Swine Fever

by Andrew Cartmel

  Then the sound of wood scraping on concrete was heard. Zandonella turned to see that what remained of the stagecoach, now concealed under a white mound, was moving. Or rather, something was moving under it. As she ran towards the white pile, something began to dig its way frantically out from underneath. A pink face appeared, staring at her, two dark eyes fixed on hers. Zandonella stopped dead in shock. The face was followed by two horribly deformed pink hands, digging madly at the white powder. A long, pink body followed, with two more of those dreadfully deformed hands; or were they feet?

  And then a tail.

  A corkscrew of pink tail. It wiggled madly at her as the intruder finished digging his way out and turned and fled across the concrete floor, feet clicking in a determined staccato.

  "Why didn't you shoot?" demanded Darrid as he ran up to join her, and only with his words did Zandonella's shock recede. She looked at the Lawgiver in her hand. It had never occurred to her to fire once she'd got a good look at their intruder.

  Carver joined them. "Did you see him?" he asked breathlessly. "He was some kind of hideously deformed mutie."

  "No," said Zandonella. "He was a pig."

  "A pig?"

  "Correct," said a voice. They all turned to see Judge Dredd standing there. Zandonella felt a warm wave of relief wash over her. With Dredd to watch her back, maybe she could finally get down to business here. Although it was probably she who would end up watching Dredd's back, as he took over. Either way, it compensated for being saddled with Darrid.

  "What are you doing here, Dredd?" said Darrid. "I thought you were guarding the lab."

  "I heard your weapons being fired. And some other explosions." Dredd looked grimly around at the smouldering wreckage surrounding them courtesy of Darrid's quick thinking. "So I came to see what in grud's name you were up to. I told the others to remain guarding the lab in case it was some kind of diversion."

  "It's no diversion, sir," said Zandonella. "It's a pig."

  The pig led them a merry chase. From the Vehicle Confiscation unit it had gone scampering into the cavernous depths of the map room. Only slightly smaller than the gargantuan vehicle unit, the room was designed to accommodate a highly accurate multi-scale map of the Mega-City. The scale of the map was variable according to the Judges' needs. It could zoom in from an overview of the city equivalent to that glimpsed by a satellite from low orbit all the way down to a close-up representation of blocks and buildings so accurate and detailed you could read the graffiti on the walls.

  The map appeared as a hologram projected in three dimensions on the glowing semi-transparent mist that filled the room to about Zandonella's chest height. She looked at Dredd wading through the hologram and saw that the map image hardly rose above his belt buckle.

  "What's with those holes in the floor?" asked Carver. He was peering around in fascination, never having seen the map room before. He had been absent on the day that Zandonella and the others had received their orientation training. As usual with Carver's absences, it had been the result of some gastric disorder, a consequence of his grisly diet. He knew nothing about the place and it would be up to her to fill in the gaps of his knowledge.

  "It's not a hole," she said. "It's a control pit."

  They were approaching one of the pits now, a hemispherical indentation in the floor big enough for one or two people to crouch in. The pit was painted a bright red that made it visible through the shining fog of the map, part of a huge number of similar pits arrayed on the floor of the vast room in a neat polka dot geometry, receding in all directions in a repeating grid pattern.

  As they neared the pit Zandonella saw a pink shape squirm and launch itself upwards. It was the pig. The animal scampered up out of the pit, moving quickly on its startlingly delicate little feet. Or trotters, as Zandonella remembered that they were called. She was raising her weapon and taking aim at the pig, but Darrid had beaten her to it. He was sighting his Lawgiver and he began to fire at the scuttling pink fugitive.

  Or at least, he would have begun to fire at it if Dredd hadn't seized Darrid's arm and twisted it so the old Judge's Lawgiver pointed upwards and blasted harmlessly towards the ceiling. Darrid stopped firing and turned to stare at Dredd, his face red and his moustache flapping with outrage.

  "What are you doing? I could have hit him."

  "Hit him with what, Darrid?" demanded Dredd in an icy voice. "What kind of round are you using?"

  "Not explosive, if that's what you're thinking. This snotty young Psi-Judge here has already given us an earful about that." Darrid glowered at Zandonella. "So I'm just using good old-fashioned armour piercing. They'll go right through that little pink bugger and tear him to shreds in the process."

  "Exactly," snarled Dredd. He took Darrid's Lawgiver from him and began to adjust the ammunition selector. "You would have killed the perp."

  "Damned right."

  Dredd looked at Darrid. "Aren't you aware of the directive requiring us to keep all intruders in Justice Central alive for questioning?"

  "Ah, well," blustered the old walrus. "I might have heard something along those lines..."

  Dredd finished adjusting Darrid's Lawgiver and handed it back to him. Darrid took it and turned to Carver. "Come on then, what are you waiting for?" he demanded, as though all this was in some way Carver's fault, and he shooed the rookie off in pursuit of their pink quarry.

  "Adjust Carver's sidearm as well," yelled Dredd after him as the two Judges hurried off into the holographic mist of the map room.

  "Yes, sir," replied Darrid tartly as he vanished into the glowing fog of the map.

  Zandonella moved to follow them but Dredd stopped her. "Let's see your weapon, Judge. I noticed that you were about to fire on the perp if Darrid hadn't beaten you to it." She showed him her gun and Dredd nodded. "Anaesthetic darts. Not bad."

  "Better than armour piercing anyway," she said.

  Dredd shook his head. "Better, but not good enough."

  "What do you mean?"

  Dredd began to alter the setting on her selector. "What makes you think that the same drug that will anaesthetise a human perp will also work on a pig?"

  "Uh, I guess I never thought about it, sir. I just kind of assumed."

  "Don't make assumptions, Zandonella. You might get us both killed." Dredd finished adjusting her gun and handed it back.

  Zandonella peered at the ammo selector. "What kind of round have you chosen, sir?"

  "Net burster," said Dredd.

  A net burster was an exploding round that erupted into a sticky spray of resin when it hit its target, wrapping the perp in an immobilising web of restraints that adhered like a cocoon. Zandonella kicked herself for not thinking of it. "Good choice, sir."

  Dredd shrugged impatiently. "Darrid and Carver's Lawgivers are set on net bursters now too. Now let's go and see if we can't catch that pig before our two colleagues manage to burst nets all over each other."

  "Wait a moment..." said Zandonella, staring around at the portion of map that now surrounded them. "Something's changed, sir." She was standing up to her collarbone in a holographic mist that represented the section of the Mega-City adjacent to Trinny and Susannah Municipal Dump. As she walked forward she was moving like a giant striding through the ghostly yielding effigies of entire city blocks, crossing a street, a small park, and then into another city block, heading towards the great circular arena of the dump.

  "We're moving through a different location on the map," said Dredd. "It's been adjusted."

  "Adjusted by who, sir?"

  "By whoever just climbed out of the control pit."

  "Do you mean the pig?" said Zandonella.

  Dredd said nothing as he disappeared into the holographic mist, Lawgiver held high. She hurried after him. Dredd managed to stay ahead of her for perhaps two minutes before they saw Darrid and Carver.

  The old Judge and the rookie had stopped fifty metres from the next control pit and were both taking aim with their weapons. Dredd hurried to interce
pt them, with Zandonella close at his heels. But they weren't quick enough to get there before the action started. A familiar pink shape came lunging out of the control pit and both Darrid and Carver instantly fired. Their Lawgivers spat flame and Zandonella saw a blur of motion as the net burster shells began to blossom into twin clouds of expanding translucent tentacles. They opened wide as they splattered into each other, locking and encircling as they fell to the floor in a heaving, sticky mess.

  Darrid and Carver had managed to shoot down each other's web bursters. Dredd and Zandonella caught up with them as they stood staring down at the floor, where a double-sized cocoon was blossoming and hardening around nothing at all. She looked at the cocoon, then at the distant figure of the pig, its little pink corkscrew tail wagging cheerfully as it evaded them yet again.

  Zandonella's attention then shifted away from the vanishing pig, to the holographic mist she was wading through. Once again she was striding like a behemoth along a cavernous Mega-City avenue leading straight towards the T&S Municipal Dump.

  "Judge Dredd," she called.

  "I know," he said. "Our friend was in the control pit and he adjusted the coordinates again."

  "We're back at the same place on the map."

  Dredd didn't answer. He moved off after the pig.

  "What friend?" said Carver.

  "Who adjusted the coordinates?" demanded Darrid querulously. "What the hell are you driving at?"

  But Dredd didn't answer them either. Zandonella hurried after Dredd, and as soon as she caught up with him, she said aloud the things she'd been thinking.

  "If that pig really did change the settings in the control pit..."

  "I don't think there's any doubt about that," said Dredd.

  "He could have done it accidentally. The settings are touch-sensitive. He could have hit them as he scrambled through the pit. I mean, that could happen. It could even happen twice..."

  "Exactly the same settings twice?" said Dredd.

  "That's what I'm worried about," said Zandonella. "That's exactly what I'm worried about."

  "Well, save your worries until we apprehend the perp."

  Three more times they caught up with the pig waiting for them in a control pit. Each time he fled before they could get in effective range to use their net bursters. And each time as he fled, he somehow managed to reset the controls so that they were surrounded by a certain section of the map. And each time, it seemed to Zandonella, the map moved a little closer to the municipal dump.

  But the fourth time they encountered the pig, Dredd got off a shot. Zandonella thought he was wasting his time. They were well beyond the net burster's range of effective use. But the blossoming tentacles of the shell arced through the air and landed at exactly the spot where the scampering pig arrived a moment later. There was an audible plop as the synthetic web locked onto the scurrying animal, enveloping him.

  "Lucky shot, Dredd," said Darrid. "We've got the little bastard." A moment later they were all standing over the cocoon. The pig didn't seem unduly upset about being immobilised in the adhesive strands. His trotters jerked for a moment, then stopped moving and he just lay there, gasping a little but looking otherwise relaxed and cheerful, fine golden bristles twitching sleekly on his pink neck and shoulders. Nestled at the base of his long, pink snout, the pig's eye seemed to be smiling up at her.

  Zandonella could have sworn he winked at her.

  "And each time the pig led us through a control pit in the map room, the map was reset to a certain district," said Zandonella. She looked at O'Mannion and wondered if the senior Psi-Judge was even listening.

  But O'Mannion was listening, all right. "What are you saying? That a pig was adjusting the map?" Her silver eyebrows twitched upwards in twin sardonic chevrons. "A pig?" Her wicked eyes glowed with amusement. "Don't be ridiculous, Zandonella. He was just accidentally hitting the controls as he scuttled through."

  "That's what we thought at first, but-"

  "No buts. It was accidental."

  "Every time taking us back to exactly the same section of the map?"

  "Coincidence," said O'Mannion.

  "Four times? That's not coincidence. It would have been five times if Dredd hadn't managed to hit him with a net."

  "What are you trying to say here, Zandonella? You asked especially to speak to me and I agreed but as far as I can tell you're not saying anything. Not anything that makes sense, anyway."

  Zandonella fought to keep her temper. "What I'm saying is that the pig was trying to tell us something."

  "Tell us?" O'Mannion's eyebrows quirked up again in amusement.

  "Show us, then. He was trying to show us that there is something special about that area. Specifically, the municipal dump."

  "Oh, come on, Zandonella. You're reading a lot into this little escapade. You're reading a whole damned library into it."

  "The pig was exhibiting intelligent, directed behaviour," persisted Zandonella. "Ask Carver or Darrid."

  O'Mannion leaned back behind her desk and lazily smiled her malicious fox's smile. "I have. They say there was nothing out of the ordinary in the pig's behaviour."

  Zandonella could feel herself finally losing her temper. "Then ask Dredd."

  "Judge Dredd is seeing the Council of Five, receiving instructions on the security arrangements for the Cetacean Ambassador's visit. He's far too busy for me to bother him with such nonsense." O'Mannion lifted her thin, pointed chin and shook back her long mane of silver hair. "You're dismissed, Zandonella."

  A Judge, even a rookie like Zandonella, commanded certain privileges, and a decent-sized con-apt was one of them. When she came home to her con-apt in Rosemary Moore Block at the end of the day, she could get undressed in her bedroom without having one foot in the living room and the other in the kitchen. The con-apt had its walls painted creamy white and the floor was covered with plush, red carpet deep enough for you to sink your feet into. Zandonella's bare feet sank into it now as she took off her uniform and changed into a kimono. She could her feel her skin breathe again after being buried all day in armour.

  She was crossing to the kitchen to get something to eat, maybe some vegetable soup with real vegetables in it, when the doorbell chimed. Zandonella tightened the belt of her kimono as she hurried to the door. Just before she opened it, she checked her hair. She had a funny feeling that it was going to be Judge Dredd and for some reason, Zandonella didn't want him to see her with her hair looking a mess.

  But it wasn't Dredd; it was O'Mannion. Her own silver hair billowed out as she took off her helmet and stepped into Zandonella's con-apt without waiting to be invited. "Good news, Zandonella," she said.

  "So good that you had to deliver it to me when I was at home, off duty?"

  "Absolutely had to." O'Mannion smiled, looking around at the furnishings of Zandonella's con-apt. Her smile seemed almost sincere. "What a bijou residence. I like the colour scheme. Sort of strawberries and cream."

  "Thank you. Now what was so important that you had to tell me?" Zandonella felt ridiculous, standing here talking to her superior officer, wearing nothing but a silk kimono. At least, the label said it was silk.

  "The good news is that Dredd confirmed your story."

  "My story?"

  "About the pig in the map room. Dredd says the pig was definitely trying to tell us something. To show us a place."

  "That's what I was trying to tell you," said Zandonella.

  "Don't bother offering me a hot beverage or anything," said O'Mannion lightly. "This won't take long. As I was saying, Dredd thinks the pig was trying to get us to look at a certain location."

  "The municipal dump," said Zandonella.

  "Correct. And so Dredd and I authorised surveillance and it transpires that the dump is being used by black market meat dealers."

  "Used for what?"

  "To grow meat and slaughter it."

  "Grow meat? You mean they have animals there?"

  "Finally up to speed?" O'Mannion smiled. A stran
d of her silver hair had drifted into her mouth and was caught between her full, red lips. Zandonella wanted to gently pull that annoying strand of hair free and then punch O'Mannion full in the face.

  "It's called a farm," said Zandonella.

  "A factory farm to be more precise. Full of pigs like the one you and Dredd apprehended."

  "With the help of Carver and Darrid."

  O'Mannion held up her hand. "Do you have to be so tediously loyal? I know those two mediocrities only slowed you down. But in any case, you caught the pig and we believe it is one of the animals from the factory farm."

  "You mean he escaped from the farm?" said Zandonella. "Good for him."

  "Him? Actually the animal is a male, yes, as it happens. And he did escape. And now he's leading us back there."

  "But why?"

  "So we can smash the factory farm and free his companions. Perhaps that's exactly what he wanted us to do. If you believe that a farmyard animal can have that much intelligence." O'Mannion smiled wickedly. "And it seems you are willing to believe that, Zandonella."

  "Yes, I am."

  "In fact, you seem to be almost fond of the animal. And that's good."

  Zandonella had a sudden sinking feeling. "Why is it good?"

  O'Mannion's eyes gleamed with amusement. "Because the pig has now gone from being an animal in the pound to being a potential witness."

  "Witness?"

  "And there's a small matter of witness protection." O'Mannion stepped back to the door of Zandonella's con-apt and swung it open again, revealing the pig standing there, patiently waiting. He looked up his narrow pink snout at Zandonella, dark little eyes glowing at her.

  "I don't understand," said Zandonella. "Witness protection?"

  "You've got yourself a new roommate." O'Mannion ushered the pig into the living room where it stood, staring alertly up at Zandonella, poised on its little hooves as though ready for mischief. "He's staying here with you tonight."

  "For grud's sake, why me?"

  "You had a very high opinion of his intelligence. I'm sure you won't mind his company. We'll pick you both up tomorrow at 06.00 sharp, for the raid on the factory farm."