Wear Iron

by Al Ewing

  Strader ran his fingertips over the stubble on his chin, wondering if it was worth a shave, if he could change himself any more completely. Razor burn was a red flag for any Jay looking to fill a day’s stop-and-search quota, but part of him wanted to risk it. There was something about the five o’clock shadow scraping the pads of his fingers—something unprofessional, something that felt like bad luck. He shook his head, as if to dispel the urge—superstition was an occupational hazard in his line of work, and something to be avoided. He’d seen too many otherwise-good men take one in the back of the head because their minds were on a missing plasteen rabbit-foot charm or a hat left on a bed in a motel somewhere. Not him. Casting a last look at his own reflection, he dried his hands under the air-jets and walked back into the bar.

  He’d picked the joint at random—the Tony Hart Working Cit’s Club, a no-account hole buried deep in a block he’d never set foot in before. It was a relatively safe place to work through his options, to try and think of a way of squaring things with the Cowboy and getting out from the net he knew had to be closing in on him. He wasn’t there for any company but his own.

  So when Bud Mooney waddled up out of nowhere, a wide, almost malicious grin creasing his chubby cheeks, Strader told him to go to hell.

  Mooney was poison in the circles Strader worked in. Two hundred pounds of gut and sweat, crammed into a pre-war op-art jacket that made him stick out like a sore thumb. He couldn’t run or even move that fast—word had it that he took his leaks into a bag on his leg, the legacy of the same run-in with the Jaybirds that’d sent him for a ten-year holiday in the rockcrete hotel and given him his nervous twitch. When he talked, one side of his face jerked spasmodically upwards into a rictus sneer. He kept a hip flask full of bathtub hooch in an inside pocket to calm the jitters, and after a few pulls—common in any long conversation—his speech became even more audibly slurred, and his eyes flickered and rolled nervously back and forth in his head.

  Bud Mooney was a wreck, pure and simple. A wreck and a liability.

  There was even a rumour doing the rounds that he might be a snitch, or at least half of one—at one point his name still carried some water among the older school of yegg, but over the past few months, those few friends who’d kept in contact had developed a serious blackmail problem. Those who didn’t pay a modest fee to an anonymous voice on the vidphone before a job would find themselves pinched by the Judges during—whoever was behind the scam was probably a Judge themselves, or at least had their ear. But the trail went back to Mooney, and now there was nobody left willing to say two words to him.

  It hadn’t always been that way. Back when the jacket was still in style, before the ten-stretch and the twitch and the urine bag, Bud Mooney had been one to watch, the undisputed king in a world of princes, a master of his chosen art. Stick-up kids still talked about the Bullet Train Heist of ’62—they’d made a movie out of it, though it’d gone straight to vid-slug—but if you pointed Bud Mooney out now and told them how that stumbling, alcoholic wad of blubber had been the mastermind for that caper... if you were lucky, they’d only laugh in your face.

  And who could blame them? That Bud Mooney had died with a dumdum bullet in his bladder, and now a fat, broken ghost shuffled through the streets in his place, dreaming impossible dreams of jobs that’d never happen, carried out by crews who could never trust him again, in between pulls of a dented metal flask in an eternally twitching hand. A human shipwreck.

  The shipwreck made another attempt at a smile. The twitch turned it into a leer. “Paul? Paul Strader?” He had teeth missing. Strader winced in disgust.

  “I said go to hell, Mooney.”

  But Mooney didn’t go anywhere. He shuffled closer, pulling out a chair and carefully cramming his bulk into it, smiling obsequiously in between sips of some cheap soygin that smelled like lighter fluid. “Listen, I got a job for someone like you.”

  Strader closed his eyes, shaking his head and hoping the other man would vanish away like a daydream. What were the odds of running into Mooney here? He felt a momentary flash of paranoia shoot down his spine—if someone like Mooney could find him here, the Judges or the Cowboy’s people probably weren’t far behind. He didn’t know which of those options was worse.

  On the one hand, he’d be safe from the Cowboy in the cubes. But on the other hand, death might be preferable—even that kind. Maybe it was because he’d never been inside, even for the basic thirty-day misdemeanour stretch that every cit seemed to hit sometime or other, but there was something about the idea of those four grey rockcrete walls closing in on him that filled him with a primal terror.

  To be cubed, he knew, would be like being buried alive. Even if the Cowboy took things slow with Strader, he’d be dead and out of it eventually. But he was looking at a life stretch for the fiasco in the jewellery store—and medical technology was only getting better. He could live for a hundred years, maybe a hundred and fifty, crammed into a tiny rockcrete box, spending day after lonely day praying for another atom war to finish him off quickly...

  Strader wet his lips, shooting a narrow glance at Mooney. “Why are you even here? How did you find me?” He tried and failed to keep the panic out of his voice.

  Mooney heard it, and smiled. “Don’t get your u-fronts in a bunch, Paul.” He held up a shaky hand, a little conciliatory gesture. “Pure coincidence, I swear. See, I got this hab across the street, over in Daniels Block—nothin’ special, just a dump on the twenty-second floor, but it’s got a real good view of the pedway into Tony Hart.”

  He grinned a little wider, and Strader resisted the urge to smash his glass into those rotten teeth. Maybe save Mooney a few creds at the robo-dentist. “Anyway,” the fat man babbled on, “I like to sit and watch the people go by. I had to sell the vid—I got bills—and, y’know, you gotta watch somethin’. Anyway, guess who I saw? I mean, you had black hair, so maybe I thought I’d got it wrong, but I’d know that face anywhere and it sure walked like you do—”

  Strader slumped back in his seat, listening to Mooney describe how he’d followed Strader into the block, then searched the block directory for a likely bar, some dive where people might go not to be found. He felt a wave of depression stealing over him, like a heavy blanket. Mooney’s story sounded like it was at least half a lie, but if it was true—was that how easy it was? All his disguise, all his preparation, and it had been seen through by a half-smart rummy in less than a second.

  He thought back to the young Judge, the one who he was sure had caught a glimpse of him—Dredd. That kid had infinite cameras at his disposal, most of them well out of wireless range—plus countless audio bugs, chemical tracers, human snitches and snoops, the whole sweep of surveillance available to Justice Department. Every day there were more eyes and ears on the streets. All “for the good of the citizenry,” of course—but all the same, all Dredd had to do was be as smart as Bud Mooney and Strader would be warming a cube by nightfall.

  Mooney grinned and drained his soygin, then glanced left and right like some animal watching for its natural predator. When he was sure the barman wasn’t looking, he tipped a measure of whatever rotgut swilled around his hip-flask into the empty glass. “Screw ’em,” he chuckled, obscenely pleased with this small piece of cheapness. “Crappy drinks here anyway.”

  He leant back and raised his glass of Grud-knew-what in a parody of a toast. “So here we are. Feels like it’s fate, you know? Like it’s meant. You walkin’ past my window like that. Just when I got something lined up that’s perfect for a guy like you. A professional.” He meant it as flattery, but coming out of his mouth it sounded like trash talk. “Seriously, I got the sweetest score you ever heard of, all but set up—just waiting—and I just need maybe three guys, you included. But, y’know, people don’t take my calls these days, so...”

  Strader shook his head. There it was. The pitch he’d known was coming since he’d spotted Mooney approaching. He sighed, feeling that depression stealing over him again, and idly wo
ndering if Bud Mooney was the type to drop a dime on him to the Jays or the Cowboy if he didn’t get his way. Strader realised he barely even cared anymore. The Texas City mess had left him vulnerable, desperate for half a cred to keep the wolves from his door, and his wild thrashing in the face of that—getting in with goons like Petersen and McKittrick, eating their pie-in-the-sky and asking for seconds—had sucked him into a quagmire there was no getting out of. And now Mooney was here, a man who’d died and still didn’t know it, showing up with a pipe dream that’d only make things worse.

  “I’m not interested,” he muttered.

  “Come on...” Mooney’s face twitched again, his voice growing shrill, wheedling. “You ain’t even heard it yet, how can you say—”

  “I’ve got my own problems, Mooney. I don’t have time for whatever daydream you’ve got rattling around that damn flask of yours, so…” Strader tailed off, hearing how unconvincing he sounded. That was the problem—he had nothing but time. He had nothing at all, and he was out of options. So he shook his head, drained his beer, and damned himself. “Hell with it. Tell me.”

  Mooney laughed, louder than he’d meant to, then did his prey-animal impression again, glancing around the bar to make sure nobody had heard. When he was satisfied that nobody was watching or listening, he leaned in closer, locking eyes with Strader.

  “It’s the Herc,” he said.

  Suddenly he had Strader’s full attention.

  Three

  KOOL HERC INFERNODROME was a white elephant waiting to die.

  They’d only built the damned thing three years before—back when everyone figured Inferno was going to be the sport of the future—but already it was on life support, and the so-called wise heads in the sports business were nodding sagely and telling everyone who’d listen how they’d seen the crash coming all along.

  Which was a lie—pure, corn-fed bull. At the start of it all, everybody had been right on board.

  Back then—and to sports fans it already seemed like a lifetime ago—Inferno was the undisputed king. It was Aeroball with all the safeties taken off, and a whole lot of extra carnage put in to spice it up a little: bikes with spiked wheels, giant clubs for smashing the ball or somebody’s head across the arena. A little slice of the Ancient Roman circus to keep the hoi polloi of the Big Meg happy and satisfied with their otherwise-dreary lives. If you could sum the whole thing up in a single word, that word would be decadence.

  Decadence was in that year—it wasn’t so long after the war, and a fair chunk of the city was still running their water through a Geiger counter every morning while they scratched their heads and tried to work out if the weird-looking birds with dog’s heads that kept landing on the windowsill were safe to eat. A little honest decadence went a long way, and there was nothing in the world more decadent than Inferno.

  So it was only natural that Donald T. Donald should get in on it.

  Donald T. Donald was the Investments King of Mega-City One, at least according to Rich Geek Weekly, which he happened to own. He was all about decadence—he knew that what the average cit craved right now was a taste of unimaginable luxury, a promise that things were going to get better one day soon. Small luxuries and big promises were two things Donald T. Donald knew how to work with.

  Besides, he loved Inferno—loved the glitz and the guignol of it, the audacity, the spectacle. When Donald T. Donald loved something, he had a tendency to buy it, turn it into solid gold—metaphorically and sometimes literally—and then sell it again. So nobody batted an eyelid when he bought the top six teams in the league and announced he was going to build a multi-billion dollar stadium to put them in.

  Donald never did anything by halves, and the Herc was no exception to the rule. He spent a year designing and building a monument to excess for the little people to spend their creds in, a huge, gleaming chrome and plasteen palace, his gift to the game that was taking the world by storm.

  Everything had to be the best. Unlike most building projects in the Meg, there weren’t any half-measures applied or corners cut—Donald paid top dollar for the best architects, the sturdiest plasteen mix, for a building that’d stand the test of time. The insides were just as fancy as the exterior—one hundred thousand capacity seating, with real leather seat covers and holo-projectors that livecast the action to the back rows, all while smiling waitresses brought muncedogs and brewskis direct to your seat at the push of a button. There were gold-effect taps in all the bathrooms, and the bathrooms seated a hundred at a time, so comfortably that you could spend a whole match dropping a deuce and think of it as creds well spent.

  It was a palace of the people, and the people loved it. They couldn’t get enough of all those small luxuries, even though they had to pay way over the odds to use them—though, since all the biggest games of the season were being played in the Herc, it wasn’t like a real Inferno nut had much of a choice in the matter. What were they gonna do, watch it on the vid?

  So the Herc was on course to make back its capital in three years, maybe less—and after that it was pure profit all the way, a money bin that would never empty. Inferno was here to stay. It was making big creds in tickets, in concessions, in share prices for the teams—there wasn’t a surer thing going in the spring of 2077. Donald T. Donald was so sure of the quality of the Herc as an investment that he’d sunk two billion and change of his own money into it. When the financial zines asked him about that, he’d said the cash was as safe in his stadium as it would be in a bank.

  But then, banks in Mega-City One aren’t all that safe.

  And what nobody really noticed, at the time, was that the sport of Inferno was already under attack. From the second it came into the world to the second it went out, it was being hit hard from two sides, and that was what would eventually kill it.

  On the one hand, you had the Judges, who didn’t like the game one little bit, even if it was technically within the law. Under the infamous ‘No Foul’ statutes of the Booth era, all manner of assault and battery had been made fully legal, just as long as it happened on a pitch during a game. That had been one of the things that won Robert L. Booth the election—that and stealing it. But he was gone now, and the Judges weren’t exactly slaves to popularity.

  Besides, they didn’t call Inferno a ‘death-sport’ for nothing. Top players were being sent to the cubes on a weekly basis, for everything from performance-enhancing drugs to good old-fashioned manslaughter. When the Judges had to stop play in the last quarter of the Wolves-Steelers game—so they could arrest the Sector Ten Steelers’ star player, Tony Lanzarotti, for murder in the first—the writing should’ve been on the wall for anybody smart enough to read. But that game, arrest and all, had been hailed as the most exciting sporting event of the season, with more than three hundred million cits tuning in live to watch Lanzarotti hauled to the cubes and double that buying it on pay-per-view after—and those numbers were all anybody saw.

  Had they been left to their own devices, Justice Department might have swallowed Inferno in the name of keeping the cits content. A thousand people sitting down to watch one crime are a thousand who aren’t pulling crimes themselves, and the Judges were never above that kind of mental arithmetic, no matter how much they might protest otherwise.

  But from the other direction, you had the syndicates.

  Inferno was the biggest new thing in sport for fifty years, and the rougher it got, the crazier everybody went for it—and that included gambling. Suddenly, the kind of fear-the-law types who’d fill their pants if they even had a library book overdue for a day were placing big, illegal bets on their home teams. There were more arrests for illegal betting in the summer of ’77 than there were for assault.

  So the gambling syndicates were making more money than they’d ever seen, more than they knew what to do with. This was the two-cred end of the business, the nickel-and-dime stuff, and suddenly the low-rent shmoes who’d been put in charge of it were hauling it in hand over fist. With big money came big power—when g
ambling was suddenly the city’s number one racket, the Godfathers and Bosses of Bosses were more than ready to sit back and listen to the experts. And these were people who knew how to reward profitable work.

  Inside of a month, the lowest-tier soldiers in the whole operation started cruising the streets in brand new, top of the line gravmobiles, eating hotties with real meat in them, being handed penthouse suites in the best hotels the mob had in their pocket. More than that, they were calling the shots—they were the money men, after all. The Bosses weren’t about to say no as long as the creds kept coming.

  But maybe they should have. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that if you take some schlub who’s never had more than ten creds in his pocket, and give him more wealth and power than he can even comprehend, said schlub is going to go more than a little screwy.

  And decadence was in that year.

  It was the Hellcats Murders in ’78 that finally upset the applecart and blew the roof off the good thing the syndicate boys had going. The schlubs and shmoes had been throwing their weight around for months, taking every bit of rope the Bosses gave them and throwing themselves big fat necktie parties with it. The Jays were all over them like a rented tuxedo, trying to get something they could use, but the lawyers the mob provided were just too slick. Except now the legal bills were starting to eat into those giant gambling profits in a big way, and the Bosses were taking a second look at what their shiny new lieutenants were up to.

  So naturally, these idiots, these little Caligulas in an empire they didn’t build and had no idea how to run—they doubled down on their own stupidity, figuring there was nothing they couldn’t do, no way they could ever get caught. And right when these saps-in-wolves’-clothing were looking around for something really dumb to get caught doing, the city’s best-loved Inferno team—an old Aeroball squad trying their hand at the new game, a real underdog story making waves on all the vid-shows—decided they wanted to buck the syndicate system.