Sue-Ann Bradley demanded shaloly, “Is anything the matter?”
O’Leary turned away. It was astonishing, he thought, what a different perspective he had on those helicopter bombers from inside Block 0. Once he had cursed the warden for not ordering tear gas, at least, dropped… .
He said harshly, “Nothing. Just that the copters have the place surrounded.”
“Does it make any difference?”
He shrugged. Does it make a difference? The difference between trouble and tragedy, or so it now seemed to Captain O’Leary. The riot was trouble. They could handle it, one way or another it was his job, any guard’s job, to handle prison trouble.
But to bring the GIs into it was to invite race riot. Not prison riot race riot. Even the declassed scum in the Jug would fight back against the GIs. They were used to having the civil-service guards over them that was what guards were for. Civil-service presidents presided, and civil-service governors governed, and civil-service guards guarded. What else? It was their job as clerking was a figger’s job, and mechanics were a greaser’s, and pick-and-shovel strong-arm work was a wipe’s. But the armed services their job was, theoretically, to defend the country against forces outside. Race riot. The cons wouldn’t stand still under attack from the GIs.
But how could you tell that to a girl like this Bradley?
O’Leary glanced at her covertly. She looked all right.
Rather nice-looking, if anything. But he hadn’t forgotten why she was in E-G. Joining a terrorist organization, the Association for the Advancement of the Categoried Classes. Advocating desegregation actually getting up on a street comer and proposing that greasers’ children be allowed to go to school with Gl’s, that wipes intermarry with civil service. Good Lord, they’d be suggesting that doctors eat with laymen next!
The girl said evenly, “Don’t look at me that way. I’m not a monster.”
O’Leary coughed. “I, uh, sorry. I didn’t know I was staring.” She looked at him with cold eyes. “I mean,” he said, “you don’t look like anybody who’d get mixed up in, well, miscegenation.”
“Miscegenation! Dirty mind!” she blazed. “You’re all alike, you talk about the mission of the Categoried Classes and the rightness of segregation and it’s always just the one thing that’s in your minds. Sex! You’re you’re trying to turn the clock back,” she sobbed. “I’ll tell you this for sure. Captain O’Leary! I’d rather marry a decent, hard-working clerk any day than the sort of low-grade civil-service trash I’ve seen around here!”
O’Leary cringed. He couldn’t help it. Funny, he told himself, I thought I was shockproof but this goes too far!
A bull-roar from the corridor. Sauer. O’Leary spun.
The big redhead was yelling: “Bring the governor out here. Lafon wants to talk to him!”
O’Leary went to the door of the cell, fast.
A slim, pale con from Block A was pushing the governor down the hall, toward Sauer and Lafon. The governor was a strong man, but he didn’t struggle. His face was as composed and remote as the medic’s; if he was afraid, he concealed it extremely well.
Sue-Ann Bradley slipped beside O’Leary. “What’s happening?”
He kept his eyes on what was going on. “Lafon is going to try to use the governor as a shield, I think.” The voice of Lafon was loud, but the noises outside made it hard to understand. But O’Leary could make out what the dark ex-professional was saying: “know damn well you did something. But what? Why don’t they crush out?”
Mumble-mumble from the governor; O’Leary couldn’t hear the words. But he could see the effect of them in Lafon’s face, hear the rage in Lafon’s voice. “Don’t call me a liar, you ciwy punk! You did something. I had it all planned, do you hear me? The laundry boys were going to rush the gate, the Block A bunch would follow and then I was going to breeze right through. But you loused it up. You must’ve!” His voice was rising to a scream.
O’Leary, watching tautly from the cell, thought: He’s going to break. He can’t hold it in much longer.
“All right!” shouted Lafon, and even Saner, looming behind him, looked alarmed. “It doesn’t matter what you did. I’ve got you now, and you are going to get me out of here. You hear? I’ve got this gun, and the two of us are going to walk right out, through the gate, and if anybody tries to stop us”
“Hey,” said Sauer, waking up.
“‘d anybody tries to stop us, you’ll get a bullet right in”
“Hey!” Sauer was roaring loud as Lafon himself now.
“What’s this talk about the two of you? You aren’t going to leave me and Flock!”
“Shut up,” Lafon said conversationally, without taking his eyes off the governor.
But Sauer, just then, was not the man to say “shut up”
to, and especially he was not a man to take your eyes away from.
“That’s torn it,” O’Leary said aloud. The girl started to say something.
But he was no longer there to hear.
It looked very much as though Sauer and Lafon were going to tangle. And when they did, it was the end of the line for the governor.
O’Leary hurtled out of the sheltering cell and skidded down the corridor. Lafon’s face was a hawk’s face, gleaming with triumph; as he saw O’Leary coming toward him, the hawk sneer froze. He brought the gun up, but O’Leary was a fast man.
O’Leary leaped on the lithe black honor prisoner. Lafon screamed, and clutched; and O’Leary’s lunging weight drove him back against the wall. Lafon’s arm smacked against the steel grating and the gun went flying. The two of them clinched and fell, gouging, to the floor.
O’Leary had the advantage; he hammered the con’s head against the deck, hard enough to split a skull. And perhaps it split Lafon’s, because the dark face twitched, and froth appeared at the lips; and the body slacked.
One down!
And Sauer was charging. O’Leary wriggled sidewise, and the big redhead blundered crashing into the steel grate. Sauer fell, and O’Leary caught at him. He tried the hammering of the head, he swarmed on top of the huge clown. But Sauer only roared the louder. The bull body surged under O’Leary, and then Sauer was on top and O’Leary wasn’t breathing. Not at all.
Everything was choking black dust.
Good-by, Sue-Ann, O’Leary said silently, without meaning to say anything of the kind; and even then he wondered why he was saying it.
O’Leary heard a gun explode beside his head.
Amazing, he thought. I’m breathing again! The choking hands were gone from his throat.
It took him a moment to realize that it was Sauer who had taken the bullet, not him. Sauer who now lay dead … not O’Leary. But he realized it, when he rolled over, and looked up, and saw the girl with the gun still in her hand, staring at him and weeping.
He sat up. The two guards still able to walk were backing Sue-Ann Bradley up; the governor was looking proud as an eagle, pleased as a mother hen.
The Green Sleeves was back in the hands of law and order.
The medic came toward O’Leary, hands folded. “My son,” he said, “if your throat needs”
O’Leary interrupted him. “I don’t need a thing, Doc!
I’ve got everything I want, right now.”
Inmate Sue-Ann Bradley cried, “They’re coming!
O’Leary, they’re coming!”
The guards who had once been hostages clattered down the steps to meet the party. The cons from the Green Sleeves were back in their cells. The medic, having finished his chores on O’Leary himself, paced meditatively out into the wake of the riot, where there was plenty to keep him busy. A faintly bilious expression tinctured his carven face. He had not liked Lafon or Sauer.
The party of fresh guards appeared, and efficiently began re-locking the cells of the Green Sleeves. “Excuse me, Cap’n,” said one, taking Sue-Ann Bradley by the arm, “I’ll just put this one back”