Better Than Life Read online

  'Like what?'

  'Like get your IQ back.'

  'Because, you muffin-making moron, it's not possible.'

  'Yes it is,' said the Toaster. 'I've been reading your manual. There's a whole section on computer senility. There's a sort of cure.'

  'What d'you mean "there's a sort of cure”?'

  'It's an emergency provision. You cross-wire all your data banks and processing circuits, so everything gets compressed and intensified. You dramatically reduce your operational life-span, but the upside is: you get your brains back.'

  'Really?' said Holly, who'd tried several times to plough through his manual, and on each occasion had found it totally unfathomable.

  The Toaster continued: 'You sort of compact all your remaining intelligence into a short but dazzlingly brilliant period.'

  'Wow,' said Holly.

  'It's like, who would you rather be: Mozart, blessed with genius, but dead at thirty-two, or Nobby Nobody, who never did anything, but lived to ninety-eight?'

  'I want,' said Holly, with absolutely no hesitation whatsoever, 'to be a genius again.'

  NINE

  Amid the chaos, Lister sat on the cold bench-seat in what remained of the jailhouse. Fred, the town carpenter, was hammering thick oak joists into position to prop up the sagging roof. All around were the groaning wounded - mainly cuts and bruises and a few cases of shock. They lay on the stone floor, covered in thick blankets, rescued from Ma Bailey's boarding-house. Piping-hot sweet tea was being handed round by Grandma Wilson and young Mrs Hickett.

  Not that Lister was offered any tea. He was studiously ignored by everyone who bustled in and out of the jailhouse. His offers of help went unheard, so he just sat there, not drinking any tea, waiting for Bert the cop to finish taking Trixie LaBouche's statement.

  Henry staggered in with a bruise above his eye. 'Here!' He thrust a dollar bill into Lister's top pocket. 'Have your darned money back. Now we's square. Man with a fine family like yours - you oughta be ...' He flapped his hand dismissively, and stumbled off to help put out the fires.

  Lister pulled the bill from his pocket, and looked at it sadly.

  'That's mine, I do believe.' Old Mr Mulligan loomed over him. Two dollars and twenty-five cents, that's how much the boat cost.' He snatched the note from Lister's hand, and stalked out of the jailhouse.

  Bert emerged from the narrow stone corridor that led to the cells, clutching three sheets of handwritten paper. He looked at Lister and shook his head. 'I never claimed to be no modern thinker, but,' he hiked a thumb over his shoulder, 'that ain't no lady by my definition. No, sir. That woman is, pardon my French' - he paused - 'that woman is trash. Emerged from the shower with a towel round her waist, and everything else on display. Then darn me if she didn't say, bold as brass, "I have to take a leak.” Some lady. Then, if that wasn't enough, right in front of my eyes, she waltzes over to the stand-up you-rinal, and pees straight into the basin! I thought I saw me some things in the War, but nothing to rival that. Trash.'

  'Can I see her now?'

  'She ain't finished dressing, yet. Not that, I suppose, another man seeing her in the altogether would bother Trixie LaBouche too much. I ran a sheet on her: she's done more hooking than a Nantucket fisherman. That's a mighty funny friend you got there, David.'

  'Bert, I don't know her.'

  'Well, she sure knows you. You got two little moles on your left-hand shoulder?' he asked.

  'No,' he lied.

  'You want to prove that?'

  Lister shook his head and looked at the floor.

  'Your Kristine,' said Bert, 'that's what I call a lady. You wouldn't catch her peeing in no stand-up you-rinal. Be a cold day in hell before you searched through her handbag and found a pair of testicle handcuffs.' Bert shook his head with infinite sadness. 'Trash.' He hoisted his thumb again, and Lister slid sheepishly down the corridor.

  Bert unlocked the cell door and nodded Lister inside. 'You got five minutes,' Bert said, curtly. 'Any funny noises and me and my nightstick'll be through that door before you can say "Irma La Douce”.'

  Trixie LaBouche stood at the cell window, futilely trying to saw through the metal bars with a pocket nailfile. She wheeled round as the door unlocked, and smiled as she saw Lister. 'Thank God. I didn't think you were going to come.'

  'You didn't think I was going to come?' said Lister, with a dangerous madness in his eyes. 'You plough through my town in a ten-ton truck, you destroy my home and cause my wife to run out on me, you make everyone in the town think I'm some kind of cheap low-life, and you didn't think I was going to come?'

  'Take a seat,' she smiled sweetly. 'This may take a while,'

  Lister sat on the chair, and Trixie LaBouche started to tell him everything.

  When she'd finished, Lister got up, and strolled over to the cell's chemical toilet, wrenched it from the wall, and poured it over her head.

  'Well,' said Trixie, her face stained blue from the destrol fluid, 'you've taken it a hell of a lot better than I expected.'

  TEN

  The evening came. The celebrations began.

  The last of Rimmer's money spent itself in a big, expensive hurry.

  The eighty-piece jazz band ripped into an up-tempo version of Hoagy Carmichael's 'Abba dabba dabba', while most of the five thousand celebrity guests hurled one another about the freshly laid marble dance floor in the torch-light of the Oriental gardens.

  Gunshots of female laughter burst intermittently into the warm evening breeze, and mingled with the chudder-chudder of male ribaldry. Tuxedoed buffoons dived into the champagne-filled swimming pool, did four lengths and emerged paralytic.

  Elvis was having a gateau-eating competition with Buddha as Kennedy emerged from some bushes, tucking in his shirt, followed by a blushing and dishevelled Elizabeth I.

  Everywhere you looked, people were having fun. Unless you were looking at Rimmer. Depression sat on his shoulders like a huge stone gargoyle, as he slumped about his wedding reception praying his fixed grin wouldn't fall off his face and shatter on the floor. Everything seemed meaningless and joyless and anaemic. He belched, and the dodo pate he'd eaten an hour earlier backfired into the night air.

  Dodo pate. It tasted like chicken, only it was two thousand times more expensive. That's what happens when your chef gets hold of the keys to your time machine.

  It suddenly struck Rimmer the number of people he'd hired specifically to help him spend his money. In retrospect, their unspoken brief had been: make me bankrupt as swiftly as possible. He was surrounded by them. Everywhere he looked, people were quaffing Rimmer's money till it gurgled down their chins; smoking away his precious fortune in thick brown Havana plumes; consuming yet another plateful of cash a la Rimmer, with pureed money in a rich lucre sauce. Great armies of them, racing around trying to find new and more ingenious ways of dispensing with his fortune. And they'd succeeded. He was broke. Tomorrow he'd have nothing.

  And tomorrow they'd all be gone.

  Behind him. he heard Juanita's stilettoed rat-a-tat. It seemed audible only to him, like a dog-whistle to a slobberingly faithful Saint Bernard. He helicoptered round, and saw her disappearing down a set of stone steps which led to a deserted willow pool. Before he knew it, he was bounding down the steps behind her.

  Everything Juanita did, let's get this straight, Rimmer found excruciatingly erotic. Everything. Right now, bathed in the light of the pool's reflection, she was blowing her nose rather loudly into a white serviette, and Rimmer's snarling libido had to be yanked back on its choke chain. How was it possible to blow your nose so provocatively? How was it possible to charge this simple act with mystery, allure and sexual promise?

  She heard him, and looked round. 'Hi.'

  'If you want some time on your own, I'll go.'

  She shook her head, and gave him sixty per cent of her best smile.

  'Where's Frank?'

  She shrugged, 'Weeth hees business buddies, I guess. Talk, talk, talk ees all they do.' She laughed l
oudly.

  Small talk was not Rimmer's strongest suit. He rooted around in his empty brain for a topic of conversation. The weather? Did she enjoy the food? Are those new shoes? That's a big willow tree, isn't it? Have I told you I'm thinking of growing a beard? Finally he hit on the ideal line: a line that, on the surface, was perfectly respectable, yet carried a subtext rich in innuendo, hinting of mutual intimacies, the shared knowledge of each other's bodies, times past and beloved.

  'How's your verruca these days?'

  Puzzled, her thin eyebrows wiggled and waved like TV interference. 'Ees fine,' she said finally.

  'Great. That's terrific. Absolutely terrific. Really.'

  More silence.

  'Helen's verr nice. She's, uh, verr pretty. She'll be good for you. You must be verr happee, yes?'

  Here was an opening. She'd asked him whether he was happy. A look here could speak volumes. A casual shrug could articulate the whole state of his relationship with Helen. A raised eyebrow could speak at novel length about his misery and despair. The tiniest, subtlest gesture could tell Juanita everything: how he wanted her back; how he could never be truly happy without her.

  He hurled himself to his knees and clawed at her two-thousand-dollarpound shoes. 'I want you,' he sobbed. 'I want you right here and now, urgently and completely. I want to worship your body. I want to lick it all over, every hummock and crevice. I want to put you in a blender and drink you. I don't care that you're insane, I still love you.'

  She sank to her knees and cradled his head. 'I'm not insane. Not anymore. Can't you tell? Doan you notice anytheeng different? I've had personality surgery.'

  'What?'

  'Ees all the rage, now. Plastic surgery ees out. Personality surgery ees in. Look at me - doan you think I'm different? I've had a sense of humour implant, I've had my selfishness tucked, my greed lifted and my temper tightened. I doan mean to sound conceited, but I've got a genuinely wonderful personality, now. And eet only cost seven hundred thousand dollarpounds. Not that money's every thing, "she said, and laughed uproariously, showing off her freshly implanted sense of humour like it was a new dress.

  'And what about Frank?'

  'Frank? He's so sweet. But he's not you. I love you, my darleeng, and at last I have the personality you deserve.'

  'But you were unfaithful to me so many times. With so many, many people.'

  'I'm different now. I've had my libido shortened. Ees normal size now. I want only you.' She sprinkled kisses on his face.

  Suddenly, Rimmer stood up, and turned to face the willow pool. 'Frank - I have to know. Did you ... the two of you ...' he twisted his head and looked at her. 'Not that's it's important, but, did you make love?'

  'No.' She smiled tenderly. 'No, we didn't make love.'

  Rimmer closed his eyes and allowed a smirk to swim to the surface of his face.

  'We had sex many, many times, but I don't remember one occasion when I could honestly say we "made love”.'

  Rimmer's smirk flailed and spluttered on his lips, then went down; once, twice, three times and drowned.

  'Sure, I let heem grunt his passion away on me. Sure, I let heem heave and sweat and moan and grind and twist my leettle body into the positions that pleased heem. But all the time, I was thinking of you. Every time he took me; on the balcony, half-way up the stairs, across the kitchen table, the back seat of his car; I dreamed it was you, my angel. I dreamed it was your hands firmly gripping my rump, you my darling, bringing me to the edge of ecstasy, your baby lotion, your vibrating love-eggs - I dreamt it was you.'

  'A simple "yes” would have sufficed,' said Rimmer, curtly.

  Juanita threw back her head and roared. 'Ees a joke!' she guffawed. 'From my new sense of humour! You get eet? Ees a joke!'

  'What's a joke?'

  'I never let Frank touch me. I only want you, my purple, jealous darling.'

  Rimmer was indeed purple. 'It's a joke,' he mumbled, flatly.

  'Come on,' she held Rimmer's hand, and he staggered behind her up the stone steps. 'God - I don't know how I survived before weethout a sense of humour. I have so many laughs now.'

  'Where are we going?'

  'Anywhere. Just away. Away from thees place. Away from theez mad peoples.'

  Yes, thought Rimmer. Away. Just the two of us: we can start again.

  Suddenly everything seemed to fall into place. It was obvious now: the Game had destroyed him in order to provide him with the unmatchable high of re-building his empire, alongside Juanita, the woman he'd stolen back from his brother.

  'Come on.' He tugged her hand. 'Let's get out of here.'

  ***

  Trees and hedgerows flitted past the tinted bullet-proof glass of the chauffeur-driven limousine, while Rimmer and Juanita, safely concealed by the driver's courtesy screen, fumbled with each other's buttons and zippers on the back seat. Rimmer's favourite piece of lovemaking music, Haydn's Surprise Symphony, piped through all eight speakers.

  The music was suddenly interrupted by the voice of the chauffeur. 'Sorry to disturb you, sir. There appears to be a vehicle in pursuit.'

  'Ees Helen.'

  'Lose it,' said Rimmer quietly.

  The car immediately lurched ninety degrees to the left, and centrifugal force drove Juanita's stilettoed foot deep into Rimmer's naked shoulder.

  Rimmer's scream hit such a pitch, it was silent.

  The limo, accelerating all the while, dipped deeply down a steep embankment, and Rimmer catapulted across the back seat, and smashed his head into the drinks cabinet. The door sprang open and bottles tumbled and crashed over Rimmer's twitching body, smashing one by one over his head. His face, stained from green chartreuse, cherry brandy and a litre of advocaat, looked like the Bolivian national flag.

  Juanita, naked save for a wisp of silk, was giggling maniacally on the back seat. Her new sense of humour was having a field day.

  Rimmer groaned and scrunched among the broken glass, trying vainly to get up.

  The chauffeur's voice again: 'We appear to have burst a tyre, sir.'

  'Pull over,' said Rimmer, and with a sickening glop pulled Juanita's heel out of his shoulder.

  There was a knock on the window.

  'OK,' called Rimmer, tidying himself. 'Give me a moment.'

  The door was wrenched instantly from its hinges. A man the size and disposition of fifth-century Mongolia craned into the car and yanked the half-naked Rimmer on to the roadside.

  'Helen sent you, right?'

  'Wrong,' the man-like creature growled.

  'Who ees he?'

  'Mr Rimmer?' The man was reading with scarcely concealed difficulty from a legal-looking document. 'Arnold, ].?'

  'Er, maybe,' said Rimmer, nervously.

  'I am a legally appointed representative of Solidgram International, As you may know, your former company is in receivership, and I am hereby empowered to repossess your body.'

  ELEVEN

  The glory days were about to return. Holly found it quite impossible to suppress his permanent smirk.

  It had taken almost three weeks for the skutters to channel all the spare run-time from Holly's thousands upon thousands of terminal stacks into the small, single Central Processing Unit which controlled his highest levels of thought.

  But now they were ready.

  ***

  'Right then,' said the Toaster. 'We're ready.'

  Holly nodded.

  'We've just got to take out the circuit breaker, and pray we don't get an overload.'

  'What happens if we do get an overload?'

  'You'll explode,' said the Toaster, simply.

  'Fair enough,' said Holly.

  A skutter moved across the Drive-room floor, and its claw pulled out the inhibitory circuit board.

  All over the ship, the lights dimmed to emergency level. Cables, dormant for centuries, rumbled with power.

  'It's coming,' said Holly, tonelessly. 'I can hear it.'

  Millions of circuit boards sparked into life. From the ou
ter reaches of the ship, the surging energy thundered towards the Drive room, and Holly's CPU.

  'Whatever happens,' he said to the Toaster, 'no regrets. It's got to be better than being stuck with you.'

  Then it happened.

  Holly's digital image expanded off the screen in a stunning explosion of colour. Huge blue bolts of static lightning ripped across the walls of the Drive room. Terminals fizzed and jerked as the thousands of cables discharged their loads into his Central Processing Unit.

  Holly felt the power enter him.

  He felt as if his whole being had been blown apart and scattered to the corners of the universe.

  And just as he thought it was abating, just as he thought the massiveness of what had happened to him had finished, the second wave burst into him, smashing him, fragmenting him again.

  And then there was silence. A choking cloud of rubber-smoke hung low over the floor.

  And Holly's splintered image reformed itself on the screen in a scream of colours.

  He opened his eyes.

  His image was different. Larger, more intense, with higher definition. But the greatest difference was in his eyes. His eyes had lost their darting anxiety. They were smiling, benign.

  Holly was at total peace with himself.

  He summoned the digital readout of his estimated IQ.

  There were two figures. The first was a six, the second was an eight.

  Sixty-eight.

  Still, he kept smiling.

  There was a plip, and the two figures were joined by another. Now, they read three hundred and sixty-eight.

  There was a pause, and another plip.

  Now the IQ readout was two thousand, three hundred and sixty-eight.

  Holly's smile broadened.

  There was a final plip and the figures were joined by a one.

  Holly's new IQ was twelve thousand, three hundred and sixty-eight.

  He was more than twice as intelligent as he'd been at the height of his genius.

  'I know everything,' he said, without a trace of conceit. He turned his huge, kindly eyes towards the Toaster. 'Ask me anything. Absolutely anything at all.'