spasmed, air sucking through the holes blown in them. The throat convulsed and the muscles around the mouth twitched. It was as though something had taken control of the body, somewhat ineptly, and was using it to move only those parts of it that it had to and nothing more.
The mouth worked, the tongue spasming within it, modulating air blown up from ruined lungs and a malfunctioning throat.
"Isss noghreal..." the body of Sturlek said. "Isss a choghpy of whassgh reelgh an so noghingh counts likgh issa reelghing... isss whasagh maghin ussagh doo..."
"What?" said Dredd.
The body slumped again into inertia, like a puppet with its strings cut. Whatever had animated it had gone. Dead meat once again - and this time, hopefully, finally dead.
The Manta had drawn level with Dredd. A hatch gull-winged open in its side.
"We're taking the body into Med-Division," Dredd told the Tactical Response Judges inside. "I want them to run every test they've got. There's something strange happening here, stranger than usual even for Crazy Season, and I'm going to find out what."
TWO
" If I were to answer the following question: 'What is slavery?' and I should answer in one word, 'Murder!' my meaning would be understood at once. No further argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death, and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: 'What is property?' may I not likewise answer 'Theft'? "
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Qu'est-ce que la Propriété?
In his plush apartments in the Shangri La Towers, Barnstable Wheems surfaced into consciousness, knitting his sense of self together from the desiccated, aching skeins of a hangover.
Possession of alcohol was, of course, illegal in Mega-City One under the Antisocial Behaviour Statutes, but the prohibition was not actively enforced save in a Crime Blitz, when it was added to the total of crimes the luckless target had committed. And if your number came up for a Crime Blitz, you'd be going down no matter what happened.
Besides, if you paid enough, you could obtain a wide variety of Synthahols, chemically altered and constantly re-modified to give all the effect while escaping Justice Department detection entirely.
It was knowing such tricks, keeping one step ahead of the Law - often on a second-by-second basis - that allowed one Barnstable Wheems to make his living as a lawyer.
There were any number of those among the hideously wealthy - with the accent on the hideous - who would pay through the nose to prevent their activities throwing a blip on the Justice Department sonar. All you had to do was try not to mind how slimy your hands got in the taking of it.
And that, in the end, was the reason why he drank. Genuine article or not, the booze blunted the sense of worthlessness and selling out.
The clients treated him like dirt - at best like the high-priced equivalent of a sewerage maintenance technician, a mere functionary doing a necessary but repugnant job.
Still, at least the money meant that he could afford to live here in Shangri La Towers, the most expensive hab-blocks in the city. Glorified servant quarters the homes on this particular level of Shangri La might be, but they were big and luxurious, and he had them to himself. That put him above 99.999 per cent of a city-state population forced to scrape a living in any bolt-hole it could find.
He'd made them nice, filling them with such genuine antiques as had survived the Rad Wars and which he could afford. Waking up safe here in his home made up for almost anything.
Having put himself together to the point where we could face getting out of bed in the morning, Wheems stretched and, for the first time, actually opened his eyes.
When the world falls down around your ears, there are a few moments when the mind simply and flatly fails to register the fact.
The blood was everywhere. The room seemed drenched
The mouth worked, the tongue spasming within it, modulating air blown up from ruined lungs and a malfunctioning throat.
"Isss noghreal..." the body of Sturlek said. "Isss a choghpy of whassgh reelgh an so noghingh counts likgh issa reelghing... isss whasagh maghin ussagh doo..."
"What?" said Dredd.
The body slumped again into inertia, like a puppet with its strings cut. Whatever had animated it had gone. Dead meat once again - and this time, hopefully, finally dead.
The Manta had drawn level with Dredd. A hatch gull-winged open in its side.
"We're taking the body into Med-Division," Dredd told the Tactical Response Judges inside. "I want them to run every test they've got. There's something strange happening here, stranger than usual even for Crazy Season, and I'm going to find out what."
TWO
" If I were to answer the following question: 'What is slavery?' and I should answer in one word, 'Murder!' my meaning would be understood at once. No further argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death, and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: 'What is property?' may I not likewise answer 'Theft'? "
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Qu'est-ce que la Propriété?
In his plush apartments in the Shangri La Towers, Barnstable Wheems surfaced into consciousness, knitting his sense of self together from the desiccated, aching skeins of a hangover.
Possession of alcohol was, of course, illegal in Mega-City One under the Antisocial Behaviour Statutes, but the prohibition was not actively enforced save in a Crime Blitz, when it was added to the total of crimes the luckless target had committed. And if your number came up for a Crime Blitz, you'd be going down no matter what happened.
Besides, if you paid enough, you could obtain a wide variety of Synthahols, chemically altered and constantly re-modified to give all the effect while escaping Justice Department detection entirely.
It was knowing such tricks, keeping one step ahead of the Law - often on a second-by-second basis - that allowed one Barnstable Wheems to make his living as a lawyer.
There were any number of those among the hideously wealthy - with the accent on the hideous - who would pay through the nose to prevent their activities throwing a blip on the Justice Department sonar. All you had to do was try not to mind how slimy your hands got in the taking of it.
And that, in the end, was the reason why he drank. Genuine article or not, the booze blunted the sense of worthlessness and selling out.
The clients treated him like dirt - at best like the high-priced equivalent of a sewerage maintenance technician, a mere functionary doing a necessary but repugnant job.
Still, at least the money meant that he could afford to live here in Shangri La Towers, the most expensive hab-blocks in the city. Glorified servant quarters the homes on this particular level of Shangri La might be, but they were big and luxurious, and he had them to himself. That put him above 99.999 per cent of a city-state population forced to scrape a living in any bolt-hole it could find.
He'd made them nice, filling them with such genuine antiques as had survived the Rad Wars and which he could afford. Waking up safe here in his home made up for almost anything.
Having put himself together to the point where we could face getting out of bed in the morning, Wheems stretched and, for the first time, actually opened his eyes.
When the world falls down around your ears, there are a few moments when the mind simply and flatly fails to register the fact.
The blood was everywhere. The room seemed drenched
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