Platinum Pohl - The Collected Best Stories

by Frederik Pohl

  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!

  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.

  They were like—like—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!

  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?

  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.

  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.

  “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.

  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 inter
n 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.

  No more cowering, she told herself desperately. No more waiting. She closed the door on the guard, still unconscious, and stood grimly before it. Him, at least, she would save if she could. They could get him, but only over her dead body…

  Or anyway—she thought with a sudden throbbing in her throat—over her body.

  6

  After O’Leary and the medic left, the warden tottered to a chair—but not for long. His secretary appeared, eyes bulging. “The governor!” he gasped.

  Warden Schluckebier managed to say: “Why, Governor! How good of you to come—”

  The governor shook him off and held the door open for the men who had come with him. There were reporters from all the news services, officials from the township governments within the city-state. There was an air GI with the major’s leaves on his collar—“Liaison, sir,” he explained crisply to the warden, “just in case you have any orders for our men up there.” There were nearly a dozen others.

  The warden was quite overcome.

  The governor rapped out: “Warden, no criticism of you, of course, but I’ve come to take personal charge. I’m superseding you under Rule Twelve, Para. A, of the Uniform Civil Service Code. Right?”

  “Oh, right!” cried the warden, incredulous with joy.

  “The situation is bad—perhaps worse than you think. I’m seriously concerned about the hostages those men have in there. The guards, the medic—and I had a call from Senator Bradley a short time ago—”

  “Senator Bradley?” echoed the warden.

  “Senator Sebastian Bradley. One of our foremost civil servants,” the governor said firmly. “It so happens that his daughter is in Block O, as an inmate.”

  The warden closed his eyes. He tried to swallow, but the throat muscles were paralyzed.

  “There is no question,” the governor went on briskly, “about the propriety of her being there—she was duly convicted of a felonious act, namely conspiracy and incitement to riot. But you see the position.”

  The warden saw. All too well the warden saw.

  “Therefore,” said the governor, “I intend to go in to Block O myself. Sebastian Bradley is an old and personal friend—as well,” he emphasized, “as being a senior member of the Reclassification Board. I understand a medic is going to Block O. I shall go with him.”

  The warden managed to sit up straight. “He’s gone. I mean—they already left, Governor. But I assure you, Miss Brad—Inmate Bradley—that is, the young lady is in no danger. I have already taken precautions,” he said, gaining confidence as he listened to himself talk. “I, uh, I was deciding on a course of action as you came in. See, Governor, the guards on the walls are all armed. All they have to do is fire a couple of rounds into the Yard—and then the copters could start dropping tear gas and light fragmentation bombs and—”

  The governor was already at the door. “You will not,” he said; and, “Now, which way did they go?”

  O’Leary was in the Yard, and he was smelling trouble, loud and strong.

  The first he knew that the rest of the prison had caught the riot fever was when the lights flared on in Cell Block A. “That Sodaro!” he snarled; but there wasn’t time to worry about that Sodaro. He grabbed the rest of his guard detail and double-timed it toward the New Building, leaving the medic and a couple of guards walking sedately toward the Old. Block A, on the New Building’s lowest tier was already coming to life; a dozen yards, and Blocks B and C lighted up.

  And a dozen yards more, and they could hear the yelling; and it wasn’t more than a minute before the building doors opened.

  The cons had taken over three more blocks. How? O’Leary didn’t take time even to guess. The inmates were piling out into the Yard. He took one look at the rushing mob. Crazy! It was Wilmer Lafon leading the rioters, with a guard’s gun and a voice screaming threats! But O’Leary didn’t take time to worry about an honor prisoner gone bad, either. “Let’s get out of here!” he bellowed to the detachment, and they ran…

  Just plain ran. Cut and ran, scattering as they went.

  “Wait!” screamed O’Leary, but they weren’t waiting. Cursing himself for letting them get out of hand, O’Leary salvaged two guards and headed on the run for the Old Building, huge and dark, all but the topmost lights of Block O. They saw the medic and his escort disappearing into the bulk of the Old Building; and they saw something else. There were inmates between them and the Old Building! The Shops Building lay between—with a dozen more cell blocks over the workshops that gave it its name—and there was a milling rush of activity around its entrance, next to the laundry shed—

  The laundry shed.

  O’Leary stood stock still. Lafon talking to the laundry cons; Lafon leading the breakout from Block A. The little greaser who was a trusty in the Shops Building sabotaging the Yard’s tangler circuit. Sauer and Flock taking over the Green Sleeves with a manufactured knife and a lot of guts. Did it fit together? Was it all part of a plan?

  That was something to find out—but not just then. “Come on,” O’Leary cried to the two guards, and they raced for the temporary safety of the main gates.

  The whole prison was up and yelling now.

  O’Leary could hear scattered shots from the beat guards on the wall—Over their heads, over their heads! he prayed silently. And there were other shots that seemed to come from inside the walls—guards shooting, or convicts with guards’ guns, he couldn’t tell which. The Yard was full of convicts now, in bunches and clumps; but none near the gate. And they seemed to have lost some of their drive. They were milling around, lit by the searchlights from the wall, yelling and making a lot of noise…but going nowhere in particular. Waiting for a leader, O’Leary thought, and wondered briefly what had become of Lafon.

  “You Captain O’Leary?” somebody demanded.

  O’Leary turned and blinked. Good Lord, the governor! He was coming through the gate, waving aside the gate guards, alone. “You him?” the governor repeated. “All right, glad I found you. I’m going in to Block O with you!”

  O’Leary swallowed, and waved at the teeming cons. True, there were none immediately nearby—but there were plenty in the Yard! Riots meant breaking things up; already the inmates had started to break up the machines in the laundry shed and the athletic equipment in the Yard lockers; when they found a couple of choice breakables like O’Leary and the Governor they’d have a ball! “But Governor—”

  “But my foot! Can you get me in there or can’t you?”

  O’Leary gauged their chances. It wasn’t more than fifty feet to the main entrance to the Old Building—not at the moment guarded, since all the guards were in hiding or on the walls, and not as yet being invaded by the inmates at large.

  He said, “You’re the boss! Hold on a minute—” The searchlights were on the bare Yard cobblestones in front of them; in a moment the searchlights danced away.

  “Come on!” cried O’Leary, and jumped for the entrance. The governor was with him, and a pair of the guards came stumbling after.

  They made it to the Old Building.

  Inside the entrance they could hear the noise from outside and the yelling of the inmates who were still in their cells; but around them was nothing but gray steel walls and the stairs going up to Block O. “Up!” panted O’Leary, and they clattered up the steel steps.

  They nearly made it.

  They would have made it—if it hadn’t been for the honor inmate, Wilmer Lafon, who knew what he was after and had headed for the Green Sleeves through the back way. In fact, they did make it—but not the way they planned. “Get out of the way!” yelled O’Leary at Lafon and the half-dozen inmates with him; an
d “Go to hell!” screamed Lafon, charging; and it was a rough-and-tumble fight, and O’Leary’s party lost it, fair and square.

  So when they got to Block O it was with the governor marching before a convict-held gun, and with O’Leary cold unconscious, a lump from a gun-butt on the side of his head.

  As they came up the stairs, Sauer was howling at the medic: “You got to fix up my boy! He’s dying, and all you do is sit there!”

  The medic said patiently, “My son, I’ve dressed his wound. He is under sedation, and I must rest. There will be other casualties.”

  Sauer raged, and he danced around; but that was as far as it went. Even Sauer wouldn’t attack a medic! He would as soon strike an Attorney, or even a Director of Funerals. It wasn’t merely that they were professionals—even among the professional class, they were special; not superior, exactly, but apart. They certainly were not for the likes of Sauer to fool with, and Sauer knew it.

  “Somebody’s coming!” cried one of the other freed inmates.

  Sauer jumped to the head of the steps, saw that Lafon was leading the group, stepped back, saw who Lafon’s helpers were carrying, and leaped forward again. “Cap’n O’Leary!” he roared. “Gimme!”

  “Shut up,” said Wilmer Lafon, and pushed the big redhead out of the way. Sauer’s jaw dropped, and the snake eyes opened wide.

  “Wilmer,” he protested feebly. But that was all the protest he made, because the snake’s eyes had seen that Lafon held a gun. He stood back, the big hands half outstretched toward the unconscious guard captain, O’Leary, and the cold eyes became thoughtful.

  And then he saw who else was with the party. “Wilmer!” he roared. “You got the governor there!”

  Lafon nodded. “Throw them in a cell,” he ordered, and sat down on a guard’s stool, breathing hard. It had been a fine fight on the steps, before he and his boys had subdued the governor and the guards; but Wilmer Lafon wasn’t used to fighting. Even six years in the Jug hadn’t turned an architect into a laborer; physical exertion simply was not his métier.