by Neal Barrett
The big robot made a rumbling noise at the mention of its name.
“All—all right. I’m sorry.” Ilsa rubbed her arm. She looked at him, let him see her own strength, the fury and determination there. Told him with her eyes that there were places he couldn’t reach, places he couldn’t hurt.
“You and I should not be in conflict, Ilsa.”
“No. We should not.”
He touched her cheek. She didn’t move, didn’t take her eyes from his.
“Then we won’t, will we?” Rico smiled. “We will work as a close, smoothly-running team. I do so like for things to run smoothly. I said that, didn’t I?”
Ilsa didn’t answer. Rico turned, and walked to the computer bank, gazed at the thousand blinking eyes.
“Status of Janus Project, Central.”
“The DNA samples have been removed from frozen state. Operation is on-line. I am prepared to begin the cloning procedure upon command.”
“Put that on hold, Central. Slight change of plans. I wish to purge the DNA samples you have on hand.”
“What?” Ilsa stepped forward, reached out to touch him, then drew back her hand. “What are you doing, Rico? What is this?”
Rico didn’t answer. “Proceed, Central.”
“DNA samples… purged.”
“Central, activate the DNA sampling console.”
“Sampling console activated and ready.”
Ilsa clenched her fists at her sides. The robot warrior whirred, swiveled its head an inch to the right.
My God, it knows… it can sense my sense my emotions, heartbeat—something!
She watched, too frightened now to move, as Rico walked to the dark metal wall. A panel opened with no sound at all. A ceramic shelf appeared. It was antiseptic white, slightly concave. Rico ripped his sleeve away and placed his bare arm in the hollow. A shiny tube whined out of the wall, split itself into eight gleaming needles, clawed for an instant at the air, then plunged its silver fingers into Rico’s arm.
Narrow columns of red began to climb the spidery points. The red disappeared. The needles rose quickly, and sucked themselves into the wall. Rico smiled at the eight crimson droplets on his arm.
“DNA samples have been obtained.”
“Done, and done again, I believe somebody said.”
Ilsa shook her head. “This isn’t right, Rico. It wasn’t part of the plan. Griffin did not authorize you to—”
Rico turned on her, faster than a snake. “Griffin got to be my keeper because he put me behind bars. What’s your excuse?”
“Analysis and replication… proceeding.”
“I’m not trying to make you do anything, Rico. Don’t get excited. I’m just telling you you don’t need to do this. Griffin’s thought this thing out. He’s had years, he knows what he’s doing. He’s going to turn Mega-City around, make things the way they ought to be…”
Rico threw back his head and laughed. “Griffin is a… a plumber, a file clerk. All he’s doing is exploiting my genius, my intelligence and abilities. And yours, Ilsa. Yours as well. We’re the giants here, Griffin is the dwarf. Isn’t that clear to you, don’t you see that?”
Ilsa closed her eyes. “My God. It was a mistake to keep you alive. He should never have done it this way.”
Rico poked a finger between her breasts, hard enough to make her gasp.
“I don’t have to ask what you voted for, do I now?”
“Don’t be foolish. You know better than that.”
“I know what you said at my trial. You wanted me to live then. You want me to live now.” He touched the lobe of her ear, let his finger trail to her cheek. “Don’t you, Ilsa? Because then, as well as now, your reason, that fine cold intellect of yours, told you one thing, and another part of you could not imagine me dying.”
Ilsa forced a laugh. “You don’t—you don’t know that at all, Rico. You don’t know what I’m thinking. You have no idea how I feel.”
Rico touched her lips. Ilsa held her breath, stunned by the power, the force, the raw heat that seemed to draw them together. It was even more intense than the first time, when Griffin had brought him here, the first time she’d seen him in the nine years he had been hidden from the world in the depths of Aspen Prison.
And, when he finally drew her to him, his presence overwhelmed her, took her in a rush.
He bared his arm again, showed her the red spots of his blood where the silver spider had drunk its fill. He didn’t have to ask her, to tell her, she knew what to do, what she ached to do, though she had never known this need before.
“You are an extraordinary woman, Ilsa. This is a moment only you and I could share. No one else, because there are no others like us in the world.”
She brought his arm to her face, let the droplets brush her cheek, brought her lips to each small well of red.
“Yes…” she heard herself say. “Yes… yes…”
THIRTY-EIGHT
He stood in the narrow hallway, clutching the Remington, squeezing the stock until his fingers went white. He remembered every break-in he’d ever seen, a thousand doors he’d found twisted, violated, broken into splinters because they stood in the way of a terrible rage, of an anger shut out that wanted in. He remembered, too, the things he’d seen, the things he’d found behind those doors.
Hershey…
“Stay behind me,” he told Fergie. “Whatever I do, I don’t want you in the way.”
“Hey, no problem,” Fergie said. “You won’t even know I’m here.”
Dredd stepped quickly into the living room, bent at the knees, and swept the room with the Remington. He felt the tight constriction of his throat. The room was totally wrecked. Furniture was overturned, the upholstery slashed with a knife. Pictures had been torn off the wall. Broken glass littered the floor. At the far end of the room, a desk was broken in half, papers scattered about. Hershey’s computer had been dashed against the wall. Dark scars on the wall said someone had picked up the machine and tossed it half a dozen times.
“You got a machine abuser here, is what you got,” Fergie said. “I’ve seen it before. Guy doesn’t like anything of the electronic persuasion, he’s going to take a little extra time, hurt it all he can. It’s something happens when that person’s a kid. Maybe he sticks his finger in a socket, sees something scary on the screen—”
“Shut up,” Dredd said. “Hold it down.”
He left the living area and moved quickly down the hall. More broken glass. Blue shreds of paper that looked familiar to Dredd. He picked up a piece, held it to the light. It came from a Judge Training Manual: Civil Disorder 201.
“Can I say something? Can I talk?”
“What?”
“This is not what we ought to be doing, Dredd. We stick around up here, this is where the Hunters are going to expect you to be. Let’s get low, man. Ol’ Fergie’ll take you Downtown, where I know how to survive.”
“Sewer rats.”
“Pardon me?”
“You want me to hide out with the sewer rats, the lawbreakers, the scum.”
“Oh, excuse me.” Fergie raised his hands. “See, I keep forgetting myself, like I’m a sewer rat, one of the criminally inclined, and you’re not. I mean, just because every Judge Hunter in Mega-City wants your ass nailed up on the wall doesn’t mean I shouldn’t show proper respect at all times—”
“Can it.”
“What?”
“I said can it, Ferguson. I’m busy, I don’t have time for this.”
Dredd stepped into the bedroom. Everything was torn apart, upside down. “You don’t like the company, take off,” he said. “Nobody’s holding you down. Go find a sewer rat. Go find a—”
The boot hit him hard in the chest, driving him back against the wall. Hershey stepped from behind the closet door. She held the Lawgiver steady in both hands, the muzzle aimed between his eyes.
“Both of you, you know the drill! Up against the wall, spread ’em wide!”
Dredd stared at her. Ther
e was a dark smudge on her cheek, an angry cut above one eye.
“Hershey, I thought they’d—”
“Thought they’d what? Killed me? You thought so or hoped, Dredd?”
“Hold it a minute. Stop it. What happened here?”
“I’m a Judge. Someone wants to kill me. Someone almost did. They get you in the street, in your home, anywhere.” She paused, and gave Dredd a chilling look. “Why don’t you tell me what’s happening? They’re dying out there. A hundred and eight Judges in forty-eight hours. What the hell is going on?”
Dredd shook his head. “You think I’m part of this?”
“I don’t know who or what you are anymore. I don’t know anything.”
“I would never hurt you, Hershey.”
Hershey studied him a long moment, glanced at Fergie, then backed off across the room. Without lowering her weapon, she reached in her jacket and and tossed a viewie to Dredd.
“Tell me about this. Make me believe in you again—the way I did when I defended you. I did, Dredd. I honestly did, I-I couldn’t imagine you doing anything that was against the Law. I couldn’t, and then I found this.”
Dredd let out a breath. He took the viewie without looking at it. “The man beside me in this picture is my—brother. His name is Rico. He was the best Judge on the street. The smartest, the most dedicated. Then something happened to him, to his mind. He went insane, Hershey. He said the Judges should rule, not serve. He said that was our destiny in life, our place in history.
“He finally became more dangerous than any of the criminals he’d put away. A lot of men died trying to stop him. I had to judge him…”
“That was the one,” Hershey said quietly.
“Yes. That was the one.”
“And you’re telling me he’s doing all this? All this killing?”
“Not by himself. He’s working with Griffin.”
“Griffin?” Hershey slowly lowered her weapon. All the strength seemed to drain from her body. “Oh, my God. It fits, doesn’t it?” She looked at Dredd. “We’ve got to let the Council know. They’ve got to stop him before he—”
“It’s too late for that. There isn’t any Council. Rico murdered them all an hour ago. Griffin set it up. Griffin was there.”
Hershey sat down. She laid her weapon on the floor. Dredd watched her. She was staring past him, looking at nothing at all. Fergie glanced at Dredd, then quietly left the room.
“I shouldn’t have even thought you had anything to do with this,” Hershey said. “I didn’t know. All I could think about was the Tribunal, what happened there. I should have known when I found out you’d been drugged. I thought it was Fargo, that he didn’t want you to try to stop him from taking the Long Walk for you…”
She caught Dredd’s expression, stood, and reached out and touched his hand. “You didn’t even know that, did you? What they’d done. Oh, Dredd!”
“It’s all right,” he told her. “You didn’t have any way to know what the son of a bitch was doing. No one did.”
“That’s why the DNA convicted you. You and Rico are the same. Brothers. Did Fargo know? Was he… ?”
“He was a part of it. They all knew. Everyone on the Council.”
Dredd turned away. “It’s not exactly like Rico and I are brothers. Not like real brothers, normal brothers, Hershey. We’re the same. Clones. We’re inhuman. Defective. He just broke down first.”
“No, oh, no, that’s not true at all, Dredd! You’re not the same!”
Dredd wouldn’t face her. “You said it, Hershey. Remember? That I had no feelings, no emotions? Now you know why. I’m not programmed to feel. Like Rico.”
“They didn’t do that to you,” she said softly. “You did, Dredd. You did it to yourself. You hurt. You hurt because you had to condemn your brother. You told yourself you would never let that happen to you again. You would never care for anyone, never let anyone get close. If you shut it all out, they couldn’t touch you.
“Don’t you see? They made you do it, but you did it to yourself.”
Dredd faced her. He felt confused, mixed up inside. He understood what she was saying, but her words didn’t seem to apply to him. They didn’t and they did. It was like she was talking about someone else, someone like him.
Fergie poked his head into the room. “Sorry, guys. I messed around with that terminal, but I’m afraid it’s torn up pretty bad. Hey, I fixed your microwave, though. Listen, is this a bad time?”
He looked at Hershey, then at Dredd. “The computer’s back up to the idiot stage. That’s the best I can do for right now. I’ve got enough working to go in and look around. I tried to find this Janus business. There’s nothing. Nowhere.”
Hershey looked puzzled. “Janus?”
“That’s the code word for the project that brought Rico and me to life. I’m not surprised Ferguson can’t find it. It would be buried under so many security barriers…”
Dredd stopped. “If Griffin’s got Janus back on-line now, it’s going to be using a lot of power. That thing’s bigger than a toaster.”
Fergie shook his head. “Tried that. No new energy allocations for anything that big. Even under an alias. Of course, that moron machine I patched together, I wouldn’t trust it to count apples.”
“No, they wouldn’t risk putting something like that on the net, would they?” Hershey said. “But it’s still got to use power, so they’d… They’d have to steal it, wouldn’t they? From everything they could get their hands on.”
Hershey turned to Fergie. “Check the sectors for recent black-outs. Any sudden power surges. Can you do that?”
Fergie looked pained. “I can handle anything you can dream up, Judge. Okay, atomic disintegration, I can’t handle that. This mortally-wounded machine of yours, though… Hey, I can try, I don’t know.”
“Try,” Dredd said.
“Right, right, I’m doing it.”
“Wait a minute…” Hershey bit her lip and frowned. “The day of that fracas in Red Quad? I had to write up everything that happened, because those groons blew up my Lawmaster. I called up all the data in that area within the time parameters—temperature, bio-air samples, pollen count, for God’s sake. I remember there was a significant power surge about thirty blocks wide. A big one. It didn’t mean a thing to me at the time.”
Fergie whistled under his breath. “Something like that’d shut down the power grid in the whole sector. We ought to be able to pin down a lot more than you get on a first-level data report.”
“What do you mean?” Dredd said.
“I mean it’s like you shoot up with battery acid, right? I wouldn’t do anything like that, that’s stupid, you’d be flat-ass dead, but I know some droogs who would—”
“Ferguson!”
“Yeah, right. Okay. What I’m saying is, it doesn’t just burn up everything in your body it touches, it leaves a trail. Nerve endings all crudded up, stuff like that. If you didn’t know where the trouble started, you could pick up the trail about anywhere and trace it right back. To the point of origin, I mean.”
Hershey looked at the ceiling. “You had to go through all that to get to the point?”
Fergie looked hurt. “Well, yeah.”
“He’s right, though,” Dredd said. “Wherever all that power went, we can follow it. We can find it!”
“Maybe,” Fergie said. “I don’t know, man…”
“You said you can do anything. So do it.”
Fergie looked at him. He had a good comeback but decided to keep it to himself. Dredd didn’t have a real good sense of humor. If Fergie had learned anything at all, he’d learned that.
“I’ll get the easy stuff first,” Fergie said. He tapped the keys, frowned, looked at the screen. “Let’s hope this thing’s still got the brain cells to—yeah, all right!
“That’s your basic power record for the date in question everywhere close to Red Quad. Those little peaks are minor over-loads. This one, the big daddy, is the power surge you’re talking ab
out, Judge. Now, let’s see where it came from, okay?”
Fergie’s fingers ran lightly over the keys. Hershey and Dredd stood over his shoulders.
“Okay, it’s coming up now, breaking down the power load to—huh?”
Dredd squeezed his arm. “What the hell’s that?”
“I don’t know what it is. Sorry. What I meant to say was…” He leaned in and squinted at the screen. Grid buildings rose up from the ground, shimmered for an instant, then vanished out of sight. Others popped up to take their place. Geometric mountain ranges blinked up and down, the beat of the city’s heart.
“I told you this computer’s glitched out,” Fergie said. “What it’s doing is taking us the long way around. It’s tracing back that sector of the city for, what? A hundred, maybe two hundred years. About a year every half a second.”
“Fascinating,” Dredd said. “When do we get to now?”
“There’s nothing I can do. It’ll run itself down and we’ll get to the source of our power drain.”
“It’s coming,” Hershey said. “That’s almost Red Quad today.”
“Couple of seconds… Okay, we’re home. Block War day.” Fergie nodded at the screen. Intricate capillaries of energy webbed the sector, merging at one central point, a glowing amber ball.
“It’s underground,” Dredd said. “No big surprise.”
“Way underground,” Fergie added. “Nothing goes that deep, man. Nothing I ever heard of.”
“Wait. What’s that? That thing right there.” Dredd jabbed a finger at the screen.
“After-image,” Fergie said. “I could clean it up if everything was working right.”
“No. No you couldn’t,” Hershey said. “It’s there, where it’s supposed to be. See that profile? That’s the Liberty Lady. What’s left of her. The city relocated it, what, seventy-five years ago?”
Fergie slapped a fist into his palm. “I’ve seen her. They built one of those death traps across from Heavenly Haven. Built it right around that Lady of yours, swallowed it up again.”