Sweet Justice Read Online Free Page A

that will leave those Juves speechless.
    I had a lengthy chat session with my kneepad – it refuses to be called GOG; evidently that’s its designer’s name, not its own. It made a rather startling suggestion: I might not be the only victim of this sinister conspiracy. There may well be thousands – even millions – of other citizens like me, living in lonely torment, completely unaware of kindred souls nearby.
    We also discussed extra-sensory perception. As a result, I am conducting an experiment: for 10 minutes every hour I am focussing my thoughts and beaming them telepathically to the city at large. If there are others like me they will hopefully respond.
     
    January 22 nd
    Spent today in bed, worn out. I suppose it was the exertions of last night’s mental telepathy. My kneepad is hanging on the chair, but it hasn’t said a word all day. I suppose that intellectuals are moody, even in the kneepad world.
     
    January 23 rd
     
    In complete contrast to yesterday, I feel fantastic! I am convinced that I have had a telepathic reply to my mental messages. When I wakened this morning, in that warm hazy space between dreams and living, I heard a voice say quite distinctly: ‘I am Mrs Gorp, your next-door neighbour. I am like you.’ My kneepad got quite excited when I told it. ‘It figures, it figures,’ it kept saying. ‘You see, Pizmo, I’ve been thinking: it’s possible to extend my theory to include everybody in the whole city!’
    I knitted my brows. Somehow, that didn’t seem scientific to me. But the kneepad rushed on: ‘I mean – what if every citizen, all 400-million-plus of them, is just the same as you? To wit: lonely, afraid, no job, no future, no money, persecuted by Juves... they wouldn’t all have been abandoned by their mothers, of course, but a lot of them might be.’
    ‘But if we’re all the same, who’s behind the conspiracy?’ I asked.
    ‘Who do you think?’ the kneepad said. ‘Who’s the common factor in all the equations? Who persecutes everybody?’
    Like all great truths, it was so simple that I wondered how I hadn’t thought of it myself. The Juves. Of course –it was the Juves who were behind everything!
     
    January 24 th
     
    We’ve hatched a plan. We’re going to alert the entire city to the conspiracy, but gradually, so as not to tip our hand to the Juves prematurely. I have been delegated to make contact with Mrs Gorp. I left my apartment at noon, after ascertaining that the Juves were nowhere in sight. I puzzled for a moment over NITCHY BLACK BLOO, which someone had scrawled on my door. Some secret Juve code perhaps?
    My push on Mrs Gorp’s bell was light but confident. Her voice rasped suspiciously from the answer-grille in the doorframe: ‘Whoozit? Whadyawant?’
    ‘Pizmo Nitchy, Mrs Gorp. From next door. We met at the Block-fest a couple of years ago.’ I bent closer to the microphone and lowered my voice. ‘I got your telepathic message. We have a lot to talk about.’
    There was a long, long pause. Then a new voice – a man’s – blared in my ear: ‘Lizzen, weirdo! I count ta ten, I open da door. Ya still there I tear ya legs an’ make ya eat ’em!’
    ‘Obviously her husband isn’t as advanced as she is,’ my kneepad hissed. ‘I suggest we return to base and revise our plans.’
    My kneepad soon hit on another scheme: ‘Letters to the vidzines – that’s the answer. If we get enough printed, the citizens’ll soon get the message. Of course, the Juves might see the letters, too. But that’s a chance we’ll just have to take.’
    It was risky, but I consoled myself with the fact that not many Juves can read. Of course, not all that many adults can either. It took me an hour to compose a document setting out my discoveries and theories, including a masterly analysis of my main Juve Conspiracy ideas.
    (I had better record here: I am not trying to take credit away from my kneepad when I say ‘my’ discoveries and theories. The kneepad itself