by Neal Barrett
“Dredd.”
“Dredd.”
“Dredd’s here…”
“Dredd!”
“Dredd!”
“DREDD!”
The drone of voices swelled into a roar. The guards sat up straight, looked at each other, flicked off safeties, and stroked the triggers of their weapons.
“All right, cool it off down there. I ain’t askin’ you again!”
“DREDD… DREDD… DREDD!”
Someone snapped a chain. Someone found a plastic blade strapped to his leg, a weapon the detectors didn’t find. Someone spit a shard of broken glass from his mouth and slipped it between the knuckles of a scarred left hand.
A man nearly seven feet tall came to his feet behind Dredd. He howled and rolled his eyes, spitting Dredd’s name, a broken chain whipping about his head. He came at Dredd fast. Dredd kicked him in the gut, slamming him back into a benchful of men. The men yelled and shook their fists, straining at their chains. A burly arm came out of nowhere, crooking around Dredd’s neck. Dredd drove his elbow straight back. The man grunted in pain, but he wouldn’t let go.
A riot gun exploded twice, breaking eardrums and lighting up the hold. A scream pierced the air.
Fergie saw the man scooting on his arms across the surface of the deck. Long arms, long legs, hairy as a spider. Dredd roared in Fergie’s ears, and pounded on the enormous arm around his neck. Fergie didn’t think Dredd looked good at all. His face looked red. Then it looked purple, then it looked blue.
If I get out of this alive, I won’t have to do any time, Fergie thought. Dredd’ll kill me and I won’t have to do five years—five minutes maybe, sure as hell not five years…
Reverend Billy Joe Angel fought the urge to reach beneath his robe and scratch his crotch. That was wrong, that was sin. God wouldn’t care for that. There was something crawling around down there—maybe a centipede, it felt kind of long. ’Course it might be a bunch of red ants. There were lots of red ants in the gully, and if you stayed on your knees long enough in holy prayer they’d find you out.
Whatever it was, it stung bad. It was stinging parts that hurt worse than anything at all. The Reverend rejoiced in God’s blessing, in the joy of the pain.
“Gwowy do Goht,” he cried out, “gwowy do hids nabe!”
He drew the hood tighter about his head, and raised his face to the skies. He was blind, but he could feel the terrible wrath of the sun. It burned through ragged cloth, blistered his flesh and seared him to the bone.
Thou art good, oh Lord, he prayed in his head. Thou hast sent me bountiful suffering and near-unbearable pain. I thank thee for this empty and worthless land, for the merciless ball of fire thou hast placed overhead, for the tiny creatures of the earth that do constantly sting and bite this worthless body, which is unclean and eternally damned. Bring forth festering sores upon me, and upon my wicked sons, the filthy spawn of my loins, the—
“Shuttle coming, Pa! Link-Link’s got us a ETA of three minutes flat!”
The Reverend felt a rush of glorious pain, a thrill of agony more intense than the nest of scorpions he’d sat in last spring.
“Praish the Lort who breegs us thish boundy!” Reverend Billy Joe Angel cried. “Praish hids nabe!”
He reached for his staff, found it, and pulled himself shakily to his feet. The ants were angry at his movements and swarmed up both his legs. He plodded up the gully, dizzy with a hundred stabs of venom in his veins. He avoided rocks and holes, for though he was blind, he knew this piece of hell as well as he knew the welts and bites that covered his scrawny form.
“Coe, coe my suds,” he shouted, shaking his shaft above his head. “Coe forth and gedder in the Harbest!”
Mean Machine jumped up and down with delight. He covered one eye and squinted through one side of the antique binoculars, the side that wasn’t filled up with dirt. He couldn’t see a thing, but he knew it was coming, knew it was there. He hadn’t seen a shuttle or heard a thing at all but he knew. The same way he knew a lot of things, since Pa had put the little tick-thing in the hole upside his head. Pa said the tick-thing was a blessed curse of God. Pa was annointified and sorely ordained, and Pa ought to know.
Junior Head-Dead scrambled up the pathway, making pig-noises with his mouth. He dragged the big Boomer along behind him, stumbling and falling and picking himself up again.
“You break that and Pa won’t hit you fer a week,” Mean Machine warned him. “And I ain’t kidding, neither!”
“Snuk-Snuk-snuk!” Junior Head-Dead dropped the handle of the boomer, scattering parts on the ground. Snapped the shaky tripod in place. Lifted the clumsy weapon and set it on the stand, bolted it into place. Junior Head-Dead had no idea what it was. He knew it worked good and that was all he cared. It was a long, dented tube, still flecked with olive-drab paint. In an ancient incarnation in the Way Back When, it might have blown the treads off of a tank. It was hard to tell what it was then. Now, a missile that looked like a gas pipe protruded out the front. The missile had flat round magnets soldered to its snout. They looked like a plague of metal warts.
“Go-go-go!” cried Junior Head-Dead. “Going to catch me some citified boys!”
“Shut up,” Mean Machine said. He looked at Link-Link. Link-Link squatted like a sausage as he always did. His rat-nose twitched at the sky. Mean Machine had the Numbers of the Beast in his head. He could see things before they happened, but Link-Link could see them when they did.
“Give me a range-oh,” Mean Machine said. “Give me an Eee-Tee-Ay, gimme a G, gimme a O…”
“Sixty-Mixty-Levendy-Three,” Link said. “A four and a two and a thing with two heads…”
“That’s an eight, shit-brain,” Mean Machine said. “You gettin’ this, Junior?”
“Snuka-Snuk!” Junior said. “Goin’ to whup ’em right out of the sky!”
“You jus’ hold it,” Mean Machine said. “There’s nothing to shoot at yet, groon.”
“Don’t you—snuk!—go callin’ me that!”
“Lo,” said the Reverend Billy Joe Angel, “Lo, I am an ins-drew-ment of the Lort. He shall blesh me with hids abomonashuns!”
Mean Machine saw it in his head, the way it would happen, the way it would be. The flash of light, thunder, and the roar.
“Fire One!” he yelled as loudly as he could, though he didn’t know why because there wasn’t any Two…
“F-F-Fire One!” Junior Head-Dead said. He pulled the trigger and closed his eyes. Fire blasted out of the rear end of the weapon. It seared all the hair off Junior’s head. Junior hit the ground and rolled twice. The missile whined and wobbled drunkenly into the air. Mean Machine marveled at the white tail of smoke fading into the colorless sky. Reverend Billy Joe Angel prayed for God to send vipers and maggots to his bed.
Then, an instant before he heard the great din of retribution, the joyous sound of death, he felt the heat of the explosion on his face, felt the mighty flame of God’s breath.
“Got the sinners, Pa!” Mean Machine shouted. “Got ’em real good!”
“Hagga-lulla!” the Reverend Angel said.
TWENTY
Dredd decided he was dead.
The big con had squeezed the life out of his lungs, pounded his head against the shuttle’s iron floor. Blood filled his eyes. He couldn’t feel his legs anymore. He beat at the man’s ugly face until his fists went raw and the bastard wouldn’t budge.
He had never thought about death. Death was just there. Death was what you did when you didn’t do life anymore.
Then, in an instant, the world ripped apart in a ball of blinding light. Dredd and the con weren’t fighting on the floor; they were spinning through the air, locked together like two angry cats. The walls of the shuttle went by in a blur. Dredd flailed out and missed, turned end over end and tried again. His fingers found steel; the con’s grip tore free. He stared at Dredd and opened his mouth in a scream. The sound was lost in the howl of escaping air. The con seemed to shrink and disappear.
Dredd saw a ragged slice of blue sky and realized half the shuttle was gone. Something hit him solidly in the back and bounced off into the light, something without a head or legs. Dredd gripped the wall and held on.
Explosion, he thought. Something hit us… not in the shuttle… something outside.
The earth and the sky flashed by in a blur of blue and brown. Not too fast, Dredd noticed, gradually slowing down, spinning, but still slowing down. The front of the shuttle, half of the craft or more, ripped itself apart. The broken shell that was still intact was trying to stabilize itself, bring itself down in one piece. Dredd couldn’t see them, but he knew micro-computers in the molecular structure of the hull were patiently firing thruster rockets to bring them out of the spin. The computers didn’t know that there wasn’t a ship anymore, just a twisted piece of scrap. It was a valiant attempt to put a scrambled egg back together and cram it in the shell.
“Dreeeeedd!”
Dredd heard his name shrieking in the wind. With an effort that strained the tendons in his neck, he turned and spotted Fergie a dozen feet away. He was still strapped down, his fingers clutched tightly around the bottom of the bench.
“Dredd, do something,” he shouted. “Get me out of here!”
“Hold on,” Dredd told him. “We’re going down.”
“No kidding? See, I didn’t know that, I thought everything was fine. Now you tell me we’re going down, you’ve got me all upset again.”
Someone screamed. Fergie decided a lot of people were dead somewhere. A few were still alive and wishing to hell their luck would run out.
“This is all your fault,” Fergie said. “You did this to me. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you!”
“You broke the Law, Ferguson. You do the crime, you serve the time.”
“What time?” Fergie stared. “I haven’t got any time!”
“Thirty seconds,” Dredd said. “Maybe forty-five.”
“Shiiiiiiiiit!” Fergie said.
The corridors were dark. Even when Griffin thumbed his flash up to high the beam seemed to fade out and die. The cold steel walls were always thirsty down here. They always drank the light. Griffin had supervised the construction of the tunnel that led to the project, but he was never comfortable in the place. The bowels of Mega-City burrowed deep into the earth, but the tunnel was farther down than that.
Too deep, too cold, Griffin thought. Even too cold for a secret like this.
He was aware of Rico beside him, Rico’s silver eyes and chilling smile. Griffin knew Rico was aware of the fact that he feared the ancient robot, that its presence over his shoulder brought the memories of terrible wars to mind, horrors that Griffin had tried to forget. It filled him with rage that Rico could do this to him, that he couldn’t control these emotions in himself. That Rico knew, that he could smell and taste a man’s fear.
The corridor ended abruptly with a blank steel wall. Judge Griffin placed his left palm against a surface as cold as glacial ice. There was no marking there, no indication that this particular point was any different from the rest.
A sound almost too low to hear throbbed within the metal wall. The warrior robot shifted its massive weight. Its armored head extended from its neck; red eyes whirred from side to side.
“Oh, dear. Fido doesn’t like what’s inside,” Rico said.
“Good. He can wait out here,” Griffin said.
“Couldn’t do that. He wants to be close to me.”
Griffin didn’t answer. The wall seemed to slip into itself, as if the metal had melted away. The scent of dust and ozone filled the air. The room was dimly lit, a large half-sphere. Black, opaque plastic covered the large, geometric structures scattered about the floor.
Rico stood perfectly still, his eyes taking in every inch of the room.
“I can’t understand why Fido doesn’t like this place,” he said. “I simply love it here.”
“I’m not surprised,” Griffin said. “Welcome to Janus. You’ve been so anxious to see it, now you’re here.”
“There is a feeling in here. A sense of… a beginning.” Rico closed his eyes. “Can you smell that, Griffin? Yes, of course you can. It’s an awakening, a dawning. The light says that. It’s always dawn down here…”
Rico opened his eyes, suddenly alert. The robot hummed and moved its bulk in Rico’s path.
Rico glared at Griffin. “Who’s in here? Someone is in here.”
“We’re not in combat,” Griffin said irritably. “Tell that toy of yours to stand down!”
Rico looked past Griffin. His pupils swelled and turned gold. The woman stepped out of shadow into sight. She was tall, dressed in something blue that captured a million shards of light. Her mouth was wide and red, her eyes slightly tilted where the dark hair tumbled past her cheeks to her breasts.
“I know you,” Rico whispered. “I remember you…”
“Yes, you do,” the woman said. “You remember me.” Her voice was a breath of chilly air. She rewarded Rico with a smile.
“You’re Ilsa Hayden. The bitch who testified before the Council. You told the Judges I was insane.”
“And therefore innocent of your crimes,” Griffin added.
“I was simply trying to help,” Ilsa said.
Rico’s eyes burned. “You insulted me. You made me look like a—a mental degenerate. I knew exactly what I was doing. I did then, and I do now.”
“Really?” Ilsa took a step toward him. One small motion with more silent meaning, more blatant sensuality than Rico had ever seen.
“You might want to reconsider your… state of mind, friend. You might need to call on my help again.”
Griffin watched them. They stood well apart, but he could feel the struggle between them, the invisible lines of tension, the hunger and the need. He forced himself to repress a smile. Ilsa was the gift he had hoped for, the control he needed to keep Rico stable, to use him, to keep the howling psychopath inside this creature from emerging and destroying them all. Ilsa could do that. The raw, animal smell of this woman could bind him tighter than the strongest chain.
“Miss Hayden has been a loyal supporter of this project for some time,” Griffin said. “She has watched over it, kept it alive for me. I’m certain you’ll find her experience… invaluable, Rico.”
Rico didn’t blink. “I’m most grateful. I’m sure I can use all the help I can get.”
“We have our work cut out for us.” Ilsa swept one hand about the room. “The equipment’s been dormant for some time. It won’t be up and running without a complete retrofit. I’ve made some notations for you. This should give you some idea.”
Ilsa handed him a thin computerpad. Rico nodded, studied the figures quickly. He frowned, then looked up in alarm.
“Are you certain this is entirely correct? Yes, of course you are.” He turned on Griffin like a snake. “Inducers, nitrogen coils, nano-pumps… Hell, is there anything you don’t need? Why don’t we just nuke the place and start over again!”
He looked at Ilsa. “You’ve kept the project alive, have you? With what, glue and tape?”
“With what I had to work with, Rico.” If his words had offended, she didn’t let it show. “There was never any intention of bringing the project up to working status until we were ready. We saw no point in that.” She raised an eyebrow at Griffin. “Perhaps you should explain.”
Griffin nodded. “Ilsa has kept me apprised of her needs all along, Rico. I’ve had the necessary equipment marked for our use. From hospitals, government facilities, research laboratories… everything slated for different destinations, different names. It’s all there, all ready.” He smiled at the two. “If I set things in motion, when can you be on line?”
“If you can really deliver all this,” Rico said, “tomorrow I’ll have the place working.”
“We can begin to think about bringing the project online in a week. No less,” Ilsa broke in.
They looked at each other, neither willing to waver. Griffin read challenge,
resentment—and curiosity as well. Together they could do it. Working with each other, in spite of each other. The attraction between them was the heat that would light a fiercely burning fire, a fire that would change the world, mold it the way Griffin knew it had to be.
“On-line won’t mean a damn thing if you can’t get into Central’s Janus files,” Rico said. He flexed his fingers and ran one hand across his jaw. “They’re still security-locked. If we can’t pry the data out of there…”
“Leave Central to me,” Griffin told him. “You have plenty to do until then. None of this, down here, will be effective if you don’t stir up the Citizens in the street. Ilsa has some good suggestions in that area, too. I’m sure she can help.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Rico said. “I don’t need any help.”
“Oh, I see.” Ilsa shook her head, a gesture that tossed a wave of dark hair over one eye. “I thought you said he was the best, Griffin. I’m afraid I overlooked that evaluation somewhere. All I see is a petulant child.”
“Look, you—” Rico’s eyes flashed.
“Please…” Griffin raised a palm in peace. “Let’s not bicker now, all right? We are all committed to the same goal, ending the squalor, the inefficiency of our world. Replacing it with a new, ordered society.”
Rico’s frown faded. He looked at Griffin and laughed. It was a sudden, abrupt sound that shattered the silence of the room.
“You’ll get your New Order, Griffin. We’ll take care of that, won’t we, sweets?” He winked at Ilsa, then turned and whistled at the robot warrior looming dark at his back. “Let’s go, Fido. Daddy’s going to find you something to bite.”
TWENTY-ONE
It sounded like a wind-up bee, a tiny clut-clut-bzzzt! in his ear. Griffin stopped dead, jerked around and stared back down the tunnel. The shadows were empty, no one was there.
Of course there’s no one there, you damn fool. No one but you!
Nerves, he told himself. That maniac and his antique killing machine were enough to give anyone the jumps. Ilsa Hayden was no paragon of mental health, as far as that was concerned, but compared to Rico…