For the disclaimer, see the first chapter.
Christmas with the Dwarfers
--Chapter Two--
It was a rather unlikely scene; a mechanoid, a hologram, the last human being alive and a creature who had evolved from his cat, all stood around a Christmas table. Kryten had lived up to his promise; everything on the table was immaculate, from the folded napkins to the little name cards that he had worked on so meticulously.
"But there's only four of us," said Rimmer, spying his name written in calligraphic lettering on a piece of folded cardboard. "What's the point of having a seating plan?"
"There's nothing wrong with a bit of formality, sir," Kryten reminded him. "I simply couldn't resist." He started to set out wine glasses upside-down on the table. "Goodness, I haven't had a chance to do something this special since Christmas on the Nova 5." He nudged a glass into position.
"Is there anything we can do to help, Kryte?" asked Lister, taking note of the mechanoid's nervous movements.
"I wouldn't dream of it, Mr Lister sir," Kryten replied, smiling. "Now, if you'd like to sit down, I'll just get out the main course." He walked over to the oven, plodding along in his curious mechanical way. Lister sat happily in his designated seat; Rimmer sat down as if it were the most difficult thing in the world. He'd protested to Kryten; after all, how could a hologram eat a Christmas dinner?
"I've arranged for Holly to cook up a simulation for you, Mr Rimmer," Kryten had explained. "You won't even notice the difference."
Of course, it wouldn't taste as good - eating hologrammatic food was the equivalent of eating with a horribly bad cold, where all the senses are dulled and lessened except in extreme cases of taste or flavour - but it would look the part. Lister gave an amused grin as he saw the expression on the hologram's face.
"Cheer up, Rimmer," he beamed. "It could be worse." Rimmer eyed him scathingly.
Kryten, carrying a large and elaborately decorated tray, returned from the oven. After asking Lister to move his hat, he placed it in the centre of the table, evidently pleased with his efforts.
"Well, tuck in, sirs," he said, pressing his hands together in excitement. "There's plenty for everyone!"
Lister mopped up the last piece of his vindaloo with the end of his finger, savouring the aftertaste as if it were the last meal he would ever eat. "That was great, Kryten," he said, reaching for the wine glass filled with lager. "And when I say great, I mean it. Honest. I don't even need an extra bucket of water to cool me stomach."
Kryten smiled, "Thank you, sir. That means a lot to me." He glanced at the others. Rimmer picked absently at a piece of hologrammatic turkey that had turned cold on his plate, whilst Cat juggled three sprigs of leftover broccoli. "I do hope you sirs thought the same." They didn't look up.
After a few long moments, Lister thought it apt to break the silence.
"Well, if nobody minds, I've got me own little surprise," he said with a smile. He reached underneath the table and brought the horribly grubby rucksack onto his lap. "See, since we haven't celebrated Christmas before – together, I mean - I thought I'd get everyone a present." Rimmer sat back in his chair and folded his arms, a wry expression on his face.
"I'm sitting opposite someone cheesy enough to make the Mills and Boon holiday edition."
Lister ignored him, "Cat, this one's for you." He passed him a small box. Cat took it from him, looking rather confused. He rattled the package, hearing something move inside.
"I don't know why you humans do this," he said. "A Cat wouldn't be seen dead giving away presents to anyone – especially not you. Can you imagine what that'd do to my reputation?" He looked at the box with suspicion, as if something might jump out of it at any moment.
Lister laughed, "Just open it." Cat gave him a slight glare, revealing his gleaming white teeth, and started to unwrap the rather shoddily-wrapped item. Opening it up, he found it to be a rectangle-shaped piece of plastic. He turned it over and turned it back again. "It's a key card," Lister said, it being evidently aware that the Cat had no idea what to do with it. "You use it in the food dispensers. Swiped it from one of the top officers' stores; lets you get as many meals as you like in one day."
"Hey, thanks bud!" Cat grinned, putting down his napkin and getting up from the table. "I think I'll go try it out right now!" Kryten looked at him, puzzled.
"But sir, you've just eaten!"
"Exactly!" the Cat beamed, unaware of his implication. "And I don't know about you, but I'm going to try and get the taste out of my mouth!" He dance-shuffled across the floor and headed up the stairs, letting out a screech that was so high-pitched that it was painful to the ears. Kryten looked suitably hurt.
"Don't worry, Kryte," said Lister, digging around in the rucksack in an attempt to blot the incident from the mechanoid's mind. "Here." He pulled out a slightly larger parcel. "This one's for you."
Kryten took it gingerly, "Thank you, sir." He opened one of the ends, and slid out a complicated-looking manual, followed by a host of computer cards.
"I checked out the science labs," said Lister, "and found some GTi components that might come in useful." Kryten was already halfway through reading the instructions. All the extras were there.
"A slide-back sunroof head!" he exclaimed, pointing to a diagram on the page. "Just what I've always wanted. Oh, thank you, sir," he said again. He continued to scan the manual for other essentials. Extra radio channels, anti-grav capabilities, even instructions for an in-built CD drive to replace the old-fashioned cassettes. He was the closest he could get to Silicon Heaven.
"Welcome, Kryters!" Lister said happily. "And hold on a sec, Rimmer," he continued, getting out of his seat. "Yours is out here. Don't think I've forgotten you."
Rimmer rolled his eyes, "Heaven forefend."
Ignoring Rimmer's sarcasm, Lister went to one of the side entrances and began to pull something out of the doorway. It was evidently quite heavy, as he strained to do it by himself. As it came around the corner, it eventually dawned upon Rimmer what it was.
"It's a bit of a botched job," admitted Lister, placing the object gently down by one of its handles, "but it's the best I could do with the time." He stood there, slightly wheezing from the effort. Rimmer's Javanese camphor wood chest, the one Lister had mutilated on their spell on the ice moon, sat next to him. Lister opened the lid to reveal the back panel. He had hammered some replacement material into the gap, using an excessive amount of wood glue which seeped out of its edges as a sealant. True, it wasn't camphor wood. It wasn't even Javanese. But it was a great deal better than that empty hole.
Rimmer's first thought was to indict Lister of mutilating the object further – the white wood glue had dried white, and left a permanent stain on the camphor wood surrounding it. But he didn't. He said nothing at all.
Lister rolled over in his bunk to face the neon green clock which hung on the back wall of the room. Narrowing his eyes to bring the blindingly bright numbers into focus, he checked the time. Three-thirty. He let out a sleepy groan, rolled back over and closed his eyes.
He often had trouble sleeping. The ship made strange noises at night; the pipes creaked, and distant metallic clangs from floors above and below rang in his ears, and echoed for minutes after. It was a sad sound, the sound of a vessel that had outdone its service, and was just now beginning to succumb to the awesome power of time. He couldn't sleep. He threw off his covers and pushed himself out of the bed, landing with a thump on the floor.
Rimmer didn't appear to wake. Lister blindly grabbed his jacket from his chair and began to feel his way to the door, using only the neon light as a guide. Each of his footsteps made an excruciating creak. He never understood that about footsteps; it was only when you were trying to be quiet that they seemed to make the loudest noise possible.
"Lights," he yawned, closing the bunkroom door behind him with a push on the palm-pad. He drudged sleepily into the conjoining room. Immediately the lights came on, causing Lister to shield his eyes before he became adjusted to the brightness.
"Can't sleep?"
"Rimmer?" said Lister, recognising the voice. "What are you doing in 'ere?" He rubbed sleep from his eyes. Rimmer sat on a chair, still wearing his emerald-green outfit, and looked at him.
"I couldn't sleep either." He turned to one of the angular windows, but it was difficult to make out the multitude of stars from the reflection of the light in the glass. "It's just – I've never had a Christmas present from anyone." He paused. "Not a real present, anyway. Not unless you count the lumps of Ionian ore my brothers put in my stocking each year."
"C'mon, man," said Lister. "Don't get so hung up on this. Didn't your parents get you anything?" He leant against the bunkroom door and stifled a yawn. Knowing Rimmer's family though, he strongly doubted it.
"My parents?" Rimmer almost scoffed, as if the very idea itself was absurd. "My father stood by a strict ratio; the number of presents we got was directly proportional to the number of times we won the Astronavigation quiz at the dinner table." He looked down at his hands, which were wrung together.
"Well, we're all a part of the crew," said Lister. "We work together; we're the posse, the Boyz from the Dwarf." He paused, "Besides, I had to give you something for keeping me sane all these years, didn't I?" He looked at Rimmer and smiled.
Rimmer glanced up at him, and a thought occurred to him that had never entered his mind before. Perhaps, just maybe, knowing every single Space Corps Directive didn't matter. Perhaps Christmas was more than knowing the maximum velocity of fifty different spacecraft. Maybe there was something more valuable than any of that. He didn't say anything; after all, Rimmer was Rimmer. But two words formed clearly in his mind that he never thought he'd think on Christmas.
Thank you.
Kryten's auto-alarm buzzed on, jolting him out of his offline state and into a frenzy of excitement. It was Christmas Day on the Nova 5, and a most special day indeed for mechanoids. All the crew, mostly Americans, would gather for an enormous Christmas party in the middle of the day. It was a huge affair. There were streamers, party hats, and mountains of sticky Christmas cake laced with a white and sumptuous icing laid out on the tables.
It was the day on which Kryten, and the other few service mechanoids aboard the craft with whom he was acquainted, were welcomed into the team as it were, and honoured as part of the crew. They would eat with the humans, and afterwards sing a mixture of carols and popular songs, culminating in a wonderful group performance of 'God Bless America' to remind them that they were never far from home. They would even engage in the crew's drunken game of Twister (though to be fair, the translation mechanoid, with its extendable arms and legs, had a clear advantage).
However, it was not this that Kryten most looked forward to, but the aftermath of the event. Hundreds of dirty dishes, trodden-on napkins and blown-out party poppers lay strewn over the floor as if a hurricane had swept through the room...and it was a dream come true! He would spend hours tidying things away, polishing, sweeping, making sure everything was as perfect and spotless as it had been before. He was almost disappointed when he'd finished. Ah well, he would think. There was always next year.
For mechanoids, Christmas was a very special time indeed.
The unnamed creature crept silently over the tops of the dome-like houses. Under the few pinpricks of light that shone from the cavern roof, he was almost invisible – and he liked it that way. He prowled on further, sticking his hand into each abandoned hovel.
His father, deeply religious, had warned him not to do this; that it was against the ancient Cat laws that had been passed down through the ages. But he was not like his father. He delved into another hut and pulled out a tin of food. He smiled, the light glinting from his pointed teeth, and put it into his bag. Supplies were running low; that's why they'd left. So he took what he could find.
He leapt silently onto the ground and began to pace down one of the wide streets that ran through the city. This landscape of surreal hovels went on for miles, expanding to the very edges of the cavern walls. He was too big for them now. It was Cat lore that his ancestors were much smaller in size. But he didn't care. He swung the bag over his shoulder and turned into the next street. There were too few of them left; they wouldn't mind a few things going missing.
"Get your things together," Dave's grandmother said in her thick Liverpudlian accent, "or we won't be going anywhere, alright?" She could be a grouch sometimes, but he knew she had a good heart. She was short, having shrunk in that strange way that old people do. She smoked a pipe, wore thick-rimmed glasses, and had reams of tattoos etched into the loose skin on her arms. Sometimes she would stretch them so that a character appeared to open and close its mouth. This always made him laugh.
Dave pulled on his bright red Wellingtons, "I'm coming, gramma!" He loved Christmas. Perhaps, he thought excitedly to himself, it would be the day he'd complete his Lego set. Christmas was the one day of the year that he could forget he was adopted. He felt as if he were a part of a family, a family that welcomed and accepted him as one of their own. And it was a wonderful feeling.
She had promised him a walk in the park, the big one with the mansion house. It had snowed afresh, and a thick carpet of white lay across the frozen ground, untouched and unspoiled. Frost clung to the trees, framing it in a delicate patchwork of ice. She held his gloved hand as they walked toward the playground. Maybe Duncan would be there, he thought excitedly. This was before he moved. He ran, laughing, toward the swings.
But his favourite part was yet to come. In the evening, they would sit on the sofa together and slip in an old, worn-out recording of his favourite film – Frank Capra's 'It's A Wonderful Life'.
And for that one day, it really was.
Arnold didn't want to get out of bed. He pulled his covers over him further so that only the very top of his hair stuck out from underneath. Pushing some of the quilt upwards, he gave himself a hole to breathe through. He felt for a moment as if he were inside an igloo, warm and protected from the outside world. But this moment was shattered as he heard the sound coming from downstairs.
Thump-thump-thump.
He emerged from his igloo and looked out of the window. Jupiter loomed like a distant monster, its eye glaring at him through the glass. The plumes of Ionian volcanoes rose on the horizon. He hid under the covers again. He could hear his brothers laughing. They would get presents today; model spaceships, clothes, books. He quietened his breathing. The thumping became louder.
"Arnold!" A voice like thunder erupted from the stairway outside his room. "I've told you twice already – come downstairs. Don't spoil Christmas for the rest of the family." The voice was full of rage; it was shouted rather than said, an order, not a suggestion. But he couldn't go. He was deathly afraid, even more afraid than he was at Io House. He sometimes thought it silly that one should be afraid of one's own family. But that was the way it was. There was nobody there to protect him; nobody to tell him that things would be all right; nobody to turn to.
He knew what he wanted for Christmas.
He wanted a friend.
A/N: Please review! And Merry Christmas everybody! Hope it's a great one for you!