Sweet Justice (11 page)

A man screamed like a girl from the direction of the teetering edifice that was Albion-Block and the Judges squinted up at the sun as a window on the fifth floor shattered into fragments. A broken, bleeding body landed at their feet, still twitching.

‘Huh-he tore out muh-my heart...’

The Judges leaned forward to examine the gaping hole in the man’s chest. They studied his clothes. The Cuban heels. The mauve, flared trousers. The tight wool jumper. His face; worn, yet tanned. The swept-back mound of brillo-pad hair. The likeness was unmistakeable. ‘Who did this to you, citizen?’ they asked the clone of Lionel Blair.

Blair coughed on his own blood as his eyes clouded over, approaching death. He glanced down at his ragged chest, chuckling for a moment at how ridiculous it looked. He tried to talk, but could only whisper odd, quiet syllables. The Judges leaned closer still. ‘What’s he like? Can you give us any clue as to who he is?’

Blair stretched out his hands, palms upwards. ‘Song?’ one of the Judges asked hesitantly. Blair nodded vigorously, and the Judge smiled smugly. ‘Three words,’ said the second Judge, catching on fast. Blair’s eyes bulged encouragingly as his hands fluttered like small birds above his shattered rib cage.

‘First word’s “Hey”.’

‘Second word. Sounds like “swannee”.’

‘“Nonny?”’

‘Third word...’ Blair ground his teeth furiously as the Judges looked on. ‘Gnaw?’ The second Judge looked blank.

‘No,’ said the first. ‘It’s “Naw” – like in the old Scottish folk song. “Hey Nonny Naw”.’ Lionel Blair looked pleased for a moment, then died very suddenly.

Upstairs the Judges found the room from which Blair had been thrown. More Charades-Hooligans? They scanned the walls, even now dripping with ectoplasm. The furniture was alight, and all the mirrors had gone black. ‘Hey Nonny Naw’, the first Judge said under his breath. Three Albion-Block citizens had been found dead this past week. Stranger still, each had been clones of television personalities from the twentieth century. First had been Barry Took, who was face-down in a rad-waste lake. Next was Liza Goddard, brutally beaten to death with a walking stick and left to die in a bed of ectoplasmic fluid. The Scot-Blocks certainly had motives for the killings, but had they the means? All experienced Charades experts would be key figures in the approaching finals, but this was just
too
weird. The Judges cordoned off the building.

Then they called Psi Division.

The Scot-Block vs. Albion-Block games were a tradition dating back almost one hundred and twenty years; since the first settlers had arrived from Brit-Cit and the Cal-Hab zones. In those days, of course, they were allowed to play football – but the first games resulted in a spate of appalling deaths, and the Judges banned the sport whilst only in its third season. The game was replaced by blow football, but even this proved to be deadly, inciting the fans to chilling acts of violence, invading the pitch and so on. This was particularly distressing, since the pitch was a four-by-five-foot coffee table in someone’s living room.

The annual game, eight years previously, became Charades. At first this proved very successful, with only a small handful of casualties; but as the years passed, support for the game, at first fanatical, became lethal. Charades-vandalism became a familiar sight. ‘Charades-casuals’ would tattoo the names ‘Gareth Hunt’ or ‘Bernie Winters’ onto their arms, waving patriotic flags to the games. What had begun in a living room expanded and grew into full-blown matches in stadiums packed with citizens from the Cal-Hab ghettoes and Brit-Cit, all wearing team colours and threatening the chunky-jumpered Chairman (who was notorious for giving one team a film title like ‘The Sound of Music’, while giving the opposing team a fiendishly difficult music title, like ‘Itsy-Bitsy-Teeny-Weeny-Yellow-Polka-Dot-Bikini’).

A forensic team were snapping photos of the room in Albion-Block when Anderson walked in. She cracked a couple of jokes, but nobody laughed. There were no ornaments in the room, no photos, absolutely nothing to indicate that the victim led any kind of life. He was a clone, bred solely to take part in the games, he had never had a family, or even friends. Charades was his life, and he had trained night and day to perfect his craft. Anderson ran a finger along the black glass of the mirror, feeling the cracks.

‘It was something old. Something terrible that did this.’

The other Judges looked up as she began to tremble. Her eyes fluttered closed as she whispered, as though in conversation with someone or something unseen; then snapped open, wise with sudden fright. Anderson drew a long shuddering breath before she spoke.

‘Do the words “Hey Nonny Naw” mean anything to you?’

Lionel Blair’s dying words. Anderson paled, as realisation of what they were facing dawned with a spectral chill. A creature famed for its eccentric anecdotes and murderously unfunny songs. The scourge of the Royal Variety Show. Another brief psychic flash; a premonition of scraggly white hair and gnashing false teeth. With terrifying certainty, Anderson knew they would have to face Sir Harry Lauder himself.

It was the eve of the big match. Ricky McFulton, the Scot-Block team manager, reclined in his comfy chair as he poured a glass of illegal whisky. He scrutinised the contract he was holding, signed in his own blood. A pact with The Beast. Yet, mused Ricky, what cost his own soul, when weighed against the importance of the game; against Charades? The Brit-Cit team, with their marshalled ranks of twentieth century TV personality clones, had won the annual event seven years running. Something
had
to be done before they reached the Grand Slam. With the help of Celtic druids on the fourth floor of Billy Connelly Block, McFulton had evoked the twisted spirit of Sir Harry Lauder; one by one, he had destroyed the best of the opposing team, as Harry tore the living hearts from their bodies.

Ricky sipped his whisky and smiled.

Elsewhere, in Jon Pertwee Con-Apts, Una Stubbs (the only surviving member of the English team) did some Charades exercises. She had been placed under 24-hour security, for fear of an attempt on her life. Anderson watched as Una groaned with concentrated effort, stretching her finger muscles one by one, rapidly skipping between one, two, three syllables. Choosing numbers at random. ‘Concentration and a clear mind,’ she trilled. ‘That’s all it takes!’ At eleven twenty-four, all the glasses in the room began to chime.

The chiming grew intolerably louder as Una, Anderson and the Judges covered their ears, mouthing silent instructions at one another. The chiming grew in volume and pitch, reaching a frequency beyond the range of human hearing. Then everything exploded. Windows, glasses, cups, saucers; clocks, watches, strip-lights, vid-screen. Everything shattered, then froze in mid-air. Like a photograph. Then the apartment went dark...

Anderson held Una’s hand in the pitch-blackness. Both squinted as a bright light appeared, widening, and a man with a small, crooked stick stepped out of it. He was wearing a kilt.

‘Hey, Nonny Naw, like a BIRD by the STREAM,’ the newcomer intoned, as though his singing voice had not been used in hundreds of years, and hadn’t been particularly good to begin with. Anderson gritted her teeth against the pain. ‘Stop it!’ she entreated. ‘For drokk’s sake, STOP IT!’

Anderson and Una screamed, pressing their hands to their ears in a futile attempt to block the terrible noise. Sir Harry Lauder merely winked as he leaned back on his walking cane with a smirk, continuing to sing. The outsize kilt was set off by a musty-looking tweed jacket. An awful beret perched balefully on his head, made all the more ludicrous by the single grouse-feather protruding from it. He hobbled forward, withered lips smacking as he reached for Una’s chest. Harry was under contract from the Devil Himself, and only the agreed bounty would satisfy the Lord of Chaos. He had to bring back the heart. Far away in Billy Connolly Block, Ricky McFulton sat bolt upright in his comfy chair as he exploded into gales of laughter. He drained the whisky glass in a single jolt.

‘Noooo!’ Anderson wrestled in living shadows that shifted and changed with her struggles, screaming threats at the shrunken, smirking form of Harry Lauder as he dropped the still-beating heart into his sporran. ‘Aye,’ he said, grinning a toothless grin. ‘That’ll do the Big Man nicely.’

With a superhuman effort, Anderson struggled free of the enveloping shadows, leaping onto the departing entertainer. With a strangled cry, Lauder was knocked spiralling through the base of the spirit-realm directly into Purgatory, arms pinwheeling wildly. Lost souls huddled in corners, wailing piteously as a freezing mist roiled around them. Anderson plunged her hand deep into Lauder’s sporran, bringing forth the purple-red heart. It pulsated in her hands as she began to squeeze. ‘Hey Nonny
nooooooo
...’ wailed Lauder, clawing at her as she slowly crushed the heart. It squelched as thick, black blood jetted out, running through her fingers.

Finally, his supernatural power spent, Harry Lauder disintegrated before her with a hollow scream. Out of breath, Anderson lurched back into the room, where time continued to stand still. Carefully avoiding the shards of shattered glass which still hung in the air, she headed for street-level, meeting the squad of Judges now surrounding the building. Crowds from both Scot-Block and Albion-Block had gathered, anxious to know how the evening’s developments would affect the championship. The news was not good. Judge Gordon Rennie’s expression was grave as he held a megaphone to his lips and gave the order that would outlaw Charades forever. It was a momentous day, in which a new crime was added to the seemingly endless charter of offences in Mega-City’s criminal calendar. Henceforth, any citizen caught miming in a built up area was lookingat a twenty-year stretch in the Cubes. The new annual sporting event between rival blocks was to be ‘I-Spy’, and then only for those citizens lucky enough to be issued with a permit.

It was not a popular decision; even less so when Rennie outlined the conditions under which citizens would qualify for a permit. The news that no-one of either Scottish or English descent was eligible under any circumstances was not well received. The crowd jeered their contempt for the ruling, screaming threats and abuse until Judge Rennie took the megaphone again, explaining that any citizen caught insulting a Judge would receive similar punishment. An immediate, if rather sullen silence fell on the street. A mother hastily covered the mouth of her squealing child as Rennie turned to Anderson with a wicked smile. Anderson held out the mangled remains of Una Stubbs’ broken heart.

‘Oh, have a
heart
, Judge Rennie.’

ROLL ON JUSTICE

By Ian Rimmer,
Judge Dredd Annual 1990

‘Who are you, kid?’ growled Agostini at the wide-eyed kid who’d entered his workshop. Couldn’t have been more than a teenager, Agostini thought. Small. Frail. Only spare flesh on him seemed to be his round face. Hardly a threat, but a serious lapse of security for him to have got this far.

The nervy kid had started at the sudden question. His chubby cheeks reddened slightly. ‘I’m Bond,’ he answered tentatively. ‘James Bond. Licensed holiday-cover mechanic.’

‘You putting me on?’ Agostini growled again. ‘You don’t look old enough, son. Anyway, where’s Hailwood, the usual cover?’

‘Got took sick,’ James replied, still wary of the crabby, grease-smeared mechanic. ‘And the others ahead of me at the agency – Surtees and Roberts – are on more important jobs.’

‘Listen son – ain’t no more important jobs than servicing Justice Department vehicles and hardware,’ huffed Agostini. ‘Still, isn’t your fault the agency don’t see it that way. ’Sides, I got me a backlog of work stretching from here to the Cursed Earth Desert. I need help. Guess you’ll have to do, James Bond. This way.’

‘You, ah, recognise my name?’ asked James, trailing the old, wizened engineer past several severely damaged Zipper Bikes. ‘Mom was a video nut. She watched stacks of these cruddy taped movies from the Twentieth. Named me after her favourite character.’

Agostini stopped to ponder for a moment. ‘James Bond, huh? Never heard of him. Okay – let’s see what we got here.’ The mechanic crossed to a large vehicle, its shape lost beneath a heavy cover. ‘Start on this,’ said Agostini, unceremoniously dragging off the cover. James’s eyes popped open wider than ever. He was staring at the road machine of the century. He was staring at a gleaming, pristine symbol of order. He was staring at a Lawmaster.

A Lawmaster... 4,000 cc of law enforcement; 500 brake-horse-power of crime-buster; 480 kilos of perp control. It was two-wheeled justice, dispensed at up to 570 kilometers per hour. It was fear, with a six-speed gearbox.

Calling the Lawmaster a motorbike was like calling its rider a policeman. It radiated authority and power, from the Justice Shield on the front wheelguard, to the tip of the twin exhausts at its rear. In between, the Notron V8 KT23 engine, silent now, waited to roar the rule of law through Mega-City One’s streets once more.

James let his eyes rove along the 2.5-meter body. He’d hoped, dreamed, yet never really believed he’d one day be this close to his dissertation subject at Mechani-College. He’d passed the personality test that ensured that there was no potential criminal intent to his studies, but James had never had the chance to touch his personal metal and leather grail before. Would he still pass that personality test...?

‘Here’s the report,’ Agostini said, reaching for the large volume on the Lawmaster seat. He flicked through a ream of computer print-outs, punctuating his progress with an ‘Uh-huh’ or a ‘Yeah’ every so often. ‘Well,’ he concluded, ‘this baby’s normally in the hands of Judge Dredd, but for now, it’s all yours.’

The elderly mechanic then spotted the look of awed wonder that still adorned James’s face. ‘Hope you’re payin’ attention, boy,’ rasped Agostini, thrusting the print-out into the hands of his star-struck junior. ‘And don’t go getting any crazy ideas...’

Agostini left the kid to the report and the Lawmaster. James sat on the former and stared at the latter. He could see little wrong with its smooth, machine-tolled lines, save for a hefty dent on the front wheelguard, to the left of the Justice Shield. That must be what it’s in for, James reasoned. For as long as it took to repair, the bike was in his charge – Agostini had said so – but straightening that guard would take him no time at all. James sighed heavily. And then he began to get a crazy idea...