Yeeeeeaah, it's been about 3 or 4 years since I updated this fic. Sorry about that. Would you believe me if I said I've been busy? No? Oh well. Admittedly I've always wanted to continue this fic, I even know how it ends! But it's the middle that always foxes me. Please do let me know what you think of this latest chapter, would be nice to get some feedback.
Two hours had elapsed since the original 13:00 rendezvous. For the last hour and a half, Murphy and Hutchins had taken it in turn to continue to radio Team D, and the one-sided conversation was doing very little in convincing that there was going to be a fruitful conclusion. Kryten's cubed fingers drummed nervously on his chest plate. He was all too aware of the search protocol for missing CANARIES after having sped-read through the thousand-page manual they'd each received when they'd first signed up. He'd found that it was a mostly useless document, most likely deliberately designed to be so long and tedious that the CANARIES didn't bother reading it. Indeed, he knew that they had burned at least two copies when they'd been stuck on the SSS Silverberg with Cassandra, huddled around it, drinking coffee, and that Mister Lister used his as a footstall in his cell. Yet in doing so, Kryten had discovered that the majority of CANARIES had missed vital paragraphs, in between the crosswords and the lengthy chapters on stamp collecting in the 20th Century, that briefly mentioned a few stomach-churning death experiences that the insurance didn't cover, such as being drowned, tortured, beaten, crushed, electrocuted and eaten. It also mentioned that after being missing for a mere two hours and if you were believed to be deceased, there was no obligation for the CANARY leaders to search for you.
Kochanski had been absently tapping the lid of her water flask against her teeth, staring across the sands, unseeing, when she realised that Murphy and Hutchins had fallen silent. There was no static, no high-pitched whine from the transmitter; the only sound came from the hushed chatter and chuckles from the other CANARIES sat outside the transport ship. She turned to the pair, who were beginning to pack up the equipment, shaking their heads.
"Such a shame," Murphy muttered, non-committal.
"Indeed," Hutchins echoed, his voice devoid of all emphasis, "big shame." He gathered up the wires with suspicous enthusiasm. "Well, let's get back to Red Dwarf," he shifted with the grating of gears, "I hear it's Shepherd's Pie for lunch today." He licked his fat pink lips and grinned to himself as he revelled in the plan of eating his own share before confiscating another meal from poor sad soul too absent-minded, mad, or frightened to fight back.
"What are you doing?" Kochanski cried in disbelief. "We haven't found them in two measley hours and you're planning to leave them stranded here?"
The two men exchanged satisfied glances before Hutchins rolled his eyes and turned to Kochanski. "Look sweetheart, if you'd have studied your manual like you should have done, you'd know everything about CANARIES search protocol, wouldn't you?"
Kochanski's mind and mouth spluttered, "But...but...what protocol?"
The two men laughed heartily. The manual had won the day again. Oh, the awkward CANARY demises that it had explained away. And it was fantastically thin on the old paperwork - a line through their names in the CANARY rosta in thick red pen usually sufficed. But it did mean they got through so many red pens that they could have bought shares in WHSmiths.
"Section 57, clause 18, line four."
All three of them glanced quickly at one another before realising that the last to speak was new to the conversation. Turning, they saw Kryten standing sheepishly behind them, his hands twitching in front of his chestplate, the way they always did when he was nervously challenging humans.
Murphy grinned at Kochanski, revealing a horrific set of yellow, jagged teeth. "You see, love? You should listen to your BogBot friend there," he chuckled.
Kryten clucked uncertainly, "Actually sirs, line four states that we are only permitted to return to Red Dwarf should there be conclusive proof that the missing CANARIES are in fact most likely deceased. I've spoken to the other teams on the mission today, and none have encountered any hostile life-forms. And five hours in these conditions with the water rations that we were supplied with, carries only a 0.3% liklihood of death by dehydration. Therefore, I can most likely conclude that Mister Lister and Mister Rimmer are indeed still alive."
The neanderthal pair growled audibly. Hutchins leaned into Kryten's rubber features with a menacing snarl. "Well if they don't prove it in the next 30 seconds, then I'm taking this bunch of sorry, good-for-nothings, and getting back to the Dwarf for my lunch, clear?"
A distant, yet persistent high-pitched squeal interrupted them. Across the distant horizon, a thin light pierced it's way upwards before exploding into small red flare.
Kochanski spun to Kryten, thrusting out her arm towards the direction of the flare. "Kryten,"she cried urgently, "calculate distance!"
"I'm on it, ma'am," Kryten replied as his pupils flitted left and right quickly, putting Pythagoras' Theorum to the case. He blinked. "Distance calculated at 6.8 miles, east."
A spluttered laugh of joy spilled from her lips as Kochanski turned back to the shocked expression slapped on the pair's faces, and the four of them exchanged silent glances. Eventually, Hutchins turned towards the gaggle of CANARIES sitting by the transport ship.
"What are you lot sitting there for, you useless bunch of maggots?" he hollered. "We've got some CANARIES to find!"
***********
The pair had been trekking through the dizzying maze of rock caverns for a period that refused to be defined. Time elongated, shortened, distorted and warped beyond comprehension, lost to the surroundings that refused to reveal progression or location. At first, their choice of path had been conducted by a careful and precise analysis that took compass direction, rock type and stability into consideration. After the time it would have taken for Lister to replay his favourite Zero-Gee football game from the '84 Winter Season in his mind (about an hour and a half), the pair instead took it in turns to use 'male intuition', that great method also understood in the business as 'guessing'. After the time it would have taken Rimmer to recount his passionate fumble with Yvonne McGruder three times over (about twenty minutes), the pair had been reduced to the age-old method of 'Ippy Dippy', hope disintegrating into desperation, tempers rising and flaring into frustration.
Yet another corridor of rock, which had promised some form of hope denied by others, cruelly split itself in two and opened into another fork. The hundredth? The thousandth? A jet of air escaped Rimmer's lips as a frustrated sob instead of the flippant sigh that he had hoped for.
"Lister, please. No more - " His hand, smeared with dried blood and dirt, pushed out weakly in an attempt to keep himself upright against the wall of sandstone. His legs cried mutiny and refused to hold his weight any longer, leaving him to collapse against its cool, gritty surface. As his body sank, his panic rose.
Lister on the other hand seemed to let the panic channel through him, pumping through his veins and using it as a near destructive form of adrenaline. It promised him an explosion of pure, undiluted energy, capable of either ultimate strength or emotional destruction. His pace quickened rather than slowed, convincing, no, telling himself that the path to the right was right, because 'right' meant 'right', right? Rimmer watched him stagger down the sloping, gritty path to the right before exhaling heavily, letting his head fall back against the rock wall and waited expectantly.
The frozen grin of manic hope slowly melted away as Lister slipped and slid down the path only to be faced with a tiny rock cave no bigger than a small box room. He stumbled forward and extended a trembling hand forwards, hoping that the far rock wall was merely an illusion. Hand met rock as they touched, cementing his vision as truth and he pulled his hand away quickly, as if the rock had seared the flesh of his palm. Clutching his treacherous hand with the other, he crept backwards as his breath quickened and became shallower, catching, jagged in his throat. He felt the familiar overwhelming foggy blanket sink down his throat and into his lungs as the walls shrank, slowly squeezing the sanity from his head. The adrenaline exploded into pure, undiluted panic, consuming then destroying him.
Intrigued by the strange wheezing noise that now replaced the silence of the rock passage, Rimmer's brow furrowed involuntarily.
"Lister?" he called out, uncertainly. Hearing only the return of his weak voice dying into a plaintive echo, Rimmer hauled his weight onto his aching feet and stumbled towards the entrance to the passage. Glancing down the small slope, he spotted Lister, half-crouched in the dust, wheezing in a manner that seemed to make Rimmer's own chest tighten. Hearing Rimmer's boots crunching towards him down the slope, Lister thrust out his hand, desperately seeking out something to hold on to. Making contact with the arm of Rimmer's jumpsuit, his trembling fingers grabbed the material and hauled Rimmer down so that his nose was millimetres from his own.
"Help me," he gasped.
Shocked, Rimmer could only blink in response.
********
"You mean completely starkers? Right in the middle of The Importance of Being Earnest?" Rimmer asked incredulously, his brow knotted in a mixture of disbelief and amusement.
Clasping a brown paper bag to his nose and mouth, which in the twenty minutes that had elapsed had slowed his breathing back to a reasonable pace, Lister's dark eyes scowled in response.
Rimmer sat back on his haunches and tapped his index finger against his lips in thought. "So which scene was it?" he asked eventually.
Lister pulled the paper bag away from his mouth reluctantly. "What?" he breathed.
"Which scene was it?" Rimmer repeated, "The scene that you so rudely interrupted with a bodily sight that would make John Merrick recoil in horror?" He ignored Lister's silent open-mouthed response, and pressed on. "I hope it wasn't that the bit where Lady Bracknell is told that Jack was found as a baby in a handbag in Worthing," Rimmer chuckled to himself. "Classic joke!"
Lister shook his head in disbelief, also attempting to displace the mental image of giving the man sat opposite a fist-related teeth disorder. He'd got a more sensitive response when he was stuck in Starbug's ducts with the Cat. "I can't believe you Rimmer, don't you have any smeggin' respect?"
Rimmer's face fell quickly. "Sorry?"
It may have been a drunken night, but Lister would have to carve out many more years in his life before he forgot the evening where he'd revealed to the others the truth behind his discovery as a tiny, helpless orphan under the pool table. "Don't you smeggin' remember Kryten's Leaving Party? I thought even you would know when to shut the smeg up, you insensitive..."
And then it hit him, as he watched Rimmer blink rapidly in genuine surprise. This man before him bore every physical resemblance to the hologram he'd spent years stuck with, shared various terrible experiences with, and yet, slowly, grew to tolerate through a mutual toleration and understanding of one another. But it wasn't him. He'd been genuinely, albeit momentarily, glad to see Rimmer again once he'd returned to Red Dwarf a few months previously. His long-lost familiar face had temporarily calmed his nerves after being placed under house arrest in his old quarters, flooding his mind with half-forgotton memories that had caused a smile to surface on his weary face. But he'd soon realised that this version of Rimmer was merely a ghost of the original. A presence that brought comfort through visual familiarity but nothing more. Lister sighed heavily, expelling his frustrations. "Sorry man, just forget it."
Rimmer opened his mouth to reply but Lister replaced the bag over his mouth, silently ending the conversation. Curling his tongue back, he swallowed and drew back to his haunches, turning his head to stare at the pool of light that was cast onto the jagged stone wall by the torch lying between them. Rimmer had long acknowledged the unspoken agreement between them that he was distinct and secondary from this supposed 'original' version of himself, but it wasn't a fact that he could let go easily. He despised the way that the others would huddle around and animatedly discuss and draw upon their shared past experiences, over him, past him, through him, as if he wasn't even there.
With his hands clasped together, he'd begun absent-mindedly picking at his palms with his thumbnail. They'd become really sore and itchy over the last couple of hours.
"Show me."
Rimmer's eyes flitted up to meet Lister's. The paperbag had been released from his mouth and was now flattened beneath the splayed fingers of his hand leaning on the cave's dusty floor. Lister nodded towards Rimmer's hands. "Show me," he repeated patiently.
Caught off guard, Rimmer proffered his hands without thinking. It was only after catching Lister whistling through his teeth that he pulled his eyes from Lister's and stared down at his own hands. Deep ugly cuts and grazes were highlighted and preserved by a thick layer of dirt, dust and grime. In time-honoured tradition, the pain only really hit Rimmer when he witnessed the damage that falling down the rockface had done to his palms and fingers. He immediately pulled his hands back into his lap, embarassed. "It's fine,"he mumbled.
Lister pulled his backpack in front of him and ruffled through the unseen contents. "Don't be silly, man," he retorted distractedly. In the confines of the bag, unseen to Rimmer, he located his silver hip flask and spun off the top. "Give me your hand."
Rimmer instintively grabbed the wrist of his right hand with his left. "Why?" he replied quickly.
Lister used the only ammo he knew how in dealing with such situations with Rimmer. "Don't be a smeggin' wuss, you smeghead. I just wanna have a smeggin' look."
Riled, but still cautious, Rimmer proffered his right hand once more. Grasping the moment quickly, Lister's left hand shot out, rattlesnake fast and roughly grabbed Rimmer's wrist. With his right, he pulled out the hipflask and poured some of the contents onto his open palm.
"OWWWWSSSSSSMMMMMEEEEGGGGIN.....!"
Rimmer immediately winced and tried to wrench his hand away, but Lister gave it a couple more seconds before he was satisfied the job was done and released his wrist. Rimmer's hand shot back to the safety of it's partner as he scowled at Lister. "What the smeggin' hell are you...?" he began to snap venemously, before he noticed that the initial searing pain had faded to a warm fuzz. He glanced back to Lister, who was sporting his trademark hamster-grin, as he took a generous swig from the hipflask. Wheezing in a mixture of pleasure and pain, Rimmer caught a strong whiff of Lister's breath.
Rimmer's eyes dropped to his hand, which did look a hell of a lot better, before returning to Lister's. "What is it?" he asked cautiously.
Lister coughed involuntarily. "I smuggled along some of Baxter's illegal hooch," he winked. "Not such a bad idea now, was it?"
Rimmer's stomach automatically lurched at the memory of that awful booze. He'd got so rat-arsed after one large swig that he'd been unable to stand unaided, and had apparantly ended the conversation with Ackerman suspiciously prematurely when he'd passed out cold. "Are you mad?!" he spat after he'd convinced himself he could open his mouth to speak without vomiting in some form of bizarre flashback.
Lister shook his head. "Don't get your knickers in a twist. I've watered it down, I'm not suicidal."
Rimmer sighed and pulled the basic medipack from the bag. Finding a length of gauze, he ran it around his palm a few times and tucked the loose end under the loop around his wrist. The hipflask was suddenly thrust under his nose and he reeled as the smell karate-chopped the back of his throat. Rimmer looked up at Lister, who had thrown himself forward towards him and was bathed in an eerie upward glow of the torch.
"Fancy a drink?" Lister asked, his pupils already slightly dilated.
And after what can only be described as a smegging horrific day, Rimmer found he rather did.
