Better Than Life

by Grant Naylor

  There was an awkward pause. 'Well,' said Rimmer, finally. 'Moving on a step, and I hope no one thinks that I'm setting myself up as a sort of self-elected chairperson, just see me as a facilitator, Kryten, what's your view? Don't be shy.'

  'Well, I think we should send Lister in as a decoy. And while it's busy eating him alive, we can creep up on it from behind and blast it into the stratosphere.'

  'Good plan!' Lister punched the wall, breaking three of his fingers. 'That's the best plan yet. Let it get knackered out eating me to death, then you guys can catch it unawares.'

  'Well, that's certainly an option, David, yes.' Rimmer sucked his pipe ferociously. 'But here's my proposal: let's get tough, the time for talking is over. Call it extreme, if you like, but I propose we hit it hard, and we hit it fast with a major, and I mean major,' he leaned forward, 'leaflet campaign. And while it's reeling from that, we follow up with a whist drive, a car-boot sale, some street theatre, and possibly even some benefit concerts.' Rimmer leaned back again. It was a radical course of action, and he just hoped he hadn't gone too far. He took a comforting suck from his hologrammatic pipe and carried on outlining his solution. 'Now, if that's not enough,' he said, almost crossly, 'I'm sorry, it's time for the T-shirts: "Mutants out”; "Chameleonic Life-forms? No thanks!” and if that doesn't get our message across, I don't know what will.'

  Kryten rolled his eyes a full circle. 'Has anyone ever told you, Rimmer, that you are a disgusting, pus-filled bubo, who has all the wit, charm and self-possession of Jayne Mansfield after the car accident?'

  The Toaster winced. 'Listen to me. You can't operate without fear, anger, guilt and vanity. They're all vital emotions that protect your personalities, and keep you sane.'

  Kryten nodded, and walked over to the Toaster. He picked it up, jammed it into the waste-disposal unit, and turned on the grinder. There was a horrible sound of mashing metals. Kryten flicked the unit off, hauled out the flattened mess of components, and tossed them in the bin. 'He's had that coming for a long time,' he said, and stamped his foot into the bin.

  'Goodness me,' said Rimmer, 'surely there was a non-violent solution to your differences with the Toaster. Why on earth didn't you try relationship counselling?'

  Lister clubbed himself on the forehead with his baseball bat. 'Listen, you bunch of tarts: it's clobbering time. There's a body bag out there with that scudball's name on it, and I'm doing up the zip. Anyone who gets in my way gets a napalm enema.'

  The Cat looked up from his bin. 'I think everybody's right, except me, so just forget I spoke, huh?'

  Rimmer got to his feet. 'Er, I think we're all beginning to lose sight of the real issue here, which is what are we going to call ourselves?' He paused for suggestions. None came. 'I think it comes down to a choice between "The League Against Salivating Monsters”, or, my own personal preference, which is the "Committee for the Liberation and Integration of Terrifying Organisms, and their Rehabilitation Into Society”.' He chewed his lip. 'Just one drawback with that - the abbreviation is Clitoris.'

  'It needs killing.' Lister started rubbing some burnt cork over his face. 'If that means I have to sacrifice my life in some stupid, pointless way, then all the better.'

  Kryten nodded. 'Yes. Why not? Even if it doesn't work, it'll still be a laugh.'

  'Right, so let's cut all of this business,' Lister mimed a yacking mouth with his hand, 'and get on with it. Last one alive's a wet ponce,' he growled. 'Who's with me?'

  Rimmer followed him to the hatchway. 'Well, the skutters won't have the protest posters ready till Thursday, but sometimes, I suppose, one just has to act spontaneously. OK, people - let's go.'

  'Hey - I'm coming too,' the Cat staggered behind them. 'Maybe I can bum some money off it.'

  Kryten took up the tail. Maybe if he handed the others over as hostages, the beast would let him go. He hoisted his bazookoid to waist level, and held the others in his field of fire. 'Move it, suckers.'

  EIGHTEEN

  It wasn't nearly as difficult as they expected, tracking down the polymorph - it had dined in rapid succession on a variety of emotions far richer than it was used to, and they found it lying bloated and half-asleep back down in the cargo bay.

  It would have been easy to kill it then, as it lay, almost shapeless, a pulsating grey-green mush. But they couldn't agree on tactics.

  The Cat wanted to throw himself on the creature's mercy. Lister wanted to strangle the mutant to death, as soon as anyone could locate its neck. Rimmer suggested they might offer it a number of concessions, including mutant creche facilities, a chameleonic lifeform helpline and free travel passes for all slimebeasts; while Kryten refused to join in the discussion, and simply walked up and down one of the wide cargo aisles, happily and noisily evacuating his waste fumes, a practice Mechanoids normally perform in private.

  As they stood over the slumbering polymorph, consumed by their pointless bickering, gradually the beast lumbered to awareness. Its primitive brain screamed for survival, and it was forced into a change. It scoured their minds for a shape to protect itself, a form that would be invulnerable while it regained its energy.

  And it found one.

  Before their eyes, the mound of blubber turned in on itself and rose up into the air, looming above their heads.

  The polymorph turned into a tall, green, wrought-iron lamp post.

  'Now, what do we do?' Lister nutted the post. 'How d'you fight a lamp post?'

  'Hey,' Rimmer held up a conciliatory hand, 'just because it's a lamp post doesn't mean it hasn't got feelings. Isn't that right, big feller?' he said to the lamp post.

  Kryten tried ripping off a volley of fire from his bazookoid. When the smoke finally cleared, the lamp post was scorched and a little blackened, but otherwise perfectly intact. 'Now what?'

  'We just have to wait,' Lister snarled, 'until it turns into something we can kill.'

  So they waited.

  ***

  Two hours passed.

  Two hours while the polymorph regained its strength, regained its energy.

  'To hell with this,' said Kryten, finally. 'I'm going to loot the shops in the ship's shopping mall.' But as he made to leave there was a sickening squelching noise, and the lamp post began turning in on itself.

  NINETEEN

  So, how did he die?

  The three surviving crew members would ask themselves the same questions over and over again during the weeks that followed.

  Whose fault was it? Was there anything anyone could have done?

  And the truth was: they would never know for sure.

  He was dead, and that was the cold, hard fact.

  There was no going back.

  Now, they were three.

  TWENTY

  Lister charged the metamorphosing mass, trying to obliterate the beast before it completed its change. A tentacle whipped out of the blubber and tossed him effortlessly down the aisle. He smashed into a pile of crates, and lay, unconscious, in the timber rubble.

  The other three fled down the corridor of packing cases, Kryten using the uncomplaining Cat as a shield.

  The creature rose, shrieking, to become the mucus-pulsing, demonic beast of Lister's fear.

  The Cat caught hold of Lister's collar, and Kryten dragged the two of them down the aisle. Kryten thumped down the bar on the emergency door with his hip, and they all fell backwards through it and began tumbling down a metal spiral staircase. They rolled out on to a white tiled floor, and found themselves in the pump room of the air-conditioning complex on the engineering deck.

  Rimmer scampered down the staircase behind them, his eyes alight with fear.

  They dragged themselves to their feet, and Kryten scoured the room for an exit.

  There were no doors, or hatches.

  They were at the very bottom of the ship.

  Suddenly, iron girders and metal tiles began to rain down from the ceiling, and with a splintering of steel, the polymorph dropped into the pump room.

  Its blac
k lips rolled back, exposing its glistening teeth, and it roared in demonic triumph.

  Untempered by guilt, Kryten's heightened instinct for self-preservation overrode his fear. It didn't make sense - there had to be another way out; there was no room on the ship that had only one exit. There had to be a second door, or an airlock, or something.

  He scanned the room again. Against the back wall was a disused pump unit, lying on its side. Kryten edged back towards it and dragged it away from the wall.

  Behind it was an old service lift.

  He jabbed the call button and heard the crashing of the gears as the motor ground into action, and the lift car begin its creaking descent from perhaps twenty floors above.

  A tentacle whiplashed out and coiled around Kryten's neck, hoisting him into the air as the lift juddered to a halt, and the doors sushed open.

  Two blue shimmering balls hovered around the lift car. They spun end over end in tiny, menacing circles, before they shot out into the pump room. They streaked round the chamber before their tracking computers locked on to the hottest object in the room, and screeched down towards the target.

  The polymorph simply disappeared. The short silence that followed the blast was broken by the sickening splatter of mucal debris and smouldering fragments of endoskeleton as the dead mutant's remains obeyed Newton.

  Suddenly a swirling wind whipped all the papers in the pump room into a spiralling tornado. Then the wind divided into four frenzied twisters and blasted into each of the crew.

  They each staggered back, filled by an energy and a force they had never experienced before.

  When Kryten groped his way upright, he was whole again. His guilt had returned. 'How can you ever forgive me?' he moaned, wretchedly. 'Naturally, I'll commit suicide immediately.' He placed the muzzle of the bazookoid into his lipless mouth.

  The Cat batted it away. 'Chill it, Buddy,' he said. 'We all did things back there we weren't proud of. Look at me.' He stood there in his ragged, stinking clothes, his hair matted and mangled. 'If I don't get a bath in the next thirty seconds, I'm going to have to resign my post as Most Handsome Guy on this ship.'

  'The Toaster,' Kryten bleated, 'what did I do to the Toaster?'

  'Lister?' Rimmer crouched over Lister's immobile form. 'Lister?' he called again.

  Kryten hurried over and knelt by his side. He looked down at Lister's grey face.

  'Is he OK?'

  'He's had a heart attack.'

  Kryten gently rolled Lister's head to one side, and felt the side of his neck for a pulse.

  'Is he OK?' Rimmer said again.

  Kryten reached forward and his open palm closed Lister's eyes.

  Part Four

  The end, and after

  ONE

  The funeral of the last remaining member of the human race was neither a solemn nor a sombre affair. Quite the opposite. Lister's favourite dance track, 'Born to Brutalize' thumped out of his old wax-blaster with such force it shook the coffin. Kryten, Rimmer and the Cat stood around the metal casket, wearing green Day-glo Deely-boppers, battery-propelled revolving bow-ties and yellow fishing waders, precisely as Lister had requested in his Last Will and Testament.

  Rimmer had been present that drunken night Lister had decided to make a will. He'd scrawled his last wishes on a pair of his old boxers in red, indelible ink, and Rimmer ensured they followed the instructions to the last misspelt letter.

  The Cat gently placed a sealed foil tray of chicken vindaloo by Lister's feet, followed by two spicy poppadoms and an onion salad. Kryten shuffled along behind him, and placed three six-packs of Leopard lager in the coffin, together with Lister's one and only photograph of Kristine Kochanski.

  As 'Born to Brutalize' reached its climactic nuclear guitar solo, they sealed the casket lid and fired the coffin off into space.

  ' 'Bye, man,' said Rimmer quietly, and the three of them turned and shuffled sadly out of the waste-disposal bay.

  ***

  Kryten busied himself setting the table for the wake. None of them felt much like drinking, but Lister had insisted they each consume an entire bottle of Cinzano Bianco. The menu was even more daunting: a triple fried-egg sandwich with chilli sauce and chutney, Lister's favourite snack.

  'I suppose someone should tell Holly,' said Rimmer.

  The Cat nodded.

  Rimmer slouched off to the Drive room.

  'On,' said Rimmer, and Holly's pixelized face materialized on to the screen. 'Sorry to bother you, Hoi, but we've got some bad news.' He gazed down at the floor. 'It's Lister,' he said, eventually. 'He's dead.'

  Holly nodded.

  'I thought you'd want to know.'

  'Yes.' Holly paused for two of his valuable remaining seconds. 'How?'

  'Heart attack.' Rimmer sketched in the details.

  Holly listened, and when Rimmer had finished, he simply said 'Oh,' and switched himself off.

  Rimmer had passed under the Drive-room exit hatch and was half-way down the corridor before the noise started.

  Printers printing.

  He wheeled round and walked back into the Drive room.

  Every single printer was churning out ream after ream of calculations and instructions.

  Rimmer stood in the hatchway and his face yielded to a grin, which, in turn gave way to laughter. Not his normal hollow braying empty laughter, this was an altogether different noise. This was a noise his vocal cords had never been called on to make before.

  It was the laughter of joy.

  ***

  Kryten and the Cat were in the sleeping quarters, sifting through a stack of old photographs, when Rimmer poked his red face through the hatchway and said, breathlessly: 'Quick! Come on!' then vanished. By the time the Cat had sauntered over to the hatchway, Rimmer was two hundred and fifty yards down the corridor and still accelerating. They started after him.

  Rimmer bounded down the emergency staircase four steps at a time, and carried on down the ship without a break, for thirty-two floors. He was moving so fast that several times even the Cat thought he'd lost him.

  Finally Rimmer emerged on the shuttle deck, and streaked across the lined runway towards White Giant. By the time Kryten and the Cat hit the shuttle bay, Rimmer was high-stepping up the ship's embarkation ramp. He disappeared inside.

  Seconds later the retros blasted into the ground, and the Cat and Kryten had to complete the last part of the journey through blinding, billowing white smoke.

  They leapt on to the hovering embarkation ramp, and ran along its length as it began to retract into the craft. They stumbled inside, coughing and tear-blind, as the hatch slammed closed. They staggered towards the cockpit over skutters sorting through reams of computer print-out, as the transport craft's autopilot taxied it down the runway and out into space.

  They listed into the cockpit section, where Rimmer stood impatiently jiggling his right leg, and flopped into the two Drive seats.

  'What's happening, Buddy?'

  'Where are we going?'

  Rimmer's left arm snaked out, and pointed through the cockpit's viewscreen at a glimmering brown dot in the distance. 'Follow that coffin.'

  The Cat flipped the controls to manual, and pressed the reheat button.

  White Giant burned across the blackness in pursuit of the slow-spinning casket.

  TWO

  Nothing.

  At first, there was nothing.

  Then.

  Then there was something.

  It was a light. A tiny shard of brilliance that shocked him with its suddenness.

  Then.

  Then there was nothing again.

  There was no way of telling how long it lasted: nothing has no time.

  Then the light again. And the light grew, and across the face of the light, dark shapes began to move.

  He watched as the shapes became faces. Faces he didn't know. They were concerned faces; gentle, kindly. They made him feel safe.

  Then he lost consciousness. But unconsciousness wasn't like not
hing, it was studded with dreams. He dreamed of a garden, pungent with jasmine. He knew the garden. He knew it very well. But he had no idea where or when he knew it from.

  Then pain.

  Something imploded in his chest. He lurched upright, and there was a second implosion, and the pain was gone.

  He drifted back off to sleep.

  When he awoke, it was dusk. He was in a bed, with clean white cotton sheets tightly tucked into the sides. There was a green screen around the bed, so the rest of the room was obscured from him. By the bedside, on a cabinet, there was a huge vase full of jasmine, with some kind of greeting card nestling among the yellow flowers. His left arm, for some reason, felt weak and helpless, so he reached up with his right, and plucked the card from its place.

  In the half-light his old eyes couldn't focus on the inscription. He replaced the card and, overcome with weariness, slid back into sleep.

  When he woke again, he was moving. Fluorescent lights streaked past above him. He tried to raise his head, but a friendly hand patted it down again, as the hospital trolley raced along the white-tiled corridor. They burst through three sets of overlapping rubber doors, and suddenly they were outside in the biting wind of the cold winter air.

  There was a jerk, and the stretcher was hoisted off the trolley. There was a commotion - people were shouting things he didn't understand, and all the time, the pain in his chest was getting worse. Two men ran with his stretcher and slid him into the back of a waiting ambulance. The doors slammed closed, and the ambulance screeched off.

  'Where am I?' An oxygen mask loomed over him, and once again, he blacked out.

  He came to as the ambulance doors swung open, and the same two men hauled his stretcher out of the vehicle, and set it down on a pavement, in the middle of a circle of people.