna eat you little fishie ...
Cause I like eating fish.'
To give the fish a fighting chance, he stood with his back to them. Then in a single movement he swivelled round, flicked one of the fish out of the tank with the back of his hand, and caught it in the bread roll.
'Too slow, little fishie,' he chided his goldfish sandwich. 'Too slow for this Cat.'
He raised the squirming roll to his mouth and started to bite down through the bread.
'Noooooooo!' screamed Lister.
The Cat half turned and saw Lister flying towards him like a berserk caber, his face contorted, his mouth forming a distorted, elliptical 'O'.
'Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!'
The Cat was still smiling, in anticipation of his fishie nibble, when Lister crashed into him. They smacked into the table and tumbled onto the hard, grey deck.
The fish roll skidded across the floor. Lister sprang off the softly-moaning Cat, grabbed the roll, and looked inside.
McCartney was still wriggling away.
Intact.
Unbitten.
'I did it,' Lister said quietly. 'I DID IT!!' he screamed, not so quietly. 'I did it. I got the fish. I'm not going to die!' He did a victory dance, like a Zero-Gee ceiling receiver who'd just scored the winning touch-up.
Rimmer stood in the doorway.
The Cat clambered to his feet. 'My tooth!' He put a handkerchief to his mouth; it came away bloody. 'You're crazy!'
Lister came towards him. 'Let me see...'
The Cat raced out of the sleeping quarters. 'My tooth! My tooth!' he was yelling. 'I think I lost my tooth!'
Lister stared at the floor, at the small piece of white enamel that was lying under the chair taun
ting him. A one-toothed grin.
'Well,' Rimmer's smirk was as big as Yankee Stadium, 'allow me to be the very first to offer my deepest commiserations.'
ELEVEN
Lister spun the cap off the bottle of Glen Fujiyama, Japan's finest malt whisky, and poured a generous measure into a pint mug. Rimmer lay on his bunk, whistling pleasantly, his hologramatic eyes a-twinkle. Every opportunity he got, he tried to catch Lister's eye and wink at him cheerily.
Lister took a gulp of whisky. 'You're loving this, aren't you?'
'Oh, you're not still going on about your impending death, are you? For heaven's sake,' Fake Scouse accent: 'change der record. Flip der channel. Death isn't der handicap it once was. For smeg's sake, cheer up.'
'You are, aren't you? You're loving it.'
'Holly - I'd like to send an internal memo. Black border. Begins: "To Dave Lister. Condolences on your imminent death."' Rimmer half closed his eyes.
'What's that poem? Ah, yes ...
Now, weary traveller,
Rest your head,
For just like me,
You'll soon be dead.'
'You're really sick, you know that?'
'Come o-o-o-on, -' Rimmer made the 'on' last three full seconds - 'it's all you ever talk about. Frankly' Lister' it's very booooring.'
'You are, you're loving it.'
'You're obsessed.'
'You realise when I die' you're going to be on your own.'
'Can't wait.'
'I thought you didn't want that. I thought that's what you were bleating on about before.'
'No, what got me down before wasn't being on my own. It was the idea that you were doing so much better than me. Staying young, and being alive; it was all too much to take. Now, me old buckeroo, the calliper's on the other foot.'
Lister gave up trying to argue. It was just adding to Rimmer's pleasure.
'I remember my grandmother used to say: "There's always some good in every situation."'
'Absolutely, absolutely' agreed Rimmer; 'and looking on the bright side in this particular situation, you are about to do the largest splits you've ever done in your life.'
'So, I get blown up' right?'
'Bits of you do. What's that thing - I think it's part of your digestive system - the long purply thing with knobbly bits? You only ever see them hanging in Turkish butcher shops. Well, whatever it is, that fair flies across the Navicomp Chamber. It was like a sort of wobbly boomerang.'
'Smeg off!'
'Temper.'
'I don't want to die.'
'Neither did I.'
'But it's not fair. There's so much I haven't done.'
Lister started to think about all the things he hadn't done. For some reason one of the first things that came to his mind was the fact that he'd never had a king prawn biriani. Whenever he'd seen it on the menu, he'd always played safe and ordered chicken or lamb. Now he never would have a king prawn biriani.
And books. There were so many he'd meant to read, but hadn't found the time.
'I've never read ... I've never read ...' Actually, when he thought about it, he realised he'd never read any book. It wasn't that he didn't like literature, it was just that generally he waited for the film to come out.
And a family. He'd always assumed one day he'd have a family. A real family, not an adopted one. A real one. And he'd always wanted to spend a lot of time doing the thing you had to do if you wanted to get a family. He hadn't done nearly enough of that. Not nearly enough. A lot, but not nearly enough.
He was dimly aware that Rimmer was speaking, and Lister grunted occasionally to give the impression he was listening. But he wasn't. He was remembering his old job, back on Earth. His old job parking shopping trolleys at Sainsbury's megamarket, built on the site of the old Anglican cathedral.
One time the manager had caught him asleep in the warehouse. He'd constructed a little bed out of bags of salt, hidden from view behind a wall of canned pilchards. The manager had two GCSEs, a company car and a trainee moustache.
He'd lectured Lister for an hour about how, if he applied himself, within five years he could be a manager himself, with a company car - and, presumably, a trainee moustache. On the other hand, the trainee moustache warned him, if he didn't apply himself he'd be parking shopping trolleys for the rest of his natural.
Lister, who knew he was no genius, also knew for absolute certain he was one hundred and forty-seven times smarter than the manager. Nonetheless, he'd found this pep-talk extraordinarily disturbing. He knew he didn't want to spend all his life parking shopping trolleys, and equally he couldn't get excited about becoming stock control manager at Sainsbury's Megastore, Hope Street, Liverpool.
The manager took him by the lapels and shook him. He told Lister he had to make the grade and become an SCM, or his life would 'never amount to shit.'
And now, as he sat there knowing he'd probably only got a few hours to live, it occurred to him for the first time ever that the pompous goit with the trainee moustache would probably turn out to be right. And that hurt. That really hurt.
And that was how he spent most of the evening. Tugging at the whisky bottle, reviewing his crummy life. And it wasn't the mistakes he made that haunted him, it was the mistakes he hadn't got round to making. He flicked through the catalogue of missed opportunities and unfulfilled promises. He thought about the magnificently unlikely string of coincidences which had brought him into being.
The Big Bang; the universe; life on Earth; mankind; the zillions-to-one chance of the particular egg and sperm combination which created him; it had all happened. And what had he done with this incredible good fortune? He'd treated Time like it was urine, and pissed it all away into a big empty pot.
But no, it wasn't true: he'd had triumphs, a little voice from the whisky bottle was telling him. He'd been at the Superdome that night in London when the Jets played the Berlin Bandits in the European divisional play-offs, when Jim Bexley Speed, the greatest player ever to wear, the Roof Attack jersey, had the greatest game of his great career. He'd seen that famous second score when Speed had gone round nine men, leaving the commentators totally speechless, for the first time in history for fully nine seconds. That was a triumph. Just being there. He was alive and there that night. How many men could say that?
Then there was that time at the Indiana Takeaway in St John's Precinct when he'd tasted his first shami kebab, and become hopelessly and irrevocably hooked on this Indian hors d'oeuvre. True, he'd dedicated a good deal of the rest of his life searching for another truly perfect shami kebab. And, true, he'd never found one. But at least he'd tasted one. One food-of the-gods, perfect shami kebab. How many men could say that?
And then there was K.K. True, they'd only dated for five weeks. And the last week had been a bit sour. But four weeks of Kristine Kochanski being madly in love with him. Kristine Kochanski, who was so beautiful she could probably have got a job on the perfume counter at Lewis's! And she'd fallen in love with him!
For four weeks! Four whole weeks. How many men could say that? Not that many, probably.
And that night in the Aigburth Arms when he played pool. That night when, for some unknown reason, everything he tried came off. The Goddess of Bar Room Pool looked down from the heavens and blessed his cue. Every shot tnuk! Straight in the back of the pocket. They couldn't get him off the table. He was unbeatable.
Three and a half hours. Seventeen consecutive wins. He became a legend. He never played pool again, because he knew he wasn't that good. But that night in the Aigburth Arms he became a legend. A legend at the Aigburth Arms. How many men could say that?
The whisky bottle clanked emptily against the rim of his glass. He'd drunk half a bottle of whisky in two hours. How many men could say that?
He was drunk. How many men could say that?
He fell asleep in the chair. How many men could say that?
At three in the morning he was woken up by Holly.
'Emergency. There's an emergency going on.
It's still going on, and it's an emergency.'
Rimmer sat up in bed, his hologramatic hair pointing stupidly in every compass direction. 'What is it?'
'The navicomp's crashed. It can't cope with the influx of data at light speed.
We've got to hook it up to the Drive computer and make a bypass.'
Lister slung his legs over the bunk. 'The navicomp? The navicomp in the Navicomp Chamber?'
'If we don't fix it, the ship will blow up in about fifteen minutes and twenty-three seconds.'
Lister jumped down to the floor. 'This is it, then.' Rimmer looked at him.
'Don't go.' 'What d'you mean "Don't go"? You said yourself I can't avoid it.'
'Let's get it over with. What was I wearing?' 'Your leather deerstalker, and that grey T-shirt.' Lister pulled on his deerstalker with deliberate precision. Then he walked across to the washbasin and lifted the metal towel rail off its support. 'Let's go.' 'What's that for?' Lister patted the towel rail against his left palm. 'I'm going out like I came in - screaming and kicking.' 'You can't whack Death on the head.' 'If he comes near me, I'll rip his tits off.' Then he was gone.
TWELVE
The Navicomp Chamber was fogged with acrid smoke from the melted insulating wires, and a thick cable swung from the ceiling, jumping and sparking like a dying electric python. A manic high-pitched screeching from the wounded navigation computer rose and fell as around the perimeter of the chamber monitor screens popped and shattered one by one.
Lister, his eyes streaming, fumbled for the bypass unit strapped to the wall and, following Holly's shouted instructions, dragged it across the broken glass and hooked it up to the main terminal.
He opened the bypass casing. Inside were twelve switches.
'Start at the one numbered twelve,' Holly was yelling, 'and leave a one second gap between each switch.'
He closed his eyes and rested his finger on the twelfth switch.
He flicked it down.
The pitch of the walling navicomp . increased by an octave. A green light flickered on beside the number twelve.
He moved his finger across to the eleventh switch.