Sue-Ann froze, waiting to see what would happen. What actually did
happen was that the guard reached up and closed the switch that
actuated the tangler fields on the floors of the cells. The prison
rules were humanitarian, even for the dregs that inhabited the
Greensleeves. Ten minutes out of every two hours, even the worst case
had to be allowed to take his hands out of the restraining garment.
"Rest period" it was called--in the rule book. The inmates had a less
lovely term for it.
* * * * *
At the guard's yell, the inmates jumped to their feet.
Bradley was a little slow getting off the edge of the steel-slat
bed--nobody had warned her that the eddy currents in the tangler fields
had a way of making metal smoke-hot. She gasped but didn't cry out.
Score one more painful lesson in her new language course. She rubbed
the backs of her thighs gingerly--and slowly, slowly, for the eddy
currents did not permit you to move fast. It was like pushing against
rubber; the faster you tried to move, the greater the resistance.
The guard peered genially into her cell. "You're okay, auntie." She
proudly ignored him as he slogged deliberately away on his rounds.
He didn't have to untie her and practically stand over her while
she attended to various personal matters, as he did with the male
prisoners. It was not much to be grateful for, but Sue-Ann Bradley was
grateful. At least she didn't have to live _quite_ like a fig--like an
underprivileged clerk, she told herself, conscience-stricken.
Across the hall, the guard was saying irritably: "What the hell's
the matter with you?" He opened the door of the cell with an
asbestos-handled key held in a canvas glove.
Flock was in that cell and he was doubled over.
The guard looked at him doubtfully. It could be a trick, maybe.
Couldn't it? But he could see Flock's face and the agony in it was real
enough. And Flock was gasping, through real tears: "Cramps. I--I--"
"Ah, you wipes always got a pain in the gut." The guard lumbered around
Flock to the draw-strings at the back of the jacket. Funny smell in
here, he told himself--not for the first time. And imagine, some people
didn't believe that wipes had a smell of their own! But this time, he
realized cloudily, it was a rather unusual smell. Something burning.
Almost like meat scorching.
It wasn't pleasant. He finished untying Flock and turned away; let the
stinking wipe take care of his own troubles. He only had ten minutes to
get all the way around Block O and the inmates complained like crazy if
he didn't make sure they all got the most possible free time. He was
pretty good at snowshoeing through the tangler field. He was a little
vain about it, even; at times he had been known to boast of his ability
to make the rounds in two minutes, every time.
Every time but this.
For Flock moaned behind him, oddly close.
The guard turned, but not quickly enough. There was
Flock--astonishingly, he was half out of his jacket; his arms hadn't
been in the sleeves at all! And in one of the hands, incredibly, there
was something that glinted and smoked.
"All right," croaked Flock, tears trickling out of eyes nearly shut
with pain.
But it wasn't the tears that held the guard; it was the shining,
smoking thing, now poised at his throat. A shiv! It looked as though
it had been made out of a bed-spring, ripped loose from its frame God
knows how, hidden inside the greensleeved jacket God knows how--filed,
filed to sharpness over endless hours.
No wonder Flock moaned--the eddy currents in the shiv were slowly
cooking his hand; and the blister against his abdomen, where the shiv
had been hidden during other rest periods, felt like raw acid.
"All right," whispered Flock, "just walk out the door and you won't get
hurt. Unless the other screw makes trouble, you won't get hurt, so tell
him not to, you hear?"
He was nearly fainting with the pain.
But he hadn't let go.
He didn't let go. And he didn't stop.