Read Online Sweet Justice by Neil Gaiman - Free Book Online Page B

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