Herman Ferguson ran as fast as he could.

Fergie had been running all his life. Running from his father, from his brothers, from the law. From outraged victims of this scam or that. Now the streets were full of blood, and he was running again. He shut out the howls of the dying and the rattle of gunfire and didn’t look back. Lead stitched the side of the building, pitting the grimy brick wall. Fergie wrapped his hands around his head as razor-sharp shards of stone stung his neck and sliced his cheek.

He ducked into the alcove and slammed his hands flat against the rusty metal door, praying it wasn’t locked. The door issued one protesting squeal and gave way. The stink in the entry was strong enough to gag a goat. The floor was ankle-deep with garbage, broken bricks, old foodpods, and several items Fergie didn’t care to think about.

The elevator shaft was a black and open wound. Fergie headed up the stairs. He glanced once more at the address on his card:

The stairway was worse than the hall downstairs. He stepped on something that squealed. Something darted up the sooty wall.

Fergie gasped for breath as he passed the second floor. Aspen Prison offered cons athletics, but he didn’t have the physical bearing or the right attitude to be a jock.

He rested on four. Took it easy up to five, and ran up to six. The hall was empty except for trash. The building was old as Time. The thick walls sucked up every sound. If gunfire still raked the streets, the noise couldn’t reach him up here.

Garbage shifted down the hallway to his right. Fergie went flat against the wall. A battered foodkart rounded the corner and headed his way. Its wheels were out of line, and it wobbled like his father used to do when he tried to find his way back home.

“Delicious and healthful rationpaks, piping hot and ready to eat… delicious and healthful rationpaks, piping hot and re—”

Fergie stepped out of its way. He passed number 662… 664…

Number 666 was a door smeared with the usual unintelligible graffiti, but Fergie didn’t care about that. Instead, he felt a great sense of relief. He hadn’t actually been alone for six months—no space, no privacy, just a couple of thousand mean, hairy sons of bitches who’d kick you to death for entertainment, or slide a rusty shiv into your heart.

“All right,” Fergie said. “The Fergie is home, the old Fergo is by himself!”

He turned the knob and stepped inside. A man with a scar-covered face and purple ears jammed a pistol up Fergie’s nose.

“Hey-hey, what we gots here? You a Judge spy, little man? ’Zat what you bes, you bes a muckin’ spy?”

Fergie blinked and stepped back. There were two other men in the room. They howled with laughter at Purple Ears’ remark. They’d never heard anything funnier in their lives. They stood by an open window. They gripped enormous weapons in their hands. Now Fergie could hear the crowd below. Weapons. Window. Crowd. Fergie felt the hair creep up his neck. All the slaughter down there was coming from here. In 666. In his room, which he didn’t really want any more.

“All right,” Fergie said, “I’ll tell you what, I can see what’s happening here. What it is, I got the wrong room. Hell, I probably got the wrong building, you know? I am always doing that.” He grinned at the three maniacs. “So I’ll just run along, I’ll leave you guys to your—”

“You hold it, droog.” Purple Ears stepped in his path. “You don’t bes goin’ anywheres, okay? You hear ’em down there? It’s a block war, man!”

Purple Ears’ companions cheered. One had two rows of Shiny hyponeedle teeth. The other wore a metal jacket he’d made from tin cans. A dead mouse hung from the lobe of each ear.

“Yeah,” said Needle Teeth, “if you l-live here, if you’re a R-R-Rezzie, you gotta stand up fer your block.”

“You gotta,” Metal Jacket added. “You don’t and you’re a—”

“—a neek,” Purple Ears finished.

“Yeah, you don’t, you’re a n-neek.”

“That sounds bad,” Fergie said.

“It is, man.”

Metal Jacket grinned and pointed a dirty finger at Fergie’s chest. “He don’ look like no Judge spy to me. I don’ guess he bein’ big enough for that.”

“Or smart ’nough, neither,” Purple Ears said. He winked at Needle Teeth. Needle Teeth showed Fergie a hideous grin. Fergie noticed the deep scars that covered Purple Ears’ face were actually words—two words carved over and over again, words that Fergie wouldn’t want his mother or his sisters to see. He wondered if Purple Ears had any idea that both of the words were misspelled. Fergie had no intention of being the one to break the news.

“Let’s go, Haven!” Metal Jacket shouted out the window. “Heaven-ly Ha-ven, all the way!”

Needle Teeth gave a blood-curdling cry and loosed a burst of automatic fire into the crowd down below. Smoke filled the room and empty cartridges rattled on the floor.

“Hey, you guys, stop that!” Fergie was appalled. “You’re killin’ people down there!”

“Yeah, you noticed, huh?” Purple Ears grinned and snapped off a dozen rounds with his automatic pistol. “Block war! Block war! Pour it on ’em, droogs!”

Metal Jacket joined in. The noise of his big black-and-copper weapon ripped through Fergie’s head. It was loud—but not loud enough to drown out the screams from far below.

“Damn it, you got to stop this,” Fergie cried out. “I’m on parole. They catch me with you morons my ass is back in Aspen again!”

No one could hear him. Fergie knew he had to do something. People were getting slaughtered down there, and though he didn’t really know his new neighbors that well, blowing them all to hell was the wrong thing to do—especially if the Judges blamed him for having a bunch of crazies in his room, and with his luck, that’s exactly what they’d do.

Fergie threw himself at Purple Ears and grabbed for his gun. A small voice told him it was a stupid thing to do. And, as it always seemed to happen, the small voice warned him half a second late. Purple Ears turned and looked at Fergie swinging on his arm, looked at him like he couldn’t believe this stupid neek was there. Then he whipped the butt of his pistol around and whacked Fergie firmly on the jaw…

It was close to sunset outside, but it was always high noon in the harshly-lit corridors of Mega-City’s Hall of Justice. The building was a towering fortress made of rough black granite that seemed to eat the light. The familiar shield and eagle of the Judges was carved in massive relief above the outside entryway.

Few ordinary citizens ever passed through these doors. Fewer still got beyond the high-security area of the first floor. And none of them ever reached the heights of the Hall of Justice, or penetrated its depths, which plunged thirty stories below the street. At least, that was the number the Judges allowed to leak to the curious public. There were secrets in this building only a handful of people ever knew.

The bench was hard as stone and the sound of the shuttle droned in Fergie’s head. The sound nearly put him to sleep, but Fergie knew better than that. A couple of cons had dozed off, then woke up yelling as the hot metal scorched their backs raw. The hull had been shielded when the craft was brand new, but it was far from new now.

Iron sweat dripped from the rusting pipes overhead. The air-recycler had blown on liftoff and the stench was unbearable in the hold. There were thirty-seven cons, cramped together on either side of the narrow aisle. No one was shackled. You could get up, move around, do whatever you wanted to.

“If you groons are crazy enough to kill each other on the way back home, then have at it, boys,” the guard said.

The con on Fergie’s left had a deep and deadly cough. The man on his right had a silver-plated leg. Fergie had heard of the guy but had never actually seen him before. His name was Jimmy Eyes, and he’d spent twenty years in Aspen Prison etching the leg with acid he’d stolen from the metalwork shop. He had done the whole thing with a magnifying glass. Unless you had a glass, all you could see on the leg were squiggly little lines. Strongly magnified, you could see the screaming faces of the people Jimmy Eyes had killed. He had driven his airbus into a power pole at three hundred-plus. No one but Jimmy got out. Everyone else was squashed flat or burned alive. A drug test showed Jimmy Eyes was bombed out on Triple Zetamine at the time.

After Jimmy finished his art—which everyone said was real fine for a man with no training at all—Jimmy took his etching acid and poured it into his eyes.

Fergie felt like a real nobody with cons like Jimmy Eyes and some of the other hardguys around. He recognized the Butcher from the paper hat he never removed from his head. The Lizard himself was supposed to be aboard. Everyone said he was a small, ordinary man, the kind you’d never notice in a crowd. Fergie shuddered at the thought. There was nothing ordinary about the Lizard, or what the Lizard had done.

Fergie knew he was small time, and that was fine with him. He had always made a real good living with a scam, and they’d only caught him once. Six lousy, miserable months, but he’d made it to the end in one piece, and he sure as hell wouldn’t let the Judges catch him cold like that again.

Fergie was certain he felt a change in the shuttle’s engines again. Maybe they were finally coming down. Or maybe the ancient crate had simply given out and they were plummeting to the ground.

There was no way to tell, no way to look out. And even if you could, there was nothing there to see. Nothing but the Big CE, the Cursed Earth itself. Death and desolation where nothing ever grew, where no one but a scrawny Dusteater could live, if you called that being alive. There was nothing else down there but the dry, hot winds that swept across the continent for three-thousand terrible miles. The winds, and one thing worse than that: Giant tornadoes that stalked the arid plains and sucked the earth dry—black, roaring funnels older than any man alive. Some people said that they weren’t simply weather anymore, like they were in the Way Back When. Now, they said, they were really alive, creatures as cunning as man himself.

That was just Dusteater talk, Fergie knew. Except he had seen one once from far away, on an Aspen Prison work detail. Now, he could no longer swear that the poor souls cast out upon the Cursed Earth weren’t right.

The shuttle tilted on its side, squeezing the seatbelt hard against his belly as the big engine started whining down. Where? Fergie wondered. Mega-City, most likely. They hardly sent anyone down to Tex-City anymore, and they never sent you back to the place where you’d committed your crime.

Fergie had tried to put that thought out of his mind for six months. He would never see LA again. Maggie, Bix and Gant—as far as he was concerned, they might as well be on Mars.

Okay, that’s that, put it out of your head. There are guys you can work with everywhere, and there’s plenty of Maggies out there.

Bix and Gant, right. But another Maggie, she wouldn’t be that easy to find…

No one was talking now. He knew what the other cons were thinking. That’s what he was thinking, too. Maybe they’d change their minds. Maybe they’d send him back. Judges could do that. Every man who’d ever been caught knew the Judges could do whatever they wanted.

He could hear the massive lock-gate grind, then thunder shut again as the shuttle passed through. Metal squealed, and the giant craft settled to the ground. The portal hummed, then opened like a massive steel eye. Fresh air filled the hold. The afternoon light was harsh after hours in the gloomy bowels of the ship. The cons opened their mouths up wide and shut their eyes.

“The Aspen Prison Shuttle has docked. Commence anti-contamination procedures at once… Parolees will disembark from Portal One-Niner now… You will maintain a single line. You will proceed in an orderly fashion to the assembly point outside…”

The voice grated from the antique speaker overhead. It sounded like gravel in a can. The cons stood and did as they were told. Fergie choked as he walked through the disinfectant spray. Whatever it was, he was certain it would kill anything inside a man or out.

When he blinked the sting away, he could see he’d guessed right. It was Mega-City, there was no mistaking that. The massive wall they’d just passed through was easily half a mile high. Ahead, he saw the awesome city itself, the silver-gray structures rising up abruptly, shutting out the sun, the great spires lost in the clouds twenty thousand feet above. Crowded skyways curled like graceful ribbons among the heights.

And, nearly out of sight, he could see the flying barges and shuttles speeding people and goods to those rich enough to live in the sparkling city towers. Fergie knew the rules. It was the same in LA. The mighty live high, and the droogs live low.

Videos didn’t do the city justice. It was bigger, grander, more terrifying than Fergie had ever imagined. LA was big—but not big like this. He had a momentary vision of a million iron swords, blades rising up north and south as far as the eye could see. And to make the image complete, the sun dipped beneath the city wall, turning the sharp planes of the city blood red…

The thin blanket was spread in the corner on the hard plastic floor. The room was totally dark. He lay perfectly still, feet together and arms at his sides. The temperature was set at forty-four degrees. Though he wore no clothes, the cold didn’t bother him at all. Heat and cold were subjects he never thought about.

He knew other people were concerned with such things—they liked to be comfortable, they liked to eat and sleep. He did not understand these feelings. Sleeping and eating were necessary for the continuance of life. Like breathing and pumping fresh blood from the heart. These were not pleasures, they were actions of the body. Some were automatic. Others were performed with intent.

He did not discuss these thoughts with the people he knew. He did not ask himself why he didn’t feel like everyone else. What difference did it make? What people did was important. Not what they thought. People could think about anything they liked. There were Laws that governed what they did.

Drawing himself erect, he began the set of exercises he performed every day. It was a hard, rigid routine, one that pushed his body to its limits, took him to the fine, exquisite edge of pain, and sometimes far beyond.

When he was done, he walked across the small room in the dark and stepped into the shower stall. Needle sprays at thirty-four degrees assaulted him from the walls, the ceiling and the floor. The shower lasted exactly three minutes, then the fans clicked on and blew him dry.

Back in his room, he punched on the harsh ceiling light. His few possessions were in a drawer built in the wall. A food dispenser was just above the drawer. There was nothing else in the room. No table or chairs. No video screen, no music, no books. Nothing but the blanket on the floor. The room was eight by ten. His position entitled him to much better quarters. He didn’t understand why anyone would need more than this. What for? No one ever came here but him. He didn’t know why people went to other people’s rooms, but they did.

He wasn’t hungry, but he ate. He punched the green button that would send him the proper daily nourishment for his age, sex, and current health assessment. The food dispenser blinked, and his meal popped out. The pellets were compressed into the shape of a chocolate bar. The color keys were off, and the chocolate bar was blue. It didn’t taste like anything at all.

He dressed quickly and quietly in skin-tight black underwear. There was a clock set in the wall but he never looked at that. He always knew what he had to do. He always knew when. His only regret in life was that his body required these minimal periods of rest, refueling, and care. It was four hours wasted every day. They were always out there, whether he was on the job or not. There were thousands of them—the killers, the rapers, the druggos - belly - gutters - head - hackers - sex - choppers, and the screaming maniacs.

In a rare display of emotion, he clenched his fists and let a cry of rage escape his lips. It wasn’t anger at them—he had no feelings at all about the citizens of Mega-City who broke the Law. When they crossed that fine line, they were subject to arrest, judgement, imprisonment, or instant execution, depending on their crime. It was his job, his duty, his purpose in life to see that these actions were properly done.

The fury he felt was not for them but for himself—for the hours he was not allowed to do his job, for the crimes being committed at that very moment he didn’t know about—and, though they were few—for the times he had pursued a lawbreaker and failed. Each day he promised himself he would push himself harder, that he would bring the cause of justice another step closer to the goal he knew was impossible to reach. Most of all, he promised himself that he would never fail again.

He drew the shutters back from the one narrow window in the room. The sun had disappeared behind the great wall in the west. The galaxy of Mega-City sparkled like a hundred-million stars. He turned away and faced the wall. He pressed his palm against the black plate of carbon and a panel slid away. The armored suit was black as space, so black it seemed to drink in all the light. The heavy gauntlets lay on a shelf. His boots were on the floor. Resting in its holster was the Lawgiver, the deadliest handgun in the world. In the left boot was a blue-steel knife. In the belt of the dark armored suit was a daystick and a cluster of studded mini-grenades. A visored helmet hung just above the collar of the suit.

On the left breast of the armor was a shield-and-eagle badge. Every Judge in Mega-City wore one, from the Street Judge to those trusted few who sat in the high, vaulted chambers of the Hall of Justice. Every badge was the same, and each was engraved with the name of the Judge who had earned it, and sworn to wear it proudly for life. The blood-bones, the clutchers, and the slicers feared every Judge in Mega-City, every chrome-and-cop-per badge. And every scummer who prowled the dark belly of the city prayed that he would be the one that fired the bullet that pierced the badge that bore the name of Dredd…

“Move along, damn you, I ain’t got all day!”

Fergie took a short step. The line shuffled forward. Glancing over his shoulder, he could see the broad curve of the shuttle’s hull. Like the cons it had carried, the shuttle had gotten its cleansing spray as well. Fingers of dirt dripped down its eroded sides. Nearly-faded letters on the side read:

MEGA-CITY JUDGE SYSTEM: ASPEN PRISON SHUTTLE # THREE

I hope to hell I never see your ugly self again, Fergie thought to himself.

“Next,” the guard said.

He stuck his right hand into the blinking red slot. The robot sensor whirred, then winked at him in green.

“Ferguson, Herman, ASP-niner-zero-zero-seven-six-four… Sentence served: Six months, three days. Welcome back, Cit-i-zen…”

“Thanks,” Fergie said.

The robot didn’t answer back. It made a bleeting sound, and flipped him a blue plastic card. The card showed Fergie’s face the day he’d entered prison. That was not a good day. He decided he looked better now.

He walked through a gate. He looked down at the ground. He waited for someone to tell him what to do. It struck him, then, and the thought nearly brought him to his knees. There was no one watching, no one telling him where to go, no one telling him what to do. He was free. He didn’t feel free, but he’d be damned if he let that hold him back.

The back of his card read:

“Sounds great,” Fergie said aloud. “Better than where I’ve been.”

A passerby saw him talking to himself. He glanced at Fergie’s prison-issue clothes, gave him a sour look, and hurried on. The man’s face was painted half cobalt-blue, half Chinese-red. His hair was coiled in a pile atop his head and tied with razor wire. It was impossible to guess the current fashion trend. Everyone he passed looked totally different from the person who’d passed before.

Poking his card in an infoslot led him to the Skycab station that would take him to the Red Quad sector, some sixty miles away. He hadn’t seen a woman on the street—or if he had, he didn’t recognize them as such. The Skycab ride made up for that. The great towers of Mega-City swept by below, but Fergie hardly noticed the sight. As the Skycab veered sharply to the left, he glanced down and saw a dazzling blue rooftop pool. Under a brightly-striped umbrella were three young women, standing and laughing by themselves. All of them were lean and impossibly tall. All of them had bright scarlet mouths and silver eyes. They wore their thick raven hair down to their thighs, and little else.

Fergie felt a knot in his stomach. He wanted to cry. He wanted to follow the women wherever they planned to go. One of the cons in the electronics shop had patched together a VIRG program, a Virtual Reality Girl. It tended to overload. Several prisoners burned out their skulls before the guards found the thing and hauled it away.

The Skycab set him down on a pleasant street. Fergie stood and stared at the breathtaking sight before his eyes. There was a shady green path winding through a forest of thick-boled trees. Sunlight filtered through the branches to sparkle in a gentle waterfall. Couples strolled hand in hand. Children chased each other across the lush lawn.

The scene brought a smile to Fergie’s face. Man, can these frigs possibly be as dumb as they look?

New variations on old schemes danced through his head. The platinum-brick routine, the antique-Coke bottle scam. These groons mooning in the park would buy a sackful of spiders if they thought they could get them half-price.

“Wonderful,” Fergie said aloud. “Herman Ferguson loves Heavenly Haven. Herman Ferguson is going to fit right in!”

“…coming soon, Citizens, the Heavenly Haven Pocket Park. Bringing fresh air and recreation to your lives. Another design for better living from the Mega-City Council…”

Fergie blinked, startled by the kindly, sonorous voice that seemed to come from everywhere. It was a warm, commanding voice, a voice you knew you could trust.

“—ing soon, Citizens, the Heavenly Haven Pocket Park. Bringing fresh air and…”

Heavenly Haven Pocket Park suddenly disappeared. Fergie stared at a dirty, graffiti-covered wall and felt the color rise to his face. Six months in Aspen and he’d let himself be conned by a damn holo poster!

“I gotta get with it,” he said, shaking his head. “I got to get straight before some scammer starts sellin’ me spiders…”

With the holo poster gone, Heavenly Haven didn’t look all that terrific anymore. Dark, skeletal tenements formed brooding canyon walls on every side. Citizens scurried through the murky streets. This part of the city was obviously incredibly old. Reminders of the Way Back When were squeezed between the tenement walls. Fergie saw a row of marble columns that held up nothing at all. Something that might have been a twentieth-century church was imbedded in a bleak slab of stone. Swallowed by the years, its brick entry surfaced now and then like the bones of some long-dead creature buried in a geologic fault.

Just to his right, half-covered by a tenement that rose out of sight, Fergie made out the remains of a statue from the very distant past. The metal was eroded and green. Half the face of a woman was left, and one raised arm. Whatever it was, time and pollution had taken its toll, and it was nearly rotted out and gone.

Fergie checked his directions again. There were no street signs. Nothing that said Red Quad or anything else. He spotted a fly-specked window, half a block away. A faded sign read: NICKO’S. He decided it was better than nothing, crossed the street, and stepped inside. There was a bar and a dirty wooden floor. A flickering bulb hung from a frayed electrical cord. There was no one in the place except the man behind the bar.

“Ah, you got a beer?” Fergie said. “Okay if I come in?”

“You got a card?”

“Of course I got a card. Everybody’s got a card.”

Fergie slapped his card on the bar. The bartender had half a steel face and two ruby-cut eyes. A cheek tattoo said he was a veteran of some obscure war.

Fergie quickly downed his first beer in six months. He closed his eyes and let his taste buds come back to life.

“How long you been out?”

Fergie didn’t bother to lie. “An hour and a half. Aspen Shuttle Three.”

“You want another one of those?”

“What do you think?”

The bartender slid another beer Fergie’s way and pushed his card into a slot. Fergie wondered how much they’d put in his account. You got some pitiful amount when they let you out of the joint. It couldn’t be much. He figured he’d have to get a scam going pretty fast.

“Since you know where I come from, maybe you can tell me where I am,” Fergie said. “I’ve got a room in Heavenly Haven. Where they’re going to do the park—”

“You’re in it, pal.” The bartender jerked a dirty thumb straight up. “Heavenly Haven. Looks a lot like Celestial Heights and Paradise Woods, only it ain’t.” The bartender grinned, showing moldy teeth. “Nice, huh? Welcome to the neighborhood.”

Fergie shrugged. “Beats hell out of Aspen Prison.”

“Yeah? That’s ’cause you just got here, friend.”

Hershey leaned into the wind, taking the skyway curve at a non-regulation twenty-two degrees, the hard surface inches from her head. The Lawmaster screamed but the broad tires held to the road. She didn’t dare look at her speed. A sensor would record all this somewhere; if she didn’t squash herself like a bug, a sergeant would eventually give her hell.

She was vaguely aware that Briscoe was still behind her, still in one piece. Maybe the Rookie would make a Street Judge after all, if she didn’t get him killed.

Mega-City rushed by in a blur of white light. A shuttle whined by overhead. Hershey wondered if Maintenance had checked the loose brake switch she’d red-lined the night before.

“Red Quad, Code Alpha-Two… Red Quad, Code Alpha Two…”

She flipped the signal off with a blink, slowed the Lawmaster for a second and a half, then squealed off the skyway onto Rampway Six. The rampway was for emergency traffic only. It circled down to the depths of the city, four thousand feet below. It was nearly pitch dark down there. Hershey punched on her brights. Code Alpha Two was Riot in Progress, and Red Quad was about as mean as you could get. The Rezzies who lived down there…

“Easy, Briscoe,” she spoke into her comm. “Keep your eyes open. There’s no one on the way yet but us.”

“I’m right with you, Judge!”

Hershey caught the excitement in his voice. “Don’t be so damn eager, Rookie. It’s real bad country down here.”

“I got you, Judge.”

“Good. Just so you do.” Hershey could hear the sound of automatic fire in the distance. She keyed the map on her dash. Red Quad. Left, then a minute and a half.

“We don’t have time for a recon,” she told Briscoe. “There are very likely people in danger right now. You take the street left, I’ll take it right.”

“I read you, Judge.”

“And Briscoe—watch yourself, okay?”

“Hey, don’t worry about me. Action is my middle—yawwwk!”

Yellow tracers stitched the street. Briscoe’s Lawmaster veered dangerously to the right, then straightened and roared ahead.

“Take cover!” Hershey shouted, “Combat One!”

She threw the machine into a skid, drew her Lawgiver and loosed a stream of fire into the tenement above. In a single motion, she was on her knees crouched in the protection of the heavily-armored machine. A glance to the left told her Briscoe was safe.

“Hang in there,” she said. “Keep cool.”

“I’m doing great, Judge!”

She couldn’t risk another look, but his voice said he still had that stupid Rookie grin on his face.

“What do you want me to do?” he said. “What are your orders, Judge?”

“Shut up,” she said, “I’m thinking.”

“Let’s go get the lousy droogs. I’ll lead off, you follow!”

“As you were!” Hershey ducked as a burst of fire slammed into her machine. “You see that? This is not an Academy simulation, Briscoe, this is real! We will stand down and wait for backup!”

“Judge—”

Briscoe’s words disappeared in a hail of fire that sent him reeling. When the acrid smoke cleared, a concrete gully a foot deep snaked across the street from one curb to the next. The line ran an inch from Briscoe’s knee.

“That is mucking heavy arms. These guys aren’t kidding!”

“What’d you expect,” Hershey said, “spitballs? Comm-Delta, Comm-Delta, this is Jaybird-Fiver, in position outside Heavenly Haven, Red Quad. Under fire, I repeat, we are under fire. Request backup, nearest Judge. Nearest—”

A fireball suddenly erupted behind her. Flames licked the side of the building and glass exploded from the windows. A woman shrieked as oily smoke blackened the street. A second blast geysered beside the first and a wall of heat struck Hershey like a fist.

“Request backup now, damn it,” Hershey shouted into her comm. “Now, or forget it!”

Briscoe raked the upper floors with his Lawgiver. A section of the wall collapsed and tumbled to the street.

“That is fire-ammo, Judge. Where’d they get their hands on that?”

“Where the hell do they get their hands on anything?” Hershey muttered. “They just do.”

Hershey tried to give the shooters a blast but the withering fire drove her down. The street was a wall of flame and there was no place to go. She glanced at Briscoe. She was glad the Rookie couldn’t see her face. It suddenly struck her that they’d stick a roach on her record for improper comm behavior. So what if they did? Who’s going to chew out a barbecued Judge?

Where’s the backup? What are you jerks doing out there!

“Judge, we could—I could lay down some fire. You could maybe get out of here, get us some help.”

“Forget it,” Hershey said, “no one’s going anywhere.”

Briscoe nodded. “Yes, Judge. I just thought…”

“I know what you thought. And thanks for the offer, all right? I won’t forget you made it.”

“Judge Hershey…”

“What, Briscoe?”

“If we don’t get out of this, if anything should—”

Hershey’s Lawmaster lifted into the air. Hershey screamed as the blast sent her rolling helplessly, head over heels along the street. Blood trickled from her ears. From the corner of her eye she could see the big machine against the sky. Time played tricks in her head and the Lawmaster seemed to float forever like a black steel balloon. It was spinning very slowly, directly overhead. Which meant, she decided, when it did come down it would flatten her into mush.

It didn’t seem important at the moment, the Lawmaster didn’t show any sign at all of coming down, and if it did, she would certainly have the sense to get out of the way, any droog could do that…

Briscoe scooped her up in his arms as Hershey’s Lawmaster struck the ground like a bomb. He leaped for the cover of his machine, gunfire chewing up the street at his boots. The Lawmaster exploded in a burst of white flame. Briscoe sprawled on the ground and covered Hershey’s head. He opened her visor and saw blood coming from her nose.

“Judge, you—you all right?”

Hershey blinked. “No, Briscoe, I’m not all right. Now get off of me.”

“Judge—” Briscoe’s eyes went wide. What if she thought that he… Oh, God, she couldn’t think that!

“These machines are supposed to serve as a protective barrier under any adverse circumstances a Judge might encounter in the line of duty,” Hershey said. “I repeat, any adverse circumstances.”

“I guess they don’t,” Briscoe said.

“If you can’t depend on your equipment, you are in deep shit, Rookie.”

“Judge. We can’t stay here. We’ve got to get out of the street.”

Hershey snapped her visor shut. “We can’t get out of here, we’re pinned down under overwhelming fire. Don’t you know that?”

Tracer bullets rained down on the street. Lead beat a steady tattoo on the armor of Briscoe’s machine.

“No, Judge, I don’t know that. I know if we don’t get out of here we’ll die and I definitely don’t want to do that.”

“You’re not going to die.”

“Who says I’m not?”

“I do, Rookie. When our back-up comes—”

“Our backup isn’t coming, Judge. Our backup is somewhere else, caught in another street fight.”

Hershey raised her visor again and gave him a chilling look. “You are wrong, Briscoe. Article Nineteen says a Judge in pursuit of his or her duty is never abandoned. When a Judge requires aid, aid will be rendered in sufficient force to remedy the situation in question. Have you read the Articles, Rookie?”

“Sure, but this time—”

“There is no ‘this time.’ The Articles apply to every time. Do you read me? Do you—”

Hershey jerked around as a deep roll of thunder reached her ears. The thunder exploded and a black Lawmaster burst through the curtain of flame. The rider slammed a heavy boot on the brakes, spinning his machine in a circle, blasting the scent of rubber into the smoky air. Gunfire ringed the man in a cage of hot steel.

Briscoe stared. “Who the… Who the hell’s that? He’s a sitting duck out there!”

“Shut up and pay attention,” Hershey said, “you might learn something.”

Flames licked at the dark figure’s heels. He stalked through the fire, ignoring the chatter of weapons from overhead. Lifting the speaker-mike from his Lawmaster, he turned and let his visored gaze sweep the tall buildings on every side.

“Drop your weapons. Everybody. This block is under arrest.”

His voice filled the streets, echoing off the dark walls.

“Holy crud.” Briscoe raised up and blinked. “It’s him—it’s Dredd!”

High-pitched laughter rang from the tenement overhead. “You want us, come up and get us, Dreddy!”

“Yeah, c-come up and get us, okay?”

Gunfire dug up chunks of pavement at Judge Dredd’s feet.

“Judge Dredd, take cover!” Briscoe shouted.

Dredd ignored him. He walked over and looked down at Briscoe, then at Hershey.

“What are you doing down there, Judge Hershey?”

“Waiting for backup,” Hershey said.

“Backup’s here.” He slapped the side of his Lawgiver. “Let’s go. Keep it simple. Standard relay. Single file. I’m point.”

Hershey nodded. Briscoe straightened eagerly, snapping to attention in front of Dredd. “Judge, I would consider it an honor if you allowed me to—”

“You…” Dredd raised a gloved hand and pointed past Hershey. “Back there. You’re tail-end Charlie. Go.”

Dredd turned away. He looked at his weapon and spoke.

“Grenade!”

The door exploded and slammed against the far wall. Dredd stepped inside. He looked at the trash and the darkened elevator shaft

“Upstairs. The perpetrators’ fire comes from Six.”

He kicked the door to the stairwell aside and started up. It was nearly pitch-dark and he didn’t use a light. He kept up a hard and steady pace and didn’t stop until they reached Six. Hershey was grateful she hadn’t slacked off on her ASJEX routine—the Advanced Street Judge Exercise program. Briscoe was breathing hard behind her. She hoped Dredd didn’t hear that.

Dredd paused in the stairwell, peered around the corner, then stepped into the hall, sweeping his weapon from left to right.

“Clear. Let’s go.”

Dredd started off, then abruptly raised his arm and stopped. The foodkart rounded the corner. It was moving slowly now, dragging a trail of garbage in its wheels. “… delicious and healthful rationpaks, piping hot and ready to eat…”

Dredd glanced at the robot and shook his head. Bending at the knees, he made his way swiftly down the hallway, listening to the walls. At 666, he stopped and raised his hand. Motioned Hershey to the left, Briscoe to the right.

“Lawful entry,” Dredd said aloud. “Suspicion of felons with illegal weapons inside.” He drew back a lever on his Lawgiver and blew the door apart.

Metal Jacket and Needle Teeth turned from the window and stared.

“D-Dredd!” Metal Jacket went white and swept his automatic weapon toward the door.

“Armed. Resisting Arrest.” The Lawgiver jerked in Dredd’s hands. Metal Jacket and Needle Teeth splattered against the wall and exploded in flames. Smoking flesh slid to the floor.

“This room is pacified,” said Dredd. “Hershey, stay with me. Briscoe, check the hall.”

“Yes, sir, you got it, Judge!”

“I have told you people not to use a gender address for a Judge,” Hershey said. “Don’t you ever listen, Roo—Briscoe, look out!”

Hershey saw the figure appear in the doorway. Briscoe was looking at Dredd. Purple Ears grinned, raised his pistol in a blur and shot Briscoe in the head. Hershey turned on the man but Judge Dredd was already there. He swept the Lawgiver in an arc and rammed the butt hard in Purple Ears’ gut.

Purple Ears dropped his weapon, gagged, and grabbed his belly. Dredd hit him again on the jaw. Hershey went to Briscoe at once. She raised his visor, saw what was there and shut her eyes.

Dredd looked at Briscoe for a full ten seconds. Then he stepped over to the man on the floor and poked him with his boot.

“You have obscenities written all over your head. Are you aware that’s a violation of the Law?”

Purple Ears looked up at Dredd. He spat a mouthful of blood on the floor and laughed.

“Hey. Are yous kiddin’ me or whats? You goin’ ’rest me or something, then do it, man!”

“Mega-City Municipal Code Three-Three-Four-Dash-Eight,” Dredd said. “Willful destruction of property. Two years.”

“Listen, pal—”

“Code Eleven-Dash-Fiver. Illegal possession of weapons. Five years. Code Thirty-Four-Dash-A. Resisting arrest. Twenty years…”

“All right!” Purple Ears raised his hands. “I gives up. You bes takin’ me in!”

“Niner-Eight-Zero-Four. Assault on a Judge with a deadly weapon…”

Purple Ears forced a weak grin through bloody teeth. “Don’t tell me. Life, right?”

“No,” Dredd said. “Death.”

He squeezed the trigger of his weapon. Squeezed it and didn’t stop. Purple Ears began to sizzle like bacon in a pan. Putrid steam rose up to the ceiling and the floor turned black.

Hershey swallowed hard but she wouldn’t look away. A Street Judge didn’t betray her feelings. She didn’t throw up. She maintained her cool at all times.

Dredd released the trigger.

“Court is adjourned,” he said.

Black-clad Judges, Mediks and Tekkies crowded the sixth-floor hallway of Heavenly Haven. Helmet spots bobbed in the grim surroundings, bringing more light to the murky walls and trashed-out floors than they’d seen in fifty years.

Briscoe’s body was the first one into the hall. The Mediks had scraped the remains of the three lawbreakers into one plastic bag, but Briscoe was one of their own. As the stretcher passed Hershey and Dredd, a gloved hand dropped from the blanket and swung limply above the floor. Hershey wanted to look away, but she forced herself to watch.

“He was a Rookie,” she said. “He was my Rookie. I was supposed to watch out for him, damn it!”

Judge Dredd shook his head. “Don’t blame yourself. He made the mistake, not you. His reactions were slow, judgement faulty. Didn’t concentrate on his work.”

Hershey turned on him and glared. “Well, that’s just great. I feel a lot better now. My God, Dredd, is that all you have to say? He got his face blown off his first week on the job!”

“He beat the odds, then. Mort-stats say five-point-seven days. If a Rookie gets past that, he’s got a four-in-seven chance of making it through the month. If he makes it past that—”

Dredd stopped. He raised a warning hand and cocked his head. Hershey followed his glance and saw a blur of motion down the hallway to their right. A quick snap of her chin brought the helmet spot to full, filling the corridor with harsh white light.

Hershey touched the butt of her weapon, then relaxed. The battered foodkart was rolling toward them again, wobbling drunkenly on its broken wheel.

“…ummm, ummmm, yumm! Healthful and nutritious rationpaks, ready to eat…”

“Somebody ought to turn that thing off,” Hershey said, “before it drives everyb—”

Dredd suddenly pushed her aside, stepped in the robot’s path, gripped his Lawgiver in both hands, and aimed it at the robot’s shiny dome.

“Halt! You have ten seconds to surrender. Ten… nine…”

“Dredd, take it easy,” Hershey said, “it’s a servo-droid.”

“… Make your selection, please. Insert your card in the slot…”

Dredd took one step forward and shoved the barrel of his weapon half a foot into the slot.

“… Make your select—oh, shit!”

The front of the robot came totally unhinged. Boxy foodpaks in drab shades of gray, brown, and mildew-green spilled onto the floor. Half a second later, Fergie tumbled out of the back. He blinked in the unfamiliar light, staring at Hershey and Dredd like an animal caught in the woods.

“Listen,” he said, “I know what you guys are thinking, but that’s the way it looks… I mean, that’s the way it is but it’s not the way it looks—”

Dredd grabbed Fergie by the collar, lifted him straight off the floor and slammed him hard against the wall.

“Wuuuuh, listen a minute, okay?” Fergie’s teeth rattled. He kicked his feet and grabbed at empty air.

“Mega-City Municipal Code One-Deuce-Niner-Six. Willful sabotage of a public droid. That’s six months, Citizen. Let’s see your card.”

“Come on, give me a break, Judge—Judge—” Fergie stared at the eagle and shield an inch before his eyes. “Judge—Dredd? Oh, my God…”

Fergie’s card fluttered out of his hand. Hershey snatched it out of the air. Snapping a scanner off of her weapons belt, she slipped Fergie’s card through the narrow slot once. A holo cube blossomed into life. Magenta words crawled across its face:

The room was small.

The walls were painted a rich shade of blue. There were three comfortable chairs, an antique glass table and a video screen mounted on the wall. The room was just off the hallway leading to the Chamber of the Council of Judges. It was used as a waiting room for those occasions when the Council allowed officials, high administrators, and prominent Citizens to bring their business before them.

This was not such an occasion. The session that was about to begin was closed to all but the Council members themselves. And, though no one would admit where they’d heard such information, it was said that this meeting was an emergency session of the gravest order. Even those who had no reliable source in high places had reason to believe this was so. There was only one topic of note in Mega-City at the moment, the only subject covered on the video news: Terror was loose in the streets, and the city was caught in a web of fear.

THE SETTING:

With a scarcely-perceptible sigh, a massive stone eagle and shield rise up from the floor of the Council Chamber. This symbol of Mega-City Justice was carved from a single slab of black marble thirty-seven meters high and twenty-eight meters wide. Its weight and dimensions were calculated to a fine tolerance by the architects to achieve the perfect spatial ratio of the Chamber itself.

Seconds after the great stone is in place, a table of carved ebony, a wood now worth its weight in gold, rises up before the high symbol. There are five chairs behind the table. On the high, ornate backrest of each chair is a carved replica of the eagle and shield, and below each emblem is the name of the High Judge who is privileged to sit on the Council.

On the wall opposite the Judges, a large holo flickers into life. The holo is a map of New North America.

There are three pulsing blue stars on the map: Mega-City One, which rests on the twentieth century foundations of New York City; Mega-City Two, a massive extension of the old city of Los Angeles, and Mega-City Three, Tex-City, which was once called Houston. All else on this map is a dull and coppery hue, the color of the sun-baked ground, the color of the land of Cursed Earth, the no-color of Death.

Finally, the members of the High Council file into the Chamber and take their places. Their uniforms are black, with scarcely any hint of their rank. They do not wear the traditional helmet of the Judges when the High Council is in session. Here, their heads are bare, their faces open to one another.

It was the first winter storm of the season and the worst in twenty-three years. It began as a silent snowfall, a thickening curtain of white that masked the dark peaks, the grim and barren plains. For half a day, this small section of Cursed Earth looked like an ancient Christmas card. Then, the blizzard struck in full force, bringing howling winds and numbing cold.

The guard towers of Aspen Prison rose like skeletal fingers behind the white veil. A chill wind moaned through the razor wire atop the granite walls. And, though there were thousands of men behind these dark battlements, not a single light was visible through the storm. Anyone who has ever been to this tomb of the living knows it is a place of darkness, not a place of light. If the Cursed Earth is Hell, then Aspen Prison is the stairway that leads to the underworld below…

The barge wasn’t made for beauty. It was three blocks long, solid and black, and built like a slag-iron whale. The Mega-City wall-lock opened like a dark and empty eye; the barge shuddered down through the night and poked its pitted nose inside.

In the amber light of the lock, the rusty hide of the barge seemed afflicted by ugly metal warts. The drive-rings in its belly pulsed in alarming shades of blue. The docking engineer frowned at the rings, glanced at his watch and cursed beneath his breath. It was 0610 and Clydo, his morning relief, was late. If the barge’s rings went totally out of sync—which they very well might, from the way they looked now—a white ball of fire would appear in the wall. He’d be a vapor, and Clydo would get another roach in his record for being late.

The barge finally whined into silence and the lock took hold. The massive craft creaked and moaned. A portal came open with a hiss of dirty steam. A crewman stepped out, rubbed a sleeve across his face, and nodded at the guard.

“Two loads from the prison factory in Hold Number Nine. One from the mines in Six. Prisoner mail in Two.”

The guard looked up from his computer tablet. “No prisoners comin’ back?”

“Just dead ones.” He nodded back into the dark. “Families probably glad to get rid of ’em, now they gotta bury the bastards.”

The crewman stalked off. The guard stepped past him into the dimly-lit hold. Fifteen body bags were strapped to the deck. Each had a yellow plastic tag stapled to his chest. Each bag was stenciled: ASP.

The guard leaned down to check the names. When he first got the docking assignment, it bothered him to get near the bodies. Like he told his wife, it was spooky as hell in there, like a Saturday holo show where the zombies and stuff came to life. He had been on the job eight months now, and the bodies didn’t bother him any more. They didn’t look like zombies, they looked like black bags with dead guys inside. Which proved you could get used to anything if y—

He heard the slight crinkle of plastic and jerked around. One of the body bags sat up, and the hair stood up on the back of the guard’s neck. He reached for his weapon, then stopped, and threw back his head and laughed. He knew what had happened and he knew who it was that’d pull a crazy stunt like this.

“Okay, I’m scared, all right? Get the hell out of there, Jak!”

A pinhole slit appeared in the black body bag. A laser beam thin as a needle touched the guard between the eyes. The guard looked surprised. There might be a punch line to this, but he was too dead to wait around and see.

Rico stepped out of the body bag and smiled at the guard.

“Home, sweet home,” he said.

She knew it didn’t make any sense, that it wasn’t like her at all. She simply didn’t do things like this. She disciplined herself, kept her emotions totally under control. And if you were going to let yourself get out of hand, why spend your feelings on Dredd!

She stood in the shadows by her locker. There was a textbook on arrest procedures on the shelf, half a box of practice ammo that she should have turned in. A good thing Briscoe didn’t see that. She was supposed to set a good example.

Hershey caught herself, closed her eyes and drew in a breath. Easy, lady, don’t lose it. Remember what they taught you… one day at a time in the streets. Yesterday was bad but you don’t have to go through that one again…

“And neither does Briscoe,” she said aloud. “Briscoe doesn’t have to do anything anymore.”

She heard the hiss of the shower and smelled the scent of steam and soap. Someone slammed a locker, the sound bouncing off the tile walls like a shot.

She glanced at her watch. Time to grab a cup of something hot before her shift. Check out the new Lawmaster, see if the tekkies had found any slips. She turned and started for the door, took four determined steps then stopped, turned on her heels and walked back the other way.

“You aren’t losing it, Hershey,” she muttered under her breath, “you have flat lost it, girl.”

Fergie couldn’t think of any painless way to die. There were a lot of ways to do it. People did it all the time. There were illegal shops in LA if you knew where to go. If you had enough bucks, they’d fix you up fine. If you had a whole lot, you’d leave your miserable life feeling like a thirty-ton orgasm blasting off for outer space.

The only thing wrong was, he wasn’t in LA any more and he didn’t have a Reagan dollar to his name. That, and the fact that he was down in a concrete pit somewhere, waiting for the shuttle to whisk him off to Aspen again. Other than that…

Someone threw up nearby. That inspired somebody else. Fergie didn’t care. There were sixty-two men in the pit and they’d been there crowded up together for twenty-nine hours or more. He’d done his throwing up the first three. He couldn’t get sick anymore, and there was nothing on earth he hadn’t smelled by now.

Fergie spent most of his time thinking up tortures for the guy with purple ears. He knew the droog was dead, but he was very much alive in Fergie’s head. Alive and in excruciating pain. Every time he died, Fergie brought him back again. Sometimes he thought about Dredd, and the good-looking Judge who’s name he couldn’t recall. He didn’t have any quarrel with them. Judges were simply a fact of life. You don’t look where you’re going, a truck’ll squash you flat. You stay in a cheap hotel, a rat’s going to bite you on the ass. When you’re in the law-breaking trade, you’re going to get caught now and then.

What drove Fergie nuts was the fact that he hadn’t done anything at all. That wasn’t right. Fate didn’t have any business pulling such a lousy trick when he just got out. If you steal you get caught, but they shouldn’t ought to cheat you like that.

When he got tired of thinking so hard he closed his eyes and slept. Sometimes the dreams were awful, sometimes they weren’t bad at all. One was a real good dream about him and Maggie. It was a real lazy day and they’d paid to ride up the Electric to the top of the LA Wall. They had a big railing up there but it was still real scary if you stood and looked down. The sign said the Wall was two thousand twenty-seven feet high. Who could get over that? Fergie wondered. Who the hell was dumb enough to try?

It was hot on the Wall, but Maggie leaned in close and trembled against his shoulder. Fergie didn’t blame her. It was an awesome thing to see. Cursed Earth stretched out to the east, the land disappearing in a wavy mirage that looked like a pig-iron sea. The sky in that direction was always brick-red from the dust storms that howled day and night across the Cursed Earth.

There were telescopes on the railing. You could put in a token and look out over the wasteland and bring everything up close. Hardly anyone did. And no one ever did it twice. There was always a chance that you’d see something more out there, something worse than the parched red earth. Something you didn’t want to see like a Krazy or a Cull. A Booter hopping on a single leather foot, or a Dusteater with skin the color of clay. Outcasters came up to the LA Wall all the time, especially at night. You weren’t supposed to feed them, but sometimes a guard would toss something off the Wall. Sometimes something would fall off a shuttle or a barge. A lot of the time, Fergie knew, an Outcaster came out of the wild just to look at the Wall, to see where he couldn’t be.

Fergie dreamed Maggie was beside him. He dreamed she touched his leg and slid her hand up his thigh. Fergie opened his eyes and saw the skinny con squatting over him, grinning with rotten teeth.

“You son of a bitch,” Fergie yelled, “get out of here!”

He knocked the man’s hand away, raised his foot and kicked him in the chest.

The con coughed, spat on the bare ground, and pulled himself up. He wiped a ragged sleeve across his face.

“You don’ have to get all heated up,” he said. “I wasn’t doin’ what you thought it was I did.”

“Yeah? What are you, then, the local massage parlor, or what? I’m going to get a free rub?”

The man smelled like he’d just won the hundred-meter cesspool event. Fergie wondered if he smelled as bad, and decided he didn’t want to know.

“I’m Dix,” the guy said. “Donnie Dix.”

“I’m not,” Fergie said. “Beat it, pal.”

“Listen, ol’ Donnie ain’t offended. I got a real thick skin. Don’t anything much bother me. Say whatever you want, it don’t mean anything to me.”

Fergie gave the con a curious look. “Nothing, huh?”

“Not a thing, friend.”

“If I was to maybe hit on something, you’d tell me, okay?”

Donnie grinned, showing jagged rows of green teeth. “I don’t just side up to anyone, mister. I been around the track once or twice an’ I can pick the right feller out ever’ time. I got an insight into people won’t quit.”

“And you picked me.”

“Right off. Minute I spotted you sittin’ over here.”

“What for?”

“What for what?”

“What did you pick me out for? What did I win, a free trip to Hell?”

Donnie looked puzzled, then his eyes lit up. “Well, say, I might’ve got you wrong, friend. It sure ain’t likely, but I won’t say I didn’t or I did. This is your first time goin’ up, ain’t it? I got to figure it is.”

“Yeah, first time up,” Fergie lied. “How can you tell?”

“Like I say, it’s a gift.” Donnie raised a dirty finger. “You got to look real good, is all. There’s a first-timer look and that’s what you got.”

He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was close.

“You’ll learn about that once you get up there. I’m not supposed to say anything an’ I’d get in a whole lot of trouble if anybody found out I did.”

“Did what?”

“Told you about the ERP. That’s the Extra Ration Plan. Prisoners get extra rations on Sundays and holidays. The thing is, a new guy like you, a fish, the old cons, they’ll take away your ERP. Unless you join up with one of the guilds. You do that, you got protection, see? Nobody’s going to screw with you, you’re in a good guild. Am I coming through okay? You got any questions, you let me know.”

“No, I think it’s pretty clear.”

Fergie had figured the scam about the first two seconds the droog started talking, he just didn’t know the wrap-up, the end.

“So what do I do when I get to Aspen, I join one of the guilds, right?”

Donnie looked pained. “No, man, you get it up there, it’s going to cost you a mucking arm and a leg. What you want to do, you want to join before, you want to join now and save half of what you’d have to pay.”

“Half sounds good,” Fergie said.

“Sure it does. Now you’re talking, man.”

“No I’m not,” Fergie said. “I haven’t got any bucks and neither do you. Neither does anyone else in this hole because the Judges took everything away.”

“Don’t I know that? Don’t Donnie Dix know that?” Dix looked irritated. “The guild don’t expect you to have any cash. They know how it plays here, man. That’s why I’m authorized to take goods instead of dough.”

“Goods.” Fergie looked at him. “Like, what kind of goods?”

Donnie tried not to let it show, but Fergie caught the look, caught the hunger and the need.

“You got stuff, man. Like boots, okay? You got real boots and good socks.”

Fergie didn’t blink. “You want my boots? I’m going to freezing-ass Aspen Prison, you want me to give you my boots?”

Donnie waved him off. “Don’t matter. You can get some more when you get there. They got boots, warm clothes, anything you want. I mean, Aspen isn’t no vacation spot, I’m not about to tell you that, but it’s not as bad as everyone thinks. You keep your cool, they’ll treat you okay.”

“Forget it,” Fergie said.

“What?”

“I said forget it. Get your sorry ass out of here. Now.”

A vein began to throb on the side of Donnie’s head. “You don’t want to mess with me, pal. You don’t want to mess with me at all. You screw around with me, word gets back to the guild, and they ain’t going to be happy at all.”

Donnie scooted in closer, and Fergie smelled the fury and the fear, saw the light of the wolf in Donnie’s eyes.

“I work for people up there you don’t want to piss off. Guys that can do stuff to you you don’t even want to think about.” Donnie paused to let that sink in. “You ever heard of Jimmy Eyes? You ever heard of him?”

“I heard of him,” Fergie said.

Donnie showed him a nasty grin. “Yeah, I thought you maybe did.”

“What I heard is he’s out, he’s not in. He got in off the shuttle a couple of days back.”

Donnie blinked. “Where the hell you hear that?”

“Dinner last night. Before the Judges picked me up. It was a setup is what it was, I wasn’t doing anything at all. All I was doing was coming out of Jimmy’s house.”

“You was—huh?”

“Coming out of Jimmy’s house.” Fergie grinned. “You don’t get it, do you? You stupid groon, I’m Jimmy’s brother. I’m Fergie Eyes.”

Donnie went white. “No, you ain’t either.”

“You want Fergie Eyes’ boots? You want his mucking socks?”

“Hey, forget it, okay?” Donnie shook his head and scuttled off like a crab who wasn’t wearing shoes or socks. “I don’t want nothing, man!”

“Right,” Fergie said. “Go straight to hell, man.”

“When the Judge Hunters came for you, Joseph. What did you say to them?”

“I think they probably told you what I said to them, sir.”

“I’m not asking them, Judge Dredd. I’m asking you.”

“I told them to go straight to hell, sir.”

“Joseph, Joseph…” Chief Justice Fargo ran a hand across his face, as if the gesture might relieve the great weight that seemed forever to drag him down.

The cell was scarcely large enough for one man. Dredd sat straight on the edge of the steel shelf that served prisoners for a bed. Manacles bound his hands behind his back, and another set held his legs.

The sight of this sent a jolt straight to Fargo’s heart. Even in his worst nightmares, he had never imagined something like this. Anyone else, perhaps—things could happen, things could go wrong—even among a body of men and women like the Judges. But not Dredd, not Joseph Dredd.

“I have to ask you this,” Fargo said. “I ask it as Chief Justice, not as a friend.”

“And I’ll be glad to answer it, sir. I’m innocent. I have not committed any crime.”

Fargo looked at his hands. “I have to tell you this. The Council is said to have irrefutable proof against you. That’s the reason this is not merely an inquiry. This is a full Tribunal, Joseph. I don’t have to tell you what that means.”

“No, sir. I understand. And with all due respect, sir, you shouldn’t be here. You’re a member of the Court. The Articles—”

“Damn the Articles, Joseph! If I choose to come here as your friend, then I will!”

Dredd was startled by the fury, the sorrow in Fargo’s eyes. He wanted to look away, but he couldn’t do that. He could not dishonor the man like that.

“I’m sorry,” Fargo said, “I had to ask. I don’t believe the evidence, whatever it is, but I had to face you myself.”

“Yes, sir. I know that. And I’m grateful to you, sir.”

“Is there… anything you need, Joseph? Anything I can do?”

Dredd shook his head. “How could this happen, Judge? Something like this. I don’t understand.”

“I don’t know. I’ve thought of nothing else since they informed me. I’ll use every resource at my command to find out, and get to the truth of this. You know I’ll do that. I will fight for you, Joseph.”

“I know that, sir.”

Chief Justice Fargo stepped to Dredd’s side and squeezed his shoulder.. “We’ll see this through. We’ll get it over and done.”

“Yes, sir. We’ll do that, sir.”

Dredd stood when Fargo left the cell. He looked at the bare, white walls. Something was growing at the edge of his mind and he couldn’t say what it might be. It was something different, something he had never felt before. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it at all. He didn’t want it in his head anymore.

When it finally broke through, it came in upon him like a rush of cold, dark water. He closed his eyes and a cry stuck in his throat. He saw the unfamiliar feeling for what it was. He was alone. He had experienced that terrible emotion once before, when he had to weigh friendship against his vow to uphold the Law. He had tried to sweep that from his mind, to put it aside as best he could. And now it was happening once more. Now he knew the awful feeling of loneliness again.

Judge Dredd was right. The Prosecution wasn’t finished. McGruder was just getting started.

Chief Justice Fargo called a brief recess, and McGruder quickly went into a huddle with her staff. Hershey watched from the dias. She didn’t have any aids; there was no one to talk to but Dredd, and Dredd was stiff as a statue, looking straight ahead. She wondered what he was thinking. There had to be something going on in his head…

The sound of Fargo’s gavel echoed through the Chamber. The room went silent at once. McGruder stepped back up on the dias. She glanced calmly at Hershey, then faced the Judges’ table.

“Your Honor, in light of your ruling regarding evidence presented in this Tribunal, I am forced to move to technical evidence which I believe is of a most critical nature. I will need the Court’s permission to access documentation marked ‘Judge Secret’ from the Central Computer.”

Hershey felt something cold at the back of her neck. Dredd didn’t move. At the Judges’ table, Griffin leaned over to speak to Fargo. Fargo listened, then turned to Silver and Esposito. Finally, he spoke to McGruder and Hershey.

“The request is granted. You may proceed, Prosecutor.”

A slight, almost imperceptible shadow crossed McGruder’s face. Hershey caught it, and knew it for what it was at once.

She doesn’t want to do this. She doesn’t, but she can’t back away from what she’s found…

“Central, are you on-line?” McGruder said.

“On-line, Judge McGruder.”

The voice was feminine; it was a calm, reasonable, and soothing voice, that instilled both confidence and authority.

“I want you to access weapons schematics,” McGruder said. “Please describe the working of the standard Judge’s firearm, the Lawgiver Two, and especially its improvements over the earlier Lawgiver One.”

A rotating schematic of the Lawgiver, stark white on blue, appeared on the big screen at once.

“Seven years ago, the Lawgiver Model Two replaced the Model One. The difference between these models lies in two areas: The computer chip and the ammunition coding. Like the Model One, the computer chip in the Model Two recognizes the palmprint of its owner. An imposter’s hand will activate the weapon’s alarm…”

The schematic dissolved into an animated figure. The figure pressed the trigger of a Lawgiver and was promptly blown to bits in a clean, computer-generated explosion.

“… Model Two is somewhat different. It is coded to the personal DNA of the Judge using the weapon, via the skin’s contact with the grip. A failsafe security precaution…”

Hershey turned to Dredd. “Did you know about this?”

“No.”

“Neither did I. I don’t think anybody did.”

“… The DNA is obtained from my medical files and upgraded automatically every time the weapon is reloaded. Each time a round is chambered and fired, the projectile is tagged with that relevant DNA…”

No, no! Hershey could see the whole thing now, see it all coming together.

“Chief Justice,” she said suddenly, “the Defense was unaware of this information. I’m sure everybody else here is unaware of it, too.”

“Let the Prosecution finish, Judge Hershey,” Fargo said calmly. “I’ll hear from you later if you so desire.”

Hershey’s shoulders fell. McGruder nodded her thanks. “Were the bullets recovered from the bodies of Vardis and Lily Hammond so DNA-coded, Central?”

“Yes, Judge McGruder.”

“And what was the result of the computer check of the DNA coding of those bullets?”

“The DNA is a perfect match for Judge Joseph Dredd.”

“That’s a lie! This is a setup! I did not kill those people!”

Dredd dug his fists into his palms, drawing blood. The cords stood out in his neck. He stared at Chief Justice Fargo. Fargo met his eyes, hesitated, and looked away.

A terrible cry started deep in Dredd’s throat. He didn’t care about the rest of them, they could believe him or go to hell. But Fargo, if Fargo doubted him, if he thought for an instant that he had done such a thing…

He turned on Hershey, gripping her shoulders hard. “I wasn’t there. I didn’t do this.”

“I know that. I know you didn’t, Dredd.” His fingers dug into her arms but she didn’t complain. “I believe you, but I don’t know what to do for you. The DNA evidence… it’s irrefutable. He’s left us without any case at all.”

Dredd dropped his hands. “Everything he’s saying is a lie. I’m telling the truth. What kind of case is that?”

“It’s the Law,” Hershey said. “McGruder may be wrong, but the Law is right, Dredd. You, of all people, know that.”

Dredd didn’t answer. He looked at Hershey but didn’t see her. He couldn’t see anything at all.

“Your Honor, the Prosecution rests,” McGruder said.

THE SETTING:

This is Chief Justice Fargo’s private study, just off the Great Council Chamber. Fargo’s quarters reflect less of the man’s lofty position than of the man himself. Instead of the dark, heavy furniture, thick carpets, and rare objets d’art other high officials might demand, Fargo’s quarters are almost Spartan. There is a bookcase against one wall. On a simple table is a pitcher of water and two glasses. There is an ordinary plastic desk stacked with papers, and two relatively comfortable chairs.

The plastered, white-washed walls contain no pictures, certificates, holos, or awards. The one feature of Fargo’s quarters which sets them apart is something few might notice at all, unless they were familiar with the architecture of the Council Chamber. The immense marble shield and eagle is, of course, the focal point of the chamber. The back of this enormous stone forms one inner wall of the Chief Justice’s study. It is hard to miss the symbolism here: Here is the emblem of power, and the man at its foundation who makes that power real. This interesting bit of mythos and wisdom is pointed out to each new class of Cadets. For most of them, this place will remain a mystery throughout their careers as Judges. The chance of actually seeing the Chief Justice’s quarters is something on the order of none.

This is a dream.

I have never had a dream, but I am certain I am having one now. Other people talk about dreams, so I looked it up to see what a dream might be. A dream is a thought in your head when you’re asleep. You do not control what you dream; it’s simply there. A dream is either good or bad. This dream is bad. It doesn’t matter though, because a dream isn’t real. When you wake up everything is fine. Everything is like it was before…

“This is Duncan Harrow with the news…

“I feel a little out of place, a bit uncomfortable, ladies and gentlemen, sitting behind the news desk today. In my mind, this desk will always belong to a man who was revered and respected by the journalistic community, and the Citizens of Mega-City, for a number of years.

“This is Vardis Hammond’s desk. And the tragic story unfolding before us today began with the brutal, senseless slaying of Vardis Hammond, and his wife, Lily.

“Why did the popular—the legendary—Judge Dredd slaughter two innocent people in the sanctity of their home? Some say Judge Dredd suffered from a serious mental disorder, a condition kept under wraps by Dredd’s powerful friend and long-time mentor, the former Chief Justice Fargo. One informed source reports that the Hammonds were killed because of Hammond’s continued criticism of the Judges, and Judge Dredd in particular. As our regular viewers will recall, Hammond long claimed that there was corruption within the judicial system, and that the increase in rioting and crime in our city could be traced to the moral decay within the hierarchy of the Judges.

“It’s a question that may never be answered, but the murder of the Hammonds, and the conviction of Judge Dredd for that crime, has led to another bizarre and startling development—the retirement of Chief Justice Fargo himself, and the commutation of Dredd’s death sentence to life in Aspen Prison.

“As I announced previously, the news media is not allowed to bring you live video coverage of the Ceremony of Retirement. We apologize for this, of course, but we must comply with the decision of the Judges. In lieu of live coverage, I will read you the text of the ceremony, as given to us by a media spokesman of the Judges.

“ ‘At sunrise this morning, retiring Judge Fargo was escorted by an Honor Guard of Street Judges to the City Gate in the Wall of Mega-City. Judge Fargo wore the traditional tan duster, traditional lawmen’s wear from a period dating to the Way Back When. A young Cadet, first in her class this year, read from the Book of Law, and a chorus of Cadets sang the solemn Judges’ Anthem.

“ ‘The cadet read: “Let him who has been written in our hearts and memories be struck from our hearts and memories forever…”

“ ‘At this point, retiring Judge Fargo hands a bundle containing his uniform, Lawgiver, and badge to the presiding Cadet. The Cadet hands Fargo the Book of Law, and the weapon he will carry to the Cursed Earth, a black-burnished Judges’ Remington pump. The Cadet salutes smartly. Judge Fargo returns the salute for the last time. The Cadet does an about face, turns her back on Judge Fargo, marches back to her post before the gathered command, and speaks again: “Let him go from us, from our city, from our protection, from our presence forever…”

“ ‘The city gates open, revealing the parched, empty land beyond. Judge Fargo walks through the gate, and into the Cursed Earth.

“ ‘He has gone from our midst, he has left us forever. May he continue his pursuit of the Right throughout his life. May he bring Law to the lawless, Justice to the unjust… as he leaves our sight forever…”

“At this point, ladies and gentlemen, the great city gate closes behind Judge Fargo. The Cadets and the honor guard of Street Judges come to attention, and the Judges’ Anthem reaches its stirring climax.

“This concludes our report on the Retirement Ceremony of Judge Fargo, former Chief Justice of Mega-City.

“As an ironic sidenote to this story, I can report to you that at virtually the same instant this ceremony was taking place, another, somewhat less formal event occurred at the Northwest Shuttle-gate of our city. Here, sixty-three men in chains and gray prison garb walked up the rampway to the Aspen Prison Shuttle Number Eleven. Some will be incarcerated for only a short time, some for many years. At least one among them will spend the rest of his life behind those forbidding walls for the crime of double murder. A prisoner named Joseph Dredd.

“Duncan Harrow here. Good night…”

The air in the hold was thick and foul. The odor was of flatulence and fear, fury and the sour smell of sweat. The prisoners were chained to the hard metal benches. The guards stalked up and down the narrow aisle between them, mean-eyed men with big necks and arms like slabs of iron. They held their riot guns close to their chests, like lovers who might run away. They prayed to dark gods that they’d get a chance to kill someone today. Maybe a con would go mental and howl like a dog. Maybe a man would try to strangle his buddy with his chains. Maybe one or two men would try to escape.

No more than two. They never prayed for more than that. A shuttle guard’s worst nightmare was a hold full of desperate men, all coming at them at once. The guards never told each other, but they knew what they would do. They wouldn’t take a chance. They’d turn their weapons on themselves, blow off their heads in one clean and decent shot.

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.

Fergie knew he was alive. Everything hurt too much to be dead. His mother had been a closet Churcher. She told him when you died all you did was go to sleep for a while. When you woke up again, you were somewhere real nice. This wasn’t it. This wasn’t nice at all. This was like really, really bad and bound to get worse. You could tell by the ugly-looking goons who were squatting by the fire. Fergie didn’t think they looked right. People you wouldn’t want to know. That, and the hoods. The other thing his mother had told him was don’t ever talk to a man who wears a hood.

What the hell were they doing over there? Snorting and sniffing, rooting through the junk they’d salvaged from the shuttle. Whatever that might be—whatever had come down in one piece.

His hands and arms were numb. They were up above his shoulders somewhere but he didn’t look to see. If he didn’t move—ever—the groons might think he was asleep or maybe dead. Dead would be good. You’re not going to kill a guy, you think he’s maybe already dead.

“Herman Ferguson…”

It was only a whisper, but Fergie nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Don’t talk to me, Dredd. I’m not here. You want to talk, talk to somebody else.”

“You’re not making sense, Ferguson. There isn’t anybody else. Get control of yourself.”

Fergie risked a look without moving his head. Dredd was half a meter to his right, hanging from his hands, his legs dangling free. Glancing up a little farther, he could see the crossbar where their hands were tied. The building around them was a ruin, incredibly old. The ceiling above was caved in. The night was unbelievably dark. The stars were colder and brighter than Fergie had ever imagined they could be. You didn’t see a black sky and stars in the Mega-Cities. In the Cities, it was never really night.

“Listen,” Fergie whispered, “don’t you tell me to get control of myself, Dredd. Don’t you tell me a thing. It’s your fault I’m in this mess. If I ever get out of here—”

“You won’t.”

“What?”

“It’s against my nature to give up, Ferguson. Understand that. Given the chance, I will give a good accounting of myself. If at all possible, I will take several of these lawbreakers with me. Aside from that, it’s pretty reasonable to assume we have little or no chance of escape. Especially if they are who I think they are.”

Fergie felt his throat go dry. “And who—who would that be?”

“Angels,” Dredd said.

“Angels? Like in—”

“No. Like in Angels of Death. God’s Maggots. Painers. Dirt Chokers.”

“God’s Maggots?” Fergie looked at the fire. “What the hell is this, Dredd—no, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know, I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to—”

Someone screamed. It was a high-pitched, terrible sound that echoed through the ruins and seemed to last forever.

“Oh shit, oh shit,” Fergie moaned.

“They’ve got somebody else,” Dredd said. “There were other survivors of the crash.”

“I don’t care about anyone else. Screw ’em. I care about me.”

“That’s a bad attitude. That’s a typical lawbreaker outlook on life, Ferguson.”

“Yeah? Well, that’s normal, see? I’m a career criminal, Dredd. Not a really big-time criminal, but that’s what I do. I wire robots, I rob public droids. I can get inside nearly any electronic device. I did time for that, okay? I am not supposed to be here now. You got me into this mess!”

“You said that.”

“I said it again. What are you going to do about that? Arrest me? Good. Please do.”

The scream cut through the night again, then abruptly stopped. Fergie closed his eyes.

“Hey, Pa! We got wakies over here!”

Someone else laughed. “We b-b-better. Pa’s flat runnin’ out of sinners.”

Fergie opened his eyes, sucked in a breath and didn’t let it out. There were three of them. Ugly. Tall. Short. Skinny. Fat. Their hoods were thrown back across their crooked shoulders. One had a face like a toad. His nose was sewn shut with leather thread. He was scarcely wider than a stick. He had enormous green eyes. The hair on his face and head was scorched black and his skin was burned raw. This one still had a nose, but his ears were sewn shut.

It was the third one that made Fergie want to throw up his lunch. If he’d had any lunch that’s exactly what he’d have done. The groon had a patchwork face, alternating squares of copper and flesh like a nightmare checkerboard. One arm was real. The other was a dull metal stub. There was something mechanical protruding from his head, but Fergie couldn’t make it out.

“Hey, how ’bout you?” The creature caught Fergie looking and grinned. “I kinda like you, man. I surely do.” Something blurred, something hummed, something silver and gold sprang out of the metal stub. Something long and sharp touched Fergie’s crotch. It trailed up to Fergie’s belly and traced a narrow line. Fergie had to look. Why did I do that, he thought, why did I have to look? It was the longest blade Fergie had ever seen. They didn’t make any blades longer than that.

“I think I’m going to like you good,” the man with yellow eyes said. “Real, real good. What you think of that?”

“Whatever you do, don’t show them fear,” Dredd said.

“Yeah, right.” Fergie felt something roll over and die in his belly. “Thanks, I’ll remember that, Dredd.”

“Dredd. Did you say Dredd?”

Yellow Eyes cocked his head and studied Dredd. His eyes went bright when he spotted the Judge tattoo.

“Blessed be, Pa!” He turned and called into the shadows. “We got us Judge Dredd hisself!”

The two other freakos jumped up and down. Something walked out of the dark. Something tall and gaunt in bug-eaten rags, something that smelled before it even got near. It shuffled past the fire, tapping its stick on the ground. The others stepped out of his way. He stopped, sniffed the air, then turned his head up to Dredd. His features were masked by the filth-encrusted hood.

“Id id twoo? We gaht uds duh gwead bed up the log hidseph?”

Yellow Eyes winked at Dredd. “Pa wants to know it it’s true we got us the great man of the Law himself. Well, is it, Dredd? That be who you are?”

“I’m Dredd.”

“Hagga-lulla!” the man in the hood said.

“I know who you are,” Dredd said. “You’re the self-styled Reverend Billy Joe Angel. Wanted on a Six-Oh-Three, Crimes Against Humanity. A Five-Two-Niner, Murder in Every Degree. You and your offspring are under arrest.”

Pa Angel howled. “Oh, be are plessid, Lort! All we brayed vor was vood and sus-nance. Bud thou has de-livert our gweat enemee undo our hans!”

“Pa says—”

“I heard him,” Dredd said. “You’re still all under arrest.”

“Dredd…” Fergie shook his head. “You keep saying that, you’re going to piss this guy off.” He looked at the hooded horror. “Listen, friend, there’s been a little mistake. Him and me, we’re not together. I mean, I was in the shuttle, he was in the shuttle. You’re in the same place with somebody, that doesn’t mean you know each other, you’re even acquainted, you know? Doesn’t mean you’ve even seen each other before, you—yahh!”

Yellow Eyes poked Fergie sharply in the ribs. “Told you I liked you, man. I didn’t mean I liked you talking. I like you when you don’t.”

“Hey, I can live without the—”

“Shut up!”

Yellow Eyes squinted at Dredd and Fergie, then nodded at the horror in the hood. “That’s Pa. You already know that. You better be real nice. He’s a au-thentic babbatized avenger of the Lord.” He stabbed the air with his knife. “You mess with him, you messin’ with the fiery hand of God himself!”

“Amen!”

“Amen!”

Yellow Eyes grinned. “They call me Mean Machine. That’s ’cause I am.” He pointed a dirty finger at his head. “Pa’s got me set on One. I had a kinda accident when I was a’born. Shit. Bein’ alive’s a pure accident out here. Pa fixed me up best he could. He can turn me all the way up to Four. That’s ber-serkin’ dog-frothin’ psycho-maniac is what it is. You don’t want to never see that.

“The dumb-lookin’ one’s Junior Head-Dead. You can likely figure why. The other one’s Link-Link. He ain’t as dumb, but he can’t get his bodily functions workin’ right. If the wind was right you could tell.”

Mean Machine stepped up closer to Fergie. He pricked Fergie’s foot with his blade, turned the edge around and around in the light of the flame. When he looked at Dredd, his half-smile faded away.

“We are mighty proud to have you here, Dredd. Mighty proud, indeed.” His blade swept out faster than any eye could see. A thin line of red appeared on Dredd’s chest. “You’re hard to hurt, I bet. Pa’s going to like that.”

“Let me—snuk-snuk!—kill it, Pa!”

“Huh-uh!” Link-Link’s face screwed up in a mask. “You said I could have one, Pa!”

“Hallelujah, brother!” Fergie cried out. “Right on. Glory to the Lord! May His mighty sword smite sinners from the face of the earth! May His wrath stomp down on the unbeliever, may He damn the rich and raise up the poor!”

Mean Machine’s eyes went wide. He gave Fergie a puzzled look.

“What you doing? Why you sayin’ stuff like that?”

“Lo, the wicked shall eat the dust of thy path, O Lord. E-ternal damnation to him who follows the false law of the Cities and curses the one true Lord of this dry and forgotten land!”

Pa Angel took a step forward. He turned his shrouded face up to Fergie. “Cud id be? Frum duh Cidy ub duh fallen, a fate-ful wud has a-beered?”

“Amen,” Fergie shouted. “The sheep’s come home, man, that’s me!”

“Ferguson…” Dredd shook his head in disgust. “You don’t want to do this. Believe me, you don’t.”

“Yeah? Think again, unbeliever.”

Mean Machine turned to his brothers. “Cut him down. If Pa says this’n is a Believer, why I reckon he is.”

Fergie laughed as Link-Link and Junior Head-Dead scrambled up the post to cut him free.

“The Law doesn’t make mistakes, Dredd, right? But I’m free and you’re toast. Go figure, man!”

“Wrong. I’m toast, Ferguson. You’re meat.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“These are the Angels, dope-head. They’re Cursed Earth scavengers. Scumbags. They’re also cannibals.”

Fergie stared. “Hey, no way. Don’t go telling me shit like that, Dredd. Don’t even joke about it, man.” He turned to Mean Machine. “Right, pal? Tell him, brother.”

“Hagga-lulla!” Pa Angel shouted.

“Snuk-snuk-snuk!” said Junior Head-Dead.

“This is terrific, you know? I mean, meeting you guys, a bunch of other Believers out here in the middle of nowhere, now what’s the chance of that? Is that God’s will or what?”

“G-g-g-glory!” Link-Link said.

“Snuk-snuk!” said Junior Head-Dead.

Fergie winked, and did a little bantam-weight shuffle. He tapped Junior lightly on the head. His hand came away with flecks of scorched hair. When the others weren’t looking, he wiped it on his pants.

“I can do a Eee-Tee-Ay,” Link-Link said. “I g-got real good navigash’nul skills. I got cord’nuts in my head.”

“Right,” Fergie said. “See a Medik next time you’re in town. Fix you right up.”

Link-Link and Junior were leading him down a narrow passage through the ruined building. Link-Link carried a burning torch. Fergie wondered where they were going, but didn’t want to ask. What he wanted to do was get far enough away from the big spook himself and that lunatic with the muckin’ machete for an arm, get his bearings straight, lose these freakos and get the hell out of town.

He felt bad about Dredd. Not bad enough to stick around, for sure, and hey, Dredd had gotten him into this squirrel nest, you couldn’t forget about that. Better Herman Ferguson on the loose than hanging there with what’s-his-name and his oversized shiv, and the old guy with the speech defect. These two groons were bad enough, but those guys…

“So,” Fergie said, “we’re going where, out for some air or what? A quick tour’s fine with me, I don’t have to be back or anything. Man, it is great out here, you know? Away from the stinkin’ city lights. God is good! Glory to His name!”

“G-Glory!” Link-Link said.

“Snuk-snuk!” said Junior Head-Dead.

Fergie looked at Link. “No kidding, fella, you get to a doc sometime, they could fix up that little problem you got with the nose. I mean, no offense, you don’t mind me bringing up the nose, right? Like, the leatherwork’s attractive and all…” He squinted at Junior’s ears. “You people work with heavy machinery a lot? I was thinking, you know, industrial accidents, something like that? They got good safety gear, you take the right precautions this—huh?”

Link-Link had stopped. He held the torch up to Fergie and stared.

“Wh-what you talkin’ about, f-fixing what?”

“Just talking, okay?” Fergie didn’t like the guy’s look. Like someone had stepped on his foot.

Link-Link looked confused. “Can’t n-nobody fix nothin’ except Pa. Pa’s re-ordinated and—”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard.”

Link-Link grinned. “Pa says if I w-walk in God’s misery and pain, I can git the Holy Gouging when I’m fifteen. Mean Machine’ll git it next year, an’ I’m after that!”

Fergie’s throat went dry. All the meals he’d missed stirred a queasy soup in his belly. “You’re saying… nah, you’re not sayin’ that, like what I think you’re saying…”

“Pa’s got it all,” Link-Link said. “The whole B-B-Blessed Mutilation of God! Ears and eyes and nose sewed up, and his m-mouth, too. He’s the only Angel’s got that.”

Link-Link rolled his eyes, thrust out his arms and turned a circle twice.

“Lo, he hast s-sewed up his every wicked ori-fuss against the evil of the world. He h-has shut out sin and cast Satan aside. He hast b-b-become a pure abomy-nation of the Lord!”

Oh, shit, I am out of here…

“Look, I got some private hygiene stuff, and you fellas have plenty to do. If you can just point me outside—”

Link-Link kicked Fergie solidly in the rear. Fergie grabbed air and bit a mouthful of floor.

“Hey, hold on there! What the hell, guys?”

Link-Link straddled Fergie’s back, crushing all the air out of his lungs. Junior wound a piece of rusty wire around his hands, then looped the other end about his feet. Link took one shoulder and Junior took the other. Together, they dragged Fergie on his belly down the hall.

“Wait a minute,” Fergie said, “I’m a Believer. I’m a—I’m a Maggot of God, just like you!”

“That’s why we l-love you, brother,” Link-Link said.

“You got a weird way of showing it, brother.”

“Like you better’n him,” Link said. “Lot’s better’n that one… Don’t we, Junior?”

“Snuk!”

“Who? Who are we talking about here? Dredd? Is that who, Dredd?”

Link made a face. “He’s a agg-nasty or something. Ch-chock fulla sin!”

Link and Junior let go. Link flipped him over on his back. Fergie looked straight at a bed of hot coals. He looked at the heavy iron spit, and he looked at the thing that was crackling there, crackling red and black, juices hissing down into the fire. It took him a second, a second and a half, then the image took a clear and very definite shape in his head. It kept kicking out then kicking back in and it wouldn’t let go. It wouldn’t let go no matter what he did.

Fergie threw up. He didn’t have a thing in his stomach but his stomach didn’t care.

“Them Unbelievers,” Link said, “just d-don’t taste right, you know? It’s impure f-f-f-flesh is what it is.”

“Snuk-snuk!”

Fergie closed his eyes. “Now this is a gag, right? What I want you to do is tell me this is a gag. Dredd said that you guys—what you—I know he didn’t mean that you were—”

Junior kicked Fergie in the mouth. He grabbed his hair and pulled him closer to the fire. He drooled on Fergie’s head.

Link found a knife somewhere in his rags, reached out and sliced off something from the spit.

“Lo, the Unbeliever’s f-f-flesh is unclean, Lord, but a p-p-person’s got to eat.”

“I was lying,” Fergie yelled, “I don’t believe in anything, I mean, I don’t even believe enough to be an Unbeliever, what do you think of that? I mean, that is something you don’t want to mess with, man. I also got a skin condition. I got athlete’s foot, guys!”

“Glory!” Link said.

“Snuk!” Junior Head-Dead said.

Hershey had many fond memories of her days at the Academy—Unarmed Combat, Street Tactics, and the harrowing but always exciting Lawmaster Endurance Course. The one class she’d always dreaded was CCT—Cadet Computer Training. She wasn’t bad at it; she had finished in the top eighty percent.

It was the computer room itself that gave her the creeps. There was something about the place. It was too alien, too cold, too antiseptically clean for Hershey’s taste. The harsh, sterile atmosphere seemed hostile to human life. The constant, almost imperceptible buzz of a billion electronic bees told her, You don’t belong here… we do…

Hershey knew it was a ridiculous, wholly irrational feeling, and she had the good sense not to share such thoughts with anyone else.

It’s not any better than it was. Over a year on the street and I still detest this damn place!

Tiny lights winked at her from the walls, like animal eyes in the night. Tiny sounds chittered in the floor.

“Judge, you all right? You okay?”

Hershey nearly jumped out of her skin. “Of course I’m all right, Olmeyer, why wouldn’t I be all right? You know of any reason, Cadet, why I wouldn’t be all right?”

Olmeyer stepped back, withering under her glare.

What did I do? What did I do? It was always something, and most of the time he didn’t know what. Sometimes he didn’t even have to say anything. Sometimes he could offend just being in the same room.

“I’m—no, sir, uh, Judge. No reason at all. I’m certain everything’s fine, Judge.”

“Good,” Hershey said. “I’m pleased to hear it, Cadet. Shall we get on with it, now?”

“My station’s over there. Over near the end.”

Hershey muttered under her breath. She followed Olmeyer across the long room, past the cramped and numbered student cubicles. Hers had been, number thirty-seven. A number she’d never forget.

“I don’t know why it has to be so damn cold,” Hershey complained. “You could store meat in here. It could snow.”

“The machines like it cold,” Olmeyer said. “They prefer the—”

“Machines do not like anything, Olmeyer.” Her look cut him down a good foot. “Computers do not have the capacity to like or dislike. They function better under certain conditions and certain temperatures. This does not mean they like it that way.”

Olmeyer started to speak, then wisely kept his mouth shut. Judge Hershey wouldn’t want to hear that he felt his computer was friendlier and more responsible than most of the people he knew. She certainly wouldn’t want to hear that he’d programmed his station to speak in her voice when he wanted it to, to speak certain… personal phrases when they were alone. What Hershey would do if she knew that was grind him into a greasy spot on the floor.

Olmeyer took a seat at his station, pulled up an extra chair for Hershey from the cubicle next door. The screen came alive as he sat, coded to his presence.

Hershey nodded at the trick. “Very impressive, Cadet.”

“It’s not—I just… It’s a simple heat sensor is what it is. It’s coded to body weight, fat content, iris pattern, stuff like that.”

He cut himself short again. She was here, she was right next to him. He didn’t want to do anything dumb, he wanted to keep her there.

“I appreciate what you’re doing,” Hershey said. “I want you to know that, Cadet.”

“I’m glad to help, Judge, I—”

Hershey stopped him with a gesture. “I want to tell you again. This is a personal request. This is not official Judge business.”

“Judge Hershey…” He looked straight at her, one of the few times he’d managed to do that without turning to jelly. “It’s for Judge Dredd. You told me that. There’s no way you could keep me from helping if I can.”

“Yes, well…” Hershey cleared her throat. “I appreciate that, Cadet.”

She reached in the slim metal case she carried and handed Olmeyer one of the framed viewies of Dredd she had taken from Dredd’s locker.

Olmeyer looked at it, then looked at Hershey.

“I want it identified,” she said.

“It’s Dredd. I don’t know the other guy.”

“I don’t want you to ID it. I want Central to tell me.”

Olmeyer nodded. He took the picture and slipped it onto a plate at the base of his computer. With a slight hiss, the viewie disappeared into the machine.

“Central, access Graphics Data Base.”

“Accessed…”

“Give me an ID, please.”

“Dredd, Joseph. Formerly Judge Dredd. Now serving a life sentence at Aspen Prison…”

“Keeps up to date, doesn’t it?” Hershey said beneath her breath.

“I want both IDs, Central,” Olmeyer said. “Give me the other one, please.”

“Scanning for identity… Unknown male… approximately two hundred centimeters tall… weight: ninety-five kilos… skin-tone: three-ten-nine-eight-seven-six… Further identification characteristics are—”

The screen flickered. The data vanished, replaced by the official eagle and shield of the Judges.

“This terminal has been disconnected from the main system for a systems check. You no longer have access to the system. Thank you.”

The viewie popped out of the slot.

“Uh-oh.” Olmeyer leaned back in his chair and frowned at the screen.

“What was that all about?” Hershey said. “That didn’t sound like Central.”

“It wasn’t. That’s a standard taped interrupt message that means ‘butt out, we don’t want you in here.’ ”

“Why? What did we do to set it off?”

“No way of telling.” Olmeyer stretched his fingers and pulled his chair up closer to the screen.

“Is that it?” Hershey said. “We’re through, we’re locked out?”

Olmeyer looked pained. “With all due respect, Judge, nobody locks out Olmeyer. Nobody. They shut the door, I climb in the window. They nail up the windows, I go in through the floor—”

“I think I’ve got it, Cadet.”

“Huh!” Olmeyer’s fingers blurred across the keys. “Keep me out. Are you people kidding? There—Graphics Analysis coming up…”

The screen blinked. A picture of Dredd as a baby swam into view. Dredd and his parents. The same picture Hershey had found in his locker.

“Olmeyer, you’ve analyzed the wrong picture,” she told him. “It’s the other one, you droog!”

“I—I did?”

“Of course you did. I want the one of Dredd and the man with him at graduation.”

“Yeah, right.” Olmeyer studied the screen a long moment. “If that’s the wrong picture, Judge, why does the computer keep telling me it’s a fake?”

“What?”

Olmeyer jabbed a finger at the screen. “See all the numbers running along the bottom of the image? That’s Graphic Analysis. It’s telling me in its own language everything that’s wrong with the picture. And so far, there isn’t much that Graphic thinks is right.”

Olmeyer shook his head and punched a dozen keys. “It’s chock-full of anomalies. Really clever ones, too. Someone must have used a GCI terminal and a scan quadrupler to come up with this. Man, that’s state of the art twenty years ago.”

Hershey squeezed Olmeyer’s arm. “What are you saying, it’s not—it isn’t real?”

“Watch. Keep your eyes on the screen. I’ll drop out all the imposters, all the artificial pixels.”

Hershey watched, stunned, as the elements of the picture began to fade and disappear, one by one, vanishing into mist, each scan line erasing another part of the image until nearly everything was gone.

“My… God,” Hershey said.

Olmeyer spread his hands. “That’s it. Sky, foreground, house, parents… it’s all fake, Judge. Every line of it.”

“Everything except—”

“Right,” Olmeyer finished. “Everything except the baby. The baby’s real. The rest of it is zero, zilch. It doesn’t exist.”

“Quit talking and do it,” Dredd said. “You’re starting to piss me off.”

Mean Machine threw back his head and laughed like a wolf in heat. He’d never seen a wolf, and he’d never seen anything in heat except Pa, and that was too scary to even think about.

“I like you,” Mean Machine said. “I like you ’bout as good as that other’n, I surely do.”

He turned to Pa Angel, standing close to the fire. “He’s just a’spoofing, Pa. He’s hurt bad. Real bad. I heard stuff crunkle inside. I figure I hit him real low in his private sinner parts he’ll bring glory to the Lord like you never seen before.”

The Reverend Billy Joe Angel turned his hooded face toward his son. He raised his wooden shaft and aimed in the direction of Dredd.

“Prink ib do kot, poi,” he shouted. “Prink ib do kot!”

“I’ll do it, Pa, I will. I’ll bring him to God real good!” His yellow eyes flashed. “Is this a—a Four you think, Pa? You think it maybe is?”

“Vore!” Pa bellowed in a voice like rocks in a can.

“Four!” shouted Mean Machine. “Four! Four! FOUR!”

Mean Machine reached up to his shiny silver head and dialed himself a Four. His mouth fell open. Blue fire crackled in his eyes. A low sound started in his gut, trembled up his body and out his throat in a ragged roar. He spread his arms wide, the good one and the bad, spread them out wide like a man who fully intended to fly. He swept in a dizzy circle around the fire, twisting and turning and shaking himself into a frenzy and a froth, a small tornado looking for a trailer park, looking for a kill. Then, with a howl that shook the ruined walls, he lowered his head and came straight for Dredd.

“Glory! Glory! GLOOOOOR—EEE!”

Dredd knew exactly how this maniac’s charge had to end. He would hit with the impact of a truck, and all of Dredd’s organs would spurt out of his ears. He tensed the muscles in his belly, in his thighs. Everything hurt. Every motion brought a new jolt of pain. Dredd opened his mouth and roared, lifted his body at the waist, snapped his legs straight out.

His boots met the top of Mean Machine’s head. Mean Machine’s speed kept him going for a second and a half. He stopped, then, shook all over, and staggered off in a ragged dizzy course. His head found the wall. He turned on his heels and stumbled off toward Dredd again. The deadly blade whirred above his head. Smoke came out of Mean Machine’s nose. Dredd jerked his body aside, felt the blade hum by, wrapped his legs around the metal head.

Mean Machine howled. Dredd closed his eyes against the pain and lifted Mean Machine off the ground. Mean Machine’s leg kicked air. The pole holding Dredd’s hands snapped. He fell in a heap, came to his feet, and ripped the leather thongs from his wrists.

Mean Machine turned in a circle, got his bearings and came at Dredd again. Dredd lifted half the broken pole, swung it in an arc at Mean Machine’s head. Mean Machine went down, shook himself, and came to his feet again.

“Okay,” Dredd said, “I get the message, friend. You can take it in the head. Forget about the head.”

Mean Machine jerked up straight, scanned the room and settled on Dredd.

“Don’t like you no more. Liked you real good. Don’t like you no more at all.”

“We’ve got a problem, then,” Dredd said. “You don’t like me and I’m still fond of you.”

He whirled the broken pole above his head. Mean Machine came at him. Dredd let go. The pole made half a turn in the air and struck Mean Machine solidly at the knees. Mean Machine yelled and went down. His eyes rolled back in his head.

Dredd moved in to finish him off. The earth exploded at his feet. Dirt and stone geysered into the air. Dredd threw himself to the ground, rolled, and came up on his knees. The Reverend Billy Joe Angel had an antique automatic weapon in his hand. He was screaming out a hymn, and blasting every corner of the room.

Dredd tried not to move. A blind man with a weapon like that was a hazard to everyone’s health. A totally whacked-out squirrely-in-the-head blind man with a weapon was a case of walking death.

Mean Machine suddenly came to life. Smoke curled out of his head. His legs kicked the air like a beetle on his back.

Pa Angel swiveled on his knees, centered on the sound.

“Huh! Goht-chew! Goht-chew, Tread!”

Lead stitched a nasty fence around Mean Machine. Mean Machine yelled, and scooted for his life.

“Sh-shit, Pa, it’s me, it ain’t him! He’s over that-away!”

Pa Angel cocked his head from side to side, raised his weapon and blasted a crooked line a foot above Dredd. Brick and plaster showered on his head.

“Enough of this,” Dredd muttered to himself. He picked up half a brick, tossed it across the room.

“Yuuuuuh!” Pa Angel turned in a blur and blasted the brick to bits. Dredd went low and scurried along the wall, into the narrow hall. He decided he was losing it, that something was wrong with his head. Looking for Ferguson after what that moron had done. Maybe he’d get lucky—maybe they’d already quartered and barbecued the little crook. Dredd could scoop him up, mail the scraps to Aspen in a box.

He could smell Pa Angel’s boys. They left an odor strong enough to cut up and stack.

Dredd stopped. There was another smell now. Different, but not much worse than the first. The smell of burning flesh. Dredd had smelled it a hundred times. Always as a casualty in the street, though, never as an item on the menu before.

He stepped out of the corridor and into the small room. The ceiling had collapsed, scattering plaster, marble, and rusted steel bars across the floor. On some of the marble, there were broken bits of names, flowers and leaves carved in stone.

Across the room, something that used to be a prisoner or a guard sizzled on a spit. Dredd drew in a breath. A few feet away, one of Pa Angel’s loonies was basting Fergie’s naked backside with half a broom. The other hummed a hymn. Fergie’s hands and feet were bound to the spit. He squawked and rolled his eyes. Dredd thought he looked a little skinny for a really good meal, but the freakos didn’t seem to care.

Dredd walked up behind Link-Link, picked him up by the collar and tossed him against the wall. Link-Link’s head made a terrible sound. Junior Head-Dead turned and stared. He said, “Snuk-snuk-shuk!” He tried to get his motor skills working, drew a long-barreled pistol from his belt. His reaction time was six months slower than Dredd’s. Dredd took the weapon from his hand, turned it around, pulled the trigger, and shot Junior in the head.

“Snuk-snuk yourself,” Dredd said. He looked down at Ferguson.

“What I ought to do is leave you here, you groon. Did I tell you these crazies ate people? You didn’t get that? That too hard for you?”

“Go muck yourself, Dredd. Have one on me.”

“Right. First intelligent thing you’ve said all day.”

Dredd felt the ground coming up. Plenty of time to think. Hour, hour and a half. Time works different somehow. Wham. Drop. Fall on your face. Stationary target. Get the hell up. He clobbers you again and you’re flat-ass dead…

Dredd pushed the darkness aside. Just enough to wake up motor control for a tiny little nudge to the right. Not bad. Good. He hit the dirt hard.

“Gaht-su, Tread! Got-su, you sinner sum-bish!”

Pa Angel’s staff came down again. Missed. Half an inch is good as a mile.

Dredd reached out and grabbed a filthy foot. Nothing. The action took place in his head. His hand was paralyzed. Pa Angel kicked him in the knee. Dredd howled and rolled away. He thought about Herman Ferguson. Ferguson and his brick. What was he doing that was more important than this? Your own fault, Dredd. Count on a criminal type you deserve whatever you get.

From the corner of his eye, he saw the scarecrow loom up above him, the staff gripped in his scrawny hands, the weapon raised up behind his shoulders, ready for the deathblow, ready for the kill.

And in that instant, in a second, in a breath, he watched the dirty hood fall away, saw the scarred and razored flesh, saw the leather thongs tangled in strange configuration, in ritual array, lacing the horror’s ruined face, covering the darkness where ears and nose and mouth and eyes of madness used to be.

The Reverend Billy Joe Angel bellowed out his rage and swept his weapon down, and Dredd knew he didn’t have time, that this was the one where he wouldn’t walk away, the one where a blind man had fooled him with a stick and a pile of smelly rags when he wasn’t really there, and Dredd wished it might have happened any other way, nearly any way but that—

“HUUUUUK!” Something exploded in the ragman’s belly and scattered him in several bloody parts.

Dredd pulled himself up, stared at the Judge Hunters dropping from the ceiling, blasting through the wall, following the drill the way they’d trained to do, fast and quick and clean. One, two, three… maybe more outside but only three in here.

Dredd threw himself at half a wall as gunfire stitched a pattern at his feet. A visored figure came right at him, firing an ugly weapon black as night. Dredd pulled Junior Head-Dead’s revolver from his belt, squeezed the trigger and fired. Lead struck the visor, glanced off the armored plastic and whined off into the air. The Hunter paused a fraction of a second, thrown off his guard. Dredd came in low. The gun clattered to the ground. Dredd raised up, jerked the Hunter’s helmet off his head, and slammed it across the man’s jaw.

He heard the sound behind him, knew there were two. Picked up the Judge Hunter’s gun, fired it in a circle an inch above the ground. The first man stopped, stared at his leg and went down. Dredd swung his weapon by the barrel, and smashed the Hunter’s face. He glanced at the Hunter he’d shot in the foot. The man cursed him and started up again. Dredd kicked him soundly in the head.

Okay, three. Everybody down. He swept the weapon around the room to make sure.

Fergie walked out of the corridor, clutching half a brick in his hand.

“You’re not going to finish ’em off? Why the hell not?”

Dredd looked at him. “Because I’m innocent, remember?”

Fergie shrugged. “Yeah, I remember. So? You think those groons give a damn about that?”

“Thanks for jumping in,” Dredd said. “I appreciate the help.”

“Hey, I was ready, you know? You were terrific, man. I said to myself, I said, ‘Fergie, you can hop in the ring and finish these guys, but if you do, you’re going to knock Dredd’s timing off. You’re gonna’—shiiiit, Dredd!”

Dredd swung around in a blur. The Hunter was up on his knees, finger on the trigger of his weapon. His head exploded in a shower of red. Dredd stared at the man in the doorway, a dark silhouette against the stars. The Remington hanging from his hand, the long duster coat…

“Fargo?” Dredd took a cautious step forward. Maybe he was tired, maybe it was somebody else.

Fargo showed him a weary grin. “Welcome to Cursed Earth, Joseph. Hell of a place we’ve created out here. I guess hell’s the right word, all right.”

Fargo glanced at the dead Hunter, then looked back at Dredd.

“I’d like to say I felt something for him. I’d like to, but I don’t.” He studied Fergie a moment, decided he was too tired to ask who Dredd’s companion might be.

“I don’t guess I’m who I was when I came out here. I don’t think anyone could be. You have any water, Joseph? I ran out half a day ago.”

“Yes, sir. Sit down. Please.”

Dredd nodded at Fergie. Fergie searched the room, and came back with two glass jars of water. Fargo took a healthy swig, letting the liquid trickle down his chin.

“Tastes good.” He leaned back, took off his hat and wiped his brow. He looked about the room and smiled.

“A little irony, I guess. You and me and the others winding up here.”

“Sir?” Dredd raised a brow.

“Don’t know where you are, do you? Those columns, that piece of carving up there… This is a courtroom, Joseph. Or used to be. That, part of a face, what’s left of it. Up there?”

“Yes, sir.” Dredd agreed, though he wasn’t certain what he could or couldn’t see.

“That’s the blind lady. Justice. Before your time. Mostly before mine, too. She treated everyone the same. No favors, no secrets. A jury of ordinary people. Hard to believe that one, but it’s true. They decided. Not us. We should never have taken the law out of their hands.”

Dredd shook his head. “You had to. You brought order out of chaos.”

“That we did. Solved a hell of a lot of problems. And created more than we knew how to handle.”

He saw Dredd’s confusion, and laid a hand on his arm. He seemed to hesitate, lost for a moment in thought.

“I never thought we’d be sitting here together. Or that I might have the chance to tell you what I could never tell you before. To be a Judge, to decide the fate of thousands of lives during your career, I think that’s… too much power in one man’s hands. Too much, Joseph. For me, you, any man.”

He looked right at Dredd. Dredd read the doubt in the old man’s eyes, the sorrow and regret, the pain of recalling a past that was written in the stone of lost years.

“I once tried to compensate for that,” he said. “To strike some kind of balance, to eliminate the mistakes we might make, to put Justice beyond the possibility of error. We tried to… to create the perfect Judge. We called it Janus.”

Dredd frowned. “I don’t understand, sir. I’ve never heard that name before.”

Fargo shook his head. “No, no you haven’t. It was forty years ago, Joseph. To create the perfect Judge, DNA samples were taken from all members of the Council. The samples were analyzed and studied. One was chosen for the Janus project. Mine. It was then refined again and again. Altered to enhance the best qualities and screen out the worst. Weaknesses. Frailties. Any physical or mental characteristics that might obstruct the purpose of the project. We… we created you, Joseph.”

Dredd’s breath caught in his throat. “Me? Sir, that couldn’t be. I—”

“Listen to me.” Fargo shook his head. “Let me finish this.”

“I had real parents. I wasn’t made by any… project!”

“Yes, you were, Joseph.”

“No!”

“Joseph…”

Dredd gripped Fargo’s arm. “My parents were killed. When I was just a kid. They told me at the Academy. You told me!”

“It was a lie.”

“I have a picture of my parents!”

“You have a fake, a lie.” Fargo shook him off. “We lied to both of you!”

“Both of—both of who?”

Fargo wouldn’t look at him. “There was another person created in that experiment. But something went wrong. Terribly wrong.”

Dredd blinked in sudden understanding. “I have a brother?”

“Yes.”

“And what went wrong with him? Is he dead, did he die?”

“He didn’t die. You were best friends at the Academy. Inseparable. Both of you star pupils. Then he… turned. Went bad. We didn’t know until then. We created one perfect Judge, and another who genetically mutated into the perfect criminal.” Fargo stopped. “And for his crimes… you judged him.”

Dredd came to his feet, fists clenched at his sides. “Rico? You let me judge my own brother and never told me!”

“I couldn’t, Joseph. You were like a son to me.”

“A son!” Dredd’s hand swept out and grabbed the water jar from Fargo, shattered it against the wall. The parched earth drank the precious fluid at once.

“Rico had to be killed,” Fargo said. “To protect you. To protect the city.”

“To protect yourself, you mean.”

“Yes. That’s true. God help me, I cannot deny that. I did it for myself, for all of us, for—”

“Wait, wait…”

It struck him, then, like a physical blow, real and so suddenly clear it nearly brought him to his knees.

“Rico. He’s not dead.” He stared at Fargo. “Rico’s still alive.”

Fargo looked at his hands. “No, he’s not dead, Joseph. He’s alive. I signed the order myself. He’s in Aspen Prison. Special quarters there. I couldn’t—I couldn’t destroy him, whatever he was. He’s part of me. Part of you.”

Dredd struck his fist against the wall. “Damn it, don’t you see it?” He gripped Fargo’s shoulders. “I didn’t kill Hammond. He did. It was his DNA that convicted me. Our DNA. It was Rico. I don’t know where the hell he is right now, but he’s not in Aspen Prison!”

“Oh, Joseph, Joseph…”

All the color drained from Fargo’s face. He looked at his hands, as if he might make the whole thing go away.

“How, though? How could he…” He looked up at Dredd. “Griffin. It has to be. There’s no one else. He’s deceived us both. Sent us both to hell and brought Rico back.”

“The Janus project.”

“Yes. Of course.” Fargo’s eyes went cold. “He’s going to do it. He’s going to activate the project, open up that box of horrors again.”

Dredd shook his head. “No. He won’t. Griffin can’t do anything without Rico. We get to Rico and we stop Griffin cold.”

“Joseph—”

“Sir. I will stop him. There are ways to get into Mega-City, we both know that.”

“It’s not that easy. You don’t know, Joseph.”

“I know I can sit on my butt in this pesthole and die!” Dredd’s voice clattered off the walls. “I know I will not do that, sir. He took my badge away from me. That’s all I ever had, and I will get it back!”

Fargo slowly pulled himself to his feet. Dredd thought he looked every one of his years. Dust filled the lines of his face, a map of his long days of service, of giving himself to a cause he was no longer sure had been a just cause at all.

What of all those years now? Dredd wondered. What had it come to, his faith in the system, in himself?

Dredd had never imagined he could look at this man with any feelings except those of respect, devotion. Fargo had been like a father to him, the only father he’d ever known. Now, with the twisted irony of truth, he knew that Fargo was his father, in blood as well as name. And with that realization came the shadow of doubt, the confusion of love and hate—rage, sadness, despair.

Dredd felt the heat rise to his face, the heat of sudden shame. Emotion of any kind had always troubled him deeply, and now those emotions battled with one another, clashed like dark and angry stormclouds in his head. That terrible conflict paralyzed him with doubt. He wanted to turn away, be anywhere but here. He wanted to reject his father for what he’d done… to go to him, tell him he understood, that he, himself, felt the torment of the decision this man had been forced to make. Right or wrong, he had followed his heart, served in the best way he could…

And as he watched the old man in the long duster coat, watched him as he looked out at the cold night stars as if he sensed Dredd’s thoughts, as if he knew that he, too, was being judged, judged by the son he had created, loved, and finally betrayed, as Dredd watched his father’s tall silhouette, another shadow rose, stirred, brought itself up on its haunches, came out of the dark with the quickness, with the awesome blurring speed of a snake, striking before Dredd could move, before the message of danger could flash from his senses to his brain.

Mean Machine screamed, a high-pitched senseless babble of sound, a hymn of joy and death. Fargo sucked in a single breath. His arms and legs went rigid, his head snapped back, his hat slid across his face. Mean Machine’s blade arm ripped through Fargo’s back, lifting him off the ground.

“This is Duncan Harrow with the news…

“I’m sure most of you were watching less than twenty minutes ago when we interrupted our programming to bring you a bulletin on the explosion at Blue Quad Heights’ Mega-City Bank. Reports have been confused and scattered, with conflicting stories of a daring daytime robbery, a utilities explosion and the crash of an inter-city shuttle. Judge squads and Mediks are on the scene. An area between Nine-hundred-fifty-seventh Street and Nixon Avenue has been sealed off tight. And while authorities are not answering questions, this reporter has obtained an interview with a source close to the disaster scene.

“Here, in an exclusive story, are the facts as we know them behind the explosion in the heart of Mega-City’s exclusive Blue Quad Sector. At nine-thirty-five this morning, just thirty-eight minutes ago, an All-Judges call reported Citizen Unrest in Blue Twelve. According to our sources, a squad of seven Lawmaster-mounted Judges arrived on the scene at the Mega-City Bank. Minutes later, four more Street Judges reported in at the site. The Judges entered the bank in what is reported as a standard intervention wedge. Only seconds later, an explosion ripped through the building, sending flaming debris into the street. While we don’t wish to anticipate official word on this incident, early reports indicate that all eleven of the Judges are casualties, as well as an undetermined number of bank employees and Citizens. At least four stories of the bank were destroyed, as well as a number of public and commercial vehicles in the streets nearby.

“Death tolls already mount into the hundreds, and many severely- and critically-wounded persons have been admitted to area hospitals…

“Ah, yes—here it is, our first video coverage of the disaster from our News-Drone unit over the scene. There are the… remains of the entrance to the bank. You can see isolated fires still burning in the building. There is a… a Judge Emergency Van, I believe, and I believe there are at least a dozen vehicles, including a ground shuttle, destroyed there in the street. That’s all the video we have at the moment, but there’ll be more as additional news units arrive.

“Let me say that since officials have not issued a statement, we have no indications at this time of the cause of this explosion. We’ll be going into the Hall of Justice now, where Willi Cupp is standing by. Willi… ?”

“Duncan Harrow here with a special bulletin…

“Only moments ago, tragedy struck again in Mega-City. This time, unknown perpetrators struck at the heart of the social order. At two minutes after one this afternoon, an explosive device of undetermined strength detonated in the Street Judge locker room, deep inside the Hall of Justice itself. There are no casualty reports as yet, but an anonymous spokesman at the scene has reported that the death toll will almost certainly be high. The device exploded moments after the mid-day shift change, a time when the locker room is normally filled with personnel coming on duty, as well as those just finishing their tours.

“Though no official will comment at this time, there is little doubt that this tragedy and the earlier massacre of Judges and civilians at the Mega-City Bank are most certainly connected. Our news-drones are on the scene, and we’ll bring you an update on this story as soon as possible.”

The six Lawmasters stopped in the street, just at the entrance of the darkened alley. The deep throb of muffled engines was the only sound except for the steady drip of water overhead. Senior Sergeant Landdale knew the city as well as any man could, and he didn’t like this place at all. Downtown, as deep as you could go. If the underbelly of Mega-City was a cesspool, the stink started here.

“Dispatcher said a Six-Oh-Three, Sergeant. If there’s an Armed Robbery in Progress here, they’re being nice and quiet about it.”

“Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut, Colter. You haven’t seen the dog, don’t go telling me what color it is.”

“Yes, Sergeant.” Colter felt the color rise to his cheeks. He didn’t have to look at the other Judges. He knew they were grinning behind their visors. Senior Sergeant Judge Landdale was always putting him down with shit Colter didn’t understand. “Don’t start singing till they pass out the music” was last week’s helpful hint. This week it was the damn dog.

“All right,” Landdale said finally, “Bolo, take the point. Pierce, you back him up real close.”

Landdale spoke softly into his visor-comm, telling the dispatcher there was no sign of a Six-Oh-Three or anything else except a lot of bad smells, and they would henceforth investigate the said area in question, stand by.

The harsh headlights of the six Lawmasters had enough power to light up the cellars of hell, but they scarcely ate through twenty feet of the murky atmosphere of the alley. Landdale didn’t care for that at all. He had stayed alive as a Street Judge for fifteen years by religiously following Landdale’s Law: “If it’s light, yell ‘Halt!’ then shoot and bring up the body bags. If it’s dark, just shoot and check it out the next day.” The only thing wrong with this practice was it never got light in this part of town. Never did and never would.

Bolo and Pierce were entering the alley, hugging opposite walls, Lawgivers off-safety, suit-lights on blind. The other members of the squad waited, holding their breaths. Suddenly, a high, whirring sound cut through the silence of the dark. Landdale and his men turned on their heels as one, fingers on the squeeze. The landcar wheezed to a stop, scant milliseconds before the Judges would’ve opened fire and turned it into a blossom of superheated gas.

Landdale put his rage on hold, stalked over to the squat vehicle, and yanked open the door.

“All right, groon-breath,” he said, “haul it out of there. I want to see ten empty digits dancing in the air.”

The man stepped out. He was a small man with a face as round as a pie.

“No need for alarm, Judge. I’m not armed. My name’s—”

“I know who you are.” Landdale lowered his weapon in disgust. “You’re that sum-bitch on the video. What are you doing here, Harold? This is a potential crime scene.”

“Harrow. Duncan Harrow with the news,” Harrow corrected. “I ran the scales, follow the little blips, the little lights. I look and listen in. That’s how I get the news. I was down in Yellow Quad, got the Six-Oh-Three, possible Armed—”

“I know what it is, mister.” Landdale glanced down the alley, then back to Harrow. “I got an interdiction in progress here. You get your ass back in that vehicle now. Turn it around and go quiet-like back the way you came in.”

“Huh-uh. I don’t have to do that. I’m a certified journalist. I have every right to be here.”

Landdale raised his visor. His eyes were hard as flint. “I’ll tell you what you got. You got every right I tell you you got. So far that isn’t even one.” He poked the muzzle of his Lawgiver between Harrow’s eyes. “Now you turn this piece of crap around and git.”

Harrow took a deep breath, ready to tell this uppity Street Judge who he knew in what high places, and decided that really wouldn’t help. This was a man who’d been around a while, and likely had a broad understanding of resisting arrest.

“Yes, sir,” Harrow said. “You got it, sir.”

He wound up the window, turned the car in a quick circle, and disappeared down the block.

Landdale watched him go, muttering under his breath. He didn’t like the video or anyone on it. They said whatever they wanted to, even something bad about a Judge. Landdale was sure it was video people behind that awful business with Fargo and Dredd. Things like that shouldn’t happen. The Judges ought to take care of their own. And if something did happen, groons like that Harold guy shouldn’t be allowed to stand in front of a camera and crow.

He thought about the groon. He thought about his hair. If he remembered, the guy didn’t have any hair. He had hair on the video, he didn’t have any hair now. Maybe that was a rule. You had to have some hair on top, you were on the video. You were off, you could do whatever you wanted to. So why not wear it all the time? Landdale wondered. Guys like that, who’s to say what they might do?

“Nothing, nada,” Polo said into his visor-comm. “Zero plus two up here.”

“That’s a double,” Pierce said. “I got junk and bad smells and that’s all.”

“Okay, squad, standard line-and-stagger, let’s move it in,” Landdale said.

The Judges began their sweep. They were pros, and they kept the chatter down to a word here and there to let Landdale know what was going on with every man. Nothing happened. The water dripped steadily from the city up above. The alley was thick with murky poison air.

“Up here, team,” Bolo said suddenly. “I’ve got potential lifeforms, Sarge.”

“Shit,” Pierce put in, “how can you tell? It’s bums, Sergeant. Scummos and vags. We’ve landed in Maggot City, guys.”

Landdale walked up toward where Bolo and Pierce were shining their lights. Colter was up there, too, Rodger and Workman on Landdale’s right.

Landdale shook his head at the pitiful sight. Judge Pierce was right. These miserable creatures were human, but only because you couldn’t classify them as anything else, not without offending some other group like earthworms or slugs. They shuffled away, squealing in fright, turning their sallow faces from the light, ducking beneath their ragged hoods.

Landdale made a mental note to tell Dispatch what he thought of their Armed Robbery in Progress report. There was something in progress here, all right. Like lice. “All right, get ’em out of here, move ’em out.”

“Where, Sarge?”

“What?”

“Where you want us to put them?”

Landdale recognized the voice. Colter again. The guy was a pain, had to have an answer to everything. Landdale wondered if the droog would notice he was still a corporal when he retired, and maybe wonder why.

“I don’t care where you put them,” Landdale said. “They’re here. Take them somewhere that isn’t here. Bolo, you see another alley up there?”

“Got nothing but alleys up here, Sarge.”

“Fine. Put ’em up there.”

What is wrong with these people? Landdale thought. I got to do everything? I got to tell them to wash their hands before dinner, I gotta—

“Sarge—something up here. Pierce, Workman, cover me…”

“What is it, Two, what’ve you got?” Landdale caught the urgency in Bolo’s voice, a man shifting into second gear.

“Don’t know… Something wrong, over there. Give me some more light, Rodger. You—come out of there. Now. Put your hands up high and—yaaaaaaak!”

Bolo’s voice went dead. Landdale heard static and then that was gone, too. Pierce or Workman or someone screamed. He couldn’t tell who. A Lawgiver chattered, lighting up the dark. A visor light went out.

Landdale snapped off his beam and went low, keeping to the wall. No use calling on the comm. Bolo was dead, out of it for sure. Maybe the other guys, too. What happened up there?

Someone breathing hard… no, chest wound. Sucking air. Landdale took a cautious step forward. His boot found something soft. One of ’em, no way to tell who.

Don’t stay here, get out, get help. No one’s going to blame you for that…

“Sarge! Oh my Gaaaah…!”

“Shut up, can it, whoever that is!”

The spot went on, turning dark into light. Landdale’s visor darkened, compensating for the blinding flare. Not a visor light. Too damn bright. Too—

He saw it, a fraction of a second before he fired, big son of a bitch, copper and steel, muckin’ feet as big as a car, shiny stuff blinking in his gut, awful red eyes…

Landdale squeezed his trigger and didn’t stop. A beam of blue light sizzled along the wall above his head, slicing through brick like fat, hissing through Senior Sergeant Landdale from his visor to his crotch.

Ilsa lowered her hood and sniffed the air.

“It smells dreadful here. Really unpleasant, dear.”

Rico smiled. “Well, that is the point, isn’t it? Drama. Horror. Death. Really dreadful smells. A theatrical event.”

“It’s all of that,” she said.

Rico glanced over his shoulder. The massive robot stood silent, light from the still glowing fires in the alley dancing on its mirrored hide.

“Come on, Fido. Be a good boy, and Daddy will get you a very nice bone.”

“This is Tommy Waco with the news…

“Bear with me, if you will, ladies and gentlemen. There are—there are times when it’s difficult to do a journalist’s job in the professional and objective manner in which that job should—and must—be performed.

“I’m certain that everyone who’s watching me now is aware of the latest tragic event that has shocked and stunned Mega-City—the ambush and slaughter of five, possibly six Judges—we can’t say exactly how many at this moment—an ambush that took place in the notorious downtown district, Black Quad Nine.

“There are few facts available at this time. What we do know is that the Judges were burned beyond recognition, along with several vagrants. Sources report that an illegal weapon was used in this brutal killing, but that information is not confirmed…

“Sorry, I’m still here, my friends. This is—difficult, as I said. This part of the story has not been on the news. Another person lost his life in that chaotic event in the Black Quad. A colleague, a friend, and a fine journalist. A man you, the viewers, have come to know and respect as a commentator on this station.

“Duncan Harrow died in that same alley tonight. Duncan’s car was found parked several blocks from the alley in question. But Duncan’s remains, along with his blackened video camera, were found several feet within the alley itself, near the scene of the disaster.

“It was like Duncan Harrow to put himself in harm’s way in order to bring you the news. That’s the kind of man—the kind of reporter—Duncan Harrow was. A man very like another journalist we sorely miss, Vardis Hammond.

“Maybe I’m going out on a limb now. Maybe it’s no longer safe for a journalist to speak to you in this manner, but here it is. Vardis Hammond felt that much of the lawlessness in Mega-City could be laid at the feet of those very persons responsible for upholding the Law. I’m speaking of the High Council of Judges itself. If you’re listening, members of this respected body, what’s your answer? Is Mega-City out of control, at the mercy of criminal terrorists? As Citizens, we need to know where we stand in these dangerous times. As the self-appointed guardians of our Society, you have an obligation to let us know. You have an obligation to the living. And you have an obligation to those who have died for the cause of Law and Order. Citizen and Judge alike.

“This is Tommy Waco with the news. Back to you, Katie Chloe, for an on-the-scene report from the site of the tragic Black Quad massacre…”

The only trouble with the Judge Hunters’ sand cruiser was the sand. Fergie wondered how technology could build a Mega-City, and still make an air valve that ground a fine engine into mush.

“We’re finished,” Fergie said, pulling himself from under the machine. “Finished. Done. Dead.”

“We’re walking,” Dredd said.

“We’re what?”

Dredd didn’t answer. He picked up Fargo’s shotgun from the hood, turned away, and started east. Fergie squinted at the sun and gently touched his cracked and swollen lips.

“You’re crazy, Dredd. It’s about two million miles to Mega-City. We don’t have any food. We don’t have any water. I can’t even spit anymore.”

“It’s seventeen miles, you moron. You can take a droid apart, you can’t add? Those Hunters punched a trip-dial before they left home. It’s a regulation.”

“Might as well be a million miles,” Fergie muttered to himself. “We’re not going anywhere without water.”

“Have a nice day,” Dredd said.

He kept on walking. He didn’t stop or turn around. Fergie watched him go. In a moment, he seemed to be walking on glass. His body wavered as the heat rose up from the earth. The horizon rippled like a cheap video.

He’s nuts, Fergie told himself. He’s a Judge and he’s nuts. Judges don’t think like normal people, and Dredd’s about seven times crazier than the rest of that bunch.

Fergie couldn’t see him anymore. All he could see was a quivering silver lake. The lake turned upside down and shimmered in the sky.

He’s crazy, but he’s not that crazy. He didn’t walk out there to die. He left me here to die is what he did. He’s got water… the bastard’s got water and he’s left old Fergie to die!

Fergie ran. He ran for a minute and a half. Then he dropped on his face and ate sand. Then he got up and ran again.

When Dredd came back and found him, he was on his hands and knees, chasing a centipede. He said the centipede had a canteen and wouldn’t tell him where.

“You’re a groon,” Dredd said. “You want water, pick that thing up and eat it. Insects have moisture inside.”

Fergie looked at him with red and hollow eyes. “Forget it. I’m not really thirsty. I’ll wait until we find a nice bar.”

“Good.”

“You want my bug? You can have my bug.”

“I don’t want your bug.”

“Maybe I’ll keep it.”

“Fine.”

“Just in case, you know?” Fergie squashed the bug and put it in his pocket. Dredd would be sorry. Dredd would get thirsty and want his bug. Fergie would tell him, “Forget it, find your own bug, man.” Fergie grinned. It made him feel good to think about that.

He shut out the fury, turned it aside. Cast a blind eye to the carnage, to the chaos, to the oily smoke from the city’s funeral pyres. A sky-lite bus had hit a barge head on, two-thousand feet above White Quad’s famous Crystal Dome. The explosion rocked the heights of the city. Twisted shards of molten metal, plastic, glass, and body parts ripped through the Dome, tearing, shredding, bringing razor-death to the naked fun-seekers below.

He ran down the alleyway behind Two-thousand-twenty-third Street, Fergie close behind. There were screams from the street, the sound of breaking glass. A looter with dragons tattooed on his face raced by with a holo set.

Now and then he saw Judges. Some of them were holding back the crowds. Some of them were dead. He used all the courage at his command to keep from jumping in to help, to fight beside his friends. He knew he couldn’t do it, that he had to stop Rico if he could. Besides, he was a fugitive. Even men who knew him might kill now.

That hurt. That hurt a lot. Almost as much as watching the people of the city tear his world apart.

Getting into the Hall of Justice wasn’t hard. Every veteran Judge knew how. Fergie didn’t want to come. Stay outside, Dredd told him, go anywhere. Fergie kept quiet after that.

The Judge in the locker room turned, startled. It was clear that he recognized Dredd. Dredd hit him carefully, a point below his neck. The man sagged. Dredd eased him to the ground and began stripping off his uniform. It wouldn’t quite fit, but that was fine.

“Oh, hell, why not?” Fergie rolled his eyes. “What else can they do to me? I’m dead already. They catch me, they can’t kill me twice.”

“Don’t count on it,” Dredd said.

THE SETTING:

The lighting is subdued in the Council Chamber. The massive marble carving of the eagle and badge of the Judges is almost lost in shadow. Perhaps this somber atmosphere reflects the mood of the Justices themselves. They know this is not a time for secrets or evasions, for half-truths and Council politics. This is a time of reckoning, of honest exchange, of sharing the strength, the wisdom, and the craft that brought them where they are. This is a time when they will perish or survive.

Griffin looked straight ahead.

He didn’t dare look at his fellow Judges. They knew him too well, as he knew them. They would see, and they would know, and he was not quite ready for that. Not yet, not yet…

The holo blinked into life before the Council table, a perfect sphere, a small blue world turning slowly in the inner space of the Council Chamber.

“Central,” Griffin said, “utilizing current technology, give me a time factor on the ability of the Janus Project to produce a fully-grown adult subject. Priority Reply.”

At once, a solid field of zeros and ones began crawling across the sphere, like the onset of day, like the end of dark night, following the blue planet’s curve from west to east, a dazzling field of green digits changing too swiftly for the ordinary eye.

“Given the current status of genetic engineering, an adult subject could be incubated and completed in eight-point-two-two-standard hours.”

“My God!” Judge Esposito sat up straight. “Stop this, Chief Justice. Stop it now.”

Griffin didn’t look at him. “I believe you agreed to… consider the project, along with the others.”

“I withdraw that agreement!”

“I… don’t believe procedure allows for that,” Judge Silver said.

Esposito glared. “I don’t give a damn what procedure says.” He jerked his head toward Griffin. “What he’s doing is criminal. You’re fools, both of you, if you let him continue with this.”

“Carl…” McGruder leaned in and laid a hand on his arm. “Carl, it’s a presentation. We agreed to that. It doesn’t have to go any further.”

Esposito started to speak. He looked at the others, shook his head and placed his hands on the flat surface of the desk. Griffin glanced at him, then turned to the shining sphere.

“In what quantity, Central? Give me a projected number of incubated and completed subjects.”

“Laboratory Number One of the Janus Project is currently equipped with one hundred subjects. Under fully operational conditions, seven hundred subjects could be completed in seven days.”

Silver stared at Griffin in disbelief. “That many? This is true? Why, we could replace our losses in one day!”

“Exactly,” Griffin said. “We could regain adequate control of the city almost at once, clean out the riotous elements in every sector. Before the week is out, we could reinforce trouble spots at such a strength that these unruly dissidents would think twice about showing their faces in the streets again.”

“These unruly dissidents you’re talking about are people, Chief Justice.” Esposito watched the blurr of data flashing across the sphere. “People. Not numbers.”

McGruder shook her head. “He’s right. We shouldn’t even be considering this. It’s… it’s inhuman, the whole concept was inhuman from the beginning. It is madness, sir. It is not the Council’s job to play God.”

“Judge…” Griffin spread his hands and smiled. It was a weary, patient smile that reflected a teacher’s concession to a backward child. “We sit in judgement of our fellow citizens because we must, because order is necessary for the continuation of a peaceable Society. If there was no need for such supervision, we could disband and go frolic in the park.”

“Don’t you patronize me, Chief Justice!” McGruder came to her feet. She glared at Griffin and jabbed her arm at the shimmering globe. “Central, restore the Security Blocks on the Janus Project. At once!”

Griffin smiled. “I’m afraid you can’t simply vote all by yourself, Judge. We are a Council here. We act together.” He looked at the others. “I find it most painful that I have to handle this myself, without your help and support. I am deeply hurt that none of you have the will, the strength, these dangerous times require.

“Central…” Griffin spoke without looking up. “Janus will remain unlocked. My command only. Authority: Override Mega-City Emergency One-Niner-Five.”

Esposito came to his feet. “This is treason, sir!” His eyes were dark with rage. “You have gone too far, you have sealed your fate here, Chief Justice!”

“No,” Griffin said quietly, “I’m afraid you’ve sealed yours. Rico—in here!”

He spoke without moving his eyes from Esposito. He felt a great sense of satisfaction, of completion, as the color drained from his face, as the meaning of the name he had spoken was reflected in the taut lines of fear about his lips, as he knew and understood what he had done, that it was finished, over, that there was nothing more for them now.

Rico walked into the great room. He wore the full-dress combat black of the Judges. He held the Lawgiver straight down at his side. He looked at the Council and smiled.

McGruder’s face was drawn, frightened. “Damn you, Griffin. Damn you to hell for this!”

“That kind of talk is not constructive, Judge,” Griffin said.

“Send-him-away! Stop this horror at once!”

“Judge.” Griffin let out a breath. “I have to ask you to—”

McGruder’s left hand dipped beneath the table. Rico seemed to make little effort at all. McGruder’s head slammed into the massive slab at her back, spattering the marble red.

Silver cried out once. Esposito didn’t move. His eyes were on Griffin as he died.

Rico smiled, studying his weapon as if he’d never seen it at all. “Who said politics is boring? I might run for office sometime.”

A pall of acrid smoke hung over the room. Griffin sniffed the air and turned away from the carnage.

“I want you out of here. Now. I don’t want anyone to see you near this place. Go out the way you came. Ilsa will be there.”

“Ilsa is getting on my nerves.”

“Get out of here, Rico. Do it now!”

Rico shrugged. He laid his weapon across his shoulder, gave Griffin a mock salute, and disappeared behind the marble slab.

Griffin walked quickly toward the doorway to the hall. Judge Hunters would hear the gunfire. They’d be on the run by now. If he hurried, there was still time to—

The big wooden doorway exploded, slammed to the ground. Griffin stepped back. Dredd stalked into the room, the weapon smoking in his hand. He looked at Griffin, then past him at the horror of the Council table.

“No… Nooooo!” Dredd tried to grasp the sight, tried to comprehend what had happened here. He raised his eyes slowly, aimed the Remington squarely at Griffin’s head.

“You murdering bastard, you—” Dredd stopped, shook his head. “Rico. He did this. You wouldn’t have the stomach for it, would you? Where is he? Where is he, Griffin!”

“Don’t be foolish,” Griffin said. “Rico’s dead. He’s been dead for years—”

“Talk to me. Where is he?”

“Dredd, listen to me, all right?” Griffin raised his hands and backed away. “Things are going to change, whether you like it or not. Nothing’s going to stop this. Not you, not anyone.”

“Janus. Is that what you’re talking about?” Dredd turned his thumb straight down. “I won’t let it happen. I will stop you any way I can.”

“There’s nothing you can do. Not now. Nothing that—”

A shout echoed through the corridor. Heavy boots pounded the granite floor. Dredd jerked around and faced Griffin.

Griffin smiled, grabbed his belly, doubled up and writhed on the floor.

“In here,” he yelled. “Hurry, for God’s sake!”

Dredd stared at the man, then suddenly understood. He cursed Griffin under his breath and ran, dodging into the small anteroom off the Council Chamber. Half a second later; Judge Hunters swarmed into the room, Lawgivers at the ready.

“Get him!” Griffin pointed shakily from the floor. “Damn it, go—he’s murdered the whole Council!”

The Hunter squad turned and charged out of the room. An officer bent down over Griffin. Griffin recognized his face.

“We’ll take care of you, sir. I’ll get Mediks on the way—”

“Captain, never mind that. Get Dredd! Kill him!”

“Sir—”

“I’m not badly hurt. Do it now!”

“Yes, sir.”

The officer hurried away. Griffin waited until his footsteps echoed down the hall. He stood and walked to the black table. He looked into McGruder’s dead eyes. He touched her with his finger, then drew a red smear across his chest. Word would get out that he was wounded, that he wouldn’t even let the Hunters stop to give him medical care. He smiled at the thought. He could picture them, at dinner, in their barracks. It was pleasant to imagine the things they might say.

Dredd tore through the anteroom, stopped to jack a shell into the chamber of the Remington pump. He could hear the Judge Hunters in the Council Chamber, Griffin’s ragged shout.

He listened a moment, then stepped into the hall. Two Hunters turned and stared. Dredd squeezed the trigger twice. The blast thundered off the walls. Dredd ran without looking back. Someone yelled. Bullets whined off the stone floor.

Dredd rounded the corner and stopped, searched the dark hall.

“Ferguson! Damn it, where are you?”

Fergie peeked out of a closet. “What the hell did you do in there, Dredd? You got all the groons stirred up again. Everybody’s after me, right?”

“Come on, get out of there.” Dredd grabbed a handful of shirt and jerked Fergie into the hall. “Stay close. Don’t stray off anywhere.”

Fergie looked pained. “Where have I heard that before?”

The end of the corridor narrowed. There were doors on either side. Dredd moved quickly, opened the third door and shoved Fergie in.

“Where are we?” Fergie said. “What are we doing, Dredd?”

“Shut up,” Dredd said.

The room was almost dark. Dredd knew he couldn’t risk a light. A faint glow came from the skylight, reflecting the brightness of Mega-City outside. The light didn’t matter. He knew every corner of this room in the dark. It was the Academy Training Center, and it was as familiar as his own bedroom.

He passed a table stacked with weapons and locks and stopped at the gleaming black machine. He felt a slight catch in his throat at the sight of brushed chrome and stainless steel, at the metal black as night.

“What is it, why are we stopping here?” Fergie looked nervously across the room. “We don’t have time to be doing any shopping now, Dredd. We’ve got company dropping in.”

“The Mark IV Lawmaster. State-of-the-art. Double sixty-fours, rapid-fire.”

“Yeah, yeah, great.”

“Get on.”

“Do what?”

“Get on or stay behind. Your choice.”

Dredd threw his leg over the broad leather saddle. He ran his fingers swiftly over the panel keys imbedded in the black steel dash. Red lights blinked in a line. Dredd punched the ignition. The lights turned green. The big engine came to life and roared.

“You coming or not?”

“Huh-uh, not me.” Fergie backed off. “I don’t think so, man. You enjoy yourself. Give me a call—”

The door to the room exploded in a burst of broken glass. Gunfire whined past Fergie’s head.

“Let’s go, what are we waiting for, haul it out of here!”

The engine climbed up the scale, wailing like a demon, howling like a lost soul. Fergie wondered briefly where Dredd intended to go. What was he going to do, charge for rides around the room? Would the Judge Hunters care, would they stand around and clap?

The floor shook. Something caught fire. Dredd slammed his palm down hard. The Lawmaster’s black fenders whirred, folded up, and disappeared. Two ugly snouts appeared in their place.

“Side arms—FIRE!” Dredd said.

The Lawmaster buckled. White flames blossomed from the twin sixty-fours. The far wall exploded, loosing a geyser of glass, brick, and assorted debris. Fergie stared at the large, gaping hole, at the towers of Mega-City that suddenly appeared, at the diamond-bright lights as far as the eye could see.

“You’re kidding, right?” Fergie gripped Dredd’s arm. “You’re not going to do that. Nobody in their right mind would do that…”

AERIAL MODE—AERIAL MODE—AERIAL MODE…

“What?” Fergie closed his eyes. “No way, man.”

“Work-work-work!” Dredd said between his teeth. “Work, you son of a bitch!”

The Lawmaster’s engine sputtered, howled. The big machine trembled, pitched forward with a gut-wrenching burst of speed and roared through the hole in the wall.

Fergie screamed.

Gunfire followed the Lawmaster into the night.

“Please-work-please-work-please-work…”

The broad wheels sucked up into the frame. The lights on the console went wild.

AERIAL MODE—AERIAL MODE—AERIAL MODE ON-LINE—AERIAL MODE ON-LINE…

The engine changed pitch. The Lawmaster banked gently in the air.

“All right!” Dredd shouted. He pounded on the dash.

“Yeah-yeah-yeah!” Fergie yelled.

The engine sputtered. Died. The Lawmaster fell like a stone.

AERIAL MODE MALFUNCTION—AERIAL MODE MALFUNCTION—AERIAL MODE MAL—

“Do-it-do-it-do-it!”

The Lawmaster tumbled dizzily toward the ground. The towers of Mega-City flashed by in a sickening streak of lights. Fergie yelled in Dredd’s ear. Dredd tore at the controls, punching every button he could find. Lights turned red-green-blue-yellow-white.

The wind spread Dredd’s skin flat against his face, opened his nostrils, pressed his lips against his teeth…

MALFUNCTION…

MALFUNCTION…

MALFUNCTION…

MAL—

AERIAL MODE ON-LINE—AERIAL MODE ON-LINE…

The engine came back to life, the most beautiful sound Dredd had ever heard. Safety rockets exploded beneath the Lawmaster, lifting it on a stable column of superheated air. Dredd twisted the control bar gently to the right. The Lawmaster jerked through four gears, and screwed itself in a dizzy circle through the night.

“What the hell are you doing!” Fergie wailed.

“Relax. I’m trying to get the feel of this thing.”

“What, this is your first time? Don’t tell me that, Dredd, I don’t want to hear tha—uh-oh!”

“What?”

“Company. Hunters on our ass. Two of ’em—three.”

“Great. Just great. Hang on.”

Dredd squeezed the control bar and gritted his teeth. The Lawmaster protested, stood on its tail, and shrieked straight up. Dredd left his stomach a thousand feet below. The bottom of a skyway appeared up ahead, blotting out the night. Dredd yanked the big machine aside, saw the startled face of a taxi driver flash by.

Fergie was babbling in his ear. Dredd risked a look back. The Hunters were good. Right on his tail.

“Here, take it,” he shouted. He ripped the Remington’s strap from his shoulder and passed it back.

“What?”

“Cover our rear. Hold those bastards off.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I never shot a gun in my life!”

“What the hell kind of criminal are you, Ferguson?”

“I’m a nice criminal. I rob droids. I steal things. Just little things. I don’t do guns, man, I never—”

“Shoot, damn it!”

Fergie closed his eyes and fired. The muzzle flashed and the stock slammed into his shoulder.

“I missed, I knew I’d miss…”

“Again!”

Fergie pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

“It doesn’t work anymore. I think the batteries are down.”

“You’ve got to pump it, you moron,” Dredd yelled. “Get a shell in the chamber.”

“I knew that.”

“Ferguson…”

Fergie fired. Something sparked on the lead Hunter’s machine.

“I got him!” Fergie pounded Dredd’s back. “You see that, I shot the son of bitch!”

“You hurt his feelings, maybe. You chipped his paint. What do you think these things are made of, paper plates? These are Lawmaster IVs.”

“Wonderful,” Fergie said, “so whose side are you on, ours or theirs?”

“You’ve got to hit something important.”

“Like what?”

“Like a power coil or cooler duct. The power coil is partially exposed during standard Aerial Mode. A well-placed shot would likely disable or seriously damage the machine.”

“That’s a lecture, right?”

“It’s a lecture. It’s my lecture. Just do it, Ferguson. Hang on, now.”

“Hang on, right. He says hang on, like I’ll maybe—Dredd, look where you’re going.”

“I’m looking.”

“You’re not looking. If you’re looking, you’re not looking like a regular person looks. That’s how I want you to look—Dredd, shit!”

Fergie held his breath. The thing loomed up ahead, a droid nearly twenty stories high. It’s eyes blinked red. One hand held a giant candy bar. The hand thrust the candy bar in and out of the droid’s mechanical mouth. The mouth chomped up and down. The droid grinned. It’s eyes winked on and off. Purple letters floated in the air overhead: YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE REAL TO LOVE ZEEL!

“We’re going to do it, we’re going to hit, we’re going to hit that thing!”

“I’m the driver,” Dredd said. “I’m the driver, you’re the shooter. Shoot, or I’ll kick your ass off of here.”

“I’m shooting, I’m shooting!”

Fergie twisted in his seat. The wind howled around his head. The three Hunters were close, spread in a narrow wedge. The two in the back weaved from side to side. Fergie didn’t care for that. He liked the one that stood still. He brought the gun to his shoulder again, took a breath, and fired. He even remembered to pump. Four shots. Three missed a mile. The last glanced off the Judge Hunter’s armor-glass visor and whined off to the side. The Hunter had been trained to ignore harmless missiles of any size. Every groon in Mega-City tossed bottles or bricks at Judges when they could.

The Hunter forgot. Before he could remember the drill, he’d pulled the Lawmaster down seven degrees. The machine hit the spire of a Mega-City condo and blossomed in a ball of white fire.

“I did it, I got him, I got him, I—waaaah!”

Fergie looked forward in time to see Dredd hurl the Lawmaster straight into the enormous mouth of the droid. He saw the red eyes streak by, the candy bar big as a family car…

He shut his eyes tight. Nothing hurt. Everything was fine. He’d learned something. It didn’t hurt to die. Dying felt good. He opened his eyes. Mega-City was still there. A billion lights shimmered below.

“You missed it? You didn’t miss it, nobody could miss it.”

“I didn’t miss it,” Dredd said. “It’s a holo. There’s nothing to miss.”

“It’s a holo?” Fergie was astonished. “It’s a real good holo.”

“You’ve been out of town.”

“Six months, yeah, but—”

Nineteen balls of yellow fire appeared directly in the Lawmaster’s path, lined up neatly like a string of pretty lights. The sound reached them half a second later, a solid wall of air that sent them tumbling out of control toward the sea of lights below.

Dredd shouted something Fergie couldn’t hear. He smelled the sharp and unmistakeable scent of electric fire. He’d smelled it a hundred times before. You break into a droid, something doesn’t go right, everything starts to go wrong. Fine. Stuff like that, it always happened on the ground. It didn’t happen five thousand feet up in the air.

The Lawmaster’s engine coughed, died, and came to life again. Dredd struggled with the controls. He pounded on the dash. Fergie saw the street coming up fast. The street was full of people. People. Buses. Cars. Something didn’t look right. Fergie looked again. People were killing people. Breaking into stores. It was a battlefield, a full-scale riot.

The Lawmaster limped above the crowd, dragging its tail and spilling an acrid cloud of smoke. Dredd heard the Hunters’ cannons begin to chatter again. A missile screamed by his head. It exploded in the crowded street below. Flesh and metal fused, vaporized in the terrible heat. Screams went by in a blur, horror frozen for an instant, then gone.

Dredd steered the damaged craft to the right. Cannon fire stitched a brick wall ahead. Dredd muttered under his breath, and yanked the control bar all the way back.

Fergie felt his stomach lurch up into his throat. Flame scorched his hair. He turned, looked back, saw the Hunter explode against the wall a hundred feet below. Dredd’s Lawmaster jerked into a tight one-eighty, heading back the way it had come.

Fergie was too scared to scream. He hated being upside down. The last Judge Hunter was below him, looking straight up. He twisted his machine in a killing turn, firing his cannons in the split second Dredd’s Lawmaster was in his sights. Dredd’s machine shuddered. Fergie felt something drop off. It sounded big and important, something they’d probably like to keep.

The Hunter suddenly loomed into sight next to Dredd, half a dozen feet away. The Hunter aimed his Lawmaster and fired. The first shot missed. The second plowed through the control panel, leaving an ugly molten scar. The Judge Hunter grinned, and pushed his visor up on the brow of his helmet.

“Steer,” said Dredd.

“What?”

“Steer!”

“I don’t know how to steer!”

“You don’t know how to do shit, Ferguson. Learn real fast.”

Dredd leaped from his seat. The Judge Hunter stared. Dredd grabbed his arm, forced it back. The Hunter yelled, fought for balance, flailed his arms and disappeared.

The Lawmaster dipped, swerving sharply to the left. Dredd held on, grabbing for the controls. The machine pitched wildly across the sky. Dredd bullied it back on course, cutting a wide arc above the Mega-City towers.

Ferguson—the little crook’s got to be somewhere… hasn’t had time to disappear…

There. Dredd spotted him, five hundred feet below, spinning like a top. Smoke spewed from the machine as the Lawmaster headed straight for a concrete wall.

Dredd muttered under his breath and punched the control panel with his fist. Red letters screamed EMERG/OVERRIDE. Turbos roared, boosting Dredd forward on a stream of blue fire. He matched his speed with the twisting machine, working out the numbers in his head. Four… three…

Fergie’s eyes were closed. Dredd grabbed him by the collar, jerked him free, sent the Lawmaster straight up.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the smoking machine hit the wall in a ball of fire and oily black smoke.

Fergie opened his eyes. He held on fast, digging his hands into Dredd’s back.

“Never again,” he said. “Never driving with you again. You hear me? Not anytime. Never.”

“You can get off anytime you want,” Dredd said. “How about here? Here’s okay with me.”

“One more chance,” Fergie said. “One more, that’s it…”

“There’s nothing to keep us from going to fully operational status,” Griffin said. “There is no longer any Council, and the city is in chaos. There is only one authority left that any government personnel will listen to. Me.”

“Yes. That narrows it down, doesn’t it?” Rico raised a questioning brow. “What you didn’t do was kill Dredd when you had the chance. That was not a good decision, Mr. Chief Justice.”

Griffin had years of experience in keeping his feelings to himself. He might have murder in his heart—as he did at that moment—but he would never let it show.

“He’ll keep the Street Judges occupied while we work on Janus,” he said. “It’s not a problem, my friend.”

“I do hope not. I don’t like problems. I like things to go smoothly and quickly. I like things to flow.”

Rico cocked his head slightly, without taking his eyes off Griffin. “Isn’t that so, Ilsa? Rico likes things to flow.”

Lisa laughed lightly. “I believe you have said so on occasion, yes.”

She stood behind Rico, hands at her sides. Griffin thought her features had an almost alien beauty in the flickering blue light of the Janus lab. It seemed inconceivable, almost a sacrilege of a kind, that such perfection stood so close to Rico’s giant robot, that relic of forgotten wars.

Yet, he decided, if Ilsa was indeed perfection, she was a cold perfection, much like the silver monster itself. Maybe they belonged together, along with Rico, who was perfection of a sort himself.

“I’ll be back,” Griffin said, glancing at his wrist. “Someone has to mollify those fool officials. They think the sky is falling down.”

“And indeed it is,” Rico said.

Griffin rose from his chair. “You don’t need me for routine initiation. You know the drill. Central… prepare the Janus facility for full operations. My command…”

“Janus… operational.”

“One more thing.” Rico stepped into his path. “I believe you promised… ?”

“What?” Griffin paused, then understood. “Yes, of course. Central, appoint Judge Rico to the Council of Judges. Appointment to take effect at once.”

Central paused for a full second. “Unable to comply.”

“Why not?”

“Legal difficulties. Judge Rico is listed as officially executed nine years, three months, fifteen days ago.”

“Your listing is obviously in error.”

“Central does not make errors. Judge Rico was sentenced and executed.”

Rico grinned. “Obviously, I got better.”

Griffin gave him a chilling look. “Correction of records, Central. Authority is Chief Justice Griffin. Correction is as follows: Central is not mistaken. You were given incorrect data. Judge Rico is alive. Please correct and carry out my command.”

“Data corrected… Judge Rico is alive… Judge Rico is approved as a Council member as of this date… Entered.”

“Thank you.” Rico bowed slightly from the waist. “I accept, and I will carry out my duties to the best of my ability.”

“I have things to do. Get hold of me if you have to.” This time, Griffin made no effort to hide his irritation. He turned on his heels and stalked across the room.

Rico watched him go. Ilsa walked up beside him. In the silence, Rico could hear the soft fabric of her dress against her legs. She laid a hand gently on his arm.

“You shouldn’t anger him like that. There is no reason for it.”

“Yes there is.”

“What?”

“I like to.”

Ilsa frowned. “That’s a childish thing to say. It doesn’t become you. You don’t have to—Rico!”

She drew in a breath, tried to pull away. His fingers pressed into the soft flesh of her arm until she closed her mouth against the pain.

Rico let her go. “You don’t want to say things like that, dear. Griffin thinks I’m insensitive because of what I am. He’s wrong. I have feelings. Don’t I, Fido?”

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…”

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. There 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 about, 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.”

Hershey looked at Dredd. “They built the Janus Project directly beneath it. Under the Liberty Lady.”

“Yeah,” Dredd said. “Where else?”

The crisp smell of ozone was in the air. Griffin could almost feel the energy, the awesome surge of raw power that throbbed beneath his feet. That much power was frightening to imagine. New life, the pulse of Creation itself…

They were together, Ilsa and Rico, at the far end of the lab. They turned as he entered. The thousand eyes of the computer cast dancing shards of color about the room. The big robot stood silently behind Rico, only its ruby glow visible in the shadows.

“Dredd got away from the Hunters,” Griffin told them. “Took some good men with him, too. Bastard’s got nine lives.”

“Not to worry,” Rico said. “Little brother won’t get in our way.”

Griffin stared at him. Rico looked bored with the whole thing, a man thinking about an afternoon nap. Damn you! When this is over… when you’re not useful anymore…

“Well, I’m glad you’re so confident,” he said aloud. “I’m pleased to hear we have no problems at all, Rico.”

“Not with Dredd, we don’t.” Rico made a note on a comm-board and passed it to Ilsa. “He’s going to be seriously outnumbered quite soon. Current figures please, Central?”

“Current figures, Council Judge Rico… The new DNA sample has been multiplexed as ordered… Gametes are dividing.”

“New—” Griffin turned on Rico. “New samples? What the hell’s going on here, Rico? I didn’t order any new samples.”

“No, but I did.” Rico grinned at Griffin’s expression. “That DNA in there was thirty years old. Sooner or later, you have to clean out the fridge.”

Ilsa laughed, the sound of silver bells. Griffin watched as she leaned in against him, watched her slide her hand down the length of his arm. He knew at once. Knew what had happened between them. It had all gone wrong. It was Rico who had seduced the woman, not the other way around, not the way he’d planned.

“You dare to do something like that? That sample was created with the greatest of care for the—” Griffin stopped, the cold chill of realization constricting the muscles in his throat. “What—what did you replace it with, Rico?”

“Uh-oh,” Ilsa said. She buried her laughter in Rico’s sleeve.

“Oh, my God, no. You didn’t!”

“Please!” Rico looked hurt. “You should be congratulating me, Mr. Chief Justice. I’m going to be a father.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Griffin told him. “The sample has to be pure of defects or the accelerator will form mutations. That’s what happened before!”

Rico laughed aloud. “That’s why Dredd’s so ugly.”

“No!” Griffin stepped into his path, his fists clenched at his sides. “It’s you, for God’s sake, Rico. You were defective—your copies will be even more defective!”

Rico’s eyes blazed. “You’re lying, Griffin. All you are about is control. Your control. But the Janus Judges won’t be the puppets you want. They’ll be my brothers. Who do you think they’re going to listen to? You, or me?”

Griffin closed his eyes a moment. “Ilsa, you’re with him on this? You can’t be. You know better, you know what he is.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever understood the full potential of this… opportunity, love.” She let her fingers rest on Rico’s chest. “This project needs vision. Not politics.”

“No, this can’t happen.” Griffin shook his head. “It can’t.”

“I’m afraid there’s not much you can do about it, Chief Jus—”

Griffin took a quick step to one side, braced his feet and whipped a small pistol from his tunic.

“No, not again,” he said. “No more like you!”

The robot’s arm came out of nowhere, wrapped a flexible steel tendril around Griffin’s arm. The weapon clattered to the floor.

“Get it… off of me, Rico!” Griffin’s eyes were wide with fear. “Get… it… off!”

The robot snaked another arm around Griffin’s arm and lifted him off the floor. Griffin tugged at the tight bands of steel, kicked his legs in the air.

“Rico, for God’s sake… please!”

Rico shook his head sadly. “You never understood me, did you, Griffin? I’m alive, I’m real. I’m not something you made to carry out the trash.”

“Central… override!” Griffin strained against the robot’s grip. “Help meeee!”

“Request is denied, Chief Justice. The ABC War Robot is not linked to my main processor.”

“You need to keep up with the times,” Rico said. “Look away for just a tiny minute, technology passes you by.”

He watched the man dangling helplessly above, looked at his eyes, at the terror in his face. He felt a sense of completion, a great sense of peace.

“Fido, tear off Chief Justice Griffin’s arms and legs, please. Save the head for last.”

They left the Lawmasters behind a rubble-strewn wall half a block away. Dredd wasn’t sure what kind of sensors Griffin might have above-ground, but he saw no reason to take any chances now.

Hershey caught up with him, peered over his shoulders into the near-darkened street. Dredd held a scanner in his hand, watching the line of green static dance across the tiny screen.

“Dead ahead,” Hershey said. “Right?”

“Down there.” Dredd thumbed shells into the Remington, racked the slide to bring number one into the chamber.

“Looks like you guys have got everything under control,” Fergie said. “I’ll watch the Lawmasters. Nobody’s going to get past me.”

“I might need you down there,” Dredd said. “To help shut down the Janus system.”

“I knew you were going to say that. I knew it.”

Dredd looked up. The street looked much the same. The debris from the block war had been scraped up and hauled away, but no one had bothered to fix the lights. In the glow from the faraway heights of Mega-City, he could see the broken profile of the Liberty Lady’s face, embedded in the ancient brick wall. One sad and empty eye, part of a cheek, a piece of a heavy brow. Higher in the wall, the suggestion of a hand, a rusted torch. Dredd looked away, studied the scanner, and led his group inside.

The building had been closed for repairs, then forgotten. It was hard to guess how many years ago. Dredd walked through the empty hallways, following the scanner’s electric glow. A concrete stairway led to a cellar below. Water dripped from old ceramic pipes. Something squealed ahead, scuttled off into the dark.

Fergie stopped. “What’s that?”

“We’re down in the lower levels,” Dredd told him. “What’s the problem? You said you had friends down here.”

Fergie didn’t answer. He kept close to Dredd. He wondered what the creatures ate down here. Where would they find any food? He decided not to think about that, decided that he might not like it if he knew.

Dredd stopped. Ahead was a concrete wall. “The scanner says the source of the power surge is straight ahead.” He nodded at the solid wall. “Right there.”

“My Lawgiver might blast through it,” Hershey said. “But I doubt it. If it did, everyone in Red Quad would hear it.”

“Forget it. Got to be some other way.”

Fergie let out a breath. “People, just move aside, will you?” He shook his head at Dredd. “I’ll bet you locked yourself in the bathroom when you were a kid, right?”

Fergie pressed his palms against the wall in a dozen places, walked down the entire width, and started over again.

“It’s an old-fashioned pressure lock. Fifty, sixty years ago. The Hush-O-Door. Big rage back then. Known in the trade as ‘The Burglar’s Delight.’ Nobody’s been dumb enough to use one since.”

He bent down and touched the wall again. “Dealer sold you the software. You set the gimmick up, picked your own contact point. Most groons put it two, three inches above the floor. Like a good break-and-enter man would be too lazy to squat a little, right?”

Fergie pressed three fingers against the wall. Nothing. Moved a foot to the right. The third time, he moved down a foot and a half. Pressed against the cold concrete. A seam appeared, the width of a door. Fergie gave it a gentle shove. The slab of concrete hissed aside.

“Very impressive,” Hershey said.

“Not bad,” said Dredd.

“Thanks,” Fergie said, “I’m underwhelmed by your support.” The door slid shut behind him. “If anyone’s interested, that thing hasn’t been used in a hell of a long time. Whoever’s coming in and out of this Janus deal has another way than this.”

“Good,” Dredd said. “Maybe they won’t expect us.”

“I’ll drink to that. Soon as we find a bar.”

“Scanner?” said Hershey.

“That way,” said Dredd.

The passage went another hundred yards, twisting in every direction, the floor slanting steadily down. Dredd noticed the absence of rats and guessed the reason why. He didn’t need the scanner now. He could feel the deep tremor of power. The rats didn’t like that at all. Dredd didn’t blame them. He hefted the Remington and nodded at Hershey. Hershey raised the Lawgiver above her head, telling him she got the warning and understood.

“Air.” Fergie sniffed. “Fresher than where we’ve been. Processed air.”

Dredd nodded. The corridor took a sharp turn to the left up ahead. “Douse the light,” he said. “Stay near.”

He moved past the corner. Hershey followed.

“We’re close,” she said softly. “I can feel the electricity in my hair. We’d better—DREDD!”

A blur of metal, cold and silver-bright. It whipped around Hershey’s waist, jerked her off her feet. The Lawgiver fell from her hands. Dredd brought his Remington up to fire, The robot was faster. An automatic weapon chattered in its free hand, stitching a deadly path. Fergie stood frozen, staring wide-eyed at the monster overhead.

“Down!” Dredd yelled. He started toward Fergie, knew he was a millisecond late. Fergie cried out, grabbed his chest, spun around twice and slammed into the concrete wall.

Dredd didn’t stop, couldn’t risk a look back. He bent low and stalked toward the big robot, blasting with the Remington, racking one shell into the chamber after the next, knowing he wasn’t even denting the metal warrior’s hide, that he didn’t dare fire at the brute’s face or its steel and copper gut. He might put a hole in the son of a bitch’s vital parts, but he might hit Hershey instead.

A bullet plowed a shallow furrow through the flesh of Dredd’s upper arm. The pain rocked him on his heels. He sucked in a breath, fired again and again.

Useless… not hitting anything… not even making the bastard mad…

Hershey screamed, kicking out against the robot’s grip. The warrior took a step toward Dredd, its massive foot sending a minor tremor through the earth. The other foot creaked, whirred, came down hard. Gray dust showered from the ceiling. Dredd threw himself aside, saw a flash of metal struts, hydraulics and coils, winking red lights, tucked behind the foot’s steel plates.

The robot turned, its gleaming arms whirring as it fired a volley at Dredd. Dredd felt flecks of stone slice his cheek. He rolled, came to his feet, held the Remington at his waist and blasted at the narrow slit in the robot’s metal joint.

A blue electric flash, a wisp of black smoke. Dredd fired again, saw the bright sizzle, heard the high-pitched whine as steel tendons snapped. A silver tube whipped free, writhed like a snake, and pumped dark and foul-smelling lubricants into the air.

The robot shuddered. Its brain said FORWARD MODE. One foot made it off the ground. The other didn’t budge. The robot roared like a prehistoric beast, teetered, then hit the floor like a quake, FORWARD MODE was still intact. The robot pounded its good foot against the ground, a jackhammer gone berserk.

Hershey was still in the robot’s grip. Dredd ran to her. Maybe he could find a handy tool somewhere, use the Remington to pry her free…

He heard the sigh of air, turned, saw the door slide open behind him. Rico. Rico and a woman. Both held weapons in their hands. He recognized the woman at once. Ilsa Hayden from Rico’s trial. What was she doing here?

“That’ll be enough,” Rico said. “Just put the weapon down.”

“No way. I shot this thing. I’m going to eat it.”

“That’s amusing, I’m sure.” Rico turned to the robot. “Fido, you clumsy bastard, if you don’t mind functioning a while, break Judge Hershey’s neck, please, on the count of three. One… two…”

“Hershey? You all right?”

“I’m—yes, I’m all right, Dredd.”

Dredd let the Remington fall from his hand.

Rico laughed. “How human of you. You’ve become a romantic, brother.” He motioned with his weapon. “Inside now. Fido, if the lady moves, crush her.”

Ilsa walked past Dredd. She glanced down at Fergie, rolled him over with her foot, shrugged, and turned away. When she bent to pick up Dredd’s weapon, she looked directly into Fergie’s eyes.

“Nice. A bit crude, but nice.”

“Watch her,” Rico said. “She’s a real tease, Dredd.”

“Where’s your boss?” Dredd said. “He let you out of your cage for the day?”

Rico shook his finger at Dredd. “If you’re trying to get on my good side, it won’t do you any good. I don’t have one.”

“Where’s Griffin?”

“Chief Justice Griffin has retired, so to speak. In his absence, I have assumed his responsibilities.”

“You mean you’ve killed him.”

Rico looked pained. “Me? Of course not. He had an accident with Fido. Doggie is not entirely housebroken, I’m afraid.”

Ilsa raised her weapon, closed one eye, and let the muzzle drop to the level of Dredd’s chest. “Rico said for you to move, dear. I think you should do what he says.”

Dredd didn’t answer. He walked toward the door where Rico and Ilsa had entered.

“He looks like you,” Ilsa said.

“He is a lot like me. Naturally.”

“I’m nothing like you,” Dredd said.

Rico turned on him. “Wrong, brother.” His eyes were slugs of lead. “The only difference between us is that you destroyed your life to embrace the Law. I destroyed the Law to embrace life.” He grinned at Ilsa. “That’s rather good, don’t you think? I need to write that down.”

He swept out his palm in a graceful motion, bowing slightly to Dredd. “After you, please. Step into the future, brother. This is how tomorrow looks. This is the way Rico’s world is going to be!”

Dredd stepped inside. Rico spread his arms wide. Half a million razor-points of light burned in the darkness overhead. Dredd felt the tingle of static in the air, the deep hum of energy below. He drew in a breath. A hundred columns of luminescent brightness rose up from the floor, glittering capsules, pods of azure blue, shimmering tubes of life. They stood erect in the clear blue fluid, clones, mutants, beings unborn and already alive. Dredd stared at a watery face—sharp planes, rigid neck. It opened its silver eyes and looked back.

Rico laughed. “This is the nursery, brother. Don’t you recognize it? This is where you were born.” He caught Dredd’s expression. “Don’t look at him with such distaste, Joseph. That isn’t just me in there. It’s you.”

Dredd felt the agony, the pain, and knew it wouldn’t go away. Rico had guessed his thought, seen the revulsion, the horror there. And Dredd knew he was right. It was true. Looking at the clone was like looking in a mirror at himself.

Rico walked away from Dredd, turned, the shimmering pods at his back.

“Look at them, Joseph, your brothers. In a few hours they’ll be born. An endless supply of perfection. Now we have a choice: to create a race of robots like Fido out there or a race of free-thinking people and call them humans.”

“You’re diseased,” Dredd said. “You couldn’t control yourself; what makes you think you can control them?”

Rico studied him a long moment, then looked away, up toward the swarm of glittering lights overhead.

“Why did you do it, Joseph? I’ve thought about it all these years. Why? Why did you judge me?”

“I didn’t have a choice. You killed innocent people.”

“Only as a means to an end, brother. You’re forgetting that.”

“That’s a lie you tell yourself. It was a massacre. Murder. You can’t call it anything else. You betrayed the Law.”

Rico laughed. “I was your blood, your brother. The only family you ever had. You sent me to my death and you talk to me about betrayal?” He jabbed his finger at Dredd. “You are the traitor, brother, not me! Do you want to be a slave all your life, do what you’re told to do, Joseph? You have the choice now. Them… or me!”

“You haven’t given me any choice. I have to stop you, Rico. If you want to stop me, you’ll have to kill me.”

Rico looked sad, then let his expression slide into a grin. “Well, I can certainly accomodate you, brother. But there’s no hurry, is there? Fido…” Rico looked past Dredd, through the great door of the Janus lab. “Bring Judge Hershey in here, then tear the bitch’s arms and legs off.”

Dredd didn’t move. “Don’t do it, Rico.”

“Or you’ll what, Joseph? Arrest me?” Rico’s eyes blazed. “Take this one too, Fido. Crush them. Let’s make some Judge soup!”

“Rico…” Ilsa stepped toward him.

“Stay away from me. Do as I say, Ilsa.”

Rico’s voice was calm, almost a gentle whisper. It scared the hell out of Ilsa.

The giant robot clanged through the doorway, scraping its metal hide. It dragged its bad foot. One red eye looked off a good twenty degrees.

Dredd saw Hershey in its grip. Hershey looked down. He tried to read her eyes. Something… not the way it ought to be.

“Take him,” Rico said. “Do it now.”

The robot stopped, whirred. Its blunt head swiveled on its hydraulic neck. A heavy foot stomped against the floor. It turned, then, dropped Hershey from its grasp, raised its hand and slammed Rico in the chest.

Rico cried out in surprise, staggered back, and fell. Ilsa ran to him. The robot moved in a blur, plucked her off the floor and threw her to the ground.

The robot turned on one heel, its broad back to Dredd. Dredd stared. Fergie was hanging on the monster’s metal back, his hands buried in an open slot. Dredd caught a glimpse of the controls—blinking lights, tangled coils of wire.

“Dredd, over here!”

Hershey tossed him the Remington. Dredd racked a shell in the chamber, turned and fired at Rico.

The weapon’s blast echoed through the domed room. Rico darted for cover, grabbed his Lawgiver and squeezed off half a dozen shots at Dredd on the run. Dredd went to his knees, aimed at Rico and fired. Rico disappeared in the maze of blue pods.

From the corner of his eye, Dredd saw the robot lurch, run headlong into a solid wall.

“Fergie, what the hell are you doing!”

“I’m not doing—anything,” Fergie cried out. “This—damn—thing—wants to drive by itself!”

The robot staggered, beat on the wall with its head. It stumbled, clattered dizzily across the room, reached up to slap the tormenter off its back.

“No way, you tin-headed freak!”

Fergie thrust his whole arm into the robot’s back, jerked out a tangle of flashing wires. The robot went berserk. It’s head turned completely around. Blue fire sparked from its eyes and ears. It bashed itself against the wall, ripping Fergie loose. Fergie yelled and hit the ground hard. The robot took two jerky steps and toppled on its face. Smoke billowed from its chest.

“Watch it, Dredd!” Hershey called from the shadows by the big door. “The woman’s off to the right, by the wall somewhere. Rico’s back there.”

Dredd saw her, bent low near the tall accelerator. She nodded toward the forest of blue fluorescent pods.

Hiding with your brothers… yours, not mine.

Dredd kept low, moving quickly behind the fallen robot. Fergie was on his back. He looked up and offered Dredd a weary smile.

“You okay, Ferguson? Take it easy, now.”

“I’m—I don’t think I’m too good…”

“You’re going to be fine, all right?” Dredd looked at his face, at the blood soaking the front of his shirt. Ferguson was right: he wasn’t too good at all.

“You—never got to say it, Dredd.”

“Never got to say what?”

“Hey, you know, man.”

“Yeah, I do.” Dredd drew in a breath. “I… I made a mistake. I’m sorry I misjudged you, Ferguson.”

“And you’ll never arrest me again.”

“I’ll—okay, I’ll never arrest you again.”

Fergie grinned. “All right, man.”

“Take it easy.”

“I’ll do that, Dredd. What I think I’ll do, I think I’ll just—sorta…”

Fergie closed his eyes.

Dredd grabbed his shoulders. “Ferguson? FERGUSON, YOU TALK TO ME, DAMN YOU!”

Dredd let him go. He clenched his fists until blood came to his palms, felt the fury begin deep in his belly, felt the fire race through his veins.

“RIIIIIICO!”

He screamed out the name, grabbed the Remington, came to his feet and ran toward the blue pods.

“Come out of there. Come out of there, Rico!”

He was driven by a rage he could scarcely contain, an anger that blinded him to caution and reason, a hatred that could only focus on Rico’s face, Rico’s laughter, Rico’s silver eyes.

He stalked through the eerie blue light, through the maze of glowing pods. Rico’s spawn surrounded him, a company of ghosts, their coral lips open, their flesh unearthly white. A man, slim and unborn. He lifted pale arms above his colorless flesh, and seemed to mock him with a smile.

“Rico!”

Dredd squeezed off two shots. A crystal pod shattered, the clone blew apart in a blossom of pink and white.

“Rico, I’m coming for you. I’m coming…”

A hail of gunfire came at him from the dark. Dredd turned, went to his knees, firing back in a wicked arc. Incubators shattered, spilling slippery flesh to the floor. One of Dredd’s shots hit a tall accelerator, a black-and-silver column at the heart of the Janus lab. Lightning crackled along the tower, snaked to the top, then exploded in a blinding fireball, showering the pods with comets of molten steel.

The incubators cracked. A flood of thick amniotic fluid hissed in the terrible heat.

Dredd saw him, then, as the computer burst into flame. Rico ran. Dredd fired, blowing a hole in the console, blinding a thousand red eyes.

The fire would keep Rico busy a minute, a minute and a half. Dredd broke into the open, keeping low, heading straight for Rico’s hiding place. Rico caught him there, raised up and raked his path with automatic fire. Dredd cursed and scrambled for cover, lead tearing the heel off his boot.

Where the hell was Hershey? She had gone after Ilsa hours—no, only minutes ago. Time was playing its tricks again.

Another incubator exploded. Blue fire webbed the walls, sizzled the concrete floor. Dredd saw the flames beginning to burst from the equipment on the far side of the lab. Getting hot in here. Going to get a hell of a lot worse…

Rico laughed, a high-pitched, grating sound that set Dredd’s nerves on edge.

“Central, hatch the first set of clones,” Rico shouted. “On my command—now!”

“Rico, don’t do that.”

“The cloning process is not finished, Chief Justice Rico. The clones will be only sixty-three percent complete.”

“I don’t care if they’re pretty or not. I want the damn clones now!”

Central’s voice droned in answer, but Dredd didn’t hear. Something exploded down below with the roar of a blast furnace, spewing a ball of yellow fire up through the floor. The place was going up; it couldn’t last long.

Hershey, where the hell are you!

The flames licked at the heart of the pods, sending shadows leaping against the far walls. Dredd wrapped a shred of his shirt around his nose and mouth, but the smoke was too thick; nothing short of getting the hell out of there would help.

He couldn’t see Rico at all. The forest of incubators had turned into the center of Hell. Fire shattered the crystal tubes, mutants writhed and twisted in pain, caught in the terrible moment of horror between birth and fiery death. Dredd turned away. He didn’t need any more of this. The image was etched forever in his mind.

Rico caught him, his mind drifting for a second, his thoughts where a Judge’s thoughts had no right to be. The manual made it clear: Daydreaming is spelled D-E-A-D.

Rico hit him with a broken steel bar. The blow caught him just below the knee. Dredd went down. Rico raised his weapon for the final, killing blow. Dredd rolled, caught Rico’s leg with one hand, jerked him off his feet. Rico laughed, kicked him in the head. Dredd shook off the pain, grabbed Rico and held on. Rico grunted, tore his way free and pounded Dredd in the face. Dredd took the punishing blows, felt his mouth fill with blood. Dredd kicked him in the crotch. Rico took the blow on his thigh, pushed Dredd away, backed off. Dredd was sure Rico had fractured his leg. He watched Rico scramble along the floor, grab his Lawgiver.

“Shit,” Dredd said.

Rico laughed, gave the weapon a loud command. “Grenade!”

“All lethal rounds exhausted… Select…”

“Standard fire!”

“All lethal rounds exhausted… Select…”

“Smoke bomb, damn you!”

Dredd saw the muzzle flash, saw the round coming at him in a blur. It sizzled, then blossomed into a ball of liquid fire.

Rico howled. “Central, turn off the overhead lighting—now!”

The room went dark. Flames lit the curved walls of the room. Dredd struggled to his feet, fighting the heat that tried to gnaw through his chest. He turned on his back, gagged on the oily black smoke.

“Central,” he yelled, “turn on the damn lights!”

“Request denied. You are an escaped convict, Joseph Dredd. Surrender to authorities at once.”

Dredd swore, tore at his armor, finally ripped it free and tossed it across the room. Another pod exploded, sending mutant parts high into the air. Something fell close by. It had a half-sized head. The head looked just like his own.

“Central… Central, look, I’ll give myself up, okay? I’ll surrender to Chief Justice Rico… Locate, please.”

“Chief Justice Rico has entered Lift Nine-Nine-Oh… through the A door to your right.”

Dredd pulled himself up. Lift? What lift? It had to be the other way in, the real way to the Janus lab.

Dredd tried to find his Remington. The heat drove him back. The A door took him down a long and narrow corridor. It finally came to an end at a metal door. An ordinary button. A glowing arrow pointing up.

Dredd punched the button. The door slid back, shut again quickly, locking him in. He could feel the lift moving fast, rushing him from the depths. Where? Where did the thing go? It didn’t much matter. It was here, or stay down there.

He smelled Rico. Smelled his sweat. On the floor, smeared on the wall, Rico’s blood. He thought about Ferguson, dead back there. He’d done his part and then some. More than anyone could ask. Hershey… she had to be all right. He should have stayed, found her, but there was nothing left down there… nothing but the dead.

The door slid open. Dredd sucked in fresh air. Lightning flashed in the distance, crackling through the towers of Mega-City. Rain beat down upon his head. Soot ran down and stung his eyes.

Rico stood just beyond him. His face was red with blood.

“Waiting for you, brother. Thought you’d never come.”

“I’m here,” Dredd said.

Rico shook his head. He aimed the Lawgiver at Dredd’s chest. Thunder rolled through the blackened skies. Dredd guessed they were fifty, sixty stories high, the roof of Heavenly Haven, above the streets of Red Quad, where it had all begun.

“This is how you repay me, brother, for telling you the truth? How can you go against me, Joseph? I’m the only person in the world, in your life, who never lied to you.”

“You broke the Law. I did what I had to do—”

“Oh, no, brother…” Rico’s terrible grin twisted his features. “No, we won’t go through that business again. You will not limp away telling me about the Law!”

Rico closed his eyes, opened them again. Rain pelted off his face. He raised the Lawgiver, let its muzzle rest on Dredd’s head.

“Joseph Dredd, do you stand ready to answer for your crimes?”

“Rico—”

“Dredd!” Rico shook his weapon in Dredd’s face. “I hereby judge you, Joseph Dredd. To the charge of betraying your best friend… Guilty. To the charge of betraying your own flesh… Guilty. And finally, to the charge of being human, when we could have been… gods! Guilty!”

Rico’s eyes went wide. “The sentence is… death!”

Rico squeezed the trigger.

Click.

“All lethal rounds exhausted… Select…”

“No!”

Dredd let out a breath. Rico had forgotten. The madness had overwhelmed him, clouded his reason, shattered his mind like the crystal columns below.

“Damn you, fire!” Rico’s hands shook. He stared at the Lawgiver, as if the weapon, too, had betrayed him.

“All lethal rounds exhausted… Select…”

“Fire—FIRE!”

Dredd moved. His right hand struck out, a short sweep to Rico’s jaw. He forced the fingers of his left hand over the weapon’s grip, clamping down on Rico’s hand.

Rico looked at him. “Joseph… ?”

“DNA accepted,” the gun-voice whirred. “Select…”

“Signal flare!” said Dredd.

Dredd fought against Rico’s grip, wrenched the weapon up, away from them both. The night turned red. The flare singed Rico’s face and rocketed into the night.

Rico cried out, stumbling blindly away from Dredd. One foot found the edge of the roof, the other stepped into empty space.

“Rico!”

Rico flailed his arms, fell away. Dredd lunged for him, caught him by the wrist. Rico hung there, blinked up at Dredd with blind eyes.

“You saved me, Joseph? Why did you do that?”

The rain whipped down in a fury, the cold drops hard as stones.

“I’ll get you out of here. Hang on. You don’t have to die, Rico.”

Rico smiled. “All right, Joseph. I won’t.”

He brought his free hand up quickly, grabbed Dredd’s wrist and forced his hand free.

“Life sentence, Joseph. Works fine for me.”

Rico slid free.

“No!”

Dredd watched him turn slowly, his arms spread wide, watched him grow smaller, disappear in the dark veil of rain. His face was still there.

His face. My face…

He knew he was alone once more… hollow, nothing inside. Rico had taken it all away once, now he had taken it again.

Dredd was aware of the presence, the feeling of another person near. He looked up, saw Ilsa Hayden, the rain-soaked dress clinging to her slender form, the dark hair plastered against her cheeks. She held the Remington an inch from his head, showed him a gentle smile, drew her lips together, let them part like a lover’s tender kiss.

Usa’s head disappeared. A red mist hung in the air for a moment, then swept away in the driving rain. Ilsa’s body folded, slid to the edge of the roof, and followed Rico down.

Dredd turned. Hershey stood in the lift, a Lawgiver clutched in her hand. Behind her, Fergie sagged against the wall. His face was pale. A strip of Hershey’s uniform was wrapped tightly around his chest.

Dredd looked at Hershey. He shook his head at Fergie.

“You’re alive,” Dredd said simply.

“What did you think I’d do, die or something? Right when you and me were just getting to be good friends?”

“We are not friends, Ferguson. We know each other, we… Okay, we’re acquaintances. I’ll go as far as that.”

“Right. Close enough. How about that—other stuff?”

“I said it once. Don’t ask me again.”

“Honestly, Dredd…” Hershey said.

“All right. I’m dropping all charges. Do whatever you want. You’re free.”

Fergie laughed. Laughing hurt, but what the hell?

“I knew that,” he said. “What are friends for?”

They were waiting in the street.

Hundreds of them—Street Judges, Cadets, Judge Hunters. Dredd couldn’t guess where they’d come from, how they’d gotten the news so quickly.

The street was jammed with Lawmasters, blue, white, and green lights flashing into the night. The storm had moved off to the south, leaving the air clean and clear. Dredd walked out of the doorway and into the street. Hershey stood beside him, Fergie held up between them. Mediks hurried over to take him, easing him gently to a stretcher. He had passed out in the lift, but there was still a smile on his face.

An okay smile, Dredd thought. The guy was maybe all right, maybe just a—He caught himself, tried to think about anything else.

The two Judge Hunters walked toward him, stiff, proud, their faces devoid of any emotion at all.

Dredd drew in a breath.

“Easy,” Hershey said.

The two Hunters parted. A third man stepped between them. He was taller than the other two, a darkhaired man in his forties. Dredd recognized him at once. He wore the white braid of Chief Judge Hunter across his chest.

The man stopped in front of Dredd. “I’m Judge Lackard.” He nodded curtly at Hershey. “You’re Joseph Dredd… ?”

“Yes, sir. Am I under arrest or what?”

Lackard looked at him a long moment. “That won’t be necessary. We… Central broadcast the Janus plans in the clear. After Griffin’s death. Everyone knows what happened in there. We, ah, owe you a debt of gratitude, Judge Dredd.”

Not Joseph Dredd this time. Judge Dredd…

Dredd looked out at the crowd, the men and women he respected, the Law, the only life he knew.

“We have to reorganize the Council,” Lackard said. “We’d like you to consider the position of Chief Justice.”

“Thank you. I’m honored.” Dredd nodded to his right. “I recommend Judge Hershey, sir.”

The Judge Hunter nodded. “Would you consider it, Judge Hershey?”

Hershey looked astonished. “I—are you sure?”

“Don’t be dumb, Hershey,” Dredd said. “It’s a good career move.”

“Let me think about it, sir,” Hershey said.

Dredd looked pained. “Don’t think, Hershey. Do it. Haven’t I taught you anything?”

Dredd turned and walked away. He spotted a Lawmaster standing ready and headed for it. Hershey followed him, stepped in his path.

“That’s it, huh? A near-death experience and no goodbye.”

“Hershey.”

“What?”

“Good-bye.”

Hershey grinned. “You’re hopeless, Dredd. Totally hopeless.” She touched the back of his neck, drew him close and kissed him full on the mouth, before he could pull away.

“That’s a Code Two-One-Two,” Dredd said. “Illegal Physical Contact with a Judge.”

“No. That’s a One-Three-Seven. You, impersonating a groon, Dredd. You’re human. You don’t have to fake it, friend.”

Dredd threw his leg over the saddle of the Lawmaster. He looked at Hershey and grinned. “Typical behavior, Hershey. I knew you’d say that.”

“Yeah? You think you know everything, Dredd. You don’t. There’s a hell of a lot of stuff you don’t know.”

Dredd thought about that. Decided she was right. He gripped the control bar of the Lawmaster, let the engine whine up to a roar, a thunder of raw power that trembled off the walls of Red Quad, and drowned every sound in Dredd’s world…

Published by arrangement with Cinergi Pictures Entertainment Inc. and Cinergi Productions N.V. Inc.

First published in Great Britain in 1995 by Boxtree Ltd.

JUDGE DREDD

Distributed by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Inc.

Copyright © 1995 Cinergi Pictures Entertainment Inc. and Cinergi Productions N.V. Inc. All rights reserved.

Cover photograph by Terry O’Neill.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

ISBN: 0-312-95628-2

Printed in the United States of America

St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / June 1995

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Today, rituals involving “prosecutors” and “defenders” occur only when a Judge is accused by his or her peers, a decidedly rare occasion, indeed.

The author can certainly vouch for one particular “character” of the era, Cadet James Olmeyer, who was the author’s paternal grandfather. As every reader will likely know, “Cadet” Olmeyer became Judge Olmeyer, Council Judge Olmeyer, and, finally, Chief Justice Olmeyer.