Backwards Read online

  Suddenly, there was a loud reverse cough from the direction of the porch. The Cat froze.

  Lister crawled towards the front of the house, and peeked over the porch.

  The hermit was sitting on the swing chair. He raised an almost-empty bottle to his lips and half-filled it from his mouth. Lister caught a wincing smell of the pungent fumes. Neat hooch.

  The hillbilly got to his feet, and looked around, scanning the woods. He started pacing agitatedly up and down the creaking porch boards.

  Lister backed away. What the smeg was the man doing awake and getting undrunk at this hour? Who was he expecting to see? Them? Had he just got out of bed, or was he going to be waiting on the porch all night?

  Lister checked his watch and blinked a curse. There were six or seven wooden shacks scattered around the property, as well as a fair-sized barn. Having to keep to the shadows and creep around silently would slow down the search considerably. It was unlikely they'd be able to cover the whole place before they'd have to set off back to the Bug.

  He sighed, stood and nodded for the Cat to follow him to the nearest of the shacks.

  * * *

  Kryten was on the last leg of his search pattern, and less than ten minutes away from engaging panic-like-a-headless-chicken mode, when he found the first of the engines.

  He wouldn't have spotted it at all if he hadn't actually tripped up over it.

  It was buried in the soil, less than fifty yards from the illegal still, with just a few inches of the nose cone peeking above the ground. Kryten knelt down and clawed away the surface soil frantically while Rimmer kept a timid lookout, trying not to think of the strange night creatures that might be lurking in the damp, dark shadows of the trees.

  Kryten exposed a further foot or so of the engine. The excitement of his discovery dwindled with each inch.

  The engine was rusted all to hell.

  He was extremely doubtful it could ever be restored to working condition.

  He lurched upright and sighed.

  'Well?' Rimmer's eyebrows crooked with expectation.

  'It's no good, sir. It's buried too deep. Without some kind of excavation tool, we haven't got a hope of extracting it in time.' Kryten discreetly slipped his hand behind his back and discarded a shard of rusted metal that he'd found flaked off the engine.

  Rimmer knelt by the exposed housing. Thankfully, there was too little light for him to spot the true decrepitude of the engine's condition. 'This is insane. Why would that backwoods bastard bury it?'

  Kryten shook his head. He had a good idea what had happened, but it belonged at the very top of the 'things he didn't want to think about' list. 'We need some kind of digging tool. I'll get one from Starbug. Suggest you stay here.' He turned and prepared to switch up to maximum jog mode.

  'Woah, woah, woah!' Rimmer smiled. 'Are you insane? I'm coming with you.'

  'I'll make much better time on my own.'

  Rimmer peered into the relentless gloom of the surrounding woods. He thought of mountain lions and grizzly bears. He thought of wolf packs and cougars. He thought of werewolves and Sasquatch and inbred hillbillies with guns and seriously dubious sexual preferences. He thought of all the wild things with yellow eyes and an insatiable blood-lust that would swallow his light bee whole as a pre-hors-d'oeuvre canape without even making a gulping noise. 'We'll go together,' he said.

  'Very well,' Kryten nodded, then turned, lurched and pelted off at maximum acceleration, leaving Rimmer wide-eyed, alone and furious.

  Kryten didn't get very far. As he burst through the thicket into the clearing that housed the still, his peripheral vision registered a pickaxe handle, and he stopped.

  He underestimated his speed and stopped too quickly, losing his balance and tumbling to the ground. He put out his hands to break his fall, plunging them into a wooden bucket filled with rainwater. When he pulled them out, he was alarmed to find they were covered in some kind of sticky goo. He considered trying to wash them, then realized that wouldn't work. In this universe, you used water to get yourself dirty.

  He picked himself up and waddled over to the pickaxe handle. It was protruding from a clump of bushes. He grabbed it with sticky hands and readied himself to tug it free.

  He looked down and froze.

  Lying in the bushes beneath him was the lifeless body of the hermit.

  The pickaxe was buried deep in his chest.

  TEN

  Kryten knelt and placed his fingertips on the hillbilly's neck. There was no pulse. The body was still fairly warm. Fresh blood was still oozing around the terrible chest wound.

  He eased back on his haunches, and tried to think. How could the hermit possibly be dead? Time was running backwards, and they'd already seen the man alive later that morning.

  Kryten accessed the unshooting incident in his visual storage and selected a still frame of the hillbilly. He looked down at the dead man, and compared the two faces.

  It wasn't the same man.

  He was dressed the same, and his features were extremely similar, but not exactly the same. Undoubtedly, the corpse was a close blood relative to the hermit who'd shot at them.

  The preceding events began to tumble into place. That's why the mountain man had been weeping in the clearing: he'd discovered his brother's corpse. He'd been beating the bushes, looking for some kind of clue to the perpetrator of the crime. Then he'd spotted Lister and chased them to the car.

  He'd assumed they were the killers.

  This was the crime for which Lister had been arrested.

  And since Lister couldn't have killed the man, that meant the real murderer was somewhere close by.

  Suddenly, Kryten was aware of someone behind him.

  There had been no footsteps, just the slight rustle of breathing. Kryten wheeled round, his hands flattened and elbows cocked in what he hoped would look like a threatening karate pose to his attacker.

  It was Rimmer. His features were puffed with rage.

  His fury deflated when he registered Kryten's fear and distress. His eyes tracked down the pickaxe handle down to the corpse, then back up to Kryten. 'Dead?' he asked, simply.

  'I'm afraid so. It's not the hermit who was chasing us. I think it's probably his brother, or his cousin.'

  'Probably both.' Rimmer knelt beside him. 'Probably his uncle and his father, too.'

  Kryten was affronted. Revulsion at human death was deep in the core of his programming, and witnessing it firsthand always disturbed him hugely. Especially when the death was unnatural and violent. He turned his face to Rimmer. 'Do you really think it appropriate to jest at the expense of the dead?'

  Rimmer shrugged. 'He won't be dead long.'

  Of course! Kryten cursed his own stupidity. Soon, probably in a matter of minutes, the corpse would come to life! All they had to do was conceal themselves in the bushes and wait until the murderer showed up.

  Suddenly, the corpse's eyes blinked open, startling Kryten so violently, he lost his balance again and tumbled on to his back.

  The corpse opened its mouth and let out a terrible death rattle.

  Kryten scrambled to his feet.

  'For God's sake,' Rimmer yelled, 'turn your smegging light on!'

  Kryten flicked on his chest light. The beam hit the animating corpse.

  It gurgled, as a thick dribble of bubbling blood trickled up its cheek and into its mouth.

  Dizzy with horror, Kryten was vaguely aware that Rimmer was talking to him. He turned and said, 'What?'

  'Your hands!' Rimmer was saying.

  He held his hands in the light. The goo that covered them was blood.

  Kryten was beginning to lose it. He felt like a tsunami was roaring through his head. The stark beam of his chest light illuminating his bloody, shaking hands fell on the corpse beyond and registered movement.

  With a low, awful moan, the corpse began to writhe. Its body started juddering violently, then it arched its back stiffly and screamed. It thumped back down and began beating the gro
und with its fists.

  It screamed again in pain and fury, and grasped the pickaxe handle. It started rocking from side to side, hands desperately clawing the handle of the instrument of its death.

  Rimmer was screaming, 'Do something!' and Kryten staggered forward, half blind with panic. He grasped the pickaxe. The corpse was looking up at him with an expression that looked like astonishment.

  Kryten tugged at the handle. There was a wet, cracking sound in the man's chest, but the pickaxe remained lodged there. Kryten summoned all his strength and pulled again.

  And the corpse was tugged to its feet, arms flailing, screaming and yelling insanely.

  And still the pickaxe was wedged in his chest.

  And then Kryten held on to the handle, the last of his sanity gurgling out of his ears as he danced a macabre waltz with the dying man in the eerie glow of his own chest light.

  Kryten was trying to yank the pickaxe loose, but the mountain man was holding it in his own chest with phenomenal, adrenal strength.

  Then, suddenly, he let go, and with a gruesome, crunching gloop, Kryten jerked the pickaxe free.

  While he was staring, astonished at the hillbilly's unblemished shirt front, the man lunged at the pickaxe still raised over Kryten's head.

  Still in shock, Kryten tussled with him for a second or two, and then let go. The reverse impetus of the manoeuvre flung him to the ground and sent him rolling side over side towards the bushes.

  For a moment, the hillbilly held the pickaxe over his head, and then swung it down towards the tumbling Kryten, but missed and raised it again. Kryten rolled over the spot where the blade had struck and stopped rolling.

  He jumped to his feet and faced the mountain man, who was brandishing the pickaxe, one hand on the handle, the other halfway along the shaft. He was snarling and murmuring vicious threats.

  Kryten was hurt and confused. He'd just brought this man back from the dead. Why was he bent on hurting him?

  The hillbilly hefted the pickaxe into one hand and swung it sideways, but he was out of range, and the blade whistled past Kryten's groinal socket.

  Kryten stumbled backwards towards the still, not knowing what to do or say. He looked around for Rimmer, but he was nowhere in sight.

  Then, as Kryten passed the still, it occurred to him to switch off his chest light. Now, the clearing was only illuminated by the gentle blue glow of the flame from the still.

  The mountain man leered dangerously at his retreating form, and then swung round and buried the pickaxe in the ground. Facing away from Kryten, he backed up towards the still, looked at Kryten once over his shoulder and promptly proceeded to ignore him.

  Kryten backed out of the clearing stealthily and collapsed on to his haunches in the shelter of the nearest bush.

  After a few minutes, his sanity returned, and Rimmer crept along after it. Kryten was going to ask him where he'd got to, but it would be a pointless question. As soon as Rimmer had seen a fight start, he'd performed his famous impersonation of a whippet with a sphincter full of dynamite. Kryten had long since ceased to wonder why a man who was already dead could be such a relentless coward.

  'Sorry about that,' Rimmer crawled close enough to whisper. 'Thought I spotted the other one trying to outflank you, so I dashed off to cover your rear.' He peered through the bushes. The hillbilly was quietly tending the still. 'What now?'

  'Now?' Kryten had lost track of time. He checked his internal chronometer. Almost two fifteen. 'We'd better get back to Starbug, see if the others are there.' If Lister and the Cat had managed to unearth the other two engines intact, it might be enough to get them airborne.

  Rimmer nodded, and turned towards the ridge. Kryten rose to follow him, then stopped in mid-crouch. A terrible thought had struck him.

  He'd been reversing the incident in his mind, in order to explain to the others what had actually happened and why they'd been delayed, when he realized the unthinkable truth.

  He had just violated his most sacred directive.

  He had killed a human being in cold blood.

  ELEVEN

  Lister was feeling pretty good. He hadn't slept for a good fifty hours now, what with the all-night interrogation at the police station which had uncracked six of his ribs and lifted the chronic pain in his kidneys. Each passing hour left him feeling fresher, stronger and more alert.

  The engine was surprisingly light: seven feet long and mostly solid metal, yet he and the Cat could carry it between them fairly easily.

  It was also surprisingly rusty.

  Still, they'd managed to find it, and if Kryten and Rimmer had enjoyed any luck at all, they'd probably have enough power for a shaky take-off.

  The Cat, who was leading the way, suddenly stopped and held up his hand. He sniffed the air, then nodded for Lister to take cover. Running sideways, with the engine between them, they trundled off the beaten pathway and ducked behind a clump of thickets.

  Lister checked his watch, agitated. One twenty-four. They were already behind schedule. Two minutes drooled by, and there was still no sign of any danger. Lister was about to get up, when he heard a twig crack, and the mountain man came into view.

  Lister was baffled. They'd just left the hermit swinging on his porch, yet here he was walking backwards down the crude path that led from the still to the cabin. As he passed them by, Lister could see his face in the full glow of the moon. If this man wasn't their hillbilly, he was his identical twin.

  There was no time to consider the ramifications. As soon as he was out of sight, they hoisted the engine to their shoulders and carried it back on to the path.

  Lister pushed the engine from the rear. The Cat got the message and upped his speed. They jogged through the clearing and climbed up the ridge to the cave.

  They set the engine down underneath Starbugs belly. Lister's hopes took a Trafalgar-sized broadside when he saw that the rest of the jets were still missing.

  Rimmer crept down the landing ramp and peered into the gloom beneath the ship. 'Lister?' he hissed, timidly.

  Lister ducked under the ramp. 'No luck?'

  Rimmer shook his head. 'We found one, but it was useless.'

  'How useless?'

  'Try "utterly". It was rotten with corrosion, with the added bonus that it was wedged solid about six feet into the ground. How did you get on?'

  'We found one in the hillbilly's grain store. He'd been using it as shelf prop. It's not in superb nick, but I reckon it'll go.'

  'The question is, will one jet be enough?'

  'Maybe. If we angle the front retros down, like I said. It'll be touch and go whether or not we clear the mountain, but I don't see what choice we've got.' Lister checked his watch. 'An hour and twelve minutes. Let's get moving. Where's Kryten?'

  'I think you're going to have to fix the jet on without him.'

  Lister looked over at the engine. 'Are you nuts? I wouldn't know where to start.'' Slowly, he twisted his head back towards Rimmer. 'Why? What's wrong with Kryten?'

  Rimmer hitched his eyebrows enigmatically and walked back up the ramp. Lister nodded to the Cat and followed him.

  Kryten was lying on the scanner table, his eyes open and rolled back into his skull. There was a strange buzzing sound that seemed to be coming from somewhere inside his head.

  Lister walked over and wafted his hand in front of Kryten's eyes. The mechanoid remained immobile. Lister tried calling his name, but still there was no response.

  'He's been like this since we got back,' Rimmer said. 'Just lying there in some kind of electronic stupor.'

  Lister put his nose to Kryten's ear and sniffed. 'Smeg. Smells like something's melted in there.'

  Rimmer nodded. 'I think it's some kind of short-circuit. Probably happened in the fight.' 'Fight?'

  'We found another hillbilly by the still. He had a pickaxe buried in his chest. Kryten pulled it out...'

  'Pulled it out?!'

  'Then they struggled a bit, and it was all over. We stagger back to Starbug, h
e lies on the scanner table: fizz, bang, there's smoke pouring out of his ears.'

  'Let me get this straight: Kryten pulled a pickaxe out of a man's chest?'

  'He had no choice. The poor bastard was writhing around in agony. Someone had to help him.''

  Lister released a sigh that had been pent up inside him for eight long years. Every single day of his unspeakable imprisonment, he'd yearned to know just one thing. Had he actually committed the crime?

  All the other inmates had the solace of knowing whether they were truly innocent or guilty. Whatever they proclaimed to the world, deep down, they all knew the truth.

  And through those long, restless nights, it had seemed to Lister that his situation would have been immeasurably more bearable if only he'd known the truth.

  Time after time, he'd pored over the transcripts of his trial, without finding enlightenment. The evidence had been circumstantial. He'd been spotted leaving the scene with another man. From the descriptions, Lister had guessed the second man had been the Cat. Lister's inability to disclose the Cat's whereabouts had counted heavily against him, in the jury's eyes. He'd been sentenced to fifteen years, of which he would serve eight.

  Well, now he knew.

  He had been innocent.

  And it didn't make him feel any better. Not one quark.

  The murderer had been Kryten.

  'Hello?'

  Lister's misted vision focused. Rimmer's face was directly in front of him. 'Hello?' he repeated. 'Anybody home?'

  Lister sighed again and dragged his hand across his face. 'Yeah, I... uhh... yeah.'

  'Thank God. For a minute then I thought you'd short-circuited too.'

  Lister crossed to the tool store, ripped open the metal cabinet door and started rooting through a box. 'I think I know what's wrong with him. Something he did tripped his auto-shutdown mechanism.'

  'Can you fix it?'

  Lister hefted a sonic screwdriver from the tool box and walked back to the scanner table. 'I've done it before, remember?' He eased a tyre lever into Kryten's head and prised away a section of skull. 'Question is: can I do it in time?'