Psykogeddon (23 page)

"I suppose so," said Wheems, though he had no idea and cared less what the Brit-Cit Senior Judge thought it might be.

"WHUT?" bellowed the Brit-Cit Senior Judge with the ear-trumpet. "WHUT THE FELLER SAY?"

"He said," said the first, "that... heh... at last we have our reward. A down-payment on it, in any case." His face split open in what he might or might not have thought of as a joyful smile, but was in fact a leer of infirm glee. "Now, at last, we truly shall live forever."

In the Mega-City Psyko-Block, Dredd and Drago San - that is, Efil Drago San dragging Dredd behind him - left the holding cell and headed for the elevator that would take them up, again, to the chambers of Doctor Bob. The corridors were empty, as ever, and there was, as ever no reason for them to be anything else. Indeed, the simple fact that Drago San was out, and apparently able to move at will, was bad news enough.

There was a smell in the air like ozone. The walls seemed to buzz with accumulated static charge, the sense of it pulsing on the brain with an enervating pressure.

Dredd, for his part, in his weakened state and after realising that struggling was doing no good against the impellors of Drago San's floater, had gone limp to conserve what was left of his energy, taking his weight on his kneepads. His resources were so exhausted now that it was an effort to even speak. The only hope, at this point, would be for some new factor to occur and change the situation.

They reached the chambers of Doctor Bob to find that the situation had indeed changed - it had changed for the worse. As the elevator platform locked into place, Dredd hauled his head up to see the somewhat underdressed forms of Nurse Pebbles and Nurse Bambam, standing stock-still, their vacant faces turned to the form of Doctor Bob in a kind of mindlessly worshipful awe.

Doctor Bob, his dark form cradled in a crawling tracery of electrical tendrils from the emitters, was floating two feet from the floor, his arms akimbo. Around him the accumulators juddered and roared. His floating form rotated slowly, light from the emitters playing over his face, shifting and reforming it by some real-time variety of subsurface-scattering. His eyes were closed in what appeared to be, in the shifting light, a state of absolute serenity.

"My word," said Efil Drago San, loudly and jovially. "What a quite impressive degree of lift. Now, if we've all quite finished playing around, it's time we thought about arranging my final escape."

He raised the hand attached to Dredd by cuffs, the deceptive and disproportionate strength of his upper body lifting Dredd off his knees in a parody of a rag doll.

"And the first order of the day," Drago San continued, "is to cut this inconvenience off from me once and for all."

The slow rotation of Doctor Bob came to a halt. The flat black disks of his spectacle-masked eyes regarded Drago San and the captive Dredd impassively.

"Years," he said, simply and in a perfectly reasonable tone of voice.

"Years?" said Drago San, still all smiles and joviality. He merely wished for some expansion on what it meant for someone to go around saying "years" for no immediately apparent reason.

"Years, I spent," said Doctor Bob, "in Psi-Division Training, looking for the magic key that would unlock the things in people's heads and open them to me. Years of trying, years of failing, and when they found out I was pretending, they just threw me away."

There was no trace of bitterness or anger, just the flat tones of one coolly working on some interesting puzzle out loud.

"And how lucky that was for all concerned," said Efil Drago San. "It put you in the perfect position for me and my associates to give you a whole new life. Do you remember that, Robert? Who it was who gave you a whole new life?"

There had been a slight but marked shift in Drago San's manner, Dredd realised. Before, he had merely been talking with a subordinate, telling that subordinate what was going to happen next. Now it was as if he was being forced, however gently, to remind this supposed subordinate as to who, in actual fact, was in charge here.

"I remember..." said Doctor Bob. "I remember not having any choice. I made the best of it. I made friends. I took people and cut their heads up and made them into friends. Put them all together and linked them up."

"That's right, Robert," said Drago San. If his sense of amiable suggestion had been slipping, it was now on the point of becoming a positive landslide. He spoke in the voice of one speaking to a child - one who was getting angry at that child's antics.

"You took some of the inmates," he continued, "hundreds of them, those with a sufficient degree of latent psionic talent. You rewired their minds, set up a resonant mesh that you can control - but you'll remember
why
you did that, Robert? Who you did it for? You set it up for
me
, Robert. A psionic bomb, set to blast this sector of the city, sending those with a propensity for it into mass and instantaneous psychosis and allowing me to slip away in the confusion."

"Made it nice," said the floating Doctor Bob. "Made it into my own little world."

"You made it for me, Robert," said Drago San. "It's not your world, you made it for me, and you're damned well going to do what I tell you with it!"

"I... don't think so." For a moment the floating Doctor Bob sounded uncertain.

And then, abruptly, as though some internal switch had been thrown, he became decisive.

"Do you know," he said resolutely, "I don't think I shall. Years, as I said, I spent building up this little sinecure, setting up the processes which will extend it, set the city outside to rights... and if you think I'll allow you to come traipsing in as if you own the place, telling me what to do, and bringing the attention of the Justice Department with you, then you've got another thing coming."

It might have been Dredd's imagination, but it seemed that the more Doctor Bob gained in confidence, the more his speech-patterns and tone echoed those of Efil Drago San himself.

"Now you listen here, you jumped-up little lunatic with a god complex," snapped Efin Drago San, now with genuine anger. "I made you; I can damn well break you. You'll do as you're told."

"Shan't," said the floating Doctor Bob with finality. "Who are you to tell me what to do? And if it's a matter of people breaking..."

Tendrils of energy arced from his splayed fingers, striking the still forms of Nurse Pebbles and Nurse Bambam. The energy seemed to be of a different nature than that which had recently struck Dredd, energizing rather than debilitating in its effect.

The bodies of Nurse Pebbles and Nurse Bambam shuddered, and then turned to advance on Drago San and Dredd. Their movements now were not of the lightning-quick variety they had been when they had killed the Tactical Arms guards. Now they held a stiff and lurching quality, as though in some manner zombified.

A sickly light pulsed from their eyes. Their progress seemed inexorable.

"Things not going exactly how you planned?" Dredd croaked to Efil Drago San.

"You might say that," said Drago San. For the first time there was an active note of worry in his voice. "You might say that indeed. I rather think, in the figurative sense at least, that now might be the time to run."

SIXTEEN

"
Those who believe they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something.
"

- Aldous Huxley

Point Counterpoint

Judge Tregan didn't bother to hit the suspect hard. You didn't have to hit hard to break the nose. There was a wet crack and blood gushed down to stain the man's skinny chest.

"Groke," the suspect blubbered. His name was Gorban Wiggles and he was a low-grade street kif dealer. Hardly worth the effort. "Oo groke by dose!" Also a master of the drokking obvious.

"Settle down, creep." Tregan produced the envelope he had "found" behind the couch, which Wiggles had not technically been holding at the time he had made the bust. "Lot of stuff here. Looks like it isn't even with Intent to Deal. Could be with Intent to Supply."

The difference was in degree the effective variation being an exponential jump in cube-time.

Wiggles looked desperate. There were now two practical options open to him. Unfortunately for all concerned he chose the wrong one.

"Lissen," he said. "I can give you people. I can give you names and-"

"Hello?" Tregan rapped him sharply upside the head. "Try again."

Wiggles shrugged. "Usual?"

"Triple," said Judge Tregan. "Otherwise some people might find out you tried to give them up."

Tregan left the conapt and headed for the hab-block transit racks with his Lawmaster, keeping an eye out for potential threat. A lone Judge was an easy target for anyone who felt like having a crack, and Tregan was quite relieved that his shift was almost over.

In the Sector Seven Precinct House, he met up with Judge Martok, fell into step with him and strolled through corridors that were, quite by chance, more out of the way and less frequented than others. "No problems," he said. "The Widows and Orphans Fund is healthy as ever."

"I'm glad to hear it, Chris," Martok said. "Look for a little something extra when we spread it out."

Tregan nodded. Felis Martok had been his supervising Judge years back, when he had been nothing more than a green Cadet.

Martok had shown Tregan the ropes and kept an almost paternal eye on him thereafter, giving him a hand up after he himself had made full Judge. Every operation in the Precinct worth talking about went through Martok - at least, every operation that involved the unofficial lining of the utility-belt pouches of the Judges on the street.

He was a good friend to have in your corner, what with the SJS taking their orders from Chief Judge Hershey these days, and actually doing their proper jobs. The crackdowns on the worst of the corruption that notoriously infected the Precinct Houses of Mega-City One were getting worse, but through long years of experience Martok had managed not to put so much as a blip on the Special Judiciary sonar.

Martok stopped by a drinking fountain and drank. His eyes, however, flicked from one end of the aisle to the other, making sure that they were effectively alone.

"I hear that one of the new lambs in the precinct has gone astray," he said.

"Breen?" Tregan said. Breen was one of the new crop of Cadets who had yet to be told the score in all its slightly dodgy details. Details that were only dodgy if you didn't have your mind right, of course. "I know him. Friendly enough, just a bit too fond of being shocked to the knickers at the minor sins of the world. He'll wise up."

"I hear a rumour that he might be Covert Ops."

The Justice Department Covert Operations Squad was to the Wally Squad what the East-Meg crater was to a hole in the ground: same general deal, but seriously worse news. Whereas the SJS liked throwing its weight around, and thus were relatively easy to see coming and avoid, Covert Ops were capable of very slowly and deliberately sneaking up and planting a knife in your back.

"Really?" Tregan became thoughtful. "I don't know. I don't think so. I usually have a nose for these things."

"Unless they're running him on deep cover." Martok shrugged. "Well, maybe he is and maybe he isn't. I do know for a fact that he's tried to make a couple of appointments with Hall of Justice personnel, and he won't take a telling. I think Breen needs to be told a little bit
harder
, you get me?"

"How hard?" asked Tregan.

Judge Martok had a thoughtful look on his face, then pulled his Lawgiver from his boot and, very calmly, unloaded a hi-ex round into Tregan's stunned face.

"Oh, about as hard as that, I should think," he said.

In the Hall of Justice stratopad comms-centre, Detective Judge Treasure Steel sat at a console that could have probably contacted Mars and run the entire colony by remote control. She had come here after being informed, somewhat brusquely, in her opinion, that the Justice Department did not lay on such fripperies for visitors as simple payphone call-boxes.

"Missing you, babe," she was saying. "We should be heading home soon, though, once they get their collective finger out and finish prepping the strat-bat for launch. How's Callum?"

"The little bastard's having one of his days," said Terry, in the kind of exasperatedly loving tone that allows mothers to get away with calling their offspring little bastards, on the basis that the words themselves are diametrically opposed to the true facts of the matter. "You know, if I didn't know it was impossible, I'd say some of your boss's bloody DNA got into the mix. He gets that look, you know what I mean, just before he starts throwing a tantrum."

Terry was, of course, Detective Judge Steel's wife, and Callum was their infant son, the production of whom had involved a "naturally-based" procedure currently popular with female Brit-Cit couples, in which the genetic coding of one mother was implanted in the gene-cleaned spermatozoa of a donor. The precise method of combining the resultant material with an egg was then a private matter between the couple concerned.

Rather than involve a stranger, the motile component had been provided by Treasure's superior officer in the New Old Bailey, Chief Detective Judge Armitage, who, as he had said, didn't have any other use for it.