2000AD - Sweet Justice - Various

**Sweet Justice**

**Selected Short Stories from the _2000 AD_**

**and _Judge Dredd_ Annuals**

Stories by Neil Gaiman, Peter Milligan, Dan Abnett, Alan Grant, Mark Millar and others.

This electronic edition first published in 2011 by Rebellion Publishing Ltd, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Copyright © 1983, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1992, 2011 Rebellion A/S. All rights reserved. _Judge Dredd_ , _Judge Anderson_ , _Judge Hershey_ and all related characters, their distinctive likenesses and related elements featured in this publication are trademarks of Rebellion A/S. No portion of this book may be reproduced without the express permission of the publisher. Names, characters, places and incidents featured in the publication are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes) is entirely coincidental.

Cover art by Barry Kitson

ISBN (epub) 978-1-84997-321-2

ISBN (mobi) 978-1-84997-322-9

Judge Dredd created by John Wagner & Carlos Ezquerra

Judge Anderson & Judge Hershey created by John Wagner & Brian Bolland

**CONTENTS**

_Judge Anderson: The Scream_ by Peter Milligan

_Diary of a Mad Citizen_ by Alan Grant

_Judge Anderson: Exorcise Duty_ by Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning

_I Was a Teenage Perp!_ by Alan Grant

_Judge Hershey: Sweet Justice_ by Neil Gaiman

_Judge Anderson: Dear Diary_ by Peter Milligan

_Radical Cheek_ by Peter Milligan

_Judge Anderson: The Most Dangerous Game_ by Mark Millar

_Roll On Justice_ by Ian Rimmer

**JUDGE ANDERSON: THE SCREAM**

**By Peter Milligan, _Judge Dredd Annual 1987_**

Out of the darkness it came, like a living thing: a scream of wild terror.

And with the Scream came pictures and feelings that flickered like shadows, dissolving, gelling, screaming...

_...There is a woman, holding three children. Their mouths are twisted, their eyes white discs of fear. They back away. The woman tries to gather the children into herself, as though she might envelop them completely. They back away until a wall stops their retreat..._

_They can scream but they cannot run. Closer. We move closer... We feel the blood, the pistons pumping hot blood inside our head... We must kill them... Kill them..._

A scream of wild terror.

Judge Anderson opened her eyes and found a dark pillow pushing down onto her face. She had stopped breathing. The Scream echoed off unseen walls. She pushed herself up, panting now, gulping in air like a woman surfacing from water...

Sweat ran down her face as the overhead striplight automatically illuminated her sleeping quarters. Anderson was scared, shivering like a child plucked from a nightmare, but she didn't want to lose it. She had to go back. She had to go back and face that scream again.

**AN EMPTY ROOM**

As a Judge in Psi Division, Anderson was on call 24 hours a day. Any time, day or night, she might get a 'flash', a psychic 'message' that might aid the Judges in their war against Mega-City crime.

Psis were especially receptive to these messages during sleeptime, that period when the barriers of the conscious mind are lowered and the dormant paranormal regions of the brain can reach out and speak to us.

Anderson travelled back, through her dreams. Normally it was routine to check out your dreams but now she was looking for something specific. She was looking for a woman and three children. She wanted to know what could have wrung from them a scream so terrible...

She walked through an empty room. Her mind was blank. The scream vision had gone, was hiding somewhere, but its psychic power had been so great it had scorched from Anderson's mind the night's other dream images.

The Scream was now just a memory. Yet still it made her shiver.

**OMAR**

The face of Omar, head of Psi Division, appeared on the vid-screen. 'What is it, Anderson? You're not on for another hour. Got something special?'

'Think so, Omar. Haven't been hit so hard since the Dark Judges were up to their tricks.'

Anderson paused, knowing that Omar would be holding his breath.

'I think I've got a lead on the Alphabet Killer.'

**REIGN OF TERROR**

On her way to the Hall of Justice, Anderson listened to the early morning news broadcast. It was familiar stuff...

'...This is Ned McTafferty standing outside the Hall of Justice, where an _angry crowd_ has gathered to express its dissatisfaction with the city's _so-called_ finest.

'On the 38th day of the Alphabet Killer's reign of terror, the Judges are still no closer to making an arrest – and the _body count_ grows. This morning, 26 new corpses were found. Eye witnesses claim that Judges on the scene appeared to be _visibly shaken_ by their discoveries. Our lawforce, once thought to be _invincible_ , has shown its _weak_ and _yellow underbelly_. Justice Dept. has slapped a _ban_ on any description of _method_ of murder or of the condition in which the _victims_ have been found, fearing that...'

Anderson blocked the rest from her mind. She knew it only too well. 26 bodies for the last 38 nights. Each murder spree starting with a victim whose Christian name began with A, working its way through the alphabet and finishing with Z.

Most of the city's Zebedees, Zachariahs and Xaviers had fled. The Judges would get the creep eventually, but it was a big, teeming city. Anyone desperate, crazy, and resolute enough could, while his luck held, get away with murder.

And, as the man said, the body count continued to grow.

'As far as our records show, the Alphabet Killer hasn't killed a woman and three children as you describe. The killer seems to be strictly a one-hit-at-a-time operator,' said the Chief Judge, in her office.

'Maybe it's a pre-cog flash,' Anderson suggested. 'It was so strong I thought it might already have happened... But maybe the killer's _going_ to get the woman and the three juves...'

'Can you give us a locale? A time? A description of the killer?'

'N-No... Not yet. But I was inside the killer's head. I was thinking his thoughts, looking at his victims...'

'Did this person actually say it was the Alphabet Killer?'

'Not exactly,' said Anderson, aware that she was making a mess of it. 'But I knew. As soon as I heard the woman's scream I _knew_ it had something to do with the Alphabet Killer... And then I was inside his mind...'

' _His_ mind? You can positively identify the killer as male?'

'Yes. No. I mean, his, er, _its_ thoughts _felt_ male... But...'

'But really,' drawled the Chief Judge, 'you should have a little more to go on before you come in here acting as though you've solved all our problems. Log your flash with the Alphabet Operations Squad and resume your normal duties.

Drokk! thought Anderson.

**PANIC RULES**

Anderson gave her flash to the Alphabet Ops. They looked all washed up. The killings were affecting everyone. On top of everything else, cases of assault on and gross disrespect for Judges had risen fifty-fold since the killings started. There were marches every day complaining about Justice Dept.'s handling of the case. And, to top it all, a bloody new block war had erupted between Grover Block and Mills Mansions, and the Muggers' Rights League were holding their annual meeting in Ian Paisley Piazza...

Already, three Judges had thrown in their badges and gone into hiding. Five were in Psycho-Cubes following mental breakdowns. Sixteen were in sickbay following assaults, and three were in the mortuary following more serious attacks.

'It's funny,' said Judge Monk.

'What's funny?' asked Anderson. 'Your face or your arrest record?'

'Ha ha. What's funny is how this city can take a block war that kills thousands and a daily homicide and mugging rate of drokk knows what without batting an eyelid. But you get someone who's knocking them off one by one in a logical, cold-blooded pattern and bang! Panic rules.'

'You seem full of sparkle. How long've you been on duty, Monk?' Anderson asked.

Monk was a big man with thin lips. The lips curled into a little smile. 'Oh, 30 hours, give or take a few. Who wants to sleep when there's a riot going on? C'mon, Patel,' he said to the Judge standing right beside him, 'we've been seconded to Riot Squad. The Muggers' Rights meeting is turning ugly.'

'I've only been going three hours and I feel beat already,' said Anderson as the two men stomped out of the room. 'Some of these he-man Judges really get up my nose.'

'Know what you mean,' said Judge Carter, yawning. 'Take Monk. Some of the boys have got a saying about Monk.'

'What's that?'

'They say he's as tough as Old Dredd.'

**PSYCHIC TERROR**

The Scream struck Anderson with monstrous mad fury as she was returning to Psi Division after a fruitless patrol of the city.

As her mind swooned she saw the woman, her face contorted, her arms cradling the children. Anderson understood now that the woman was the children's mother. Most of her fear was for them.

Anderson was not yet totally inside the killer's mind, although she was seeing the woman through the killer's eyes. She had to concentrate, find a clue. Where was this happening? Who was the killer?

While all her senses begged her to pass out, Anderson summoned her last vestige of mental fortitude and cast her mind's eye away from the woman. The Scream grew louder, more demented and, for an instant, Anderson saw a wall. A tower block. Some words, blurred. She strained at them and managed to decipher some of the middle letters: ---ESS, a gap, and then BL---.

And then the Scream, the awful, spiralling scream of psychic terror, dragged her back to the woman's face, her mouth, twisted in the act of screaming...

Anderson tried to enter that face. She tried to become that face, to see through those eyes and know what those eyes were seeing.

Her mind was being torn from her body. Her own screams mingled now with the other Scream, and for a moment she saw something else, she saw through the woman's eyes.

Anderson's mind was a jumble of images, of ghosts dancing in ether. She looked hard into this ether and made out a shape. Something dark. Something big and dark was moving, unsteadily, towards her. Something glinted on the face of the dark thing. Something caught the light and glinted. For a heartbeat the reflected light illuminated something yellow... The thing was closer now. It was black or blue. The face caught the light again. No. It wasn't a face. It was something in front of the face. Something the face was wearing. A visor, on a helmet. And above the visor a badge. A yellow badge on a helmet.

A Judge's helmet.

**A STATE OF WAR**

Omar's expression was crumpled and peculiar, as though every tiny muscle in his face was trying to pull in opposite directions. The Chief Judge's left eyelid flickered once. Just once.

'I'll pretend I didn't hear that, Omar.'

'That's what Anderson said. The Alphabet Killer's a Judge. I know it's crazy but Anderson isn't usually _that_ far off the mark.'

'Listen, we're all under a lot of strain. Only today I saw a gang of juves pelting a med squad with acid bombs. If we suggest that the Alphabet Killer is one of _us_ we'll have a state of war.'

'Yes, Chief Judge... I understand...'

The Chief Judge leaned forward, her voice softening.

'Oh, but off the record, Omar... let Anderson follow the lead.'

**AGNESS BLAGG**

The Scream was like a tune playing a few rooms away. It was always there, though sometimes she forgot about it. She tried to home in on it, tried to glean more information from it, but she came to understand that she would have to wait. The Scream came to her. She did not go the the Scream.

While she waited she went through the computer files to see how many Mega-City blocks ended in –ESS. In all there were 739. She started sifting through them, hoping that if she came across the right one she would recognise it.

She'd been working on this half an hour when the first Alphabet Killing of the evening was reported.

Anderson visited the body in the mortuary, hoping to pick something up. The victim's name was Agness Blagg and she had been found near Dudley Moore Bungalows. Anderson had seen plenty of gore in her time, but this horrified her. And Judge Monk, standing nearby, saw it.

'Don't let it get to you, Anderson,' he said. 'It's just another stiff. Dead is dead, however you got there.'

Anderson turned as Monk was leaving with another Judge. He cracked some lousy joke but Anderson didn't hear it. All she heard was a scream, like a living thing, wild and monstrous, terrible and terrified.

As Judge Monk walked away, the Scream faded.

'Who found the body?' she asked the attendant.

'Why, those two. Judges Monk and Lord. Lord looked a little shook-up but Monk, boy, he sure can take it on the chin. D'you know what the boys say 'bout Monk? They say he's as tough as...'

'...Old Dredd. Yeah, so I heard.'

Anderson was already running out of the slab room.

**THE BIRTHDAY BUTCHER**

It was all there on the files. You just had to be looking for it. Judge Monk had reported the first Alphabet Killing and the mortuary attendant had been sufficiently horrified by the corpse to have made a note of it... and of Monk's lack of emotion.

And there was more on his personal record.

A very terrible thing had happened to Monk. He'd been called to his original home one day to find his father murdered. His father had been the sixth victim of the notorious Birthday Butcher, a killer who claimed 28 lives before he was finally caught.

The Birthday Butcher was in fact a sub-hume called Nathan Bones who, as a child, never received birthday presents from his sub-hume parents. One day, Nathan's anger and resentment boiled over and he went on his killing spree. For 28 nights he killed a selected person; a person whose birthday it was. A few film companies made movies out of Nathan's killing spree.

The description of the Birthday Murders read like a horror story but one thing caught Anderson's attention. Monk's father had been impaled on metal-spiked birthday candles, which were subsequently set alight.

Agness Blagg had suffered a similar fate.

**JUDGE DREDD**

Omar wasn't alone. The Chief Judge and Judge Dredd were with him in his office. Anderson burst in.

'Omar! C.J.! I've cracked it! I know who did it!'

Dredd, Omar and the Chief Judge looked straight back at Anderson without saying a word. Anderson gulped in air and said, 'It's Judge Monk. Judge Monk is the Alphabet Killer!'

'That's very interesting, Anderson,' said the Chief Judge. 'Because Dredd has just apprehended the Alphabet Killer... and he most certainly is _not_ Judge Monk.'

'You've... arrested...'

'The Alphabet Killer. That's right, Anderson. Caught the creep as he was going for his third stiff of the night.'

Anderson stood in dazed stupefaction as Dredd told her about the Alphabet Killer, who was nothing but a low-lifer called Angelo Christie who had wanted to get rid of his brother.

Christie had hit upon the idea of killing 25 people as well as his brother, so the Judges would look for a psychotic methodical killer instead of someone who plugged his brother because he couldn't stand his guts.

Christie had got hooked on murder, though, and just couldn't stop. A dormant sadistic streak was awakened and the killings just went on and on, long after the original purpose of them, to deflect suspicion from his slaying of his brother, had been forgotten.

Apart from his job on the zoom-tube allowing him quick access to every part of the city, there was no special reason why Christie had evaded the law for so long. He was just a non-entity who got lucky. Which was unlucky for his 990 victims.

'Now,' said the Chief Judge, when Dredd had finished. 'Would you like to repeat what you said about Judge Monk?'

The Scream hit Anderson with so much force she staggered. She saw the woman and her three children. And she saw the woman's mouth. And she heard the Scream. For the first time, she really heard the Scream.

'Where's Monk? WHERE IS HE?'

**JUVE ABUSE**

Anderson's bike sped through the night-time streets of Mega-City One and the flashing neon lights were glowing like phantom faces: the woman, the three juves...

'Monk,' she said aloud, as the Scream grew...

She had found the place on Omar's Grid-Vid. Monk had called in a few minutes earlier with a report of more Juve Abuse. They were throwing fire-bottles at Judges again. Monk was going to clear them off. That was in Enderby Square. Three streets away from Enderby Square was a place called Burgess Block.

\---ESS BL---

Every traffic noise now seemed part of the Scream. How could she have been so blind? In the distance she saw the tall grey building that was Burgess Block. She recognised it from her dream. The Scream grew louder, more terrible, like a living thing. Only now she knew that the Scream was not coming from the woman.

The Scream was coming from Judge Monk.

**A CHINK OF LIGHT**

'Filthy, stinkin' juves! Don't you think we'd _like_ to get our hands on that maniac?'

The back of Monk's hand struck one of the juves across the face. The juve fell, then scampered to his feet and ran off with his brothers.

'Foul-mouthed brats. Chucking bottles... You shoulda seen what _I've_ seen!'

The three juves ran down the alley into the arms of their mother. They were all around the age of ten.

Monk lumbered after them, clumsily drawing his gun. The mother, pulling the children close to herself, saw the Judge and started backing away. Until she felt a cold wall touch her shoulders.

A chink of light glinted on Monk's helmet's visor and he saw his father, lying dead in the dining room. He saw the Alphabet Killer's victims, lying dead in some foul alley, and he saw these filthy juves and their mother, cowering before him. And somehow it all seemed to be the same thing. Somehow they were _all_ to blame.

The blood pounded hot and wild inside his head as he moved closer and raised his gun. It would be good to shoot them, to blow them away. It would be good to hit back, to avenge his father after all this time...

'Monk!'

As Monk turned, Anderson drove her fist into the side of his neck, just below his left ear. It was a blow that, delivered correctly, would bring down the biggest man.

'Why did you hit me, Anderson?' Monk asked, smiling.

Then he fell over.

Later, Anderson sat back and relaxed. The Scream was gone from her mind now. Things were back to normal – or at least Mega-City One's equivalent of normal. Monk was in a Psycho-Cube. He'd never be a Judge again, but at least he wasn't up for murder.

'All those years putting on the Tough-Guy image, scared of showing the slightest weakness, took their toll. Something had to break, though Monk couldn't see it,' said Anderson. She was in C.J.'s office with Omar, Dredd and the Chief Judge herself.

'But,' said Omar, 'Monk's _subconscious_ mind knew. It had a pre-cog of what was going to happen, and it tried to get help, to stop Monk committing murder. So it contacted Anderson...'

'Yeah. Monk must be a latent Psi himself,' said Anderson. 'Only I misread the Scream at first. Thought it was the terror of being murdered, not the terror of being the _murderer_. And that description of the candles threw me. Didn't think that the Alphabet Killer might have seen those old Birthday Butcher movies...'

Dredd clonked his large boot onto the floor, preparatory to standing. He snorted.

'Another cry for help, huh?'

Anderson smiled.

'A _scream_ for help, actually. And _you_ shouldn't be so sure of yourself. You saw what happened to Monk... and you know what the boys used to say about _him_...'

'What did they say?'

'That he was tough as Old Dredd... How tough is _that_ , Joe?'

**DIARY OF A MAD CITIZEN**

**By Alan Grant, _2000 AD Annual 1986_**

_'Hey You, Joe Normal! Reckon Future Shock Couldn't Happen to You? Well, You're Wrong! It Can Strike Anyone at Anytime, I Know... I've Been Thereeee!'_

January 19th 2107

Something very peculiar happened today.

I rose slightly earlier than usual, to catch the Kenny Kark Morning Spectacular on my holo-vid before venturing out on my weekly jaunt across city to Orinoko's. I'm not really very fond of Kenny Kark – to be frank, he makes me sick – but watching his show every week adds to my sense of occasion. It helps make my Thursdays special.

I compounded the feeling of celebration by having an extra bowl of Tokyo Joe's Synthi-Soy Soyflakes. 'Not a single natural ingredient' it says on the packet. I seem to remember my mother telling me that when she was a kid they had real soy soyflakes. She...

But I don't want to talk about my mother now. I don't want to talk about Kenny Kark, either, except to note that his last guest was a fat lady who'd had her face biosculptured into that of a goldfish. I reckon she has star quality, and if betting wasn't illegal I'd bet my kneepad she makes it big before the end of February.

On second thoughts, I wouldn't bet my kneepad. I mean, I still think fatty'll strike it rich – but my kneepad's far too precious for me to risk it on the fortunes of fishface. Not precious in a financial sense, you understand – it's just a plain black number with faded diamante GOG lettering, and although it's 17 years old now it wouldn't fetch more than a couple of hundred creds on the Classique Pad Market. But it's worth a lot more to me; me and that pad have seen 17 years worth of life together, hard times and worse times. And like they say on the Brain Tape ads: 'The tapes cost 100 – but memories are priceless.' How true (although I've seen Brain Tapes discounted to 59.90 on the Block Mall).

As the Kark Show ended, I pondered my next move. The journey from my apartment door to the lift is without doubt the most dangerous part of my weekly odyssey. That's not to say that the rest of the trip is without its dangers – the Uptown/Downtown Zoom Underpass Pedway, for instance, was voted Top Mugger's Haunt in a recent phone-in, and the crumbling chem-pools along the Reclaim Zone are always claiming innocent victims. However, it is a Justice Dept. statistical fact that 50% of all criminal violence is inflicted either within the victim's home, or between his home and his Block Exit.

When I tell you that I live in the Gary Coleman Block, you'll understand my apprehension. Gary Coleman Juves are reputed to be amongst the nastiest, foulest and toughest in the city. I sometimes wonder if they're waging some kind of vendetta or holy war against me, so numerous have the incidents become. But I suppose it makes statistical sense: there are 58,000 people living in Gary Coleman, and it stands to reason that some of them are going to be pestered more than others. And when you consider that dozens of families never leave their apartments, that must lower the odds even more in favour of any particular individual being chosen as a target.

I peered out through my door's Exterior Viewer. The corridor appeared to be empty. A good omen. I unlocked and unbarred the door's triple-security locks and slid out into an alien world. The walls are hidden under a constantly-changing sea of graffiti, chief amongst which are various Juve boasts: GC JUVES RULE, SLINKY KILLS TOASTIES, POWER TO THE SUB-TEENS! and the like. Of course, there's a fair smattering of adult slogans, too. It's a funny thing about graffiti – no matter how fast the Block scrubber squads work, they never seem to be able to keep up with the scrawlers' prolific output. Even when Citi-Def post round-the-clock sentries, the graffiti still appears, almost as if it grew there of its own accord. Now, I paused long enough only to record the fact that someone had scrawled NITCHY IS A FINK in large day-shine letters all over the door, then sprinted for the lifts at the end of the corridor.

As if on cue, Juves appeared just as I punched the call button. I'm not afraid of 11-year-olds, of course, not even when there are a dozen or so of them; but all the same, they can be pretty unnerving. They lounged against the Block wall, scuffing their Mock Doc aggro boots noisily. Not one of them said a word. They all just stood there, glaring at me.

I ignored them. I'm used to this treatment: everybody in Mega-City One is. Citizens glare and glower at other citizens wherever they happen to be – though not if there's a Judge around, I hasten to add.

The Juves were obviously unhappy that their glares had failed to bug me. An older boy with a blue-painted face lashed out in my direction with a heavy boot – then stopped his kick just before it struck my leg. None of them laughed, though several sneered provocatively.

I pursed my lips and began to whistle beneath my breath. Stay nonchalant, that's the best motto. Don't give these louts an ounce of satisfaction!

'OW!' I gasped as something small and solid struck me sharply on the back of the head.

'You young devils!' I snapped. 'Which of you threw that?' None of them moved. They continued to lounge and glare as if I hadn't even spoken. I felt like shaking them by their stupid shoulders, but wisely refrained. Assaulting a minor is a very serious offence. Of course, assaulting an adult is a serious offence, too – but it would be my word against ten of theirs. 'OW!' Another missile cracked against my skull. But thankfully, before they all decided to join in, the lift arrived.

It was empty, except for one Juve with a single 30-centimeter-long spike of rigid, plasticated hair. The point of it stabbed my ear painfully as he squeezed by me.

Thankfully they didn't follow me into the lift. I don't think I could have endured their malicious taunts all the way to street level. I breathed a sigh of relief – and it was then I noticed that the STOP button had been depressed for every single floor from mine down. All 88 of them. Evidently the work of my spiky-headed attacker. But why?

I found out on floor 88.

As the doors slid open, I was deluged by a shower of garbage. The perpetrators, of course, were Juves – whether the same ones who'd menaced me upstairs, I couldn't tell. What's the difference? They're all the same anyway!

I punched the Close button and fended off a final missile as the doors hissed to. It didn't require a genius to figure out that I was going to receive more of this treatment... all the way down to the street.

By the time the lift reached the bottom, I resembled not so much a decent, law-abiding citizen as a walking muck heap, cleverly constructed over a framework of painful bruises. I am not ashamed to say that I was whimpering.

My journey across the city wasn't exactly pleasant, but compared with my descent in the lift it was a doddle. I arrived at Orinoko's Lunchette in Sector 44's Avenue of Poloypropylop. I was afraid the waiter wouldn't serve me, I was in such a state; but happily, he recognised me under the filth and bade me enter with his usual good-natured gusto. Wouldn't surprise me if I was his best customer – after all, I've been coming here every Thursday lunchtime for 17 years now.

I ordered my usual – soypfel strudel and a big jug of synthi-caff – and settled down by Orinoko's big front window. Normally I'd scan the faces of the passing crowds with rapt attention, hoping that maybe today... maybe today I'd find the face I'd been looking for all these years.

But the 88 peltings I'd received at the hands of those surly, sinister Juves had entirely spoiled my mood. I sat there, a muck-encrusted 40-year-old with a heavy heart and no prospects... just another big city loser... a man who couldn't even find his own dear mother...

There, I've said it. Mother's the reason I come here every week. It's in the hope that one day she'll come in here, just like she did every Thursday back in the old days, and say in that lilting, laughing voice of hers: 'Mockola for me and a freezipop for the brat.' We were happy together, Mom and me; why, when dad died in the big Space Port disaster back in '86, we hardly even noticed. Times were hard, but me and Mom were together, and that was always enough for me.

But as I got older, we started to grow further apart. When I finished with my unemployment courses, Mom insisted that I become independent, move out, set up house on my own. I guess she wanted to live her own life, taste a little freedom for a while. But she was my mom, for Josh-sakes; I couldn't leave her.

So my Mom did the next best thing: she left me.

It was a few days after my 23rd birthday. I'd been out on a cheap-shot trip and picked up this great GOG kneepad – yes, the very one I wear to this day. I came rushing into the house, yelling to Mom to look-see the new pad. My voice echoed around an empty home. Mom had packed her clothes – and everything that wasn't bolted down – and vamoosed.

I was distraught. I asked the neighbours if they knew where she'd gone – most of them didn't even know who she (or I) was. The Judges were neither helpful nor very sympathetic. 'Look, pal – we got enough to do fighting crime without busting our guts to find a lady who's "abandoned" a 23-year-old!' as one of them so forcefully put it.

The only hope I had was Orinoko's. Mom used to come here every Thursday after her Principal Fondomics work-out; I'd come over from the apartment to meet her, and she'd tell me about those mysterious exercises she learned.

I checked with her Fondomics instructors, but they were only vexed that Mom had split without paying her overdue tuition fees. So I took to hanging out in Orinoko's at that same time every Thursday, in the faint hope that one day she'd come back. And she never did...

I felt a tear dribble down my cheek, pushing a small heap of muck before it. I didn't even try to wipe it away. What was the point? Insulted and beaten up by Juves; unemployed and unemployable; friendless and alone; a man whose own mother had deserted him. Who cared if I cried or not. Who gave a mutie's curse?

'I do, Pizmo.'

The voice was low, throaty – the sort of voice they used to advertise hi-class clinics. A friendly voice. It seemed to come from under the table. I looked down, expecting to see maybe a television set or a lurking dwarf.

'No dwarf, Pizmo,' the voice said. 'It's me. Your kneepad.'

January 20th

I broke off rather abruptly yesterday. I needed time to absorb the implications of that amazing incident. Finding that my kneepad could talk wasn't all that big a deal; I mean anybody who watches holovision (which is everybody) sees a dozen equally amazing things in their living rooms every week. A talking kneepad isn't really more surprising than a dame with a goldfish face, or men like the fatties who can eat a tonne of food at one sitting.

No, what amazed me was the fact that my kneepad cared. And even more – it cared about me.

I started to ask it how come it had never told me this before, but the kneepad cut me short. 'I can't talk here,' it said. 'Someone might overhear. Let's go home.'

So we did.

Back in my apartment the questions I was bursting to ask came pouring out. 'Why did you never speak before? What's your name? Does it hurt when I kneel on you?'

The kneepad ignored them. 'For the past 17 years,' it began, 'I have been studying humanity from the vantage point of your left knee. My studies have now reached an end. I have formulated a conclusion – and from your point of view, Pizmo, a very grim conclusion it is.'

A little shiver ran up my spine. 'Wh-what is it?'

'Simply this: that you, dear Pizmo, are the victim of a city-wide agreement which has resulted in you becoming a victim for all and sundry to persecute at will.'

I could hardly believe my ears. 'This is incredible!' I gasped. 'It's like you've been reading my mind. I've often wondered what I did to deserve a life like mine: no job, no prospects, plagued by sinister Juves, a man whose own mother...'

'Yes, yes, Pizmo,' the kneepad put in impatiently. 'I know all that. The question is – what are you going to do about it?'

I shrugged helplessly. 'What can I do? Like you just said – everybody in the city's against me. The only place I might get help is in foreign parts – like Texas City, maybe, or Brit-Cit. But there's probably a conspiracy to stop me leaving town – and besides, I have no money.'

'You're too negative, Pizmo,' the kneepad told me. 'Adopting a more positive attitude would be of immense benefit. Yes, I think that's where we'll start...'

It talked on into the evening. I have a feeling that my life is going to take a sudden turn for the better.

January 21st

On the advice of my kneepad, I have taken up Hari-ip-Slip, the ancient Oriental art of self-defence through Positive Posturing. From a basic ten or so slinky body movements, I am constructing a dancing defence that will leave those Juves speechless.

I had a lengthy chat session with my kneepad – it refuses to be called GOG; evidently that's its designer's name, not its own. It made a rather startling suggestion: I might not be the only victim of this sinister conspiracy. There may well be thousands – even millions – of other citizens like me, living in lonely torment, completely unaware of kindred souls nearby.

We also discussed extra-sensory perception. As a result, I am conducting an experiment: for 10 minutes every hour I am focussing my thoughts and beaming them telepathically to the city at large. If there are others like me they will hopefully respond.

January 22nd

Spent today in bed, worn out. I suppose it was the exertions of last night's mental telepathy. My kneepad is hanging on the chair, but it hasn't said a word all day. I suppose that intellectuals are moody, even in the kneepad world.

January 23rd

In complete contrast to yesterday, I feel fantastic! I am convinced that I have had a telepathic reply to my mental messages. When I wakened this morning, in that warm hazy space between dreams and living, I heard a voice say quite distinctly: 'I am Mrs Gorp, your next-door neighbour. I am like you.' My kneepad got quite excited when I told it. 'It figures, it figures,' it kept saying. 'You see, Pizmo, I've been thinking: it's possible to extend my theory to include everybody in the whole city!'

I knitted my brows. Somehow, that didn't seem scientific to me. But the kneepad rushed on: 'I mean – what if every citizen, all 400-million-plus of them, is just the same as you? To wit: lonely, afraid, no job, no future, no money, persecuted by Juves... they wouldn't all have been abandoned by their mothers, of course, but a lot of them might be.'

'But if we're all the same, who's behind the conspiracy?' I asked.

'Who do you think?' the kneepad said. 'Who's the common factor in all the equations? Who persecutes everybody?'

Like all great truths, it was so simple that I wondered how I hadn't thought of it myself. The Juves. Of course –it was the Juves who were behind everything!

January 24th

We've hatched a plan. We're going to alert the entire city to the conspiracy, but gradually, so as not to tip our hand to the Juves prematurely. I have been delegated to make contact with Mrs Gorp. I left my apartment at noon, after ascertaining that the Juves were nowhere in sight. I puzzled for a moment over NITCHY BLACK BLOO, which someone had scrawled on my door. Some secret Juve code perhaps?

My push on Mrs Gorp's bell was light but confident. Her voice rasped suspiciously from the answer-grille in the doorframe: 'Whoozit? Whadyawant?'

'Pizmo Nitchy, Mrs Gorp. From next door. We met at the Block-fest a couple of years ago.' I bent closer to the microphone and lowered my voice. 'I got your telepathic message. We have a lot to talk about.'

There was a long, long pause. Then a new voice – a man's – blared in my ear: 'Lizzen, weirdo! I count ta ten, I open da door. Ya still there I tear ya legs an' make ya eat 'em!'

'Obviously her husband isn't as advanced as she is,' my kneepad hissed. 'I suggest we return to base and revise our plans.'

My kneepad soon hit on another scheme: 'Letters to the vidzines – that's the answer. If we get enough printed, the citizens'll soon get the message. Of course, the Juves might see the letters, too. But that's a chance we'll just have to take.'

It was risky, but I consoled myself with the fact that not many Juves can read. Of course, not all that many adults can either. It took me an hour to compose a document setting out my discoveries and theories, including a masterly analysis of my main Juve Conspiracy ideas.

(I had better record here: I am not trying to take credit away from my kneepad when I say 'my' discoveries and theories. The kneepad itself insisted that I delete all reference to it throughout, on the grounds that it had no right to disturb the status quo of the kneepad world over what was essentially a human problem. I asked it what it meant.

'If citizens at large found out that your kneepad can talk, they'd want to know why their own kneepads can't.'

'Well – why can't they?'

'Oh,' said my kneepad, 'most can. It's just that they choose not to.')

January 25th

Spent the entire day composing letters to newsvids, vidzines and holovid shows, including one to Kenny Kark. My kneepad thinks Kark might be a Juve spy, but I'm not so sure. He's pretty tall for a Juve.

January 26th

Thursday again. Time for my weekly trip to Orinoko's – but the usual fear of going out was absent this morning. As soon as I reached the lift, the Juves arrived on schedule. They launched into their usual glare and sneer tactics – but this time I glared and sneered right back. I elbowed one of them aside and lounged against the wall, looking as contemptuous as possible. This is all part of the Hari-ip-Slip method. 60% of all Juves will shuffle off if treated like this.

Not a Juve shuffled. I knew this meant they had accepted my challenge to their challenge, and events were now likely to escalate. No matter. I have surprised even myself with how well I have mastered the martial art.

So when the first Juve aimed a blow at me, I was ready. I swayed back out of his reach, causing him to lose his balance and strike one of his bald associates on the head. The bald Juve snarled – and hauled a cosh from a pocket in his zipporak.

All hell broke loose. I ducked the cosh with a Snaking Weave, combining it with a sideways Dragon Slide that took me out of range of the fists that tried to smash me from behind. A Juve closed in from each side, one wearing a studded Knocknux, the other swinging a short stave. I did a double Dodge-Duck on the spot, and the stave hit the knux kid full in the mouth.

That's when I made my mistake. I should have executed a Backward Long Slither and worked myself away from them. Unfortunately, I paused long enough to titter about the Juve who'd been hit.

It was my undoing.

A dozen hands grasped at me, pulling me down. A hard, bald head cannoned into my stomach, winding me. I tried to summon up the strength for a desperate Leaping Lizard – but it was too late. I was submerged in a sea of boots and fists and swinging sticks...

I don't know how a Juve gang decides when its victim has had enough. I'm glad they do, though. As suddenly as it had begun, the whole melee was over. The Juves disappeared along the corridors, and I was left to pick myself up, rubbing my wounds, feeling dazed and a little sick.

'You... okay, kneepad?' I looked down. Horror of horrors! My kneepad – my mentor – my saviour – was gone.

It must have been ripped off in the struggle, and the Juves had carried it off – no doubt to torture and interrogate. Despair spread through my veins like ice water. It was all over. Without my kneepad, I was nothing. It had been my only friend – had kept me sane and relatively cheerful through this black time. I would never see it again.

Dejected, dispirited, I slouched back into my apartment. The scrawl on my door had been changed to NITCHY BOKS GREE, presumably during the fracas, but I didn't pay it a second thought. I knew in my heart there was only one way out of it for me now.

I opened my living room window and clambered up onto the ledge. It was a long way down to the ground: 89 storeys. Nobody could possibly survive that drop. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and prepared to jump...

'Hold it, Citizen!'

I whirled, to see the impressive figure of a Judge framed in my living room doorway. 'Attempted suicide is a serious offence.'

He took a step towards me, but I waved him back. 'I'm sorry, Judge. I've never broken the Law before, but I... I just can't go on. Without my kneepad to tell me what to do, there just doesn't seem any point. I've no-one to talk to any more.'

'Hold on a second.' The Judge spoke quietly into his wrist-communicator, then a voice blared up from the street below.

'Pizmo!' it cried. 'Pizmo!'

I leaned out a little and, fighting the dizziness, looked down. On the street below I could make out the shapes of a few Justice Dept. vehicles, and the tiny figures of some Judges.

'This is your kneepad, Pizmo!' the tinny voice went on. 'Don't jump! I'm safe! The Judges found me. Come on down and claim me back!'

I turned back to look at the Judge in my doorway. 'That doesn't sound like my kneepad,' I told him.

'It's speaking through a megaphone, Pizmo,' the Judge replied. 'Makes 'em sound a bit funny.' He stepped further into the room, and stretched out a gloved hand. 'Come on now. I'll take you to your pad.'

There were tears in my eyes as I allowed him to take my hand and lead me out to the lifts.

January 29th

Of course, it was a trick. They hadn't really found my kneepad at all. It was another Judge hollering through the loudspeaker. They were very nice to me, though, if a trifle brisk. They brought me here, to this Justice Dept. Psychiatric Cube where XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXCENSORED BY ORDER OF CHIEF JUDGE MACGRUDERXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.

February 9th

I'm cured now, the medics tell me. I can go home soon. They've been encouraging me to keep up my diary. They say it makes a splendid hobby, and a good hobby is more than half the battle against the possibility of further bouts of Future Shock. So I think I will stick at it.

I watched the Kenny Kark Spectacular this morning on the Cube holo. Funny how Kenny doesn't seem to be half as nauseous as he used to. If gambling wasn't illegal I'd have won that bet too – the goldfish woman was his star guest. She's evidently Number One in the Musi-Charts with a thing called Ant Egg Salad.

February 10th

I've decided I won't bother going to Orinoko's any more, looking for Mom. The Judges traced her for me – she married an alien and moved back to Alpha Centauri with him. So I don't suppose she'll be coming to the Mega-City for her Thursday lunchettes. Perhaps she'll write to me.

Looking back, all that stuff with the kneepad seems like a dream, like it all happened to some other Pizmo Nitchy, not me. I mean, kneepads don't have any vocal cords, so how could it speak? (They don't have brains either, so it couldn't have been communicating telepathically.) And how could a kneepad know all about things like Juve conspiracies? It never told me that. Still, I can't help remembering something I imagined my kneepad said: 'Most kneepads can talk. It's just that they choose not to.'

I wonder why?

**JUDGE ANDERSON: EXORCISE DUTY**

**By Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, _Judge Dredd Annual 1991_**

The Mavis Riley Home for the Debilitatingly Bewildered lies in the quiet Western districts of Mega-City One; five stories of pale, pink, pastel windows gazing out in quiet contemplation. It is a calm place, serene and tranquil, seemingly untouched by the City's contaminating turmoil. But today the polyester curtains are twitching at the sound of visitors on the pedway below. It's not the hushed tones of visiting relatives that echo through the antiseptic Hospitality Zone, but the heavy thump of marching feet. Judges!

'I'll only be a few moments,' Anderson said tersely to her four companions. 'You guys can wait in the Sympathy Suite.'

Judge Pyke, who had been with the squad for only a few weeks, sneered as she strode away. 'I heard Psi Division were highly strung, but she's got her corn rations wedged somewhere painful.'

'Clamp it, Pyke!' growled Judge Warner. 'It's Anderson's private business.'

'It troubles me. I sense heavy angst in Anderson and it's clouding her normally pure aura,' said Judge Lutz, the squad's new empath.

'When you've been with this unit a little longer, my dear,' said the massive Judge McKern, setting a plump fist reassuringly on the little empath's shoulder pad, 'you'll learn that we always stop by here when we're on Exorcise Duty in this sector.' Lutz smiled timidly at the team's mountainous telekinetic.

'Suppose we'll have to wait then,' mumbled Pyke, as he flicked through a dog-eared copy of _Which Sedative?_ from the coffee table.

'Is Thorne in his Iso-Cube?' inquired Anderson as she strode purposefully down the corridor, accompanied by the Home's Well-Being Monitor.

'Environment, you mean?' replied the droid, its servo units straining to match Anderson's pace.

Anderson ignored the correction as she continued to ignore the muzak emanating from the droid. 'And how is he?'

'He's as happy as a sandboy, as pleased as punch, as nice as pie... he hasn't a care on his mind!'

'He hasn't got a mind,' replied Anderson acidly.

They came to a halt by a padded shutter. 'I'll just open the door,' said the droid. 'It's in passive mode.'

'Locked, you mean.'

'We don't like to use negative terms here at the Mavis Riley facility,' said the droid. 'When stress and trauma get you down, and your face just isn't smiley, never fear, relief is near, book in at Mavis Ri–'

'Shut up,' said Anderson as the door slid open.

'Such a sad case,' reflected the droid. 'And so inexplicable.'

'Haven't you read his diaries?' said Anderson, stepping past the droid into the cell.

From the diary of Gregory Thorne:

_'_ ** _...May 12_** ** _th_** _: When I got home from work today, I got a message from God. It was just a quick word to say that the Antichrist would soon be in the neighbourhood, and could I keep an eye out for him. He's given me a list of signs to look for and said that when I've ticked them all off, he'll give me some further tips on how to save the world from an eternity of damnation. I found the first sign straight away –_ a beast rising out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns and on the horns ten crowns _– that couldn't be easier. I'm working on it...'_

**June 6 – 5.25pm**

They rode out of the city, five riders ahead of the storm. The burning headlamps of their Lawmaster bikes cast jagged shadows across the blasted wasteland of Reclaim Zone #13. Even now, years after the Apocalypse War, a charnel smell hung in the wind. Anderson signalled her Spook Squad to halt as the brooding grey structure of the half-finished Geo-Stability Tower rose before them. Seven massive support columns rising from a gash in the landscape, lifting ten vent-capped geothermal conversion chambers into a thunderous sky. It was here that warheads had split open the very flesh of the planet. It was only structures such as these, whose tectonic anchors were embedded deep below, that kept in check the tidal fury of the magmatic seas that boiled close to the surface.

'Re-cap please, Troughton,' said Anderson.

The young Judge accessed his bike's terminal. 'Zone #13 rehab program contracted to Ideal Block Inc. This is the final stabilising tower to be constructed before work begins on the residential areas. Work currently at a standstill due to a series of bizarre industrial accidents and unrest in the workers' compound. Cause may be residual psychic energy left over from the conflagration. Psi Squad investigation required.'

'What was this place before?' asked Judge Stokes. 'Empathically, I'm not reading much.'

Troughton shot her a grimace. 'Neutral Zone mediplex. Ninety thousand civilians cremated in a nanosecond, thanks to a stray nuke.'

'Any speculations, McKern?' asked Anderson.

The big man was lost in the shadows. 'Sounds like a casebook Revenant Node. A concentrated mass, representing thousands of souls traumatised in the same moment. Could mean we're in for a busy night.'

Judge Warner shook his head in mock sadness. 'You really suffer for your art, don't you? Psi Division always makes a meal of things. If it was up to us regulars there would be a lot more hard graft and a lot less agonising.'

'While you and Troughton ride shotgun on this team you'll keep your opinions to yourselves,' Anderson retorted. 'These souls deserve respect and consideration, not brute force.'

'The workers' compound is just ahead. We'd better make tracks – Neill the I.B.I. rep has requested assistance nine times in the last hour,' Troughton observed.

'I sense... persistent jackass,' groaned McKern.

'I was right,' he whispered to Anderson, as Neill scurried toward them in the lobby of the workers' compound.

'About time!' he snapped. 'Do you have any idea of the seriousness of the situation? Work ceased _three days_ ago. I.B.I. are facing interest charges in excess of nine trill. Phoenix Block is over budget and behind schedule. What do you intend to do about it?'

Anderson shrugged. 'Not my problem. We're here to locate paranormal disturbances.'

'And when you do?'

'Once I've located the problem telepathically, Judge Stokes, our empath, will categorise and contain it, allowing our telekinetic, Judge McKern, to expel it from this dimension. Problem solved.'

'And what do the other two do? Chant and burn incense?'

'They're here to support us in more... physical encounters,' said Anderson.

'We break heads,' added Warner drily.

'I don't care _what_ you have to do,' Neill raged. 'Just make damn sure you do it quickly. This place is falling apart around my ears. I've got four thousand discontented construction workers and their families refusing to pick up tools or step out of the compound over some superstitious crem about demonic forces and walking dead! I've had nine workers injured in clumsy accidents that are gonna cost me a spitload of creds, and another three flash-fried yesterday when their work cradle fell into the magmatic vent, for reasons that will no doubt become painfully clear in an expensive negligence suit. Now if this is because I'm playing host to the Devil, show him the damn door so we can get on with our work!'

Anderson turned her group with a sigh. 'Okay team, you know the drill. Exploration, exculpation, extradition! Stokes, what have you got?'

The petite empath frowned, shaking her head.

'A headache? Sorry, Cass. It's a psionic blank as far as I can sense, just like outside.'

Warner snorted. 'Drokk! You said it, it's a wild ghost chase! All we need is an H-Wagon and a crime blitz. What's needed here is a liberal dose of work ethic, not exorcism.'

Exasperated, Anderson turned toward the window, gazing grimly out as though the night sky might help her. Above the massive Geo-Stability Tower, a full moon glowed crimson through a pall of exhaust fumes. Anderson felt a slight tremor... like a whisper, as though someone was speaking. It took Anderson a moment to realise it was herself.

'"And the moon became as blood..."'

'What did you say?' asked Warner.

Anderson ignored him and put her hand to her temple. 'There is something here after all,' she said. 'And I don't like it one bit.'

_'_ ** _...May 22_** ** _nd_** _: It's all coming together now. The moon's been red for several days, just as God told me it would be. As for the six hundred three score and six, that's obvious to me now too! Three sixes... The Antichrist will be born on the sixth day of the sixth month at six o'clock, the son of a jackal. That's soon now. I must find this jackal. I must wait for its offspring and I must kill it!_ '

**June 6 – 5.52pm**

The apartment door crumpled like tissue paper under McKern's telekinetic onslaught, and Warner and Troughton swung into the room, Lawgivers at the ready.

'Empty,' reported Warner. 'Are you sure this is the place?'

Anderson stepped coolly into the room between them. Her gaze lingered on the walls, which were papered with pages torn from bibles. Crucifixes had been crudely rammed into the door and window frames.

'You're right,' she said witheringly. 'The guy's obviously totally sane.' She stepped toward a small writing desk, picking up the slim volume lying on its surface. 'This is the focus of the emanations I've been getting. It's some sort of diary.'

Stokes looked troubled as she followed them in. 'This room's _saturated_ with emotional residue!' she said. 'Such anguish, such pain, such hatred... but it's determined, obsessive; _focused_. This is a bad one, Cass.'

Warner holstered his weapon. 'Great. We've got a Futsie. Let's find him, Cube him and stop this time-wasting.'

McKern turned to Anderson. 'What do you think? Cassandra, you've gone quite pale. What's the matter?'

Anderson dropped the diary. 'There has to be a medical centre in the compound... so let's move it there on the double. Now!'

_'_ ** _...June 6_** ** _th_** _: I've found the jackal. He lives upstairs. Jack L. Remick, whose wife is expecting any day now (I know precisely when, of course). I wonder if she knows she's carrying the Antichrist? She will when I kill him. God spoke to me again last night. He said I was doing awfully well...'_

**June 6** **th** **– 6.01pm**

The nurse was screaming something about no admittance, and continued screaming as McKern lifted her out of their path on a raft of telekinesis. Leading the pack, Anderson and Warner crashed through the doors, bowling over the Midwife Droid. 'What in Grud's name are you doing in here?' bellowed Jack L. Remick, clutching the hand of his labouring wife.

'What's more to the point,' breathed Anderson, 'what's _he_ doing in here?' She pointed at the bewildered figure nearby, dressed in an orderly's uniform and frozen in the act of pulling a recoilless automatic from beneath his tunic. Warner's Lawgiver was in his hand in the blink of an eye. 'Armed Futsie!' he screamed. 'Everybody down!'

Anderson's fist crashed into his wrist. The shot went wide, tearing through the far wall. Simultaneously, the perp's gun flew from his grasp, straight to McKern's outstretched hand.

'What the drokk are you _doing_?' spluttered Warner. 'There were civilians at stake.'

'And one of them was your target!' Anderson snapped back. 'I sense he's a strong latent psionic, acting under the influence of something external. If you'd shot him, you'd have been shooting an innocent.'

Warner was about to argue further, but was cut off by Stokes' warning scream. They turned in horror to see the suspect crumple drunkenly to the floor, an inhuman howl rising in his throat. His body twitched and convulsed as something spewed from him; something abominable, something unholy... a grotesque mass of screaming faces that hung in the air, raining greasy fluid on the floor beneath.

'The child! It wants to possess the new-born child!' shrieked Stokes, gagging as her senses reeled beneath the psychic onslaught.

'Warner, block it!' ordered Anderson desperately.

At once, Troughton and Warner leapt between the delivery bed and the oncoming nightmare. 'Rapid fire. Drive it back!' instructed Warner, gratified at last by a job at which he excelled. The two Lawgivers roared in the confines of the ward, but the thing advanced still, turning its many eyes toward the duo. There was a rending explosion as, through some infernal influence, the magazine of Troughton's pistol detonated and tore him apart. Blasted off his feet by the impact and peppered with slivers of his colleague's armour and bone, Warner was flung across the room like a doll, landing dazed against the wall. The thing turned in mid-air and lurched towards him... and then froze. Blue electrical energy coruscated across its surface.

'We're holding it... barely,' said Anderson through gritted teeth, as she and Stokes quaked under the psionic strain. Stokes' face was blank with agonised effort. 'McKern! You've got to expel this thing _now_!' Anderson could barely speak.

Sweat beaded the big man's brow. 'I'm trying... I can't,' he gasped. 'It's too big... a revenant node... ninety thousand angry souls in one. I'm just not... strong enough!'

'Then we have to force it back into the host,' Anderson strained. 'Contain it, before it burns Stokes out completely!'

There was silence as the trio redoubled their efforts. The entity swelled; doubled its size.

Then it screamed through all its mouths. Shrinking and crumpling horribly, it dissolved like noxious smoke into the limp body of the orderly.

The psychic link severed, the Psi-Judges staggered back. Only the dregs of McKern's telekinetic strength cushioned Judge Stokes' collapse to the floor.

'Lisa!' exclaimed Anderson, as she and McKern reached the prone form. McKern cradled her frail figure in his great arms. 'We've lost her,' he said simply.

Anderson turned speechlessly, her eyes burning as she faced the slumped figure of the possessed man.

'We still have a problem to solve,' she said.

'So she wiped his mind of everything he was. In a split second, construction worker Gregory Thorne ceased to be. She hated herself for it, but there was no alternative. The node was too strong to banish. It could only be contained in a prison that had no contact with the world outside. Maybe the hardest choice she ever made – to sacrifice an innocent mind.' McKern fell silent, aware that Pyke and Lutz were considering the story.

'That's why we always come here when we're on Exorcise Duty,' said Warner. 'Anderson has last respects to pay. And forgiveness to ask for.' They looked up to see Anderson returning through the suite.

'Let's go,' she said briskly. 'There's plenty to do, and the day is yet young...'

'Lead on, Chief.' Warner followed her to the door.

Out in the yard, as they mounted their Lawmasters, Anderson caught McKern's eye and smiled. 'And let's pray for a quiet night,' she said.

**'I WAS A TEENAGE PERP!'**

**By Alan Grant, _Judge Dredd Annual 1983_**

_'I WAS A TEENAGE PERP!' A LAWBREAKER CONFESSES! MOVING TRUE STORY!_

I remember the day I broke my first law as if it was yesterday. In fact it _was_ yesterday.

I was cruising the Block Plaza with Willy the C, both of us just hanging out and looking cool. I was wearing my new glitter kneepad, so of course I was attracting more than my share of admiring glances from the other citizens in the crowd. That's what put Willy in a bad mood and started all this trouble.

I'm going to give you a piece of advice, all you guys reading this. It's the most important lesson I've learned in all my fourteen years on the Mega-City streets. Never lose your temper. In a city where so many millions of people are fighting each other for living space, losing your temper just causes trouble.

Take Willy the C and me for instance. Willy's problem was envy. He'd never owned a kneepad. Can you imagine that? Thirteen years old and he'd never had a kneepad of his own. Me, I loved the things – I ate, slept and breathed 'em. In fact, I liked them so much that our Block School Careers Robot advised me to make them my hobby. So I did.

In the year or so that the kneepad craze had been sweeping the city, I had acquired myself half a dozen different pads. Not expensive ones, no solid-gold-effect or mock-velvet or nothing, just regular models. But my secret – the thing that drew so many admiring glances from the chicks and so much envy from bowbs like Willy – was that I custom-built my kneepads. Yessir, I stripped them right down to the frame and rebuilt those little gizmos with tender loving care. The first one I ever made was shaped like the death-mask of Fergee, 'cos when I was a kid he was one of my all-time great heroes. But my others were more practical.

Like, the one I was wearing yesterday in the Plaza was a spinning double metal helix; I'd covered it with rainbow strips of lase-cut mesh-weave I found in my mother's embroidery box. Embroidery is her hobby, but I didn't think she'd miss them. I don't suppose that matters much now.

So anyway I'm strutting along, my helix spinning and flashing in the artificial sunshine, feeling good, looking groovy. We lived in the Frankie Lymon Block, and I've always considered cruising the Block Plaza as one of my favourite things to do. I love the feel of being in a crowd, just moving along with it, going nowhere special and then coming back again. I really dig crowds. Lots of other folk do too, of course. 65,000 citizens live in Frankie Lymon, and the Plaza is always crowded. If you find a quiet spot to watch 'em from, you'll see the same people drifting by time and again. It's fun being part of a crowd – especially when lots of them are admiring your kneepad and trying to pretend they're not. All of a sudden Willy grabs my arm and yanks me towards the slidewalk so we're being carried along towards the Block Park.

'Hey, what's the big idea, bowb?' I asked him, annoyed. Already the slidewalk had taken us a hundred meters away, and as it's illegal to travel the wrong way on a moving slide, I'd have to wait till we hit a cross-over before I could double-back.

'The Plaza's where the best crowds are, dope,' I pointed out. 'The Park's for kids. The Park's a drag.'

'You're the drag, Milton,' Wally muttered, and I was surprised by the venom in his voice. 'Ever since you made that new kneepad, your head's been swelling and swelling. All you ever want to do now is cruise the Plaza and swagger with your kneepad!'

He broke off, stamping his foot petulantly on the slide's plascon surface. How childish, I thought irrelevantly.

The he went on: 'We used to play a lot in the Park, Milton. We had a lot of fun together there, didn't we, Milton?'

I couldn't meet his eyes. He was right, I suppose – we used to go to the Park most days, and it _was_ a lot of laughs. But somehow, now, it seemed like it was for kids. I mean, I was growing up, leaving my low-teens behind me. I was beginning to realise there were ways of having fun other than swinging through a stand of synthetic trees on a never-snap rope, or playing Judges and Perps in the stone-effect rockery near the Park's center. I mean, I didn't know what those other ways were – but I was definitely beginning to wonder!

But how do you tell your best friend, the buddy that's played with you since childhood (we lived next door to each other), that you're growing up faster than he is? I forced a grin and made my voice sound cheerful. Just like Conrad Conn sometimes does in his viddies.

'Okay, Willie, you got it,' I said breezily – and it sounded more like Conrad Conn than the man himself does. Maybe I should have been an actor. 'Let's go check out the Park.'

Not that we had much choice – the slidewalk was at that very moment carrying us through the wide entrance. A couple of security robots lounging by the low wall gave us a quick once-over, and then we were in the Frankie Lymon Block Memorial Park.

**ROBO-DUCKS**

It's quite a place. The walls and huge domed roof are covered in holopix, so it actually looks as if you're outside the Block – outside the city, even – on a warm, warm day. Only instead of there being nothing but Cursed Earth radiation desert stretching all the way to the horizon, the holopix show forests of real green trees and distant snow-capped hills. And in the sky there are realistic images of fluffy white clouds instead of clouds of radioactive gas. The Park's where the Block's senior citizens like to come, which means it's deadly dull unless you like joining in their games of hide-and-seek or kicking a plastic-sphere around. It's popular with the kids, too, of course.

Yeah, okay, I'll get back to my story. I'm only telling you all this about the Park and all, 'cos I know that a lot of guys live in Blocks where they don't even have a Park. Anyway, what happened to me goes to prove that the theories of social delinquency might not be all they're cracked up to be. I mean, when a guy like me, a guy from a nice Block, a guy with an interesting hobby, and a cool Plaza to cruise and a Park, even – when a guy like that ends up as a perp, where do you put the blame?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I know _my_ answer: Willy the C. He'd got what he wanted – I'd come to the Park – but that wasn't enough. Nossir. Right away Willy wants to go and join some under-twelves who're feeding the robo-ducks on the synthi-pond. I rolled my eyes in mock horror that wasn't so mock.

'C'mon, man, you must be joking!' I pointed dramatically at my still-whirling, still-flashing kneepad. 'I didn't put this little beauty on so's I could sit with the kiddos and feed the robo-duckies. I don't even _like_ robo-duckies!'

Willy wasn't listening to my protest. He was looking off to the side, where one of the robo-ducks was waddling jerkily towards us. Usually they move with a strange sort of mechanical grace, but this one was sparking and twitching like it had blown a circuit. It flapped its wings in slow-motion as it came towards me. Stupid. I don't know why they needed robo-ducks in the first place, unless it was to please the senior citizens. Some of them swore they could remember when there were _real_ ducks, though I don't believe 'em myself. Real ducks died out a _long_ time ago. I know there's mutant ducks out there out in the Cursed Earth, but they live on oil. They couldn't survive in the water. Not even synthi-water. So I guess that's why they got robo-ducks for the Park's ponds.

Anyway, I suddenly realised what this particular duck was up to. Its scanners must have picked up the rainbow flash of my windmilling kneepad, and somehow the dazzling light had fused a circuit in the machine's micro-brain.

'Hey – get back, you dumb robot!' I waved my hands at it and took a couple of steps backward. The crazed duck didn't falter. It changed course and came zooming in straight at my knee – only now its bill was opening and closing with a loud SNUPP.

It lunged. Quicker than the eye could follow – well, quicker than I could dodge aside – its neck darted forward. Its bill closed with great force and a loud SNUPP. Right on my kneepad. SNUPP went the bill and CRUNCH went my beautiful kneepad. Smashed useless.

That's when it happened. I lost my temper.

**RED MIST**

I'd come close to it before, of course – everybody does at one time or another. But always in the past I'd remembered what the teaching droids used to drum into us at school: control your emotions. Losing your temper only causes trouble.

I suppose you guys reading this already know the ways out of losing your cool: like swallowing your pride and walking away, or counting up to 50, or visualising a stern robotic face listing all the hassles a lost temper can cause. 'Cos when tempers are lost, there are always consequences. Why, I even heard a rumour that the biggest civil disorder the Mega-City ever witnessed – Block Mania – was started by just one woman blowing her stack. Melda Dreepe, her name was; there was some graffiti about her on our Block Hall walls. But as I stood by the side of the synthi-pond and looked down at the fragments of junk that only moments before had been my Numero Uno kneepad, I forgot all about controlling my emotions. A red mist seemed to spread in front of my eyes, and there was an ominous roaring in my ears. Like it was coming from a whole sector away, I could hear that stupid kneepad-mangling duck quacking... kwaak... KwaaK... KWAAK!

I erupted. It was as if fourteen years of pent-up frustrations and held-in anger just came boiling XXXXXXXXXXXXCENSOREDXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXCENSOREDXXXXXXXXXXXCENSOREDCENSOREDXXXXXXXXXXXCENSOREDXXXXXX.

My hand shot out and grabbed the duck by the neck. The stupid things are programmed to flap off if a citizen gets too close, of course, but like I said this one had popped its cork. I gave the loudest yell I've ever heard without the assistance of a Judge's megaphone and whirled that criminal duck round my head.

Willy the C, needless to say, was lying on his back on the plasti-grass, laughing like he was having some kind of seizure. Looking back on it, I suppose I would have laughed too if our situations had been reversed and the delinquent duck had attacked my buddy. But it hadn't, and I was too angry to see the funny side of anything. So I threw the duck straight at Willy's head.

I'll say this for Willy the C – his reflexes are good. I mean, when we used to play in the Park he was always the best on the never-snaps, and he always won when we played ballgames with the seniors. And it was his reflexes that saved him now.

He rolled back, both legs jerking out straight. He caught the duck – which must have weighed about five kilos, by the way – a hefty kick. It whizzed through the air. From this point on, everything that happened was a pure accident. I swear it. I mean, I had to throw the duck 'cos I lost my temper, and Willy _had_ to kick it aside otherwise it'd have probably caved his skull in. I've already made that clear to the Judges. They say it doesn't matter. They say _I_ caused the accident, and Willy was a major accessory. So that's that. There's no quarrelling with a Judge's judgement.

Anyway, like I was saying, Willy kicks out and the robo-duck goes flying. Right at the crowd that was hurriedly forming around us. You don't need me to tell you how quickly that happens when something out of the ordinary is going on. And of course, you don't need me to tell you that there was a trouble-maker in the crowd. Every crowd has one, a do-gooder, a bigmouth who wants to interfere and clear things up for everybody.

In this particular crowd it happened to be a skinny runt wearing the insignia of the Dennis Tanner Citi-Def.

'All right, all right,' he loudmouthed. 'Let me through here...'

He broke off and screamed as the diverted duck, travelling about 20 kilometers an hour, hit him slap in the jaw.

A lot of people would say it was his own fault. For a start, he was a Tanner Blocker so he didn't really have any right to be in _our_ Block Park (he was visiting a relative, it turned out.) And then he was a Citi-Def member. Let me tell you, these Citizen Defence Corps creeps are all the same – they're so full of themselves and their responsible work, they'll interfere with _anything_. Huh! Where were the Citi-Defs during the war with East-Meg One, that's what I'd like to know! I mean, Citi-DefXXXXXXXXXXXCENSOREDXXXXXXXXXXXCENSOREDXXXXXXXXXXXCENSOREDXXXXXX.

'Aaaaaaagh!' The Dennis Tanner Blocker screamed.

'Kwaak!' squawked the robo-duck. Its neck had snapped on contact with the Tanner Blocker's face, and its voke-box must have been knocked out of action. This was its final Kwaak.

And it was that strangled Kwaak that brought me to my senses. My anger vanished as quick as it had appeared – to be replaced by a queasy feeling in my gut so strong I nearly retched. Fear. Fear for what me and Willy had done. Fear for what the consequences would be.

Willy was scrambling to his feet now and he didn't need to speak for me to know he felt exactly the same. 'Cos the Tanner Blocker was lying very still on the plasti-grass, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. A girl stooped beside him, shaking her head like she was stunned.

'He – he's dead,' she gasped. 'The – the duck must've broken his neck!'

The duck in question, now completely headless, was flapping round in silent circles like a top-notch boinger, agiley avoiding the couple of giggling senior citizens who were trying to catch it.

I glanced again at Willy and our eyes locked. I could almost smell his fear. A Blocker was dead – a robo-duck was badly damaged – and even though it was an accident, we knew who was going to get stuck with the blame. US!

Panic swept over me in an icy wave. 'Get outta here,' a voice inside me seemed to shriek. 'Move! Get away! Run!'

**JUDGED**

My blood felt as cold as a freezipop, and I lost all control. My shaking legs started to run, and I couldn't do nothing to stop them. I mean, I didn't want to run away; the real me wanted to stay and explain everything to the Judges who would soon be on the scene. It was the panic that made me run, not me.

(I tried telling the Judges that too, but it didn't make any difference. Evidently every citizen is responsible for his own actions and reactions, unless he's a Futsie in which case Future Shock gets the blame.)

'Let's move,' I yelled, and Willy – his mouth hanging open like he'd just seen Conrad Conn in person – came hurtling up the plasti-grass slope behind me.

We hadn't gone more than twenty meters when a security robot came buzzing over the brow of the low hill and braked to a halt in front of us. 'Stop!' its voke-box blared. 'Stop! Stop!'

And like a mugh, Willy the C stopped.

I dodged past it, then hesitated. 'Judges have been summoned,' the robot was saying. 'Citizens should not leave the area until they arrive.'

My heart was hammering like a bike cannon on full blast. If we were still there when the Judges hit the scene, they'd nab us for sure. Too many citizens had witnessed the incident– and now this security job would have our images on its vid-tapes. We'd be identified as the perps, and we'd be _judged_.

'It's no good, Milton,' Willy announced wearily, and his resigned, scared voice sounded like it was my own conscience talking. 'Judges are coming. We'll never get away. Let's just give ourselves up, and they might go easy on us. Though they probably won't,' he added as an afterthought.

If I'd been in my right mind, I'd have listened to him. But panic was still surging through me, and the roaring in my ears blocked out the voice of reason. I had to get away from there – get outside the Block, lose myself in the millions of citizens swarming round the City's streets.

The security robot moved towards me, raising its arms. I ignored it. Everybody knows that every robot in town is programmed so's it can never hurt a human being. All a security droid is good for is hollering _Judge_!

I took off again, and ran full pelt down the other side of the slope. A couple of citizens dived out of my path – luckily for them. And me, I suppose. I gave a sigh of relief when I saw I was headed directly for the Block Park's Buggy Park, the plasticon wayby where those citizens too tired, poor or lazy to walk from their apartments could park their vehicles.

They ain't much, these Block buggies – just a meter-square box with a tiny hover-engine fitted, big enough to carry a couple of people to the Block's remoter areas.

But to me, the buggies spelled freedom.

A guy with a biotronic arm was just starting his buggy up when my crazy run brought me skidding to a halt beside him. He looked up in surprise – just in time to see my fist hammer out at him. It hurt me almost as much as it hurt him. I sucked at my knuckles as I pushed his unconscious form out of the buggy-box and jumped in myself. I grabbed the easy-to-use control stick in my good hand and hauled back on it. The buggy shot skyward.

I levelled out about 20 meters up and glanced down to see what was happening. Willy the C was still on the slope, on his knees now, sobbing violently and beating his fists on the plasti-grass. The security robot was rolling in tight little circles, still yapping about Judges and stop. Knots of people were standing around watching, though a lot of adults were hurrying their kids away. They knew how easily trouble can spread when it starts, I guess.

And then I heard it, a keen high-pitched wail that sounded like it came straight from Hell. A Lawmaster siren. Judges in the Park! 'No, no – they mustn't get me!' I was gibbering to myself and my trembling hand just couldn't get the control stick to function. But I had to get out of there, find somewhere to be alone, somewhere I could clear my head, grab time to think about how this whole crazy mess had come about...

'Lawbreaker!' The Judge's voice cut through the confused babble of my thoughts like a lase-knife through munce. 'Give yourself up. You will not receive a second warning.'

There he was below me, sitting astride his massive Lawmaster as if he and the machine were part of each other. Even through my terror, my mind registered the calm authority he exuded, the somehow soothing menace of the Lawgiver gun in his right hand.

With an effort, I wrenched my eyes away from the awful, hypnotic sight of him. Looking up I saw blue sky... blue sky and freedom. I gave an involuntary yell – if I could just make it to those clouds up there before he fired, if I could just do it, I might be safe!

I yanked hard back on the control stick and the buggy responded with maximum elevation at maximum speed... and smashed with an ear-splitting crash into the plastic and metal wall underneath the deceptive holopix! The ground rushed up to meet me, then everything went black.

I woke up to find myself here, in a Juve-Cube medical bay. Seems I broke some ribs, fractured my leg and suffered bruising and concussion when the buggy hit the ground. The medico tells me I'll be as good as mended in a couple of days.

Small consolation. I've been judged and sentenced for a number of crimes: damaging Block property (one duck); manslaughter of the Tanner Blocker; conspiracy to leave the scene of a crime; assault on a citizen; piracy of a Block buggy and destruction of same; and damage to a very expensive holopix wall.

I'll be moved into a Juve-Cube soon as my injuries are healed. It'll be my home, and mine alone, for the next ten years.

I've tried to tell them it was all a mistake, an accident. I didn't mean any of it. I just lost my temper. But I guess the Judges hear that excuse pretty often, 'cos it hasn't made any difference. Ten years... it's a long time. I'll be 24 when I get out. With a little luck I'll be able to use my time to learn how to keep my temper in check. I won't make that mistake again.

You guys reading this don't know how lucky you are. You're free. And if you take my advice you'll stay free.

How? Simple, really. Just remember: even if you're provoked real bad, never lose your temper.

THE END

**JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: PASSED FOR CIVIC CONSUMPTION IN THE INTERESTS OF THE LAW**

**JUDGE HERSHEY: SWEET JUSTICE**

**By Neil Gaiman, _Judge Dredd Annual 1988_**

**THE MEET**

The Old Man had promised Jamie some sugar. All Jamie had to do was meet him in the alleyway under Stephen King Block, late on Saturday afternoon.

Jamie, who at seven considered himself quite old enough to cope with strange old men, wandered down there. He had hidden a table-knife in his sock, in case the Old Man started to turn nasty, and he had stolen a container from his mother's bathroom cabinet, in case the Old Man could come up with the stuff.

The Old Man –that was all the name he seemed to have – had lurked in the underpass for years; a raddled, grizzled old wreck with raw red eyes that stared nastily out of a dirt-etched face. If that was what sugar did to you, Jamie wasn't sure he wanted it... But the Old Man was undoubtedly an addict; while Jamie just wanted to try some sugar, just once, just to see what it was like. He knew he'd be able to cope.

The Old Man was standing in the shadows of the underpass, leaning by the wall, his mouldering coat seemingly a part of the garbage mound beside him. He was standing perfectly still.

'I'm here,' hissed Jamie, from ten paces away. You didn't get too close to the Old Man unless you had to – the smell was worse than the garbage.

The derelict said nothing, made no movement, just stared straight ahead with dry, papery eyes.

'I said I'm here. You said you'd have something for me...'

Something scared Jamie. Perhaps it was the rustling, a strange clicking and chittering that seemed to emanate from the figure of the Old Man; perhaps it was just his unnatural lack of movement. The boy grabbed an empty synthbeet can from the garbage pile, flung it at the Old Man, and turned on his heel, prepared to run.

There was the sound of soft tearing as the can hit the still figure and sank in. The Old Man's eyes jerked open, and as Jamie watched, two heavy black tears trickled down the Old Man's cheeks. Or at least, the boy thought they were tears, until they scuttled, on tiny insect legs, out of the light, into the man's hair.

Then Jamie started screaming.

When Judge Hershey found him, a quarter of an hour later, he was still standing there, staring at an old overcoat. Hershey had examined it; it contained the paper shell of what had once been a human being, and a number of stunted black spiders.

The Old Man was the third sugar user she had found like that that Saturday, and she didn't like it at all.

**BRIT-CIT BOUND**

It had taken eight hours to get clearance, eight hours during which Hershey prowled the Grand Hall of Justice corridors, inspected her equipment, reviewed the case files, and waited. She was quite prepared to verbally dissect anyone who so much as said hello, but no-one did, which made her even more irritable.

She thought of the perps vanishing into Brit-Cit like spiders scuttling into a garbage pile, and her lips tightened.

It was almost midnight when Chief Judge Silver called her into his office. 'I've spoken to the Brit-Cit Chief Judge, and the International Justice Council...'

'And?'

'And they want to talk to you, Hershey.'

Hershey flicked the hair out of her eyes impatiently. There were times when the thought of the International Justice Council, the cadre of Judges that administered matters of jurisdiction and international law, would have caused her a second of apprehension. Now she thought of...

(spiders)

...and a cold flame of anger burned inside her. She sat down, opposite the bank of screens, and said, 'Go ahead.'

The screens came to life; the top screen showed about half a dozen shadowy faces in helmets and uniforms of as many designs; Hershey could not make out any faces. The bottom screen showed a large man with a huge moon-face, a bronze lion on his shoulder, and a star-shaped beauty mark on his cheek. He was the first to speak:

'So you want to come to Brit-Cit, eh, Judge Hershey?' His accent was soft and strange.

'Yes, sir.'

'Nobody tell you we've got Judges of our own over here?'

'I know that... sir.'

'Don't you think we're capable of finding one little sugar dealer?'

Hershey took a deep breath. 'That's not the issue any more, _sir_. Have you looked at the records of this case?'

One of the figures on the top screen broke in. 'We've seen the records, Judge Hershey. What we query is the need for your involvement. Clute will undoubtedly be tracked down by Brit-Cit Judges...'

'With respect, sir,' broke in Hershey, 'this is _my_ case. I broke it. I had Clute identified, and I was there when those people started to... started to...' She paused. 'I think this is big. I think it could be a matter of planetary security. And there is nowhere that crummy little perp can hide, be it Brit-Cit or anywhere, I can't track him down and beat the truth from his lousy little hide! Does that answer your question, sir?'

But the top screen had gone blank. The Brit-Cit Chief Judge nodded at her, then his screen blanked out as well.

Hershey looked up at Silver. 'Well?'

'It was agreed in principle half an hour ago, but they wanted to get a look at you first. Get on your bike, Judge Hershey – you're going to Brit-Cit.'

She was out of the room before he finished the sentence.

**ARMOUR PIERCING LOOK**

Three hours later, Hershey saw the Silver Lions of Brit-Cit for the first time, as they loomed out of the neon night. A face flickered onto her Lawmaster's communicator.

'Judge Hershey? This is Judge Armour. Welcome to Brit-Cit. I'm half a klik ahead of you – lock your Lawmaster to mine and follow me to Scotland Yard.'

'Scotland... that's north Brit-Cit, right?'

'Uh, right. But Scotland Yard's the Justice Headquarters in south east Brit-Cit.'

'Oh.'

She flipped the Lawmaster onto remote, and followed the British Judge down the narrow Brit-Cit roads. Six lane highways. Hardly room to move.

Armour's face appeared on the screen. 'Never been to Brit-Cit before, huh?'

'No.'

'Well, I've never been to Mega-City, either, so I suppose we're equal. I did a shift on the Atlantic Plex, though. Worked with a few Mega-City One Judges. You know Dredd?'

'Yes.'

'Quite a Judge. Impressive sort of bloke.'

'Bloke?'

'Oh, uh, chap, uh, man. Person.'

'I see. Yes, he is.' Hershey sighed under her breath. She was only three hours from home; you would have thought they could have spoken English.

'Jolly good,' said Armour.

They pulled up in front of Scotland Yard. It was an impressive building compared to the blocks around it – few of them even half the size of a Mega-City Block – but Hershey found herself comparing it to the Grand Hall of Justice; in comparison it was poky and quaint. She climbed off the bike. Armour was waiting for her by the entrance, a giant of a man with a black velvet star stuck on his chin. She removed her helmet and shook out her hair.

Armour's jaw dropped. He grinned. 'Gosh! Nobody told me you were going to be so attractive. I can see this is going to be a pleasure.'

Hershey had perfected a number of stares over the years for people who attempted to treat her as anything other than a Judge. They ranged from pitying, to the chill, through to the arctic. Now she let loose a look that was positively sub-polar; Armour gave an involuntary shiver and looked away. He tried to smile once more, but his facial muscles seemed to have forgotten how. She walked in to the British Hall of Justice, and the Brit-Cit Judge followed her in.

They travelled up in the elevator in silence, until Hershey said, 'That _thing_ on your chin. What's it for?'

'It's a beauty patch. They're very fashionable. In Brit-Cit.'

'"A Judge,"' quoted Hershey from memory, '"should be clean, upright, and stern. No more. We are not in a beauty contest."'

'Judge's Manual?'

She shook her head. 'Dredd.'

'Oh.'

The Brit-Cit Chief Judge, whose Brit Territories' flag name badge told Hershey his name was Jones, was sitting in a large easy chair. He looked up as Hershey came in. She gave him her slightly cold look (which produced a sensation not unlike a fridge door being left open), and stood by his desk.

'We've never had anything like this before, lass,' said Chief Judge Jones. 'Outside Judges coming in, like. I hope we're all going to get along.'

Hershey raised an eyebrow. 'I'm looking for Clute. Severian Clute. He's a small-time Brit-Cit sugar dealer. He's positively identified as the man who sold each of the... victims their sugar. By the time we had a positive ID on him he had taken the zoom-tube back to Brit-Cit.

'Whatever he's selling, isn't sugar. It looks like pure crystals, apparently tastes like the stuff. But it's deadly. Probably alien. I want him brought back to Mega-City One, and I want the source – whatever it is – of this stuff put out of action for good. On that basis I need the full co-operation of the Brit-Cit Judges.'

Chief Judge Jones got up, revealing himself as quite overweight, something that Hershey had never seen in a Judge before. He stared out of the window. The lights of Brit-Cit flickered and twinkled beneath them.

'I take it that I will get that co-operation, sir?'

Jones didn't look at her. 'Well,' he said. 'You do, and you don't. It's not that we don't want to give you all the help we can. But you're a Mega-City One Judge. And this is Brit-Cit. We do things differently here.

'I'm assigning you to Judge Armour. You two can work together on this case. You can use Brit-Cit Justice Department Facilities. _But_ while you're here you take orders from Armour. And from me. And none of this charging into places, Lawgiver blazing, damaging property and putting the wind up our citizens! You aren't in Mega-City One now, lass.'

'No,' said Hershey. 'I can see that I'm not.'

'Right then,' said Chief Judge Jones. 'That's all that needs to be said then. Good luck.

'Just remember. We've got a saying over here. _Softly softly catchee perp_. Right then. Good morning.'

**TV NASTIES**

Clute had done five years in an Iso-Cube when he was twenty. The hologram of him taken then showed Hershey a weasely little man, short, prematurely balding, with little cherubic lips.

Since then he had been on the move. Severian Clute was just one of the half-dozen names he had used, a minor confidence man and compulsive liar who had informed on the Brit-Cit underworld just enough to keep in circulation. No record of sugar dealing until six weeks back, when he had left his job handling transit passengers at the Space Port, abandoned his apartment, and gone underground.

There were no leads as to his current whereabouts.

Hershey sat in her hotel room, and reviewed the files again and again, hoping to pry some clue from Clute's shifty little face, from the list of dates and places. No go. She paced the room. Flipped on her communicator.

'Armour? Hershey here. Got anything?'

''Fraid not. I'll contact you as soon as I have.'

She sighed. 'I can't sit around forever! I'll go nuts!'

'I'll call you as soon as there's _any_ word. Really, in the meantime why don't you watch the box?'

'Huh?' Why couldn't the man speak in English?

'The television. Armour out.'

Hershey activated the television, flipped the channels. BCB1 was showing a historical drama about the Second Elizabethan Era. A woman named Thatcher – played by a remarkably attractive young actress – whom Hershey took to be the Chief Judge of that period, was riding her horse down a freeway, in company with an army of punk rockers.

' _If Hitler is to be defeated,_ ' she told her troops, ' _we must declare this to be The Summer of Love!_ '

Hershey flipped channels.

' _Don't move perpy, 'cos I am the Law!_ ' shouted a wild-eyed young man. There was a burst of canned laughter. ' _It's Dudd!_ ' said someone. ' _Don't talk to me about crime in Brit-Cit. I left my bicycle by Tony Hancock Block last week, and when I got back that evening it was still there!_ ' ' _The bicycle?_ ' ' _No, blah-face! The Block!_ ' More hysterical laughter.

Hershey thought seriously about heading down to Brit-Cit Broadcasting and arresting the lot of them. Instead she turned the television off.

'Be a good citizen,' a recorded message implored her. 'Please destroy your television set now. Support local obsolescence.'

Hershey had never destroyed public property in her life. She walked to the far side of her hotel room, took out her Lawgiver, and fired at the TV set.

Her communicator crackled.

'Hershey? It's Armour here–! What's that noise? I thought I heard a shot!'

'It's just the television,' she explained.

'Oh gosh – it sounded so real! Anyway, one of our Judges thinks he may have a lead. Meet you downstairs.'

As she left the room a new television set slid up from the floor.

There was another Judge waiting with Armour, whom he introduced as Judge Pratchett. Hershey had never seen a Judge with a beard before. She found it vaguely obscene. Judge Pratchett was holding a middle-aged woman with a runny nose; he had her arm twisted as far up her back as it would go without actually breaking anything.

'Now then, chummy,' said Pratchett, 'tell this Judge what you told me. And none of your lip this time, sunshine, or I'll add on another year to your sentence.'

'All I know,' squealed the terrified woman, 'is that Clute's been hanging around Speaker's Corner. Near the Legalise Sugar stand. I bought some stuff off him yesterday.'

'Have you taken any yet?' said Hershey quickly.

'Oh no. I was saving it for a cup of tea. There's a bloke I know said he could put a few tea bags my way, you see.'

'Oh dear, oh dear,' said Judge Pratchett, cheerfully. 'Well, well, well, tea as well is it? You're a regular little den of iniquity, my girl. It looks like you're going to be helping us with our enquiries for quite some time to come, eh?'

Hershey got on her Lawmaster. 'Speaker's Corner?'

'Follow me.' They headed off into the misty Brit-Cit morning, Judge Pratchett's muffled 'Mind how you go, now!' echoing after them.

**ROCKS IN CONCERT**

Hyde Park was a smallish car park, not more than a hundred and fifty storeys high, covering less than five square miles. The top floor had been turned into some kind of park. In the centre a Rock Group – an alien species of intelligent granite, top musicians all, on a galaxy-wide tour – were being hooked up to huge loudspeakers. According to the painted legend on their sides they were called the Growling Stones. Hershey had heard a little rock music in Mega-City, but didn't like it.

In one corner a knot of people had gathered.

'That's Speaker's Corner,' said Judge Armour. 'We'll leave the Lawmasters here by the gate, and go over on foot. We'll be less conspicuous.'

As they drew closer the wind blew snatches of speech over to Hershey. She was not sure she believed what she was hearing.

'...of course Judges are evil. The system is an evil, corrupting system...'

'...all right, so if you can grow your own tobacco, what's wrong with smoking it – in your own home of course...'

'...sure we're robots. But why should we be treated as second class citizens? A neuronic brain is...'

'...so what's wrong with a little mutie-bashing, I should like to know? I mean they aren't like us...'

The speakers were all men and women (and in two cases robots) who stood on chairs and boxes, in the middle of the crowd. Around them people cheered or heckled, made suggestions or cracked jokes, moving from speaker to speaker by osmosis.

Hershey stopped. 'These people... what they're _saying_! Shall we round them up now? They'll get ten years in an Iso-Cube.'

Armour shook his head. 'This is Speaker's Corner. They can say what they like.'

'But... it's seditious. And all the people listening to them...'

'It doesn't matter,' said Judge Armour. 'Nobody's paying any attention. It's a game.'

Hershey could not believe her ears. 'I think you British Judges are _crazy_. They – they're _breaking_ the _Law!_ '

Armour shrugged. 'It doesn't matter, Judge Hershey,' he said softly. 'They can do what they like. It won't change anything.' He pointed to the far corner. 'Over there. The Legalise Sugar speaker. You move in from the left, I'll hit the right. Keep an eye out for Clute.'

'...and what they say is, they tell us that sugar is _harmful!_ They tell us it _rots our teeth!_ They tell us it _burns out the pancreas!_ Well my brothers and sisters, that's a load of tommyrot! I have evidence, I say _evidence_ , that far from being harmful, sugar is actually _beneficial_ to the human body! And I say this...' But what else the Sugar Speaker had to say Hershey never found out. She spotted a familiar face in the crowd around the stand, a sweating, shifty, ferrety little face, and shouted:

'Clute! _Freeze!_ '

The man ran for it, which, in retrospect, was something of a mistake. When a Judge tells you to freeze, you freeze. He ran, not for the gate, but towards the Stones in the centre of the park, through the crowds, with Armour and Hershey following.

Clute elbowed and kicked, ducked and weaved, clambered on top of the largest of the boulders, then, pulling a gun from his jacket, he pointed it down at the huge, round rock beneath him.

'If you Judges come one step closer – I-I'll vap'rise Mig'Yeagger here! Now... n-now you don't want to cause an interplanetary stink, do you? D-DO YOU?'

Hershey weighed the alternatives quickly. She could get her Lawmaster to hit him from the back... she and Armour could double team... she could try and stun him before he had a chance to move...

At the end of the day she didn't know which of these she would have picked. She was quite sure she could have disarmed Clute in seconds. That was why she was a Judge. But whatever Hershey could have done would have been less surprising to the crowd, and to Clute, than what actually happened.

The stone rolled.

Rigellian rocks, being a silicate life form, are not known for their speed of action. This one, however, realising its very existence was in danger, wobbled slightly, then rolled over completely, crushing Clute's leg, and trapping it underneath its huge and weighty bulk. Clute dropped the gun and screamed.

Armour and Hershey walked over to the rock, and to its victim.

'I'm not talking,' sobbed Clute. 'And don't think about mind-probing me, 'cos I've had treatment. I bin done. You'll never get a word out of me!'

'They are terribly unsafe things, rocks,' remarked Armour to Hershey, apparently ignoring Clute's speech.

'Terribly unsafe,' she echoed. 'Positively precarious.'

'Why, I wouldn't be at all surprised if that one didn't tip over completely... totally, _horribly_ crushing our Mister Severian here.'

'Crushed into mince,' agreed Hershey, brightly. They began to walk back the way they had come.

' _WAIT!_ ' screamed Clute.

The Judges' bikes were riding through the crowds towards them. The rocks vibrated the triad of D sharp minor. The crowd applauded.

'Wait... please...' begged Clute. 'Listen. The sugar. It's in the basement of Ennio Morricone Block. But get me out of here. It's a retinal lock – keyed to my eyeprints. You need me to open it. Get me out. Please! _Get me out!_ '

Hershey looked at Armour and Armour looked at Hershey. They turned back.

'Please,' said Hershey to the rock star. It rolled back. Armour picked Clute up, and threw him over his shoulder. 'Let's go, jerk,' he muttered.

**THE WHITE STUFF**

The basement of Ennio Morricone Block smelt peculiar, although Hershey didn't recognise the smell. Clute couldn't stand, so Hershey picked him up and held his face against the microcamera. It scanned his eyeball, compared the tracery of blood vessels to the pattern on its records, and auto-unlocked the door. So far, at least, the little perp had been telling the truth.

'I-I'll wait out here, me leg is giving me gyp. You all go in...'

The smell was so strong it almost knocked her out. A high, sweet smell unlike anything she had known before. The room – and it was huge – was piled high with white crystals, hills and mountains of sugar. A white expanse. And the smell was so sweet. Hershey wanted to throw herself on the ground, to bury her face in the stuff, lap it up and taste the candied flavour flooding through every nerve. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Armour falling to his knees, digging his gloves into the white drift.

Something twitched behind a hillock. Whatever it was, it was enough to snap her out of the state she was in. She snapped down her respirator, and kicked the sugar out of Armour's hand.

'Judge Armour! Use your respirator!'

He reached up a trembling arm and fumbled it down.

'I don't know what come over me,' his voice echoed in her helmet.

'This stuff isn't sugar,' said Hershey. 'We've known that all along. But I think we're about to find out where it came from...'

And then the thing came over the hill.

Seen at that size the resemblance to a spider was decreased. It had seven legs, and dragged a hairy, bulbous body between them. A network of tiny eyes circled its body; at the front were mandibles, behind it a stream of white crystals was trickling down.

It was enormous.

Armour sighted his Lawgiver. She put out an arm. 'No, don't shoot.'

'Huh?'

'It's intelligent. I recognise the life-form. A Sakishira. It's non-aggressive... I saw some seven years ago, when I went extragalactic. This one is sick.

'Armour, put out a call to Justice Central, or whatever you people call it here. Tell them we need an alien handler. And a truck to move the thing. And an alien medic, if you've got such a thing in Brit territories – otherwise call Mega-City One and ask them to send Sturgeon over. He's the best we've got.'

Armour began to put in the calls. Hershey walked over to the spider-creature. Her Allspeak was rusty – it had never been good – but she managed. 'You-ill-make-better-thing-come.' The alien shuddered, and lay down.

Hershey walked over to where Clute was lying.

'There used to be an insect called the bee. Almost extinct these days. Not enough plants around. Bees made a synthetic sugar in their bodies called honey. Food for their young. When you saw this alien come in on the shuttle point, trickling sugar, you thought it was something like that. That right, creep?'

The man nodded. Sugar crystals were sticking to his sweat-soaked forehead.

'So you kidnapped the thing, and dragged her down here, and locked her up. Must have taken a lot of work. But you thought you'd made your fortune.

'There must be twenty million creds worth of sugar down here, eh, creep? You thought you were printing your own money.'

'You're smart, Judge, for a–'

'Shut up, creep. But you were wrong. This stuff isn't food. It isn't sugar. It's eggs. That's how these things breed. They lay this stuff, animals eat it, and it transforms the cellular structure of the animals into little duplicates of Big Momma over there.

'You've been sugar dealing, kidnapping an intelligent being and killing people, creep. You want to know what the sentence for that is?'

Clute didn't respond. His face seemed waxen, papery. Something pulsed rhythmically in his cheek. The skin broke, and tiny black legs clawed at the air.

'How's our prisoner?' called Armour.

Hershey shrugged. 'He's gone to pieces,' she said. 'Must have been sampling his own merchandise.'

Then the clean-up squad arrived, and it was all over.

**EPILOGUE**

Chief Judge Silver sent for her as soon as she arrived back in Mega-City One.

'You did all right,' he told her. 'The International Justice Council were pleased. So was Chief Judge Jones: if their man had shot the Sakishira it could have provoked an intergalactic incident. And we've an antidote to the sugar for anyone we can get it to in time. No point in having them turn into little spiders in the Iso-Cubes.

'So what did you think of Brit-Cit?'

Hershey was expressionless. 'I'm pleased to be home, sir.'

'Yes, I hear they do things differently over there. Still, they get the job done. That will be all, Hershey.'

She left.

Silver looked down at the paper on his desk. It was a request, from the Brit-Cit Chief Judge, that Judge Hershey be assigned to the Brit-Cit Judge force for a six-month tour of duty, while they sent a Brit-Cit Judge to Mega-City One. ' _To_ _foster understanding and the exchange of ideas and techniques_ ' as Jones put it.

Silver thought of Hershey spending six months in Brit-Cit. And Silver smiled.

**JUDGE ANDERSON: DEAR DIARY**

**By Peter Milligan, _2000 AD Annual 1988_**

21 JUNE 2109

Today is going to be really boring.

If my flashes are correct, and knowing my luck most of them will be, I'll get caught in a traffic snarl-up on my way to H.Q., and then I'll get cornered by that fat greaseball from records, Ned Kamen. I think Kamen has probably got a portrait of himself somewhere, a portrait that stays looking young and beautiful while Kamen himself is the embodiment of all the slimy and devious facets of his slimy and devious life.

Sorry, are you getting the impression I don't like him? You know I have nothing against ugly people. They can't help it and, hey, there are probably one or two people in the world who don't go a bundle on me. No. Just because he's got a complexion like the Sea of Tranquility and his hands are like two slabs of greasy bacon and to smell his breath you'd think his alimentary canal was linked to the city's sewer system doesn't mean to say that he isn't a nice human being. It's just that he isn't a nice human being, and he keeps cornering me and trying to run his not-nice-human-being's hands all over me. And then–

Hold on. I'm getting something else. Drokk! Someone's going to break into my locker. I'll go to the locker at about noon and a find a spare uniform plus some other odds and ends missing. Where are Security going to be, for Grud's sake?

Make a note, Anderson. Keep your eye on your locker.

The rest of the day is a bit confused. I think there'll be further outbreaks of violence between rival factions of the Philosophers. A gang of young Existentialists, aided by some disaffected Hedonists, will ambush and kick drokk out of a passing mob of Logical Positivists. Thanks to this flash, there'll be a squad of Riot Judges there to _really_ give the Philosophers something to think about. Tsch. All this in-fighting amongst the city's thinkers is enough to make you a cynic; except that all the Cynics are in jail after they finally killed off the Stoics last year. Of course, the Cynics were the biggest gang of all, Mega-City One philosophers having a tendency, for some reason, to embrace that particular creed. And as for the Stoics, well, they didn't even bother trying to defend themselves when the Cynics attacked them. They just gritted their teeth, accepted it all as their fate, and were subsequently mashed to a pulp.

22 JUNE 2109

I was right. Yesterday **was** really boring.

Forewarned by my flash I tried to avoid the Elephant Man (otherwise known as Ned Kamen) all morning. I saw his eyes, his cold patient eyes like black pebbles set in blancmange, following me around, waiting for the moment when he could trap me. I was hoping yesterday morning's flash was incorrect; I'm not infallible.

I'd successfully dodged him for about an hour when Omar, head of Psi Division, passed by. I told him about my flash concerning the Philosophy riot, on Zeitgeist Boulevard.

'Okay, Anderson. Log it with Kamen and then get moving.'

Trying to avoid a precog can be like sliding slow-motion downhill in a car without brakes. As quickly as possible, I gave the flash to Blubber Boy – but his blubber belied his agility. Before I could exit, he'd cut off my escape route.

'Anderson,' he breathed, 'When are we going to have that dinner?'

' _What_ dinner, Kamen?'

The smell of distant mudflats had reached my nostrils. I pushed past him, and felt a clammy claw crawl onto my shoulder.

'The dinner you're going to cook me round your place, of course.'

'Do you know what I like about you, Ned?'

Ned looked at me with wide eyes, his lip muscles flexing into something resembling a smile.

'No. What do you like about me, Anderson?'

'Nothing,' I replied, bringing up my right knee.

I hadn't wanted to report him for hassling me – Psi Division is understaffed as it is – but enough is enough, right?

Well, during all this excitement, I'd forgotten about my locker. By the time I got there it was noon, and the cupboard was bare. Security knew nothing about it; they said they hadn't seen anyone but me go near the locker all day.

The next time those guys call themselves security I'm going to sue them under the old Trade Description Act.

My philosophy flash was pretty accurate. Actually, it was disaffected _Pragmatists_ , not Hedonists, who teamed up with the Existentialists, but who's counting?

As for today, I see yet another snarl-up en route to H.Q.; I see Ned Kamen, after a brief trip to Med Bay, putting in for a transfer to Mutant Control Division, where he will feel more at home; I see a few petty crimes that I'll log, and I see myself walking into an exclusive uptown apartment and shooting a businessman's head off.

Hold on. Look at that again, Anderson. Grud, that's heavy. I just walk straight into his room, lift my Lawgiver, and pebble-dash the wall with his frontal lobes.

Now it's going a bit hazy, like looking through a dirty window. I see myself, walking... walking a little strangely. I go up to this man, another businessman I think, in another uptown apartment. What am I going to do? Shoot him too? He puts something onto the table. A case. He opens the case. Inside the case is a lot of money. A hell of a lot of money. I shut the case, shake the man's hand, and I walk out of the room with the money.

'Nice job, Anderson,' says the man. Am I going crazy? Am I a killer? Or am I both?

What I mean is, do I have another side to my personality? Beneath this good-natured, highly cultivated, mild-mannered exterior does there lurk a Judge Hyde character? And if there does, can she please go live somewhere else?

Let's try and piece this thing together. I have a flash about emptying a guy's cranium of all its grey matter. But during the day, I have no conscious awareness that I'm doing such a thing. That's the truth. As far as I'm concerned, I did _not_ shoot that man. But that man **was** shot. Oh yes. Took me hours to piece the flash together, but finally I located the address where the 'killing' was to happen. Only I arrived too late. There was a Lawgiver lying on the floor. I picked up the gun and at that moment some other residents came into the room, just like a corny old vid where the hero picks up the bloodied knife and is holding it over the bloodied corpse as the screaming witnesses appear.

'See anyone enter the building in the last five minutes?' I asked. The residents shrugged their shoulders and looked bored. Seeing a Judge shoot down a perp in Mega-City One is no big deal I guess.

'Only _you_ , Judge. Only you.'

Weirder and weirder. I went to the armoury with the Lawgiver that shot the businessman. Seems it was one I called for – _personally_ – a few hours before the homicide. So. I had the gun that shot the man, I was the only person the other residents saw going into the businessman's apartment, and I had a flash in which I saw myself divorcing his cerebral cortex from his spine. Doesn't take a genius to work out who shot him, does it, Anderson? You're flipping out, girl.

Or else...

Let's concentrate on today. A few magazine-sellers hacked to an inch of their lives on Geller Strasse; illegal Scottish coffee-drinking party at the Loch Ness Cafe. Small time. Ignore it. Look harder. Ah, there I am. I'm walking into a club, a low-grade joint called Slimelight. I'm going up to the owner. He's smiling, not because he knows me but because I'm a Judge, as I lift my Lawgiver and point it at his face. A second later he has nothing left to smile with.

Not exactly following Judge procedure there, Anderson.

What next? Ned Kamen will eat his lunch opposite me. Forget it. Forget Kamen, Anderson. You're getting confused. _There_ I am. Walking in the business sector. I open the door to an office. I see Kamen dribbling spaghetti down his chin.

No! Concentrate. I walk into the office, up to a man sitting behind a desk. It's the same man I saw earlier, the one who gave me the case of money. Now he gives me another case. Of money.

Back to H.Q., Kaman's been denied transfer request to Mutant Control, probably on the grounds of not being pretty enough. Hell. Look harder, Anderson. Don't get side-tracked. There I am. I'm at my locker, putting something into my locker, locking the door to my locker, leaving my locker.

So what's in my locker?

24 JUNE 2109

Money, of course. Money I'd been paid for scratching the businessman and the club owner. The owner of Slimelight had been found dead that morning. I don't remember getting out of bed and doing it, but who can say?

It's well-documented that people can have split personalities, the left hand doing what the right hand doesn't know about, so to speak. I've never thought I could be one of those people, but then I suppose no-one ever does. Logically speaking, Psis should be good candidates for mental shenanigans, being as they are like highly-strung thoroughbred racehorses. It's scary, though, to think that part of me might be this monster, shooting people and getting paid for it, and knowing that as a Judge I'd be able to go where I liked and no-one would ask questions.

It got to the stage during the day when I really thought I was going crazy. Maybe I should pack it all in, report to Psycho Tube, and spend the rest of my days playing Napoleon in a straight-jacket. But I won't because I think, hey, I'm _Judge Anderson_ : I'm capable of beating anything. Ego, I know. And when a Judge's ego overshadows their ability for rational, objective reasoning, they're in trouble.

And so I decided not to tell Omar about all this, not just yet. Of course, it wouldn't be long before the authorities started taking a closer look at me, and if they found those creds in my locker I'd be in a radiation zone without a rad cloak, if you know what I mean. But, well, something was telling me to hold on, and in my line of business you learn to listen to your little voices.

As for today, I'm going to spend it in a Flash-Cube, a nice quiet place where Psis go to let their thoughts run free without distraction. At the moment my mind is like a thick soup; but there's too much gravy and not enough meat.

Hold it. Now I see myself getting somewhere. I see myself running from the Flash-Cube and contacting Omar. I see a word. No, some letters. _LDP_. I see myself at the end of the day, smiling.

But now I can see myself lying on the floor, bleeding.

You're getting confused again, Anderson. Don't you think it's a little unlikely that you'll end the day smiling and bleeding? In my book, those two phenomena have always been mutually incompatible.

And what's this? Oh, I see myself writing this diary, tomorrow morning (as you know I work on an old-fashioned word-processor, i.e. _you_ ). I'm writing away when suddenly the old machine breaks down. Again, if the previous evening I've been spread-eagled on the floor and pumping out my life's blood, it's unlikely that I'll be Dear Diarying.

Hmm. Maybe I'd better get to work. I've a feeling there's a long hard day ahead of me, and this is getting nowhere.

25 JUNE 2109

I was sitting in the Flash-Cube, just trying to clear my mind of all the rubbish (Kamen, snarl-ups, Philosophers, that sort of thing), when a picture of myself began to form. Oh, oh, I thought. Another killing. I was walking through a kind of mist, though in real life this wasn't mist; my mind's eye just wasn't focussing properly. I tried to get a tab on a time or a place but couldn't so I looked closer at myself. Was this me or was this the monster that dwelt within me? I looked closer still. A gust of wind lifted my hair a few inches from the nape of my neck, and there it was. So small only a magnifying glass, or a Psi, would have spotted it. _LDP_. And then I remembered what LDP stood for and I knew what was happening.

I must have been crazy to think I was actually going crazy.

I reported to Omar. Gave him the whole thing – my flashes, the killings, the money in my locker. Within the hour a prisoner had been taken from his Iso-Cube and was being interviewed by Judges. I was on my way with two other Judges to an address in Pravda Mansions. The man being interviewed was a plastic surgeon whom I'd been instrumental in putting away a few years back.

He called himself Leonardo da Peckham, and like most artists he signed his work with his initials.

Pravda Mansions is such a tough area that even the rats go round in pairs. I had two Judges as back-up, and we all warily entered the run-down residence of Leonardo's daughter, Mona. Mona was the only member of Leonardo's family who had not been slung behind bars.

Scattered on the table I saw some of the stuff that had been taken from my locker. As I was looking at it a floorboard creaked behind me. I turned, gun at the ready, but saw nothing there... just a bookcase with no books, an old chair, a full-length mirror. I relaxed.

And then the full-length mirror started shooting.

I fell to the ground, rolled, came up, fired. I am trained to do this without thinking. Someone shoots at you and you switch to automatic pilot, which is a lot quicker than manual control.

Mona lay on the floor. I say Mona, but really she was _me_. That was the creepiest moment I ever had; shooting your own double and then looking at her, dead at your feet. I bent down, studied the features I knew so well, the blemishes, the intricate contours of the nose, the eyes, the ears. It was perfect. Even then it was hard to believe that this really wasn't me. And then a crazy thought flashed through my head. What if this _is_ Anderson?

What if I really am Mona?

That way, as they say, madness lies.

This, then, is the story: three of Leonardo's sons had gone loco in the Cubes and were now confined to the psycho tubes, with intelligence ratings slightly lower than a well-cooked cabbage. So when Leonardo escaped about four months ago he knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to get his own back on me; he wanted to drive me crazy. To that end he operated on his daughter, Mona. Then he gave himself up, knowing that no perp on the run can last for long.

Four months later Mona's scars had healed, and she started working on me. She stole the things from my locker so that I would be psychically linked to what she was wearing and carrying. My mind would travel to them, and once there my mind would accept Mona as myself. She used her likeness to me to get the gun, to plant the money in my locker, and to get into the right places to kill those people. And it was all working out fine. I'd started to believe I was cracking up, started to wonder if a beast lurked within me. And then just one little mistake caught them out.

The problem was, Mona was Leonardo's masterpiece. He excelled himself, it was possibly the greatest piece of flesh sculpture the world had ever seen, and Leonardo's ego simply could not resist signing it.

An ego that overshadows rational, objective thought might be dangerous in a Judge, but luckily for us it's just as troublesome for a perp.

What else is there? Oh yeah... The creep who gave Mona the hit money in my flashes was actually an out-of-work actor she'd hired. His next appearance will be in the Cubes, and it'll probably run and run for about thirty years. The money in the flashes was what Mona stole from the people she shot.

By the way, the hackings on Geller Strasse were cleared up; the illegal coffee drinkers escaped; Kamen is suing the department for unfair dismissal; but it looks as though my flash got it wrong when it said my old word processor would break down. I've been writing on it all morning and it's working just fi

**RADICAL CHEEK**

**By Peter Milligan, _Law in Order: Judge Dredd Annual 1990_**

'Okay, Max,' snarled Judge Dredd, grabbing me roughly by the umbrella. 'I'm pulling you and all the Normals in.'

'Hey, Dreddio!' I said. 'Don't blow my zeal with that zany spiel. This is my big day! This is the day of the Max Normal Mega-City Fashion Show! Rest the jest, Man. I mean, take a dive with that jive and let a cool cat stay alive!'

Hey, listen. Maybe I should start at the beginning. That's the _normal_ thing to do, is it not? I'm Max Normal. I'm the King of Kool, the chap with the rap, and I'd arrived at one of my MAX NORMAL BOUTIQUES only to see that Dredd and some of the other Judges were already there. All my staff and a flare of Normal shoppers were either lined up against a wall or being thrown into Crim-Wagons. Was this a nightmare or was this a nightmare? Later that day I was going to have my biggest fashion bash yet, the Max Normal Mega-City Fashion Show, featuring a new line of thirty-inch flared pin-striped suits, with matching handkerchiefs and bowler hats, all the fab gear it takes to make a Norm top of the form, and here was Dredd laying down some krazy karma, saying how he was going to throw my hide inside a Crim-Cube. Get ye behind me, mindblower!

'For old times' sakes, Dredd baby,' I said. 'Give me the rundown on what's come down. Give Max the facts.'

As you know, old Dredd has got a soft spot for Maxie. It's a soft spot about two inches below the solar plexus, and this is where he hit me, with his elbow.

'Not this time, Normal. Your followers are a public menace.'

I hit the ground. But I hit it with style. They don't call me the Sheik of Chic for nothing. They wouldn't call me the Sultan of _Soigné_ if I couldn't take a little blow down below.

'Freeze out, Daddy. Just give me a sign of what's in line. Maybe I can give the long arm of the law a hand!'

Dredd pulled me to my feet and dragged me away from the boutique, then he threw me against a wall and pushed his face so close to mine I could see my reflection in his visor. My reflection looked as good as ever. It's nice to know you can still count on _some_ things.

'Okay, Normal,' grunted Dredd, without moving his lips. 'I'll give you one chance. Overnight there has been an outbreak of criminal activity by Max Normal fashion followers. Bank jobs, muggings, vandalism; you name it, those punks have done it all. All the Normalite punks are wearing your clothes, Normal. They're your followers. If you don't clean it up in five hours, I'm closing down your boutiques and making the possession of flared trousers a criminal offence.'

With that, Dredd elbowed me once more for luck in that soft spot beneath my solar plexus and sped off on his bike. If it weren't for his dress sense, that Judge would be a mile of style.

So this was the score with the law. Some renegade Normals were causing a stir and if I didn't want to end up in stir myself I had to get to the bottom of it and come out on top. The future of flared trousers rested in my hands. I had five hours to stop my cool crown slipping. I had five hours to save the Max Normal Mega-City Fashion Show. I knew, in the name of everything pin-striped, that I couldn't afford to lose.

So I lost no time in going round the boutiques and fashion stores. I flashed the cash, I didn't stifle the rifle, I laid the creds on all the heads in the know, trying to clue in on any new blood that was buying the Normal line of menswear.

Now, one thing you chucks and chicks should know about the fashion world is that it's a jungle. It's full of gangsters, crooks, protection rackets, pay-offs, lay-offs, day-offs and corruption. In other words, the fashion game is the same as everything else in Mega-City One.

And while I myself looked for a clue as to what was new I kept asking myself a question or two: why should there suddenly be an outbreak of lawlessness by cats in bowler hats? By guys in striped ties? By dregs in flared pegs?

I had no luck with the Normal cats and kitties. No-one knew a thing. No-one could tell why dedicated followers of Max Normal had suddenly turned into crazy law-breaking dudes.

I decided to visit the high guru of the mean fashion scene: Old Man Ross. The old man is crazier than a three-eyed Cyclops, and you can't just chat cat to cat with him: he insists on putting you in front of an old camera and _interviewing_ you. But I was running out of ideas and running out of time. If I didn't get a lead soon I'd lose my fashion show, and the world would be sentenced to a fate worse than drainpipe trousers.

Old Man Ross spent about three minutes asking me about my life and my stranger habits, and then I managed to throw him a question.

'Hey, Man. Can you give me a rundown on what happened at sundown? Last night scores of coots wearing my suits started to loot, and otherwise rave to a crime wave.'

'Sowwy, Max. Can't help. But if you'd like to lie down I'll show you how to leg-wrestle. It's weally fun...'

Poor old Ross. One of these days the only person he'll have left to interview is himself. I left him lying on his back waving his legs in the air and went outside to resume my search. Three hours had passed, and I still hadn't a clue as to what made my fashion followers turn criminal. I decided to try the low end of the market, the grubby clothes stalls frequented by the kitsch and fameless.

Fifteen minutes later I was strolling through the shabby makeshift stalls of the shabby makeshift garment district of Mega-City. Naturally, I was attracting some attention. Normalites were gathering around me, begging me for fashion tips. How thin should pencil-thin moustaches be? Should bowler hats be tipped to the left or right? You know the sort of thing. One finely dressed young cat came up to me, and asked if I would autograph his sock-suspender.

'I see you're wearing one of my Leon Brittan Chunky Pin-Stripes,' I said. 'That's real ice, baby.' But as I bent to put my moniker on his suspender something caught my eye. The stitching on the flare. It wasn't right. In fact, it was left. It should have been on the right leg. I pulled the flare out and examined it. I won't tell you exactly what I saw on the flare until the end of the story, because that's how you tell stories, holding on to bits of info to keep you guys interested.

'Just as I thought,' I declared. 'This isn't a real Max Normal suit. This is mock Leon Brittan. This is fake city, kitty. This is cheap _copyville_!'

The fake pretender with the suspender turned and started to run, and I went out after. He headed off the main drag into a side street. But he wasn't going to get away from Mr Normal. I threw my trusty brolly at his feet. He yelped. He tripped. He fell. And the next minute he was looking into the eyes of one Mad Max.

'Okay, Man, what gives? Where did you get all the ersatz?'

'I-I'm truly sorry, Daddy,' he whimpered. 'I want to be a cool cat like you, but I can't afford the real fur. You dig my drift? These copies were going for a pinch. They were cheapsburg, man.'

I asked the faker where he bought the cute suit. He was about to open his mouth and tell me, when something strange happened. His mouth didn't open. Instead his eyes started to flicker, like, like these crazy flickering eyes. Then his mouth started to shake, rattle and dribble, and then he turned away from me and started walking. He was walking slowly, like a zombie, like a Joe on tow, like a man with a plan that wasn't his own.

Max, baby, I said to myself. I think you've stumbled on something mega.

I followed Jonny Ersatz for about half an hour. Eventually we arrived at the dingy warehouse district of Mega-City, next to the commercial space port. By now I had little more than an hour to solve the puzzle and save my show and the inalienable right of free men to wear flared trousers. Ersatz walked real slow, like a sleepwalker, and finally he came to this warehouse and he knocked three times on the door. The door opened, and he walked in. Me, I used my brolly to climb up the side of the warehouse, then I slipped in cool as you like through a fanlight window. I crept through a few small rooms and then came into the main warehouse, where I saw my old friend Ersatz. Next to Ersatz were about a dozen more cats in Max suits, though I guessed that all of these were fakeroonees too. They all had that by now familiar lobotomised look that Ersatz wore.

The warehouse was full of boxes. One was open and I saw a stack of imitationville Max Normal pin-striped suits. A few Leon Brittans, a couple of Max Normal regulars and some Stockbrokers 50001s. There was also a stack of computers, and a few thugs with guns. A man was behind the computers, talking to the zombie normals. When he stepped into view it almost blew my mind. For one terrible second my cool began to melt as I recognised that terrible withered frame, that peroxide-cropped head, that hideous little face. This was none other than the Godfather of Fashion, the Don of the Rag Trade.

'"Scarface" Gaultier,' I whispered to myself.

'Scarface' Gaultier, known as The Frog, was leader of the most vicious fashion mob in Mega-City, but recently I'd been cutting into his profit margin, not to mention his prophet margin. The creds he got from his illicit bicycle shorts sales had been hit by the growing popularity of my Normal wear. I should have known The Frog would have been behind the plot to zap me and flared trousers off the map.

He moved some buttons on the computer and a few of the ersatz Normals jerked. They jerked towards one of the crates, where some of Gaultier's jerks handed them a pile of fake Normal suits.

'Give them to your friends,' squeaked The Frog. 'In one hour we'll have another little show. I'll hit the right buttons on this lovely little computer and more followers of Max Normal will go on the rampage, and that pigswill don of démodé Max Normal will get the blame.'

So that was it. The Normalites were being controlled by Gaultier through the fake suits. I'd seen enough. Carefully I took off my bowler hat where, inside, there was a mini-phone linked directly toJudge Dredd's bike. I pressed the button.

'Dredd.'

'Dredd, baby. Has Max got some fashion facts for you!'

'Spill it, Normal.'

'Scarface Gaultier, Daddy. He's the ham behind the scam.'

I gave Dredd directions to the warehouse. And then, as I went to put my bowler hat back on the mat (that's my hair to anyone who's not tuned in to Normalspeak) I fumbled. The hat fell through my hands. Are my fingers made out of butter or are they made out of butter? The bowler fell down to the warehouse below. It landed right in front of Gaultier, who looked up and saw me looking down.

Too cool, Maxie. I said to myself. Blown it, you most definitely have.

'Normal!' shrieked Scarface.

'Gaultier!' I shrieked back, as I couldn't think of anything choicer to shriek. Next moment I was running towards the fanlight window. All I had to do was avoid Gaultier's cats until Dredd showed his head: but they were coming at me from all sides. Crazy, I thought. Real Little Big Hornville. I reached the fanlight as Scarface's thugs closed in. I leapt up towards it, about to catch the ledge with my brolly, but at that moment a fat cat in spats knocked me flat. Now I'm a mean machine when it comes to fighting clean, but this was a really uncool dirty scene. There were ten of them, and the last time I looked there was only one of me. They dragged me down to the warehouse floor and threw me in front of Scarface.

'Freeze out, Scarface,' I said. 'What gives with the Max Attack?'

'I'll tell you what gives, Normal. It's quite simple. I'm going to kill you.'

Hey, a little thing like impending doom and destruction isn't enough to faze the Normal. Even when Gaultier's boys attached me to a large kind of printing press, my cool wasn't blown, my calm wasn't thrown. I knew I had to keep Gaultier rapping. I had to tow the line and play for time. When Dredd turned up everything would be fine.

By the gleam in Gaultier's mean little eyes I figured that he had no normal murder planned.

'What's the score, superbore?' I asked him. 'Are you putting the chap with the knack on the rack?'

'More than that, you garbage-mouthed anachronism,' he replied, pushing down a lever on the printing press. Immediately I started to shiver and vibrate. The press on which I was tied rose.

'This is an old-fashioned tee-shirt printing machine, Normal,' sniggered Scarface. 'I'm going to give you a change of appearance. I'm going to crush you into a _psychedelic tee-shirt_.'

Psychedelic tee-shirt! The thought stuck in my mind like a fishbone in a throat. I began to froth at the mouth, man. I mean, was I rabid or was I a mad dog? I was lowered down. To my left I saw cartons of ink. Bright blues and reds and yellows!

'No use struggling, Normal. How I've longed for this day. How I've loathed your silly pin-striped suits, your appalling flares, your excruciatingly sensible shoes. You stand for everything I detest!'

'So sit down, Scarface,' came a deep and familiar voice. It was Dredd. He was standing at the door of the warehouse. Well things got a little complicated here. There were shots and shouts and screams. You know the score so I won't be a bore. Few minutes later, Dredd had untied me. He was still fighting off some of Gaultier's boys. Gaultier himself was a weirdo who had disappeared.

'Back in a beat, Dredd, baby,' I said, leaping off the printing machine and picking up my bowler hat from the floor. 'I'm going to slog The Frog. I'm going to assaultier the Gaultier.'

'Just shut up talking about it and do it, Normal,' grunted Dredd.

'Sure thing Daddy. I've heard your word.'

Gaultier had slipped out through the fanlight onto the roof. A few moments later I was up there with him. He had about a fifty yard start on me, but his retreat was incomplete: he was slowed down by his bright yellow baggy trousers with straps joining each leg. What a fashion victim, I said to myself, as I leapt through the air, without a care, the King of Kool, the Prince of the Pin-Stripes, the Lord of the Ties, the Nawab of Normality.

As I caught up with Scarface he turned to stand his ground. I deftly struck the first blow with my brolly to his rib cage. The pup doubled up.

'You're out of the bout, Scarface,' I said, tipping my hat back. But at that moment Gaultier hit back. From his inside pocket he produced a small bottle and threw the contents in my face. I reeled back. It was expensive French perfume for men. I felt my life flash before my eyes. No Normal would be smelt dead reeking of anything but soap and water.

Before I could recover, The Frog had leapt at me and knocked me off my feet. I lay on my back, looking up at him, as he pulled a revolting expressionistic cravat from his neck. The sunlight glinted on the edges of the cravat as he lifted it above me. The squaresville neckerchief was lined with razors!

'Goodbye, Normal,' said The Frog.

Now you might think that this was a heavy scene, but it takes more than a cravat attack to tax Max. Gaultier was standing above me, about a yard from the edge of the roof, and I'd already dug that his feet were on the splayed material of my thirty-inch flares. As he lifted the razor-cravat I pulled my legs away, and his feet shot up in the air. He let out the old Fashion Mob curse of 'May the suit of Armani be upon you,' and then was over the edge and over the hill.

When I got onto street level I found Gaultier lying in a heap. He looked like the sort of meal you get served in cheap Chinese restaurants. Dredd drove up on his bike.

'Nice work, Normal. We'll get the medics to patch him up, then we'll throw him in a Crim-Cube. I reckon nine to eleven years. By the way, how was the punk controlling those fake Normals?'

'Easy, Man. There were little mechanisms in the flares of the phoney suits,' I said. (This is what I saw when I first looked at the suspender pretender's mock Leon Brittans. Remember?) 'The mechanisms were linked to the computers in the warehouse. When activated I reckon they sent messages to the wearers' brains. And so Gaultier had an army of barmy Normals.'

Dredd revved his bike, about to depart.

'Okay, Normal. You're in the clear. You can go ahead with the Max Normal Mega-City Fashion Show. And your suits remain legal. For now.'

'Cool, baby,' I said, tipping my hat. 'You can't say _flarer_ than that!'

**JUDGE ANDERSON: THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME**

**By Mark Millar, _Judge Dredd Yearbook 1992_**

It happened every year. No-one could stop it. Grilles snapped tight over shop windows, steel shutters were locked over doors and those people in Mega-City who believed they were decent stayed inside, weapons in hand, until the madness was over. Children huddled to their parents for comfort, terrified eyes filled with tears. How many would die? How many _more_ would die this year? Bones snapped in two, meat torn from bodies, streets red with corpses.

How many more would die this year... for Charades?

The Judges always appeared after the fights were over. When everyone was dead. Every year the Scot-Blocks would meet the Albion-Blocks in a pitched battle to the death for their sport. 'Charades-Hooligans', as Channel 99 News had called them; people who failed to understand that it was only a game. People who took each subtle gesture, each syllable, each film with six words in the title so seriously that they were prepared to _die_ for it. The streets were already crimson with blood, and the semi-finals had barely begun. All the Judges could do now was to pick up the pieces and hope that the luckless contestants had no more fight left in them. Load up the bodies in a sweet-smelling truck bound for Resyk. Few Judges dared break up the riots. None would enter the Scot-Blocks at night – there was even a rumour that Judge Dredd himself had whistled and driven past a fight between two drunken Scotsmen. It's said that even _he_ was afraid to confront them, but this was only a rumour. It probably wasn't true.

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

'Huh-he tore out muh-my heart...'

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

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

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

'First word's "Hey".'

'Second word. Sounds like "swannee".'

'"Nonny?"'

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

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

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

Then they called Psi Division.

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

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

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

'It was something old. Something terrible that did this.'

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

'Do the words "Hey Nonny Naw" mean anything to you?'

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

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

Ricky sipped his whisky and smiled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Oh, have a _heart_ , Judge Rennie.'

**ROLL ON JUSTICE**

**By Ian Rimmer, _Judge Dredd Annual 1990_**

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As he rocketed around Barry Sheene Block on the Lawmaster, James felt freedom for the first time in his life. The air sucked at his face, rippling his fleshy cheeks. The wind tugged and yanked his hair, whipping it untidily about his head. But that was all part of the thrill for James – all part of knowing that, at last, he was truly alive.

That knowledge had first dawned when he'd realised he was going to take the bike. Once this intention was clear in his mind, the mechanics of the act were incredibly simple.

Starting the Lawmaster for someone with his knowledge of the machine presented no problem; but before that he'd had to disable the bike's Synitron Auto-Pilot computer. He didn't want some Judge riding a desktop terminal transmitting a programme which would steer him straight to the Iso-Cubes. Keeping the main onboard computer turned off ensured there'd be no outside interference channelled through there. As he'd expected, bending the front wheelguard back into something approaching shape so that the wheel could turn unhindered took mere seconds. After that, it was just a matter of climbing into the seat, starting the engine, selecting first gear, and rolling out past the dumb-struck Agostini to wave goodbye.

Ever since, James Bond had been making the streets of Mega-City One his own. The bike handled like a dream, allowing him to stay in top gear, and at near top speed. Any vehicle in his way took immediate evasive action when he gave them a blast from the siren. And who needed to obey traffic signals when sitting astride a Lawmaster? As he left the residents of Barry Sheene Block inhaling his exhaust fumes, James reflected that he'd not even touched the bike's brakes yet.

He also reflected that he was living out a fantasy of modern man. He knew this to be true from some of the old videos he'd seen with his mother. Like the landscape flying past as he hurtled onwards, details were hazy, but his imagination had still been fired. Yes – he was Marion somebody, in The Wild something. He was Peter Fondue – was that his name? – from Pale Rider... or was it Easy Rider? He was – no! On the Lawmaster, he was his _own_ man. He was James Bond, razzling the living daylights out of the City.

He's in one heap of trouble,' mused Judge Dredd when the communication came through. 'He's looking at 20 for stealing the bike – and double that with his traffic offences.'

Dredd was on foot patrol, marshalling a demonstration by the Simplified Spelling Committee, or the C.C.K. as they referred to themselves. The march was halted with little protest once the danger of a rogue Lawmaster was explained. It was heading their way, and everybody understood the words 'motorbike victim' however they were spelt.

Dredd walked purposefully into the centre of the roadway, closed to traffic because of the march. He adjusted the transmit frequency on his portable communicator. He drew his Lawgiver, flicking its indicator needle position to three. Then he waited, while the demonstrators held their 'breff'.

James thought about braking and turning back when he saw the signs saying 'Diversion: Roadway Temporarily Closed'. Instead he opened the throttle even wider. This was a Lawmaster he was on, he reminded himself – a bike that diverted for _nobody_.

Moments later, James was bearing down on some makeshift mesh fencing stretching across the expressway ahead. Without hesitation, he hauled back on the handlebars and applied extra throttle. The wheelie bounced the front tire into the fencing, which buckled, then crumpled under the bike's immense power. The machine's Firerock bullet-proof tires ground metres of fencing to dust before they once more bit the rockcrete roadway, allowing James to speed onwards.

The sound of Dredd's voice booming at him from the bike's Likron communications unit was as startling to James as the words themselves. 'Hit the brakes, creep – or take a hit from a Lawgiver!' James suddenly felt uneasy for the first time since he'd mounted the bike. He'd stolen a Judge's bike, and there was a Judge directly ahead of him, clearly ready to administer the ultimate sentence. In a split-second, James had weighed up his options.

Stopping meant the end of the ride of a lifetime, and the beginning of a long, long stretch in the Cubes. To carry on, he'd have to open fire first. Triggering the bike's firepower wasn't a problem, but blowing away a Judge – with Justice Department hardware – would have drastic consequences for his own life expectancy.

What the hell, thought James, the ride's got to end sometime – even Lawmasters run out of fuel.

As he eased back on the throttle, James began to smile. So they'd take the bike back, slam him in an Iso-Cube for maybe half his life. So what? He'd always have his memories. He slipped in the clutch, dropped down a gear. What good was any thrill that you couldn't reflect on? Sure, he'd have plenty of time to reflect, but wasn't the point of any experience to remember the last time, and look forward to the next time? 'Roll on justice!' thought James. 'Me and my memories are ready to do time!' He floored the brake.

Dredd watched impassively as the Lawmaster suddenly dipped. The perp hurtled over the handlebars and through the air, to smack bone-breakingly onto the rockcrete. He bounced, scraped and twisted along the expressway, while, behind him, the lock-wheeled Lawmaster did the same. Metal and leather stood up to the punishment better than flesh and bone, however.

James finally rolled to a halt a few meters from Dredd's feet. 'Same thing happened to me, last time I rode that Lawmaster,' the Judge informed the groaning, bloody, unnaturally contorted perp. 'Locking brakes was the main reason it was in with Agostini...'

The medics did a fine job of putting James Bond back together again, so he could serve his sentence. Unfortunately, pondered James as he sat in his Iso-Cube, they hadn't done much for the incessant buzzing in his head. 'Wear a crash hat next time,' was the advice they'd given him. 'That way you'd still have those thirty-six hours or so you've lost, because there'd be no severe concussion – and no incessant buzzing.'

James stared at the seamless, souless walls of his cell. The mystery of his imprisonment in the Iso-Cubes was equalled only by that last, perplexing remark from the medics. What could he have done, he asked himself, that should have necessitated wearing a crash hat...?

**BEHIND THE LEGENDS**

Exclusive interviews and career overviews of key comics creators taken from the pages of the Judge Dredd Megazine.

In this first collection Pat Mills, Carlos Ezquerra, Ron Smith and Mick McMahon discuss their work in comics, 2000 AD and many other titles in great detail.

_www.2000adonline.com_

**THE CRIME IS LIFE...**

Mega-City One, 2123 - and a plague is spreading like wildfire amongst its millions of citizens, apparently turning them into blood-crazed vampires. With the Justice Department struggling to contain the outbreak, Judge Dredd teams up with the psychic Judge Anderson and ex-Judge DeMarco to investigate the trail of carnage and death left by the enigmatic Death Cult. When the cultists fight back by summoning the four Dark Judges - Death, Fire, Fear and Mortis - it becomes a fight to save both the Mega- City and Dredd's very soul! Based on the explosive computer game by Rebellion Studios, this all-action novel pits the legendary future lawman against his deadliest and most infamous enemies.

**... THE SENTENCE IS DEATH!**

_All-new stories from the future-shocked worlds of the Galaxy's Greatest Comic - 2000 AD! Check out the other books in this series._

_www.2000adonline.com_