Psykogeddon (28 page)
Dredd came to a decision. "We have to try it."
He brought up the Screaming Meatgun and loosed a stream of slugs into the nearest rack of pods.
The slugs wavered in the air, as though hunting round themselves in puzzlement, and then dissipated.
"And that was supposed to help precisely how?" said Efil Drago San. "Our Doctor Robert already told you that the entire Psyko-Block was blanketed by a nerfing-field."
"And we were supposed to take his word for it without testing it out?" growled Dredd. "Oh well. It looks like we're gonna have to do it the old-fashioned way." He dropped the Screaming Meatgun with a wet and organic-sounding thump. "Go round these racks and start yanking leads."
"Now I really don't," said the voice of Doctor Bob, "think I can allow you to do that."
("We stumbled through the tunnels 'till we found the husk of Nail: desiccated and flaking and propped against the wall, crumbling into paper grey ash. The Strata Angel was there, a construct now, like gelid glass, shot with wormholes filled with lambent fluid. Shadowplay on translucent surfaces, macroforms splitting and flickering and pulsing. Somewhere somebody was shrieking, clawing at his face in the room of the broken machine...")
Shutters in the wall of the chamber racked back to reveal the forms of Doctor Bob together with Nurse Pebbles and Nurse Bambam, standing in a loose kind of clinch reminiscent of the little tableau that had been presented to Dredd and Drago San on first entering Doctor Bob's private chambers. Though certain aspects might give rise, to a certain sort of mind, to dark suspicions as to precisely what it was Doctor Bob got up to in his off-moments.
Chief amongst these, perhaps, was the fact that Pebbles and Bambam were naked, their Nurses costumes having no doubt proved overly restrictive to any number of endeavours. The silver traceries of cybernetic implants were now clearly visible in their flesh.
"Can't have you throwing a monkey wrench into the works at this point," said Doctor Bob. "If the Justice Department has time to catch its breath and notice me, who knows what might happen?"
"Yeah, well I've got news for you," growled Dredd. "If you didn't know it anyway. Your perimeter's breached. Tactical Arms and Judges are coming for you as we speak."
"A small force, nothing more." Doctor Bob waved a negligent hand. "Easily dealt with in due time. For the moment, though, it's time to deal with you. And the good news is, my girls are fully charged-up. Ladies?"
The eyes of Nurse Pebbles and Nurse Bambam blazed with light and they flung themselves forward with inhuman speed.
As the cyber-enhanced women flung themselves forward, their forms seemed to change. Something streamlined and demonic, their jaws elongating, their hands extending into talons.
Dredd had barely time to register this, because at that point Efil Drago San grabbed hold of him and held him in his powerful arms, in what for all the world was an embrace.
"What the drokk do you think you're playing at?" Dredd barked, trying to kick himself away.
"Hold still!" Drago San hissed, pinioning him. "We have to see if this... ah, yes, I see that it has. Work, that is, being the operative word. For the moment, anyway."
Nurse Pebbles and Nurse Bambam had now stopped dead and were casting about themselves in feral puzzlement, like tracker dogs who had lost the scent.
"So glad that worked," said Efil Drago San smugly. "Since the masking-field that was supposed to protect me from Screaming Meatgun slugs was, as it were, redundant, I thought I'd modify the output to flummox cyborg sensors, should we happen to run into those chaps again. I'm glad to see that these charming young ladies here operate on the same general principles. Over to you, Dredd."
The first weapon to come to hand was the daystick Dredd had acquired back in the Med Station. Like any Judge from the streets, he was adept through long years of experience at cracking heads - but those had been predominantly human heads. There was no telling how far Nurse Pebbles and Nurse Bambam might be enhanced in the armour-plated skull department.
Still, it was the only option going. He launched himself away from Drago San's bulk, flipping head over heels in mid-air - a vague creaking in his spine telling him it was probably about time he signed up for another round of rejuve-treatments - and felled the pair of enhanced women with a crack and follow-through and crack. Each blow was designed to transfer the maximum force possible through the skull and into whatever passed for the contents of the brainpan.
Amazingly, it seemed to have worked. Pebbles and Bambam went down as though poleaxed. For good measure, still hefting the daystick in his right hand, Dredd pulled the Med Station hypo-gun from his belt with his left and pumped a bunch of anaesthetic darts into the apparently unconscious bodies.
"Scratch one problem," he said.
It was only then, belatedly, that he realised what had been wrong with this scene. He looked down at the hand holding the hypo-gun to see the set of cuffs dangling from his wrist, the circlet that had up until recently been secured to Drago San quite definitively open.
He spun to see Drago San giving him a sardonic little wave.
"You appear to have things well enough in hand," Drago San said. "It seems to be a propitious time to reveal that I could have opened your handcuffs pretty much any time I liked. It's been useful to be under your custody and protection, but now, I feel, if I understand correctly from your incoherent mutterings, that the arrival of a number of other Judges is imminent. I think it's time I made my excuses and left."
"Hold it right there, Drago San!" Dredd snapped, training the hypo-gun on his former prisoner. "You make one move and-"
"And what, precisely, Dredd?" Drago San smirked. "Given my... well, given my bodily mass, and the number of darts I imagine are left in that hypo-gun, there's not a lot you can do. Nothing that would disable me enough to prevent me from doing what I need to do, in any event. I have, in fact, set my floater's self-repair routines in addition to disrupting the sensors of cybernetically-enhanced and comely young ladies. Allow me to demonstrate."
A bluish glow flared from beneath Drago San's paraplegic floater - and then, quite suddenly, he simply dropped down through a perfectly circular hole.
"Drokk!" Dredd pelted forward and looked down to see a perpendicular shaft, comprised of holes in successive Psyko-Block floors, the distant glimpse of what might or might not have been Efil Drago San dopplering away.
What the drokk was that?
came the voice of Psi-Judge Karyn.
Tracking shows something heading downwards, and it's going at a hell of a rate.
"That was Drago San," Dredd snarled. "He's making his break. Heading for the Undercity, probably. Do we have a Scumcatcher Detail down there?"
State of the city at the moment?
said the voice of Karyn.
I very much doubt it. We're over-extended here as it is.
"Oh dear me," said a voice from off to one side. "Do I take it that you've experienced a small inconvenience?"
For his part, what Dredd experienced at that point was a moment of complete and utter confusion. He simply could not, momentarily, work out who or what had spoken.
It would only be later that he had the time to wonder about this. The sudden escape of Efil Drago San was a distraction, to be sure, but there was just no way it could have made a trained Judge forget about the important matters and dangers at hand.
The nearest he could come to explaining it, when he had time to think about it, was that Doctor Robert Roberts (aka Doctor Bob) had some yoga-like ability to switch his essential self off and fade into the background. Become the equivalent of some dull little man, standing next to you somewhere crowded, who you only notice when you turn and walk right into him. Some form of protective colouration.
Whatever it was that he might have switched off, however, Doctor Bob had quite definitively switched it back on.
"This is becoming tiresome, Dredd," he said. "In a very real sense, the Psyko-Block is my home - and you've been blundering through it, making all kinds of noise and mess, and now you've brought along some equally noisy and destructive friends. I'm sick of having to think about you. I think it's time we ended it."
"Oh yeah?" Dredd hefted his daystick. "Bring it on, then. Let's end it, once and for all."
"So glad you agree," said Doctor Bob.
Energy-tendrils burst from the racked pods, striking Doctor Bob full in the chest. He lurched and staggered, flesh crawling and mutating on his bones, his body bulking at such a rate that his black polymer coat burst apart in shreds.
"LET'S DO THIS THING," he said, his voice taking on the aspect of a booming, bestial roar. "LET'S DO IT NOW!"
TWENTY-ONE
"
I wish I loved the human race;
I wish I loved its silly face;
I wish I liked the way it walks;
I wish I liked the way it talks;
And when I'm introduced to one,
I wish I thought What Jolly Fun!
"
- Sir Walter A Raleigh
In a place outside of space and time as we know it, creatures we have elected to call the Slaarg slopped and slunked around a Rift between the worlds.
It shall feed on the life there, and expand. It shall proliferate and eat that other world, converting it into that which we ourselves need to live. And then what they appear to call the sun... <\speak>
The monstrous form of Doctor Bob stalked into the chamber, its feet pounding the floor with such weight as to make it tremble. The polyceramaline pods shook in their racks with a sound like a giant shaking a box of Christmas tree ornaments.
There was something oddly familiar about Doctor Bob's new form. It was a kind of cross between an ape and the idea of a troll or the like, but there was something specific and particular that rang a mental bell. It was a moment before Dredd was able to access that specific and particular bit of general knowledge.
It was a neurological man, an illustrative demonstration of how the nervous system was connected to the brain, the size of each anatomical item and appendage mapped in relative size to how many connections there were. The hands, lips and sundry other items were bloated and distended, other elements atrophied; as a whole, the body had the aspect of a ridiculous grotesque.
Any sense of ridiculousness, however, was tempered by the fact that the new body of Doctor Bob was over thirty feet tall and still growing.
"YOU COME TO ME HERE, LITTLE MAN?" he roared. "HERE WHERE THE POWER OF A THOUSAND PSIONICS COURSES THROUGH ME? ALL RIGHT, FIFTEEN HUNDRED, IF YOU WANT TO GET PEDANTIC ABOUT IT!
"THE POINT IS, LITTLE MAN, HERE AND NOW, IN THE VERY CENTRE OF MY POWER, HOW CAN YOU EVER BELIEVE YOU'LL GET OUT ALIVE?"
Dredd glanced down briefly at his daystick and depleted hypo-gun.
"Karyn?" he muttered. "What's the ETA on you guys meeting up with me? I could really use some extra firepower here."
We're through the worst of the active resistance now,
came the voice of Psi-Judge Karyn.
Two or three minutes, maybe
.
"I think that's gonna be too late, Karyn," said Dredd.
What?
said the voice of Karyn.
What are you talking about? I can't - hang on, let me access your sensorium for a sec-
There was a burst of quasi-lightning in Dredd's head that made those he had experienced before seem like scuffing his feet on a carpet and touching a radiator-pipe. Then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone.
"GOING TO DIE NOW, LITTLE MAN!" the thing that had once been Doctor Bob roared with diabolic glee.
Dredd,
came the voice of Psi-Judge Karyn.
I think I've got a handle on what you're up against. I want you to do something for me, Dredd, and do it now.
"What to you want me to do?" Dredd asked.
Smack yourself in the eyes. Do it now!
"What?" said Dredd.
Oh for Grud's sake!
the voice of Psi-Judge Karyn exclaimed in exasperation.
Smack yourself in the eyes, Dredd! Do it!
Whether Psi-Judge Karyn had exerted some form of psionic control, or whether it was simply the tone of command in her voice, Dredd would never know. In that instant, in the here and now, it just seemed like the right and perfectly natural thing to do.