Swine Fever

by Andrew Cartmel

  While he swung there, his own bike hit the support, slamming neatly into the hole just as the gaping concrete jaws of the hole snapped together. But instead of closing on empty space and causing the rest of the pillar to break, the edges of the hole snapped shut on the Lawmaster, crunching the metal mass of it into a tight deformed bundle with a sound like a giant hand crushing a huge beer can. Dredd had filled the gap. The concrete support pillar was stable... for the moment.

  Zandonella was still gaping in astonishment at this feat when she heard Dredd yelling at her. She realised he'd been yelling for some time as he hauled himself hand over hand up the grappling line, back towards Zandonella and her bike, and the safety of the access ramp.

  "Evacuate those citizens," he bellowed. Zandonella looked up at the crowd surrounding the Wiggly Little Piggly on the platform above. The screaming had stopped now they realised they were safe. Some of them had even begun to applaud Dredd's manoeuvre. Others were hurrying back to the restaurant to resume their clamouring for pork.

  Zandonella understood the urgency in Dredd's voice. The Lawmaster had plugged the hole but it was just a stopgap measure. The support pillar was fundamentally unsound and it could give way at any moment.

  She got on her communicator and ordered more Judges to the scene to oversee an evacuation as Dredd approached the rim of the access ramp, swinging hand over hand with smooth athletic skill. Above them the applause was growing as more and more of the crowd realised what Judge Dredd had done for them. Not everyone was pleased, though. Zandonella saw a small child chuck the contents of his Wiggly Little Piggly bucket over the edge of the guardrail, sending down a spill of half-chewed, greasy ribs to drop with fiendish accuracy right on top of Dredd. He shouldered his way through the shower of oily pork fragments and seized the edge of the access ramp.

  "Help me up, Zandonella," he snarled.

  Zandonella jumped off her Lawmaster and ran to help drag Dredd back onto solid ground. He accepted her assistance and for a moment they were wrapped into an embrace like any two lovers, but then Dredd got his feet planted and quickly let go of her, standing up straight and stable and calm. Zandonella was amazed. If it had been her, her knees would have turned to jelly at this point and she would have needed to sit down, if not lie down. Dredd merely brushed the remains of the bright red spare ribs off his uniform.

  "Let's cite that little creep for littering," he said, looking up at the platform where the child with his empty spare rib bucket was waving at them.

  Zandonella's communicator buzzed in her ear and she heard Carver's excited voice gabbling at her. She only listened for an instant before she turned to Dredd. "We'd better get down on the skedway, sir. There's a problem with the Cetacean Ambassador."

  "Problem is an understatement," said Dredd, staring at Carver, who was standing white-faced beside the tangled wreckage of what had once been his Lawmaster.

  "Yes sir," muttered Carver, his voice hardly audible but filled with embarrassment and shame.

  "What you're telling me," continued Dredd relentlessly, "is that you've lost the Cetacean Ambassador."

  "He's not exactly lost, sir," stuttered Carver. "He's still in his tank in his official limo."

  "But you have no idea where that might be," said Dredd coldly. Carver shook his head.

  Dredd turned away in disgust. "How is she doing, Zandonella?"

  Zandonella looked up at him from the street where she was kneeling beside the Karst sisters. She was crouching between the wreckage of the two black limousines, helping Tykrist wrap a tourniquet around Esma's hand, or rather the bloody stump of what had once been her hand. They were sitting in a stretch of road that had been sealed off with roadblocks at both ends. Between the roadblocks lay the wreckage of the two limos, three Lawmaster bikes and one wounded Judge. There was broken glass on the road surface and dark stains from spilled motor oil and blood.

  "We've got the bleeding under control," said Zandonella.

  "What exactly happened?" demanded Dredd. Carver opened his mouth and started to answer, but Dredd held out a hand, cutting him off. "Let her tell me."

  Tykrist looked away from the spreading red stain on her sister's clean, white bandage. Esma's eyes were shut but Zandonella could see the girl's lids trembling with pain. Zandonella couldn't tell if she was conscious or not. Hopefully by now the painkillers had knocked her into some comfortable twilight zone.

  Tykrist cleared her throat. "The driver of the blue limousine-"

  "You mean the dolphin's driver?"

  "Yes, the driver of the Cetacean Ambassador, he just seemed to go nuts sir."

  "Exactly what kind of nuts, Judge Karst?"

  "He began to veer his vehicle wildly."

  "Do you think he lost control? Maybe he was injured?"

  "We thought so at first, sir. He hit Judge Carver's bike and knocked him off, so I went to help Carver while Esma - Judge Karst - went after the blue limo to see if she could help. But then the limo hit the brakes and stopped directly in the path of the other two limousines. It forced both of them off the road. One of them smashed into a streetlamp and the other one into a side barrier. They were both write-offs."

  "What about the passengers?" said Dredd.

  "The VIPs? Shaken but not apparently injured. We got the other Judges to take them away from the scene. They're being checked out at hospital now and-"

  "What about the blue limo?"

  "Well, by now it was pretty evident that the driver was deliberately trying to damage the other vehicles."

  "Pretty evident?" said Dredd. "Yes, I'd say so. And also trying to take out all the Judges in the escort."

  "That's right, sir. Like I said, I stopped to help Judge Carver. Before I realised what was happening, I'd got off my bike and the blue limo drove straight into it, totalling it."

  "So Carver's bike was down, your bike was down, and your sister's..."

  "My sister went after the blue limo like a bat out of hell, sir," said Tykrist, looking up at Dredd. There were tears in her eyes and a note of pride in her voice. "She stayed right on his tail as he headed for the off-ramp."

  "What was the dolphin doing all this time?"

  "The ambassador? Well he looked pretty shook up, too, sir. The water in his tank was bubbling and frothy after all the crashes and impacts and so on."

  "But he was still alive and well?"

  "Yes, sir. He was splashing about, a bit agitated and all. But he looked fine. Water is a pretty good shock absorber, sir. He would have been insulated from the worst of the impacts."

  "So he was driven away towards the off-ramp with your sister in pursuit?"

  "Yes."

  "What went wrong?"

  "When the bastard - I mean the driver of the blue limo realised he was being followed, he jammed on the brakes."

  "And she went straight into the back of him."

  "Yes, sir," said Tykrist. "Her bike went into the back of the blue limo at high speed. And she came right off. But that didn't stop Esma. Not her. She grabbed on."

  "Grabbed on?" said Zandonella. It was a hot day and she could smell the spicy tarmac of the road surface and the toxic sweetness of the spilled oil.

  "Yes, onto the back of the blue limo. She used her new metal hand." At this point Tykrist's voice became unsteady, but she managed to keep control of her feelings and continue to report. Dredd listened impassively with no flicker of emotion on his face as she went on.

  "She grabbed on to the rear bumper of the limo and held on for dear life. The driver must have known she was there because he began to accelerate in an attempt to shake her off. She was being dragged along the road, but her uniform and her Judge's helmet protected her. The blue limo continued to accelerate but it also began to swerve. Esma was hanging on like a cyborg bulldog. She wouldn't let go. But unfortunately her hand did: her metal hand. The limo hit top speed and pulled it clean off." Tykrist began to cry. "She was left lying there in the road with nothing left but a bloody stump."

  "Your siste
r did a good job," said Dredd in a cool, level voice. "She was brave and I'll see she gets a citation for attempting to stop the abduction." He looked around at the wreckage and the roadblocks. "But that doesn't alter the fact that we were supposed to protect the dolphin and we didn't. Now we have to find him." He turned and walked away towards the cavalcade of Judges that had just arrived to help clean up the mess.

  Zandonella looked down at Tykrist who was trying to wipe away her own tears while she cradled her sister in her arms. "Don't worry," said Zandonella. "They'll be able to fit her with a new hand."

  At that moment, as if she'd been listening all along, Esma opened her eyes. She looked at Zandonella and said, "Where did they take the ambassador?"

  "We don't know," said Zandonella. But she had a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach that they were going to find out. And in doing so, she would have to call upon her special psi capabilities.

  "Kidnapped?" said Blue Streak.

  "Or dolphin-napped," said Mac the Meat Man. "If you prefer."

  "But why?" said Blue Belle. The tattooed girl's voice, demanding and strident at the best of times, rose above the sound of trickling water and echoed harshly off the tiles that lined the walls of the swimming pool room. The tiles were pale green in colour, the ceiling lustrous panels of bronze, and the floor and the pool itself were painted white and had perhaps once been spotless and not as dirty as they were now. The pool was part of an underground health spa in what had once been a luxury hotel. Now it smelled of mildew and mouse droppings.

  Mac smiled at Belle. "All will be explained when we get the ambassador here and hear what he has to say."

  "Say?" said Belle. "You mean this fish can talk?"

  "Strictly speaking he's a mammal, not a fish." Mac adjusted his tie; a black shoelace affair that secured the collar of a bright red shirt of the sort cowboys wore in movies. Very bad and very old movies, thought Streak. Mac was also wearing a white suit, buttoned tight over his little round paunch. He had obviously made an effort to dress up and he looked quite the dandy. Streak wondered if this was in honour of the Cetacean Ambassador or because Mac knew he was going to see Blue Belle again. He felt a small hot flash of jealousy.

  Belle was dressed to fight rather than to impress, wearing camouflage combat trousers, steel-toed boots and a tank top. But her flimsy and frankly minuscule tank top did nothing to conceal the abundant and shapely tattooed breasts swelling beneath it, and Streak was convinced that Mac was using every possible opportunity to try and peer down at her cleavage. Streak decided that if he caught the little man in the act he would grab him and strangle him slowly with the thick, red rubber hose that snaked across the floor, feeding a steady flow of water from a tap in the wall into the kidney-shaped swimming pool that filled two thirds of the room.

  "And this mammal," continued Mac, "is a highly intelligent creature. Otherwise they would never have made him ambassador, I guess." He smiled and twinkled at Belle. Streak thought maybe he'd stuff the hose up one of his orifices and turn the water on full blast...

  "How does he talk?" said Belle. "He's under water, isn't he?"

  "There's a translation device fitted to his tank. It converts cetacean chirps and grunts into English. We'll be able to talk to him just fine when he arrives, don't worry."

  "We aren't worried," said Streak. "Maybe you're the one who should be worried."

  "Why?" said Mac, his disgustingly huge, white eyebrows doing a little dance of innocent puzzlement on his face. Streak wondered how Mac would respond to having those eyebrows torn off his face.

  "You invited us here," said Streak. "We're your sworn enemies and you decided you wanted to meet us here, all alone, just you and both of us. Don't you think you should be worried?" Streak patted his waistband under his billowing black T-shirt, feeling for the reassuring hard shape of the pistol he had tucked there.

  "Let me take your points one at a time," said Mac, smiling cheerfully and raising his chubby fingers so he could count on them. "Number one..." He extended one little pink finger. "We aren't sworn enemies."

  "Oh no?" said Streak.

  "Certainly not. We're just competitors. Competitors in the same business."

  "The meat business," said Belle, who obviously felt she had been left out of the conversation for too long. Streak reflected that she was never one to fail to point out the obvious.

  "That's right," said Mac. "That's exactly right, young lady." He extended a second fat, pink finger and Streak indulged himself in a sadistic fantasy of lopping those fingers off with some kind of heavy-duty cutting tool. Shears, bolt cutters... Anything would do, really.

  "Number two: there may be two of you and only one of me, so to speak, at the moment, but the boys are due here any second."

  "The boys?" said Belle.

  Mac bobbed his head jovially. "The Barkin brothers. You remember? Theo and Leo, plus Leo's faithful robot companion. The three of them will be arriving shortly, with our guest the ambassador."

  There was a sudden grumbling and squeaking of machinery that had apparently been left unused for a long time. "What's that?" said Streak, reaching under his shirt for his pistol.

  "Cool your jets, son," said Mac with an infuriating note of condescension in his voice. "It's just the elevator. Sounds like the boys are here already."

  "What kind of place is this, with an elevator and a swimming pool?" said Belle, who could always be relied upon to ask the most irrelevant questions.

  "It used to be a four-star hotel," said Mac. "But now it's a no-star flop-house. They've closed down their sub-basement, subsequently mothballing a sports centre and, as you can see, this nice little swimming pool. But old Mac managed to get access to it." He twinkled and put one fat finger alongside his nose in a gesture of self-congratulatory slyness. "It's very handy because the boys can get to it through an equally disused basement garage that once served the hotel. No one will see them coming in with our cetacean friend."

  A rusty screeching sound filled the room as the grumbling elevator came to a halt. A rectangular section of the green tiled wall opposite the pool lurched open to reveal smooth, featureless bronze doors that in turn slid open to reveal the brightly lit interior of the elevator. Inside were two men, a robot, and a large, cylindrical water tank sitting on a low, motorised platform of the kind used in hotels to carry around piles of luggage.

  Inside the tank was the Cetacean Ambassador, a large, dark and streamlined blue shape hanging alertly in the water, his smiling face pressed to the glass. "Why is he smiling like that?" said Streak.

  "He isn't. That's just the way dolphin's faces look. Their mouths are in a smiling shape. Like a cat's."

  The dark-haired Barkin brother stepped out of the elevator. He had a gun in his hand. "What the hell is going on?" he demanded, looking at Mac. "What are these two doing here?"

  "I like cats," said Belle. "I had a cyborg cat, but it broke." Her voice was nonchalant, but Streak saw how she turned slightly away from the elevator so the Barkin brothers couldn't see her hand slide down the side of her combat trousers and take hold of the chrome Peaceful World automatic pistol sagging in her pocket.

  Neither of the brothers, nor Mac, noticed what she was doing. But the red metal robot suddenly stepped out from beside the dolphin's tank and announced, "Female intruder reaching for hand weapon."

  "Intruder?" said Belle, bringing the gun into view. "That's not very nice. I was invited."

  "Put it down or I'll shoot," said the blond brother stepping out of the elevator, raising his own gun.

  "Now boys," said Mac the Meat Man, stepping between the two opposing parties. "Let's everybody calm down and put those guns away. I asked our tattooed friends here because we're all in the same business, aren't we? Which got me to thinking, why shouldn't we be in business together?"

  "Together?" echoed the Barkin brothers simultaneously.

  "Certainly," said Mac. "Partners."

  "Why do we need partners?" asked Leo.

  Mac gave a pat
ient, tolerant smile. "Because the meat trade is a tough racket and we need all the help we can get."

  "Are you going senile?" said the other brother, Theo. "Our mutant pork has just been legalised. You know that. You helped us sell a full warehouse to Wiggly Little Piggly Enterprises. Have you forgotten that?"

  "I am neither forgetful, nor senile," said Mac. "As for the legality of the meat trade, I fear our cetacean friend here will have something to say about that."

  The brothers glanced at the dolphin in his tank. "Him?" they said with simultaneous scepticism.

  "Certainly," said Mac. "That's why we brought him here. Now if you would be so good as to switch on the ambassador's translation device..."

  "What translation device?" asked Leo.

  "Allow me, sir," said the robot, and pressed some buttons on a band of metal that circled the base of the dolphin's tank. As if responding to the pressing of the buttons, the dolphin swung around to face the humans, alert and calm. There was a sizzle of static as a loudspeaker came to life in the base of the cylinder, and then some strange clicking noises, rapid and sharp. After a moment, the clicking faded into the background and a synthesised voice murmured at them.

  "Is that water for me?" he said.

  The humans all looked at each other. Mac the Meat Man beamed at Blue Belle. "See? I told you he was smart." Mac glanced at the level of the water in the swimming pool. The hose was now floating three or four metres above the floor of the pool. He hurried over, pulled the hose out of the water and went to the wall and turned the tap off. He wiped his hands and turned to the dolphin's tank, smiling and bowing. "Yes, Ambassador, it is indeed for you."