Psykogeddon

by Dave Stone

  "And the Sturlek body itself?" asked Karyn.

  "Believe me," said Shenker, "you don't want to know. Let's just say she did some other things after she tore the throat out of the med-tech."

  "Marvellous," said Psi-Judge Karyn.

  She popped the hermetic seals and opened the hatch of the holding cell. And then she did her very best not to read anything into the fact that it closed, extremely hurriedly, after she had gone inside.

  "So, what do we do?" said Chief Judge Hershey, in the smaller, private chamber that was situated off to one side of the public and which served her as an office and living quarters combined. "If these old Brit-Cit drokks don't take a telling, what do we do?"

  "I vote that we let them take him back to Brit-Cit and have done with it," said SJS-Judge Slithe. "No skin off our nose. One less mouth to feed in the Iso-cubes."

  "You've made your opinions known on that score," said Hershey sourly. "According to you, half the people in the Cubes are more trouble than they're worth and should be shot in the head."

  "Oh, there are more people than that who we feel are more trouble than they're worth," said Slithe pointedly. "I simply fail to see what advantage we can possibly gain by holding on to the man in the face of all opposition."

  "It's not a question of advantage," said Dredd shortly. "It's a question of principle."

  "A principle worth instigating a police-action over?" said Slithe. "In the eyes of the world we'd be seen as the aggressor, landing on a smaller, weaker city-state simply because we can. The world's going to wonder to whom we're going to turn our attention next, and the global political situation is precarious enough at the moment as it is. This is, after all, why we agreed to this rigmarole of a hearing in the first place."

  "If we don't stand on our principles," said Dredd, "even when it's hard, we end up standing on nothing. The basis of our authority is that we dispense Justice without compromise - and I'm not going to let that go without a fight."

  "Fine sounding clichés," said Slithe. "Unworkable in real life."

  "Only if you're afraid of getting into an honest fight with everything out in the open, rather than creeping around and stabbing people in the back - which it seems is more the SJS style."

  "I resent that remark!" Slithe exclaimed. "The Special Judicial Service performs a valuable function. Our remit is to judge the Judges, and for a responsibility like that we need a singular, and quite specialised, degree of procedural power."

  "Yeah, well, seems to me," said Dredd, "given your track-record, it's more a case of that little bit of extra power corrupting just that little bit more."

  Brit-Cit Detective Judge Treasure Steel, for her part, was wondering just what the hell she was doing there.

  The Brit-Cit Senior Judges were taking advantage of the recess to have their saline nutrient packs replaced, their blood exchanged and - in the case of more than one, due to the number of artificial components of their bodies - their oil changed.

  Detective Judge Treasure Steel had been set to accompany them as part of the contingent of Street Judges serving as their guard, but the Mega-City Chief Judge had indicated quite strongly that it would be a good idea to attend this meeting.

  No coercion or anything like that, just the hanging question of what might happen if she refused to attend without coercion.

  "What do you want out of me?" Steel said. "I'm not empowered to broker any kind of deal."

  "We just need information," said Chief Judge Hershey.

  "If you're thinking I'd betray confidential information about my city-state," said Treasure Steel angrily, "you've got another thing coming. Do what you like, you'll get no soap out of me."

  The Hendon-trained part of her that was constantly alert, evaluating every situation for potential threat, chose this moment to point out that it was probably not a good idea to put ideas in Mega-City heads.

  Through contact with Hershey years before, she had learnt that Mega-City Judges, as individuals, were not necessarily to be despised, but their rockrete-solid sense of self-righteousness meant they were capable of anything, if they could only convince themselves that they were in the right.

  That SJS-Judge Slithe, for example, for all his talk of taking a conciliatory stance, seemed just the sort to be breaking out the pentothal and mind-probes before you could say "sharp torture-implement".

  "Nobody's asking you to betray anything," said Hershey. "Cards on the table, here, okay? None of us know what we're doing, Mega-City or Brit-Cit, and we're pretty much making it up as we're going along. I'm telling you this because I know you, and trust you, and know you'll have worked that much out for yourself. I just want to impress upon you the fact that we are seriously and honestly looking for the best solution for all concerned.

  "I just want your general thoughts on what Brit-Cit is expecting out of all this. What you want, what you won't give up and how you think this is all going to pan out."

  Treasure Steel shrugged. "Okay. Keeping things nice and general. You know as well as I do - it's common knowledge - that the so-called Senior Judges of the Star Chamber are basically a front. At least, they have been since some people, who shall remain nameless, contrived to cut them off from some quite illegal rejuve-boosters. They're all gonna die, quite soon, and good riddance, frankly. They're just hanging on to their last gasp like nobody's business.

  "Anyhow. The order to extradite Drago San came down through them, from one or several of the Overlords - and you can stop looking at each other like that, thank you very much. Us Brit-Cit guys, we've heard enough of this 'City run by criminals' shit to make you sick.

  "I mean, it's true in one sense, I suppose - the same way that you could say the Royal Family, back in the twenty-first century, were a bunch of land-thieving whoresons who had somehow managed to clamber to the top of a pile of bodies on a battlefield while waving a bloodied sword.

  "In any day-to-day reality, of course, these days that just ain't so. The guys are more or less just in the business of keeping things ticking over and working. I'm not gonna stand here and try to defend it. It's just the way things work. And as such Brit-Cit's not particularly better or worse, in and of itself, than anywhere else."

  "A system founded on corruption," said Dredd sternly, "cannot be anything other than corrupt."

  "Do you know," said Treasure Steel, "I've never looked at it that way. Thank you, Dredd, for removing the scales from my eyes and helping me see the error of my sinful ways. Why, it's as if I come from a country where the first leaders grew narcotics on a mass-production basis and kept slaves."

  Treasure Steel scowled. "And let's get one more thing straight, while we're at it. What with most of the landmass on your continent being a total no-go zone, Brit-Cit is in actual fact bigger than Mega-Cities One and Two combined, with marginally more international goodwill and one hell of a lot better natural defences - so less of this talk about a police-action against a poor little city-state, if you please. If it ever came down to it, it'd be flat-out war and you know it.

  "Anyhow, the order came down from up top, via the Star Chamber, that the Big Boys want Drago San back. It's not what you're worried about. It's not a question of sending him back to his friends - Drago San's fresh out of friends in Brit-Cit.

  "It's a question of him giving the Overlords a bad name. I mentioned how the Big Boys aren't criminals as such, but Drago San's excesses, in the name of being an Overlord, had brought the whole question up again and tarred the Big Boys with the same brush. That was okay when he was safely off and imprisoned somewhere out there in the stars, but the simple fact of him being back on Earth, even in Mega-City custody, is a constant reminder and an insult."

  "Can you give me some assurance, then," said Chief Judge Hershey, "that if Drago San were returned to Brit-Cit, he would be seen to pay for his crimes?"

  "Probably not," admitted Treasure Steel. "That's not the way things happen. What would probably happen is, Drago San very quietly disappears without a trace and is never seen or h
eard from again, but everybody, somehow, happens to know about it."

  "Sounds like a perfectly equitable arrangement to me," said Slithe. "We have all of us much to learn from the Brit-Cit way of doing things, I'm sure."

  "Completely unacceptable," said Dredd.

  "Hey," said Treasure Steel, "I'm just saying what the Overlords want, some of them at least. I don't think it's unanimous." She shrugged. "Personally, I'd be happy to go home with a reason why they can't have it that's good enough so's I can keep my neck."

  Hershey sighed. Not for the first time, she found herself stuck with the basic quandary the Justice Department presented by its very nature. How do you find some compromise between opposing points of view, when one of those points of view is an absolute refusal to compromise?

  "Your comments have been noted," she said to Dredd and Slithe. "And thank you for your candour, Ms Steel."

  Detective Judge Steel shrugged. "Any time. I'm told it's my most endearing character trait. By the people I'm actually on speaking terms with, anyhow."

  "I think," Hershey decided, "that all we can do at this point is let things ride. See if some new facet comes to light that gives us an acceptable way out for everyone concerned."

  The five Brit-Cit Senior Judges of the Sacred and Most Worshipful Order of the Star Chamber, meanwhile, were down in Med-Division, undergoing such medical maintenance as their ancient bodies required. Or rather, frankly, the hugely excessive amount of medical maintenance that their ancient bodies required.

  The Mega-City med-techs had never had to deal with people that old in their lives, people so old who weren't dead, anyway, and certainly could not connect these crumbling wrecks with Judges in any way, shape or form.

  They performed the necessary procedures as though running maintenance on machines. They certainly didn't recognise the vague mutterings and mumblings of their temporary charges as human speech.

  This was useful to the Senior Judge of the Sacred and Most Worshipful Order of the Star Chamber, who in certain specialised areas were not quite so senile as they let on in public.

  "Mm... heh..." muttered one Senior Judge, the lion-based Brit-Cit badge pinned to his knitted, hairy string jersey reading "CHOLMOLDLY-SHRIKE". "Time soon... heh... Time to say what we have to..."

  The others turned to listen, picking up his meaning through long years of practice. Except, of course, for the one in the Paisley-check flat cap, whose name-badge read "HUCKFONT", who jammed an ear-trumpet in his left ear and bellowed, "HUH? WHUH?"

  "Can... hng... mnh... do you think we can trust him, do you think?" wondered the one in the ocelot-trimmed Burberry parka and espadrilles, whose name-badge read SLEE. "What do you... mm... think, heh, Whimslowe?"

  "I like strangling moles," said Whimslowe, who was in actual fact senile to the point where he was incapable of following anything, years of practice or not. "'Cause they lay their little eggs in me when I'm asleep."

  All the rest of the Sacred and Most Worshipful Order of the Star Chamber looked at him for a moment before continuing:

  "We... have to trust him," said the final Senior Judge, who had lost his name-badge somewhere along the way. "He's the only one who can... give us what we need. Make us... young again."

  "Yes," agreed Cholmoldly-Shrike. "Give him what he needs... heh... He gives us what we need to make us young again."

  ELEVEN

  "When a felon's not engaged in his employment -

  Or maturing his felonious little plans -

  His capacity for innocent enjoyment -

  Is just as great as any honest man's."

  - The Pirates of Penzance

  Psi-Judge Sela Defane sat, knees drawn up as far as they physically could be to her somewhat disproportionate torso. Her forearms were buried in a slightly squashed-looking globe of mimetic polyceramaline. The material was such that if you moved very slow and relaxed, it would stretch like taffy, leaving your hands encased in two smaller, connected globes. If you made any kind of violent move, it instantly snapped back and became rock solid.

  Karyn happened to be one of those people who fit the height-versus-body-weight profiles almost perfectly. On the other hand, she was also one of those people who insisted on having a uniform that was the right cut for her frame, and made a point of keeping the zipper all the way up, and ate whatever she felt like whenever she wanted to.

  Body image was just something she had never particularly thought about. Okay, so people had sometimes mentioned her skin tone and mane of flame-red hair, but what the drokk was she supposed to do about it? Cut it all off and break out an industrial sander?

  Trying to cut off her skin and sand down her scalp would probably cause even more comment. The point was, in a world where some people Judge others by appearance, and others thought that judging by appearance was something to be thoroughly ashamed of, Karyn simply didn't care much either way.

  All the same, even in this hunched-up state, there seemed to be something slightly off about Defane's body in a purely physical sense. It was nothing as blatant as a Fattie piling metric tonnes on a birdlike skeletal frame, but there was some subtle sense that this was a body that had been made to do things for which it wasn't suited, put through contortions that were wrong for its basic frame, over a period of years.

  Of course, this sense of wrongness might have had more to do with the blood and other matter smeared over her face than anything else.

  She had bitten her lips and tongue, doing not quite enough damage to make it worth Psi-Division personnel, afraid as they were of whatever communicable mental disease she now had, coming in to fit her with a mouth-guard. Then, by the look of the holding-cell wall, she had smeared her own blood on it, then rubbed her face against the wall to daub herself.

  The result, in the end, looked as if she had been trying to put on a mask.

  "You dare," said Psi-Judge Sela Defane with a cold and murderous calm. "Don't you dare."

  Her voice was slightly mushy, due to the self-inflicted damage to her mouth, but Karyn could hear what she said perfectly - automatically reading the speech-centre impulses being sent to the damaged lips and tongue.

  "What?" said Karyn. Not because she hadn't heard; she just didn't know what Sela meant.

  "Don't you dare put your grubby fingers in my head," said Sela. "I know where they've been."

  "What?" Karyn said again. "I've never..."

  "The fingers you think about," said Psi-Judge Dela Defane. "Don't put the fingers in your mind in me. Don't you dare."

  "I... just want to talk," said Karyn, making absolutely drokking sure she didn't do the thing she sometimes did with other Psis who she actually liked, of actively synchronising speech-centres to some extent. "I want to know about the body you read."

  "What do you want to know about the body I read?" For all the world it was as if Sela Defane was a transputer-routine. Ask a question and you get an answer - but you only get what you ask for. Garbage in, garbage out.

  "What happened to you?" Karyn said. "What happened to you when you read the body?"

  "I felt... I saw..." It wasn't as if Defane was groping for the right words in any human way. It was more in the nature of attempting to access information, looking for data-files that simply were not there.

  "What do you mean?" said Karyn.

  "It was like the world wasn't there," Psi-Judge Sela Defane said at last. "It was there but it wasn't real. It was like a copy of it, right down to the last detail, so it didn't matter. I could do what I wanted. I could do what I liked..."

  Across the public chamber from the Chief Judge's private offices were cells designed for those rare occasions when the Chief Judge was directly involved in dealing with a prisoner. Since the Justice System operated, for the most part, on the principle of Instant Justice, administered by the Judge on the spot, these cells had not actually been used in months.

  The last time this cell had been used, in fact, was to detain a would-be assassin who had somehow managed to evade the guards - and f
or that matter every other Judge in the Halls of Justice - and attempted to blast the Chief Judge with a Screaming Meatgun.

  The SJS were swearing blind that it was impossible to discover precisely who the would-be assassin was, particularly since he had, unfortunately, committed suicide by way of a bomb-implant that had resulted in the almost complete vaporisation of his body, shortly after being placed in their care by Hershey after she had taken him down.

  This had, however, been the impetus for the Justice Department to start dealing with Screaming Meatguns slightly more seriously than they had before. So that was all right, then.

  In one of these cells, alone with Efil Drago San, the worst single day of Barnstable Wheems's life was getting worse. The façade of confidence and equilibrium he had worn in public for the hearing was deserting him by the second. He had been given barely an hour to prepare for the hearing, and five minutes into that hour he had come to the conclusion that he was completely out of his depth.

  His expertise, such as it was, was in evading the Law by a variety of statutory hand-waving techniques. When it came to the processes of Criminal Law - International Criminal Law - he wasn't waving his hands by any stretch of the imagination; he was drowning.

  He'd only gotten this far by sheer bluff. It couldn't last.

  And then there was the matter of Drago San himself. Efil Drago San was the first actual criminal Wheems had ever met - his job, after all, was to keep his rich paymasters from ever being defined as criminals in the first place.

  And if you're going to meet your first actual criminal, it is probably better for the nerves if that criminal is not a mass murderer with a death count score in the thousands.

  It did only a little for Wheems's peace of mind that the man's paraplegic floater was still without power, Drago San having been manhandled into this cell by way of a pair of burly techs and a heavy-duty gimbal-rig.