PLATINUM POHL (17 page)
Authors: Frederik Pohl
“Aw, chief!” Lafon grinned.
“You been looking for trouble. O’Leary says you were messing around with the bucks from the laundry detail,” Sodaro said half-heartedly. But he didn’t really like picking on Lafon, who was, after all, an agreeable inmate to have on occasion. “All right. Where’s the coffee?”
They didn’t bother with tanglefoot fields in Honor Block A. Sodaro just unlocked the door and walked in, hardly bothering to look at Lafon. He took three steps toward the neat little desk at the back of the cell, where Lafon had rigged up a drawing board and a table, where Lafon kept his little store of luxury goods. Three steps. And then, suddenly aware that Lafon was very close to him, he turned, astonished—A little too late. He saw that Lafon had snatched up a metal chair; he saw Lafon swinging it, his black face maniacal; he saw the chair coming down. He reached for his shoulder holster; but it was very much too late for that.
Captain O’Leary dragged the scared little wretch into the warden’s office. He shook the con angrily. “Listen to this, warden! The boys just brought this one in from the Shops Building. Do you know what he’s been up to?”
The warden wheezed sadly and looked away. He had stopped even answering O’Leary by now, he had stopped talking to Sauer on the interphone when the big convict called, every few minutes, to rave and threaten and demand a doctor. He had almost stopped doing everything except worry and weep. But—still and all, he was the warden. He was the one who gave the orders.
O’Leary barked, “Warden, pay attention! This little greaser has bollixed up the whole tangler circuit for the prison. If the cons get out into the Yard now you won’t be able to tangle them. You know what that means? They’ll have the freedom of the Yard, and who knows what comes next?”
The warden frowned sympathetically. “Tsk, tsk.”
O’Leary shook the con again. “Come on, Hiroko! Tell the warden what you told the guards.”
The con shrank away from him. Beads of sweat were glistening on his furrowed yellow forehead. “I—I had to do it, Cap’n!” he babbled. “I shorted the wormcan in the tangler subgrid, but I had to! I got a signal, ‘Bollix the grid tonight or
wheep,
someday you’ll be in the Yard and they’ll static you!’ What could I do, Cap’n? I didn’t want to—”
wheep,
someday you’ll be in the Yard and they’ll static you!’ What could I do, Cap’n? I didn’t want to—”
O’Leary pressed: “Who did the signal come from?” But the con only shook his head, perspiring the more.
The warden asked faintly, “What’s he saying?”
O’Leary rolled his eyes to heaven. And this was the warden—couldn’t even understand shoptalk from the mouths of his own inmates!
He translated: “He got orders from the prison underground to short-circuit the electronic units in the tangler circuit. They threatened to kill him if he didn’t.”
The warden drummed with his fingers on the desk.
“The tangler field, eh? My, yes. That is important. You’d better get it fixed, O’Leary. Right away.”
“Fixed? Warden, look—who’s going to fix it?” O’Leary demanded. “You know as well as I do that every mechanic in the prison is a con. Even if one of the guards would do a thing like that—and I’d bust him myself if he did!—he wouldn’t know where to start. That’s mechanic work.”
The warden swallowed. He had to admit that O’Leary was right. Naturally nobody but a mechanic—and a specialist electrician from a particular subgroup of the greaser class at that—could fix something like the tangler field generators. That was a fact of life. These days, he thought pathetically, the world was so complex that it took a specialist to do anything at all.
He said absently, “Well, that’s true enough. After all, ‘Specialization is the goal of civilization,’ you know.”
O’Leary took a deep breath—he needed it.
He beckoned to the guard at the door. “Take this greaser out of here!” The con shambled out, his head hanging.
O’Leary turned to the warden and spread his hands.
“Warden,” he said reasonably, “don’t you see how this thing is building up? Let’s not just wait for the place to explode in our faces! Let me take a squad into Block O before it’s too late.”
The warden pursed his lips thoughtfully and cocked his head, as though he were trying to find some trace of merit in an unreasonable request.
He said at last, “No.”
O’Leary made a passionate sound that was trying to be bad language; but he was too raging mad to articulate it. He walked stiffly away from the limp, silent warden and stared out the window.
At least, he told himself,
he
hadn’t gone to pieces. It was his doing, not the warden’s, that all the off-duty guards had been dragged double-time back to the prison, his doing that they were now ringed around the outer walls or scattered on extra-man patrols throughout the prison.
he
hadn’t gone to pieces. It was his doing, not the warden’s, that all the off-duty guards had been dragged double-time back to the prison, his doing that they were now ringed around the outer walls or scattered on extra-man patrols throughout the prison.
It was something, but O’Leary couldn’t believe that it was enough. He’d been in touch with half a dozen of the details inside the prison on the intercom, and all of them had reported the same thing. In all of E—G not a single prisoner was asleep. They were talking back and forth between the cells, and the guards couldn’t shut them up; they were listening to concealed radios, and the guards didn’t dare make a shakedown to find them; they were working themselves up to something. To what?
O’Leary didn’t want ever to find out what. He wanted to go in there with a couple of the best guards he could get his hands on—shoot his way into the Green Sleeves if he had to—and clean up the infection.
But the warden said no.
O’Leary moaned and stared balefully at the hovering helicopters.
The warden was the warden! He was placed in that position through the meticulously careful operations of the Civil Service machinery, maintained in that position year after year through the penetrating annual inquiries of the Reclassification Board. It was
subversive
to think that the Board could have made a mistake!
subversive
to think that the Board could have made a mistake!
But O’Leary was absolutely sure that the warden was a scared, ineffectual jerk.
The interphone was ringing again.
The warden picked up the handpiece and held it limply at arm’s length, his eyes fixed glassily on the wall. It was Sauer from the Green Sleeves again; O’Leary could hear his maddened bray.
“I warned you, warden!” O’Leary could see the big con’s contorted face in miniature, in the viewscreen of the interphone. The grin was broad and jolly; the snake’s eyes poisonously cold. “I’m going to give you five minutes, warden, you hear? Five minutes! And if there isn’t a medic in here in five minutes to take care of my boy Flock—your guards have had it! I’m going to chop off a hand and throw it out the window, you hear me? And five minutes later another hand! And five minutes later—”
The warden groaned weakly. “I’ve called for the prison medic, Sauer. Honestly I have! I’m sure he’s coming as rapidly as he—”
“Five minutes!” And the ferociously grinning face disappeared.
O’Leary leaned forward. “Warden. Warden, let me take a squad in there!”
The warden stared at him for a blank moment. “Squad? No, O’Leary. What’s the use of a squad? It’s a medic I have to get in there. I have a responsibility to those guards, and if I don’t get a medic—”
A cold, calm voice from the door: “I am here, warden!”
O’Leary and the warden both jumped up. The medic nodded slightly. “You may sit down.”
“Oh, doctor! Thank heaven you’re here.” The warden was falling all over himself, getting a chair for his guest, flustering about.
O’Leary said sharply, “Wait a minute, warden. You can’t let the doctor go in alone!”
“He isn’t alone!” The doctor’s intern came from behind him, scowling belligerently at O’Leary. He was youngish, his beard pale and silky, a long way from his first practice. “I’m with him!”
O’Leary put a strain on his patience. “They’ll eat you up in there, Doc! Those are the worst cons in the prison. They’ve got two hostages already—what’s the use of giving them two more?”
The medic fixed him with his eyes. He was a tall man and he wore his beard proudly. “Guard, do you think you can prevent me from healing a sufferer?” He folded his hands over his abdomen and turned to leave.
The intern stepped aside and bowed his head. O’Leary surrendered.
“All right, you can go. But I’m coming with you—with a squad!”
Inmate Sue-Ann Bradley cowered in her cell.
The Green Sleeves was jumping. She had never—no,
never,
she told herself wretchedly—thought that it would be anything like this. She listened unbelieving to the noise the released prisoners were making, smashing the chairs and commodes in their cells, screaming threats at the bound and terrified guards.
never,
she told herself wretchedly—thought that it would be anything like this. She listened unbelieving to the noise the released prisoners were making, smashing the chairs and commodes in their cells, screaming threats at the bound and terrified guards.
They were like—like—
animals!
animals!
She faced the thought, with fear, and with the sorrow of a murdered belief that was worse than fear. It was bad that she was, she knew, in danger of dying right here and now; but what was even worse was that the principles that had brought her to the Jug were dying too.
Wipes were
not
the same as civil-service people!
not
the same as civil-service people!
A bull’s roar from the corridor, and a shocking crash of glass; that was Flock, and apparently he had smashed the TV interphone.
“What in the world are they
doing?”
Inmate Bradley sobbed to herself. It was beyond comprehension. They were yelling words that made no sense to her, threatening punishments that she could barely imagine on the guards. Sauer and Flock, they were laborers; some of the other rioting cons were clerks, mechanics—even civil-service or professionals, for all she could tell. But she could hardly understand any of them. Why was the quiet little Chinese clerk in Cell Six setting fire to his bed?
doing?”
Inmate Bradley sobbed to herself. It was beyond comprehension. They were yelling words that made no sense to her, threatening punishments that she could barely imagine on the guards. Sauer and Flock, they were laborers; some of the other rioting cons were clerks, mechanics—even civil-service or professionals, for all she could tell. But she could hardly understand any of them. Why was the quiet little Chinese clerk in Cell Six setting fire to his bed?
There did seem to be a pattern, of sorts—the laborers were rocketing about, breaking things at random; the mechanics were pleasurably sabotaging the electronic and plumbing installations; the white-collar categories were finding their dubious joys in less direct ways—liking setting fire to a bed. But what a mad pattern!
The more Sue-Ann saw of them, the less she understood.
It wasn’t just that they
talked
different—she had spent endless hours studying the various patois of shoptalk, and it had defeated her; but it wasn’t just that. It was bad enough when she couldn’t understand the words—as when that trusty Mathias had ordered her in wipe shoptalk to mop out her cell.
talked
different—she had spent endless hours studying the various patois of shoptalk, and it had defeated her; but it wasn’t just that. It was bad enough when she couldn’t understand the words—as when that trusty Mathias had ordered her in wipe shoptalk to mop out her cell.
But what was even worse was not understanding the thought behind the words.
Sue-Ann Bradley had consecrated her young life to the belief that all men were created free, and equal—and alike. Or alike in all the things that mattered, anyhow. Alike in hopes, alike in motives, alike in virtues. She had turned her back on a decent civil-service family and a promising civil-service career to join the banned and despised Association for the Advancement of the Categoried Classes—
Screams from the corridor outside.
Sue-Ann leaped to the door of her cell to see Sauer clutching at one of the guards. The guard’s hands were tied but his feet were free; he broke loose from the clumsy clown with the serpent’s eyes, almost fell, ran toward Sue-Ann.
There was nowhere else to run. The guard, moaning and gasping, tripped, slid, caught himself and stumbled into her cell. “Please!” he begged. “That crazy Sauer—he’s going to cut my hand off! For heaven’s sake, ma’am—stop him!”
Sue-Ann stared at him, between terror and tears. Stop Sauer! If only she could stop Sauer. The big redhead was lurching stiffly toward them—raging, but not so angry that the water-moccasin eyes showed heat.
“Come here, you figger scum!” he brayed.
The epithet wasn’t even close—the guard was civil-service through and through—but it was like a reviving whip-sting to Sue-Ann Bradley.
“Watch your language, Mr. Sauer!” she snapped, incongruously.
Sauer stopped dead and blinked.
“Don’t you dare hurt him!” she warned. “Don’t you see, Mr. Sauer, you’re playing into their hands? They’re trying to divide us. They pit mechanic against clerk, laborer against armed forces. And you’re helping them! Brother Sauer, I beg—”
The redhead spat deliberately on the floor.
He licked his lips, and grinned an amiable clown’s grin, and said in his cheerful, buffoon bray: “Auntie, go verb your adjective adjective noun.”
Sue-Ann Bradley gasped and turned white.
She had known such words existed—but only theoretically. She had never expected
to
hear
them. And certainly, she would never have believed she would hear them, applied to her, from the lips of a … a
laborer.
At her knees, the guard shrieked and fell to the floor.
to
hear
them. And certainly, she would never have believed she would hear them, applied to her, from the lips of a … a
laborer.
At her knees, the guard shrieked and fell to the floor.
“Sauer, Sauer!” A panicky bellow from the corridor; the redheaded giant hesitated. “Sauer, come on out here! There’s a million guards coming up the stairs. Looks like trouble!”
Sauer said hoarsely to the unconscious guard, “I’ll take care of
you.
” And he looked blankly at the girl, and shook his head, and hurried back to the corridor.
you.
” And he looked blankly at the girl, and shook his head, and hurried back to the corridor.
Guards were coming, all right—not a million of them, but half a dozen or more. And leading them all was the medic, calm, bearded face looking straight ahead, hands clasped before him, ready to heal the sick, comfort the aged or bring new life into the world.
“Hold it!” shrieked little Flock, crouched over the agonizing blister on his abdomen, gun in hand, peering insanely down the steps. “Hold it or—”
“Shut up.” Sauer called softly to the approaching group: “Let the doc come up. Nobody else!”
The intern faltered; the guards stopped dead; the medic said calmly: “I must have my intern with me.” He glanced at the barred gate wonderingly.
Sauer hesitated. “Well—all right. But no guards!”
A few yards away Sue-Ann Bradley was stuffing the syncoped form of the guard into her small washroom.
It was time to take a stand.
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