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.Rimmer cocked an eyebrow.'Pestilence?'Pestilence acknowledged his name with a nod.'Old Doc Diagnostics went down with acute bullet poisonin', rest his soul.Now I'm the medical examiner round these parts.''I see.' Rimmer jumped off the hearse.'Well, let me put it like this: anyone who wishes to bury this gentleman is going to have to come through me.And that includes any pox-rotted retards with terminal syphilis.'Pestilence's leer broadened.'Well, I reckon I can accommodate you in that respect.' He turned and strode towards the sidewalk, wrapped his arms around the thick wooden strut that held up the overhang and with a single grunt tugged it free.The roof splintering and collapsing behind him, he turned and brandished the strut, two-handed.'I'm gonna send your teeth so far south, you're gonna be flossing through your butt-hole.'Rimmer smiled, easy like, 'Well, my disease-brained friend, that should make it all the more pleasant for you to kiss it.And kiss it you will.' He parted the crowd and crossed over to the horse rail.He spat on his hands, wrapped them round the rail, said, Tucker up,' and pulled.And nothing happened.Rimmer wrinkled his brow, straightened, flexed his muscles and bent to the rail again.And pulled.And nothing happened.Disgorging a primal yell, he redoubled his efforts, straining up and up, his neck bones jutting out like the struts on a whalebone corset.His face reddened, then purpled, then turned marble white.With a final hissing grunt, like a steam train pulling into a station, he flopped limply over the rail, arms dangling, lungs scorched and pumping for air.The horse rail hadn't budged a single millimetre.'When you's done with all your squealin' and strainin', friend,' Pestilence grinned, 'I believe I have an open invitation to beat your stinkin' brains out.'Rimmer looked over to the Cat and rasped, 'What the smeg is going on?''Don't look at me, buddy,' he said, delight illuminating his features.'You're the one who promised to make this handsome dude French kiss your butt-hole.'Pestilence advanced.Rimmer backed away.'For smeg's sake, shoot him,' he squealed.The Cat took out his harmonica and started to play.Rimmer's voice hit the falsetto range: 'Shoot the ugly goitre-faced gimboid! Shoot him! Now!'Reluctantly, the Cat decided Rimmer had suffered enough, and dropped his hand to his pistol, aiming to put six shots through the wooden strut, severing it at just the right angle to collapse back on to Pestilence's head and plant him out cold.Only it didn't exactly work out like that.What happened, exactly, was the gun went off while it was still in its holster, drilling a neat hole through the centre of the Cat's boot.He froze, his eyes wide, staring in disbelief at the street through his foot, then threw his head back and yowled like a B-movie wolfman.'Oh smeggy pudding,' Rimmer chittered, 'we've lost our special skills.'The Cat grabbed his wounded foot and started hopping and howling.Pestilence came on, relentlessly.'Your compadre don't dance so fancy no more,' he giggled.Rimmer kept on backing away, holding out the palms of his hands, his eyes flitting from his menacer to the Cat and back again.'Does it hurt?' he screeched dry-mouthed, hoping against hope that the Cat was wailing because his footwear had been ruined.'No!' the Cat yelled.'It's fun! I'm having a good time.' He tumbled on to his back and started thrashing around in the dirt, thick spurts of blood geysering over his hands through the sole of his boot.Rimmer's brain was screaming.This was an electronic reality.They shouldn't be able to feel pain.What in the name of the merciless nothing that spawned the universe had gone wrong? Then it hit him with a jolt: the virus had spread to the Artificial Reality unit!He glanced behind him: he was fast running out of retreating space.All things considered, now would be a most propitious time to leave.He called out to the struggling Cat.'Time to go! Clap, clap!' He clapped his hands together.And absolutely nothing happened.He clapped again.And still he was stuck in Kryten's fever nightmare.Still his rot-faced tormentor was bearing down on him with murderous intent.He looked over at the Cat, who had temporarily released his wounded foot and was clapping with the dedicated fury of an audience at a special all-nude version of a Lily Langtree revue.The virus had sealed them in.Rimmer had only two options: make a stand and slug it out with this maniacal demon from hell, or plead and beg for mercy like a quivering, spineless jellyfish.Rimmer daringly plumped for mimicking a marine coelenterate of the class Schyphozoa.From deep down inside himself, he dredged up his most winning smile.'Uh, Mr Pestilence, sir, it would appear that, due to circumstances completely beyond my control, there's been a bit of a cock-up in the bravado department.I may have come across as being slightly more brave than I, in fact, am.'Pestilence swung the strut.Rimmer leapt backwards, barely getting out of the arc of the swing in time.He staggered, regained his balance and was retreating again before Pestilence had the chance to raise the weapon back to his shoulder.'Now I may have given the impression that I held you in low esteem, particularly in regard to some rather thoughtless remarks I passed in relation to various features of your appearance, which were not only childish and peevish, but also highly inaccurate, and which, on mature reflection, I utterly withdraw.I ask you now, in the spirit of brotherly harmony and world peace.''Shut your sissy bitchin', you worthless son of a filthy whore,' Pestilence said.'Fair enough,' Rimmer said, and Pestilence brought the strut swinging down on to his left shoulder.There was a thump and a sickening snap of bones.Rimmer tried to black out before the pain hit him, but he didn't make it.The faces of the onlookers loomed and waned in his eyes.He sagged to his knees.He twisted his flopping head and drove his blurry vision over to the struggling Cat.Step by satisfied step, Pestilence was advancing on him.Rimmer tried to persuade the screaming in his shoulder to shut the smeg up, but it kept on screeching, and through the throbbing swelling his eyesight had become he watched the huge wooden strut rise up over the struggling Cat and fall, and saw the Cat lay still.Rimmer pitched head forward into a pile of dung thoughtfully dropped for him by the funeral horses.Then everything went blissfully black.TENLister stared at the blood on his hand like it was a Rorschach ink-blot test.Pulsing thickly through the small nick on his palm, it spread slowly, becoming a butterfly, then a bat, then a huge ugly dragon, its head reared, its wings spread.He slipped a cream kerchief from the breast pocket of his tailored jacket and mopped up the dragon.He was thinking how oddly unfamiliar his hand looked to him, and how strangely inept the expression 'to know something like the back of your hand' was.He doubted he could pick out the back of his hand in a police line-up if it had stolen his cattle and burnt down his ranch.Lister tugged the kerchief in a tourniquet to stem the blood flow.He shouldn't really have been thinking about hands.What he should have been thinking about was why he'd cut himself at all [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]