Swine Fever

by Andrew Cartmel

  "Negative to possibility of pursuit," said the robot. "All Judges are arriving on clandestine dump ships converted for the purpose."

  "Dump ships? Those old crates? They'll never catch us. That's good news. Did you hear that, Mac? Did you hear the good news?"

  Mac wasn't listening. He was looking at his floating factory farm shrinking in the distance, disappearing behind the dirty brown veil of burning garbage. "So long to the old farm," he said. A tear glistened in his eye.

  Zandonella was relieved to find that, throughout the gun battle and the enemy escape, Porkditz had remained crouched on the platform by the airlock, out of harm's way. He was still there now, waiting for her, his bright little eyes gleaming up at her from the base of his snout. They seemed to be gleaming with some inner amusement. She crouched down beside him and scratched him behind one of his big floppy membranous ears, which folded back like a thick pink handkerchief. As she scratched, she looked over the railing. Below, the other Judges were approaching, making their way slowly back through the thousands of squealing pigs that filled the room, with Dredd in the lead.

  "If you'd gone into that mass, you would have got lost and we would never have found you again," she told Porkditz, staring out at the heaving ocean of pig flesh. "I'm glad you stayed put." Dredd overheard her as he climbed up onto the platform and joined them.

  "I only wish Darrid and the others had as much common sense as your pig," he said.

  "I heard that," cried Darrid. "I heard it and I resent it."

  Dredd continued to ignore him, turning instead to Carver. "Have you still got your backpack, Carver?"

  Anxious to make amends, the young Judge hurried up onto the platform. "Yes sir. Right here, sir."

  "Then take out the sniffer and get busy with it," said Dredd. Carver hastily opened his orange nylon backpack with a ripping of Velcro and delved into its black interior. He took out a sniffer; a forensic analysis unit modified to scoop in air with a small fan and sample it over a test membrane.

  "What do we need the sniffer for?" said Darrid.

  "Explosives."

  Mac the Meat Man stared tearfully into the screen, watching his factory farm vanish into the distance behind the speeding shuttle craft. "I built that farm with my own hands," he sniffed. Then he cleared his throat shakily. "Well, all right, not literally. I built it with my own money. Other people used their hands. But it still breaks my heart to say goodbye to it."

  Theo put a hand on his shoulder. "Take as long as you want saying goodbye."

  "Don't take too long," said Leo, sitting at the controls of the shuttle. "We'll be out of range soon."

  Dredd held the sniffer in the air, the gentle buzzing of its fan drowned out in the background noise of thousands of agitated pigs.

  "I still don't understand why you're wasting time with that thing," complained Darrid. "We should be investigating the rest of this farm before the reinforcements arrive. Who knows what contraband we might uncover? We don't want those Johnnie-come-latelies getting credit for finding anything."

  "We're staying put until I give you the all clear," said Dredd, studying the control panel on the sniffer.

  Darrid frowned, twirling his moustache restlessly between his fingers. "What do you hope to achieve with that thing? Why are you looking for explosives? All the sniffer is going to sniff around here is pig shit."

  "Tell him, Zandonella," said Dredd.

  Zandonella looked at Darrid. The older Judge was seething with impatience. He wasn't going to listen to anything she said, but she decided to give it a try anyway. "The sniffer is an extremely sensitive device."

  "I know that."

  "It will detect the presence of any explosive compounds anywhere in this farm and indicate their location."

  "But why all this gruddamned obsession with explosives?"

  "Because obviously the perps might have rigged this place to self-destruct," said Zandonella, "now that someone has allowed them to get clean away."

  "Self-destruct?" said Darrid.

  Leo checked the control panel and made some adjustments. "Maximum signal range will be reached in approximately two and a half minutes," said the robot's head from between his thighs.

  "That's all right, fellows," said Mac, turning away from the screen. "I've come to terms with the loss. We'll start over somewhere else. Somewhere new."

  "That's the spirit," said Theo.

  Mac nodded. "The people of this fair metropolis will still want to eat black market meat and we'll be back in business supplying them in no time. All we need is an empty building somewhere and some pigs to put in it."

  "And some machinery to kill them with," said Leo.

  "That's right, you boys and me will be back in business before you know it." Mac's eyes flicked to the screen and the dwindling shape of the balloon and space station. "We just have to accept that our old farm is gone."

  "Not as gone as it's going to be in a minute," said Leo.

  "Explosives?" said Darrid. Zandonella and the others had fallen silent. They were all watching Judge Dredd, who was studying the readout on the sniffer's screen.

  "That's right," said Dredd. "About a thousand kilos of plastic explosives." He switched the sniffer off and handed it to Carver. "Put it away."

  "Put it away?" shrilled Darrid. "But we need to know where the explosives are."

  "We know where it is," said Dredd. "It's in here."

  "In here?" Darrid and the other Judges exchanged looks and then stared around at the vast open metal room, packed with squirming, screeching pigs. "But there's nowhere in here to hide a thousand kilos of..."

  Like all of the others, he was following the direction of Dredd's gaze. Up in the air. Straight up. At the giant, pink plastic pig hanging from the ceiling.

  The escape shuttle bucked and jumped as it sped through the sky. Mac the Meat Man settled back in the acceleration couch and wiped his eyes. "All right, sentiment has its place, but so does action. Let's get even with those bastards who took away our beautiful farm."

  "About time," said Leo.

  Mac looked at Theo. "Did you make all the necessary arrangements, son?"

  "You bet," said Theo.

  "All right fellows, pull the plug," said Mac.

  "Excellent," said Leo, making an adjustment to the control panel.

  The robot head between his thighs said, "Space station auto-destruct protocol sent and received."

  Leo chuckled. "We're in business."

  His brother looked at Mac. "Are you sure you're ready, Mac?"

  Mac the Meat Man took one last look at his farm on the screen and nodded brusquely. "Push the button," he said in a scratchy voice.

  "Okey-dokey." Leo leaned towards the control panel, reaching out to push a large red button.

  His brother slapped his hand away. "No, let me press it."

  "No, me," said Leo.

  "Boys, boys," said Mac.

  Judge Dredd was ten metres above the floor on a thin line of carbon filament. He had fired a grappling hook onto the giant plastic pig and now he was using the line to winch himself up. Below, five Judges and countless thousands of pigs were watching his progress as he approached the distended pink belly above.

  Zandonella stared up at him. Dredd was a tiny figure at this distance, dwarfed by the ludicrous cartoon pig. She watched as he reached the side of the pig, momentarily obscuring two of the purple letters of its slogan so it read, Shat Mac the Meat Man's! Dredd hauled himself up using the inertia effect of the winch and the strength of his powerful shoulders. He had now reached the sloping back of the pink plastic effigy and hauled himself onto it. For a moment he disappeared from view, examining the cluster of metal cables that kept the pig attached to the ceiling. Zandonella held her breath. Dredd was no longer attached to his safety line. If he put a foot wrong on the smooth slope of that plastic back and slipped...

  Dredd came back into view and Zandonella started breathing again. He called down to them. "There was a receiver and a detonator. I've
disconnected them." He took hold of the filament line and began to lower himself back towards the floor.

  "He's such a show-off," said Darrid. "There was probably never any danger of them detonating that thing."

  Mac, Theo and Leo all stared in consternation at the stern screen. The balloon and space station had long since disappeared from view, and the giant brown cloud above the dump was now also shrinking in the distance. "We should have been able to see the explosion from here," said Mac. He turned anxiously to Theo. "Shouldn't we?"

  "A detonation of one thousand and twenty-three kilos of plastic composite explosive should be visible for approximately three hundred and fifty seven kilometres in line of sight," droned the robot's head from between Leo's thighs.

  "Something must have gone wrong," said Theo.

  "You must have screwed up the connection," said Leo.

  "You must have screwed up the transmission," said Theo.

  "Boys, boys," said Mac.

  Behind them the municipal dump vanished in the distance as the shuttle craft thundered away over the Mega-City.

  Once the reinforcements had arrived and the factory farm was secured, Zandonella led Carver and Darrid on a tour of the place using Porkditz as their guide. Tykrist had gone back to Justice Central with the medical team who were working on her sister. Unfortunately, it seemed unlikely they could save her hand. Dredd was busy with Psi-Judge O'Mannion discussing the report they would have to file on the raid, and all the other red tape necessary after the wounding of a Judge. Rather them than me, thought Zandonella.

  Porkditz had led them safely through the maze of the abattoir, avoiding a tunnel full of whirring multi-toothed cutters, another tunnel lined with razor-edged hooks, a sharply sloping chute with back-curving disembowelling blades set in the floor ("I wouldn't want to slide down there with no pants on," said Carver), and an array of other grisly automated devices devoted to the slaughter of pigs.

  The route Porkditz chose followed air ducts, access tunnels and some crawl spaces that were clearly part of the original space station and had never been adapted for use in the farm. Never again, thankfully, did he take them through anything as vile as the slurry tunnel. As they travelled they were getting a good overview of the layout of the farm, and were building an appreciation of the sheer scale of the operation. They had encountered three more of the giant shed-like rooms packed with pigs and Zandonella suspected there were more to come. Her mind boggled at the vast number of animals penned up between these steel walls, and at the hellish existence they led before being fed to the killing machines.

  But Porkditz didn't seem to be taking them on a general tour. It seemed to Zandonella that he was leading them to a particular destination he had in mind. She mentioned this to the others and instantly regretted it when Darrid burst into laughter and Carver joined him.

  "She thinks that pig's got brains," said Darrid.

  "More than you," said Zandonella. But Carver and Darrid continued to chortle. Porkditz glanced up at them in a friendly fashion. He seemed to have no idea that they were laughing at him. Maybe he's not so intelligent after all, thought Zandonella.

  They were moving through what was apparently an air conditioning duct. It was circular in section and just big enough inside for Zandonella to stand up erect. Dredd would have had to stoop to move through it. Porkditz was scampering ahead of the three Judges, his trotters making a musical sound on the aluminium floor of the duct. Suddenly the music stopped as he came to a halt beside a trap door.

  "Looks like we've arrived at our destination," said Zandonella.

  The trap door turned out to be in the ceiling of a long, cool, shadowy room full of odd, spicy smells. The Judges lowered themselves down one by one from the air duct and onto a rectangular metal table. There didn't seem to be any way to get Porkditz down, so they left him standing there, peering at them through the circular trap door opening in the ceiling with mysterious Russian instructions stencilled beside it. The pig stared down, watching them.

  "He doesn't seem bothered at being left behind," said Darrid.

  "No," said Zandonella. "In fact, he seems relieved."

  "Relieved." snorted Darrid as he fumbled along the wall and hit the light switch. The long room abruptly lit up around them.

  "Holy grud," exclaimed Carver, staring at their surroundings. It was now obvious where the spicy smell was coming from. All across the ceiling were fitted long slender rods. Hanging from the rods on hooks were cylindrical red shapes of varying length and thickness.

  "Sausages," said Darrid.

  "Salami," said Carver, correcting him. It was the first time Zandonella had ever heard him contradict someone, or come up with a fact that was accurate. "It's a kind of special dried sausage."

  "Is it?" said Darrid good-naturedly. "Well I'll bet this is more salami than you've ever seen in your life."

  Carver reached up and took down one long thin salami with string wrapped around it in a diagonal diamond pattern. He sniffed its waxy red surface. "It sure smells good," he said. And as he spoke, a spurt of saliva jetted from his mouth. Zandonella stepped back hastily to avoid getting sprayed and shot Carver a furious look.

  Darrid just laughed. "The boy's got an appetite," he said.

  "They sure look tasty," said Carver, looking longingly at the salami as he turned it over in his hands.

  Darrid took it from him and gave it a sniff. "Mmm, you're right. It does smell good."

  Carver's stomach rumbled audibly in the quiet room. He looked at Zandonella. "Sorry," he said.

  "Don't apologise to her," said Darrid. "It's perfectly natural, a man having an appetite after a daring operation like the one we've just been through. Danger makes a fellow hungry."

  "You're both disgusting," said Zandonella. "I don't see how you can even think about eating that stuff."

  "Listen to Miss High and Mighty," chuckled Darrid.

  "You saw where it came from," said Zandonella. "You saw the stuff they were feeding to those pigs. Garbage from the dump! Rotting organic matter, radioactive sump oil, bird droppings, hospital waste... not to mention their own blood and excrement."

  Darrid winked at Carver. "Our little Psi-Judge has a dainty constitution," he said. He handed the salami back to Carver. Carver turned it over and over in his fingers.

  "It sure smells good," he repeated, mournfully.

  "And besides, it's evidence," said Zandonella. She got back up onto the table and scrambled through the trap door to rejoin Porkditz.

  SIX

  When it was time to leave the farm, Judge Dredd rejoined them and led them to their point of entry, the giant oval air conditioning duct. They clambered through the angled steel shutters and once again found themselves outside on the lip of metal. The hover-chutes were lying where they'd left them, including the ones that Esma and Tykrist had used.

  "I'll take the rigs used by the Karst sisters," said Dredd. "One of you can return them to the Armoury when we get back to Justice Central."

  "I will," offered Darrid. It was unusual for Darrid to volunteer for any laborious minor errand but clearly he was eager to get back in Dredd's good books after the fiasco with the perps' escape. Dredd just grunted and clipped on his own chute, strapping the sisters' rigs to his chest. Zandonella fitted her own hover-chute and then coaxed Porkditz into his half of the tandem. The pig was cooperative, almost eager, and did not struggle as she strapped it onto him. Perhaps he had enjoyed the ride on the way in. Or maybe he was just glad to be leaving this place.

  From the edge of the metal lip Zandonella could see the curving rim of the space station stretching away from them. A steady stream of dump ships, piloted by Judges, were ferrying back and forth to the station, using the docking ports designed for cargo transfer in space. The pigs from the farm were being loaded onto the dump ships and taken away like any other confiscated contraband. The squealing, squirming mass of animals was being piled into the dump ships as though they were garbage. None of the Judges seemed to be brutalisin
g them, but neither were they taking any great pains to treat them well.

  No one had said anything to Zandonella about Porkditz and she had deliberately avoided asking. She was worried that someone would give orders to leave the pig behind or add him to the exodus of pink flesh on those dump ships. She found that her fingers were trembling with eagerness as she finished strapping on Porkditz's hover-chute. If she could just get him out of here without anyone saying anything...

  Darrid turned to Dredd and said, "What about Zandonella's little chum here?"

  "I'll keep him at my place," said Zandonella quickly.

  "At your place?"

  "In case he's needed for any more exploratory visits to the farm," said Zandonella, thinking fast. "It's still a dangerous place and we may need a guide to lead us around it."

  "Good thinking," said Dredd.

  They floated away from the farm through the bitter brown smoke of the municipal dump, the donut structure of the old space station and the bloated sphere of its balloon receding behind them like images in a dream. Porkditz hung patiently and quietly in his harness as Zandonella guided them both through the sky towards the weapons platform, still hovering exactly where Dredd had left it. They climbed on board, followed by the other Judges.

  All of them unstrapped themselves from their chutes in the rear of the FWP. Carver was staring out at the dump ships powering through the sky, carrying their cargo of pig flesh back to Justice Central.

  "Why are we taking them?" Carver asked.

  "Did you expect us to leave all that valuable black market meat just floating there for anyone to take?" asked Darrid.

  "The pigs are to be kept as evidence," said Dredd.

  Carver kept his face pressed to the window, watching the dump ships leaving vapour trails that were glowing pink as the sun set over the Mega-City. The ships were stubby craft, mostly painted white, with a small cockpit nestling over the nose of the vehicle and a large, open rear section for the garbage containers. In the rear of them the pink heaving mass of the pigs could be clearly seen. Zandonella saw one pig drop off, a tiny figure, and fall twitching helplessly into the void. Then another fell. Then another, spilling hopelessly to its doom. She winced and looked away.