‘It’s something I developed for Reinbek,’ he had explained. ‘He used to be an interrogator for the Criminal Intelligence Service, but now he works for the Black Hole. And sometimes he wants information from people, and he gets me to use this particular simulation on them. Sura Fifteen’s named after the book in the Qur’an that describes seven portals leading into seven divisions of hell. You said you wanted Antichrist, mister, well you’ve got it. What they’re going through is hair-on-end, cold sweat, blood-turning-to-water, stampeding-panic-attack horror, and I wouldn’t inflict it on my worst enemy. Parts of the model I had to buy prefabricated from some real sado-freaks and mental fuck-ups. So don’t ask me to describe what’s in there in more detail because I just don’t know. I wouldn’t go in that simulation if you promised me eternal life.’
‘I can guarantee you a very short life if you’re lying to me,’ Rimmer had promised.
Two whole hours had gone by since Prevezer had reported that Dallas and Gates had gone through the first portal of hell, and Rimmer had grown tired of the Simworld modeler’s one-word pictures of the numbers he was seeing on the computer screen. Bad. Evil. Ghastly. Grim. Horrifying. Dreadful. Monstrous.
‘How do I know that it’s as bad as you say it is?’ Rimmer demanded, pressing the gun against Prevezer’s nose.
‘You can’t. Not for sure. Not without going in and taking a look for yourself.’
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
Prevezer said nothing, momentarily distracted by some small change he had noticed in Gates.
‘I know I would,’ said Cavor from the floor where he still lay alongside Ronica and Simou.
‘Shut up,’ snarled Rimmer. And then to Prevezer: ‘This isn’t working for me. Not anymore. Maybe I’ll just shoot them now. Maybe I’ll just shoot you all.’
‘Wait,’ said Prevezer. ‘You wanted confirmation that they’re going through hell? Well look. Look at Gates. Look at his hair, for God’s sake.’
Rimmer bent down and peered through the fretwork of the geodesic dome that covered Gates’s head. There could be no doubt about it. Gates’s hair, uniformly brown when Rimmer had come into the hotel suite, was now distinctly gray.
‘My God, you’re right,’ he breathed. ‘His hair’s turned quite gray. Just while I’ve been here.’
‘You bastard,’ hissed Ronica.
‘Now do you believe me?’ demanded Prevezer.
‘My hair is gray, but not with years,’ said Cavor. ‘Nor grew it white, in a single night, / As men’s have grown from sudden fears.’
‘What’s that?’ asked a delighted Rimmer.
Cavor sat up and repeated the verse, adding by way of provenance, ‘Lord Byron.’[118] Now if Rimmer would just turn his back, he could take him on.
‘Shut up, Cav,’ ordered Ronica. ‘Don’t you see? You’re only adding to the bastard’s sadistic enjoyment.’
‘It’s only my sadistic enjoyment of their discomfort that’s keeping you alive,’ said Rimmer, kneeling beside her. He collected a handful of her braids in his hand and then twisted them.
Ronica screamed until he stopped.
‘Another word out of you and your hair will encounter some grief of its very own. Only it won’t turn gray. It won’t have time because I’ll tear it out, braid by beautiful braid, until your scalp is as cratered with holes as the surface of the Moon.’
Ronica screamed as he twisted her hair again. Cavor gathered one leg beneath himself and prepared to leap.
‘And stop that bloody screaming,’ said Rimmer, silencing her with a slap this time. ‘Don’t think that anyone’s going to hear you. These rooms are soundproofed.’ He chuckled. ‘They have to be on account of all the lovemaking that goes on in this place. Even if someone did hear you, they’d only assume you were having a good time. That might still be a possibility for you.’
He stood up and returned to his contemplation of the two men, hoping that he might see Dallas’s hair turn white with fright in front of his very eyes. After several minutes he shook his head sadly. ‘That was good, but it wasn’t quite good enough.’ And pointing the gun through the dome at the center of Dallas’s forehead, he added, ‘It’s time you were on your way to the real hell, Dallas.’
It was now or never, thought Cavor. He had just started to move when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lenina.
Even in the Moon’s microgravity, Rimmer’s sudden progress across the suite was spectacular. It seemed hardly connected to the simultaneous muted explosion of air — much like the sound of a metallic drawer sliding shut — that emanated from the gun in Lenina’s hand. Swaying slightly, her face covered in the rubelliform rash that described her condition with more eloquence than a hematologist’s case notes, she stood in the bedroom doorway and fired once more at the man who had bounced off the wall and was now trailing blood as he crawled toward the door. Her second bullet hit Rimmer in the back of the head, lifting a piece of his scalp and killing him instantly as it bored through his brain, before finally coming to rest between his teeth, as if, like some circus sharpshooter, he had meant to catch it in his mouth.
‘You took your time,’ snarled Ronica, rising stiffly from the floor. ‘I thought you’d never hear me screaming.’
‘Shut up,’ Prevezer snapped. ‘Can’t you see she’s dying?’
Lenina said nothing, too sick to answer. She let the gun fall to the ground, turned on her heel, and walked back to lie on Prevezer’s bed, even as he sprang forward to press the button that would switch Dallas and Gates from the artificial cortical mode controlling the Simworld to the real one.
Gates, trembling, his face as white as the marble chair he was sitting on and almost breathless with fear, called out to them, ‘Get this thing off me.’
There was just enough time for Prevezer to withdraw the electro-neuroneedles before Gates, jumping up, removed the geodesic dome from his now sweat-plastered head and threw it to the marble floor, smashing it into a dozen tetrahedral-shaped shards. He paused for a second, glanced around the room with wide eyes, and then, retching like a dog, ran into the bathroom.
‘I’d better see that he’s okay,’ said Cavor, going after him.
Dallas waited until Prevezer had removed the dome from his own head and then let out a long, unsteady breath. Saying nothing, he bit the knuckle of his forefinger until it bled. Seeing this, Ronica pulled his hand away from his mouth and then cradled his head against her belly.
‘What happened?’ he whispered. Then he saw Rimmer’s body and understood.
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘It’s all over. You’re back with us now. Take it easy.’
Prevezer was already preparing an intravenous sedative for each man.
‘This is just a tranquilizer,’ he told Dallas. ‘It’ll help you to sleep.’
‘Are you kidding?’ demanded Simou. ‘I’d be afraid to ever close my eyes again.’