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grove, smoke curled from the chimney stack of a small homestead.
There.'
Rimmer couldn't make out what the Cat was pointing at for some moments: his
eyesight wasn't nearly as keen.
Then he saw it. Distantly, in a thin rectangular patch of brown, a tiny figure
was dragging a handmade plough across a half-furrowed field.
'It's Lister. It's got to be.'
They half slid, half tumbled down into the valley, and ran across the fields
towards the figure. When they were two hundred yards away, they realized they
were wrong. It was a human, but it wasn't Lister. It was an old man,
grey-haired and slightly bent. More than a little hard of hearing, too,
because he didn't respond to any of Rimmer's shouts until they were almost on
him.
He swivelled and looked at them, his fingers toying idly with his long,
braided silver beard. He had the strong muscle tone and weathered skin of a
farmer who's spent a lifetime in the fields. He was fit and strong, but he had
to be at least sixty, maybe more. He gazed at them for a while from under the
thick, furry white caterpillars of his eyebrows, then he mopped his brow with
a leathery forearm and turned back to his plough.
'Old man!' Rimmer panted. 'We're looking for someone.'
The man stopped, but didn't turn.
'A friend of ours. Crashed just over the hill.' The Cat pointed, but the old
man didn't look. Instead, with his back still to them, he performed a passable
impersonation of Rimmer's voice.
I ll be back,' the old man said. 'Trust meeeeeee.' He turned and pulled off
his cap. He swept a liver-spotted hand through the remaining wisps of silver
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on his pate.
Rimmer crooked his head to one side and studied the old man's features. It was
the eyes that gave it away.
'Lister?' he said, his eyes half-pinched in disbelief.
Lister shook his head. 'Where the smeg have you been?'
'We got here as quick as we could.'
'Quick?' Lister bellowed.
'Quick!?'
He rubbed his legs together and made a series of bizarre clicking noises
with his tongue.
'It's only been sixteen days.' Rimmer looked at the old man Lister had become.
'My god - it must be the Time dilation.'
'The what?'
'The ship got stuck in a Black Hole. Time moves more slowly around a Black
Hole. Relativity. From our point of view, you've only been away a couple of
weeks.'
Lister snorted, showing a row of gnarled teeth. 'I've been here, on my own,
waiting for you to bring me some food' - his eyes sparkled with fury - 'for
the last thirty-four years.
Thirty-four smegging years.'
Rimmer shook his head and tried to think of something adequate to say. All he
could come up with was:
'Sorry.'
SEVEN
The Cat spun round, taking in the whole valley. 'You did all this yourself?'
Lister grunted.
'This was all garbage before, and you made it into this?'
Lister grunted again. He hadn't spoken much English for over a third of a
century, and his conversation was sparse. He turned and squinted across the
fields. Rimmer followed his sightline towards a herd of animals grazing at the
very edge of the valley. They looked too small to be horses, but it was
impossible to tell at this distance. Lister slid his two thumbs into his mouth
and emitted a piercing, wavering whistle.
One of the herd looked up from its feeding, and broke into a trot. As they
watched, the creature suddenly lifted off into the air and headed, skyborne,
towards them.
The giant, eight-foot long cockroach landed neatly between the screaming Cat
and the hysterical Rimmer. Its mandibles rubbed tenderly up the back of
Lister's legs, and he patted its thorax fondly, cooing his strange clicks and
whistles all the time.
'Yow! Warghh!' The Cat wriggled his body, as if shrugging off a thousand
creeping bugs, while Rimmer convulsed quietly beside him.
'They eat all the garbage,' Lister said, as if this were some kind of
explanation, and climbed on its back. 'Hop on.' He patted the cockroach's
rump.
The Cat twisted and gyrated, scratching every spare inch of flesh. 'Yak!
Wurghh! Yahhhh! It's a cockroach!'
'You expect us to sit on this thing?' Rimmer said, between heaves.
'It's six miles back to the house.'
'Six miles? Is that all?' Rimmer swept both his hands forward. 'You guys go on
ahead. I feel like a jog.'
'What? No. I'm coming with you,' said the Cat, and went into another gyrating
dance of revulsion.
The cockroach clicked and whistled and animatedly rubbed his bristling back
legs together.
'He's getting upset,' said Lister. 'He thinks you don't like him.'
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