Judge Dredd (2 page)

“Or
smart
’nough, neither,” Purple Ears said. He winked at Needle Teeth. Needle Teeth showed Fergie a hideous grin. Fergie noticed the deep scars that covered Purple Ears’ face were actually words—two words carved over and over again, words that Fergie wouldn’t want his mother or his sisters to see. He wondered if Purple Ears had any idea that both of the words were misspelled. Fergie had no intention of being the one to break the news.

“Let’s go, Haven!” Metal Jacket shouted out the window. “Heaven-ly Ha-ven, all the
way!”

Needle Teeth gave a blood-curdling cry and loosed a burst of automatic fire into the crowd down below. Smoke filled the room and empty cartridges rattled on the floor.

“Hey, you guys, stop that!” Fergie was appalled. “You’re
killin’
people down there!”

“Yeah, you noticed, huh?” Purple Ears grinned and snapped off a dozen rounds with his automatic pistol.
“Block
war!
Block
war! Pour it on ’em, droogs!”

Metal Jacket joined in. The noise of his big black-and-copper weapon ripped through Fergie’s head. It was loud—but not loud enough to drown out the screams from far below.

“Damn it, you got to stop this,” Fergie cried out. “I’m on
parole.
They catch me with you morons my ass is back in Aspen again!”

No one could hear him. Fergie knew he had to do something. People were getting slaughtered down there, and though he didn’t really know his new neighbors that well, blowing them all to hell was the wrong thing to do—especially if the Judges blamed him for having a bunch of crazies in his room, and with his luck, that’s exactly what they’d do.

Fergie threw himself at Purple Ears and grabbed for his gun. A small voice told him it was a stupid thing to do. And, as it always seemed to happen, the small voice warned him half a second late. Purple Ears turned and looked at Fergie swinging on his arm, looked at him like he couldn’t believe this stupid neek was there. Then he whipped the butt of his pistol around and whacked Fergie firmly on the jaw . . .

I
t was close to sunset outside, but it was always high noon in the harshly-lit corridors of Mega-City’s Hall of Justice. The building was a towering fortress made of rough black granite that seemed to eat the light. The familiar shield and eagle of the Judges was carved in massive relief above the outside entryway.

Few ordinary citizens ever passed through these doors. Fewer still got beyond the high-security area of the first floor. And
none
of them ever reached the heights of the Hall of Justice, or penetrated its depths, which plunged thirty stories below the street. At least, that was the number the Judges allowed to leak to the curious public. There were secrets in this building only a handful of people ever knew.

It was exactly 1847 hours when Judge Hershey left Locker Room G and walked down the narrow rampway to Level Seventeen, her black helmet tucked beneath her arm. Rookies stopped and saluted as she passed. Tekkies and office personnel nodded in respect and stepped out of her way. A few seasoned Street Judges looked her up and down, but only after she’d safely passed by.

Judge Hershey’s eyes were dark and wide-set, her skin slick as satin and perfectly clear. Her black hair was cut nearly as short as a man’s. A curl formed a perfect halfmoon on either cheek, her only concession to fashion and her sex.

Not that anyone had ever mistaken her for a man. Though Hershey was dressed in the standard, beetle-black armor, gauntlets, and boots of a Judge, no one with normal vision would make a mistake like that. She was trained, disciplined, and quick as death, or she would never have earned the eagle-and-shield badge molded in copper and chrome across her breast. Still, it was clear there was more to Hershey than impact plastic and steel. Every male Judge could see that, though no one among them could truthfully say they knew she was a woman for sure. A hopeful rumor was whispered now and then, but none of them were true.

Armorglass doors slid aside with a sigh, and Hershey walked into the vast, curved tunnel that was the heart of the Street Judge’s life. The thunder of engines echoed off the concrete walls. The deep, throaty roar was more than just a sound, it was a living force that rose up through Hershey’s boots, rippled through her belly, and spread like a tremor of the earth into her arms and legs.

She had never discussed this effect with the other Judges—it would have been a sign of emotional weakness to do so—but she was certain hers was a feeling shared by any man or woman who had ever walked into Level Seventeen among a hundred gleaming Lawmasters growling like metal beasts, crouched and waiting to come alive at the hands of their keepers.

If there was a more powerful, awesome machine in the world, Hershey couldn’t imagine what it might be. A lawman from the twentieth century would recognize the basic motorcycle shape, but the resemblance ended there. These squat, black monsters were incredibly durable, lightning-fast killing machines a hundred generations removed from their ancestors of the world of Way Back When—and nearly as deadly as the peace officers who rode them through the streets of Mega-City now.

Hershey spotted Rookie Briscoe on the far end of the line of machines. It was 1852 hours, eight minutes until the shift change at 1900, and the tunnel was filled with armor-clad Judges and red-sleeved maintenance personnel. Hershey checked her helmet, saw all the points of light on her visor wink emerald-green, started for Briscoe, then stepped back to let a Lawmaster pass.

“Judge! Judge Hershey!”

Hershey recognized the voice, hurried her step, and pretended not to hear.

“Judge—ma’am . . .”

Hershey stopped abruptly and wheeled around.

“Olmeyer! If you have read
Manners and Conventions,
Article Seven, you will be aware of the fact that there is no such thing as a
ma’am.
Ma’am is a gender title, Cadet. All Judges are addressed as
Judge.
They are not, I repeat,
not
addressed as sir, ma’am, miss, it, or any other discriminatory word or phrase. Do you
read
me, Cadet?”

“Yes, ma—yes,
Judge!”

“Fine. Now what do you want? I’m on duty in forty-two seconds.”

Olmeyer backed off. His throat went suddenly dry. It always happened when he spoke to Judge Hershey. He couldn’t look her straight in the eye. If he did, she took his breath away and scared him to death at the same time. So he did what he usually did, which was gaze at the tunnel ceiling, as if he were searching for flies.

“I was, uh, wondering if you’d had a chance to think about what I—”

“No. Forget it, Olmeyer.” Hershey’s eyes were black as winter ice. “I am
not
interested. You will not speak of this again.”

“It’s—it’s for the yearbook, Judge. It’s classic poses is all. It’s not some Way Back When p-porno centerfold or anyth—”

“Olmeyer . . .”

Hershey leaned down, cocked one gloved finger and aimed it directly between his eyes. “Olmeyer, I
know
what it is. Don’t
tell
me what it is. And if you mention this again I will fry your fat head and eat it. Am I getting
through
to you, Cadet?”

“Yes, Judge.”

“I can’t
hear
you.”

“YES, JUDGE!”

Hershey glared at him hard enough to kill a house-plant, then turned and marched away. She felt the heat rise to her face and jammed the helmet on her head. The helmet offered more than protection from criminals on the street; no one could read you if they couldn’t see your face.

Briscoe was standing by his Lawmaster. He’d seen the exchange between Judge Hershey and Olmeyer, but hadn’t been close enough to guess what it had all been about. He didn’t really care. Anything Judge Hershey did, thought, or said was fine with him. He had dreams about Hershey he wouldn’t even tell his best friend Miguel. It frightened him to even think about things like that. If he ever had to do a Truth Session, he’d take the killpill before he let them know what was churning through his head.

“Nice evening, Judge,” he said. “I hope that little droog didn’t bother you any. Cadets are sure a pain in th—”

“Shut up, Briscoe.” Hershey gave him a chilly look. “A Cadet is lower than a slug’s belly, and a
Rookie
is a quarter inch higher than that. You read me clear?”

“Yes, Judge!”

“Good. Excellent, Briscoe. Now pay attention and get your act together. The citizens aren’t paying you to look nice in your new black suit. Straddle that mother and find me some crime!”

T
he bench was hard as stone and the sound of the shuttle droned in Fergie’s head. The sound nearly put him to sleep, but Fergie knew better than that. A couple of cons had dozed off, then woke up yelling as the hot metal scorched their backs raw. The hull had been shielded when the craft was brand new, but it was far from new now.

Iron sweat dripped from the rusting pipes overhead. The air-recycler had blown on liftoff and the stench was unbearable in the hold. There were thirty-seven cons, cramped together on either side of the narrow aisle. No one was shackled. You could get up, move around, do whatever you wanted to.

“If you groons are crazy enough to kill each other on the way back home, then have at it, boys,” the guard said.

The con on Fergie’s left had a deep and deadly cough. The man on his right had a silver-plated leg. Fergie had heard of the guy but had never actually seen him before. His name was Jimmy Eyes, and he’d spent twenty years in Aspen Prison etching the leg with acid he’d stolen from the metalwork shop. He had done the whole thing with a magnifying glass. Unless you had a glass, all you could see on the leg were squiggly little lines. Strongly magnified, you could see the screaming faces of the people Jimmy Eyes had killed. He had driven his airbus into a power pole at three hundred-plus. No one but Jimmy got out. Everyone else was squashed flat or burned alive. A drug test showed Jimmy Eyes was bombed out on Triple Zetamine at the time.

After Jimmy finished his art—which everyone said was real fine for a man with no training at all—Jimmy took his etching acid and poured it into his eyes.

Fergie felt like a real nobody with cons like Jimmy Eyes and some of the other hardguys around. He recognized the Butcher from the paper hat he never removed from his head. The Lizard himself was supposed to be aboard. Everyone said he was a small, ordinary man, the kind you’d never notice in a crowd. Fergie shuddered at the thought. There was nothing ordinary about the Lizard, or what the Lizard had done.

Fergie knew he was small time, and that was fine with him. He had always made a real good living with a scam, and they’d only caught him once. Six lousy, miserable months, but he’d made it to the end in one piece, and he sure as hell wouldn’t let the Judges catch him cold like that again.

Fergie was certain he felt a change in the shuttle’s engines again. Maybe they were finally coming down. Or maybe the ancient crate had simply given out and they were plummeting to the ground.

There was no way to tell, no way to look out. And even if you could, there was nothing there to see. Nothing but the Big CE, the Cursed Earth itself. Death and desolation where nothing ever grew, where no one but a scrawny Dusteater could live, if you called that being alive. There was nothing else down there but the dry, hot winds that swept across the continent for three-thousand terrible miles. The winds, and one thing worse than that: Giant tornadoes that stalked the arid plains and sucked the earth dry—black, roaring funnels older than any man alive. Some people said that they weren’t simply weather anymore, like they were in the Way Back When. Now, they said, they were really alive, creatures as cunning as man himself.

That was just Dusteater talk, Fergie knew. Except he had seen one once from far away, on an Aspen Prison work detail. Now, he could no longer swear that the poor souls cast out upon the Cursed Earth weren’t right.

The shuttle tilted on its side, squeezing the seatbelt hard against his belly as the big engine started whining down. Where? Fergie wondered. Mega-City, most likely. They hardly sent anyone down to Tex-City anymore, and they
never
sent you back to the place where you’d committed your crime.

Fergie had tried to put that thought out of his mind for six months. He would never see LA again. Maggie, Bix and Gant—as far as he was concerned, they might as well be on Mars.

Okay, that’s that, put it out of your head. There are guys you can work with everywhere, and there’s plenty of Maggies out there.

Bix and Gant, right. But another Maggie, she wouldn’t be that easy to find . . .

No one was talking now. He knew what the other cons were thinking. That’s what he was thinking, too. Maybe they’d change their minds. Maybe they’d send him back. Judges could do that. Every man who’d ever been caught knew the Judges could do whatever they wanted.

He could hear the massive lock-gate grind, then thunder shut again as the shuttle passed through. Metal squealed, and the giant craft settled to the ground. The portal hummed, then opened like a massive steel eye. Fresh air filled the hold. The afternoon light was harsh after hours in the gloomy bowels of the ship. The cons opened their mouths up wide and shut their eyes.

“The Aspen Prison Shuttle has docked. Commence anti-contamination procedures at once . . . Parolees will disembark from Portal One-Niner now . . . You will maintain a single line. You will proceed in an orderly fashion to the assembly point outside
. . .”

The voice grated from the antique speaker overhead. It sounded like gravel in a can. The cons stood and did as they were told. Fergie choked as he walked through the disinfectant spray. Whatever it was, he was certain it would kill anything inside a man or out.

When he blinked the sting away, he could see he’d guessed right. It was Mega-City, there was no mistaking that. The massive wall they’d just passed through was easily half a mile high. Ahead, he saw the awesome city itself, the silver-gray structures rising up abruptly, shutting out the sun, the great spires lost in the clouds twenty thousand feet above. Crowded skyways curled like graceful ribbons among the heights.