The outside guard shrugged.
"Detail, _halt_!" The two guards turned to see what was coming in as
the three new candidates for the Greensleeves slumped to a stop at the
head of the stairs. "Here they are," Sodaro told them. "Take good care
of 'em, will you? Especially the lady--she's going to like it here,
because there's plenty of wipes and greasers and figgers to keep her
company." He laughed coarsely and abandoned his charges to the Block O
guards.
The outside guard said sourly: "A woman, for God's sake. Now O'Leary
knows I hate it when there's a woman in here. It gets the others all
riled up."
"Let them in," the inside guard told him. "The others are riled up
already."
Sue-Ann Bradley looked carefully at the floor and paid them no
attention. The outside guard pulled the switch that turned on the
tanglefoot electronic fields that swamped the floor of the block
corridor and of each individual cell. While the fields were on, you
could ignore the prisoners--they simply could not move fast enough,
against the electronic drag of the field, to do any harm. But it was a
rule that, even in Block O, you didn't leave the tangler fields on all
the time--only when the cell doors had to be opened or a prisoner's
restraining garment removed.
Sue-Ann walked bravely forward through the opened gate--and fell flat
on her face. It was her first experience of a tanglefoot field. It was
like walking through molasses.
The guard guffawed and lifted her up by one shoulder. "Take it easy,
auntie. Come on, get in your cell." He steered her in the right
direction and pointed to a greensleeved straitjacket on the cell cot.
"Put that on. Being as you're a lady, we won't tie it up, but the rules
say you got to wear it and the rules--Hey. She's crying!" He shook his
head, marveling. It was the first time he had ever seen a prisoner cry
in the Greensleeves.
However, he was wrong. Sue-Ann's shoulders were shaking, but not from
tears. Sue-Ann Bradley had got a good look at Sauer and at Flock as she
passed them by and she was fighting off an almost uncontrollable urge
to retch.
* * * * *
Sauer and Flock were what are called prison wolves. They were
laborers--"wipes," for short--or, at any rate, they had been once.
They had spent so much time in prisons that it was sometimes hard even
for them to remember what they really were, outside. Sauer was a big,
grinning redhead with eyes like a water moccasin. Flock was a lithe
five-footer with the build of a water moccasin--and the sad, stupid
eyes of a calf.