They've got two hostages alreadywhat's the use of giv-
ing them two more?"
The medic fixed him with his eyes. He was a tail 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 inteme stepped aside and bowed his head. O'Leary
surrendered.
"All right, you can go. But I'm coming with youwith
a squad!"
Inmate Sue-Ann Bradley cowered in her cell.
The Green Sleeves was jumping. She had neverno,
never, she told herself wretchedlythought 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 likelikeanimals!
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, mechanicseven 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 sortsthe 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 waysliking set-
ting fire to a bed. But what a mad pattern!
The more Sue-Ann saw of them, the less she under-
stood.
It wasn't just that they talked differentshe 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 wordsas when
that trusty Mathias had ordered her in wipe shoptalk to
mop out her cell.
