Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers by Grant Naylor

  Look at him! Rimmer thought. He's really trying. He's wearing all his least smeggy things. That T-shirt with only two curry stains on it - he only wears that on special occasions. Those camouflage pants with the fly buttons missing.

  'You're toffed up to the nines!' he said out loud.

  'That's rich, coming from someone who looks like Clive of India.'

  'Oh, it's started.' Rimmer dusted some imaginary dust off his gold epaulette. 'I knew it would.'

  'What has?'

  'The put-downs. It's always the same every time we meet women. Put me down to make yourself look good.'

  'Like when?'

  'Remember those two little brunettes from Supplies? And I said I'd once worked in the stores and they were very interested, and asked me exactly what I used to do there?'

  'And I said you were a shelf'

  'Right. Exactly.'

  'So? They laughed.'

  'Yes! At me. At my expense. Just don't do it, OK? Don't put me down when we meet them.'

  'How d'you want me to act then? How d'you want me to behave?'

  'Just show a little respect. For a start, don't call me Rimmer.'

  'Why not?'

  'Because you always hit the RIMM at the beginning. RIMM-er. You make it sound like a lavatory disinfectant.'

  'Well, what should I call you?'

  'I don't know. Something a bit more pally. Arnie? Am, maybe? Something a bit more ... I don't know. How about: "Big Man"?'

  'Big Man?'

  'How about "Chief", then? "The Duke"? "Cap", even. What about "Old Iron Balls"?'

  Rimmer could see he wasn't really getting anywhere. 'OK, then, he tried, 'how about the nickname I had at school?'

  'What? Bonehead?'

  Impossible! Lister couldn't possibly have known his nickname at school was 'Bonehead'. No one knew this. Not even his parents. 'What on Io makes you think my nickname at school was Bonchead?'

  'Well, it had to be, didn't it?'

  'What?'

  'It was a guess.'

  'Well, it was a guess, as it turns out, that was completely way off the fairway and into the long grass. The nickname to which I was referring was "Ace".'

  'You're nickname was never "Ace". Maybe "Ace-hole".'

  'There you go again! Knock, knock, knock. Why can't you build me up instead of always putting me down?'

  'For instance?'

  'Well, I don't know. Perhaps if the chance occurs, and it comes up naturally in the course of the conversation, you could possibly drop in a mention of the fact that I'm, well ... very brave.'

  'Do what?'

  'Don't go crackers. Just, perhaps, when my back's turned, you might steer the dialogue round to the fact that I ... died, and, well, I was pretty gosh-darn brave about it.'

  'You're pretty gosh-darn out of your smegging tree, Rimmer.'

  'Or you could bolster up my sexual past. Why don't you just casually hint that I've had tons of women? Would that break your heart, would it? Would that give you lung cancer, to say that?'

  Rimmer arched threateningly close to Lister's face, his eyes bulging: 'Just don't put me down, OK?'

  SEVENTEEN

  'Come on, everyone - they're here! They're in orbit! Heavens! There's so much to do.' Kryten rushed down the sloping corridor, pausing only to water a lusciously green plastic pot plant.

  Things were going very well. Very well indeed. The girls had been quiet and really most forlorn of late. Being marooned light years from home with scant hope of rescue had been very trying, to say the least. He'd done his best to keep them entertained, to keep their spirits high, but over the last few weeks, he'd felt intuitively that they were losing hope.

  Even his Friday night concert parties, usually the highlight of the week, had begun to be greeted with growing apathy. Miss Yvette was especially guilty of this. She hadn't particularly enjoyed them from the beginning, and had told him so.

  The concert parties always began in the same way. After baths and supper Kryten would clear the decks while the girls played cards, or read. At nine sharp the lights would be dimmed, and Kryten would tap-dance onto a makeshift stage in the engine-room, singing I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy, juggling two cans of beeswax.

  And then he'd go into his impressions. His best one was of Parkur, the mechanoid aboard the Neutron Star' but none of the girls knew him, so it never went down that well. Then there were the magic tricks. Or, to put it more accurately, the magic trick. He would lie in a box and saw himself in half. It wasn't much of a trick because he actually did saw himself in half. And then the evening suffered a slight hiatus while they waited the forty minutes it took for Kryten to reconnect his circuitry.

  Then he'd round off the evening with a selection of hits from The Student Prince. And then they'd play prize bingo. The prize in the prize bingo was always a can of jiffy WindoKleen. Nobody ever wanted a can of Jiffy WindoKleen, so Kryten always got it back and was able to use it as the next week's prize.

  In an odd kind of way Kryten was grateful for the accident. His life had taken on a new vitality. He was needed. The girls depended on him. His days were full. There was the cooking, the changing of the bandages, the physiotherapy, the concert parties. And, of course, there was the cleaning.

  Kryten took almost orgasmic delight in housework. Piles of dirty dishes thrilled him. Mounds of unwashed laundry filled him with rapture. An unmopped floor left him drymouthed with lust. He loved cleaning things even more than he loved things being clean. And things being clean sent him into a frenzy of ecstasy.

  And at night, when everyone was safely tucked in bed and all the chores were done and there was absolutely nothing left to clean, then, and only then, he'd sink into his favourite chair, cushions aplump, and watch Androids.

  Androids was a soap opera, aimed at the large mechanoid audience who had huge buying power when it came to household goods. Kryten had all one thousand, nine hundred and seventy-four episodes on disc. He'd seen them all many times, but he still winced when Karstares was killed in the plane crash. He still wept when Roze left Benzen. He still laughed and slapped his metal knee when Hudzen won the mechanoid lottery and hired his human master as a servant. And he always cheered when Mollee took on the android brothels, put the pimps into prison and set the prostidroids free.

  Androids, he told himself, was his one vice. That, and the single chocolate he allowed himself each viewing, to conserve supplies. When he watched Androids he wasn't just a mechanoid, marooned light years from nowhere, with three demanding dependants and a never-ending schedule of work He was somewhere different. Somewhere glamorous. Somewhere else.

  He was Hudzen, winning the lottery and hiring a human to serve him. He was Jaysee, swinging the mega-quidbuck deals, dining in the best restaurants, living in his vast penthouse atop the Juno Hilton.

  He was someone else.

  ***

  Kryten rushed down the slope and onto the main service deck, where the girls were breakfasting.

  'Come on! They're here!' He clapped his hands.

  Richards, Schuman and Fantozi didn't move. They hadn't moved, in fact, for almost three million years.

  The three skeletons sat round the table, in freshly-laundered uniforms, and grinned.

  'I don't know what's so funny,' said Kryten. 'They'll be here any moment, and there's so much to do!' He clucked and shook his head. 'Miss Elaine, honestly: you haven't even made an effort. Look at your hair.'

  He fussed over to the table' and took out a hairbrush.

  'What a mess you look.' He hummed Stay Young And Beautiful, and combed her long blonde wig with smooth, gentle strokes. When her hair was just so, he stood back and eyed her critically. He wasn't quite satisfied. He took out a lipstick that matched her uniform and touched up her makeup.

  'Dazzling. You could go straight on the cover of Vogue.'

  He shuffled down the table.

  'Miss Yvette! You haven't touched your soup. It's no wonder you're looking so pasty. He patted her gingerly on the shoulder. T
here was a long, slow creaking noise, and the skeleton slumped face down into the bowl of tomato soup. Kryten threw up his hands in horror. 'Eat nicely, Miss Yvette! What will that nice Captain Rimmer think if he sees you eating like that?' He hoisted the skeleton back onto the chair, sprayed her with a squirt of windo-Kleen, and gave her head a quick polish.

  'Now then, Miss Kirsty.' He waddled over to the remaining skeleton and looked her up and down: the trendy knee length boots, the chic, deep red mini-skirt and the peaked velvet cap cocked at a racy angle.

  'No,' he beamed, putting the hairbrush away. 'You look absolutely perfect!'

  EIGHTEEN

  The Cat slinked down the docking bay gantry in his gold, hand-stitched flightsuit, carrying a two-feet-high, cone-shaped matching space helmet under his arm.

  He climbed up the boarding steps into Blue Midget, where Lister and Rimmer were sitting in the drive seats waiting for him. He jumped into the cramped cabin, struck a pose like King of the Rocket Men, legs splayed, chest puffed out, hand on one hip, and said: 'Put your shades on, guys. You're looking at a nuclear explosion in lurex.' He gleamed a smile at them and fluttered his eyes.

  'You're looking good,' said Lister' craning round.

  'Looking good?? Did I hear the man say, "Looking only good??" Buddy, I am a plastic surgeon's nightmare. Throw away the scalpel; improvements are impossible.'

  'A spacesuit,' said Rimmer, 'with cufflinks?'

  'Listen,' said the Cat, dusting the console scat before arranging himself on it, 'you've got to guarantee me we don't pass any mirrors. If we do, I'm there for the day.'

  Lister flicked on the remote link with Holly.

  Holly appeared on the screen looking somehow different. Lister scrutinised the image. He couldn't quite work out what it was.

  'All right, then, dudes? Everybody set?'

  Lister twigged. 'Holly, why are you wearing a toupee?, Holly was upset. He spent some considerable time corrupting his digital image to give himself a fuller head of hair. 'So it's not undetectable, then? It doesn't blend in naturally and seemlessly with my own natural hair?'

  'It looks,' said Lister, 'like you've got a small, furry animal nesting on top of your head.'

  'What is wrong with everybody?' Rimmer straightened his cap. 'Three million years without a woman, and you all go crazy.'

  He's right, thought Holly, who am I trying to impress? I'm a computer! How humiliating to have that pointed out by a hologram! Out of spite he instantly simulated a large and painful boil on the back of Rimmer's neck, and made it start to throb.

  ***

  Blue Midget, the powerful haulage transporter originally designed to carry ore and silicates to and from the ship, looked strangely graceful as it flickered between the red and blue lights of the twin sun system above the howling icy green wasteland of the moon that had become Nova 5's graveyard.

  Lister peered through the furry dice dangling from the windscreen. 'Nice place for a skiing holiday.'

  Rimmer stared unblinkingly at the tracking monitor. 'Nothing yet,' he said helpfully. He slipped his finger down the collar of his shirt where a large boil was really beginning to hurt.

  Lister struggled hopelessly with the twelve gear levers. Each provided five gears, making it sixty gears in all, and Lister hadn't yet been in the right one throughout the twenty-minute jag.

  The tracking monitor started delivering a series of rapid bleeps.

  'We've got it!' Rimmer cried. 'Lat. twenty-seven, four, Long. seventeen, seven.'

  Lister looked at him like he was speaking Portuguese.

  'Left a bit, and round that glacier.'

  'Oh' right.'

  ***

  Lister landed appallingly in forty-seventh gear. Blue Midget stalled, bounced and rocked, before settling to rest with an exhausted sigh. Lister pushed in the button marked 'C'. The caterpillar tracks' telescoped out of their housing, rotated down to the icy emerald surface and hoisted the transporter ten feet above the ground.

  'Hey,' said the Cat' impressed, 'You really can drive this thing.'

  'Actually,' said Lister, 'I thought that was the cigarette lighter.'

  The red-hot wiper blades melted green slush from the windscreen as Blue Midget rose and fell over a series of icy dunes. As they reached the peak of the next range, they saw, in the hollow below, the broken wreck jutting out of the landscape like a child's discarded toy.

  The gearbox groaned and rattled as they made their slippery descent down into the crater.

  'Yoo-hoo!' the Cat squealed in falsetto, and waved madly out of the port side window.

  ***

  'Ah, come in, come in.' Kryten ushered them in from the airlock. 'How lovely to meet you,' he said, and bowed deeply.

  'Cârmita,' said Rimmer' speaking too loudly. 'What a delightful craft - reminds me of my first command.' He turned and hissed to Lister: 'Call me Ace.'

  Lister pretended not to understand and walked off down the spotless, newly painted white corridor after Kryten, who was chattering banalities about the weather.

  'Green slush again. Tut tut, tut.'

  The Cat flossed his teeth one last time, and followed them.

  Kryten, used to the strange tilt, walked speedily down the thin corridor, listing at an odd angle.

  He went through a large pear-shaped hatchway, and they followed him across what must have been the ship's Engine Room. Even Lister, who knew next to nothing about these things, could tell Nova 5's technology was far in advance of Red Dwarf's. Taking up three-quarters of the room was the strangest piece of machinery Lister had ever seen: it was like a huge series of merry-go-rounds stacked one on top of the other and turned on their sides. Each of these was filled with silver discs joined by thick gold rods, and at the end was what looked like an enormous cannon.

  'What's that?' asked Lister.

  'It's the ship's Drive,' Kryten replied. 'It's the Duality Jump.'

  'What's a Duality Jump?'

  'Don't be thick, Lister. Everybody knows what a Duality Jump is,' said Rimmer, lying.

  Kryten scurried through the pear-shaped exit, and Lister practically had to sprint out of the engine-room to catch up with them two corridors later.

  Suddenly, the Cat swivelled, as they passed a full-length mirror recessed in the wall. His heart pounded, his pulse quickened. He felt silly and giddy. He was in love.

  'You're a work of Art, baby,' he crooned softly at his reflection.

  Lister turned and shouted: 'Come on!'

  'I can't. You're going to have to help me.'

  Lister picked up his golden-booted foot and started to yank him down the corridor. Unable to help himself, the Cat hung on to the mirror. His gloved fingers squeaked across the glass surface as Lister pulled him free.

  'Thanks, Man,' the Cat said gratefully. 'That was a bad one.'

  ***

  'I'm so excited,' said Kryten, shuffling along and absently dusting a completely clean fire-extinguisher. 'We all are. The girls can hardly stop themselves from jumping up and down.'

  'Ha ha haaa,' brayed Rimmer' falsely. 'Cârmita, Cârmita'

  'Ah!' said Kryten, 'Ii parolas Esperanton, Kapitano Rimmer?'

  'I'm sorry?'

  'Vi parolas Esperanton, Kapitano Rimmer?'

  'Come again?'

  'You speak Esperanto' Captain Rimmer?'

  'Ah, oui, oui, oui. Jawol. Si, si.' Rimmer searched desperately through his memory for the appropriate phrase. Mercifully it came to him. 'Bonvolu alsendi la pordiston laiisajne estas rano en mia bideo.'

  'A frog?' said Kryten. 'In which bidet?'

  'Ha ha haaaaa,' brayed Rimmer, even less convincingly. 'It doesn't matter. I'll deal with in myself.'

  ***

  Kryten walked round the corner and down the ramp on to the service deck.

  'Well, here they are,' he said.

  Without looking where Kryten was beckoning, Rimmer bent down on one knee and swept his cap 'in a smooth arc. 'Cârmita!' he purred.

  Lister and the Cat tumbled i
n behind him.

  Their eyes met the hollow sockets of the three grinning skeletons sitting around the table.

  There was a very, very long silence.

  It was followed by another very, very long silence.

  'Well,' said Kryten, a little upset 'isn't anybody going to say "Hello"?'

  'Hi.' said Lister, weakly. 'I'm Dave. This is the Cat. And this here is Ace.'

  Rimmer still hadn't closed his mouth from forming the final vowel of Cârmita.

  Lister leaned over and whispered to him conspiratorially: 'I think that little blonde one's giving you the eye, Cap.'

  'Now,' Kryten clapped his hands, 'you all get to know one another, and I'll run off and fetch some tea.' He staggered off up the slope.

  'I don't believe this,' said Rimmer, massaging the 'H' on his forehead.

  Lister looked at him. 'Be strong, Big Man.'

  'Our one contact with intelligent life in over three million years, and he turns out to be an android version of Norman Bates.'

  'So, they're a little on the skinny side,' said the Cat, ever hopeful. 'A few hot dinners, and who knows?'

  Lister walked up to the table and put his arms around two of the skeletons' shoulders.

  'I know this may not be the time or the place to say this, girls, but my mate, Ace here, is incredibly' incredibly brave ...'

  'Smeg off' dogfood face!'

  'And he's got tons and tons of girlfriends.'

  'I'm warning you Lister.

  Kryten raced back down the slope' carrying a tray which held several plates of triangular-shaped sandwiches, a pot of steaming tea and a plate with seven of his precious chocolates on it. As he laid out the cups on the table' he looked up, suddenly aware of the lack of conversation.

  'Is there something wrong?' he asked.

  'Something wrong??' said Rimmer' aghast. 'They're dead.'

  'Who's dead?' asked Kryten, pouring some milk into the cups.

  'They're dead,' Rimmer waved at the three skeletons. 'They're all dead.'