Kryten pulled a silvery kettle from a hiding place behind one of the floor to ceiling pipes and wandered over to the sink. It was one of the only contraband items that Kochanski had convinced him to keep after the cell had been stripped of his ill-gotten valuables. It almost drove his guilt chip into meltdown to keep anything he had bought with the exploitation of his clueless cell-sisters. It had taken a lot of cajoling from Kochanski for him to stop trying to drown himself in the tiny sink in their cell when she suggested that they hang on to the kettle, but eventually he agreed to keep it back for emergencies.
If a talk didn't count, then what did?
He pulled back the sleeve of his prison-issue jumpsuit and opened a maintenance panel in his wrist. Warning messages scrolled down his field of vision in big, glowing angry red letters and a siren only he could hear whined. He concentrated and they dimmed and then stopped. Placing the kettle on his outstretched palm, he gingerly fiddled with his right nipple nut. At the table, Kochanski tactfully looked away.
There were some advantages of picking apart your programming, Kryten mused. He had invalidated his guarantees but then again, having been operational for most of human existence, it stood to reason that anything that could go wrong with him could not be fixed by getting Divadroid on the phone. His unerring sense of rightness and place within the Universe had also gone, leaving him some of the less desirable human traits of doubt, disbelief and loss of purpose. He had, however, gained the ability to lie, cheat, steal and boil water by venting the heat his body generated into his hands and thereby boil a mid-sized kettle. So it all balanced out in the end.
Kochanski looked tired but grateful as he mixed her up an instant hot chocolate in a battered metal mug and handed it to her.
"I'm sorry there are no marshmallows Ma'am but I'm not certain that there are any left in the -"
"It's lovely Kryten. Thank you."
She sipped hot chocolate and looked slightly less miserable. Dredging up the memories of the loss of your species could not have been pleasant for her and Kryten understood that. Any conversations on Starbug that had wandered onto the subject of the early times on Red Dwarf had always silenced Mr. Lister. Kryten had longed to understand why, after all, he may have lost everything and everyone he had ever known and loved but he had always had the company and consolation of Mr. Rimmer -
Actually, that explained a lot.
"If I may be so bold Ma'am, why is it that you were less than pleased to see Mr. Lister? I was of the understanding that you had been -"
"I wasn't not pleased to see him, Kryten. I was very pleased. I thought I was on my own forever and I think…. I was more surprised than anything else. I didn't know why Holly had revived him and not one of the hundreds of other people on board. The Captain or … well anyone."
Kryten sat at the table opposite her with his hand held to one side, allowing it to cool. "Our Holly brought back Mr. Rimmer in order to keep Mr. Lister sane. The fact that Mr. Rimmer was a small minded, petty bureaucrat with less personal appeal then a plague rat who had separated from his wife and really let himself go was something he understood all too well. With a clear authority figure and rival to be a target for his natural drive to rebel, it reinforced his personality and let him keep his mind. In your case however Holly must have been trying a different approach."
Kochanski smiled, "I asked Holly a few hours after Lister had been revived why it had been him. Holly told me that he had thought we both were still an item. Never mind that I had been going out with Tim for close to three months, Holly had somehow missed that. He had an excuse about corruption of his cached files but I don't know; three million years alone had made Holly several Ferrero Rocher short of an ambassador's reception."
Kryten started whistling quietly to himself.
"What? Kryten? You think that somehow Holly had orchestrated a brilliant master plan? That he had sat down and planned out how we would both react using his vast knowledge of human psychology? It took him four weeks to realise that talking incessantly about everyone who had died wasn't cheering me up. Four weeks of; 'Oh, bet that that Console Officer Gilberts doesn't need her CD collection anymore. You can have them if you want.'"
Kryten drummed his fingers on his chest and pursed his lips, carefully planning what he was going to say next.
"I believe Ma'am that Mr. Lister was exactly what you needed."
"How? We were so different. Look, we're talking about a man who can cut through steel with his morning breath. A man with the verbal wit of a steamed asparagus. A man who couldn't even spell 'culture' let alone understand it. A man whose crowning educational achievement was attending Art College for less than an hour. What did we have as common ground for a meaningful relationship?"
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you telling me that your Mr. Lister was like that?"
Kochanski looked off into the middle distance, her brows knitting in concentration, "Well, no. I mean, he started like that of course; he was the same disgusting slob that he had been when he was alive. But as a hologram he couldn't touch anything……"
*_*_*_*_*_*_*
Lister sauntered into the Drive Room, humming to himself a half remembered, off-key rendition of a popular Rasta Billy Skank single. Kochanski resolutely ignored him, plotting another point on the massive chart in front of her.
Lister sat on the edge of the table, kicking his heels. Kochanski stepped to one side and continued to scribble down calculations, continued to ignore him. Plucking the cigarette from his ear, he transferred it to his mouth and grinned.
"Still getting nowhere?"
Kochanski continued to ignore him but her lips twitched slightly, a grimace waiting just beneath her placid mask. Lister scratched his armpit absently.
"You know what we're doing wrong don't you? We should be going back to Earth. You've got us flying randomly in space where we'll just be stuck flying randomly forever and ever. Let's just go home. You and the Cat can go into stasis and we'll zip there, like that." Lister clicked his fingers to emphasise how easy he thought it would be.
Kochanski continued to ignore him but was visibly uncomfortable; sweating into her pristine uniform and frowning in concentration as she plotted another point onto her chart.
"You don't need to work so hard Krissie, just let Holly handle it. You can kick back, relax, and drink some margaritas while Hol finds a place wide enough to do a massive u-turn and then we just go straight back. Nothin' to it. What you wasting time in here doin' anyway?"
Kochanski continued to ignore him but she was starting to shake from the effort. Lister got up and popped the cigarette back in his ear and stood behind her, looking over the maps.
"Cor, there's lots of nothin' isn't there?"
Kochanski snapped, screaming at him. "Of course there is smegging nothing, we are in uncharted deep space! No one has been here before, I'm having to make all the smegging charts from scratch! Stop getting in the smegging way and let me work it out!"
Lister flinched back from the tirade. Kochanski felt guilty looking at the hurt in his eyes and was about to apologise when Lister cut in.
"See what I mean, waste of time. Just get Hol to turn the ship around and chug back to Earth. Piece of cake."
Any feeling of sympathy Kochanski fizzled away by Lister's blasé attitude. His inane grin didn't help. She was at the point where she was starting to sympathise with Rimmer of all people, who had had to put up with him twenty-four hours a day. Spending the last week and a half subjected to a constant emotional and verbal barrage from him about what they were doing, where they were going and why weren't they going back to Earth was driving her more and more to the brink of a full-blown psychotic episode. It was probably for the best that he didn't have a physical presence or she would have stabbed him by now. Instead she pointed a finger at his face like a pistol and let rip.
"David, let me try and explain this one more time. We can't get back to Earth. We can't just turn around and go backwards. We are probably several hundred thousand light years from Earth, which could be in any number of directions. We aren't driving a mini down the bloody high street, we can't just yank the wheel round and head back the way we came! Holly has no way of knowing what direction he drove the ship, what astronomical bodies affected our flight; we could have been knocked off course by meteors, been whipped round planets bigger than the Sun or dragged toward super novas! I can barely work out where the Milky Way is, never mind Galactic North! Coupled with this, we've been accelerating for millennia with nothing to slow us down; we're probably going close to the speed of light. This floating skip wasn't built to go faster than 200,000 miles per hour. Even if we wanted to just yank the wheel round and go back the way we are travelling now, it would take us well over three months to slow down enough that when we turned we wouldn't suffer major structural damage or catastrophically explode! It's either slow down or loop-the-loop round something with a suitable gravitational pull like a black hole without just plummeting straight into it and killing us all! Oh, and as Holly so delicately reminded me yesterday at breakfast, the human race is most likely extinct. Look at the Cat! What the hell would three million years of evolution have done to the human race? We'd be more under developed than Homo Habilis, we would…. Why the hell are you laughing?"
Lister's attempt to look serious failed miserably and he laughed, a deep belly laugh with no hint of malice or scorn. Kochanski tried to feel insulted or at least irritated but she couldn't manage it. As the laugh continued, she had to work hard on keeping her annoyed expression.
"I'm so sorry to interrupt you Krissie. You had a good rant going there and I went and spoiled it by laughing. It's just nice having you talk to me again. Look, I know it's stupid. I'll stop bothering you about going back to Earth"
Kochanski did smile at this but raised an eyebrow, "You promise?"
Lister stood to attention and crossed himself, "Cross me heart and hope to….. yeah"
Kochanski dropped her pencil and flopped down into a chair.
"I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm just trying to get a plan together. Maybe if I work out where we are it might just all fall into place. I didn't think that I would be the last of the human race. It should have been someone tall, handsome, terrific and with manageable hair. Oh God, there's no one who will be able to cut my hair ever again."
Her head sagged at this and Lister rushed forward, concern filling his eyes.
"Ay, ay, ay, don't be like that Krissie. Look, it's just me and the Cat here. We don't care how you are. We'll deal with that problem when we get to it, you know like when we meet aliens and things. You could always wear a hat then."
Kochanski looked up and once again was surprised that she wasn't more peeved by Lister's massive faux pas, but she really couldn't help it. His whole face beamed, the mischievous twinkle in his eye made you just want to share the joke.
"You're right Dave. Sorry I'm such a misery guts. I should really –"
"Stand aside please dear Gentlefolk, stand aside."
The Cat strode forth into the room, a vision in a crisp scarlet cavalry officer's jacket, white jodhpurs and shimmering black knee-high boots. Striking a heroic pose before the astonished couple in the room, he pulled out a small brass horn and blew a piercing note, a clarion call to arms. Removing the horn he drew up to his full height and declared in a deep voice,
"Attention to all gentle Lady Cats. I am in want of a wife. I possess a good fortune and am of excellent breeding. Please form an orderly queue, this is your lucky day."
There was a silence in the room. The Cat held his position for a moment before sweeping the room with his eyes. Seeing no one besides the humans, he looked downcast.
"Will my search never cease? A beautiful entrance, a well executed fanfare and strong declaration are all for nothing."
Kochanski asked the obvious question, "Cat, what are you doing?"
"Why, dear Madam, I am courting"
Lister looked around, "Who?"
"Why, whoever turns up"
Kochanski let out a sigh, "I'm sorry to disappoint you Cat, but I'm afraid there is no one else apart from yourself, Dave and I."
The Cat looked confused, "Dear Madam, if I were to believe such a fact to be true then I would surely go quite mad."
Kochanski and Lister looked at each other. They were spared from answering as the Cat continued, "I have brought the book you requested Madam."
In his hands he held an ornate, leather-bound book, which he handed carefully to Kochanski. She opened it and gasped, the beautifully inscribed illustrations and calligraphy surprising her in their intricacy and detail. Lister leaned over her shoulder.
"Wow, nice pictures."
"Such work is typical of us Cats. When we want to show an illustration of what is occurring in the text, we have pictures."
Lister looked scathingly at the oblivious Cat, "We have pictures too, you know"
"Who is this?"
Kochanski pointed at a picture of an achingly beautiful woman dressed in a flowing silk dress, her long dark hair festooned with flowers. She was illuminated from above, a halo around her head. At her feet a shadow stretched before her, shaped like a man. The man mirrored the way she stood but was darker and heavy set. Kochanski was reminded of Bacchus, his smiling face without guile.
"Why, that is Anne Skai, the Golden Light. She is our Goddess, the protector of our people. Below her is her mate, Cloister who is Father of us all. He brought forth the Holy Mother from whom we are all descended. It is said that his brother, Rom Mer, grew jealous of Cloister and used his vanity to trap him within a mirror for all eternity. Anne Skai took the Holy Mother and hid her from the vengeful gaze of Rom Mer. She blessed the Holy Mother, told her of the world and taught her the way one must live; with breeding, honour and pride.
Finally, Rom Mer found Anne Skai and they fought, the whole ship quaking from the force of their titanic battle. After days of combat, Rom Mer was defeated but Anne Skai was gravely injured in the struggle. In order to survive she travelled unto the bowels of the ship and froze herself within a crystal. There are some among us who hear her guide us, leading us unto the righteous path and avoiding the path of vanity that so betrayed our Father. It is also said that she will one day arise and lead us to our true destiny. Of course, these are just stories. I try not to let it interfere with my time spent preening or snoozing. One must always look one's best, yes?"
Kochanski stared at Lister, trying to imagine him with a shred of vanity as once again he transferred the cigarette he could never light from his mouth to his ear.
"And now, gentlefolk, I must leave. As much as one tries, the needs of all females must be attended to."
The Cat bowed and left the room blowing his hunting horn and scattering a skutter who was attempting to repair a vending machine.
Kochanski shook her head in amazement, "That is incredible. Holly, could you translate the book for us please?"
Lister whistled low, "Who'd have thought, local boy makes good. Not too hot on the idea that I get diddled out of my Godhood by Rimmer but still, not bad being the mate of a Goddess."
Kochanski burst out laughing and picked up her pencil, "Yeah, right. Only in your dreams would I be your mate."
Lister jumped up and perched on the desk as she tried to continue with her calculations.
"I don't know Krissie, how about it? Last two humans able to chat in the universe, got to count for something, right?"
She looked deep into those eyes, warm and smiling and without guile. She found herself grinning back.
"Sure, why not?"