Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers by Grant Naylor
PENGUIN BOOKS
Red Dwarf
Grant Naylor is a gestalt entity occupying two bodies, one of which lives in north London, the other in south London. The product of a horribly botched genetic-engineering experiment, which took place in Manchester in the late fifties, they try to eke out two existences with only one mind.
They attended the same school and the same university, but, for tax reasons, have completely different wives.
The first body is called Rob Grant, the second Doug Naylor. Among other things, they spent three years in the mid-eighties as head writers of Spitting Image; wrote Radio 4's award-winning series Son of Cliché; penned the lyrics to a number one single; and created and wrote Red Dwarf for BBC Television.
They have made a living variously by being ice-cream salesmen, shoeshop assistants and by attempting to sell dodgy life-assurance policies to close friends. They also spent almost two years on the night shift loading paper into computer printers at a mail-order factory in Ardwick. They can still taste the cheese 'n' onion toasties.
Their favourite colour is orange.
Red Dwarf was an enormous bestseller when published as a Penguin paperback in 1989. Better Than Life was the not-very-long-awaited sequel.
Penguin also publish Primordial Soup: Red Dwarf Scripts, and Son of Soup: A Second Serving of the Least Worst Scripts is forthcoming. Last Human, Doug Naylor's Red Dwarf novel, is also available.
Special Thanks to:
MikeTZ who scanned, OCR'd and proofed a mobi version for books2bytes which I found on Demonoid..
tardismatrix of Demonoid who created a PDF that helped in editting and proofing this epub.
CONTENTS
Part One:
Your own death, and how to cope with it
Part Two:
Alone in a Godless universe, and out of Shake'n'Vac
Part Three:
Earth
Part One
Your own death and how to cope with it
ONE
'DESCRIBE, USING DIAGRAMS WHERE APPROPRIATE, THE EXACT CIRCUMSTANCES LEADING TO YOUR DEATH.'
Saunders had been dead for almost two weeks now and, so far, he hadn't enjoyed a minute of it. What he wasn't enjoying at this particular moment was having to wade through the morass of forms and legal papers he'd been sent to complete by the Department of Death and Deceaseds' Rights.
It was all very well receiving a five-page booklet entitled: Your Own Death and How To Cope With It. It was all very well attending counselling sessions with the ship's metaphysical psychiatrist, and being told about the nature of Being and Non-Being, and some other gunk about this guy who was in a cave, but didn't know it was a cave until he left. The thing was, Saunders was an engineer, not a philosopher - and the way he saw it, you were either dead or you were alive. And if you were dead, you shouldn't be forced to fill in endless incomprehensible forms, and other related nonsensica.
You shouldn't have to return your birth certificate, to have it invalidated. You shouldn't have to send off your completed death certificate, accompanied by a passport-size photograph of your corpse, signed on the back by your coroner.
When you're dead, you should be dead. The bastards should leave you alone.
If Saunders could have picked something up, he would have picked something up and hurled it across the grey metal room. But he couldn't.
Saunders was a hologram. He was just a computer generated simulation of his former self., he couldn't actually touch anything, except for his own hologramatic body. He was a phantom made of light. A software ghost.
Quite honestly, he'd had enough.
Saunders got up, walked silently across the metal-grilled floor of his sleeping quarters and stared out of the viewport window.
Far away to his right was the bright multi-coloured ball of Saturn, captured by its rainbow rings like a prize in a gigantic stellar hoop-la game. Twelve miles below him, under the plexiglass dome of the terraformed colony of Mimas, half the ship's crew were on planet leave.
No planet leave for Saunders.
No R & R for the dead.
He caressed his eyelids with the rough balls of his fingers, then glanced back at the pile: the mind-bogglingly complicated Hologramatic Status application form; accident claims; pension funds; bank transfers; house deeds. They all had to be completed so his wife, Carole - no, his widow, Carole - could start a new life without him.
When he'd first signed up, they both understood he would be away from Earth for months on end, and, obviously, things could happen; mining in space was dangerous. That was why the money was so good.
'If anything happens to me,' he'd always said, 'I don't want you to sit around, mourning.' Protests. 'I want you to meet someone else, someone terrific, and start a new life without me.
What a stupid, fat, dumb thing to say! The kind of stupid, fat, dumb thing only a living person would ever dream of saying.
Because that's what she was going to do now.
Start a new life - without him.
Fine, if he was dead dead. If he'd just taken delivery of his shiny new ephemeral body and was wafting around in the ether on the next plane of existence - fine.
Even if there was no life after death, and he totally ceased to be - then again, absolutely fine.
But this was different. He was dead, but he was still here. His personality had been stored on disc, and the computer had reproduced him down to the tiniest detail; down to his innermost thoughts.
This wasn't the deal. He wanted her to start a new life when he was gone, not while he was still here. But of course, that's what she'd do. That's what she had to do. You can't stay married to a dead man. So even though she loved him dearly, she would, eventually, have to start looking for someone else.
And ... she would sleep with him.
She would go to bed with him. And, hell, she would probably enjoy it.
Even though she still loved Saunders.
She would, wouldn't she? She would meet Mr Terrific and have a physical relationship.
Probably in his bed.
His bed. Their marital bed. His bed!
Probably using the three condoms he knew for a fact he had left in the bedside cabinet.
The ones he'd bought for a joke.
The flavoured ones.
His mind ran amok, picturing a line of lovers standing, strawberry-sheathed, outside his wife's bedroom.
No!' screamed Saunders, involuntarily. 'Noooooo!'
Hologramatic tears of rage and frustration welled up in Saunders' eyes and rolled hologramatically down his cheeks. He smashed his fist down onto the table.
The fist passed soundlessly through the grey metal desk top, and crashed with astonishing force into his testicles.
As he lay in a foetal position, squealing on the floor, he wished he were dead.
Then he remembered he already was.
Saunders didn't know it but, twelve miles below, on the Saturnian moon of Mimas, Flight Coordinator George McIntyre was about to solve all his problems.
TWO
George McIntyre sat in the Salvador Dali Coffee Lounge of the Mimas Hilton, and stared at a painting of melting clocks while he waited for the tall, immaculately dressed mechanoid to return with his double Bloody Mary, no ice. He couldn't stand Bloody Mary without ice, but he didn't want his shaking hand to set the cubes clanking around in the glass, advertising his nervousness when his visitors arrived.
Five minutes later they did arrive, and McIntyre wished they hadn't. When he turned and caught sight of them, the heat left his body as quickly as people leave a Broadway first night party when the bad reviews come in.
There were three of them. Big men. They each had the kind of bui
Biceps and triceps screaming to be released from the fetters of the finely-tailored lounge suits. The kind of bodies that only look right and natural in posing pouches. In suits, no matter how expensive - and these were expensive - they looked like kids who'd been forced into their Sunday best, all starched and itching. McIntyre couldn't shake the feeling that they were yearning, aching to get nude and start oiling-up.
They didn't say 'hello' and sat down at his table. One of them took up both spaces on the pink sofa, while the other two drew up chairs from a nearby table and squeezed into them. The armrests were forced out into a tired Vee, to the accompaniment of an uneasy creaking sound.
McIntyre just sat there, smiling. He felt as if he was sitting in the middle of a huge barrel of sweating muscle. He was convinced that if he shook hands with any of the three, he would immediately die from an overdose of steroid poisoning.
He wondered, though not too hard, why one of them was carrying a pair of industrial bolt clippers.
The tall, immaculately-dressed mechanoid came up and served McIntyre his Bloody Mary. All three of the men ordered decaff coffee. While they waited for it to arrive, they chatted with McIntyre. Small talk: difficulties parking; the decor; the irritating muzak.
When the coffee came, McIntyre pretended not to notice that they couldn't get their fingers through the cup handles.
The man on the sofa lifted up a briefcase and fiddled clumsily with the lock.
For a moment McIntyre found himself feeling sorry for the man - everything was too small for him: the briefcase, the coffee cup, the suit. Then he remembered the bolt clippers, and stopped feeling sorry for the man and started feeling sorry for himself again. The case eventually sprang open and the man took out a fold-out, three-page document and handed it to McIntyre with a pen.
McIntyre explained, apologetically, that it was impossible for him to sign the document.
The three men were upset.
George McIntyre left the Salvador Dali Coffee Lounge of the Mimas Hilton, carrying his nose in a Mimas Hilton Coffee Lounge napkin.
THREE
The four astros paid the fare, leaving the smallest of small tips, and staggered through the jabbering crowd and up the steps into the Los Americanos Casino.
Lister flicked on the 'For Hire' sign, and decided to take the hopper down Central and back towards Mimas docks. He slipped the gear into jump, and braced himself. The hopper leapt into the air, and landed with a spine-juddering crunch two hundred yards down Eastern Avenue. The hopper's rear legs retracted into the engine housing, then hammered into the ground, propelling him another two hundred yards. As it smacked into the tarmacadamed three-lane highway, Lister's neck was forced into the hollow at the base of his skull, further aggravating an already angry headache. The hopper's suspension was completely shot to hell.
Lister began to wish he'd never stolen it.
Hoppers had been introduced to Mimas thirty years previously, to combat the ludicrous congestion which had blocked the small moon's road system so badly that an average Mimian traffic jam could last anything up to three weeks. People had been known to die of starvation in particularly bad ones. Hoppers, which could leapfrog over obstructions, and spend most of their time in the air, helped ease the problem. True, there were a fair number of mid-air collisions, and there was always the possibility of being landed on by a drunk-driven hopper, but, by and large, you reached your destination in the same season you set off.
Lister watched with envy as another hopper overtook him with the easy grace of a frolicking deer. The next landing was the worst. The hopper hit a metal drain cover with such violence that Lister bit his cigarette in half, and the glowing tip fell between his thighs and rolled under the seat of his pants. Frantically, he arched his body out of the seat and tried to sweep the butt onto the floor as the hopper leapt madly down the busy highway, like a sick metallic kangaroo.
Something was burning.
It smelled like hair. And since he was the only thing in the hopper that had hair, it was fairly safe to assume some part of him was on fire. Some part of him that had hair. He liked all the parts of him that had hair. They were his favourite bits.
His eyes searched desperately for a place to park. Forget it.
In London people parked wherever it was possible. In Paris people parked even where it wasn't possible. On Mimas people parked on top of the people who'd parked where it wasn't possible. Stacks of hoppers, three, sometimes four high, lined the avenue on both sides.
A typical Saturday night on Mimas.
The thick air hung heavy with the smells and noises of a hundred mingling cultures. The trotters, Mimian slang for 'pavements', were obscured by giant serpents of human flesh as people wrested their way past the blinking neons of casinos and restaurants, the on-off glare of bars and clubs; shouting, screaming, laughing, vomiting. Astros and miners on planet leave going wallet-bulging crazy, desperate for a good time after months of incarceration in the giant space freighters that now hung over the moon's shuttle port.
The Earth had long been purged of all its valuable mineral resources. Humankind had emptied its home planet like an enema, then turned its rapacious appetite to the rest of the solar system. The Spanish-owned Saturnian satellite of Mimas was a supply centre and stop-off point for the thousands of mining vessels which plundered the smaller planets and the larger moons and asteroids.
Smoke began to plume from between Lister's legs.
Still nowhere to park.
Traffic blared and leapfrogged over him as he skewed across lanes, fighting to keep control.
In desperation he grabbed the thermos flask lying on the passenger seat, struggled with the unfamiliar cap, and poured the contents into his smouldering lap.
A hiss signalled the end of the cigarette. There was a second of delicious relief.
Then he smelled coffee. Hot coffee. Piping-hot coffee ... Piping-hot coffee that covered his loins. The pain had already hit him by the time he poured the bottle of upholstery cleaner he found in the glove compartment over his thighs.
The hopper, now madly out of control, caromed off the Mutual Life Assurance building, taking a large chunk out of the neon sign before Lister wrestled it back under control, and, still whimpering in pain, headed towards the docks.
***
The man in the navy-blue officer's coat and the blatantly false moustache flagged down Lister's hopper and got in.
'A hundred-and-fifty-second and third,' he said curtly, and pressed the tash, which was hanging, down on the right-hand side, back into place.
'Going to a brothel?' asked Lister amiably.
'Absolutely not,' said the man in the blue officer's coat; 'I'm an officer in the Space Corps' - he tapped the gold bars on his lapel -'and I do not frequent brothels.'
'I just thought, what with hundred-and-fifty-second and third being slap bang in the middle of the red light area...'
'Well, you're not paid to think. You're paid to drive.'
Lister flicked on the 'Hired' sign, slipped the hopper into jump and bounced off to the district the locals affectionately called 'Shag Town'.
On the first landing, the officer's moustache was jolted almost clear of his face.
'What the smeg's wrong with the 'suspen-' 'his head disappeared into the soft felting of the cab's roof' -sion ... !?' He bounced back down into the seat.
'It's the roads,' Lister lied.
They stopped at a blue light. At right angles to them, thirty hoppers sprang forward like a herd of erratic gazelles pursued by a pack of wolves.
'What's it like?'
'What's what like?' said the man, feeling his jaw, convinced a tooth had been loosened in the last landing.
'Being in the Space Corps? Being an astro? I was sort of thinking of signing up.'
'Were you really?' Contempt.
'D'you need any qualifications?'
'Well, not exact
Lister felt for the fare-enhancer button he'd found concealed under the dashboard of the taxi, and added a few dollarpounds to the fare. The lights changed and they lurched off, conversation impossible.
Lister had been trying to get off Mimas for nearly six months now. How he'd got there was still something of a mystery.
The last thing he really remembered with any decent clarity was celebrating his birthday back on Earth. He, and six of his very closest friends, decided to usher in his twenty-fifth year by going on a Monopoly board pub-crawl around London. They'd hitched a ride in a frozen-meat truck from Liverpool, and arrived at lunchtime in the Old Kent Road. A drink at each of the squares was the plan.
They started with hot toddies to revive them from the ride. In Whitechapel they had pina coladas. King's Cross station, double vodkas. In Euston Road, pints of Guinness. The Angel Islington, mezcals. Pentonville Road, bitter laced with rum and blackcurrant. And so they continued around the board. By the time they'd got to Oxford Street, only four of them remained. And only two of the four still had the power of speech.
His last real memory was of telling the others he was going to buy a Monopoly board, because no one could remember what the next square was, and stepping out into the cold night air clutching two-thirds of a bottle of sake.
There was a vague, very vague, poorly-lit memory of an advert on the back of a cab seat; something about cheap space travel on Virgin's new batch of demi-light-speed zippers.
Something about Saturn being in the heart of the solar system, and businesses were uprooting all the time. Something about it being nearer than you think, at half the speed of light. Something about two hours and ten minutes. And then a thick, black, gunky fog.
He'd woken up slumped across a table in a McDonald's burger bar on Mimas, wearing a lady's pink crimplene hat and a pair of yellow fishing waders, with no money and a passport in the name of 'Emily Berkenstein'. What was more, he had a worrying rash.