Backwards Read online

With a strange sucking sound, a bullet tugged itself out of the dashboard and, dragging the tiny shards of glass from the seat beside him in its wake, zipped through the rear window, sealing it neatly.

  'Stay low!' Lister injuncted, quite unnecessarily.

  The hillbilly scampered up a hillock and out of Rimmer's sight as the truck swept round a bend. Naturally, given Lister's inexcusable insistence on obeying the perverse conventions of this world, the bend would take them round the hillock where the hermit would be waiting for them, giving him the chance to squeeze off another shot.

  Sure enough, there was the strange implosion sound again, and the glass on Lister's lap leapt up and formed itself into a drivers door window, which for some reason appeared to be misted over and coated in yellowish slime.

  Then Lister did something for which Rimmer would never forgive him.

  Lister parked the car.

  'Lister! What the smeg are you playing at?' Rimmer mezzo-sopranoed.

  Lister ignored him, bent forward and began fiddling with the steering-column.

  Rimmer looked up and saw the hermits face pressed madly against the driver's window, yelling incomprehensible threats.

  And Lister stopped the engine.

  Without taking his eyes from the yellow slobber the mountain man was slavering up from the window, Rimmer asked, in a voice far too calm to be sane, 'What are you doing, David?'

  'What d'you think? I'm trying to unhotwire this damn thing.'

  Rimmer tried to swallow, but his tongue just rasped against his sandpaper palate. 'A more prudent approach, one might venture, would be to leave this vehicle in a posthastely kind of way and run backwards the hell out of here.'

  Lister carried on fiddling with the ignition wires. 'Rimmer, I've got to undo this. That's the way things are around here. Effect and cause. Every effect is followed by a cause. There's no way round it.'

  'We couldn't just waive the rules for once?'

  'Not rules, Rimmer: laws. Immutable cosmic laws. Look, man, just stop interrupting me, and try and panic in silence, OK?'

  The engine churned, spluttered and stopped. The hillbilly stopped thumping, cursing and slobbering and moved away. Rimmer peered over the edge of his window and watched the hermit, clutching his shotgun racing handily backwards towards a pathetic log cabin.

  Rimmer could quite clearly see a giant sow sitting in a swing chair on the wooden porch. The hermit appeared to have dressed the pig in a pink gingham dress and varnished its hooves with bright red nail polish. Rimmer really didn't want to know why.

  The engine churned again and died.

  Rimmer found in his soul a new level of loathing for Lister. Valiantly and selflessly, he'd risked life and limb to land on this hellhole to rescue his shipmate, and how had the scumbag repaid him? By leading him into a series of life-threatening situations, culminating in his being unshot at and deslobbered over by a giant pig's husband who was almost certainly related to himself in a variety of illegal ways.

  The engine chuddered one last time, and Lister seemed satisfied. 'That's it!' he said. 'We're out of here!' then leaned over and thrust open Rimmer's door.

  Rimmer glanced over at the cabin. The hillbilly had stashed his shotgun by the door, and was haring off backwards up towards some thick woods behind them.

  'Come on!' Lister was yelling. 'Move it!'

  Kryten jumped out of the car and slammed his door. Lister leaned over to the passenger side and locked it.

  Rimmer eased himself out of the jalopy, keeping his eyes fixed on the sow, who was rocking happily back and forth on the porch bench, its little pig eyes watching him. Kryten leaned in the car and helped the Cat crawl out backwards. He closed the door, and Lister leaned over and locked that too.

  Lister jumped out of the driver's seat and started poking at the door lock with a rusty nail that had leapt into his hand from the track.

  'What now?' Rimmer whined.

  'Reckon he must keep it locked.'

  Rimmer looked over at the woods the hillbilly had vanished into. 'Why on Io would the trigger-happy pork-poker bother locking his car up here in this God-forsaken wilderness?'

  'Search me.' Lister heard the click as the lock connected. 'Maybe he doesn't want the pig driving off in it.'

  That made sense to Rimmer. From what he'd seen of the mountain man, the pig was undoubtedly the brains of the business.

  Lister wiggled the nail out of the lock and placed it in the dirt beside the car. He straightened. 'All right, it's "leg it" time.'

  Rimmer asked; 'Which way?' even though he was fairly sure he could guess the answer.

  Lister nodded towards the woods. 'I reckon he was chasing us. Don't you?' He turned to Kryten, who was conversing in forward-speak with the Cat. 'How is he?'

  'He'll be fine, sir, so long as we stay together. Apparently, he had an unpleasant experience in some bushes a while back when we left him alone.'

  Lister wiped the palm of his hand across his face. 'I can guess. We should have warned him.' He looked at the Cat, answering his accusatory stare with a sympathetic facial shrug, and then nodded again over at the woods. 'OK, people. Wagons roll!' He performed his familiar reverse skid, and took off for the trees. Kryten turned around and followed him, backwards. Rimmer and the Cat looked at each other, and mutely voted to flout convention. They ran towards the woods forwards.

  As the Cat leapt into the woods, the thick undergrowth snapped aside before him, clearing his path, then slashed back on his calves behind him. Rimmer's hologrammatic feet simply disappeared into the heavy fern, as if he were running on a foot-thick soft carpet. The undawning sun burst sporadically through the overhanging leaves, illuminating their flight with thousands of golden spotlights.

  They thrashed on through the woods. The Cat kept yelping 'Mnadh!' as his inverted slipstream continually whipped his pigtail over his cheeks and eyes. He reached behind his head and grabbed it, keeping his other arm needlessly cocked in front of him, to protect his face from branches, which he had absolutely no faith would continue to yield a path for him just before he reached them.

  The Cat burst through a thick bush to find Lister and Kryten crouched behind a bank of fern which looked up on to a hillside cave.

  Rimmer's heart jumped up and shook hands with his Adam's apple when he recognized it as the cave they'd concealed Starbug in.

  The broad, twisted grin of delight slowly trickled back down from his cheeks when he saw that Lister was frowning and chewing the inside of his lip. 'What's up?' he whispered. 'We're home.'

  'Not quite,' Lister hissed.

  Rimmer followed his gaze. In the clearing before them, a bizarre jerry-built concoction of vats, tubes and pipes was sucking in smoke from the treeline above. 'What is it?'

  Kryten answered 'I would guess some kind of illegal still.'

  Not for the first time, Rimmer doubted the sanity of the lawmakers of reverse Earth. What in heaven's name could possibly be illegal about taking dangerous alcoholic liquor and converting it into grain for planting?

  Then he saw it.

  Just below a small blue flame which was sucking the heat out of some bubbling liquid in a vat, a rubber tube led to a fuel canister. The canister was imprinted with a Jupiter Mining Corporation logo, and stamped 'Red Dwarf'.

  This time, Rimmer's heart plunged towards the pit of his stomach, and his testicles leapt to meet it.

  The hillbilly had found Starbug.

  EIGHT

  There were lots of things Kryten was trying not to think about. He was trying not to think about how they now had less than seven hours before their take-off window closed, leaving them stranded in this reverse universe. He was trying not to think about just how much of Starbug had been pillaged by the mountain man, and whether or not the vessel would still be capable of flight. He was trying not to think about how he was going to explain the severity of their plight to the others.

  He looked over at Lister, whose face was set in grim frustration, which gave him something else not
to think about.

  The hillbilly had unspotted Lister just as they leapt behind the bank of ferns, and was now prodding around the undergrowth on the other side of the clearing. His shoulders were heaving and he was sobbing loudly. Thick streams of wetness crawled up his cheeks from his damp beard into his nose and eyes.

  Finally, he backed into a thicket just by the still, and he was gone.

  'Right.' Rimmer glanced around trying to decide who should bear the brunt of his reproachful look, and settled on Kryten. 'Just how bad is this?'

  'It's not good, sir. Those spare fuel tanks are stored in the hold. To access them, an intruder would have to breech every single one of our security measures. We must conclude that the entire ship has been compromised. Including the computer systems and engine-rooms.'

  Rimmer shook his head. 'Marvellous,' he said. 'We don't even have the technology to keep out a bandy-legged, brain-dead hillbilly with a gene pool no bigger than a spider's piss puddle.'

  'It's possible he only took the fuel canister.' Kryten tried to inject optimism into his tone. 'It's unlikely he would have understood the function of much else.'

  'Only one way to find out.' Lister stood. 'And that's to look.'

  They picked their way carefully up the sloping ridge to the cave's entrance. The undawning sun was glimmering dangerously low, just over a distant white-capped peak, and while Kryten and the Cat had excellent low-light vision, Lister and Rimmer were beginning to have difficulty seeing.

  Once inside the mouth of the cave, Kryten was forced to activate his chest light. Lister felt his chest tighten with excitement as the beam fell on Starbugs cockpit.

  He hadn't seen the dirty green insect-shaped ship-to-surface vessel in almost forty years, but he'd dreamed of it plenty. It had become an icon to him. His ticket home.

  They walked round to the flared tail section. The rear drive jets all seemed to be intact and in place. The bulbous mid-section appeared secure. The landing steps were withdrawn and the door was sealed.

  Wordlessly, Kryten emitted the access signal, and the door swung open. Hydraulics hissed and the landing ramp dropped smoothly down.

  No one dare speak, but everyone was thinking so far, so good.

  They climbed inside.

  Kryten activated the airlock, the steps retracted and the outer door clanged shut. After an unbearable pause, the inner door opened and they stepped into the mid-section.

  It was just as they'd left it.

  Fighting the urge to run, Kryten walked up to the airlock door and keyed in the access code. A red scanner light slid across his face, and the airlock door wheel sighed open. He walked into the mid-section and straight up the four steps into the cockpit section as the drive lights flickered on. He eased himself down into the seat of the drive computer station, and started running system checks.

  The Cat headed straight up the stairs which led from the mid-section to the rest quarters above, presumably to check that no one had been screwing around with his clothes, while Rimmer made for the maintenance corridor to glance around the engine-rooms and investigate the supplies.

  All Lister could do was sit.

  He thumped down into one of the chairs surrounding the scanner table and looked around the room.

  Above the girder grid of the mid-section's ceiling, the lights appeared to flare. Lister put his hand to his eyes, and it came away wet. He looked down at the floor where small droplets began to form from a damp patch there and started whipping up towards his face.

  Shamelessly, Lister unwept.

  Thirty-six years ago, in his own universe, Lister had died. His shipmates had brought him to this place, where Time's reversal could bring him back to life. And he'd lived that life. And he'd been grateful for it. But all the while, he'd felt he was an outsider here.

  There had been joys, of course. Somehow his long-dead ex-lover, Krissie Kochanski, had been brought here with him, and they'd shared the pleasures of growing younger together. Eventually, their twin sons had come home to live with them, and there had been the inverted delight of watching them de-mature.

  But all that had long since passed. More than a decade had gone by since the boys had been pushed back into their mother. And nine years ago, he and Krissie had been introduced, whereupon she'd promptly gone away and forgotten him.

  And after that, the only thing that kept him sane had been the dream of this moment. Here, now, sitting in Star-bug's familiar, unhomely, metallic surroundings. For Lister, there was no more glorious decor in the history of interior design.

  The last of the teardrops rolled up his face, leaving only fading red rims around his eyes as the Cat skipped down the metal stairway, grinning as if there was a wedge of Edam lodged between his cheeks. 'Hfyahs rah tsoots iym,' he beamed. 'Sksaherh nakh eeooh!'

  Rimmer ducked in through the hatch from the engine rooms. 'What was that?'

  Lister looked up. He hadn't used forward-speak for decades, but he ought to start practising. He ran the Cat's words over in his head. Suddenly, they clicked. 'I think he said: "We can relax. My suits are safe. "'

  'Excellent news.' Rimmer favoured the Cat with the grin he reserved for idiots and foreigners. 'I for one shall sleep soundly tonight. Well' — he rubbed his hands together — 'supplies are good, just the one fuel canister missing. Engines seem operational. Computers are functioning. Looks like we can lift off.'

  Kryten stepped down from the cockpit. The others turned their eyes towards him, expectantly. 'I... I... I...' he began, and then slammed his forehead against the hull's interior. 'I'm afraid there is one minor problem. Somehow, the landing jets have become detached.'

  There was a brief moment of silence, and then Lister suddenly cursed 'Smeg!' and kicked the body of the scanner table, neatly removing a dent that had been there.

  'It's not that bad, people,' Rimmer smiled encouragement. 'We don't have to land. Once we RV with Red Dwarf, one of us can jet-pack over and tow Starbug in. Yes?'

  'You don't understand.' Kryten sank into the seat opposite Lister. 'When we set down here, I had to reverse the controls. The only way of bringing us down was to use the take-off procedures.'

  Rimmer was still baffled. 'So?'

  'So,' Lister said, 'we need the landing jets to take off. Without them, we'll be stuck here.' He looked between his feet where the damp patch had been. 'We'll be stuck here for ever.'

  NINE

  The four of them stood under the bulge of Starbugs belly, Kryten's light angled directly at the alarming space where the retro jets ought to have been. All three of them were missing.

  'It doesn't make sense.' Rimmer ran his hand through his wiry hair. 'Why would Jethro Clampett's stupider brother want three landing jets from a space vehicle? What's he going to do: launch his cabin into orbit and join the Mile High Club with his pig?'

  'Perhaps he's not the one responsible,' Kryten offered. 'Look,' He directed the beam at the severed retainers which had been welded to the engine. The metal exposed there was rusted over. Kryten's list of things he didn't want to think about was growing to novella proportions.

  'All right.' Rimmer walked back to Starbugs rear. 'Couldn't we rig up one of the main thrusters underneath, so it could act as a landing jet?'

  'It might work,' Kryten agreed, 'if we had time. Unfortunately, it's not an option.'

  'Why?' Rimmer strode back to the group. 'What's the rush?'

  'We're relying on certain planetary conditions to help us sling-shot out of the solar system. Those conditions will not be fulfilled unless we leave soon.'

  'How soon is "soon"?'

  'Five and a half hours.'

  Lister blew like there was a tuba missing from his lips. 'That's soon. OK. All right. How about we angle the front retros? That should give us some lift.'

  Kryten looked towards the cave's entrance. 'I doubt we'd get sufficient power to clear the tops of those redwoods. Certainly not enough to get us over that mountain.'

  'Right then,' Lister shrugged. 'We've got just one shot:
find those engines. How long would it take us to attach them?'

  Kryten looked at the ground and shook his head. 'There's no way of knowing. It would depend on what condition they're in. At least ninety minutes. Maybe two hours.'

  Lister looked at his watch. 'That gives us till two a. m. One-thirty at a pinch. We're going to have to split into two groups. I'm no good in the dark. Neither's Rimmer. I'd best go with the Cat. Come what may, we meet back here at half-past one.'

  Kryten nodded and they headed out of the cave.

  When they reached the clearing where the still was bubbling away, Lister and the Cat peeled off south towards the mountain man's cabin, and Kryten and Rimmer carried on eastwards into the woods.

  Kryten's plan was to walk for fifty minutes searching every square inch of the terrain, then cut back diagonally south-west for another fifty, then north for fifty minutes more. It wasn't exactly a definitive search pattern, but it would leave him a full hour for his back-up plan, which involved racing around in a panicky funk if nothing turned up, hoping against hope to come across the engines by sheer fluke.

  * * *

  Lister and the Cat crept up to the log cabin.

  The lights were out and the metal pipe that served as a chimney was no longer sucking thick white smoke from the sky.

  They edged along the side of the cabin, up to a shuttered window. From inside, there came the regular hum of a deep-sleep snore. Good. The hermit was asleep. That would make it easier to search the storage sheds. The Cat peered gingerly over the wooden sill and through a crack between the slats.

  The entire cabin was comprised of a single room. There were no jet engines in sight.

  In fact, there was very little furniture. A rocking chair, and a rickety wooden table with a short-wave radio on top. Most of the room was taken up by a huge bed, which could have happily accommodated six or seven normal-sized people. As it was, a single occupant was taking up the bulk of it.

  The giant hog.

  She was snoring contentedly, one hoof on the pillow beside her head. She was wearing a floral nightdress and a lace-trimmed cap.