"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. Youngish, his beard pale and silky, he was a
long way from his first practice. "I'm here to assist 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 Greensleeves
was jumping. She had never--no, _never_, she told herself
wretchedly--thought that it would be anything like this. She listened
unbelievingly to the noise the released prisoners were making, smashing
the chairs and commodes in their cells, screaming threats at the bound
guards.
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 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!
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 on the guards that she could barely
imagine. Sauer and Flock 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_ differently. 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 ear off! For heaven's sake,
ma'am--stop him!"
* * * * *
Sue-Ann stared at him, between terror and tears. Stop Sauer! If only
she could. 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 roared.
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.
"Sauer! Sauer!" A panicky bellow from the corridor; the red-haired
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 outside 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 only 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.