Chapter 6
The Final Conversation

They had safely traversed the Time Loch, and for some incalculable reason were twelve hours away from their female counterparts. As a strange bonus the female version of Ace and her ship appeared as well.

Lister lay exhausted but unable to sleep in his makeshift bunk. It had been hours since they arrived in the Femverse, now they were just waiting to spot the Dwarf.

The digital clock read 4:23 am but he was wide awake. Finishing off the last of a self heating Saki he tossed the container in the general vicinity of the waste disposal unit. It clanked to the floor and rolled into several other discarded saki containers, all of whom seemed to have missed their goal.

"Is that how I'm to end up," he thought. The blue glow of the temporary stasis field built into the lower bunk filled the lightless room.
Within this quickly hobbled together piece of brilliance Jim and Bexly, barely thirty two hours old, lay frozen in time. Well practically, it seems that the Stasis field built into the Starbug didn't freeze time completely, but up to about 95%.

"That should be fine," he told Kryten, who was on the verge of mechanoid top blowing.

Thankfully Holly spoke a sequence of numbers and counter commands which in the end left Kryten's head smoking and the mechanoid mumbling something about a fribble. Aside from all that everything was peachy.

"If all goes well I'll be seeing me other self in less than 24 hours." His mind drifted to their last conversation in the airlock aboard her Red Dwarf.

"You know you don't have to stay." Dave said after adjusting his space suit.

"How's that?" Questioned Deb.

"You could come back with us. You know, just in case," he paused then looked away. "You know."

Without thinking a Deb Lister blurted out:

"Look I'm not going dimension jumping with you and your lot. Leaving my own dimension and my own plans on the one in a million chance you're up the spout. The way you go on about it, like you already know you're pregnant."

Lister had been looking at his reflection in the window, so as not having to look at his other self when she turned him down, as he knew she would.
But now he was puzzled by her statement and he was forced to face her. Looking into familiar mudd brown eyes his head slightly tilted he asked.

"What's that there then?" His scouse accent thickened by his familiarity.

"You heard me. How do I know that if you are indeed pregnant, that it's even mine?"

"Well who else's is it likely to be? Clive of India?" Was all he could come up with flabbergasted as he was.

"You and your mates could have cooked this whole scheme up long ago. You dimension bed hop from here to Andromida then when one of you gets knocked up, you blame it all on the poor gal who you happen to be sleeping with at the time. What do you think, I was born yesterday!"

Lister couldn't speak. If he could speak it wouldn't have mattered because he couldn't think of anything to say in response. He just stared at her, open mouthed. His jaw had dropped some time earlier, but he hadn't noticed it, nor fixed it. In silence he catatonically turned, bent over and picked up his helmet.
As he was locking it into place he stared wide eyed out the airlock view port keeping his eyes focused of his version of the small rouge one.

"Better step out," a tinny half voice announced from the speaker attached to his helmet.

Before Deb Lister finished her accusations she had regretted them. Everything she said, every word, every syllable, a low down rotten selfish lie.
In the dark recesses of her mind in a section where, what's called the Goon, lives, a plan was hatched so diabolical that if Deb was conscious of it she would have had her mind washed out with soap.

As she was about to apologize her mind froze and she headed towards her own ship though the inner airlock door. You see the Goon had a friend in the Ego department and being how friends tend to be, they stuck together. As did Deb's lips as she passed into her ship's corridor absently hitting the button which closed the airlock door behind her.

Also closing Dave Lister and her children out for the rest of eternity.
Lister didn't talk much on the jag back to his Red Dwarf and ultimately back to his universe.

He couldn't believe what he had heard. What a load of Smeg. How
could she have even conceived of such a thing. Though he didn't think about it to hard, because if he had he would have remembered a conversation very similar which occurred between he and Lisa Yates about three million and eight years ago back on Earth.

Dave Lister had been going out with Lisa for eight months now and all was great for the first six. Then it happened.
That horrible feeling that you get when you're claustrophobic and you get caught in a relationship that has suddenly gotten serious. Way too serious and all over you life.

On a cold September night the couple had come back from an evening at the local. Where even though Lister was around all his mates and his lady he still seemed unhappy. This was becoming more and more the case of late and she had felt Lister was treating her badly. So she made a decision.
As they said goodnight the hot air which they expelled steaming off into nothingness with the wind.

"Dave what's wrong?" She asked smiling.

"Look I got to go. I uh got some things I gotta do."

"Dave Please." Her eyes worried. 'We need to talk. I really really got to tell you something."

"OK, make it quick. I'm running late." Lister looked at a fictitious watch on his left wrist.

After she told him about the sickness and about the clinic she had visited Lister exploded. Such a vile amount of wishy washy excuses and accusations were hurled at the poor girl. She hadn't a chance.

Finally in the end she said it had been just a test, and that he failed it. Miserably.

He relied in his clever wit that he would have done better if it was an oral exam.

She didn't laugh.

He knew it was over and he had lost her. Quite possibly
the best thing he had in his life up to that point and possibly the best thing he ever would have.

Lister turned and stepped off the stoop and started walking slowly becoming swallowed by the night. Behind him he thought he might have
heard something that sounded like a whimper.

He didn't look back.

Ever.

Never seeing her tears.

That was the last time he ever spoke to Lisa Yeats.

Now he wondered if perhaps it wasn't a test. And most possibly that on in some reality, perhaps his own, that she had birthed his twin sons.

Then he thought that Deb never saw my tears.

Either.