Sweet Justice

by Gaiman, Neil

  ‘...May 22nd: It’s all coming together now. The moon’s been red for several days, just as God told me it would be. As for the six hundred three score and six, that’s obvious to me now too! Three sixes... The Antichrist will be born on the sixth day of the sixth month at six o’clock, the son of a jackal. That’s soon now. I must find this jackal. I must wait for its offspring and I must kill it!’

  June 6 – 5.52pm

  The apartment door crumpled like tissue paper under McKern’s telekinetic onslaught, and Warner and Troughton swung into the room, Lawgivers at the ready.

  ‘Empty,’ reported Warner. ‘Are you sure this is the place?’

  Anderson stepped coolly into the room between them. Her gaze lingered on the walls, which were papered with pages torn from bibles. Crucifixes had been crudely rammed into the door and window frames.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said witheringly. ‘The guy’s obviously totally sane.’ She stepped toward a small writing desk, picking up the slim volume lying on its surface. ‘This is the focus of the emanations I’ve been getting. It’s some sort of diary.’

  Stokes looked troubled as she followed them in. ‘This room’s saturated with emotional residue!’ she said. ‘Such anguish, such pain, such hatred... but it’s determined, obsessive; focused. This is a bad one, Cass.’

  Warner holstered his weapon. ‘Great. We’ve got a Futsie. Let’s find him, Cube him and stop this time-wasting.’

  McKern turned to Anderson. ‘What do you think? Cassandra, you’ve gone quite pale. What’s the matter?’

  Anderson dropped the diary. ‘There has to be a medical centre in the compound... so let’s move it there on the double. Now!’

  ‘...June 6th: I’ve found the jackal. He lives upstairs. Jack L. Remick, whose wife is expecting any day now (I know precisely when, of course). I wonder if she knows she’s carrying the Antichrist? She will when I kill him. God spoke to me again last night. He said I was doing awfully well...’

  June 6th – 6.01pm

  The nurse was screaming something about no admittance, and continued screaming as McKern lifted her out of their path on a raft of telekinesis. Leading the pack, Anderson and Warner crashed through the doors, bowling over the Midwife Droid. ‘What in Grud’s name are you doing in here?’ bellowed Jack L. Remick, clutching the hand of his labouring wife.

  ‘What’s more to the point,’ breathed Anderson, ‘what’s he doing in here?’ She pointed at the bewildered figure nearby, dressed in an orderly’s uniform and frozen in the act of pulling a recoilless automatic from beneath his tunic. Warner’s Lawgiver was in his hand in the blink of an eye. ‘Armed Futsie!’ he screamed. ‘Everybody down!’

  Anderson’s fist crashed into his wrist. The shot went wide, tearing through the far wall. Simultaneously, the perp’s gun flew from his grasp, straight to McKern’s outstretched hand.

  ‘What the drokk are you doing?’ spluttered Warner. ‘There were civilians at stake.’

  ‘And one of them was your target!’ Anderson snapped back. ‘I sense he’s a strong latent psionic, acting under the influence of something external. If you’d shot him, you’d have been shooting an innocent.’

  Warner was about to argue further, but was cut off by Stokes’ warning scream. They turned in horror to see the suspect crumple drunkenly to the floor, an inhuman howl rising in his throat. His body twitched and convulsed as something spewed from him; something abominable, something unholy... a grotesque mass of screaming faces that hung in the air, raining greasy fluid on the floor beneath.

  ‘The child! It wants to possess the new-born child!’ shrieked Stokes, gagging as her senses reeled beneath the psychic onslaught.

  ‘Warner, block it!’ ordered Anderson desperately.

  At once, Troughton and Warner leapt between the delivery bed and the oncoming nightmare. ‘Rapid fire. Drive it back!’ instructed Warner, gratified at last by a job at which he excelled. The two Lawgivers roared in the confines of the ward, but the thing advanced still, turning its many eyes toward the duo. There was a rending explosion as, through some infernal influence, the magazine of Troughton’s pistol detonated and tore him apart. Blasted off his feet by the impact and peppered with slivers of his colleague’s armour and bone, Warner was flung across the room like a doll, landing dazed against the wall. The thing turned in mid-air and lurched towards him... and then froze. Blue electrical energy coruscated across its surface.

  ‘We’re holding it... barely,’ said Anderson through gritted teeth, as she and Stokes quaked under the psionic strain. Stokes’ face was blank with agonised effort. ‘McKern! You’ve got to expel this thing now!’ Anderson could barely speak.

  Sweat beaded the big man’s brow. ‘I’m trying... I can’t,’ he gasped. ‘It’s too big... a revenant node... ninety thousand angry souls in one. I’m just not... strong enough!’

  ‘Then we have to force it back into the host,’ Anderson strained. ‘Contain it, before it burns Stokes out completely!’

  There was silence as the trio redoubled their efforts. The entity swelled; doubled its size.

  Then it screamed through all its mouths. Shrinking and crumpling horribly, it dissolved like noxious smoke into the limp body of the orderly.

  The psychic link severed, the Psi-Judges staggered back. Only the dregs of McKern’s telekinetic strength cushioned Judge Stokes’ collapse to the floor.

  ‘Lisa!’ exclaimed Anderson, as she and McKern reached the prone form. McKern cradled her frail figure in his great arms. ‘We’ve lost her,’ he said simply.

  Anderson turned speechlessly, her eyes burning as she faced the slumped figure of the possessed man.

  ‘We still have a problem to solve,’ she said.

  ‘So she wiped his mind of everything he was. In a split second, construction worker Gregory Thorne ceased to be. She hated herself for it, but there was no alternative. The node was too strong to banish. It could only be contained in a prison that had no contact with the world outside. Maybe the hardest choice she ever made – to sacrifice an innocent mind.’ McKern fell silent, aware that Pyke and Lutz were considering the story.

  ‘That’s why we always come here when we’re on Exorcise Duty,’ said Warner. ‘Anderson has last respects to pay. And forgiveness to ask for.’ They looked up to see Anderson returning through the suite.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said briskly. ‘There’s plenty to do, and the day is yet young...’

  ‘Lead on, Chief.’ Warner followed her to the door.

  Out in the yard, as they mounted their Lawmasters, Anderson caught McKern’s eye and smiled. ‘And let’s pray for a quiet night,’ she said.

  ‘I WAS A TEENAGE PERP!’

  By Alan Grant, Judge Dredd Annual 1983

  ‘I WAS A TEENAGE PERP!’ A LAWBREAKER CONFESSES! MOVING TRUE STORY!

  I remember the day I broke my first law as if it was yesterday. In fact it was yesterday.

  I was cruising the Block Plaza with Willy the C, both of us just hanging out and looking cool. I was wearing my new glitter kneepad, so of course I was attracting more than my share of admiring glances from the other citizens in the crowd. That’s what put Willy in a bad mood and started all this trouble.

  I’m going to give you a piece of advice, all you guys reading this. It’s the most important lesson I’ve learned in all my fourteen years on the Mega-City streets. Never lose your temper. In a city where so many millions of people are fighting each other for living space, losing your temper just causes trouble.

  Take Willy the C and me for instance. Willy’s problem was envy. He’d never owned a kneepad. Can you imagine that? Thirteen years old and he’d never had a kneepad of his own. Me, I loved the things – I ate, slept and breathed ’em. In fact, I liked them so much that our Block School Careers Robot advised me to make them my hobby. So I did.

  In the year or so that the kneepad craze had been sweeping the city, I had acquired myself half a dozen different pads. Not expensive ones, no solid-gold-effect or mock-velvet o
r nothing, just regular models. But my secret – the thing that drew so many admiring glances from the chicks and so much envy from bowbs like Willy – was that I custom-built my kneepads. Yessir, I stripped them right down to the frame and rebuilt those little gizmos with tender loving care. The first one I ever made was shaped like the death-mask of Fergee, ’cos when I was a kid he was one of my all-time great heroes. But my others were more practical.

  Like, the one I was wearing yesterday in the Plaza was a spinning double metal helix; I’d covered it with rainbow strips of lase-cut mesh-weave I found in my mother’s embroidery box. Embroidery is her hobby, but I didn’t think she’d miss them. I don’t suppose that matters much now.

  So anyway I’m strutting along, my helix spinning and flashing in the artificial sunshine, feeling good, looking groovy. We lived in the Frankie Lymon Block, and I’ve always considered cruising the Block Plaza as one of my favourite things to do. I love the feel of being in a crowd, just moving along with it, going nowhere special and then coming back again. I really dig crowds. Lots of other folk do too, of course. 65,000 citizens live in Frankie Lymon, and the Plaza is always crowded. If you find a quiet spot to watch ’em from, you’ll see the same people drifting by time and again. It’s fun being part of a crowd – especially when lots of them are admiring your kneepad and trying to pretend they’re not. All of a sudden Willy grabs my arm and yanks me towards the slidewalk so we’re being carried along towards the Block Park.

  ‘Hey, what’s the big idea, bowb?’ I asked him, annoyed. Already the slidewalk had taken us a hundred meters away, and as it’s illegal to travel the wrong way on a moving slide, I’d have to wait till we hit a cross-over before I could double-back.

  ‘The Plaza’s where the best crowds are, dope,’ I pointed out. ‘The Park’s for kids. The Park’s a drag.’

  ‘You’re the drag, Milton,’ Wally muttered, and I was surprised by the venom in his voice. ‘Ever since you made that new kneepad, your head’s been swelling and swelling. All you ever want to do now is cruise the Plaza and swagger with your kneepad!’

  He broke off, stamping his foot petulantly on the slide’s plascon surface. How childish, I thought irrelevantly.

  The he went on: ‘We used to play a lot in the Park, Milton. We had a lot of fun together there, didn’t we, Milton?’

  I couldn’t meet his eyes. He was right, I suppose – we used to go to the Park most days, and it was a lot of laughs. But somehow, now, it seemed like it was for kids. I mean, I was growing up, leaving my low-teens behind me. I was beginning to realise there were ways of having fun other than swinging through a stand of synthetic trees on a never-snap rope, or playing Judges and Perps in the stone-effect rockery near the Park’s center. I mean, I didn’t know what those other ways were – but I was definitely beginning to wonder!

  But how do you tell your best friend, the buddy that’s played with you since childhood (we lived next door to each other), that you’re growing up faster than he is? I forced a grin and made my voice sound cheerful. Just like Conrad Conn sometimes does in his viddies.

  ‘Okay, Willie, you got it,’ I said breezily – and it sounded more like Conrad Conn than the man himself does. Maybe I should have been an actor. ‘Let’s go check out the Park.’

  Not that we had much choice – the slidewalk was at that very moment carrying us through the wide entrance. A couple of security robots lounging by the low wall gave us a quick once-over, and then we were in the Frankie Lymon Block Memorial Park.

  ROBO-DUCKS

  It’s quite a place. The walls and huge domed roof are covered in holopix, so it actually looks as if you’re outside the Block – outside the city, even – on a warm, warm day. Only instead of there being nothing but Cursed Earth radiation desert stretching all the way to the horizon, the holopix show forests of real green trees and distant snow-capped hills. And in the sky there are realistic images of fluffy white clouds instead of clouds of radioactive gas. The Park’s where the Block’s senior citizens like to come, which means it’s deadly dull unless you like joining in their games of hide-and-seek or kicking a plastic-sphere around. It’s popular with the kids, too, of course.

  Yeah, okay, I’ll get back to my story. I’m only telling you all this about the Park and all, ’cos I know that a lot of guys live in Blocks where they don’t even have a Park. Anyway, what happened to me goes to prove that the theories of social delinquency might not be all they’re cracked up to be. I mean, when a guy like me, a guy from a nice Block, a guy with an interesting hobby, and a cool Plaza to cruise and a Park, even – when a guy like that ends up as a perp, where do you put the blame?

  I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know my answer: Willy the C. He’d got what he wanted – I’d come to the Park – but that wasn’t enough. Nossir. Right away Willy wants to go and join some under-twelves who’re feeding the robo-ducks on the synthi-pond. I rolled my eyes in mock horror that wasn’t so mock.

  ‘C’mon, man, you must be joking!’ I pointed dramatically at my still-whirling, still-flashing kneepad. ‘I didn’t put this little beauty on so’s I could sit with the kiddos and feed the robo-duckies. I don’t even like robo-duckies!’

  Willy wasn’t listening to my protest. He was looking off to the side, where one of the robo-ducks was waddling jerkily towards us. Usually they move with a strange sort of mechanical grace, but this one was sparking and twitching like it had blown a circuit. It flapped its wings in slow-motion as it came towards me. Stupid. I don’t know why they needed robo-ducks in the first place, unless it was to please the senior citizens. Some of them swore they could remember when there were real ducks, though I don’t believe ’em myself. Real ducks died out a long time ago. I know there’s mutant ducks out there out in the Cursed Earth, but they live on oil. They couldn’t survive in the water. Not even synthi-water. So I guess that’s why they got robo-ducks for the Park’s ponds.

  Anyway, I suddenly realised what this particular duck was up to. Its scanners must have picked up the rainbow flash of my windmilling kneepad, and somehow the dazzling light had fused a circuit in the machine’s micro-brain.

  ‘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.