Platinum Pohl: The Collected Best Stories

by Frederik Pohl

  Sauer said coaxingly, “Wilmer, won’t you leave me have O’Leary for a while? If it wasn’t for me and Flock you’d still be in A Block, and—”

  “Shut up,” Lafon said again, gently enough, but he waved the gun muzzle. He drew a deep breath, glanced around him and grinned. “If it wasn’t for you and Flock,” he mimicked. “If it wasn’t for you and Flock! Sauer, you wipe clown, do you think it took brains to file down a shiv and start things rolling? If it wasn’t for me, you and Flock would have beat up a few guards, and had your kicks for half an hour, and then the whole prison would fall in on you! It was me, Wilmer Lafon, that set things up, and you know it!” He was yelling, and suddenly he realized he was yelling. And what was the use, he demanded of himself contemptuously, of trying to argue with a bunch of lousy wipes and greasers? They never understand the long, soul-killing hours of planning and sweat; they wouldn’t realize the importance of the careful timing—of arranging that the laundry cons would start a disturbance in the Yard right after the Green Sleeves hard-timers kicked off the riot; of getting the little greaser Hiroko to short-circuit the Yard field so the laundry cons could start their disturbance. It took a professional to organize and plan—yes, and to make sure that he himself was out of it until everything was ripe, so that if anything went wrong he was all right. It took somebody like Wilmer Lafon—a professional, who had spent six years too long in the Jug—

  And who would shortly be getting out.

  7

  Any prison is a ticking bomb. Estates-General was in process of going off.

  From the Green Sleeves where the trouble had started, clear out to the trusty farms that ringed the walls, every inmate was up and jumping. Some were still in their cells—the scared ones, the decrepit oldsters, the short-termers who didn’t dare risk their early discharge. But for every man in his cell, a dozen were out and yelling.

  A torch, licking as high as the hanging helicopters, blazed up from the Yard—that was the laundry shed. Why burn the laundry? The cons couldn’t have said. It was burnable, and it was there—burn it!

  The Yard lay open to the wrath of the helicopters, but the helicopters made no move. The cobblestones were solidly covered with milling men. The guards were on the walls, sighting down their guns; the helicopter bombardiers had their fingers on the bomb trips. There had been a few rounds fired over the heads of the rioters, at first.

  Nothing since.

  In the milling mob, the figures clustered in groups. The inmates from Honor Block A huddled under the guards’ guns at the angle of the wall. They had clubs, as all the inmates had clubs, but they weren’t using them.

  Honor Block A—on the outside, civil service and professionals. On the inside, the trusties, the “good” cons.

  They weren’t the type for clubs.

  With all of the inmates, you looked at them and you wondered what twisted devil had got into their heads to land them in the Jug. Oh, perhaps you could understand it—a little bit at least—in the case of the figgers in Blocks B and C, the greasers in the Shop Building—that sort. It was easy enough for some of the Categoried Classes to commit a crime, and thereby land in jail. Who could blame a wipe for trying to “pass,” if he thought he could get away with it? But when he didn’t get away with it, he wound up in the Jug, and that was logical enough. And greasers liked civil-service women, everyone knew that. There was almost a sort of logic to it—even if it was a sort of inevitable logic that made decent civil-service people see red. You had to enforce the laws against rape if, for instance, a greaser should ask an innocent young female postal clerk for a date. But you could understand what drove him to it. The Jug was full of criminals of that sort. And the Jug was the place for them.

  But what about Honor Block A?

  Why would a Wilmer Lafon—a certified public architect, a Professional by category—draw a portrait in oils and get himself jugged for malpractice? Why would a dental nurse—practically a medic—sneak back into the laboratory at night and cast an upper plate for her mother? Greasers’ work was greasers’ work; she knew what the penalty was. She must have realized she would be caught.

  But she had done it. And she had been caught; and there she was, this wild night, huddled under the helicopters, feebly waving the handle of a floor mop.

  It was a club. And she wasn’t the type for clubs.

  She shivered and turned to the stock convict next to her. “Why don’t they break down the gate?” she demanded. “How long are we going to hang around here, waiting for the guards to get organized and pick us off?”

  The convict next to her sighed and wiped his glasses with a beefy hand. Once he had been an Income-Tax Accountant, disbarred and convicted on three counts of impersonating an attorney when he took the liberty of making changes in a client’s lease. He snorted, “Damn wipes! Do they expect us to do their dirty work?”

  The two of them glared angrily and fearfully at the other convicts in the Yard.

  And the other convicts, huddled greaser with greaser, wipe with wipe, glared ragingly back. It wasn’t their place to plan the strategy of a prison break.

  Captain Liam O’Leary muttered groggily, “They don’t want to escape, all they want is to make trouble. I know cons.” He came fully awake, sat up and focused his eyes. His head was hammering.

  That girl, that Bradley, was leaning over him. She looked scared and sick. “Sit still! Sauer is just plain crazy—listen to them yelling out there!”

  O’Leary sat up and looked around, one hand holding his drumming skull.

  “They do so want to escape,” said Sue-Ann Bradley. “Listen to what they’re saying!”

  O’Leary discovered that he was in a cell. There was a battle royal going on outside. Men were yelling, but he couldn’t see them.

  He jumped up, remembering. “The governor!”

  Sue-Ann Bradley said, “He’s all right. I think he is, anyway. He’s in the cell right next to us, with a couple guards. I guess they came up with you.” She shivered, as the yells in the corridor rose. “Sauer is angry at the medic,” she explained. “He wants him to fix Flock up so they can—‘crush out,’ I think he said. The medic says he can’t do it. You see, Flock got burned pretty badly with a knife he made—something about the tanglefoot field—”

  “Eddy currents,” said O’Leary dizzily.

  “I guess so. Anyway, the medic—”

  “Never mind the medic. What’s Lafon doing?”

  “Lafon? The black one?” Sue-Ann Bradley frowned. “I didn’t know his name. He started the whole thing, the way it sounds. They’re waiting for the mob down in the Yard to break out, and then they’re going to make a break—”

  “Wait a minute,” growled O’Leary. His head was beginning to clear. “What about you? Are you in on this?”

  She hung between laughter and tears. Finally: “Do I look like I’m in on this?”

  O’Leary took stock. Somehow, somewhere, the girl had got a length of metal pipe—from the plumbing, maybe. She was holding it in one hand, supporting him with the other. There were two other guards in the cell, both out cold—one from O’Leary’s squad, the other, O’Leary guessed, a deck guard who had been on duty when the trouble started. “I wouldn’t let them in,” she said wildly. “I told them they’d have to kill me before they could touch that guard.”

  O’Leary said suspiciously, “What about you? You belonged to that Double-A-C, didn’t you? You were pretty anxious to get in the Green Sleeves, disobeying Auntie Mathias’ orders. Are you sure you didn’t know this was going to—”

  It was too much. She dropped the pipe, buried her head in her hands. He couldn’t tell if she laughed or wept, but he could tell that it hadn’t been like that at all.

  “I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly, and touched her on the shoulder. He turned and looked out the little barred window, because he couldn’t think of any other way to apologize. He heard the wavering beat in the air, and saw them—bobbing a hundred yards up, their wide metal vanes fluttering and hiss
ing from the jets at the tips. The GI copters. Waiting—as everyone seemed to be waiting.

  Sue-Ann Bradley demanded shakily, “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 O. 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 corner and proposing that greasers’ children be allowed to go to school with GIs’, 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, hardworking 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 civvy 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 Sauer, 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.

  “—if 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-bye, 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.”

  8

  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 relocking 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—”

  “I’ll take care of her,” said Liam O’Leary. He looked at her sideways as he rubbed the bruises on his face
.

  The governor tapped him on the shoulder. “Come along,” he said, looking so proud of himself, so pleased. “Let’s go out in the Yard for a breath of fresh air.” He smiled contentedly at Sue-Ann Bradley. “You too,” he said.

  O’Leary protested instinctively, “But she’s an inmate!”

  “And I’m a governor. Come along.”

  They walked out into the Yard. The air was fresh, all right. A handful of cons, double-guarded by sleepy and irritable men from the day shift, were hosing down the rubble on the cobblestones. The Yard was a mess; but it was quiet now. The helicopters were still riding their picket line, glowing softly in the early light that promised sunrise.

  “My car,” the governor said quietly to a state policeman who appeared from nowhere. The trooper snapped a salute and trotted away.

  “I killed a man,” said Sue-Ann Bradley, looking abstracted and a little ill.

  “You saved a man,” corrected the governor. “Don’t weep for that Lafon. He was willing to kill a thousand men if he had to, to break out of here.”

  “But he never did break out,” said Sue-Ann.

  The governor stretched contentedly. “Of course not. He never had a chance. Lafon spent too much time in the Jug; he forgot what the world was like. Laborers and clerks join together in a breakout? It would never happen. They don’t even speak the same language—as my young friend here has discovered.”

  Sue-Ann blazed: “I still believe in the equality of man!”

  “Oh, please do,” the Governor said, straight-faced. “There’s nothing wrong with that! Your father and I are perfectly willing to admit that men are equal; but we can’t admit that all men are the same. Use your eyes! What you believe in is your own business—but,” he added, “when your beliefs extend to setting fire to segregated public lavatories as a protest move, which is what got you arrested, you apparently need to be taught a lesson. Well, perhaps you’ve learned it. You were a help here tonight, and that counts for a lot…”