Chapter Nine
Rimmer laughed his plumiest laugh, but his dark eyes burned. Getting caught in one of his father's squirrel traps – he felt like a humiliated eight year old all over again. His memory echoed with the sound of his three brothers laughing like heckling hyenas while they sat in the security room, zapping him mercilessly with stun bolts. Now, here he was, some three million years and countless dimension-hopping adventures later, and what had changed? Nothing, it seemed, but his height.
"What's going on—what is this?" Kochanski demanded, struggling to find space to breathe between Lister's curry-crusted jacket, Kryten's sharp angles, and Cat's perfumed shoulder.
"Keep still. I can handle this," Rimmer assured them. Speaking in his best 'Ace' voice, he called out, "Very funny, very funny. But, the joke's over. Drop the forcefield and let's join the party, what?"
"Can I zap the intruders, Daddy?" said Frank's little girl, her small hand hovering over the security room's touch console.
"Me, let me!" her brother piped up. "Please, Daddy, I promise I won't miss!"
"Out of the way," Frank said, shooing his kids away from the viewscreen and claiming the chair for himself. His left arm throbbed and burned, but he clenched his teeth against the pain and zoomed the image in until he could clearly make out his prisoners' faces.
"Is that…" He frowned and leaned in closer, turning on the speaker. "But it couldn't be…Fletch? Cousin Fletcher? It's Frank! Ol' Frankie-boy. I thought you were stuck in that special training camp on Phobos! Or, was it Deimos?"
"What, and miss all this?" Rimmer said, ignoring Lister's questioning look. "It's not every marriage that makes it to the big 40. Thought I'd drop in to pay my respects."
"Well, just so long as you're prepared to pay for your dinner," Frank said, doing his best to keep his voice light and free of pain. "You know how the folks are about the whole RSVP thing – caterers charging by the plate and all that. But, come on up to the house, you and your friends. I'll meet you at the check-in table."
Frank turned off the speaker and released the trap. The energy field dissipated with a crackling sigh, and the poles disappeared back into the ground.
"Does this mean we don't get to zap them?" his son said sulkily.
"Yes, that's what it means," Frank said irritably, and clutched his seething arm.
"But, Daddy, who is this Cousin Fletcher person?" his daughter asked as she trailed Frank out of the room. "I've never heard of him."
"Yeah, Rimmer, give," Lister said, as the Dwarfers continued their march through the vast, postcard-perfect gardens. "Who's 'Fletch,' and just who are we supposed to be?"
"Captain Simon Fletcher was my mother's half-sister's son," Rimmer explained, his eyes fixed grimly on the path ahead. "I hardly knew him, he was so much older than me. But, I remember, my brothers used to follow him like puppies whenever he came 'round for the holidays. He was some kind of engineer, I think…worked on Earth for a while before joining the Space Corps. So, if Frank thinks I'm him, and he's supposed to be in special training or whatnot, then you lot can pretend you're—"
"No, stop, this isn't right," Kochanski broke in. "You can't go on letting your family think you're your cousin. That would simply be exchanging one mask for another. And before you start with the excuses, Second Tech Rimmer, just remember the Wildfire brought you here for a reason. I, for one, do not want to risk that scheming ship of yours stranding us on this backwater moon, so ridiculously far in the past, because you couldn't find the guts to face your family as yourself."
"Ah ha!" Rimmer said. "So you are bitter about your trip home being derailed! I knew that whole 'gallantly selfless officer' thing was an act."
Kochanski almost choked, she was so affronted. Lister rushed to thump her back – until she froze him with a glare. Still, "I'm with Kris, man," he said to Rimmer. "We didn't come here to put on some show for your folks. The whole point of this trip is to help you face up to the truth of who you really are."
"No matter how awful that truth might be," Kryten said.
The group nodded…including Rimmer.
"Wait, I don't get it," Cat said.
"Get what?" asked Lister. "Rimmer bein' a weasely flake or Kochanski gettin' all passive-aggressive, like usual?"
"Hey," Kochanski said. "I am not passive-aggressive."
"Would you prefer overtly aggressive, then?"
Lister grinned, provoking Kochanski to ball her fists.
"Why you unwashed, squid-haired little—"
"No, no, no, I get all that," the Cat said, waving their argument away. "What I don't get is these people. I mean, they're supposed to be old Goalpost Head's family, right? His mother, father, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, and all the rest?"
"So they tell me," Rimmer muttered.
"Right," Cat said. "So how come they would think you're this 'Fletch' guy and not you? Don't they know what you look like?"
Rimmer chuffed a humorless laugh.
"As far as they know, Mssr. Arnold Rimmer is currently seventeen years of age and filling his days supervising the busiest spaceport on Titan. Not that any of them believed my letters. Really, I was taking a refresher maintenance course – the very course, in fact, which qualified me as a third technician and, ultimately, would land me that fateful position on Red Dwarf."
"So, what's your point?" Cat asked.
"I'm not seventeen," Rimmer said, and he quickened his pace, leaving the rest of the group to catch up.
The Dwarfers met Frank at a small, fold-out table beside the extensive marble patio where the anniversary reception was in full swing. He stood ready with nametags and markers, "For the caterers," he explained. "Write your preferred entrée at the bottom, under your name. Mother and Dad will have the bill sent to you."
"Good luck with that, bro…" Lister chuckled to himself, then leaned back and glanced at the others as they wrote, only to snicker loudly when he read Cat's tag.
"Looks like your name's Cat Fish, man," he said. "Oh, what's that make me, then? Dave Curry?"
"Sounds about right," Kochanski said dryly, printing pasta in parentheses on her nametag.
"No, wait, I'll write in 'Dave Vindaloo,'" Lister said. "That way, when you make the introductions, you can say 'Meet Vindaloo,' get it? Meat Vindaloo? An' you, Rimmer – you can be Arnold: Chicken. Or is it Fletcher Ribeye?"
"You, Lister, are about as funny as a cist on a cow's neck," Rimmer said, pressing his neatly printed 'Arnold J. Rimmer' nametag firmly to the front of his flight suit. Frank took one look at it and barked a laugh that would have gone on a lot longer if his throbbing arm hadn't so rudely distracted him.
"You find something amusing?" Rimmer said archly.
"That's good!" Frank said, coughing a little to cover his agonized wince. "Honestly, the way you arched your nostrils...! But, you really are a nutter, Fletch. You know how Mother and Dad feel about that boneheaded little twat. Still, good gag. John and Howie should get a kick out of it."
"I'm sure they will," Rimmer muttered, and flexed his kicking foot.
"Are you really our cousin?" a little voice peeped. Rimmer looked down to spot two round faces staring up at him, one boy and one girl.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"We—" the girl started.
"Oh, those are just my kids," Frank said, grabbing their arms and roughly herding them into the milling crowd. "Can't you see grown-ups are talking? Go find your mother and quit getting underfoot," he snapped.
Rimmer frowned, but didn't comment. Instead he said, "Excuse me, Frankie-lad, but I should go find the hosts…let them know I'm here. Manners, and all that," and headed in the direction the kids had gone.
"We should go too," Kochanski said, and the rest of them, not wanting to hang around at the table with Rimmer's brother when there was food and drink – and women – just beyond, quickly faded into the crowd.
Frank, apparently, felt the same about them now his favorite 'cousin' had left. As soon as he was alone, the silently suffering Space Corps commander let out a shaky sigh and gingerly cradled his arm against his chest.
The throbbing pain was getting so much worse, spiking in his neck and shoulders and prickling down his spine into his thighs and toes. For an endless stab of a moment, only one thought besides pain possessed his brain: the prospect of grabbing a bottle of painkillers and slipping into that hot, steaming, soothing Jacuzzi.
Clutching his arm, Frank practically ran back into the house. He knew the reception dinner was due to start any moment, he knew he was expected not only to attend, but to participate, but for once in his life, he honestly couldn't care. The way his arm felt, nothing on Io was going to keep him from that steaming Jacuzzi tub – not the dinner, not the general…not even the threat of his parents' disapproval. In half an hour, when the painkillers had kicked in and his current misery had dulled to something almost tolerable, then he'd return to the speeches and songs and whatever other duties his parents and superiors had in mind for him.
Maybe.
To Be Continued...
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