Rico Dredd: The Titan Years Read online

  “Hey, Little Joe... Anything interesting today?”

  “The usual. You?”

  “Not much. Took down those three perps who’ve been tapping on the Galleria escalators. You’d have liked that—one of them had a zip-gun. Actually pulled it on me and took a hostage.”

  “Headshot?”

  “No, there was no clean angle. Shot him in the knee instead.”

  Joe nodded, and speared another bright-orange mockarrot with his fork. “Intentional?”

  It annoyed me that he felt he had to ask that. “Well, yeah. I’m surprised the whole city didn’t hear the drokker’s screams.”

  My brother’s only response was to nod again, his attention now back on the Lawbook in front of him.

  “Joe, you know all this stuff. Why do you keep reading it?”

  “The Law isn’t fixed, Rico. We have to keep on top of it.” He looked up, hitting me with that flinty gaze of his. “If we don’t, then we might arrest someone for something that’s no longer a crime, or let something go that now is a crime. You know that.”

  I started on my food. It was pasta in the shape of little Lawgivers; whoever had programmed chefbot that day had a strange sense of humour. “Yeah, yeah... It wouldn’t do you any harm to relax now and then. Might even do you some good. Might make you a better Judge to be human. Look, we’ve got a lot of leave worked up already. Why don’t we take a day off? We could get out of the city, go someplace where the predominant colour is green, not grey.”

  Judge Gibson dropped into the seat next to me. “I was thinking the same thing. Me and the guys have been talking about getting together sometime soon. You two in?”

  “Yep,” I said.

  Joe asked, “Why?”

  “Chew the fat,” Gibson said. “Talk over old times.”

  “Old times? Gibson, we haven’t been alive long enough to have old times. You guys are only twenty. And Rico and I are thirteen.”

  Gibson said, “Chronologically, yeah, but the geneticists sped up your aging, right? You’ve caught up with the rest of us.” He sighed and shook his head. “And you’ve kept aging, Joe. You are such an old man. I remember the first time I met you guys. I was seven. We came into class one day and there you were, identical, sitting there looking like four- or five-year-olds.” He laughed. “Me and Hunt, we used to give you such a hard time. Remember that?”

  I said, “I remember that time when you spit in Little Joe’s breakfast and he beat the snot out of you.”

  Gibson laughed harder. “I went running to Judge Duane, crying my eyes out. Man, that was funny.”

  Joe wasn’t amused. “You were a bully. Nothing funny about that.”

  “Has he ever laughed?” Gibson asked me.

  That got me thinking. Gibson and I wracked our brains. We did manage to recall a couple of occasions when Joe had smiled, but actually laughed? We couldn’t think of a time when that had ever happened.

  Half-way through the discussion, Joe got up and left. Anyone else, you might think he was pissed that we were talking about him right in front of his face. But Joe didn’t get offended by things like this. He’d finished his meal, so it was time to go back on patrol.

  But let’s get back to Evan Quasarano. His gang kept their heads down, pretty much, for a couple of weeks, then someone robbed a local synthahol dispensary and all fingers were pointing at the Beadles.

  I got the call on a Sunday evening, eighteen hundred hours, so first stop was Quasarano’s apartment. It was a ground-floor place, Brendan Behan Block. The whole floor stank of sweat and grease and boiled vegetables. Ragged lumps of filth burst out of piles of damp garbage and squealed as they scattered ahead of me. They could have been oversized rats or undersized children—it was hard to tell.

  The door to Quasarano’s apartment opened before I could knock. He stepped out and pulled it closed behind him. “What do you want, Rico?”

  “Is that any way to greet the man who’s keeping you out of the cubes?” I nodded toward the door. “Anything you don’t want me to see in there?”

  His eyes narrowed. “You think me and the boys are responsible for turning over the boozery on Seventh, don’t you? Wasn’t us.”

  I stepped around him. “I’m gonna need to check inside, Quasarano.”

  “Rico... c’mon, man! I’m asking you as a friend. Don’t do that.”

  It was hard not to smile at that. “A friend?” I placed my palm on the door. “Friendship goes both ways, kid. What have you ever done for me?”

  “My mom’s in there,” he said quietly. “She doesn’t know anything about... about anything. She thinks we’re all angels.”

  I looked at him for a second, then pushed open the door. “I can be discreet, when I have to be.”

  Elizabeth Louise Quasarano was one of those women who are so deep into their fifties they look like they’ve got lost in there and they’re never going to find their way out. She was stooped, frail, tiny—not even up to her son’s shoulder. When she saw me, she almost dropped the casserole dish she was carrying toward the kitchen table. “Oh, sweet foetal Jovus! What’s he done now?”

  “Ma, it’s okay,” Quasarano said. “I’m not in trouble.”

  Mrs Quasarano regained her composure very quickly. “Right. Well, sit down. Both of you. There’s enough to go around.”

  Staring at me from around the table were an old man who looked like he’d fought in the war and would bring it up in every conversation, Quasarano’s two younger brothers, and his sister. The boys were twelve and eight, skinny but too tall for their clothes. The girl was nineteen, pretty but hollow-eyed, and seemed completely unsurprised to see me.

  “I just need to ask Evan some questions, Mrs Quasarano. This won’t take long.”

  She nodded. “Sit. And eat. Look at you—there’s hardly a pick of meat on you.”

  Quasarano dragged over a chair, his brothers bunched up, and somehow I found myself taking off my helmet and gloves and sitting down, while Mrs Quasarano ladled the casserole into a small dish in front of me. “Uh, we’re not really supposed to...”

  “It’s just a little goulash,” she said. “Never hurt anyone. Better than that artificial rubbish you Judges eat. I don’t know how you keep going. Thomas, be a good lad and pass the Judge some bread. No, don’t use your hand! Pass him the plate. Grud above! Have I taught you nothing? I’m so sorry, Judge. I didn’t raise my boys to be rude to guests.”

  She talked incessantly while we ate, telling me about the kids, her neighbours, her own childhood. No one else said a word; she never stopped long enough. At one point, I reached out to take the last bread roll and she slapped my hand. “In this home we ask before we take the last one. Where was I? Oh, right. So. My mother, Grud rest her, she was in the fashion industry. Well, that’s what she told everyone, but between you and me, the truth is she worked in a clothing factory where she operated the machine that put buttons onto shirts. But she was a proud woman, very strict. Made sure we were brought up right...”

  Eventually, the old man—Quasarano’s paternal grandfather—pushed back his chair. “I’m done. Let the man ask Evan his questions, Liz. I’m sure he’s got a whole backlog of innocent suspects to beat up.”

  Before the old man left the room, he pulled a litre bottle of Jepsom’s Drunkifier from a cupboard. I didn’t know much about booze, but I had a good idea of how much that bottle cost, and it was about as much as this whole family received from welfare in a month.

  Quasarano paled at that, and looked away when I turned to him. “Your grandfather’s right, Evan,” I said. “You and I need to talk.” I stood up and nodded to his mother. “Thank you for the meal, Mrs Quasarano. It was... tasty.”

  She beamed at that, and I moved toward the door before she could start talking again. “Evan?”

  The kid followed me out into the apartment’s narrow hallway, and closed the door behind him. He still wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Rico, I’ll get the boys to bring the booze and the money back to the store. Some of it
’s gone already, but...”

  “Not them. Just you. And you weren’t involved in the robbery. You found the stuff under the overpass. Got that? You don’t know how it got there. You didn’t keep it because you were scared that the Judges would blame you for taking it. If they offer you a reward—they probably won’t—then you accept it. Don’t pretend to be noble and decline it, all right? If you do, they’ll become suspicious. In fact, if they don’t offer you a reward, ask for one. Get annoyed if they say no.”

  He nodded. “Got it. Thanks, Rico.”

  I left him there in the hallway, and as I trudged my way through the garbage all I could think about was the meagre meal that his mother was happy to share with a stranger, and how Quasarano’s brothers’ and sister’s clothes didn’t fit.

  I couldn’t do much to help them, but I could do something. I pulled out my radio. “Control—Dredd.”

  “Go ahead, Dredd.”

  “Checked out the rumours of the Beadle gang’s involvement in the synthahol robbery. Dead end. Looks like a rival gang’s trying to shift the blame.”

  “Acknowledged, Dredd. We’ve got a 15-02 on the Westbound Narroway.”

  “On my way. And recommend you contact the owner of Brendan Behan Block. Damn place is knee-deep in garbage. That’s a violation of city ordnance 4221. Tell him he’s got twenty-four hours to get the block up to minimum standards, or he’s looking at five in the cubes for neglect leading to possible endangerment.”

  That’s how it began.

  At my hearing, the investigators pinpointed that moment as “pivotal in Dredd’s corruption.” Their definition of “corrupt” didn’t match mine, of course. Still doesn’t.

  Judge Rico Dredd became personally involved in the welfare of Evan Quasarano. Under the belief that he could steer the boy away from a life of crime, Dredd knowingly and deliberately covered up Quasarano’s participation in a number of minor offences, one of which brought Dredd into contact with Quasarano’s family.

  Dredd was particularly impressed with Elizabeth Louise Quasarano, the boy’s mother, and the manner in which she presided over her family and struggled to provide them with basic needs. Med-Judge Littman’s psychological evaluation of Dredd suggests that Mrs Quasarano became a surrogate parent-figure, filling a void in the standard social structure that, as a clone raised in the Academy of Law, Dredd had never experienced.

  Dredd personally intervened when Hector Quasarano, the boy’s maternal grandfather, was arrested following a fracas involving three other war veterans. Dredd arranged for the charges against Hector Quasarano to be quashed, despite unequivocal evidence of Quasarano’s willing participation in the event.

  Though the defendant refuses to comment on this matter, we believe that it was around this time Dredd entered into a brief physical relationship with Stacie Quasarano, Evan’s nineteen-year-old sister.

  Stacie was quiet, thoughtful. The sort of girl that most guys wouldn’t notice. And in truth I barely noticed her myself, the first few times I had dinner with the family. But one night, after the meal—I’d brought along a dozen re-Veal cutlets that I’d confiscated from a street-corner blackmarketeer—Stacie and I found ourselves sitting side-by-side on the sofa. Evan was out, the younger boys were in bed, and her mother and grandfather were taking the remaining cutlets to a neighbour.

  It was a cold night, but I could feel the heat of Stacie’s body even through my uniform. She wasn’t saying much, just listening as I told her about my day.

  I hadn’t intended for it to happen. I hadn’t intended for any of it to happen, of course. I used to call in to the Quasaranos’ apartment maybe a couple of times a week. At first just to check on Evan, but soon it was because I liked it there. Most of the time the apartment was cold and damp, but the atmosphere was always warm and welcoming. The grandfather would tell stories about the war, and what America had been like back when it still was America. The kids would badger me with questions about being a Judge. Evan, too; I think he liked the idea, even though they were all far too old to sign up. Mrs Quasarano would tell me I was looking tired, or hungry. She’d fuss about me, making sure I was comfortable, giving me hot drinks. When I was leaving, she’d tell me to drive safely and not get into trouble. And one time, when I’d had a particularly tough day—a stolen truck had jack-knifed during a high-speed chase and killed Judge Ellard, who I’d known all my life—she could see that I was upset and she gave me a hug.

  Stupid, I know. I was a Mega-City One Judge, trained in the best, toughest academy in the world. I shouldn’t have cared. I didn’t cry or anything like that, but this tiny woman wrapped her arms around me and told me that everything was going to be all right, and that meant more than any number of hours with a Department psychologist.

  And so it happened. Stacie and I were the only ones awake in the apartment. I had a couple of hours free before my next shift. She was sitting next to me, her thigh pressed against mine as we watched some dumb game show on their crappy TV. We weren’t even looking at each other, much. The sound was off and I was telling her how I’d chased down a perp.

  Then Stacie’s hand was on my leg. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to cover her hand with my own, to squeeze it a little and interlock our fingers.

  She was the first girl I ever kissed. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but I went with the flow.

  Two

  CELIBACY ISN’T EASY for most people. It’s even tougher for Judges; there’ll always be people out there who are drawn to power, and among them are those citizens willing to commit a crime just so that they’ll be arrested.

  In the Academy, we all had to pass a course called “Sexual Rebukes.” It’s not easy, and a good number of cadets utterly fail it. I like to imagine that they go on to have happier lives outside of the Department.

  There are many reasons Judges can’t have sex, and some of them are even credible. A Judge in a sexual relationship won’t always have his or her mind on the job. That one makes sense, for most Judges. Despite the rumours, we’re still human and detaching ourselves from our emotions isn’t always easy. Then there’s the danger of a Judge compromising a case by inadvertently revealing sensitive information to a lover, or of a perp hiring a hooker to seduce a Judge, filming the exciting parts, and embarking on a campaign of blackmail.

  On top of all that, you really don’t want a situation where some perp gets away with a crime because the Judge that might have stopped him is laid up in a med-centre with a dose of galloping crotch-rot.

  They give other reasons, too, and some of them are less realistic. When we were hitting puberty, Judge-Tutor Semple told us, “Sex makes babies. The city’s already over-populated and under-resourced. The Department doesn’t want to have to fund a nursery for the illegitimate offspring of you little drokkers. So keep it in your pants.”

  And then there was this classic, which me and Joe got from Judge Morphy: “We belong to the Justice Department. They own us, and everything about us. That includes any DNA samples we might be inclined to deposit inside another human being. So you have sex with someone and the Department will be well within its rights to charge them with receiving stolen goods.” I still don’t know whether Morphy was joking about that, or if he believed it.

  The first time I realised that I was under suspicion was when Judge Ernest Kenner took me aside one day and said, “Rico. Need to talk to you about Stacie Quasarano.”

  I put on my best poker-face and denied all knowledge of the girl, but Kenner wasn’t an idiot. He knew me: he’d run my final assessment. “It ends, Rico. Understood? I should report you, but, damn it, you’ve got the makings of a good Judge. So you get it out of your system and you end that relationship. And do it right. Let the girl down easy. You don’t want her going to the local Sector House looking for you.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  “If you can’t keep your libido in check, pay a visit to the med-unit and get a suppressant. Doesn’t always work one hundred per
cent, but it helps keep you focussed. If that fails, there’s always surgery.”

  I’d heard that some Judges underwent castration as an alternative to self-control or drugs, but the idea sickened me. “I can control myself.”

  “I hope so, Rico. My advice? Sign up for a two-man team. It’s a lot easier to resist temptation when there’s another Judge around.”

  I thanked him for the advice and told him that I preferred to work alone. He seemed satisfied with that.

  I applied for transfer to another part of the sector, and while I waited for that to come through I kept clear of the Quasarano family. Stacie had been getting kind of clingy anyway, always wanting to see me. I knew that I was better off without her, especially if Kenner was watching me.

  That bugged me, though. Kenner had no call to interfere with my life, especially since I wasn’t doing anything wrong. It was against the rules, yes, but that doesn’t make it wrong.

  ON THE WEST side of the sector there was what the politicians like to refer to as a “house of ill-repute.” Joe and I received a call one morning, about seven months into our first year: someone had beaten the stomm out of one of the girls. They didn’t call it in themselves, mind. A passing motorist saw the perp on the street, giving the victim the full treatment with his fists and feet.

  By the time we got there, the usual localised amnesia epidemic had taken hold. No one could remember exactly what the John had looked like.

  The brothel was run by a middle-aged woman calling herself Madam Ozelle. Big hair, more make-up than clothes, permanently suspicious. But she treated the girls well, made sure they were safe. “I might recognise him if he comes around again,” she told me.