she claimed the same businesssaid she didn't under-
stand when the other one asked her to move along." He
said virtuously, "The guard warned her then that next
time she'd get the Green Sleeves for sure."
Inmate Bradley seemed to be on the verge of tears. She
said tautly, "I don't care. I don't care!"
O'Leary stopped her. "That's enough! Three days in
Block 0," he snapped, and waved her away. It was the
only thing to dofor her own sake as much as for his. He
had managed, by strength of will, not to hear that she had
omitted to say "sir" every time she spoke to him; but he
couldn't keep it up forever, and he certainly couldn't over-
look hysteria. And hysteria was clearly the next step for
her.
All the same, he stared after her as she left. He handed
the rap sheet to Sodaro and said absently, "Too bad a kid
like her has to be here. What's she m for?"
"You didn't know, Cap'n?" Sodaro leered. "She's in for
conspiracy to violate the Categoried Class laws. Don't
waste your time with her, Cap'nshe's a figger-lover!"
Captain O'Leary took a long drink of water from the
fountain marked "Civil Service." But it didn't wash the
taste out of his mouth.
What got into a girl to get her mixed up with that kind
of dirty business? He checked out of the cell blocks and
walked across the yard, wondering about her. She'd had
every advantagedecent Civil Service parents, a good
education, everything a girl could wish for. If anything,
she had had a better environment than O'Leary himself,
and look what she had made of it.
"Evening, Cap'n." A bleary old inmate orderly stood
up straight and touched his cap as O'Leary passed by.
"Evening." O'Leary noted, with the part of his mind
that always noted those things, that the orderly had been
lealling on his broom until he'd noticed the captain coming
by. Of course, there wasn't much to sweepthe spray
machines and sweeperdozers had been over the cobble-
stones of the yard twice already that day. But it was an
inmate's job to keep busy. And it was a guard captain's
job to notice when they didn't.
There wasn't anything wrong with that job, he told
himself. It was a perfectly good civil-service position
better than post-office clerk, not as good as Congressman,
but a job you could be proud to hold. He was proud of
it. It was right that he should be proud of it. He was civil-
service born and bred, and naturally he was proud and
content to do a good, clean civil-service job. If he had
happened to be born a figa clerk, he told himself; if he
had happened to be born a clerk, why, he would have
been proud of that too. There wasn't anything wrong with
