civilization,' right?" He was a great man for platitudes,
was Warden Schluckebier. "You know, you don't want
to worry about my end of running the prison. And I don't
want to worry about yours. You see?" And he folded his
hands and smiled like a civil-service Buddha.
O'Leary choked back his temper. "Warden, I'm telling
you that there's trouble coming up. I smell the signs."
"Handle it, then!" snapped the warden, irritated at last.
"But suppose it's too big to handle? Suppose"
"It isn't," the warden said positively. "Don't borrow
trouble with all your supposing, O'Leary." He sipped the
remains of his coffee, made a wry face, poured a fresh
cup and, with an elaborate show of not noticing what he
himself was doing, dropped three of the pale blue tablets
into it this time.
He sat beaming into space, waiting for the jolt to take
effect.
"Well, then," he said at last. "You just remember what
I've told you tonight, O'Leary, and we'll get along fine.
'Specialization is the' Oh, curse the thing."
His phone was ringing. The warden picked it up ir-
ritablythat was the trouble with those pale blue tablets,
thought O'Leary; they gave you a lift, but they put you
on edge. "Hello," barked the warden, not even glancing
at the viewscreen. "What the devil do you want? Don't
you know I'm What? You did what? You're going to
WHAT?"
He looked at the viewscreen at last with a look of pure
horror.
Whatever he saw on it, it did not reassure him. His
eyes opened like clamshells in a steamer.
"O'Leary," he said faintly, "my mistake."
And he hung upmore or less by accident; the handset
dropped from his fingers.
The person on the other end of the phone was calling
from Cell Block 0.
Five minutes before he hadn't been anywhere near the
phone, and it didn't look as if his chances of ever getting
near it were very good. Because five minutes before he was
in his cell, with the rest of the hard-timers of the Green
Sleeves.
His name was Flock.
He was still yelling. Sue-Ann Bradley, in the cell across
from him, thought that maybe, after all, the man was
really in pain. Maybe the crazy screams were screams of
agony, because certainly his face was the face of an
agonized man.
The outside guard bellowed: "Okay, okay. Take ten!"
Sue-Ann froze, waiting to see what would happen. What
actually did happen was that the guard reached up and
