Swine Fever

by Andrew Cartmel

  Dredd nodded. "He couldn't bring himself to destroy it. They never can."

  "That's right," said Carver. "Dirty pork seller."

  "You've certainly changed your tune," said Zandonella.

  "When it was legal I liked eating it, but now that it's illegal I can see the error of my ways," said Carver. He sounded like he was reciting something that he had memorised slowly and painfully. Which was probably the only way Carver could memorise anything, reflected Zandonella.

  "Oh," said Featherman. "Were you occasionally fond of a spot of tasty pork, Judge?"

  "Occasionally?" said Esma. "He was forever stuffing his face with the vile stuff."

  "It was vile stuff," said Carver dutifully. "I can see that now. I can see the error of my ways and-"

  "What sort of pork, Judge?" asked Featherman. "Chops? Cutlets? Bacon and sausages? Ham? Ribs? Black pudding?"

  "Unh," said Carver indistinctly. Zandonella suspected he was salivating so vociferously that he couldn't speak. She felt ashamed of letting Porkditz hear this kind of talk, although of course he couldn't understand any of it. Carver swallowed audibly then said, "Salami at first but then mostly ribs."

  "Ah, ribs."

  "And bacon sandwiches and sausages," said Carver, his voice beginning to garble again as he drooled uncontrollably.

  "Carver, button it," said Dredd. "And you Featherman, shut up."

  "Just trying to pass the day pleasantly," said their prisoner. Dredd grabbed him by the handcuffs and dragged him along so quickly that his feet could only touch the ground in a rapid skipping dance.

  "Pleasant enough for you?" said Dredd.

  Their FWP was waiting at the edge of the roof where they had landed, the sun gleaming on it. "Snazzy vehicle," said Featherman. "Is that what I'll be riding in as you take me to pay my debt to society?"

  "Enjoy it while you can, creep," said Dredd. He was walking directly in front of Featherman and Zandonella was behind the prisoner as they escorted him towards their vehicle. The Karst sisters followed and Carver and Darrid were bringing up the rear. Dredd suddenly turned and looked at them.

  "What are you doing?" he demanded.

  Darrid twitched visibly. He was still understandably sensitive about the fiasco at Sylvia Plath Block. He shared a worried glance with Carver. "What do you mean?" he said. "We're following you, escorting the prisoner in. We're not doing anything."

  "Exactly," said Dredd. "You're not doing anything. You're leaving the airlock open." They all turned back to look at the atmosphere dome with the green blur of pine trees inside it. "Get back there and secure it. This is a crime scene. We don't want any of this creep's friends getting in and tampering with evidence."

  "Yes," said Featherman. "Who knows what tantalising, damning and fiendishly incriminating items I might have left scattered around my modest domicile?"

  "Shut it, creep," said Dredd. He turned to watch Carver and Darrid hurry back to the airlock and begin struggling with the cumbersome mechanism. Dredd watched them for a moment and then shook his head. "I'd better show them what to do. Zandonella, take the prisoner to the vehicle and put him in restraints."

  "Aren't these restraints enough?" said Featherman, holding up his skinny wrists with the massive cuffs hanging from them. Dredd ignored him as he strode back to the dome's airlock.

  "Come on, creep," said Zandonella, giving Featherman a nudge to get him moving again. As they started for the FWP, now only a few paces away, she stepped in front of the prisoner, leaving the Karst sisters to watch him from behind.

  Looking back on it, Zandonella would realise that that was her big mistake.

  No sooner was her back turned than she heard a rapid stutter of gunfire. She spun around to see that Featherman had broken away and was running for the edge of the roof. Both the Karst sisters had their Lawgivers drawn and were firing what sounded like non-lethal interception rounds at the fleeing fugitive.

  "Hold your fire," shouted Zandonella, diving in pursuit. The rounds might be non-lethal but she had no desire to take one in her back. She ran after Featherman, who had darted to the left of the FWP and was running along the edge of the roof. Zandonella was gaining on him swiftly and she wasn't even trying very hard. After all, there was nowhere for the prisoner to go. The rooftop had a waist-high, black and yellow striped safety railing running along it. On the other side was a drop of approximately one kilometre, straight down. It was ludicrous that he'd even attempted to run.

  "He's not going anywhere," shouted Zandonella as she closed in on him.

  That was when Featherman stepped over the railing and jumped.

  Zandonella flung herself onto the railing but it was too late. The Karst sisters joined her, followed by Dredd, Darrid and Carver soon after. Finally, Porkditz came and took a careful peek.

  "Should we get in the FWP and follow?" said Darrid helpfully.

  "Too late," said Dredd. "He's gone."

  They watched the tiny black and red speck that was Featherman's parachute as he steered it like a hang-glider between blocks. He disappeared into a vast, shadowed canyon of steel and glass.

  "Where did he have the parachute hidden?" said Esma.

  Zandonella shrugged ruefully. "In his haute couture diapers."

  TEN

  Three weeks passed and Porkditz became quite adept at sniffing out caches of contraband meat and illegal pork dens. He began to enjoy going out on patrol with Zandonella and the other Judges. The discovery of the dismembered and cooked remains of his fellow pigs didn't seem to disturb the otherwise acutely sensitive creature. Indeed, Zandonella and Dredd had on several occasions been obliged to drag Porkditz off a pile of seized meat before he enthusiastically devoured the evidence.

  "He isn't too choosy what he eats, is he?" observed Carver.

  "Look who's talking," said Zandonella.

  "At least I'm not a cannibal."

  "You are if you adopt the assumption that all living creatures are one," said Tykrist.

  "Not that we adopt that assumption," said her sister Esma hastily, holding up her metal hand with the middle finger jutting obscenely at Tykrist. "Sometimes you sound like one of those radical vegetarian nuts."

  "Vegetables and nuts go together," said Tykrist, and both the sisters giggled.

  "Quiet back there," said Dredd.

  The five Judges were walking along the upper level of a two-story shoplex on Ben Franklin Skedway. It was a medium-sized shoplex with approximately seven hundred and fifty businesses in it. There was nothing distinctive about the place. It was merely the next one on their search pattern.

  In front of the five Judges walked Porkditz.

  The pig occasionally paused to sniff the air or the ground. But for the most part he maintained a brisk pace which the humans were hard pressed to keep up with. They passed the elaborate shop front of a Chinese restaurant. The name Fu Man Chew was emblazoned in gleaming red lacquer letters set over green, faux jade panels. Between the jade panels were glass doors. The doors opened and a little old Chinese lady in a red and black dress ran out to greet them. She held a white bowl with a blue dragon decoration around the rim.

  Inside the bowl were milky green cubes which glistened like slime. "No pork here," said the old lady. "Just pure synthetics!" She produced a pair of chopsticks from a hidden pocket on her dress and delved into the bowl with them, deftly capturing one of the green cubes and holding it up. "You try?" The green cube dripped at the end of the chopsticks.

  "No thanks," said Zandonella. Judge Dredd ignored the question and the Karst sisters quickly shook their heads. Even Carver declined.

  "No pork here," repeated the old lady, shaking her little head. Porkditz sniffed at the hem of her robe and then turned away.

  "Evidently you're telling the truth, ma'am," said Zandonella. Porkditz trotted away from restaurant towards the next unit in the shoplex and the Judges followed him.

  The next unit was a MPEG52-DVD rental outlet that boasted "Ten acres of viewing pleasure!" Porkditz hesitated at t
he door before going in. Zandonella went after him. They made their way between the endless racks of video discs. There were action movies and sport and music promos but she soon began to get the impression that nine of those ten acres of the store were devoted to pornography.

  At the back of the store was a counter with a cash register manned, if that was the word, by a teenage boy and girl. They were both wearing baggy white T-shirts with large black lettering on them. The boy's T-shirt read "Will work for bandwidth." The girl's read "Don't just stare - buy me a drink." The couple looked up apprehensively at the group of Judges approaching them, their advance spearheaded by the merrily scampering pig.

  Porkditz went straight past the counter, past a low table piled high with discount MPEG52-DVDs, including My Big Fat Greek Orgy, Justice Academy 37: Juves on Patrol, From East Meg One with Love and the complete films of Chuck Norris. There were two more tables of execrable DVDs and beyond them a large wire mesh rubbish receptacle. Here Porkditz paused, sniffing.

  Zandonella approached, snapping on a pair of latex gloves. "What are you doing?" said the boy, who had hurried out from behind the counter.

  "Don't want to contaminate the crime scene," said Zandonella breezily.

  Porkditz had got his snout in the brimming trashcan and was now nosing through the pile of discarded fast food cartons and soft drink containers. He emerged from the pile with a pyramid-shaped tin clutched in his mouth. He dropped it with a clatter at Zandonella's feet. She turned to look at the boy. The girl had come out from behind the counter now to join him. She took his hand and stood behind him, sheltering there from Zandonella's sardonic gaze.

  "What's that?" said the boy.

  "We'll ask the questions," said Dredd. Carver and the Karst sisters followed him as he went behind the counter. While the Judges searched there, Porkditz returned to the waste bin and ferreted out another pyramid-shaped tin.

  "Some kids put them in there," said the boy. "They were browsing in the store and eating something."

  "It sure smelled bad," said the girl.

  "It sure did," agreed the boy quickly. "They were eating from those tins and they just chucked them in the bin when they were finished. I've been meaning to take the garbage out."

  "Do you know what these tins had in them?" said Zandonella.

  "No," said the boy and girl, shaking their heads.

  "They contained Sputam."

  "Never heard of it," said the boy.

  Zandonella smiled at him to let him know she didn't believe him for a moment. "Sputam is mutant ham. It consists of pork products heavily processed into a toxic pink sludge and then sold in these distinctive tins." She kicked the empty, pyramidal tins that Porkditz had piled at her feet.

  "Well if we see those kids in here again we'll call you," said the boy.

  Dredd stepped forward. "You know what they put into Sputam?" he snarled.

  "No," said the boy in a small voice. The girl just shook her head.

  Dredd proceeded to tell them, in great and grisly detail, and a moment later the boy and girl were white-faced and trembling, hands to mouths in an attempt not to vomit. The description was substantially accurate, Zandonella knew, but recent investigations had left her so inured to the horrors of the black market meat trade that her stomach barely heaved. They cautioned the kids, bagged the tins for evidence, then left the DVD store.

  The next unit in the shoplex was a tattoo parlour called Lucky Jack's. Porkditz stood on the threshold, staring into the brightly lit shop. He turned and looked at Zandonella as she approached with the other Judges.

  She could have sworn there was excitement in his little piggy eyes.

  "We need to irradiate the Sputam," said Mac.

  "What do you mean, irradiate it?" said Blue Belle.

  "I mean blast it with radiation, zap it."

  They were sitting in the control room of the factory farm. It was exactly the same control room and the same factory farm that the Judges had raided a few weeks earlier; the converted Russian space station that hung suspended by a balloon over the Trinny and Susannah Municipal Dump.

  It wasn't hanging there now, but being back here freaked Blue Belle out a little nonetheless. After the raid, during the brief period of legitimacy for the pork business, Mac had bought the farm at a police auction at a competitive price. He had gone straight back into business, taking the precaution of concealing the farm in a new and secret location. This precaution paid off as soon as pork became illegal again. Belle had to concede that behind that cheerful, fat little face, there was a sharp brain. She was even beginning to like his fluffy white eyebrows.

  "You want radioactive meat?" said Belle.

  "Not radioactive, just germ free," said Mac.

  "It's a wise precaution," said the robot sitting beside Leo Barkin at the control panels. "The whole slaughter process is one vast cloaca."

  "What's that in plain English?" said Leo testily.

  "What's with the attitude?" said Blue Belle. "I thought you and that robot loved each other."

  "That's what Theo used to say," said Leo, his voice suddenly thick with emotion. "That's the joke he used to make when we were kidding around together."

  "Kidding around? You were deadly serious. You guys hated each other," said Blue Belle.

  "Appearances can be deceptive," said Mac the Meat Man gently. Blue Belle was astonished to see that there were tears in Leo's eyes. Or maybe not so astonished. Leo hadn't been the same since his brother had been shot by the Judges and put away in medical lock-up. The rumour on the street was that Theo's head wound had left him completely brain-dead. As far as Belle was concerned, that wouldn't be much different from before.

  There was an uncomfortable silence in the narrow control room which was finally broken by the robot. "A cloaca is the lower part of the digestive system found in reptiles, amphibians, birds and some fish. I was trying to make an analogical point that our abattoir is a breeding ground for harmful bacteria."

  "So what?" snarled Leo, wiping his face. "Since when are we concerned about food hygiene?"

  "Since our customers started getting sick," said Mac.

  "Since when did we care about that?" said Blue Belle.

  "Killing our customer base is simply a bad idea. Trust me. That's why I'm using the nuclear plant at my Aquatomic Pool Complex to irradiate our Sputam and other pork products."

  "I thought that was supposed to be a legit operation, the Aquatomic thing."

  "It is indeed. The leisure pool complex and the nuclear power business are completely legitimate and above board. It's an ideal way for us to launder our black market pork profits. You should visit the place. Our customers come for a swim or buy our electric power off the grid. It's a truly wonderful operation. You really must come and see it. We heat the water with our nuclear reactor to create steam to turn the turbines that generate the electricity. Then we recycle the heat to warm our swimming pool to a pleasant tropical temperature that the kids love. And we use waste water from the pool to feed the power plant. It's a wonder. It's a miracle."

  Belle smiled sardonically. "But you still can't resist smuggling a shitload of illegal pork in and out the back door?"

  Mac the Meat Man shrugged. "It's a cost-effective solution." He stroked Belle's arm and purred like a big fat cat. "You must allow me to take you on a guided tour. You can go for a swim. Free of course. No charge." Belle thought about telling Mac to take his pudgy hand off her, but she didn't. She kind of liked it.

  "Where's Blue Streak?" said Leo suddenly.

  "He's gone over to Lucky Jack's to make arrangements for the next delivery of pork," said Belle.

  Mac's fat white eyebrows wiggled in puzzlement. "He's gone there in person? He could have done that over the phone."

  Belle sighed and rolled her eyes. "He's trying to score a free tattoo."

  Lucky Jack had four small tattoos on his forehead: a four leaf clover, a swastika, a black cat and a small, stumpy white object which Jack had become so sick of explaining
that he had tattooed the words "Rabbit's Foot" underneath it. He had done all this work in a mirror, wielding his tattoo needles while under a local anaesthetic from the eyes up. He had done a pretty good job as far as Streak was concerned.

  Streak liked coming to visit Lucky Jack. There were usually some fascinating women hanging around the tattoo parlour and Jack was always a good sport about providing free tattoos for business partners. Now Streak was in the chair receiving the full benefit of this largesse. The needles were buzzing and Lucky Jack's sweaty, bald head was bent intently over Streak's chest.

  Jack was a big man with a wrestler's build, a neatly trimmed black beard and a shaven head. He wore khaki trousers, sandals and a navy blue tank top which revealed the expertly executed tattoos that writhed over his powerful biceps. Those biceps jumped and shifted as Jack manipulated the needle, its insect song varying in pitch as he worked on Streak, turning away now and then to consult the photograph of Blue Belle's face which he had pinned up beside the closed-circuit Tri-D screen which offered him shifting views of the front of his shop.

  Lucky Jack was in the process of transferring that photo with great fidelity to the area just below Streak's sternum, a blank spot Streak had been saving for something special. There was a mirror over the chair which allowed Streak to see what was happening, and it was clear that Jack was doing a magnificent job. The face he was tattooing on Streak's flesh was both beautiful and recognisably Belle's. Streak had every reason to be happy, but he wasn't.

  "Pretty girl," said Lionel Featherman, examining the photograph.

  "Don't touch it," said Streak. Featherman was the reason he wasn't happy. He hadn't expected to find a competitor here at Lucky Jack's, but the little man with his ridiculous long braid had been sitting comfortably sipping a cup of tea when Streak had arrived. Featherman was dressed in white robes that looked like some kind of judo outfit and seemed quite at home. How could Jack do it? How could he even be talking to a rival black market meat provider? And Featherman, the little creep, didn't even have any tattoos.