Scum of the Universe Page 15

  Tuesday twitched at the voice. It was cultured, calm and had an unfamiliar accent. Opening his eyes and blinking away quadruple vision until it was reduced to a mere triple, Tuesday nodded, licked his cracked lips, and tried not to drift off again.

  “Mmm. Sorta.”

  Over a span of ten seconds Tuesday's sight gradually recovered to the point where a panorama of grey blurs morphed into colourful details. The first thing that came into focus was a thin man in a perfectly tailored charcoal-coloured silk suit with a shiny bald head sitting less than two metres away on an ergonomic chair. If the bizarre twisting sensation in his own spine and neck were any indication, Tuesday was pretty sure he was sitting on some similar variety of Swedish torture device.

  Beyond the unknown guy, everything remained fuzzy.

  Rolling his head from side to side, wincing at a headache that resembled having an entire rosebush massaged into his brain, Tuesday discovered that he was lying half-upright on the plushest mattress he’d ever been fortunate enough to drool on. Funnily enough, after so many years of hard living on sleeping bags and inch-thick rubber slabs, this luxury was actually painful.

  Freeing his arms from a blanket that was so soft he literally couldn’t feel it, Tuesday looked down at his hands. An assortment of derms – colourful, coin-sized circles that had a lot in common with band-aids – decorated his wrists in a dozen places. Even half unconscious and stupefied by a concussion that was so big you could use it to beat a Silverback gorilla to death, Tuesday immediately recognised a bunch of assorted medical symbols. He wasn’t an expert, but Tuesday was pretty sure they were pharmaceutical-grade detox patches, and were currently leeching all sorts of poisons from his bloodstream. He did know, however, that those things were pricy.

  Closing his sore eyes again for a few moments, Tuesday tapped both carotid arteries with his index fingers. Yep. More detox patches.

  That voice interrupted the silence again.

  “I need you to focus, Mister Tuesday. This is very important.”

  Tuesday yawned and stretched like a cat, clicking all his joints in a series of gross pops, and gradually opened his eyes like rusty garage doors. The unknown man in the nice grey suit came back into focus, and the expression on his face gave the impression he was pleased by the fact Tuesday hadn’t fallen unconscious again.

  Raising his right hand, the guy in the suit clicked his fingers; as though by magic, a hair-thin sushi pad and a curved stylus appeared from nothing, and he plucked them out of the air. The stylus went click-click as it tapped at the palm-sized device.

  “Wozza…” Tuesday managed. “How’d you do that?”

  Mister Grey Suit pretended as though Tuesday hadn’t spoken. He tapped and stroked the pad a couple more times, probably just to check it was working, and spoke.

  “Good third afternoon to you, Mister Tuesday. My name is Travis Melchor, and I hold tenth-dan blackbelts in applied legalism, impartial mediation and advanced justice. I am, in fact, a Legalitor of the highest calibre, and I have been assigned to resolve your case. If we avoid any unnecessary delays then our business may be concluded in as little as ten minutes, followed by your sentencing, if applicable.” Melchor blinked. His eyes were emotionless, and his mannerisms reminded Tuesday of a desert lizard. “For this to go smoothly it is essential that you are completely aware of what is going on before we precede any further. Do you understand?”

  “Wassa charge?”

  Tuesday snorted and sat up a little straighter. It turned out he was wearing a hospital gown of such a shining white that it was uncomfortable to look directly at it. Tuesday coughed viciously.

  “And how d'you know my name?”

  Melchor crossed his legs and tapped the stylus on one heel in irritation.

  “The charge is Environmental Terrorism, Mister Tuesday, and I know your name because PusCo, the conglomerate that manages mining contracts on dozens of World Slugs across the Known Universe, were extremely helpful in providing the Seven Suns legal department with everything we wanted to know, which included giving us your citizen card and all related paperwork.” Melchor tilted his head slightly, as though considering how much he should say at this point. “I hardly need to note that your contract with PusCo has been officially terminated pending the resolution of this investigation, and that all of your accrued earnings will likely go towards making financial reparations to numerous parties once your trial is completed.” Blink. “Are you ready for your trial, Mister Tuesday?”

  Tuesday responded with long-honed instinct.

  “But it was an accident!”

  Melchor dismissed Tuesday's words with a curt hand signal.

  “Mister Tuesday, I have absolutely no interest in hearing anything that you have to say unless I directly request it. Your words profit neither of us, and only serve to delay what I am here to achieve. I say again: your trial will sort everything out in short order.” Blink. “Do you understand, Mister Tuesday?”

  Now Tuesday tilted his head.

  “Wait…so you’re saying I don’t have to say a single thing for this…this trial to happen?” Tuesday scoffed. “What are you going to do? Torture a confession out of me? Beat me until I plead guilty? Break fingers til I sign a confession?”

  Melchor gave Tuesday an odd look. He seemed insulted, and perhaps even a little nauseated, at such concepts.

  “I will do no such thing, Mister Tuesday! As the legal system on Seven Suns demands, we will simply tap into the recall function built into your standard-issue neural software and pinpoint every memory and belief you have surrounding the alleged incident. I can then make an immediate judgement based on the facts. Like I said, if we avoid delays, we should be done within ten minutes.”

  “But what about being judged by a jury of my peers?” Tuesday insisted, trying to buy time. He was well aware that half the stuff in his memories would get him fired into the closest star by most polite societies. “Due process? Innocent until proven guilty? Occam’s Shaving Kit?”

  Melchor barely moved his head, but he definitely flinched.

  “It’s Occam’s Razor.” Melchor sighed, resigned to the fact that Tuesday was going to be one of those clients. “Mister Tuesday, rest assured that to all intents and purposes, I am a courtroom. I am judge, jury, defence and prosecution, all in one.” Melchor leaned forwards. “There are only a handful of Legalitors of my level on Seven Suns, and I can absolutely assure you that I have never ruled incorrectly on any matter since the official end to my hardwiring. In addition to being comprehensively loaded with the details of every legal case in the history of modern mankind, becoming a full Legalitor involved stripping away my capacity to feel any inappropriate bias towards my defendants, and it is impossible to fool me with any falsehoods, no matter how clever. Seven Suns is proud to have the finest, most flawless legal system in all of The Unison, and I can absolutely guarantee that you will get precisely what you deserve for your actions. Do you understand?”

  Tuesday felt a sting of dread. That’s what I’m worried about…

  Tuesday sighed in resignation. Aggravating this guy wasn’t going to help matters, so he did the smart thing.

  “Yes. I understand.”

  Melchor seemed relieved.

  “Acceptable. Now, this process should be virtually painless,” Melchor said this first part serenely, but then a hardness appeared in his eyes. “However, if you attempt to resist the scan in any way, such as by repeating nursery rhymes in your head or deliberately thinking of going to the…to the potty, it will accomplish precisely one thing: it will force me to employ more effort, which means the process will hurt a lot more.”

  Melchor casually threw the stylus and pad into the air, and they vanished the same way they’d appeared. Wriggling his long, thin fingers before finally placing them against his bald head, Melchor closed his eyes and leaned back as much as the ergonomic torture chair would allow. The Legalitor took a few slow breaths, and then finally seemed to stop breathing altogether. His skin took on a
wax-like consistency, and the veins randomly splayed all over his temples grew darker and visibly pumped.

  It took a couple of seconds, but all of a sudden Tuesday could feel a weird twitching in the depths of his mind, a tickle in his thoughts...it was a feeling that he wasn't alone inside his own skull, that every definition of privacy he’d ever understood was a total lie. It wasn’t unpleasant, like poisonous bugs were burrowing in his cerebrum or anything like that, but it certainly wasn’t how you’d want to spend a long weekend.

  Melchor’s eyebrow visibly twitched, as though in confusion. Clenching his face more tightly, Melchor crunched his eyes together and bared both rows of teeth. The experience got more uncomfortable for Tuesday, like the sort of burning you’d feel after thrashing an exercise bike for twice as long as you should have, but the sensation was in his brainpan rather than his thighs.

  Melchor hissed, and red crept across his forehead and cheeks. Veins rose to the surface on the back of his flawless hands.

  “I don’t know what you’re doing or how you’re doing it, Mister Tuesday,” Melchor ground out, “but resisting your trial only makes you look more guilty, and such things have penalties all of their own.”

  “I’m not doing a bloody thing!” Tuesday complained. “I’m just sitting here quietly, doing absolutely fegging noth…”

  Tuesday’s words ended in a squeak of pain as psychic nails hammered into his grey matter from every direction. The sensation was shocking, and Tuesday’s face twisted up into a spiral of agony. Glowing lead danced through his brain, sweeping aside reasoning and self-control. His mind broke like a beer bottle against a brick wall, and for a few seconds Tuesday was utterly insane. His thoughts melted and ran like multi-coloured candles in a roaring fireplace, and it was around this moment that all of his memories became nothing more than an illusion.

  Tuesday spent the next fifteen seconds as a desert lizard sunning itself on a rock. It was good for a time, peacefully drawing heat through his scales and into his frigid bloodstream, but this calm ended in the most hideous way as he was caught in a huge, leathery hand and eaten alive. He only had a fraction of a second to see who’d bitten him in half, but that face, those curved, ivory-coloured teeth, were as unmistakable as the sound of his reptilian body being crunched into paste.

  It was Ruska, Tuesday's mother.

  His point of view jumped sideways into a place far, far worse, a hell that you wouldn’t wish on a dog: the vile head of Ernest Fell. The gangster was pointing a hard-core automatic kinetic weapon at the naked, cowering form of Jim Tuesday, but some sort of primal, drawn-out scream grabbed Fell’s attention to the right, and now the gun was rising towards the threat at about one tenth normal speed. His gun panned over the cowering toddler version of Bob Tuesday, up towards the noonday sun of the deep Mojave, then over to the hairy mountain of pure womanhood bounding towards a surprised Jeeves. With her simian arms raised for war, Ruska didn’t have the faintest idea what hit her as Ernest Fell's assault weapon detonated in concussive bangs that sent vultures flapping and geckos diving under rocks. Ruska’s body opened up like a razor had been run over her stitching, and everything went red in an explosion of meat…

  Mercifully, at this point the scene ended, but Tuesday’s sense of reality continued to break apart in an eternal scream, and just as he (she? it? they? them?) was certain that this madness was all that had ever existed and all that would ever exist, it all came to a halt like a fatal roller-coaster accident. The freefall of pain faded, but that brief psychosis lingered like the stench of burning human flesh.

  When Tuesday was finally able to open his eyes, regaining the capacity to know who he was and what was real after what felt like a lifetime of delusion, it was to see that Melchor was studying him with an expression halfway between confused and angry. Despite the pain he’d just inflicted on Tuesday, the Legalitor seemed to have no time for pity or apologies. Without so much as a “whoops,” Melchor ploughed into his next question.

  “What happened to your software, Mister Tuesday?”

  Tuesday gave Melchor exactly the sort of reaction you’d expect.

  “Software? What bloody software?” Tuesday retched a little. “Fink I’m going to be sick…”

  Melchor narrowed his eyes. He hardly needed to repeat the fact that he was immune to the smallest of fibs, but he seemed at a loss in the face of Tuesday’s overwhelming lack of basic facts. Melchor clicked his fingers, and the hospital room instantly lit up so brightly that it felt like they were both being dissolved in a ground-zero nuclear explosion. Tuesday cursed and clawed at his eyes, blinded.

  “Mister Tuesday, your citizen card shows that you were born and raised on Seven Suns. It is a core component of our – of your - culture that all children go through an extensive series of AutoEducation uploads in their fifth year of life, followed by a yearly top-up to make sure nothing has leaked out.” Melchor leaned forwards through the light pollution, his eyes large and dark and angry. “How could you, somebody born and raised on Seven Suns, have possibly missed out on our proud tradition of universal education?”

  Tuesday froze.

  Crap. I really should have read that stupid citizen card at some point…

  “I-”

  “Was it your parents?” Surprisingly, Melchor looked sympathetic all of a sudden. Tuesday immediately detected a potential point of weakness, and decided that he’d exploit it as soon and as far as possible. “It was their duty to bring you in for the standard uploads. Why didn’t they?” Melchor pushed.

  Tuesday shook his head. His eyes had almost adjusted to the brightness, and it became clear that all Melchor had done to cause the overwhelming glare was to open a panorama of windows. Tuesday could make out an endless sprawl of white spires shrouded in equally white clouds that stretched to the vanishing point and beyond, as well as far, far too many bright spots in the sky. He blinked stupidly and counted the blazing suns.

  Was that…are there seven suns in the sky? How in the…

  “Answer the question, Mister Tuesday.” Melchor said with a lot less softness.

  “My parents definitely didn’t get me any sort of AutoEducation uploads from anywhere at anytime, honest.” Tuesday rattled off. “Television was my teacher.”

  Melchor looked faint. He seemed so rattled by such a concept that he lost his otherwise perpetual eloquence.

  “Well I have never, in all my…the sheer horror of….and you’ve been walking around all this time without a single fact in your head, going through life as a total imbecile? How do you even walk without falling on your face?” Melchor was now visibly shaking. “Mister Tuesday, as your brain doesn't have any software, it is impossible for me to conduct your trial. Also, I feel I must apologise for the violence of my reading attempt. If I knew you didn’t have any software, I wouldn’t have dreamt of doing such a thing. I hate to imagine how painful that must have been! Please accept my apologies, and I will do all in my power to make amends.”

  Tuesday brightened, but he didn’t show it. For now, giving any sign of relief might as well be an admission of guilt. Things were still too dodgy to take any such chances.

  “So can I go?” Tuesday suggested, swinging for the fences.

  Melchor seemed amused by this question. But then he did something really strange: Melchor’s eyes rolled back in his head a bit, as though he was trying to look at his own left eyebrow. This spasm only lasted for a second, and then he resumed exactly where he’d left off.

  “Although this is almost without precedent, our course is clear: you will need to undergo the standard series of AutoEducation uploads that all children from Seven Suns must receive. Once you have the basic software suite installed, I should be able to conduct your trial without any further delay.”

  Tuesday’s hope did its best Titanic impression and sank to the bottom of the Northern Atlantic Ocean. So close, yet so far away…

  Tuesday squinted in thought.

  “How long will this take? How far is the…the school,
or whatever?”

  Melchor didn’t bother to give an answer beyond a curt hand signal before simply disappearing, chair and all. Blinking in surprise at the vacated space, Tuesday barely had enough time to gape stupidly before two unlikely guards stomped into his line of vision through an opaque plateglass door. Thankfully, the uniformed geeks looked less like Monoliths and more like mathletes, and were equipped with stun batons so ridiculously tiny that the weapons must have been originally intended for clubbing Chihuahua puppies. Tuesday decided in an instant that either there was some sort of planetwide law enforcement strike going on and these spugs were the cheapest rent-a-cops left over, or this world was so ridiculously civilised that there was no need for proper police officers. Either scenario worked for him.

  The guards exchanged nervous glances, followed by a hideously failed attempt at looking tough. It was really quite sad.

  “C-come with us, sir,” guard number one stuttered.

  Tuesday, looking bored and unworried, leaned back in the luxurious bed with his hands behind his head.