'You're crazee! My mother was right. She always warned me against marrying a dead man!'
Rimmer watched her naked, tanned bottom as she clomped down the summerhouse steps and wandered over to a group of people eating their barbequed giraffe steaks. He scanned the group. Lenin, Einstein, Archimedes, God and Norman Wisdom. Wisdom was staggering around, laughing hysterically, with his jacket half off his shoulders. Suddenly, without warning, he threw himself up into the air and landed on the floor. Lenin, Einstein and Archimedes looked down rather disdainfully. God splurted out his mouthful of Cinzano Bianco and bellowed uncontrollably, tears streaming down his face.
'That's comedy!' God was saying. 'That is comedy!'
Let's face it, Rimmer thought, there was at least a marginal possibility that Lister was right.
SIX
The black stretch Mercedes with the tinted, bullet-proof glass purred onto the shiny black tarmacadamed runway of Rimmer International Airport (AJR), and drew up alongside the black LearJet, Rimmer One.
The twenty-minute journey had been conducted mainly in silence. Lister had been watching MTV on one of the car's TV sets, where a poll had proclaimed Rimmer the Sexiest Man Of All Time. Second was Clark Gable, and third was Hugo Lovepole.
Rimmer had smiled wanly. It was turning into a nightmare. If this was indeed his fantasy - and he was still clinging onto a faint hope that Lister was wrong - if it was his fantasy, it was suddenly hideously embarrassing. His psyche lain bare for all to see.
The chauffeur clicked round the car and opened one of the eight passenger doors, and they got out. Lister looked at the chauffeur and almost said 'hello', because at first he thought he knew him. Then he realized he didn't, but he'd seen his face somewhere.
'Who's the driver?' he whispered to Rimmer as they walked across to the LearJet's steps.
'It's a lovely evening, isn't it?'
'Is he somebody famous?' Lister persisted.
'Who?'
'The driver.'
'No.'
'Who is he, then?'
Rimmer started to climb the steps. 'He's my dad,' he said quietly. 'I brought him back in the Time Machine.'
'To be your chauffeur?!' Lister wrinkled his cheeks in disbelief 'Yes!' Rimmer hissed.
'I'm very proud of you, Son,' his father called. 'I'm so proud I'm fit to burst.'
'Shut up,' said Rimmer.
As they got to the top of the Lear Jet's steps, the screaming started. Rimmer had been dreading it. He'd hoped they might be able to slip aboard unnoticed.
But even this small mercy was denied him. As Lister turned, hanging over the observation balcony of the airport terminal building, twenty thousand teenage girls caught in the helpless throes of Rimmermania waved intimate garments and banners, screamed and chanted uncontrollably.
'Arnold! We love you!'
'Arnieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!'
Rimmer shook his head in humiliation, his cheeks glowing baboon-bottom red.
They screeceeeeeeeamed as he half-nodded at them. Lister squinted, trying to read the banners. 'Arnie is brave' he could make out. 'Arnie has had lots of girlfriends'. 'Arnie is FA B. He turned to Rimmer.
'Basically,' he grinned, 'you just want to be adored, don't you?'
'Thank you, Sigmund,' said Rimmer without parting his teeth.
'It's really quite cute.'
'Look - we're still not a hundred per cent sure that this is a fantasy. And if it turns out it's not, you're going to feel plenty silly as you drive your clapped-out old banger back to Nowhere City.' Rimmer ducked his head and disappeared into the body of the plane.
***
Rimmer wasn't really watching the in-flight movie, but he was wearing the headset as a kind of sanctuary to avoid Lister's accusing grin. The film was Darkness At Noon, which had culled Juanita her first Oscar. How well Rimmer remembered that evening - the twenty-five minute thank you speech she'd made, saying it was all down to him. He watched her play the scene in the apartment - the famous 'olives on the cocktail stick' scene. Could he really have fantasized this woman? It was absurd! Why would he fantasize a woman, no matter how beautiful, who was Trouble with a capital 'T' the size of the GPO tower?
Because he wanted the most exciting woman in the world. The most desired, the most beautiful, the most ... dangerous. But, having got her, why would he then fantasize she was unfaithful? With Hugo the hairy-shouldered pool attendant!
What the hell did that say about the state of his mind? Mentally unwell, that's what it said. And why had he fantasized his wife's refusal to make love with him for the past eighteen months? Why on Earth did he want that to happen?
Was it that even in his fantasies Rimmer couldn't bring himself to believe anyone could truly love him? That inevitably she would reject him, giving him those pathetic excuses that the insurance company wouldn't allow him to touch her bosom? And inevitably she would take a lover - a lover who was more masculine than he? More manly? Oh, my god.
My god, my god, my god.
He moaned softly. The innards of his psyche were there for all to see: putrid and rotten and rancid. His neuroses parading like grinning contestants 'in the Mr Universe contest!
He glanced over at Lister, who had taken out a well-worn leather wallet and was looking sadly at some dog-eared photographs of his family back in Bedford Falls.
Hadn't Lister's fantasy been even more ridiculous? A leaky house? A clapped-out car? A little shop? It was so ... corny. A girl-next-door type wife, two kids.
If they were playing Better Than Life, he could have had anything he wanted.
Absolutely anything he wanted. And this was his choice? Something so ordinary, so small, so ... normal?
Oh my god, my god, my god.
That was the truth, wasn't it? Lister's fantasy was so much more mature than his. Lister didn't need mega-wealth to make him happy. He needed fourteen dollars and twenty-five cents. He didn't need a stunning-looking actress desired by a 11. He just wanted someone who cared for him. Even the car. Rimmer had a twenty-five-foot black penis extension. Lister had a clapped-out old banger.
What did that mean, then? That Lister had a limousine inside his Y-fronts, while Rimmer had a I 940s Ford that needed hand-cranking?
Lister's was the fantasy of a man at peace with himself. A man who felt he had nothing to prove. Rimmer's was twenty-five foot cars, hundred and forty storey buildings, airports, Lear Jets, a twenty million dollar bosom, a forty billion dollar fortune, his father as his own chauffeur ... It couldn't be a fantasy. No one could be that screwed-up!
Lister sat there looking at the black-and-white dog-eared snaps which Mr Calhoon, the photographer, had taken last Christmas Eve with his old box Brownie on its tripod, with the magnesium flare. There was one in particular of him and Kochanski with big cheesy grins.
So you don't exist, he thought. I just made you exist and fall in love with me.
He was still hung up on Kristine Kochanski. A girl he dated for five weeks and two days, three million years ago. In a way he was kind of jealous of Rimmer. If he'd have known it was a fantasy, he'd have become Jim Bexley Speed and dated Ida Lupino. He'd have played with the Beatles: the Fab Five -John, Paul, George, Ringo and Dave. But he hadn't. He'd settled down in Bedford Falls and married Kristine Kochanski. He wanted to live his life in a movie. What a jerk! What an even bigger jerk for falling in love with someone who, if she'd been alive and real and with him now, probably would give him a sweet little smile and sit down at the back of the plane with one of her wacky mates.
Sure, they'd had a great two years; but it hadn't been real - none of it.
Counterfeit delights. A pathetic hankering on account of a crazy obsession.
Unreal. Impossible. Ridiculous.
The air hostess leaned over him.
'Can I get you anything?' she smiled. It was Ida Lupino. Ida Lupino was standing in the aisle, dressed as an air hostess. 'Anything at all?' she twinkled.
Lister shook his head. 'I'm married. I'm mar
ried to someone who doesn't exist, with two nonexistent kids. I can't get involved with someone else who doesn't exist. Life would get too complicated.'
The Lear landed in Copenhagen. The Danish government laid on a power boat to get them across to the Cat's island.
They sat in the back of the boat as it cut through the billowing waves of the foul-tempered sea. The island loomed through circles of mist, towering above the stormy waters: a single, sea-ringed mountain, tapering into the clouds. As they moved slowly closer, something at the very summit caught the sunlight and glimmered.
They moored the boat at a crumbling wooden jetty, and looked around, trying to find a route up the unclimbable mountain. They heard a sound: a creaking steel chain. And crashing out of the soggy mist, a cable car lurched to a halt in front of them.
They sat, rocking in the dangerous wind, as the cable car slowly squeaked its way up the mountain. The - trip took three hours. They went through cloud. The atmospheric pressure changed. Whatever the Cat's fantasy was, it certainly didn't involve entertaining a great many visitors.
Finally the cable car wheezed into its mooring, and they got out. Standing on a narrow mountain track were two rickshaws attended by eight-foot tall, huge-breasted Amazon Valkyries in scanty armour. Lister shook his head.
'I've really got to have a word with the Cat about his sexual politics.'
Worse was to follow because, as Lister climbed aboard the rickshaw, he realized that the two wing mirrors he'd assumed were for the giantesses to see behind them were in fact strategically placed so the passenger could spend the short trip to the mountain top watching their cartoon-sized boobs jiggling up the track. He shook his head again.
'Who did he get this place from? Benny Hill?' He climbed out. 'Forget it - we'll walk.'
Rimmer tried to hide his disappointment as they trudged up the curving track. As they reached the crest, they saw it.
Any faint hopes that Rimmer still entertained that they were on Earth and in the world of reality gurgled noisily down the plug hole as they gazed up at the Cat's home.
It was a thirty-towered golden castle surrounded by a moat filled with milk.
SEVEN
The tip of the highest golden tower was almost invisible to the naked eye. The battlements were patrolled by more of the horn-helmeted, skimpily armoured Valkyries.
Lister and Rimmer clumped noisily across the wooden drawbridge.
'Halt! Who goes there, buddy?' one of the Valkyries shouted from the gate house.
'We've come to see the Cat!' shouted Lister, his voice sounding weak and ineffectual by comparison.
They were led into the castle and through a maze of chambers. The Cat's portrait hung on every wall: here clad in gleaming armour, there grinning from a rearing horse; there wrestling a lion, here draped. on top of a pink piano. They followed the guards out into an ornamental garden that made the grounds of the Palace of Versailles look like a window box. Rimmer began to regret the smallness of his own imagination.
The guards were marching double time, and Lister and Rimmer felt compelled to keep up. They were getting quite tired by the time they reached the end of the gardens, which let out onto a courtyard surrounded by stables.
The Cat, in a red riding jacket, gleaming white jodhpurs and black leather boots, was mounted on a cream-coloured, fire-breathing, racing yak. There was a smell of sulphur hanging in the air as the yak reared and tried to bolt. The Cat, laughing, deftly wrestled it under control as it haughtily spouted two more jets of fire from its nostrils.
A dozen hunting dogs yapped and bayed and snapped at the leashes held by four Valkyries. As the dragon yak ceased its protestations, the Cat turned and caught sight of Rimmer and Lister.
'Hey! What's happening?' He waved his black riding cap and tooted his hunting horn, driving the dogs berserk. 'Sydney!' he called to the tallest of the Valkyries, 'Saddle Dancer and Prancer! Guys,' he turned to Rimmer and Lister, 'grab a yak!'
Rimmer mounted his flame-coloured yak with more than a little trepidation, and held timidly onto the reins.
'I've never really ridden a ... fire-breathing racing yak before,' he said unnecessarily.
Lister patted the neck of his beast, and used the resultant jet of flame to light one of the foot-long Havana cigars he'd stolen from Rimmer's study back in Paris. Then he hooked a foot into the stirrup and clambered into the saddle.
The Cat tooted his curved hunting horn and called to the Valkyries restraining the hounds: 'Release the dogs!'
The dozen hunting dogs streamed out of the courtyard. The Cat reared on his yak and bellowed 'Tally ho!', and all three of them thundered over the cobblestones and out into the dank, misty wasteland that surrounded the castle.
Lister clung desperately to the neck of the bouncing yak, the reins hanging free as it splashed through the bog land which was covered in a carpet of mist.
Before him, whenever he dared to open his eyes, he could see the Cat, straightbacked, holding onto the reins with his left hand, a silver shooting pistol in his right, while behind him he could hear the occasional low moans of Rimmer as he recited various incantations from a number of different religions.
They came to a low hedge. The dogs burst through it and the yaks leapt over. As they hammered across the hard, frosty ground, Lister saw the Cat level his pistol. He couldn't see the quarry, and he wasn't particularly keen to. They were riding fire-breathing dragon yaks. What on Earth would they be hunting? He saw the Cat's shoulder jerk back, and a puff of smoke, before he heard the crack of the pistol. In the distance, one of the dogs cartwheeled twelve feet into the air and landed, dead, on the floor.
'No!' Lister yelled as the Cat quickly picked off the eleven remaining dogs. He reined in the yak, raised his horn and tooted a victory call.
'You shot all the smegging dogs!' said Lister, gulping for air.
'They're vermin,' laughed the Cat; 'what did you think we were shooting?' He raised himself in his saddle and called to the entourage of Valkyries galloping up on horses some way behind them. 'More dogs, Sydney!'
***
They stood before the roaring fire in the vast inglenook fireplace of the Cat's baronial dining hall, drinking hot milk laced with cinnamon from pewter mugs.
The Cat stood, a spat-covered foot resting on the gold fender, his elbow crooked above his head on the marble mantelpiece, shaking his head, staring into the fire.
'You mean none of this is real? None of this actually exists?'
'Of course it doesn't!' Rimmer snorted in disgust. 'Firebreathing yaks?
Eight-foot tall Nordic goddesses? A castle surrounded by a moat of milk? Is any of it even remotely tinged with credibility? I don't understand how you could even believe it was!'
Lister thought of the Rimmer Buildings, Paris, New York, and London, but he didn't say anything.
'I mean,' Rimmer shook his head, 'at least our fantasies were possible! Perhaps not likely, but possible. But yours is just totally preposterous. It's like a Gothic fairy tale. How come you didn't suspect anything? Didn't you think it was a little bit odd the way you just acquired all this?'
'No. I just thought I deserved it.'
'Deserved it?' Lister tilted his head.
'Because I'm so good-looking.'
A naked, oiled Valkyrie banged the enormous gong and announced it was supper.
As they took their places at the long oak banquet table, the lights dimmed and a spotlight picked out Sydney holding a large silver platter at the top of a stone staircase which led up to the balcony skirting the baronial hall.
The flagstones in the middle of the hall slid apart, and from beneath a seven-piece band rose up on a hydraulic pedestal. Mozart on piano, Jimi Hendrix on lead guitar, Stéphane Grappelli on rhythm, Charlie Parker on sax, Yehudi Menuhin on violin, Buddy Rich on drums, and Jellybean on computer programs. They began to play.
'Listen to these boys,' the Cat confided; 'they really kick ass.
They had never heard the tune before, but it was
so perfect, so instantly classic, Lister and Rimmer immediately started tapping along with the heavenly beat.
Sydney danced down the stairs, flanked by forty lurex-clad Valkyries, all bearing platters and singing:
'He's going to eat you little fishies,
He's going to eat you little fish,
He's going to eat you little fishies,
Because he likes eating fish!'
Three platters were placed before them, each containing a large aquarium packed with writhing shoals of vividly-coloured fish.
Rimmer eyed his dinner with disgust. 'Don't you prefer them caught and cooked?'
'No, sir!' said the Cat, picking up the mini-fishing rod which was laid out with the cutlery by his plate. 'I like my food to move.'
'I think,' said Rimmer, draping his napkin over the fish tank, 'we've established beyond all reasonable doubt that we are playing Better Than Life.'
'Right,' Lister agreed, 'but the question is: how do we get out?'
'Why do we have to get out?' asked the Cat as he sucked a squirming angel fish off the hook of his rod.
'Because it's a computer-induced fantasy, because it's not real, and in the real world our bodies are wasting away. We're dying.'
'What are you talking about?'
Lister explained about the messages on his arms, and how it meant that someone was trying to get through to them.
'Which someone?' asked the Cat.
'Holly, obviously,' said Rimmer.
Lister shook his head. 'Maybe. We don't know. We don't know exactly at what point we started playing the Game. How much of this has been real? Did we get back to Earth? Did we fix Nova 5? Did Nova 5 exist? Maybe I started playing BTL back on Mimas, and you two don't exist. Maybe our whole relationship and everything that's happened has been part of my fantasy.'
'No, no, I exist,' said Rimmer. 'Honestly.'
'Yeah, but you'd say that even if you didn't exist,' said Lister.