Sweet Justice (3 page)

As if on cue, Juves appeared just as I punched the call button. I’m not afraid of 11-year-olds, of course, not even when there are a dozen or so of them; but all the same, they can be pretty unnerving. They lounged against the Block wall, scuffing their Mock Doc aggro boots noisily. Not one of them said a word. They all just stood there, glaring at me.

I ignored them. I’m used to this treatment: everybody in Mega-City One is. Citizens glare and glower at other citizens wherever they happen to be – though not if there’s a Judge around, I hasten to add.

The Juves were obviously unhappy that their glares had failed to bug me. An older boy with a blue-painted face lashed out in my direction with a heavy boot – then stopped his kick just before it struck my leg. None of them laughed, though several sneered provocatively.

I pursed my lips and began to whistle beneath my breath. Stay nonchalant, that’s the best motto. Don’t give these louts an ounce of satisfaction!

‘OW!’ I gasped as something small and solid struck me sharply on the back of the head.

‘You young devils!’ I snapped. ‘Which of you threw that?’ None of them moved. They continued to lounge and glare as if I hadn’t even spoken. I felt like shaking them by their stupid shoulders, but wisely refrained. Assaulting a minor is a very serious offence. Of course, assaulting an adult is a serious offence, too – but it would be my word against ten of theirs. ‘OW!’ Another missile cracked against my skull. But thankfully, before they all decided to join in, the lift arrived.

It was empty, except for one Juve with a single 30-centimeter-long spike of rigid, plasticated hair. The point of it stabbed my ear painfully as he squeezed by me.

Thankfully they didn’t follow me into the lift. I don’t think I could have endured their malicious taunts all the way to street level. I breathed a sigh of relief – and it was then I noticed that the STOP button had been depressed for every single floor from mine down. All 88 of them. Evidently the work of my spiky-headed attacker. But why?

I found out on floor 88.

As the doors slid open, I was deluged by a shower of garbage. The perpetrators, of course, were Juves – whether the same ones who’d menaced me upstairs, I couldn’t tell. What’s the difference? They’re all the same anyway!

I punched the Close button and fended off a final missile as the doors hissed to. It didn’t require a genius to figure out that I was going to receive more of this treatment... all the way down to the street.

By the time the lift reached the bottom, I resembled not so much a decent, law-abiding citizen as a walking muck heap, cleverly constructed over a framework of painful bruises. I am not ashamed to say that I was whimpering.

My journey across the city wasn’t exactly pleasant, but compared with my descent in the lift it was a doddle. I arrived at Orinoko’s Lunchette in Sector 44’s Avenue of Poloypropylop. I was afraid the waiter wouldn’t serve me, I was in such a state; but happily, he recognised me under the filth and bade me enter with his usual good-natured gusto. Wouldn’t surprise me if I was his best customer – after all, I’ve been coming here every Thursday lunchtime for 17 years now.

I ordered my usual – soypfel strudel and a big jug of synthi-caff – and settled down by Orinoko’s big front window. Normally I’d scan the faces of the passing crowds with rapt attention, hoping that maybe today... maybe today I’d find the face I’d been looking for all these years.

But the 88 peltings I’d received at the hands of those surly, sinister Juves had entirely spoiled my mood. I sat there, a muck-encrusted 40-year-old with a heavy heart and no prospects... just another big city loser... a man who couldn’t even find his own dear mother...

There, I’ve said it. Mother’s the reason I come here every week. It’s in the hope that one day she’ll come in here, just like she did every Thursday back in the old days, and say in that lilting, laughing voice of hers: ‘Mockola for me and a freezipop for the brat.’ We were happy together, Mom and me; why, when dad died in the big Space Port disaster back in ’86, we hardly even noticed. Times were hard, but me and Mom were together, and that was always enough for me.

But as I got older, we started to grow further apart. When I finished with my unemployment courses, Mom insisted that I become independent, move out, set up house on my own. I guess she wanted to live her own life, taste a little freedom for a while. But she was my mom, for Josh-sakes; I couldn’t leave her.

So my Mom did the next best thing: she left me.

It was a few days after my 23
^rd
birthday. I’d been out on a cheap-shot trip and picked up this great GOG kneepad – yes, the very one I wear to this day. I came rushing into the house, yelling to Mom to look-see the new pad. My voice echoed around an empty home. Mom had packed her clothes – and everything that wasn’t bolted down – and vamoosed.

I was distraught. I asked the neighbours if they knew where she’d gone – most of them didn’t even know who she (or I) was. The Judges were neither helpful nor very sympathetic. ‘Look, pal – we got enough to do fighting crime without busting our guts to find a lady who’s “abandoned” a 23-year-old!’ as one of them so forcefully put it.

The only hope I had was Orinoko’s. Mom used to come here every Thursday after her Principal Fondomics work-out; I’d come over from the apartment to meet her, and she’d tell me about those mysterious exercises she learned.

I checked with her Fondomics instructors, but they were only vexed that Mom had split without paying her overdue tuition fees. So I took to hanging out in Orinoko’s at that same time every Thursday, in the faint hope that one day she’d come back. And she never did...

I felt a tear dribble down my cheek, pushing a small heap of muck before it. I didn’t even try to wipe it away. What was the point? Insulted and beaten up by Juves; unemployed and unemployable; friendless and alone; a man whose own mother had deserted him. Who cared if I cried or not. Who gave a mutie’s curse?

‘I do, Pizmo.’

The voice was low, throaty – the sort of voice they used to advertise hi-class clinics. A friendly voice. It seemed to come from under the table. I looked down, expecting to see maybe a television set or a lurking dwarf.

‘No dwarf, Pizmo,’ the voice said. ‘It’s me. Your kneepad.’

January 20
^th

I broke off rather abruptly yesterday. I needed time to absorb the implications of that amazing incident. Finding that my kneepad could talk wasn’t all that big a deal; I mean anybody who watches holovision (which is everybody) sees a dozen equally amazing things in their living rooms every week. A talking kneepad isn’t really more surprising than a dame with a goldfish face, or men like the fatties who can eat a tonne of food at one sitting.

No, what amazed me was the fact that my kneepad cared. And even more – it cared about me.

I started to ask it how come it had never told me this before, but the kneepad cut me short. ‘I can’t talk here,’ it said. ‘Someone might overhear. Let’s go home.’

So we did.

Back in my apartment the questions I was bursting to ask came pouring out. ‘Why did you never speak before? What’s your name? Does it hurt when I kneel on you?’

The kneepad ignored them. ‘For the past 17 years,’ it began, ‘I have been studying humanity from the vantage point of your left knee. My studies have now reached an end. I have formulated a conclusion – and from your point of view, Pizmo, a very grim conclusion it is.’

A little shiver ran up my spine. ‘Wh-what is it?’

‘Simply this: that you, dear Pizmo, are the victim of a city-wide agreement which has resulted in you becoming a victim for all and sundry to persecute at will.’

I could hardly believe my ears. ‘This is incredible!’ I gasped. ‘It’s like you’ve been reading my mind. I’ve often wondered what I did to deserve a life like mine: no job, no prospects, plagued by sinister Juves, a man whose own mother...’

‘Yes, yes, Pizmo,’ the kneepad put in impatiently. ‘I know all that. The question is – what are you going to do about it?’

I shrugged helplessly. ‘What can I do? Like you just said – everybody in the city’s against me. The only place I might get help is in foreign parts – like Texas City, maybe, or Brit-Cit. But there’s probably a conspiracy to stop me leaving town – and besides, I have no money.’

‘You’re too negative, Pizmo,’ the kneepad told me. ‘Adopting a more positive attitude would be of immense benefit. Yes, I think that’s where we’ll start...’

It talked on into the evening. I have a feeling that my life is going to take a sudden turn for the better.

January 21
^st

On the advice of my kneepad, I have taken up Hari-ip-Slip, the ancient Oriental art of self-defence through Positive Posturing. From a basic ten or so slinky body movements, I am constructing a dancing defence that will leave those Juves speechless.

I had a lengthy chat session with my kneepad – it refuses to be called GOG; evidently that’s its designer’s name, not its own. It made a rather startling suggestion: I might not be the only victim of this sinister conspiracy. There may well be thousands – even millions – of other citizens like me, living in lonely torment, completely unaware of kindred souls nearby.

We also discussed extra-sensory perception. As a result, I am conducting an experiment: for 10 minutes every hour I am focussing my thoughts and beaming them telepathically to the city at large. If there are others like me they will hopefully respond.

January 22
^nd

Spent today in bed, worn out. I suppose it was the exertions of last night’s mental telepathy. My kneepad is hanging on the chair, but it hasn’t said a word all day. I suppose that intellectuals are moody, even in the kneepad world.

January 23
^rd

In complete contrast to yesterday, I feel fantastic! I am convinced that I have had a telepathic reply to my mental messages. When I wakened this morning, in that warm hazy space between dreams and living, I heard a voice say quite distinctly: ‘I am Mrs Gorp, your next-door neighbour. I am like you.’ My kneepad got quite excited when I told it. ‘It figures, it figures,’ it kept saying. ‘You see, Pizmo, I’ve been thinking: it’s possible to extend my theory to include everybody in the whole city!’

I knitted my brows. Somehow, that didn’t seem scientific to me. But the kneepad rushed on: ‘I mean – what if every citizen, all 400-million-plus of them, is just the same as you? To wit: lonely, afraid, no job, no future, no money, persecuted by Juves... they wouldn’t all have been abandoned by their mothers, of course, but a lot of them might be.’

‘But if we’re all the same, who’s behind the conspiracy?’ I asked.

‘Who do you think?’ the kneepad said. ‘Who’s the common factor in all the equations? Who persecutes everybody?’

Like all great truths, it was so simple that I wondered how I hadn’t thought of it myself. The Juves. Of course –it was the Juves who were behind everything!

January 24
^th

We’ve hatched a plan. We’re going to alert the entire city to the conspiracy, but gradually, so as not to tip our hand to the Juves prematurely. I have been delegated to make contact with Mrs Gorp. I left my apartment at noon, after ascertaining that the Juves were nowhere in sight. I puzzled for a moment over NITCHY BLACK BLOO, which someone had scrawled on my door. Some secret Juve code perhaps?

My push on Mrs Gorp’s bell was light but confident. Her voice rasped suspiciously from the answer-grille in the doorframe: ‘Whoozit? Whadyawant?’

‘Pizmo Nitchy, Mrs Gorp. From next door. We met at the Block-fest a couple of years ago.’ I bent closer to the microphone and lowered my voice. ‘I got your telepathic message. We have a lot to talk about.’

There was a long, long pause. Then a new voice – a man’s – blared in my ear: ‘Lizzen, weirdo! I count ta ten, I open da door. Ya still there I tear ya legs an’ make ya eat ’em!’

‘Obviously her husband isn’t as advanced as she is,’ my kneepad hissed. ‘I suggest we return to base and revise our plans.’

My kneepad soon hit on another scheme: ‘Letters to the vidzines – that’s the answer. If we get enough printed, the citizens’ll soon get the message. Of course, the Juves might see the letters, too. But that’s a chance we’ll just have to take.’

It was risky, but I consoled myself with the fact that not many Juves can read. Of course, not all that many adults can either. It took me an hour to compose a document setting out my discoveries and theories, including a masterly analysis of my main Juve Conspiracy ideas.

(I had better record here: I am not trying to take credit away from my kneepad when I say ‘my’ discoveries and theories. The kneepad itself insisted that I delete all reference to it throughout, on the grounds that it had no right to disturb the status quo of the kneepad world over what was essentially a human problem. I asked it what it meant.

‘If citizens at large found out that your kneepad can talk, they’d want to know why their own kneepads can’t.’

‘Well – why can’t they?’

‘Oh,’ said my kneepad, ‘most can. It’s just that they choose not to.’)

January 25
^th

Spent the entire day composing letters to newsvids, vidzines and holovid shows, including one to Kenny Kark. My kneepad thinks Kark might be a Juve spy, but I’m not so sure. He’s pretty tall for a Juve.

January 26
^th

Thursday again. Time for my weekly trip to Orinoko’s – but the usual fear of going out was absent this morning. As soon as I reached the lift, the Juves arrived on schedule. They launched into their usual glare and sneer tactics – but this time I glared and sneered right back. I elbowed one of them aside and lounged against the wall, looking as contemptuous as possible. This is all part of the Hari-ip-Slip method. 60% of all Juves will shuffle off if treated like this.

Not a Juve shuffled. I knew this meant they had accepted my challenge to their challenge, and events were now likely to escalate. No matter. I have surprised even myself with how well I have mastered the martial art.