Ffffzzz ... 'I'm a natural,' sighed the Cat, patting his pompadour in the rear-view mirror. 'Load me up. I have another snooze break due in one minute precisely.'
TWENTY-NINE
Rimmer sat in the hard metal chair at the hard metal table, reading the strategic account of the battle of Borodino, the critical battle in Napoleon's abortive advance on Moscow. He was taking full advantage of the fifteen minute rest and recreation period at the end of another exhausting day.
Lister's uranium party had been away now for three weeks, a full week over schedule. After the accident which smashed Nova 5 into three pieces,. the two Rimmers had gone into overdrive. Fifteen of the eighty-four skutters had exploded due to overwork. But at least Nova 5 had been welded together so that it now lay in the original two pieces it had been before Lister left. After three weeks of back-breaking, skutter-blowing toil, they were finally back where they'd started.
Rimmer looked up at his double, who was sitting in the quarters' one, easy chair, bathed in the pink glow of the student's study lamp, studying the rude paintings of Renaissance women in their book on Florentine art. When he'd drunk in enough of one painting he nodded at a skutter, who turned the page.
It was funny, the original Rimmer thought, staring at his duplicate. He'd never realised before how big his Adam's apple appeared in profile, or how small and triangular his chin was; he'd never been aware that his nostrils flared so ludicrously, or that his nose twitched like a dormouse's whenever he was concentrating. It was a stupid-looking face really.
As he watched, his double slipped a hand into his pocket, felt around and, pretending to cough, surreptitiously popped a hologramatic mint into his mouth.
Pathetic. Deeply, deeply pathetic, thought Rimmer. They're computer-simulated mints. There's no limit to their number. So why doesn't he offer me one?
Absently he slipped his chin below the table line and sucked a hologramatic boiled sweet from the line of three on his knee. Because he's mean, he thought, sucking silently; he's pathologically mean.
The double looked up and gave Rimmer a watery halfsmile, forcing him to return to his Napoleonic diaries. The duplicate wondered idly if Rimmer knew he was beginning to lose his hair on the back of his crown, and if he knew how small and triangular his chin looked from this angle, above that megalithic Adam's apple, which bobbed up and down ludicrously, like a hamster caught in a garden hose. And why did he never offer him one of his boiled sweets? Why, instead, did he go the rough that absurd charade of ducking below the table and sucking them off his knee? He was mean, that was the top and bottom of it. Pathologically so.
Rimmer looked up again and noticed his double watching him. 'Good book?' he asked.
'Mmmm?' said the double, quickly swallowing his mint. 'Yes, yes. Florentine art.'
Rimmer smirked.
'What's funny?'
'Nothing,' said Rimmer, shaking his head.
'No, tell me. What is it?'
'You're looking at the rude pictures of Renaissance women. I just think it's funny.'
The double snorted through his familiar, lying halfsmile. 'No, I'm not. I just happen to be intrigued by sixteenth century art. True, there are several saucy portrayals of the Madonna sans fig leaf, as it were. But I don't particularly dwell on them.'
'Yes, you do. You're a freak for Renaissance bazongas. And the pair on page 78 in particular.'
An anger tic tugged at the double's top lip. 'Do you really think I'm the sort of pathetic, sad, weasly kind of person who could get erotically aroused by looking at paintings of matronly breasts?'
'I do it, so you must do it,' Rimmer said brightly. 'It's just, obviously, I've never seen it from the outside before. And although it is sad, pathetic and weasly, I grant you, it's also tremendously amusing. Especially the way you keep on getting the skutter to turn back to page 78 as if you've forgotten something.'
'I don't have to sit here and take this.'
'Yes. That's a good idea. Why don't you stand up and let me have a go on that chair?'
'Ohhhh -'the double smiled and nodded -'that's what this is all about.'
'It's just it's my favourite chair, Rimmer said petulantly, and you always seem to hog it.'
'It's my favourite chair too,' protested the duplicate.
'I used to be able to sit on it all the time when I was with Lister. Now I'm with you, I'm relegated to this hard metal chair, next to this hard metal table.
And you get the student's pink light.'
'Well, the student's pink light just happens to be next to the comfy chair.'
'Which is why once in a while you might offer to let me sit there.'
'Well, of all the stupid things to argue about, honestly. You're tired - I think you must be working too hard.'
'I'm not working too hard,' Rimmer hissed; 'I can take it.
'Hey - it's no disgrace to need more than two-and-a-half hours' sleep. True, a lot of the greatest people in history survived on three hours or under, but it doesn't necessarily mean you're a complete failure if you need twelve or thirteen.'
'I don't need twelve or thirteen.'
'Then why are you getting so ratty?'
'I'm not getting ratty,' Rimmer whined.
'Why do you keep putting me down, then?'
A bitter silence descended on the room. The thing that Rimmer hated more than anything was being put down. Lister did it to him, the Cat did it to him, and now he was doing it to himself. Rimmer began to regret his outburst. He didn't like to see his other self upset, and he even contemplated briefly going up to him and giving him a manly embrace. But in a moment of homosexual panic, he thought his double might get the wrong idea. Not that he would, of course, because he was him and he knew for a fact that he wasn't that way sexually tilted; so obviously his double wasn't and obviously his double would know that he wasn't either, and it was simply a manly embrace, meant in a sort of mano a mano kind of way ... Perhaps he was tired. He certainly had good reason. He'd only had ten hours' sleep in the last twenty-one days. He was practically hallucinating with fatigue.
And whose fault was that? His double's. Rimmer didn't know how it had started, but somehow they'd got involved in a kind of 'tougher-than-you' game. Every time Rimmer suggested a schedule that was reasonably testing, his double would have to top it. And Rimmer could hardly let him get away with that, so he'd suggest something even more difficult, and then his duplicate would top that too!
Now, after twenty-one days of this. they were down to one-and-a-half hours' sleep a night. All he needed was a lie-in. Two or three days in bed and he'd be his old self again. It made sense! They'd blown up the skutters and broken the ship. If they'd spent the last three weeks in bed doing absolutely nothing at all, they'd be in exactly the same position as they were in now. He decided to suggest they take a couple of days off. Who cared if his copy saw it as a sign of weakness? He'd suggest it anyway.
'I was thinking,' he said aloud, about tomorrow's getting up time.'
'So was l,' said his double. 'How about tomorrow we only have one hour fifteen minutes?'
'How about one hour?' Rimmer found himself saying automatically.
'No, better still,' said his double, 'forty-five minutes.'
Rimmer shut up, and wished he'd never spoken.
THIRTY
Blue Midget headed at breakneck speed towards the metal wall of Red Dwarf's hull. just before impact it flattened out and hugged the body of the ship, before twisting into a loop the-loop and zipping smoothly in through the open doors of the cargo bay. It twisted side over side like a torpedo before flipping upright and coming to rest on the landing pad.
Lister eyeballed the Cat. 'That's the last time you drive,' he said.
They clambered down the boarding steps and stood on the deck of the cargo bay.
There before them Nova 5 lay in one gleaming whole. Repaired, finished and space-worthy. Lister was stunned. True, they had been away almost three months, collecting enough thorium 232, for the jag home, but the
Rimmers had done it!
They'd actually done a job, and not screwed it up.
It was only at a second glance that Lister became aware of the burnt-out husks of eighty-or-so exploded skutters surrounding the ship. From Nova 5's hatchway a lone skutter slowly emerged with a welding laser in its tired claw, and made its way unsteadily down the boarding ramp and onto the cargo bay floor. It glided painfully across the deck, emitting a dangerous whining sound, and arrived in front of Lister, Kryten and the Cat. It tilted its head like a quizzical dog, and exploded in an orange flare.
***
The three of them clumped noisily down the gantry steps on to the habitation deck, and were halfway to the sleeping quarters when they heard the voices.
'Shhh!' Lister held up his hand.
Faintly at first, then gradually increasing in clarity, the sound of a heated argument filtered down the corridor.
'What did you call me?'
'I said you were a bonehead, Bonehead!' 'I'm a what?'
'It's no wonder Father despised you.' 'I was his favourite.'
'His favourite boneheady wimpy wet!' 'You filthy, smegging liar!'
'Everyone hated you. Even Mother.' 'Pardon?'
'You're a hideous emotional cripple, and you know it.' 'Shut up!' , 'What other kind of man goes to android brothels, and pays to sleep with robots?'
'THAT WASN'T ME!!!!'
'Of course it was you - I'm you. I know.' 'Shut UP!!'
'You've always been afraid of women, haven't you?' 'Shut UP!!!'
The argument had begun at eight o'clock, shortly after supper. It was now five hours later, and it was showing no signs of abating. Neither of them could remember why it had begun or, indeed. what it was about. They just knew they disagreed with one another. It was all-out verbal warfare. They'd gone beyond the snide sniping stage; they'd gone past the quasi-reasonable stage, when each pretended to put his case coolly and logically, and would begin with phrases such as: 'What I'm saying is ...', 'The point I'm making is ...', and prevent the other from speaking with the perennial: 'If you'd just let me finish ...' They had made exactly the same points in a variety of different ways for nearly two hours, before tiredness crept in and the argument turned into a nuclear war.
Rimmer's double had launched the first nuke: the bonehead remark. Bonehead.
Rimmer's nickname at school. He was really quite irrationally sensitive about it. The word yanked him back to the unhappy school-yards; reminded him of the mindless taunts of his cruel peers, of the dreadful mornings when he ached to be ill so he wouldn't have to go on the green school shuttle and have That Word daubed on his blazer in yellow chalk. He was branded. It was a brand that might fade, but would never completely disappear. He might be eighty years old, and successful as hell, but if he bumped into an old classmate he would still be Bonehead.
Before the double launched the bonehead nuke, Rimmer was unquestionably on top in the argument. The double had said something stupid, and Rimmer had been at the stage of saying: 'Give me an example of that,' knowing full well there were no examples to give. He was strutting up and down in his pyjamas, arms folded, a man in control, a man in command, when the bonehead nuke looped across without warning and blew him away.
'Pardon me, Bonehead.'
Rimmer actually physically staggered. Their arguments had never escalated this far before. They'd gone up to Def Comm Three, but never past it. Rimmer had to employ the time-honoured device of pretending not to have heard him properly, while his psyche's lone bugler sounded muster, and his tattered thoughts tried to regroup and launch an offensive.
But his double had capitalised on Rimmer's temporary silence by immediately launching three follow-up nukes in quick succession. The one about his Father hating him. KAB00M! The one about him being a hideous emotional cripple. KAB00M! And the one about him being afraid of women. KABABABOOM!
Rimmer was about to use a nuke of his own. His left leg had gone into spasm caused by rage. His eyes were wide and crazed. And he didn't care any more. He was going to use the nuke. The nuke-to end all nukes. The total annihilation device. When his double used it instead.
'Oh, shut up,' the duplicate sneered, 'Mr Gazpacho!'
Rimmer stood, his mouth half-open, swaying dizzily. He felt as if someone had sucked out his insides with a vacuum cleaner.
'Mr What?' he halfsmiled in disbelief. 'Mr What??'
'I said: "Mr Gazpacho," DEAFIE.'
'That is the most obscenely hurtful thing anyone has ever said ...'
'I know,' the double grinned evilly.
Rimmer's hatchway slid open.
'That's the straw that broke the dromedary!' Rimmer screamed back at his double.
Then he turned and padded into the corridor where Lister, Kryten and the Cat were standing.
'Ah, Lister. You're back,' he said quietly.
'Everything all right, is it?' Lister asked.
'For sure,' Rimmer smiled. 'Absolutely.'
'No problems, then?'
'Nope.'
'Everything's A-OK?'
'Yup! Things couldn't really be much hunky-dorier.'
'It's just - we heard raised voices.'
Rimmer laughed. 'That's quite an amusing thought, isn't it? Having a blazing row with yourself'
From the sleeping quarters the double's voice screamed: 'Can you shut the smeg up, Rimmer! Some of us are trying to sleep!'
'I mean,' Rimmer continued, ignoring the outburst, 'obviously we have the odd disagreement. It's like brothers, I mean ... a little tiff, an exchange of views, but nothing malicious. Nothing with any side to it.'
The double screeched: 'Shut up, you dead git!'
Rimmer smiled at Lister and, perfectly calm, he said: 'Excuse me -I won't be a second.'
He walked slowly down the corridor, paused outside the hatchway, and bellowed at maximum volume: 'Stop your foul whining, you filthy piece of distended rectum!'
Lister, Kryten and the Cat shuffled uncomfortably and examined the floor.
'Look, it's pointless concealing it any longer,' said Rimmer, walking back towards them. 'My duplicate and I ... we've had a bit of a major tiff. I don't know how it started but, obviously, it goes without saying: it was his fault.'
THIRTY-ONE
Lister's empty supper plate lay on the floor. Only the red, oily streaks of Bangalore Phall and half of his seventh poppadom, which he couldn't quite manage, bore evidence that he'd had a five-course Indian banquet for one.
Earth!
As he lay on his bunk, cuddling his eighth can of Leopard lager, Jimmy Stewart was asking the townfolk not to withdraw their money from the Bailey Building And Loan Company on the sleeping quarters' vid screen.
Earth!
He was watching Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, his all-time favourite movie, but couldn't concentrate, even though it was his favourite scene. The Wall Street panic scene. The scene where Jimmy Stewart is trying to calm the hysterical mob clamouring to withdraw all their money after the Wall Street crash. But the money isn't there - the money's invested in the people's houses.
Then Jimmy Stewart offers them his honeymoon money - he offers to divide out the two thousand dollars he was going to spend on his honeymoon - to keep them going till the bank opened again on Monday. But the fat guy in the hat steps up to the counter and still demands all his money - two hundred and forty-two dollars - and Stewart has to pay it, and he's begging people just to take what they need.
And then a woman comes up to the counter and says she can manage on twenty dollars. Then up steps old Mrs Davis and asks for only seventeen dollars and fifty cents, which was the point where Lister usually started to blubber, and tears would sting his eyes, and he wouldn't dare look around the room in case anyone was watching him. But not this time.
Earth!
The movie was as great as ever, and he would never get tired of watching it, but he couldn't concentrate on anything because he knew he was finally going back home.
Earth!
He
could taste it.
Nova 5 was fuelled and ready to go. The small band of skutters they'd brought back from the mining expedition were making the final checks and loading supplies. Tomorrow they were leaving. Within weeks Lister would be back on Earth!
Earth!
That septic orb. That dirty, polluted world he loved. He ached for the Brillo pad sting of a breath on a city street. The oh-so-delicious stench of the oily, turdy sea in summer. The grassy parks in spring, festooned with the thrilling vibrant colours of discarded chocolate wrappers and squidgy condoms and squashed soft drink cans. He longed to look up at a winter sky and see again the huge artificial ozone plug which sat above the Earth like an absurd toupee, constructed in his lifetime to repair the damage caused by two generations of people who wanted to flavour their sweat. Earth. It was a dump. It was a sty.
But it was his home, where he belonged, and where he was finally going.
He flicked off the vid and slipped down from his bunk. It was time to tell the Rimmers. It was time to tell them that when they left tomorrow on Nova 5, only one of them could come.
***
Rimmer had been avoiding himself since the argument. He didn't know how to begin a reconciliation conversation.
Things had been said which ... well, things had been said. Hurtful things.
Bitter, unforgivable things which could never be forgotten. Equally, he couldn't just carry on as if nothing had happened. So he spent the day in the reference library, keeping out of everyone's way.
It was 4.30 p.m. when he finally swallowed the bile and slumped reluctantly into his sleeping quarters, looking curiously unkempt. His hair was uncombed and unwashed. A two-day hologramatic growth swathed his normally marble smooth chin.
His uniform was creased and ruffled. He flopped untidily into the metal armchair.
***
His double sat on the bunk, looking moodily out of the viewport window. As Rimmer entered he'd looked round over his shoulder, then turned back without acknowledging him.