He was nauseated. His wife unfaithful! Juanita and Hugo! His hairy-shouldered pool attendant had caressed that fabulous bosom! What would the insurance company say?
His wife had slept with his pool attendant. No wonder the water was never at the right temperature!
Rimmer felt ... numb.
THREE
Lister sat in the red glow of the firelight, looking down at his arms and the messages in ointment on each of them. How was it possible for pain to 'spell out' words? What was it? Was it something inside him? The message on his left arm: 'DYING'. What did that mean? He was dying? The something inside him was dying?
He looked across at his right arm: four letters and a symbol, but he didn't know what they meant. Couldnt be that it was just a coincidence that the pain happened to spell out two messages that happened to be in English on his forearms? Unlikely, but not impossible. After all, some fairly bizarre things had happened since he returned to Earth. Finding Bedford Falls the way he'd always imagined it. Finding someone who was the exact duplicate of Kristine Kochanski. Exact. Down to the pinball smile. Down to the laugh. Down to the tiny mole on her bottom. Who just happened to be a direct descendant of the Third Console Officer he'd had an affair with aboard Red Dwarf three million years ago. Who just happened to fall in love with him almost instantly, and give him twin sons.
And the boys. Both beautiful, both perfectly-formed, never any trouble. They never cried, they never whined; they even changed one another's nappies.
Wasn't that a bit odd? Self-nappy-changing babies? Lister didn't know much about babies, but Krissie had always accepted it as normal behaviour, so he had too.
Also, he didn't know exactly when babies started to walk and talk, but Jim and Bexley were only fifteen months old yet they could play the piano, converse like adults, and even toss a Zero-Gee ball about with him in the back garden.
Previously, he'd never given these things much thought. His life was pretty much perfect. He had everything he wanted, and what was the use in worrying about how lucky he'd been?
The Emporium - that was another peculiar thing. Now he came to think of it, every week he always took fourteen dollars and twenty-five cents. Which, as it happened, was the exact amount he needed to pay for his mortgage, three dollars; food, two dollars; petrol, twenty-five cents; the rent on the shop, a dollar fifty; savings, five dollars; leaving three dollars fifty, which he could give to people in trouble.
He got up and started pacing the threadbare carpet. He didn't like where his thoughts were leading him. How many times had it been Christmas Eve since he arrived at Bedford Falls? Five, six hundred? In fact, wasn't it always Christmas Eve? How was that possible?
Bexley padded down the stairs in his Donald Duck sleepsuit and Goofy slippers.
'Hi, Dad. Jim wants a drink of milk. We've run out - is it OK if I get some?'
Lister looked at his fifteen-month-old son as he struggled into his quilted jump suit. He was big for his age, there was no question. Fifteen months, he could talk and dress himself. He was precocious.
'I'm just going to pop down to Old Man Gower's,' he said, tugging on his wellingtons. 'D'you want anything?'
Lister shook his head. Bexley stood on tiptoe and opened the front door.
Lister heard the model 'A' Ford start up and Bexley roared off into town.
Everyone thought it was funny that Bexley could drive Lister's car. Obviously it was illegal, but Bert, the cop, thought it was funny too. 'He's a better driver than I am,' he used to say; 'why should I stop him?'
Now that was weird. A fifteen-month-old baby driving into town to get some milk for his brother. It was barely believable. Well, it wasn't believable. It was impossible.
Lister looked down at the message on his right arm. Four letters, one symbol. A chill passed through him. He knew what it meant. 'U=BTL'.
He knew what it meant.
FOUR
It was a gloriously warm summer's evening with just enough breeze to make it perfect. The Rimmers were having a party. Arnie and Juanita were entertaining.
And anybody who was anybody, and anybody who was one day going to be anybody, was there.
The four-hundred piece New York Philharmonic Orchestra, flown in specially for the evening, were playing a tribute to James Last. The prima ballerinas from all the European, Ballets were arranged around the roof garden in gilded cages, spinning and pirouetting to entertain the guests.
Five thousand guests in all.
The men in black DJs, and the women in fabulously outrageous ball gowns, mingled among the flocks of pink flamingos Rimmer had hired for the evening.
Rimmer sat in his white dinner suit under the shade of a giant parasol, sipping a glass Of 1799 Château d'Yquem, holding court to only the most famous and influential. A waiter was serving soup from a giant golden tureen. One of the guests, a member of the British Royal family, was complaining that the soup was cold. Rimmer leaned over and whispered discreetly in his ear that it was gazpacho soup, and gazpacho soup was always served cold - it was Spanish.
'Well, I didn't know that,' said the Prince of Wales. Rimmer waved his hand in a desultory fashion to dismiss the poor man's embarrassment.
'Not many people do.'
Rimmer caught sight of the swimming pool, and it plunged him back into his depression. A fluttering started in his stomach. He loved his salute-shaped pool, but he'd never be able to look at it again without thinking of Hugo, the pool attendant. Hugo, the caresser of twenty-million-dollar bosoms. He'd dismissed him, of course, then made a few phone calls. Never again would Hugo be able to use a credit card. Never again would he shop at any Marks & Spencer's branch in the entire solar system. And buying shoes from any of the companies in the Burton group he would find strangely impossible. Getting his haircut anywhere in France would be out of the question. And a certain canned food company beginning with 'H' had guaranteed that a certain individual, also beginning with 'H', would never be sold any of their products in the future.
Never again would the wretched man ever enjoy beans on toast. At least, not really good beans on toast. Only inferior supermarket brands. Not in itself punishment to rival the auto de fes, but Rimmer had barely begun pulling the strings and calling in the favours which would ensure Hugo's life became unbearable.
Rimmer heard Juanita's tinkling laugh and, as he peered through the milling party guests, he caught a tantalizing glimpse as she stood on the Chinese bridge over the pool, dazzling some producer with her wit and beauty. He froze.
She was wearing that outfit! The one he'd expressly forbidden her to wear. The glass brassiere with the live goldfish swimming inside, the thin red belt, and nothing else! Just the diamond high heels and the gold anklet.
A red belt! That's all she was wearing. He shook with rage. She was uncontrollable. Everything was on display! Everything! For all the guests to see.
'But it's so chic!' she'd argued. 'Adrienne created eet especially for me.
You're such a prude.'
The more he'd screamed at her to put some clothes on, the more determined she'd been to wear it. To wear it and humiliate him. Her only gestures to modesty were the two goldfish - one in each bra cup - and they could hardly be relied on to stay in a nipple-covering position all the time. He hated her. But he loved her.
The Brazilian Bombshell.
What could he do? She drove him crazy. But he was stuck with it. The third richest man in the whole of the world had a wife who wore a couple of goldfish at dinner parties.
He tried to rip his eyes away from her and back to the game of RISK he was playing with his three favourite dinner guests. It was Julius's go. With his yellow counters he'd established a foothold in Africa and was poised to throw the dice and attack Southern Europe, where Rimmer's blue counters had their second front. The third player, the Frenchman with the kiss curl, looked on earnestly. If the yellow assault should succeed, he could break out of South America with his red counters and swamp George's green counters, which were ma
ssed in the USA.
Julius shook the dice and rolled three threes. Rimmer rolled two fours. Julius attacked and Rimmer defended, until the yellow hordes had been reduced to only two counters. The Italian rolled his eyes skywards. He was finished, and he knew it.
'Well, Julius, me old fruit,' Rimmer grinned, 'looks like you re a gonner.
Caesar took off his laurel wreath and scratched his balding head. 'I'm going to get a drink!' he stormed, and stalked off to the poolside bar.
'So -' Rimmer turned to his two remaining adversaries -'just Messrs Patton and Bonaparte left in.'
'God damn you, you dirty son of a bitch!' General Patton threw his huge cigar into the pool. 'Throw the dice and get it over with.'
One of the waiters - Rimmer couldn't remember his name - leaned over and whispered discreetly.
'There's a gentleman in the main reception who insists on seeing you, sir.'
'Send him away.'
'He insists, sir.'
'Send him away. I'm busy.'
'He says his name is "Lister", sir. Claims he was your cohort on Red Dwarf.'
***
Lister stood in the mahogany-panelled library, where the man in the penguin suit had finally ushered him. He helped himself to a foot-long Havana cigar, and sat in the huge leather reading chair, his legs crossed on the polished walnut table. The twelve feet high double doors swung open and Rimmer strode in, grinning.
'Listy! Long time no see. I was going to invite you, but ... I didn't really think it was your scene.'
'You've done pretty well for yourself. What are you now, the second richest man in the world?'
'Third,' said Rimmer, modestly. 'Long way to go before I'm second.'
'And married to Juanita Chicata.'
'I'm getting by,' Rimmer nodded. He reached into the drawer behind his desk.
'So, two years. Has it really been two years?'
'Yup.'
'I've missed you. First six months of my marriage I couldn't get to sleep because, for some unfathomable reason, Juanita doesn't snore like an adenoidal pig.'
Lister lassoed Rimmer with a huge grey smoke ring, and grinned back.
'So,' said Rimmer, taking out a cheque book a yard long, with more pages than a James Clavell novel, 'you finally came to see me. How much do you want? One, two, three, four pounds?' Rimmer threw back his head and brayed loudly.
'You're a smeg head, Rimmer, you really are a smeg head.'
'But a rich smeg head, eh?' Rimmer brayed again. 'Seriously, what do you want?' he poised his pen over the cheque, 'a couple of mill? What do you want?'
'I want,' Lister said, leaning forward, 'to go back to Earth.'
'Come again?'
'This isn't Earth.'
Rimmer-smiled uncomprehendingly.
'I'm afraid, Arn,' Lister continued, 'we've taken a wrong turning. We are in another plane of reality. Somehow we've wound up playing Better Than Life. We're just a couple of Game heads.'
FIVE
It couldn't be. It was ... well, it just couldn't be. Rimmer followed Lister down the narrow white stone steps to the roof garden, where the party was still in full swing. Lister was jealous, plain and simple. Rimmer didn't like to say it to his face because it would be like rubbing it in. But it was only natural he should feel jealous. Rimmer had everything. He'd amassed a fifty billion dollarpound fortune, whereas Lister had amassed a leaky house, a silly car, and a wife and two kids. The poor boy had flipped! He couldn't accept he was a failure and Rimmer was a hit, so he was trying to persuade everybody they were in the wrong dimension of reality. Totally fliparoonied.
'Heard from the Cat?' Lister was asking.
'No. He's on some island off Denmark. Haven't heard from him since we got back to Earth. You?'
Lister shook his head, grabbed a bottle of Dom Perignon from a passing ice bucket, and they sat down. He rolled back his sleeves. 'Let me show you my arms.'
'Your arms?'
'Both my arms look perfectly normal, don't they?'
Rimmer looked at his perfectly normal arms and nodded. He started looking round for his bodyguards.
'But they hurt like hell. And when I put ointment over the spots that hurt, it spells out a message.'
Rimmer shook his head, smiling. 'Amazing.'
'Watch.' Lister took a jar of cold cream out of his jacket pocket and daubed 'DYING' on his left arm and 'U=BTL' on his right.
'Now, I don't want to sound like I'm a sceptic,' Rimmer rubbed the flat of his hand against his face, 'but you have to concede that the effect I've just witnessed could just as easily be produced by an insane person with two arms and a pot of cold cream.'
'Yes, but I'm just covering the areas of pain! It's the pain that spells out the message.'
'The pain?'
'In my arms. Someone's trying to get a message to us.'
'On your arms, through the cold cream.'
'Look, if we are in the Game, we won't know we're in the Game. It protects itself - it won't let you remember that you've started to play it.'
'But we didn't start to play it.'
'No, we don't remember starting to play it. That's different.'
Rimmer flopped back in his seat and looked round the roof garden. He looked at the two thousand people dancing a conga round the pool. He looked at the phalanx of waiters holding the silver platters above their heads as they glided about, serving the second course of the banquet. He looked across at the sous-chef, atop a ladder, carving generous portions of meat from the barbequed giraffe which slowly rotated on the forty-foot spit. Could this really not be real?
'If we're in the Game,' Lister continued, 'we're wandering around somewhere with electrodes in our brains, totally oblivious to the real world. Someone in that real world is trying to tell us where we are by burning or cutting or scratching a message into my arms: "U=BTL": "You are in Better Than Life and "DYING": in reality, I'm dying! I'm a Game head.'
'But it doesn't make sense! I thought when you're in the Game all your fantasies were supposed to come true. But look at you - stuck in some hick town in the back end of nowhere with a wife and two kids, and no money.'
'Money isn't important to me.'
Rimmer snorted.
'Bedford Falls and everything else,' Lister shook his head wistfully, 'that was everything I always wanted.'
There was a series of explosions and forty thousand fireworks burst in the night sky, forming a portrait of Rimmer and Juanita in a pink Valentine's heart. While the awe-struck guests gazed in open-mouthed wonder, the fireworks portrait animated: Rimmer's face winked down at them, then turned and kissed Juanita's image. Then two huge bangs - and the two faces transformed into the Rimmer Corporation company logo.
The standing ovation lasted for ten minutes.
'Come on, Rimmer - face facts. Look at this place. The Rimmer Building?
Overlooking the Champs Elysées? Your company inventing the Solidgram? You're married to the most famous actress in the world? Is any of it even remotely credible?'
Lister stood up and pointed across the pool, his voice raised an octave in incredulity. 'Who the hell are they?'
Rimmer looked round.
Lister was waving his arms excitedly. 'The guys under the parasol, applauding?'
'Napoleon Bonaparte, Julius Caesar and General Patton.'
'And what are they doing here?'
'Oh, that. There's a perfectly rational explanation for that,' Rimmer nodded vigorously.
Lister grabbed another bottle of champagne.. 'Which is?'
'It's a bit hush-hush at the moment. I'm not really at liberty to say.'
'Un-hush-hush it.'
Rimmer mulled it over. Well, it would be public knowledge in a week or so.
Couldn't do any harm. He leaned over conspiratorially. Rimmer Corporation Worldwide plc have developed a Time Machine. I've been playing around with it for a few months, inviting famous people from different eras in Time to pep up a few dinner parties.'
Lister was look
ing at him in a strange way.
'What's wrong with that?' Rimmer protested. 'You don't think that's believable?'
'No, I don't. I think you just wanted to meet these people, so your imagination had to cook up a nearly credible explanation to bring them here.'
'Nonsense!' said Rimmer, but without conviction. Could it be true? Could he have fantasized the invention of a Time Machine just so he could bring back Caesar, Bonaparte and Patton - the three greatest generals in history - simply in order to beat them at 'R IS K', the strategic war game for ages fifteen and over?
Could he really be that small-minded?
'Come on -' Lister stood up and drained the bottle 'we've got to find the Cat.'
Rimmer picked up a phone and punched in three numbers. 'Harry? Put the Lear Jet on stand-by. Mr Rimmer and guest will be going to Denmark this evening.' He put the phone down and turned to Lister. 'Wait in the car - I'd better say goodbye to, uh ...' And he wandered off.
***
'Een the middle of our party, you are going off weeth your stupid friend to Denmark?!'
Juanita, still naked from the waist down apart from the diamond stilettoes, stormed up and down the parquet floor of the roof garden's white balustraded gazebo. Rimmer thrust his hands deep in his pockets and squirmed.
'Darling, I know it's awful, but the thing is: there's an outside chance ...'
Rimmer didn't know quite how to put this '... there's a tiny little possibility that you don't exist.'
'I don't what?'
'It's only a slight chance, and there's probably nothing to worry about. But if Lister's right, you're just a figment of my imagination.'
'And for this reason you are leaving my party and flying to Denmark?'
'Yes,' said Rimmer, 'it's a sort of metaphysical emergency.
'Thees man comes here thees evening, with his stupeed furry hat, and tells you your wife doesn't exist, and you go waltzing off weeth heem to Scandinavia?'
'You're right, I won't go. I won't go. Of course you exist. I'll go down to the car and explain that we've talked it through, and we've come to the conclusion that we all do exist, and we don't want anything more to do with him.'