Swine Fever

by Andrew Cartmel

  "All right. I'll check it out," said Belle wearily. She headed for the door.

  "If she's sick or injured or anything," said Mac, "just replace her with another one from the population." He gave Belle a breezy smile. "And process Satan's Sow for table meat."

  Zandonella stared at her reflection in the metal wall in front of her. The red light distorted things, but not to any significant degree. She could see well enough to grasp the essentials. She was a pig all right - a big, bristling pink sow. Her mind had refused to accept the concept at first. But gradually acceptance had begun to seep in. It probably helped that she was thinking with a pig's brain.

  There was something tattooed on her side. Alphabetic letters that formed words. Zandonella could see that they were letters. She knew that they formed words. But it took her pig brain a long time to connect up the letters and make meaningful phrases out of the words. This sort of abstract thought was alien to the pig's natural mental processes, but in the end Zandonella's persistent human mind forced the new patterns into action and the thoughts began to flow. She looked at the reflection and worked it out. The words read "Satan's Sow".

  That wasn't very nice. Zandonella would have laughed if her new body had allowed her to laugh. Perhaps it was just as well that it didn't. If she had started to laugh, she would probably never stop.

  She was trapped in the body of a pig. It was as simple as that. There was no denying it. And with the acceptance, shock set in. Her heart thudded and surged in her thick, solid chest. A low, bellowing squeal of terror rose from deep within her throat. Her guts gurgled and writhed with fear and her curly tail twitched as her bowels became fluid with panic.

  Zandonella commanded herself to be calm. She was trapped in the body of a pig. So be it. She was a Judge. There would be a way out of this dilemma. And she would find it. She must find it. Judge Dredd and the others would be looking for her. She had to survive until they could find her and rescue her.

  Zandonella forced herself to think rationally, to take stock of her surroundings. The room she was in was eerily familiar. She was standing in front of a raised metal platform fronted with a curving wall. She had been studying her reflection in the polished surface of that wall. Above her, at what seemed like a vast height but was actually less than three metres, there was a railing and beyond that, out of sight, the airlock that would allow her to escape this room - if only she could get to it.

  There were no steps leading up to the platform. It sat atop the smooth, curved featureless wall. A wall she could not possibly climb. When she had been a Judge, in a human body, she could simply have jumped up to reach the railing from the floor below. Now, as a pig, there was no way she could make the corresponding jump. The smooth wall of metal would have barely been chin-high to her human form. But now it represented an insurmountable barrier.

  Zandonella turned away from the platform. The room stretched out behind her under the bloody red glare of the lights. It was a vast shed with a floor of closely spaced metal bars. Above her was the curved ceiling adorned with a giant pink plastic pig with lettering on its side. She was able to read the words more quickly this time, the patterns falling into place in her mind. They said "Shop at Mac the Meat Man's!" She remembered Dredd climbing up to this ludicrous thing to defuse the bomb that had been left there.

  There was a sound behind her, the metallic clunk of a lock releasing and the moist sucking of a rubber seal letting go of metal, followed by a swift whisper of escaping air. Zandonella whirled around and stared up at the platform. She couldn't see it, but she knew the airlock door was opening. Zandonella scuttled forward and pressed herself against the curved metal of the wall. With luck she would be out of sight of whoever stepped through that door onto the platform above. Zandonella had no wish to meet any of the humans who ran this state-of-the-art slaughterhouse.

  The sound of someone moving up above her on the platform could be heard. Zandonella held her breath. There was silence for a moment and then came a deeply familiar noise, a soft interrogative squeal that caused her heart to melt. Porkditz! There was no mistaking it. Her roommate. Her kidnapped companion. Zandonella began breathing again and instantly her keenly attuned snout identified the welcome odour of her little friend drifting to her from above.

  Not so little now. In relative terms, he was almost the same size as her. Porkditz peered down over the rim of the platform, looking at her with his bright eyes and cheerful, almost-smiling face. "Out of the way. I'm going to jump and I don't want to land on you."

  Zandonella moved obediently back from the platform as Porkditz grunted, then leapt down, landing heavily on the floor, his breath bursting from him in an explosive grunt.

  "Are you all right?" said Zandonella, rushing to his side. Then she stopped dead. She had said something to Porkditz. And he had said something to her. They were talking.

  Or, rather, they weren't talking. They were communicating by a strange blend of behavioural cues - body language, odour, the squeals they made - and something else. A strange extra element of intuitive communion, a bond between them that made them understand each other in a profound fashion that went beyond language. The whole blend of sensations added up to a kind of telepathy and, as a Psi-Judge, Zandonella didn't have any problem accepting telepathy, even in pigs.

  Porkditz looked at her with amusement. "Don't worry about me. I'm swell, you beautiful fat sow," he said. "You seem surprised that I'm talking to you."

  "Aren't you surprised, you handsome rutting little swine?" Zandonella found the string of affectionate endearments pouring out of her as naturally as breath. This form of communication gave rise to such terms as a matter of course. It seemed that undisguised emotional display was built into the very language of the pigs.

  "Of course, I'm not surprised. I've always been able to understand you." Porkditz snorted with amusement. "It was only you who couldn't comprehend what I was saying. It wasn't your fault. You were handicapped by your stunted human nose and hopelessly vestigial ears. You were more than half-blind, oh swell sow-sister, but now you can see. You were deaf but now you hear! Now you have a fine long snout and huge flapping ears. And what a beautiful creature you are." Then suddenly the amusement vanished from Porkditz's manner. "But there is no time now to revel in each other, my plump beloved, to rub bristles or exult in the scent of one another's droppings. Instead we must move quickly, with purpose and a mission. Follow me."

  Porkditz turned away from her and set off across the big room, his trotters ringing against the metal bars of the floor. Zandonella ran after him, panting with the effort to keep up. "What is it? Why must we hurry?"

  "Because the next intake is about to arrive." Porkditz skidded to a halt. They had reached the far wall of the shed-like room, a featureless corrugated span of metal.

  "The next intake?"

  Porkditz spun around and started running again, in a new direction, moving parallel to the corrugated wall. "Follow me. They are coming." Zandonella fell in behind Porkditz, running as fast as she could, following his bobbing little tail. The wall blurred beside her as she ran. There was a deep grumbling noise and a tremor ran through the floor.

  "They are here," said Porkditz. Zandonella glanced at the corrugated wall which was gradually rising up, lifting off the floor like a giant shutter.

  "Hurry!" implored Porkditz. They were racing towards a dead end, the corner where the long wall of the shed joined the corrugated back wall that was now grinding upwards, opening all along its length. As the wall rose, Zandonella could glimpse the trotters of thousands of pigs standing there and she began to hear their terrified squealing and smell their overpowering collective fear. Porkditz had gone as far as he could now. He hit the side wall and bounced off, landing in the corner, his snout stuck under the corrugated back wall as it rose. "Swiftly! Join me, sow-sister." Zandonella slid to a halt beside him and stuck her own head under the rising door. She realised now what Porkditz was doing.

  They were at the extreme edge of the mass of inco
ming pigs. Pressed against the wall as thousands of newcomers poured in...

  "Now!" shrilled Porkditz. He wormed his way under the rising wall. As the mass of pigs began to pour into the room, Porkditz was slipping out. Zandonella followed him. Together they found a tiny pocket of space by the wall in the next room and waited there as the army of squealing, squirming pigs pressed past them, into the red glow.

  "To their doom," she muttered.

  "Doom indeed, sweet sow-sister." Porkditz beamed at her. The mass of pigs was thinning now. "Our fellow porkers know that the red lights of the holding shed spells their imminent demise. But what can they do about it? What is life but the short span between the breeding pits and the killing chutes? A short and cheerless span filled with suffering as we live out our ordained fate, to be tortured and slaughtered and then eaten by the longghouls."

  "The longghouls?"

  Porkditz shook himself with amusement. The wall had reached its full aperture and was now beginning to descend again with a renewed ugly grinding. The last few stragglers were trotting past, rushing by Porkditz and Zandonella, hurrying to enter the red gloom of the holding shed before the wall closed.

  "The longghouls?" she repeated.

  "You call them humans."

  Zandonella tried to remember what human beings were, what it had been like to be one. But that all seemed a very long time ago. The corrugated wall was now locking back into place and the last of the red glow from the shed was abruptly cut off. Suddenly she was alone with Porkditz in a large, shadowy tunnel that led away into the curving darkness of the factory farm.

  "What do we do now?"

  "Something that I should have done a long time ago, you sultry, salty temptress," announced Porkditz in a debonair voice, promptly mounting her from behind. Before Zandonella had time to question what was happening, Porkditz was ploughing into her in a copulatory frenzy. Her pig body and pig nervous system immediately responded in a roller coaster of sensation unlike anything she had ever experienced before. Explosion after explosion of raw ecstasy detonated in her swinish brain.

  "You're porking me!" she squealed. "Don't stop! Don't stop!"

  "Quiet, my beautiful, bloated beloved," murmured Porkditz in her ear, gently nibbling at it. "We mustn't be heard by the longghouls. Or much worse, the cabal."

  Zandonella could barely heed his warning, or wonder who the cabal were. Her rational mind was temporarily melted by the hot pleasure of their united flesh. Only gradually did full awareness return, after the act was over and Porkditz had slipped back off her hindquarters and they were lying together there in the slaughterhouse corridor, their individual aromas uniting in a magnificent combined stink. Zandonella rolled over and looked at Porkditz.

  "I'm so glad you're safe. When I heard that you'd been kidnapped I almost couldn't bear it. Those fools were supposed to look after you." Zandonella's brain struggled to remember Judge Darrid and Judge Carver. The walrus-moustached old hack and the ill-smelling, gauche young recruit. But their human characters were hard to fit into her pig brain, and since there was no way she could name them in the language of pigs, she let all memory of them slip away and simply said, "Those treacherous fools."

  "I was fortunate," said Porkditz. "After all, I was kidnapped instead of killed outright. But I suppose I'm a useful piece of merchandise to them."

  Zandonella shuddered. "You mean they wanted to turn you into meat."

  "If necessary. But the longghouls also recognised my huge intelligence."

  "Surely not," murmured Zandonella. "Otherwise they would never have allowed such an intelligent, dangerous, subversive pig to exist. They would have slaughtered my plump, beloved, curly tailed one."

  "True, they only sensed a small portion of my vast intellect. But that was enough for them to try and put me to use."

  "What do you mean, my fine swine love?"

  "They thought that they could use me to control the population of our brethren as they are being flowed to the slaughter, just as you are used. Or the body you now inhabited was once used, to lead your fellows to their death in the machines below."

  "But how did you know it was me in this body? How did you know I was your human friend?"

  "I sensed your power when I first came upon you, my bristly love. And when you arrived here I simply smelled your presence. Thank the Great Fates that it was so."

  "Yes, thank the Great Fates," echoed Zandonella, letting the pigs' unique primitive concept of deity slot into her brain.

  "And thanks to my knowledge of the farm and all of its secret passages, I was able to come to you and rescue you."

  "Ah, yes," sighed Zandonella contentedly. "My brave rescuer."

  "Excuse me for interrupting," came a gravelly utterance, "but I thought I'd better break in on you love-pigs before I spill my swill."

  Zandonella and Porkditz leapt to their trotters and spun around to face the newcomer. He had emerged from the shadows of the tunnel and stood watching them, calm and amused. He was a scarred old boar with a large brass ring encrusted with mucus hanging from his nose. He shook his head as he spoke, and the ring wiggled and dangled, occasionally shedding a viscous drop of slime.

  "Who are you?" quavered Zandonella. She looked at Porkditz. "Who is he?" But Porkditz didn't answer immediately. He just stared at the boar, his snout and ears vibrating with hostility.

  "The little one wants to attack me," said the boar. "But he knows better."

  Porkditz stared at Zandonella. "He is from the cabal." His voice held a note of doom. "They have found us."

  TWELVE

  "This sleeping beauty is Theo Barkin," said Judge Dredd, indicating the med-bed that was strapped down, filling the wide, bright orange seat that occupied the entire rear of the patrol wagon. The whole wagon was painted a ferocious fluorescent orange that was almost painful to the eye, the same orange as the jumpsuits that the prisoners wore. There were no prisoners on the wagon today, though. A normal load would have been twenty or more, all fully conscious and in relatively good health.

  Tonight it was accommodating the sole, comatose form of Theo Barkin, and the vehicle had required some adapting for the purpose. O'Mannion had supervised the work of a team of droid fitters, installing straps to the seat that would secure the med-bed. She looked at the unconscious perp - the "Sleeping Beauty" as Dredd had so cruelly put it. Theo's face was as white as the polished surfaces of the med-bed that kept him alive. It looked like he was in an open coffin: a white coffin with a smooth curved surface dotted here and there with computer readout screens and control panels. Above his pale sleeping face were fitted two cylinders of pure oxygen which were mixed with a feed of anaesthetic and fed into Theo's nostrils through a thin transparent tube.

  Looking down on him, like mourners at some bizarre funeral, were Judge Dredd, Judge Darrid and Carver. O'Mannion stood beside them. They were alone in the bus, which could accommodate up to three dozen prisoners. She checked Theo's life signs while Dredd explained the situation to the others.

  "You'll remember that Theo Barkin was apprehended during the rescue of the Cetacean Ambassador."

  "Of course we remember," said Darrid. "Don't we boy?" He nudged Carver, who flushed red with embarrassment and nodded wordlessly. "That was a hell of a good bust, wasn't it?" Darrid crowed. "We sure taught them a lesson."

  "If we'd taught them an adequate lesson, we wouldn't need to be here now," snarled Dredd.

  "Excuse me, sir," ventured Carver, "but what are we doing? I thought our assignment was to escort a prisoner."

  "Here's your prisoner." Dredd rapped on the smooth surface of Theo's med-bed. "He received a massive head wound resisting arrest and is now on medical life-support. He's officially brain-dead."

  "Brain-dead?"

  O'Mannion nodded. "Yes. Ironically, the meat kingpin has turned into a vegetable."

  "So why are we taking this vegetable anywhere?" said Darrid. "Surely the proper thing for him is to stay right here at Justice Central, in the medical unit. In the per
p pit."

  "We aren't taking him anywhere," said O'Mannion.

  "But we've got him here on the bus." said Carver.

  "He's a decoy," snarled Dredd. "It's a trap."

  "Hoo boy, that's more like it," said Darrid. "A trap. A trap for who?"

  "For Barkin's brother. He is our only link to Psi-Judge Zandonella who is being held against her will in the factory farm that Barkin runs."

  "Against her will?" said Carver. He had turned pale.

  "Yes. And we have reason to believe her life is in danger," said O'Mannion.

  "So we need Barkin to lead us to her," said Dredd. He glanced impatiently at the open door of the cockpit at the front of the wagon. O'Mannion could see that he was itching to get started.

  Dredd abruptly stopped talking and simply started towards the cockpit. Just before he ducked inside the amber-lit compartment, he called back over his shoulder to O'Mannion. "You tell him the rest." He disappeared into the cockpit, slamming the security hatch behind him.

  O'Mannion looked at Darrid and Carver. They were like a couple of baby birds waiting to be fed scraps of information. "We've spread a story through our network of criminal informants," explained O'Mannion. "A story to the effect that we're moving Theo into long-term custody. We expect his brother to emerge from the woodwork and try and ambush us on this wagon at some point on our journey tonight."

  "Ambush. Oh boy," said Darrid happily. "That's the stuff." O'Mannion wished the old fart would shut up. There was a shivering jolt through the frame of the wagon as Dredd turned the engines on and brought the vehicle to life.