Better Than Life
Page 20
'What's happening?' he bleated pathetically. Gingerly, the two men eased him off the stretcher and placed him on the cold hard pavement.
One of them packed up the stretcher and dashed back with it to the ambulance, while the other twisted his leg so it folded under his body, then lifted up his head and slid his arm underneath it. The pain was unbearable, now.
He tilted his head weakly, and watched as the two men jumped into the ambulance, and reversed off into the busy traffic. He lay on his back, peripherally aware of the circle of onlookers. One of them, a woman, was talking, but she sounded vague and distant, and he couldn't make it out.
One by one the onlookers began to drift away, until, eventually, he was totally alone, lying in his unnatural pose on the pavement.
The pain reached a crescendo, and imploded in his chest. He jumped to his feet, staggered along a shop window, regained his balance, and started to walk slowly down the street.
The worst of the pain had subsided, just a sharp ache in his left arm remained, and his breathing was beginning to come more easily.
Half-dazed, he shuffled along the street, found a bench and sat down. After ten minutes, he didn't feel too badly at all and decided to go for a coffee.
He found a cafe just a few shops down, and sat at one of the red plastic tables. Almost immediately, a waitress came over and set down a plate of money. Then she smiled at him, pleasantly and scurried off.
Soon after, she returned with some crockery: a cup, a saucer, and a plate. She put them on his table and went off to serve someone else.
The cup was dirty. It had a coffee ring around the top, and there was some half-dissolved sugar in the bottom. The plate was dirty, too. It was covered in crumbs, and in the middle there was a huge blob of mayonnaise.
He held up his hand to call back the waitress, but suddenly, he realized he was going to be sick. Liquid gushed up his throat, but he managed to catch it in the coffee cup.
But he hadn't been sick. He looked into the cup - it was half full of coffee. Then he was filled with panic again. This time, he definitely was going to be sick. He reached up to his mouth, and regurgitated a perfectly shaped triangular tuna and mayonnaise sandwich. Three other quarters followed in fast succession, along with a sliver of cucumber, a slice of tomato and a small portion of watercress.
'Help,' he said, quietly. His throat gurgled again, and he filled the coffee cup to the top.
He smelled the cup. It was coffee. Fresh. Steam was coming off it. He dipped his teaspoon in and swirled it around. When he brought the spoon out again, it was full of sugar. He tipped it into the sugar bowl, and looked around the cafe.
A large woman with two unruly children was mid-way through regurgitating an enormous chocolate eclair. On the next table, a man was jabbing a fork into his mouth, and pulling out french fries.
He looked over to the waitress, and watched as she flipped open the pedal bin, took out a handful of rib-bones, and arranged them on a large white plate. Then she served the bones to two teenage boys sitting at the counter.
He watched as the boys raised the bones to their mouths and began to fill them with meat.
The waitress swept over to his table and took away his sandwich and his coffee. She held the cup under a cappuccino machine, which sucked the liquid noisily up into its metal cylinder. Then she opened the sandwich, spooned the tuna and mayonnaise filling into a bowl, effortlessly scraped the bread clean of butter, and returned the bread to a large, uncut loaf.
He left the cafe, deciding he needed some fresh air.
All the traffic was going backwards.
What was this place? What was he doing here?
Almost every aspect of the city was strange and unfamiliar. He tramped around for twenty minutes, looking for a landmark, something he might recognize, but it was hopeless.
When he next looked around, he found he'd wandered off the main street, and was in a dimly lit alley. He felt panicked, and alone. Suddenly he heard urgent footsteps coming towards him from behind. Before he could turn, the man was on him, pressing him up against a wall, and holding a short silver knife against his throat.
Deftly the mugger fastened a watch around the old man's wrist, then slipped a wallet into the inside pocket of the old man's coat.
He watched bemused as the mugger flipped closed the blade of his knife, smiled with false charm and raced off down the alley.
'Help,' the old man said quietly. 'What's happening to me?'
He opened the wallet and looked inside. Astonishingly, his own photograph was in one of the credit card compartments. There was a driving licence, too. The name on the licence was: 'Retsil Divad'.
It took the old man a good ten minute's to realize the name was his.
Because, like everything else in this crazy place, his name was backwards.
THREE
Four thousand dull gunmetal-grey canisters lay stacked in neat ranks in the scoop room of White Giant's cargo section.
'Here's some more,' said Kryten, as a fresh haul of canisters clattered down the chute. He read the numbers, and then one by one tossed them to the Cat, who began to pile them alongside the others.
'Has anyone even the vaguest, remotest idea what it is we're doing here?' asked Rimmer.
The Cat and Kryten grunted verbal shrugs. The truth was, none of them even pretended to begin to understand the list of instructions, data, formulae and coordinates Holly had left them. Not even the newly repaired Toaster claimed to understand this one. Although it was fair to say it wasn't in tip-top peak condition, despite the many hours Kryten had spent panel-beating its chrome cover, and reconstructing its mashed circuitry. Kryten wasn't exactly an expert when it came to Artificial Intelligence, and the Toaster wasn't all it might be in the sanity department.
In fact, for some reason, the Toaster now thought it was a moose.
It bellowed loudly from time to time, and occasionally threatened to charge them with its huge antlers, but otherwise it was harmless.
More canisters scuttled down the chute, and once again Kryten studied the numbers. 'Got it!' he squealed with delight, and clapped his hands.
The Cat began rotating his body from side to side, and pumping his hands so they circled over each other in front of his chest. 'Yes, yes, ye-ess!'
'Excellent!' grinned Rimmer.
'Mahooooooo!' bellowed the Toaster.
It had been easy enough collecting Lister's coffin and returning it to a stasis booth on Red Dwarf, but the second instruction was a little more bizarre. They had to locate a swarm of canisters floating through space at a certain set of coordinates, and bring aboard the one numbered '1121'. Holly had failed to mention there would be something in the region of ten thousand of these canisters, and the search had taken them the best part of five weeks.
'What next?' asked Rimmer, as he craned over Kryten's shoulder, trying to read the indecipherable machine code.
'I'm supposed to treat the canister; bombard it with X-rays, gamma rays - all kinds of stuff.'
'Then what?'
Kryten consulted Holly's sheet again. 'We take Lister's body on a little trip.'
'Where?'
'Through the Black Hole. Into the omni-zone. To a particular planet in Universe 3. Apparently, we're to bury him there.'
'Universe 3? What's so special about Universe 3?'
'Well, apart from the fact that it's almost a mirror image of our own universe, except that time moves backwards there,' Kryten said, 'there's nothing very special about it at all.'
The Cat shook the canister. 'What's this got to do with anything? What's in it?'
'I don't know,' Kryten flipped through the instructions. 'Maybe some chemical we have to use later.'
'I don't think so,' Rimmer tried to suffocate a smirk. 'I've got a pretty good idea what is in there, and I don't think you'll find it's a chemical.'
He raised an enigmatic eyebrow, and walked back to the cockpit, whistling happily.
FOUR
So time w
as running backwards. It had taken Lister a while to figure it out, but if he reversed the events of the day, it all seemed to come together. He'd walked down a dark alley, where a mugger had stolen his watch and his wallet. In a daze, he'd stumbled through the streets, until he came across a cafe where he'd had a coffee and something to eat to calm his nerves. Obviously it hadn't worked, because he'd gone out into the street, suffered a heart attack, and been rushed to hospital. After a few hours slipping in and out of consciousness, he'd suffered a second heart attack and died.
Except, of course, it had all happened backwards.
He looked at the address on his driving licence. A cab screeched up backwards beside him. He leaned in the window, accepted the fare and the tip from the cabbie and climbed in. Lister was about to attempt to read out the backwards address on his licence when the cab pulled off and began reversing through the streets at high speed.
The driver knew where he was going, which, when Lister thought about it, made some kind of sense. If everything was backwards, presumably, when they reached their destination, Lister would have to tell the driver where he picked him up.
His brain ached.
Suddenly, the cab stopped, caught up in traffic. Lister leant out of the window to see what was causing the jam. Three fire engines pulled up outside a ruined building. As the firemen uncoiled their hoses, the ruins began to smoulder. The hoses sucked giant jets of water out of the smoking rubble, and within minutes the ruins were a flaming orange inferno. When the blaze had reached its peak, the firemen put away their hoses and drove off with sirens blaring. The traffic began to shuffle past the fire. By the time Lister's cab had passed it, the fire was almost out. Where the ruins had been, there now stood a chic, new-looking office block.
Lister shook his head, and ducked back into the cab. There was a newspaper jammed down the side of the bench seat. He dug it out, and opened it out to the front page. Under the headline was a large photo of the blaze he'd just witnessed. This wasn't helping his brain-ache. Finally, he realized it must be an old newspaper, from the previous morning. In the backwards reality, obviously, news was reported before it happened.
A thought struck him, and he turned to the seirautibo column. And there he was: Retsil Divad. It took him a while to translate the accompanying text: 'David Lister, aged 61, joyfully brought to life on Thursday, the 21st, at eleven-thirty p.m. (see personal column).'
Lister feverishly ripped through the pages, and found the personal column. He traced his finger down the entries, and stopped when he found one that was printed forwards.
'Dave Lister,' it said. 'Sure everything will become clear to you. This was the only way. Obviously, can't be with you - everyone would get younger. Will pick you up in thirty-six years. Be at Niagara Falls, by the souvenir shop, at noon precisely. See you then. Good luck, from the Red Dwarf crew.'
They'd done it again. They'd marooned him in some insane part of the universe, expecting him to cope alone for the best part of forty years.
To do that once was bad enough. To do it twice - twice in consecutive lifetimes - that was sheer bad manners.
Lister was a social animal. He hated being alone. Always had done.
He looked out of the cab window.
It was beginning to rain.
There should have been a saxophone playing a wistful, melancholy blues number.
The rain swirled up from the wet pavements and hurled itself into the scowling clouds above.
Finally, the cab screeched to a start outside the address on the driving licence. He was home, whatever that meant. The taxi door flung itself open, and Lister climbed out.
He took the key from his wallet, walked up the path to the house and let himself in.
It was a big house. Whatever he was destined to do for a living, it looked like he was destined to do it pretty successfully. He walked into the first reception room. Framed photographs jostled for position on the old stone mantelpiece.
This was his life - the life he was about to lead in this strange reality in which he was an interloper.
Something in one of the photographs caught his eye, and he scrutinized the others more closely.
Impossible.
It just wasn't possible. Not even with an IQ of twelve thousand.
But the evidence was there, in the photographs. Somehow, Holly had done it.
But how?
Lister would have to wait thirty-six years to find out the answer.
He turned and watched the lace curtains fluttering in the breeze through the open french windows.
He crossed the room and stepped out into the garden.
At the end of the lawn an old woman in a wide-brimmed sun hat was clipping away at the jasmine borders. She looked up and saw him, and her face crinkled into her famous pinball smile.
Thirty-six years. They would grow young together. They had a whole new past to look forward to.
The old man's face crinkled into a smile of its own, and he started shuffling down the garden towards her.
Table of Contents
Part One
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
Part Two
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
Part Three
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
Part Four
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR