Judge Dredd (5 page)

Purple Ears dropped his weapon, gagged, and grabbed his belly. Dredd hit him again on the jaw. Hershey went to Briscoe at once. She raised his visor, saw what was there and shut her eyes.

Dredd looked at Briscoe for a full ten seconds. Then he stepped over to the man on the floor and poked him with his boot.

“You have obscenities written all over your head. Are you aware that’s a violation of the Law?”

Purple Ears looked up at Dredd. He spat a mouthful of blood on the floor and laughed.

“Hey. Are yous kiddin’ me or whats? You goin’ ’rest me or something, then do it, man!”

“Mega-City Municipal Code Three-Three-Four-Dash-Eight,” Dredd said. “Willful destruction of property. Two years.”

“Listen, pal—”

“Code Eleven-Dash-Fiver. Illegal possession of weapons. Five years. Code Thirty-Four-Dash-A. Resisting arrest. Twenty years . . .”

“All
right!”
Purple Ears raised his hands. “I gives up. You bes takin’ me in!”

“Niner-Eight-Zero-Four. Assault on a Judge with a deadly weapon . . .”

Purple Ears forced a weak grin through bloody teeth. “Don’t tell me. Life, right?”

“No,” Dredd said. “Death.”

He squeezed the trigger of his weapon. Squeezed it and didn’t stop. Purple Ears began to sizzle like bacon in a pan. Putrid steam rose up to the ceiling and the floor turned black.

Hershey swallowed hard but she wouldn’t look away. A Street Judge didn’t betray her feelings. She didn’t throw up. She maintained her cool at all times.

Dredd released the trigger.

“Court is adjourned,” he said.

B
lack-clad Judges, Mediks and Tekkies crowded the sixth-floor hallway of Heavenly Haven. Helmet spots bobbed in the grim surroundings, bringing more light to the murky walls and trashed-out floors than they’d seen in fifty years.

Briscoe’s body was the first one into the hall. The Mediks had scraped the remains of the three lawbreakers into one plastic bag, but Briscoe was one of their own. As the stretcher passed Hershey and Dredd, a gloved hand dropped from the blanket and swung limply above the floor. Hershey wanted to look away, but she forced herself to watch.

“He was a Rookie,” she said. “He was
my
Rookie. I was supposed to watch out for him, damn it!”

Judge Dredd shook his head. “Don’t blame yourself. He made the mistake, not you. His reactions were slow, judgement faulty. Didn’t concentrate on his work.”

Hershey turned on him and glared. “Well, that’s just great. I feel a lot better now. My God, Dredd, is that all you have to say? He got his
face
blown off his first week on the job!”

“He beat the odds, then. Mort-stats say five-point-seven days. If a Rookie gets past that, he’s got a four-in-seven chance of making it through the month. If he makes it past that—”

Dredd stopped. He raised a warning hand and cocked his head. Hershey followed his glance and saw a blur of motion down the hallway to their right. A quick snap of her chin brought the helmet spot to full, filling the corridor with harsh white light.

Hershey touched the butt of her weapon, then relaxed. The battered foodkart was rolling toward them again, wobbling drunkenly on its broken wheel.

“. . .
ummm, ummmm, yumm! Healthful and nutritious rationpaks, ready to eat
. . .”

“Somebody ought to turn that thing off,” Hershey said, “before it drives everyb—”

Dredd suddenly pushed her aside, stepped in the robot’s path, gripped his Lawgiver in both hands, and aimed it at the robot’s shiny dome.

“Halt! You have ten seconds to surrender. Ten . . . nine . . .”

“Dredd, take it easy,” Hershey said, “it’s a
servo-droid.”

“. . . Make your selection, please. Insert your card in the slot
. . .”

Dredd took one step forward and shoved the barrel of his weapon half a foot into the slot.

“. . . Make your select—
oh, shit!”

The front of the robot came totally unhinged. Boxy foodpaks in drab shades of gray, brown, and mildew-green spilled onto the floor. Half a second later, Fergie tumbled out of the back. He blinked in the unfamiliar light, staring at Hershey and Dredd like an animal caught in the woods.

“Listen,” he said, “I know what you guys are thinking, but that’s the way it looks . . . I mean, that’s the way it is but it’s not the way it looks—”

Dredd grabbed Fergie by the collar, lifted him straight off the floor and slammed him hard against the wall.

“Wuuuuh,
listen a minute, okay?” Fergie’s teeth rattled. He kicked his feet and grabbed at empty air.

“Mega-City Municipal Code One-Deuce-Niner-Six. Willful sabotage of a public droid. That’s six months, Citizen. Let’s see your card.”

“Come on, give me a break, Judge—Judge—” Fergie stared at the eagle and shield an inch before his eyes. “Judge—
Dredd?
Oh, my God . . .”

Fergie’s card fluttered out of his hand. Hershey snatched it out of the air. Snapping a scanner off of her weapons belt, she slipped Fergie’s card through the narrow slot once. A holo cube blossomed into life. Magenta words crawled across its face:

FERGUSON, HERMAN D.

MEGA-CITY 2, L.A.

SENTENCE: ASPEN PRISON

TIME SERVED: SIX MONTHS, THREE DAYS

PRISONER NUMBER: ASP-900764

CHARGES: TAMPERING OF CITY DROIDS . . .

COMPUTERS . . . CASH MACHINES . . . ROBO-TAXIS

RELEASED: MEGA-CITY 1, SENTENCE COMPLETED

Dredd scanned the rest of the message, and shook his head in disgust. “You got off of the shuttle this afternoon. You haven’t been out of jail five hours, Ferguson.” He turned to Hershey. “He’s a habitual. Automatic five-year sentence.”

“What!”
Fergie turned white. “Five
years?
No, no
way.
Look, I didn’t have any choice. Those droogs were in my
room.
They hit me on the head. Come on, look at my head. Will you
look
at my head, just look at it, okay? What was I supposed to do, jump out the damn window!”

“It’s legal,” Dredd said.

“It’s suicide,” Fergie shouted. “It’s six floors down!”

“Case closed. Five years.”

“Wait
a minute!”

“I’ve got a question,” Hershey said. “How did you do that?”

“How did I do what?”

“Work that food droid. That’s a highly complex electronic device. Only a trained, skilled professional could possibly do that.”

“Yeah? You’re kidding.” Fergie grinned. “What you do is you cross the yellow wire with the blue wire. Unless you got a Model E, then you gotta—
uuuk!”

Dredd let go and Fergie dropped to the ground. “You have just made a confession, Citizen. Duly dated and recorded.” He nodded at a Street Judge standing in the hall. “Take this person away. Next shuttle back to Aspen Prison.”

The Street Judge walked up to Fergie. Snake-locks whipped around his wrists.

“I am telling you, I didn’t have any choice. I didn’t
do
anything!”

Fergie’s voice echoed down the hall. He dragged his heels, plowing two clean furrows on the floor.

“You think that’s good, the foodkart stuff?” he called out to Hershey. “You ought to see me with a Poker-droid!”

“Gambling devices are illegal,” Dredd said.

Hershey wiped her hands along the sides of her uniform. “The guy’s scared to death, you know? He might’ve been telling the truth. He’s just a scam artist. He’s not going to be hanging around with crazies, Dredd.”

Dredd shook his head. “I’ve heard every sad story in Mega-City, Hershey. What did you expect him to say? Lawbreakers are liars. Liars are criminals. Criminals must be punished to the full extent of the Law.”

Dredd gave Hershey a curious look. “These are all things you know as well as I do. Why do I get the feeling you do not clearly understand what I’m saying? You are familiar with the Articles. You know the Legal Code.”

“I am completely familiar with
every
aspect of my work, Judge Dredd.” She snapped down her visor to mask her eyes. “I do not need you or anyone else to tell me how to perform my duty!”

“I’m pleased to hear that, Judge Hershey. Thank you for clarifying the matter.”

“You’re welcome,
Judge!”

Hershey stalked off, taking careful measured steps, keeping her back straight. She was determined not to betray her feelings in front of Dredd again.
Damn the man,
she thought,
is there anything inside him, any soul, anything behind those armor-plated eyes?

There had to be. Every person had something in his heart—some small light of understanding, some connection to the rest of humanity. Even the filth who’d slaughtered those people in the street and murdered Briscoe. It was hard to imagine them as members of the human race, but they were. And Dredd, as far above their kind as the towers of Mega-City were above Heavenly Haven . . . Dredd was human, too.

Downstairs, Hershey stood in the night and looked out over the ruined neighborhood. The street was a combat zone. Broken glass littered the ground, and the tenement walls were blackened by fire. The bodies of the victims had been hastily removed, and maintenance trucks were spraying down the street. By first light, the place would probably look better than it had in years.

She could hear the wail of sirens in the night. There were fifty million people in Mega-City One. Fifty million packed into three hundred twenty square miles. A hundred and twenty years before, a city with another name had stood here. That city had held
eight-
million people, and in the same three hundred twenty square miles!

Crime had nearly overwhelmed the city then, and there had been no Judges to keep the vast and lawless population under control.

If we ever lost the upper hand here . . .

Hershey shuddered at the thought. Maybe she was wrong and Dredd was right. Maybe they couldn’t afford to understand . . . maybe there was
no
way to let their guard down. Article One, carved on the high wall at the entry to the Hall of Justice read:

FIRST THERE IS THE LAW.

It was something Dredd understood. That there was no other way. No other means to assure that civilization survived.

Maybe I’d better think about that instead of feeling sorry for some miserable little groon in a foodkart. Maybe I’d better think about how to stay alive . . .

She walked out into the street and studied the burned and twisted mass of metal that had been her Lawmaster half an hour before.

That’s another thing I’d better do. I’d better start thinking how I’m going to write this sucker up.

She kicked a piece of blackened chrome and sent it clanging along the street.

“It better be one hell of a report,” she said aloud. “Some jerko at the Hall has a real bad day, I’ll be
buying
this wreck for the rest of my natural life . . .”

If the Hall of Justice is the heart of Mega-City, the Chamber of the High Council of Judges is its soul. It has been said that if a priest (formerly, a religious practitioner) from the fourteenth century were suddenly transported to this great chamber, he would be struck by the majesty, the size, the stark and unworldly beauty of the place. He would gaze in disbelief at the vaulted ceiling sweeping nearly four hundred feet overhead, its graceful span of arches broken only by shimmering planes of cobalt-blue, lit by artificial suns.

This priest would likely fall to his knees and clasp his hands in prayer, certain that here was the Cathedral of Heaven, that he was, indeed, in the presence of his mythical Creator. He would soon learn he was wrong. He would find neither “love” nor “forgiveness,” or the debilitating emotions of compassion and understanding, so often associated with the “tragedy of the misguided lawbreaker.” He would learn that these false values which weakened society for centuries have been cast aside in favor of the more practical and realistic standards of our time. He would learn that our world has its own definition of Judgement Day. That we have given new meaning to the ancient concept of “the quick and the dead.” He would learn that the god worshipped here is named Law . . .

—History of the Mega-Cities

James Olmeyer, III

Chapter VII: “The Chamber”

2191

T
he room was small.

The walls were painted a rich shade of blue. There were three comfortable chairs, an antique glass table and a video screen mounted on the wall. The room was just off the hallway leading to the Chamber of the Council of Judges. It was used as a waiting room for those occasions when the Council allowed officials, high administrators, and prominent Citizens to bring their business before them.

This was not such an occasion. The session that was about to begin was closed to all but the Council members themselves. And, though no one would admit where they’d heard such information, it was said that this meeting was an emergency session of the gravest order. Even those who had no reliable source in high places had reason to believe this was so. There was only one topic of note in Mega-City at the moment, the only subject covered on the video news: Terror was loose in the streets, and the city was caught in a web of fear.

“This is Vardis Hammond, and I’m standing in front of the ruins of Heavenly Haven Block. As you can see behind me, city workers are still busy sifting through the burned and twisted debris from the savage battle that took place earlier this evening. Fifty-three Citizens have been hospitalized . . . five of them children. The death count is nineteen so far, and many victims are still on the critical list. The perpetrators themselves are among the dead. They have tentatively been identified as ‘crazed squatters’ who were allegedly killed in Summary Execution by Judge Dredd himself. The number of squatters involved has yet to be determined, due to the difficulty in separating the individual bodies
. . .”

Judge Dredd looked at the video screen, but paid little attention to what he saw. He stood in the center of the room, his helmet under his arm. He did not consider sitting in one of the chairs. It made him uncomfortable to place his body in a position where precious seconds might be lost if he were called upon to act quickly. This was how Judges lost their lives, by letting their guards down for that one single instant when they should have been fully alert. This was why Rookie Briscoe was dead. He had taken his mind off his business for the blink of an eye. It seldom took longer than that.