Swine Fever

by Andrew Cartmel

  Carver was eating from the bucket with one hand, bright red grease on his face from the ribs, while looking at the wrist of his other hand on which was strapped a chunky chronometer. Carver was stuffing his face, keeping an eye on the time, and weeping. Big fat tears were oozing down his cheeks, cutting a path through the red grease.

  "I can't believe it, Carver."

  "I know, I know."

  "You're crying. You're actually crying."

  "I know."

  "How childish can you get?"

  Carver paused and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing the grease around but doing nothing to remove any of it. "I'm sorry."

  "Don't apologise to me. Just stop it."

  "It's just that I'll be so sorry to see all this go." He swept his greasy hand over the table to indicate the half-full bucket of ribs in front of him as well as the empty containers scattered nearby which had recently contained salami sandwiches, a bacon bun and sausages with chips. "I just love it so much," blubbered Carver.

  "Pull yourself together. And stop using words like 'love' in connection with a junk food addiction."

  "Don't call it junk food. Munce was junk food. This isn't junk. This is great. It's pork." Carver's voice was tremulous with emotion.

  Zandonella sighed. "It used to be intelligent creatures, before they were butchered and cooked for you to eat."

  "I know, I know," said Carver. "But they were so tasty. Why did they have to be so intelligent?"

  "Learn to live with it," declared Zandonella with satisfaction. "At one minute after midnight the new Law comes into effect."

  "Don't remind me."

  "All this," Zandonella gestured at the junk food cartons, "becomes illegal."

  "I know, I know."

  "That's why we're here. That's why I came off leave early, yet again."

  "I know."

  "Because all hell is going to break loose in the Mega-City when pork addicts like you are forced to comply with the new legislation."

  "I am not an addict!"

  "No? You're weeping because you're being forced to give up your favourite snack."

  "It's not a snack, it's the backbone of my diet."

  "Speaking of backbones, do you know what they put into those sausages?"

  "I don't care. They are so tasty. I mean they were."

  "We're all pulling extra shifts on riot duty because people like you think this stuff is so damned tasty."

  "Not people like me. I'm a Judge."

  "Then act like one, instead of like a deranged fast food junkie."

  Carver sighed a tearful, liquid sigh. "I'm going to miss it so much. All these wonderful forms of pork." He stuck his face into the pink plastic bucket full of ribs and his voice reverberated from within. "I can't believe I'll never taste it again."

  "It's just as well." Zandonella pointed at his bulging waistline, pushed tight against his Judge's belt. "You're getting as fat as a..."

  She stopped herself just in time. Carver didn't notice. The alarm on his wrist went off at that moment. He stared at the chronometer in horror. "No. It can't be. You distracted me. It's-"

  "Midnight plus one."

  "But I haven't finished my ribs."

  "Too bad. It's past the deadline. It's now a felony to touch anything in that bucket."

  "It's not fair. You distracted me." Carver clutched the bucket to his chest protectively. Then he leaned forward and whispered to Zandonella. "You wouldn't tell on me, would you? I mean, it's only just past the deadline." His big schoolboy eyes glinted. "Just a teeny bit, a teeny weenie bit past. Don't tell anyone. No one need know. Just let me finish my ribs."

  Before Zandonella could reply, a hand reached over Carver's shoulder and seized the bucket. Carver resisted for an instant before he looked up and saw that it was Judge Dredd. He immediately let go of the bucket.

  Dredd looked down at the glistening red mess of ribs with distaste. "I'll take this down to the incinerator, Judge."

  "Yes, sir," said Carver meekly.

  "And if I find any more pork in this canteen it will be confiscated and logged as evidence of a crime, with full punishment for any Judges involved. Do I make myself clear?"

  "Yes, sir. Absolutely clear, sir."

  "Then get your riot shields and clubs. We're going out on patrol again now. The fun's really begun."

  The fun referred to by Dredd was, of course, the rioting that erupted in the wake of the new legislation. The very moment that pork became illegal, the violence began.

  "Is it another rumble between Wiggly Little Piggly fans and Pork Lane supporters?" asked Zandonella as they climbed into the rear of the FWP that would carry them back into the Mega-City night.

  "Not any more," said Dredd. "But there's just as much mob violence. We're moving in and shutting down all the fast food outlets still selling pork."

  "But they were supposed to close themselves down automatically at midnight plus one."

  "Unfortunately, no one is complying with the new legislation."

  "But it's the Law," said Carver.

  "If everyone obeyed the Law, Judges would have an easy time of it," said Dredd. He moved through the passenger section of the FWP, stooping as he climbed into the cockpit.

  "But it's not easy to obey the Law," said Carver. He turned to look at Zandonella, who was strapping herself in beside the Karst sisters. Darrid wasn't with them on this patrol. Evidently he was still in disgrace after his snafu with the omniphone. Dredd had probably demoted him to traffic control.

  "Not easy?" said Dredd over the intercom in a menacing growl.

  "They keep changing it, they keep changing the Law," said Carver, hastily justifying himself. "First pork was illegal, then it was legal, now it's illegal again."

  "That's illegal two times out of three," said Zandonella. "I think the general thrust of the Law-making process is easy to discern."

  The FWP undocked and they went flying out over the Mega-City, its dark streets dotted with the cheerful flames of burning fast food restaurants. On one rooftop there was the incongruous pale gleam of water. Zandonella looked down and recognised the Neverland Fun Fair that had been the scene of her first encounter and shoot-out with the Barkin brothers. Except it wasn't the Neverland Fun Fair any more. Construction work seemed to be nearing completion on a new consumer Mecca, something that announced itself on a brightly illuminated sign as the "Aquatomic Fun Pool and Fission Reactor Complex."

  "They use waste heat from the atomic piles to warm the water in the lagoon pool," explained Esma, looking over Zandonella's shoulder. She stared wistfully down at the pool as it receded in the distance. "I'm looking forward to having a swim there, as soon as it opens. Having a swim and relaxing..." Her voice took on a nostalgic note. "When this is all over."

  "Fasten your seatbelts," snarled Dredd over the intercom. "Anti-aircraft fire ahead." Bright spheres of blue flame blossomed in the night ahead of them, illuminating the glass and steel skyscrapers on either side of their craft, a glinting canyon receding into the distance.

  "That anti-aircraft fire sure looks pretty, doesn't it?" declared Esma. The vehicle bucked with the turbulence of air displaced by the explosions.

  Zandonella had a feeling it was going to be a long night, and she wasn't wrong.

  It was six in the morning with red traces of dawn smearing the sky before she was able to stumble back to her con-apt. She unlocked the door, swiping her card key with trembling hands, and stepped over the threshold.

  Porkditz came scampering in to greet her from the bedroom. He stood there staring at her with his happy gleaming eyes peering up and his little curly tail jauntily twitching.

  "Don't look so cheerful," said Zandonella, bending down to pat the pig. "Next time I go out, you're going with me."

  "Timber!" shouted Judge Darrid, trying to make himself heard over the banshee scream of the chainsaw that dominated the communication band in the Judges' helmets like jagged yowling static.

  "What does that mean?" yell
ed Zandonella into her own helmet microphone. It was noon of the day after the first big pork riots and she was back on duty after a couple of hours in a sleep machine. She had never heard the word before. Timber?

  "Watch out for the falling tree," said Darrid's voice as the chainsaw noise diminished. At that same moment a powerful hand grabbed Zandonella by the shoulder and dragged her back. Zandonella was a full-grown woman, but the hand moved her like a child being scooped up by an adult. The hand belonged to Judge Dredd. As he pulled her to safety, there was a scream of rending wood and a thin, dark shadow swept across Zandonella's face with stroboscopic speed. The tree came toppling towards her and crashed to the ground, shaking the entire rooftop. The topmost branches gently lapped at the toes of Zandonella's boots.

  The tree had missed her by millimetres. Zandonella turned around to look at Dredd. He had pulled her out of danger at the last possible instant. "Thank you," she stammered.

  "Be more careful in the future, Zandonella," was all Dredd said. He turned to Darrid. "And you. Watch how you handle that chainsaw."

  Darrid shrugged apologetically as he set the saw aside. "All finished anyway," he declared. "We can go in now." He gestured at the space he'd cleared in the tight cluster of trees that filled the dome.

  The dome was a transparent plastic bubble that occupied most of the huge expanse of the rooftop of Lobsong Rampa Villas Block, a skyscraper that stood overlooking one of the Mega-City's more elite districts. Dredd hadn't offered any explanation as to why they were here and Zandonella knew better than to ask him. Dredd might seem like some kind of unstoppable automaton, but in reality he was as human as any other Judge and the night of rioting had left him short-tempered and irritable. Zandonella had kept her mouth shut as they'd landed on the roof, opened the steel airlock door that sealed the dome from the city's polluted air, and gone in with guns and chainsaws.

  The air in the dome was extraordinary. Zandonella had never experienced anything like it. It tasted clean and moist, and had a smell that reminded her of certain synthetic bathroom cleaners, although it was subtly different. She assumed the smell of the air must have something to do with the tall skinny trees covered with green needles that grew in the soil that had been dumped on the rooftop to form a floor a metre deep. The trees filled the dome, growing so closely together that almost as soon as they'd entered the airlock Darrid had been compelled to get busy with his chainsaw. Zandonella and Dredd had followed, with Carver bringing up the rear. He too was carrying a chainsaw, but unfortunately this piece of saw-toothed technology had malfunctioned. Zandonella wondered why Carver insisted on carrying the heavy saw when it was clearly useless, but she'd decided not to humiliate the young Judge by saying anything about it; he'd work it out soon enough.

  "All right, we're going in," said Dredd. "Be careful and have your weapons ready."

  The gap Darrid had created in the trees gave access to a circular clearing. Lush green grass, longer and shaggier than the synthetic turf Zandonella was accustomed to, covered the clearing. In the centre of the grass was a large tent made of white fabric drawn up in high, fanciful crescent shapes. Coloured lights glowed inside the tent and Zandonella thought she could hear the sound of a voice from within, raised in song.

  "Leave your chainsaws here," said Dredd. "You too, Carver." He set off into the clearing and the others followed.

  Their footsteps were silent as they crossed the grass towards the tent, although any attempt at stealth was pointless now, after the prolonged ear-splitting shriek of the chainsaw. Any perp who hadn't heard that must be so stone deaf that the explosion of a tactical nuke wouldn't tip him off. They neared the tent. There was an opening in its side, covered by a billowing sheet of opaque white fabric. It didn't appear to be secured in any way.

  "I guess you don't need a lock on your door when you live in a dome," said Zandonella.

  "Quiet," said Dredd. "I'm going in first. Cover my back." He stepped through the door of the tent, lifting the white fabric over his head and disappearing inside. The voice from within the tent continued in a monotonous tune. Zandonella, Darrid and Carver looked at each other for a moment before following Dredd.

  Inside the tent there was a spicy perfumed smell coming from the coiling oily smoke of incense that burned in a large brass bowl studded with green gemstones. The brass bowl sat on a low gleaming circular table of dark polished wood that occupied the centre of the tent. Other than the table, the only piece of furniture visible was a large, state-of-the-art Tri-D screen that stood at the far end of the room. The floor of the tent was covered with rugs woven with strange geometric designs in black, red and white.

  Sitting on a pile of brightly coloured cushions in front of the table was a thin man with a long, lustrous braid of dark hair that curled down his naked back like a black snake. The man's only garment was a baggy loincloth of red and black silk, which Zandonella thought looked like fancy diapers. The man's naked torso was skinny, but not starved, with smooth, lean muscles cladding his ribs. Carefully walking from behind him to his side, Zandonella could see that his eyes were shut as he sat on the cushions, chanting. Spherical coloured lights hung from the ceiling like illuminated balloons and their glow showed on the man's oiled skin.

  The man's chants seemed to rise towards the ceiling of the tent along with the smoke of the incense. Dredd stood looking down at the man with an expression of patient disgust on his face. "Come on, Featherman," he said. "The show's over."

  The small man stopped chanting, opened his eyes and looked at Dredd. His eyes were cool and blue and amused. "I hope you didn't chop down too many of my pine trees when you barged your way in here."

  "We have a standing search warrant for these premises."

  "For what crime, pray tell?" The man smiled politely.

  "You know perfectly well what crime," grated Dredd. "Running a black market pork operation."

  "Black market pork? There must be some kind of administrative error." He offered no resistance as Zandonella fixed pneumatic cuffs on him, adjusting them to fit snugly on his thin wrists with a sigh of compressed air. The small man looked her in the eye and winked. "Not an entirely unknown phenomenon at Justice Central, I might add."

  "No error," grated Dredd. "Just a major crime. And you're going down for it."

  "I know where the source of confusion might lie," said Featherman, studying the handcuffs. "I was indeed a licensed pork wholesaler, but only when it was legal. Only during that brief window of mercantile opportunity that was opened to us honest business folk before it was slammed shut by the Council of Five - in their infinite wisdom, of course." He smiled at Dredd. "Naturally, as soon as dealing in pork was made illegal, I divested myself of all business interests in that area. I sold my last shares shortly before midnight on the day preceding that fateful day, which I like to call P-Day, when the Law so precipitately changed."

  "Sure, you sold some of your holdings," said Dredd.

  "All of them," corrected Featherman patiently.

  "You sold them to hollow corporate shells and fronts and holding companies, all of which can be traced back to you. It was a flimsy attempt at a paper trail that kept our fraud team busy for all of half an hour."

  "Well, I hope they were entertained," said Featherman.

  "They ran you through their computers and got the answer. You're still the owner of a vast illegal pork syndicate."

  "Am I? Pork syndicate. Vast. Illegal. You know, I rather like the sound of that."

  "And you're going to do time for it."

  "That, I like the sound of rather less. But all this sounds very theoretical, you know. Where's your hard evidence?"

  "You want hard evidence?" Dredd turned to Zandonella. "Go and get the special deputy."

  Zandonella was back in less than two minutes, accompanied by the scampering Porkditz, who had been snoring contentedly on the rooftop in the shade of the FWP that had brought him here. She had the pig on a retractable plastic lead, more for his own safety than any other reason.<
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  "Is that the special deputy?" said Featherman. "I must say I'm impressed. It seems that recruitment for the Judges has reached a new high standard."

  "Keep making jokes, Featherman," said Dredd in a dangerously rumbling monotone. "Zandonella, see what he can do."

  Zandonella took the lead off Porkditz. The pig shook himself happily then trotted out of the tent and back into the stand of pine trees. The Judges and the prisoner followed. They came to a clearing in the woods and Zandonella noticed that Featherman was no longer making any jokes. When Porkditz began to dig, his face went pale. Dredd turned to look at their prisoner.

  "You see, our science department worked out that pigs have extremely sensitive noses; more sensitive than even our best equipment. And one of the things they're extremely good at detecting is other pigs." Dredd looked at the hole Porkditz was excavating in the thick, dark loam. "Or the remains of other pigs."

  In the hole, amidst the dark, black earth and green shreds of pine needles, was the unmistakable red gleam of meat. Porkditz stood back from his work and looked happily at Zandonella.

  "Looks like pork to me," said Darrid, twirling his moustache.

  Featherman sighed and shrugged. "I don't suppose you'd believe me if I told you that's organic fertiliser," he said.

  "It's organic fertiliser, all right," said Dredd. "It's also a ten-year sentence."

  They led the handcuffed man back through the wreckage of his forest, out the airlock of his atmosphere dome and back onto the baking tarmac of the rooftop. The Karst sisters were waiting for them there and guarding the open airlock as Porkditz came trotting out ahead of the Judges.

  "You got him," said Esma.

  "Porkditz found the evidence," said Zandonella.