closed the switch that actuated the tangler fields on the
floors of the cells. The prison rules were humanitarian,
even for the dregs that inhabited the Green Sleeves. Ten
minutes out of every two hours, even the worst case had
to be allowed to take his hands out of the restraining gar-
ment. "Rest period" it was calledin the rule book; the
inmates had a less lovely term for it.
At the guard's yell, the inmates jumped to their feet.
Bradley was a little slow getting off the edge of the steel-
slat bednobody had warned her that the eddy currents
in the tangler fields had a way of making metal smoke-hot.
She gasped, but didn't cry out. Score one more painful
lesson in her new language course. She rubbed the backs
of her thighs gingerlyand slowly, slowly. The eddy
currents did not permit you to move fast. It was like push-
ing against rubber; the faster you tried to move, the
greater the resistance.
The guard peered genially into her cell. "You're okay,
auntie." She proudly ignored him as he slogged deliber-
ately away on his rounds. At least he didn't have to untie
her, and practically stand over her while she attended to
various personal matters, as he did with the male prison-
ers. It was not much to be grateful for, but Sue-Ann
Bradley was grateful. At least, she didn't have to live
quite like a figlike an underprivileged clerk, she told
herself, conscience-stricken.
Across the hall, the guard was saying irritably, "What
the hell's the matter with you?" He opened the door of
the cell with an asbestos-handled key held in a canvas
glove.
Flock was in that cell, and he was doubled over.
The guard looked at him doubtfully. It could be a trick,
maybe. Couldn't it? But he could see Flock's face, and
the agony in it was real enough. And Flock was gasping,
through real tears: "Cramps. I1"
"Ah, you wipes always got a pain in the gut." The
guard lumbered around Rock to the drawstrings at the
back of the jacket. Funny smell in here, he told himself
not for the first time. And imagine, some people didn't
believe that wipes had a smell of their own! But this time,
he realized cloudily, it was a rather unusual smell. Some-
thing burning. Scorchingalmost like meat scorching.
It wasn't pleasant. He finished untying Flock and turned
away; let the stinking wipe take care of his own troubles.
He only had ten minutes to get all the way around Block
0, and the inmates complained like crazy if he didn't
make sure they all got the most possible free time. He was
pretty good at snow-shoeing through the tangler field. He
was a little vain about it, even; at times he had been
known to boast of his ability to make the rounds in two
