Sweet Justice (6 page)

‘Hey – get back, you dumb robot!’ I waved my hands at it and took a couple of steps backward. The crazed duck didn’t falter. It changed course and came zooming in straight at my knee – only now its bill was opening and closing with a loud SNUPP.

It lunged. Quicker than the eye could follow – well, quicker than I could dodge aside – its neck darted forward. Its bill closed with great force and a loud SNUPP. Right on my kneepad. SNUPP went the bill and CRUNCH went my beautiful kneepad. Smashed useless.

That’s when it happened. I lost my temper.

RED MIST

I’d come close to it before, of course – everybody does at one time or another. But always in the past I’d remembered what the teaching droids used to drum into us at school: control your emotions. Losing your temper only causes trouble.

I suppose you guys reading this already know the ways out of losing your cool: like swallowing your pride and walking away, or counting up to 50, or visualising a stern robotic face listing all the hassles a lost temper can cause. ’Cos when tempers are lost, there are always consequences. Why, I even heard a rumour that the biggest civil disorder the Mega-City ever witnessed – Block Mania – was started by just one woman blowing her stack. Melda Dreepe, her name was; there was some graffiti about her on our Block Hall walls. But as I stood by the side of the synthi-pond and looked down at the fragments of junk that only moments before had been my Numero Uno kneepad, I forgot all about controlling my emotions. A red mist seemed to spread in front of my eyes, and there was an ominous roaring in my ears. Like it was coming from a whole sector away, I could hear that stupid kneepad-mangling duck quacking... kwaak... KwaaK... KWAAK!

I erupted. It was as if fourteen years of pent-up frustrations and held-in anger just came boiling XXXXXXXXXXXXCENSOREDXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXCENSOREDXXXXXXXXXXXCENSOREDCENSOREDXXXXXXXXXXXCENSOREDXXXXXX.

My hand shot out and grabbed the duck by the neck. The stupid things are programmed to flap off if a citizen gets too close, of course, but like I said this one had popped its cork. I gave the loudest yell I’ve ever heard without the assistance of a Judge’s megaphone and whirled that criminal duck round my head.

Willy the C, needless to say, was lying on his back on the plasti-grass, laughing like he was having some kind of seizure. Looking back on it, I suppose I would have laughed too if our situations had been reversed and the delinquent duck had attacked my buddy. But it hadn’t, and I was too angry to see the funny side of anything. So I threw the duck straight at Willy’s head.

I’ll say this for Willy the C – his reflexes are good. I mean, when we used to play in the Park he was always the best on the never-snaps, and he always won when we played ballgames with the seniors. And it was his reflexes that saved him now.

He rolled back, both legs jerking out straight. He caught the duck – which must have weighed about five kilos, by the way – a hefty kick. It whizzed through the air. From this point on, everything that happened was a pure accident. I swear it. I mean, I had to throw the duck ’cos I lost my temper, and Willy
had
to kick it aside otherwise it’d have probably caved his skull in. I’ve already made that clear to the Judges. They say it doesn’t matter. They say
I
caused the accident, and Willy was a major accessory. So that’s that. There’s no quarrelling with a Judge’s judgement.

Anyway, like I was saying, Willy kicks out and the robo-duck goes flying. Right at the crowd that was hurriedly forming around us. You don’t need me to tell you how quickly that happens when something out of the ordinary is going on. And of course, you don’t need me to tell you that there was a trouble-maker in the crowd. Every crowd has one, a do-gooder, a bigmouth who wants to interfere and clear things up for everybody.

In this particular crowd it happened to be a skinny runt wearing the insignia of the Dennis Tanner Citi-Def.

‘All right, all right,’ he loudmouthed. ‘Let me through here...’

He broke off and screamed as the diverted duck, travelling about 20 kilometers an hour, hit him slap in the jaw.

A lot of people would say it was his own fault. For a start, he was a Tanner Blocker so he didn’t really have any right to be in
our
Block Park (he was visiting a relative, it turned out.) And then he was a Citi-Def member. Let me tell you, these Citizen Defence Corps creeps are all the same – they’re so full of themselves and their responsible work, they’ll interfere with
anything
. Huh! Where were the Citi-Defs during the war with East-Meg One, that’s what I’d like to know! I mean, Citi-DefXXXXXXXXXXXCENSOREDXXXXXXXXXXXCENSOREDXXXXXXXXXXXCENSOREDXXXXXX.

‘Aaaaaaagh!’ The Dennis Tanner Blocker screamed.

‘Kwaak!’ squawked the robo-duck. Its neck had snapped on contact with the Tanner Blocker’s face, and its voke-box must have been knocked out of action. This was its final Kwaak.

And it was that strangled Kwaak that brought me to my senses. My anger vanished as quick as it had appeared – to be replaced by a queasy feeling in my gut so strong I nearly retched. Fear. Fear for what me and Willy had done. Fear for what the consequences would be.

Willy was scrambling to his feet now and he didn’t need to speak for me to know he felt exactly the same. ’Cos the Tanner Blocker was lying very still on the plasti-grass, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. A girl stooped beside him, shaking her head like she was stunned.

‘He – he’s dead,’ she gasped. ‘The – the duck must’ve broken his neck!’

The duck in question, now completely headless, was flapping round in silent circles like a top-notch boinger, agiley avoiding the couple of giggling senior citizens who were trying to catch it.

I glanced again at Willy and our eyes locked. I could almost smell his fear. A Blocker was dead – a robo-duck was badly damaged – and even though it was an accident, we knew who was going to get stuck with the blame. US!

Panic swept over me in an icy wave. ‘Get outta here,’ a voice inside me seemed to shriek. ‘Move! Get away! Run!’

JUDGED

My blood felt as cold as a freezipop, and I lost all control. My shaking legs started to run, and I couldn’t do nothing to stop them. I mean, I didn’t want to run away; the real me wanted to stay and explain everything to the Judges who would soon be on the scene. It was the panic that made me run, not me.

(I tried telling the Judges that too, but it didn’t make any difference. Evidently every citizen is responsible for his own actions and reactions, unless he’s a Futsie in which case Future Shock gets the blame.)

‘Let’s move,’ I yelled, and Willy – his mouth hanging open like he’d just seen Conrad Conn in person – came hurtling up the plasti-grass slope behind me.

We hadn’t gone more than twenty meters when a security robot came buzzing over the brow of the low hill and braked to a halt in front of us. ‘Stop!’ its voke-box blared. ‘Stop! Stop!’

And like a mugh, Willy the C stopped.

I dodged past it, then hesitated. ‘Judges have been summoned,’ the robot was saying. ‘Citizens should not leave the area until they arrive.’

My heart was hammering like a bike cannon on full blast. If we were still there when the Judges hit the scene, they’d nab us for sure. Too many citizens had witnessed the incident– and now this security job would have our images on its vid-tapes. We’d be identified as the perps, and we’d be
judged
.

‘It’s no good, Milton,’ Willy announced wearily, and his resigned, scared voice sounded like it was my own conscience talking. ‘Judges are coming. We’ll never get away. Let’s just give ourselves up, and they might go easy on us. Though they probably won’t,’ he added as an afterthought.

If I’d been in my right mind, I’d have listened to him. But panic was still surging through me, and the roaring in my ears blocked out the voice of reason. I had to get away from there – get outside the Block, lose myself in the millions of citizens swarming round the City’s streets.

The security robot moved towards me, raising its arms. I ignored it. Everybody knows that every robot in town is programmed so’s it can never hurt a human being. All a security droid is good for is hollering
Judge
!

I took off again, and ran full pelt down the other side of the slope. A couple of citizens dived out of my path – luckily for them. And me, I suppose. I gave a sigh of relief when I saw I was headed directly for the Block Park’s Buggy Park, the plasticon wayby where those citizens too tired, poor or lazy to walk from their apartments could park their vehicles.

They ain’t much, these Block buggies – just a meter-square box with a tiny hover-engine fitted, big enough to carry a couple of people to the Block’s remoter areas.

But to me, the buggies spelled freedom.

A guy with a biotronic arm was just starting his buggy up when my crazy run brought me skidding to a halt beside him. He looked up in surprise – just in time to see my fist hammer out at him. It hurt me almost as much as it hurt him. I sucked at my knuckles as I pushed his unconscious form out of the buggy-box and jumped in myself. I grabbed the easy-to-use control stick in my good hand and hauled back on it. The buggy shot skyward.

I levelled out about 20 meters up and glanced down to see what was happening. Willy the C was still on the slope, on his knees now, sobbing violently and beating his fists on the plasti-grass. The security robot was rolling in tight little circles, still yapping about Judges and stop. Knots of people were standing around watching, though a lot of adults were hurrying their kids away. They knew how easily trouble can spread when it starts, I guess.

And then I heard it, a keen high-pitched wail that sounded like it came straight from Hell. A Lawmaster siren. Judges in the Park! ‘No, no – they mustn’t get me!’ I was gibbering to myself and my trembling hand just couldn’t get the control stick to function. But I had to get out of there, find somewhere to be alone, somewhere I could clear my head, grab time to think about how this whole crazy mess had come about...

‘Lawbreaker!’ The Judge’s voice cut through the confused babble of my thoughts like a lase-knife through munce. ‘Give yourself up. You will not receive a second warning.’

There he was below me, sitting astride his massive Lawmaster as if he and the machine were part of each other. Even through my terror, my mind registered the calm authority he exuded, the somehow soothing menace of the Lawgiver gun in his right hand.

With an effort, I wrenched my eyes away from the awful, hypnotic sight of him. Looking up I saw blue sky... blue sky and freedom. I gave an involuntary yell – if I could just make it to those clouds up there before he fired, if I could just do it, I might be safe!

I yanked hard back on the control stick and the buggy responded with maximum elevation at maximum speed... and smashed with an ear-splitting crash into the plastic and metal wall underneath the deceptive holopix! The ground rushed up to meet me, then everything went black.

I woke up to find myself here, in a Juve-Cube medical bay. Seems I broke some ribs, fractured my leg and suffered bruising and concussion when the buggy hit the ground. The medico tells me I’ll be as good as mended in a couple of days.

Small consolation. I’ve been judged and sentenced for a number of crimes: damaging Block property (one duck); manslaughter of the Tanner Blocker; conspiracy to leave the scene of a crime; assault on a citizen; piracy of a Block buggy and destruction of same; and damage to a very expensive holopix wall.

I’ll be moved into a Juve-Cube soon as my injuries are healed. It’ll be my home, and mine alone, for the next ten years.

I’ve tried to tell them it was all a mistake, an accident. I didn’t mean any of it. I just lost my temper. But I guess the Judges hear that excuse pretty often, ’cos it hasn’t made any difference. Ten years... it’s a long time. I’ll be 24 when I get out. With a little luck I’ll be able to use my time to learn how to keep my temper in check. I won’t make that mistake again.

You guys reading this don’t know how lucky you are. You’re free. And if you take my advice you’ll stay free.

How? Simple, really. Just remember: even if you’re provoked real bad, never lose your temper.

THE END

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: PASSED FOR CIVIC CONSUMPTION IN THE INTERESTS OF THE LAW

JUDGE HERSHEY: SWEET JUSTICE

By Neil Gaiman,
Judge Dredd Annual 1988

THE MEET

The Old Man had promised Jamie some sugar. All Jamie had to do was meet him in the alleyway under Stephen King Block, late on Saturday afternoon.

Jamie, who at seven considered himself quite old enough to cope with strange old men, wandered down there. He had hidden a table-knife in his sock, in case the Old Man started to turn nasty, and he had stolen a container from his mother’s bathroom cabinet, in case the Old Man could come up with the stuff.

The Old Man –that was all the name he seemed to have – had lurked in the underpass for years; a raddled, grizzled old wreck with raw red eyes that stared nastily out of a dirt-etched face. If that was what sugar did to you, Jamie wasn’t sure he wanted it... But the Old Man was undoubtedly an addict; while Jamie just wanted to try some sugar, just once, just to see what it was like. He knew he’d be able to cope.

The Old Man was standing in the shadows of the underpass, leaning by the wall, his mouldering coat seemingly a part of the garbage mound beside him. He was standing perfectly still.

‘I’m here,’ hissed Jamie, from ten paces away. You didn’t get too close to the Old Man unless you had to – the smell was worse than the garbage.

The derelict said nothing, made no movement, just stared straight ahead with dry, papery eyes.

‘I said I’m here. You said you’d have something for me...’

Something scared Jamie. Perhaps it was the rustling, a strange clicking and chittering that seemed to emanate from the figure of the Old Man; perhaps it was just his unnatural lack of movement. The boy grabbed an empty synthbeet can from the garbage pile, flung it at the Old Man, and turned on his heel, prepared to run.