Judge Dredd (24 page)

“Not by himself. He’s working with Griffin.”

“Griffin?”
Hershey slowly lowered her weapon. All the strength seemed to drain from her body. “Oh, my God. It fits, doesn’t it?” She looked at Dredd. “We’ve got to let the Council know. They’ve got to stop him before he—”

“It’s too late for that. There isn’t any Council. Rico murdered them all an hour ago. Griffin set it up. Griffin was there.”

Hershey sat down. She laid her weapon on the floor. Dredd watched her. She was staring past him, looking at nothing at all. Fergie glanced at Dredd, then quietly left the room.

“I shouldn’t have even thought you had anything to do with this,” Hershey said. “I didn’t know. All I could think about was the Tribunal, what happened there. I should have known when I found out you’d been drugged. I thought it was Fargo, that he didn’t want you to try to stop him from taking the Long Walk for you . . .”

She caught Dredd’s expression, stood, and reached out and touched his hand. “You didn’t even know that, did you? What they’d done. Oh, Dredd!”

“It’s all right,” he told her. “You didn’t have any way to know what the son of a bitch was doing. No one did.”

“That’s why the DNA convicted you. You and Rico are the same. Brothers. Did Fargo know? Was he . . . ?”

“He was a part of it. They all knew. Everyone on the Council.”

Dredd turned away. “It’s not exactly like Rico and I are brothers. Not like real brothers,
normal
brothers, Hershey. We’re the same. Clones. We’re inhuman. Defective. He just broke down first.”

“No, oh, no, that’s not true at all, Dredd! You’re
not
the same!”

Dredd wouldn’t face her. “You said it, Hershey. Remember? That I had no feelings, no emotions? Now you know why. I’m not
programmed
to feel. Like Rico.”

“They didn’t do that to you,” she said softly.
“You
did, Dredd. You did it to yourself. You hurt. You hurt because you had to condemn your brother. You told yourself you would never let that happen to you again. You would never care for anyone, never let anyone get close. If you shut it all out, they couldn’t touch you.

“Don’t you see? They made you do it, but you did it to yourself.”

Dredd faced her. He felt confused, mixed up inside. He understood what she was saying, but her words didn’t seem to apply to him. They didn’t and they did. It was like she was talking about someone else, someone like him.

Fergie poked his head into the room. “Sorry, guys. I messed around with that terminal, but I’m afraid it’s torn up pretty bad. Hey, I fixed your microwave, though. Listen, is this a bad time?”

He looked at Hershey, then at Dredd. “The computer’s back up to the idiot stage. That’s the best I can do for right now. I’ve got enough working to go in and look around. I tried to find this Janus business. There’s nothing. Nowhere.”

Hershey looked puzzled. “Janus?”

“That’s the code word for the project that brought Rico and me to life. I’m not surprised Ferguson can’t find it. It would be buried under so many security barriers . . .”

Dredd stopped. “If Griffin’s got Janus back on-line now, it’s going to be using a lot of power. That thing’s bigger than a toaster.”

Fergie shook his head. “Tried that. No new energy allocations for anything that big. Even under an alias. Of course, that moron machine I patched together, I wouldn’t trust it to count apples.”

“No, they wouldn’t risk putting something like that on the net, would they?” Hershey said. “But it’s still got to use power, so they’d . . . They’d have to
steal
it, wouldn’t they? From everything they could get their hands on.”

Hershey turned to Fergie. “Check the sectors for recent black-outs. Any sudden power surges. Can you do that?”

Fergie looked pained.
“I
can handle anything you can dream up, Judge. Okay, atomic disintegration, I can’t handle that. This mortally-wounded machine of yours, though . . . Hey, I can try, I don’t know.”

“Try,” Dredd said.

“Right, right, I’m
doing
it.”

“Wait a minute . . .” Hershey bit her lip and frowned. “The day of that fracas in Red Quad? I had to write up
everything
that happened, because those groons blew up my Lawmaster. I called up all the data in that area within the time parameters—temperature, bio-air samples,
pollen
count, for God’s sake. I remember there was a significant power surge about thirty blocks wide. A big one. It didn’t mean a thing to me at the time.”

Fergie whistled under his breath. “Something like that’d shut down the power grid in the whole sector. We ought to be able to pin down a lot more than you get on a first-level data report.”

“What do you mean?” Dredd said.

“I mean it’s like you shoot up with battery acid, right? I wouldn’t do anything like that, that’s stupid, you’d be flat-ass dead, but I know some droogs who would—”

“Ferguson!”

“Yeah, right. Okay. What I’m saying is, it doesn’t just burn up everything in your body it touches, it leaves a
trail.
Nerve endings all crudded up, stuff like that. If you didn’t know where the trouble started, you could pick up the trail about anywhere and trace it right back. To the point of origin, I mean.”

Hershey looked at the ceiling. “You had to go through all that to get to the point?”

Fergie looked hurt. “Well, yeah.”

“He’s right, though,” Dredd said. “Wherever all that power went, we can follow it. We can find it!”

“Maybe,” Fergie said. “I don’t know, man . . .”

“You said you can do anything. So do it.”

Fergie looked at him. He had a good comeback but decided to keep it to himself. Dredd didn’t have a real good sense of humor. If Fergie had learned anything at all, he’d learned that.

“I’ll get the easy stuff first,” Fergie said. He tapped the keys, frowned, looked at the screen. “Let’s hope this thing’s still got the brain cells to—yeah, all
right!

“That’s your basic power record for the date in question everywhere close to Red Quad. Those little peaks are minor over-loads. This one, the big daddy, is the power surge you’re talking about, Judge. Now, let’s see where it
came
from, okay?”

Fergie’s fingers ran lightly over the keys. Hershey and Dredd stood over his shoulders.

“Okay, it’s coming up now, breaking down the power load to—huh?”

Dredd squeezed his arm. “What the hell’s that?”

“I don’t
know
what it is. Sorry. What I meant to say was . . .” He leaned in and squinted at the screen. Grid buildings rose up from the ground, shimmered for an instant, then vanished out of sight. Others popped up to take their place. Geometric mountain ranges blinked up and down, the beat of the city’s heart.

“I told you this computer’s glitched out,” Fergie said. “What it’s doing is taking us the long way around. It’s tracing back that sector of the city for, what? A hundred, maybe two hundred years. About a year every half a second.”

“Fascinating,” Dredd said. “When do we get to now?”

“There’s nothing I can do. It’ll run itself down and we’ll get to the source of our power drain.”

“It’s coming,” Hershey said. “That’s almost Red Quad today.”

“Couple of seconds . . . Okay, we’re home. Block War day.” Fergie nodded at the screen. Intricate capillaries of energy webbed the sector, merging at one central point, a glowing amber ball.

“It’s underground,” Dredd said. “No big surprise.”

“Way
underground,” Fergie added. “Nothing goes that deep, man. Nothing I ever heard of.”

“Wait. What’s that? That thing right there.” Dredd jabbed a finger at the screen.

“After-image,” Fergie said. “I could clean it up if everything was working right.”

“No. No you couldn’t,” Hershey said. “It’s there, where it’s supposed to be. See that profile? That’s the Liberty Lady. What’s left of her. The city relocated it, what, seventy-five years ago?”

Fergie slapped a fist into his palm. “I’ve
seen
her. They built one of those death traps across from Heavenly Haven. Built it right around that Lady of yours, swallowed it up again.”

Hershey looked at Dredd. “They built the Janus Project directly beneath it. Under the Liberty Lady.”

“Yeah,” Dredd said. “Where else?”

T
he crisp smell of ozone was in the air. Griffin could almost feel the energy, the awesome surge of raw power that throbbed beneath his feet. That much power was frightening to imagine. New life, the pulse of Creation itself . . .

They were together, Ilsa and Rico, at the far end of the lab. They turned as he entered. The thousand eyes of the computer cast dancing shards of color about the room. The big robot stood silently behind Rico, only its ruby glow visible in the shadows.

“Dredd got away from the Hunters,” Griffin told them. “Took some good men with him, too. Bastard’s got nine lives.”

“Not to worry,” Rico said. “Little brother won’t get in our way.”

Griffin stared at him. Rico looked bored with the whole thing, a man thinking about an afternoon nap.
Damn you! When this is over . . . when you’re not useful anymore .
. .

“Well, I’m glad you’re so confident,” he said aloud. “I’m pleased to hear we have no problems at all, Rico.”

“Not with Dredd, we don’t.” Rico made a note on a comm-board and passed it to Ilsa. “He’s going to be
seriously
outnumbered quite soon. Current figures please, Central?”

“Current figures, Council Judge Rico . . . The new DNA sample has been multiplexed as ordered . . . Gametes are dividing.”

“New—” Griffin turned on Rico.
“New
samples? What the hell’s going on here, Rico? I didn’t order any new samples.”

“No, but I did.” Rico grinned at Griffin’s expression. “That DNA in there was thirty years old. Sooner or later, you
have
to clean out the fridge.”

Ilsa laughed, the sound of silver bells. Griffin watched as she leaned in against him, watched her slide her hand down the length of his arm. He knew at once. Knew what had happened between them. It had all gone wrong. It was Rico who had seduced the woman, not the other way around, not the way he’d planned.

“You dare to do something like that? That sample was created with the greatest of care for the—” Griffin stopped, the cold chill of realization constricting the muscles in his throat. “What—what did you replace it with, Rico?”

“Uh-
oh,” Ilsa said. She buried her laughter in Rico’s sleeve.

“Oh, my God, no. You didn’t!”

“Please!”
Rico looked hurt. “You should be congratulating me, Mr. Chief Justice. I’m going to be a father.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Griffin told him. “The sample has to be pure of defects or the accelerator will form mutations. That’s what happened before!”

Rico laughed aloud.
“That’s
why Dredd’s so ugly.”

“No!”
Griffin stepped into his path, his fists clenched at his sides. “It’s
you,
for God’s sake, Rico. You were defective—your
copies
will be even more defective!”

Rico’s eyes blazed. “You’re lying, Griffin. All you are about is
control. Your
control. But the Janus Judges won’t be the puppets you want. They’ll be
my
brothers. Who do you think they’re going to listen to? You, or me?”

Griffin closed his eyes a moment. “Ilsa, you’re with him on this? You can’t be. You know better, you know what he
is.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever understood the full potential of this . . . opportunity, love.” She let her fingers rest on Rico’s chest. “This project needs vision. Not politics.”

“No, this can’t happen.” Griffin shook his head. “It
can’t.”

“I’m afraid there’s not much you can do about it, Chief Jus—”

Griffin took a quick step to one side, braced his feet and whipped a small pistol from his tunic.

“No, not again,” he said.
“No more like you!”

The robot’s arm came out of nowhere, wrapped a flexible steel tendril around Griffin’s arm. The weapon clattered to the floor.

“Get it . . . off of me, Rico!” Griffin’s eyes were wide with fear.
“Get . . . it . . . off!”

The robot snaked another arm around Griffin’s arm and lifted him off the floor. Griffin tugged at the tight bands of steel, kicked his legs in the air.

“Rico, for God’s sake . . . please!”

Rico shook his head sadly. “You never understood me, did you, Griffin? I’m alive, I’m real. I’m not something you made to carry out the trash.”

“Central . . . override!” Griffin strained against the robot’s grip. “Help meeee!”

“Request is denied, Chief Justice. The ABC War Robot is not linked to my main processor.”

“You need to keep up with the times,” Rico said. “Look away for just a tiny minute, technology passes you by.”

He watched the man dangling helplessly above, looked at his eyes, at the terror in his face. He felt a sense of completion, a great sense of peace.

“Fido, tear off Chief Justice Griffin’s arms and legs, please. Save the head for last.”

T
hey left the Lawmasters behind a rubble-strewn wall half a block away. Dredd wasn’t sure what kind of sensors Griffin might have above-ground, but he saw no reason to take any chances now.

Hershey caught up with him, peered over his shoulders into the near-darkened street. Dredd held a scanner in his hand, watching the line of green static dance across the tiny screen.

“Dead ahead,” Hershey said. “Right?”

“Down there.” Dredd thumbed shells into the Remington, racked the slide to bring number one into the chamber.

“Looks like you guys have got everything under control,” Fergie said. “I’ll watch the Lawmasters. Nobody’s going to get past me.”

“I might need you down there,” Dredd said. “To help shut down the Janus system.”

“I knew you were going to say that. I knew it.”

Dredd looked up. The street looked much the same. The debris from the block war had been scraped up and hauled away, but no one had bothered to fix the lights. In the glow from the faraway heights of Mega-City, he could see the broken profile of the Liberty Lady’s face, embedded in the ancient brick wall. One sad and empty eye, part of a cheek, a piece of a heavy brow. Higher in the wall, the suggestion of a hand, a rusted torch. Dredd looked away, studied the scanner, and led his group inside.