obviously incredibly old. Reminders of the Way Back When were squeezed between the tenement walls. Fergie saw a row of marble columns that held up nothing at all. Something that might have been a twentieth-century church was imbedded in a bleak slab of stone. Swallowed by the years, its brick entry surfaced now and then like the bones of some long-dead creature buried in a geologic fault.
Just to his right, half-covered by a tenement that rose out of sight, Fergie made out the remains of a statue from the very distant past. The metal was eroded and green. Half the face of a woman was left, and one raised arm. Whatever it was, time and pollution had taken its toll, and it was nearly rotted out and gone.
Fergie checked his directions again. There were no street signs. Nothing that said Red Quad or anything else. He spotted a fly-specked window, half a block away. A faded sign read: NICKO’S. He decided it was better than nothing, crossed the street, and stepped inside. There was a bar and a dirty wooden floor. A flickering bulb hung from a frayed electrical cord. There was no one in the place except the man behind the bar.
“Ah, you got a beer?” Fergie said. “Okay if I come in?”
“You got a card?”
“Of course I got a card. Everybody’s got a card.”
Fergie slapped his card on the bar. The bartender had half a steel face and two ruby-cut eyes. A cheek tattoo said he was a veteran of some obscure war.
Fergie quickly downed his first beer in six months. He closed his eyes and let his taste buds come back to life.
“How long you been out?”
Fergie didn’t bother to lie. “An hour and a half. Aspen Shuttle Three.”
“You want another one of those?”
“What do you think?”
The bartender slid another beer Fergie’s way and pushed his card into a slot. Fergie wondered how much they’d put in his account. You got some pitiful amount when they let you out of the joint. It couldn’t be much. He figured he’d have to get a scam going pretty fast.
“Since you know where I come from, maybe you can tell me where I am,” Fergie said. “I’ve got a room in Heavenly Haven. Where they’re going to do the park—”
“You’re in it, pal.” The bartender jerked a dirty thumb straight up. “Heavenly Haven. Looks a lot like Celestial Heights and Paradise Woods, only it ain’t.” The bartender grinned, showing moldy teeth. “Nice, huh? Welcome to the neighborhood.”
Fergie shrugged. “Beats hell out of Aspen Prison.”
“Yeah? That’s ’cause you just got here, friend.”
The day was nearly gone. Old-fashioned lampposts shed amber pools of light on the pot-holed streets. Far above the dark walls, the heights of Mega-City shimmered bright as day.
As he stepped out of Nicko’s, Fergie heard the sound. It was a deep, angry drone, and it echoed off the tenement walls. Fergie walked back the way he’d come. Turning the corner, he walked right into the crowd. They were boiling out of every building, shouting and waving their fists. He backed against a wall and let them by. He had seen one riot in Aspen Prison and he didn’t want to see one again.
Everyone was running south. Fergie followed a comfortable distance behind the crowd. They were throwing rocks and bottles at the wall where the holo of Heavenly Haven Pocket Park had been. The holo was different now. It showed a great shining building, stretching to the skies. The golden shield and eagle of the Judges was superimposed on the image, glowing in a painted blue sky. He could hear the booming voice, even over the anger of the crowd:
A stone shattered a window past the holo. A woman beat at the image with the leg of a chair.
“They stole our park!”
“Damn them all!”
“Lying bastards!”
The crowd swept forward in a wave, a dark and ugly beast with half a thousand heads. They tossed bricks and stones, and tore at the empty air with their hands. A lamppost snapped, and a bright electric arc crackled along the street. A Citizen jerked in a crazy dance and fell.
And that was the moment the weapons opened up on the crowded streets below. Men and women screamed. Lead ripped flesh and bone. Heads exploded and limbs tore away. A river of blood spattered the dark and grimy walls, and Herman Ferguson, ASP-niner-zero-zero-seven-six-four, peed in his prison-issue trousers and ran like hell…
It is difficult to imagine that even in the late twentieth century our nation was still paralyzed by a primitive, ineffective system of Justice. In those times, the trial of an accused criminal was often delayed for months, even years. In some cases, the accused was allowed to roam free prior to his trial, enabling him to commit further crimes before being judged for the first.
To add to this bizarre practice, the accused was allowed to hire a professional trained for the sole purpose of confusing the issue through any means possible, in order to set the accused free. This was not an overly difficult task, since accused persons were judged before a “jury of their peers”—that is, ordinary Citizens picked at random who had absolutely no knowledge of the legal system of the times.[1]
It is little wonder, then, that lawlessness was rampant in the land in those days, and no one was safe in the streets…
SIX
Hershey leaned into the wind, taking the skyway curve at a non-regulation twenty-two degrees, the hard surface inches from her head. The Lawmaster screamed but the broad tires held to the road. She didn’t dare look at her speed. A sensor would record all this somewhere; if she didn’t squash herself like a bug, a sergeant would eventually give her hell.
She was vaguely aware that Briscoe was still behind her, still in one piece. Maybe the Rookie would make a Street Judge after all, if she didn’t get him killed.
Mega-City rushed by in a blur of white light. A shuttle whined by overhead. Hershey wondered if Maintenance had checked the loose brake switch she’d red-lined the night before.
She flipped the signal off with a blink, slowed the Lawmaster for a second and a half, then squealed off the skyway onto Rampway Six. The rampway was for emergency traffic only. It circled down to the depths of the city, four thousand feet below. It was nearly pitch dark down there. Hershey punched on her brights. Code Alpha Two was Riot in Progress, and Red Quad was about as mean as you could get. The Rezzies who lived down there…
“Easy, Briscoe,” she spoke into her comm. “Keep your eyes open. There’s no one on the way yet but us.”
“I’m right with you, Judge!”
Hershey caught the excitement in his voice. “Don’t be so damn eager,
