Chapter Twelve
"I'm going to kill him. I swear it, Computer," Rimmer muttered through clenched teeth, dodging and weaving through the milling party guests on his way back to the sign-in table where he'd last seen Frank. "I'm going to wrap my hands around the smarmy bastard's neck and squeeze 'till his eyes pop like the frog he so resembles. I'll—"
"Arnold, calm down," the Wildfire's voice sounded through his enhanced lightbee's inbuilt comlink. "You're very angry right now, and that's—"
"Damn right, I'm angry!" Rimmer snarled. "It's one thing for Frank and the rest to bully me. I was the youngest, the runt, the reject… But Janine! Beautiful, sensitive Janine… For Frank to freeze her out like this— It's so…so…mother!"
He fisted his hands so tightly, he felt his nails cut into his palms.
"I know what it is, Computer," he said. "It's because she's unenhanced. A Nehb Earth celebrity, struggling to fit in with the crème de la crème of the Outer Rim. I knew there'd been some trouble with Mother and Father when she and Frank started dating, but… Frank married her, he stood up to them! To slight her now…his children… I ought to knock him flat and have Lister sit on his face, the arrogant, bigoted, two-faced hypocrite! Where's he gone?"
"He's not where you left him?" the Wildfire asked.
"No. He's scarpered," Rimmer snapped, pounding his fist on the cluttered, unmanned table.
"Take a breath and let me run a scan," the Wildfire said calmly.
"I don't want to take a breath," Rimmer complained. "I want to murder my brother."
The Wildfire's voice conveyed a distinct smirk.
"Fratricide isn't exactly in keeping with the Ace legacy, you know."
"I thought you brought me here so I could break free of that smegging tether," Rimmer muttered darkly. "Forge an identity of my own…"
"Again, fratricide: not exactly the best place to build from. Well...unless you happen to be Romulus, perhaps. Ah—found him."
"So, where is the slimy reptile?" Rimmer demanded.
"Promise you'll behave yourself?"
Rimmer rolled his eyes.
"Just tell me where he is."
"Third floor, East Wing," she told him, and Rimmer turned straight toward the towering manor, fighting to contain his boiling temper and wondering at this startlingly strong need to actually face his brother.
Arnold Rimmer had always been a coward. It was one of his defining characteristics. When faced with danger of any sort, Rimmer had learned early on that the best course was to hightail it to a cozy hidey-hole and tremble there until the danger had passed…or at least been distracted by a different victim.
So, what the hell was he doing stalking up the marble steps and through the huge, French doors of the family manor, itching to confront the man who, more than any other, had worked and schemed and plotted to make his childhood a tortured misery? Was it Ace – some macho, protective drive carried over from the role? Or was it merely an impulsive burst of fury, fueled by memory and destined to crumple to panic and humiliation the moment he laid eyes on his brother again?
"Frank? Frank, I know you're here!" he shouted, his voice echoing in the soaring, cathedral-like foyer that buffered the main house from the gardens. Not that there was really any point to such a buffer, since there was no actual weather inside Io's domes. He turned into a corridor, where rich carpeting muted his calls.
"I saw Janine, Frank! I saw what you and this so-called 'Family' have done to her! Do you hear me, Frank?"
The severed heads of a variety of unfortunate animals lined the walls on both sides of the corridor: stags, boar, moose, squirrels, a gnu... These taxidermied heads had always given him horrible chills as a child, as if the dark, glass eyes were watching him, accusing him of atrocities he didn't commit. They gave him chills now, but this time, those watchful eyes felt more commiserative. Could it be that they knew he was dead now too: a skin of photons in the shape of Arnold Rimmer?
"Nonsense," Rimmer muttered uncomfortably and quickened his pace, heading for the main stairway to the east wing. His brothers had occupied the entire third floor there, when they weren't away at boarding school or, later, the academy.
"Impressive place, this," the Wildfire observed through the computer link they shared.
"Think so?" Rimmer grunted.
"You don't approve?" she asked him.
Rimmer snorted a cold, bitter laugh through his nose.
"Computer, I know every locked door and off-limits knick-knack in this house," he said. "There isn't a corner or corridor that doesn't resonate with memories."
He shook his head.
"I truly hate this place," he said, pausing mid-step to stare around at the sweeping architecture and magazine cover-perfect decor. "The ostentatious pretense, the false pomp and posed, affected superiority. Repressed dreams and subverted ambitions, that's what it's really all about. The glitter's just to distract important houseguests."
"Do your brothers feel the same way?"
"Don't know, don't care," Rimmer grunted, and continued his climb to the third floor. Leaving the elaborate curving staircase with its gold-plated banisters, he entered a wide, magisterial hall of veined, polished marble and plush, purple carpeting.
"By my software engineers!" the Wildfire gasped. "Was your bedroom also on this floor?"
"Not likely," Rimmer snarked, and snorted again. "I was never actually allowed near my brothers' rooms when they were growing up. My bedroom was a cylindrical eighth floor turret with small, low set windows and a very sharply sloped ceiling."
He paused for a moment, reflecting.
"Actually, it was kind of fun, having that small tower room all to myself. At least, it was when I was small. I remember spending hours up there, staring out at the gardens, Jupiter forever looming in the sky… 'S possibly why I always sought out the high observation dome whenever I needed to…escape…back on Red Dwarf," he realized, then shook his head, his expression pinched and angry.
"But by thirteen, I had to hunch my back just to get around in there, and I was always banging my head…"
He straightened his posture back to its customary arrow-like rigidity, as if in defiance of his cramped, restricted youth.
"Hear that?" the Wildfire asked.
Rimmer frowned, and listened to the distant sound of running water.
"So, he's here after all…"
Rimmer followed the sound to the second door on the right, his bitter feelings roiling and swelling within him as his mind again filled with memories he couldn't stop...
Frank, forcing his head into the downstairs servants' toilet and holding it there while John flushed and Howard laughed and cheered them on…
Frank, knocking him over from behind and looping a rope noose around his ankles so John and Howard could pull him into the air and leave him swinging, helpless and upside down, from a tree branch while they ran off to supper…
Frank, shoving him into a garden shed and locking the door, trapping him in the dark with a family of very territorial squirrels…
"If you don't mind my asking, Arnie," the Wildfire broke in. "Why are you so focused on Frank? Weren't your other two brothers just as bad?"
"Oh, they were," Rimmer said, his voice quieting to a whisper as he got closer to the door. "John was always the ringleader, the idea man who rarely got his hands dirty; Howard was his grinning lackey and occasional muscle; but Frank…"
He scowled, his eyes darkening dangerously.
"Frank was the closer, the one who got things done. Actually, I rather suspected that was why Frank ended up being the one selected for Special Services, rather than John or Howard – and why Frank was the one to snag a celebrity model for a girlfriend. He was a doer, an achiever, never hesitating to make a move or pausing to second-guess a command…"
Rimmer's bitter scowl deepened, and he knew his searing hatred for the man hadn't diminished one iota in three million-plus years. But then, neither had his hatred for himself, for never once standing up to the cold-blooded smegger.
Well, that was about to change…
"Better step back now, old girl," Rimmer advised his computer. "I'm going in."
"I trust you, Arnie," she said. "You can do this."
There was a slight crackle of static, and Rimmer felt he was alone. He sighed, a trickle of apprehension chilling its way up his spine.
He didn't have to do this. He didn't even have to tell Frank who he was. The idiot thought he was their cousin, for smeg's sake…and there was always Ace to hide behind if—
Rimmer shook his head, disgusted by the very thought. Maybe his family was right – maybe he was a loathsome, cowardly, boneheaded little worm. But, even a worm could turn…
Frank's door was ajar, so Rimmer pushed his way inside and made a beeline through the princely bedroom, following the sound of water to the bathroom.
"Oi, Frankie-boy," he called out and rapped his knuckles on the doorframe, smiling slightly at the startled splashing and gurgling he'd provoked. "You decent, or should I give you a moment to dress?"
"Gah—what? Who's there?" Frank gasped, coughing.
Rimmer leaned against the bedroom wall, out of sight, not particularly eager to catch a glimpse of his brother in the bath.
"Your wife was inquiring after you," he said primly.
"I'll bet she was," Frank muttered, still splashing and sloshing. "Well you can tell her from me, I- YII—EEEE GODS!"
His voice rose in unmistakable agony, and Rimmer dashed to his aid without thinking, only retroactively cursing the years of training that had instilled that Ace-ish impulse in his coward's heart.
"What's wrong? What happened?" he demanded, only distantly envying the fact that Frank's bathroom featured a sunken, full-length Jacuzzi tub. "Stub your toe on the soap?"
"Get out of here!" Frank roared, clutching his arm and writhing among the jet stream bubbles. "I'm fine. This is just-GOD!"
He whimpered, and slammed his throbbing side and shoulders against the tub again and again, his narrow face a taut mask of pain.
Rimmer raised an eyebrow.
"If this is what you call 'fine,' miladdio, I'd hate to see what injured looks like," he commented, and slapped his hands against the tub's slippery edge, using it lever himself back to this feet. "But hey, if you want to be left alone with your torment, who am I to argue. Couldn't happen to a more deserving chap, whatever it is. I'll just tell Janine and the kids you won't be down for supper, shall I?"
"Wait…" Frank grunted. "That voice… That smarmy, nasal voice…"
The suffering man managed to still his anguished thrashing long enough to glare over his shoulder at the intruder.
"You're not Fletch…" he panted, his voice strained. "Who the hell are you?"
"Can you really not tell?" Rimmer asked curiously. "Surely I haven't changed all that much. Or, have I? It has been rather a long time since we've seen each other in the flesh…as it were…"
He glanced down at his hard-light fingers, then clasped his hands behind his back.
Frank tried to stand, but his legs gave out from under him and he fell back into the tub, water sloshing over the sides in waves.
"Oeeerrrggghhrrrgggllll…" bubbled his underwater groan.
Rimmer waited to see if Frank would surface, then waited a few moments longer, then longer still, crossing his arms and tapping his toe. Finally, he gave an exasperated sigh and strode through slippery puddles to turn off the Jacuzzi and haul his brother out of the steaming water.
"Leave me, leave me," Frank muttered, as Rimmer wrapped him in a fluffy, blue towel. "Just let me drown…"
Rimmer snorted.
"That certainly doesn't sound like the Frank Rimmer I know," he said. "Zipping up the ziggurat, lickety-split, all set to make captain before he hit thirty?"
"Better make that…thirty-five…now...if not...forty," Frank gasped, curled in a miserable hunch under his towel.
"Only if you survive that long," Rimmer commented. "What the smeg is going on here, Frank? And give me the truth, or I won't be able to help you."
"Who says I want your help?" Frank growled. "You haven't even said...who you are!"
"I'm here," Rimmer hedged, furious that the man didn't seem able, or willing, to figure it out. "And so are you. And you can't honestly tell me that this is normal. Or, is your left arm supposed to be longer and larger than your right?"
"What…?"
Frank shook his arm free of the towel and stared, slowly bending and unbending long, knobby fingers that looked more ape-like than human. As the two of them watched, Frank's knuckles sprouted coarse, brown hair – thick, fur-like hair that traveled up his arm, across his shoulders, and down his back.
"Good God, Frank…" Rimmer gasped. "What have you—?"
Frank roared in agony, clutching his legs and rolling to his side. His muscles twitched and spasmed beneath his skin, his bones seeming to spread wider, grow longer, his cheekbones sharpening, his ears stretching…
Rimmer stepped back, a hand pressed over his gaping mouth. He'd seen this before – not the transformation, but the end result.
Commander Frank Rimmer...his brother…was a GELF.
To Be Continued…
Next Time: the confrontation really begins. Thanks so much for your reviews! :)