Sweet Justice Read Free Page B

to lounge and glare as if I hadn’t even spoken. I felt like shaking them by their stupid shoulders, but wisely refrained. Assaulting a minor is a very serious offence. Of course, assaulting an adult is a serious offence, too – but it would be my word against ten of theirs. ‘OW!’ Another missile cracked against my skull. But thankfully, before they all decided to join in, the lift arrived.
    It was empty, except for one Juve with a single 30-centimeter-long spike of rigid, plasticated hair. The point of it stabbed my ear painfully as he squeezed by me.
    Thankfully they didn’t follow me into the lift. I don’t think I could have endured their malicious taunts all the way to street level. I breathed a sigh of relief – and it was then I noticed that the STOP button had been depressed for every single floor from mine down. All 88 of them. Evidently the work of my spiky-headed attacker. But why?
    I found out on floor 88.
    As the doors slid open, I was deluged by a shower of garbage. The perpetrators, of course, were Juves – whether the same ones who’d menaced me upstairs, I couldn’t tell. What’s the difference? They’re all the same anyway!
    I punched the Close button and fended off a final missile as the doors hissed to. It didn’t require a genius to figure out that I was going to receive more of this treatment... all the way down to the street.
    By the time the lift reached the bottom, I resembled not so much a decent, law-abiding citizen as a walking muck heap, cleverly constructed over a framework of painful bruises. I am not ashamed to say that I was whimpering.
    My journey across the city wasn’t exactly pleasant, but compared with my descent in the lift it was a doddle. I arrived at Orinoko’s Lunchette in Sector 44’s Avenue of Poloypropylop. I was afraid the waiter wouldn’t serve me, I was in such a state; but happily, he recognised me under the filth and bade me enter with his usual good-natured gusto. Wouldn’t surprise me if I was his best customer – after all, I’ve been coming here every Thursday lunchtime for 17 years now.
    I ordered my usual – soypfel strudel and a big jug of synthi-caff – and settled down by Orinoko’s big front window. Normally I’d scan the faces of the passing crowds with rapt attention, hoping that maybe today... maybe today I’d find the face I’d been looking for all these years.
    But the 88 peltings I’d received at the hands of those surly, sinister Juves had entirely spoiled my mood. I sat there, a muck-encrusted 40-year-old with a heavy heart and no prospects... just another big city loser... a man who couldn’t even find his own dear mother...
    There, I’ve said it. Mother’s the reason I come here every week. It’s in the hope that one day she’ll come in here, just like she did every Thursday back in the old days, and say in that lilting, laughing voice of hers: ‘Mockola for me and a freezipop for the brat.’ We were happy together, Mom and me; why, when dad died in the big Space Port disaster back in ’86, we hardly even noticed. Times were hard, but me and Mom were together, and that was always enough for me.
    But as I got older, we started to grow further apart. When I finished with my unemployment courses, Mom insisted that I become independent, move out, set up house on my own. I guess she wanted to live her own life, taste a little freedom for a while. But she was my mom, for Josh-sakes; I couldn’t leave her.
    So my Mom did the next best thing: she left me.
    It was a few days after my 23 rd birthday. I’d been out on a cheap-shot trip and picked up this great GOG kneepad – yes, the very one I wear to this day. I came rushing into the house, yelling to Mom to look-see the new pad. My voice echoed around an empty home. Mom had packed her clothes – and everything that wasn’t bolted down – and vamoosed.
    I was distraught. I asked the neighbours if they knew where she’d gone – most of them didn’t even know who she (or