Psykogeddon (13 page)

In Brit-Cit, it seemed, they did things in another way. When a Judge got too old to be of any use, they simply promoted him.

The jury - or more properly, the Board of Adjudicators who would make the final decision on the result of this hearing under the direction of Chief Judge Hershey - was made up of five Brit-Cit Senior Judges. The Sacred and Most Worshipful Order of the Star Chamber.

Senior
being the operative term, in the same way that "senior citizen" is the polite way of saying "drooling, piss-spraying waste of space who, in any reasonable world, should be shot in the head, as a matter of course, for standing at a store checkout, paying for a single tin of cat meat (which they probably eat themselves) with the exact change from a coin purse."

The other sort are even worse, of course. Whether of the curtain-twitching sub-variety who have passersby shuddering with revulsion as they sense the mordant presence of a Nosy Parker skulking in the dark, or the variety who just blunder around white-knuckled and seething with barely-suppressed ire at the goings-on of the youth of today, they seem to exist in a state of mean-spirited spite at the fact that those younger than them (everyone else in the world) have the audacity to go around breathing oxygen like they own it.

Such people were, of course, the last ones who would wish to be in the business of pronouncing informed Judgement upon anything. They sat here now, in the Chamber of the Chief Judge, dressed in a variety of scraps culled from Judges' uniforms over a century of Brit-Cit styles. Several of them were plugged into portable life-support systems, which wheezed and creaked and bubbled almost as much as the bodies of those who weren't.

You could tell by their eyes - those eyes that were not filmed by cataracts or simply vacant with terminal senility - that this Board of Adjudicators wasn't going to let these Mega-City upstarts get away with anything.

In the case of Efil Drago San, things were looking black - or at least, a quite appalling shade of urine-stained beige - for the Justice Department of Mega-City One.

"On the matter of evidence," said Barnstable Wheems, "we have evidence of our own to present. Evidence concerning events in the Boranos system, shortly after my client was taken into custody, gathered by means of recording equipment situated inside his mobility-pod..."

"That's impossible!" Dredd growled, from his position beside SJS-Judge Slithe. "Drago San has spent a year in the Iso-cube system. No recording devices of any kind showed up in the security scans. What are you trying to pull here, Drago San?" He glared at the immobilisation-field containing the accused.

The field was supposed to allow full facial movement and speech, but Drago San just stared out blankly, his eyes glazed, nothing but a sense of deadness inside them.

If Dredd didn't know better, hadn't had a perfectly normal conversation with Drago San mere hours before - so far as any conversation with a mass-murdering master-criminal can be considered normal - then it was almost possible to believe that he was suffering from Cube-psychosis.

"Passive recording and storage," said Wheems, taking it upon himself to answer. "Integral to the structure of the unit. A troubleshooting measure, I believe, allowing the manufacturers to run diagnostics as to the situation and circumstances of any failure of the unit. There's no reason why it should show up under anything until power was plugged through it to play that gathered material back."

"I don't believe you," said Dredd, shortly. "Our sensors are sophisticated enough to pick up anything like that, active or passive. And believe you me, we'll be taking Drago San's drokking floater apart under a microscanner to prove it."

"Do so," said Wheems. "You'll find matters are precisely as I say, now that you know what to actually look for. In the meantime, I suggest that I be allowed to present my evidence - on the understanding that you are at liberty to confirm or deny, at any time, whether it conforms to your recollection of events."

"That seems fair," said Chief Judge Hershey, glancing over to the board of adjudicators to see how they were taking it all in.

The Brit-Cit Senior Judges, in fact, didn't look like they were taking much of the proceedings in at all. Each of those who were not merely sitting and drooling, every bit as blank as Efil Drago San, appeared to be looking in a different direction, in the celebrated manner of one following the flight-path of a nonexistent fly.

"I'll allow it," said Chief Judge Hershey, somewhat lamely. "Proceed."

"Very well," said Wheems. His own sense of confidence and authority seemed to be growing in direct proportion to the degree which the Mega-City Judges were finding themselves nonplussed. He gestured to the techs manning the consoles. "Proceed, if you'll be so kind, with the playback..."

Backflash: 01:27:2125

"Drokk!"

In the fungus jungles of Boranos, the floater-pod of Efil Drago San stalled against the marked unevenness in terrain caused by the felled mass of some decomposing mushroom the size of a tree.

The pod was calibrated for flat surfaces, like the floor of a corridor off the gangways of a ship, and continually overcompensating. The reaction jerked Dredd back and almost caused his feet to slither out from under him.

"Apologies," said Efil Drago San, in the unconcerned tones of one who is not, in fact, sorry in the slightest. "I do so hate being a burden."

"You're a drokking liability at this point." Dredd grabbed for the floater-pod to steady himself. "I should just pitch you out of this. Leave you shackled somewhere and see if I can use this thing to gain some height. See if I can catch our bearings."

They had been wandering lost in the fungus jungles since crash-landing their escape pod, ejected from a
Justice One
hijacked by privateers working for the Boranos Accord.

The "vegetation" of the jungle was incompatible with human biological processes; their only hope was to locate the base to which
Justice One
was being taken before they died of starvation.

In this the pair was handicapped, somewhat more than they might otherwise have been, in that they were handcuffed together. The smack-shackles were standard Justice Department issue when transporting a wanted fugitive - their failsafe mechanisms would not open until they were back in the secure environment of the ship.

"A fine idea in principle," said Efil Drago San. "Though unfortunately, entirely unworkable in practice. After the... incident, years ago, that cost me the use of my legs, the control systems of the pod were directly melded to my spinal column. Man and machine inextricably linked, as it were... unless you really do feel competent enough for a spot of microsurgical whittling with your boot knife?"

"Well, at least you could use it to drokking keep up," Dredd snarled.

Drago San snorted. "As ever, Dredd," he said, "you're rather missing the point. The functionality is such that the floater is a replacement for my legs and nothing more. Too inherently powerful and I'd be forever braining myself on ceilings and shooting through walls - not my idea of a good time."

"I could think of worse for you," Dredd said. "Shame you didn't die in the landing, all things considered. I could have just hacked myself free of you and left you behind." He paused thoughtfully. "That still might happen, you give me any more trouble."

"Empty threats, Dredd?" said Efil Drago San. "That's uncharacteristic of you. I shall put it down to the stress of recent events. Need I remind you that I'm in your custody? That works both ways. It means, in a very real sense, that I am under your protection."

"Yeah," said Dredd. "Well let's see how long that protection lasts when I'm forced to choose between protecting a creep like you and protecting someone relatively innocent."

"Oh, come now, Dredd," said Drago San. "Surely, any small misdemeanours I might have committed in your fair city-state-"

"Misdemeanours?" Dredd exclaimed. "You killed thousands, maybe tens of thousands in that Killing Zone of yours, and broadcast the results to half the city. And when we finally caught up with you, you tried to destroy an entire Sector!"

Drago San shrugged. "Well, we can none of us be held to blame for the mistakes made in our youth."

"Youth?" Dredd spat. "That was six months ago."

"Well, we're none of us getting any younger."

"Jokes?" Dredd was used to creeps who cloaked their acts in irony, masking their confessions of atrocity with a sarcasm that spoke of a recognition of how bad those atrocities had ultimately been.

With Drago San, however, there was no sense of anything but a massive unconcern - as though he genuinely believed every word he said. Maybe it was this famous dry Brit-Cit wit everybody was talking about.

"You see human life as so worthless you can make jokes?" Dredd said.

"Such as they are," said Drago San impassively. "Oh, I'm quite aware of the value of human life. To their credit, truth be told. You're forgetting I grew up in Puerto Lumina, one of the few places in this world that never lay down, rolled over and bought into your so-called Justice system."

"And Puerto Lumina is a living hellhole," said Dredd.

"A hell - as you so rightly say - hole. And who made it so? We saw how you stamped out all opposition in Luna-Cit and the other lunar colonies, crushing thousands as you shoved them into the mechanism of your Law, and how you kowtowed down and licked the hands of the oxy-corps like lapdogs.

"What did you get for it, Dredd? How much did they pay you to sell off-world humanity into slavery?"

The accusation, coming as it did from out of left field, caught Dredd utterly unprepared. He knew that the situation had never been like that in the Luna colonies, effectively stranded by the post-Rad War breakdown, but he could see how the facts could be twisted to fit the accusation.

"The Justice Department never takes bribes," he said flatly. "Mega-City One isn't Brit-Cit."

"You mean you never even
got
anything out of it?" said Drago San in some astonishment. "That just makes it all the worse."

"In the harsh environment of a Lunar colony," Dredd said, "measures had to be taken. Sacrifices made. Discipline enforced."

"Quite possibly," said Drago San. "That does not, however, automatically have to involve the crash-depressurisation of entire family living quarters on the basis of getting a little behind on the air-tax. Even at worst, we of Puerto Lumina wanted no truck with things like that. We refused to join your Bright New Dawn for Justice - and what did you do to us?"

"We left you alone," Dredd said. "Left you to your own devices. You wanted your own little world, and that's what you got. You made your bed and we let you lie in it, nothing more, nothing less."

"You instituted a blanket embargo!" Drago San spat.

For the first time, it seemed, cracks had appeared in his shell of utter insouciance. Dredd could see the anger and hatred boiling beneath.

"Knowing what that would mean! Nothing going out, nothing coming in. We had air and water recycling facilities in place, of course - but our food production was still in its first stages. Have you
seen
food riots, Dredd? Have you killed an entire family for a single nutri-pak? Have you seen a society degenerate into cannibalism?" Drago San sighed and abruptly fell silent. It was as though the shutters of disassociation had come crashing down again. Once again, there was nothing to see but suave calmness.

"An equilibrium was eventually achieved, of course," he continued, in composed and perfectly reasonable tones. "We pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps, with some small degree of help from our friends. Order was finally restored, though it was of course too late for me. I'd acquired something of a taste for it."

Dredd recalled the tenebrous savagery of Puerto Lumina the footage of which was commonly used in Justice Department propaganda concerning the alternatives to the Justice system as a means of governance.

"You acquired a
taste
for cannibalism?" he asked.

"Not as such. Nothing so on the nose, however pleasantly it might be cooked. More for the act of killing as the preferred option for anything I might want." Drago shrugged massively. "Who knows? Had I been born into other circumstances, things might have been quite different."

There was a pause.

"And that's it, is it?" said Dredd. "After all that, the point of your story is that you're not responsible for your actions? That society's to blame?"

"Oh, no, Dredd!" For an instant Drago San seemed quite genuinely shocked. "Heaven forbid that I should for one second attempt something so trite!

"I simply choose to kill, as and when I may, and I make no bones about it. At least, not since the dietary conditions of my surroundings improved. I just thank your Justice Department for handing me that option on a plate."

NINE

"
I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmic, primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable.
"

-
The Mikado

"Judge Joe Dredd," said Barnstable Wheems, consulting the information streaming across the screen of his data-pad. "The 'Joe' being your full name, as opposed to a contraction of 'Joseph' or some such.