North of the prison, on the long, flat, damp developments of reclaimed land, the matchbox row houses of the clerical neighborhoods showed lights in every window as the figgers stood ready to repel invasion from their undesired neighbors to the east, the wipes. In the crowded tenements of the laborers' quarters, the wipes shouted from window to window; and there were crowds in the bright streets. "The whole bloody thing's going to blow up!" a helicopter bombardier yelled bitterly to his pilot, above the flutter and roar of the whirling blades. "Look at the mobs in Greaserville! The first breakout from the Jug's going to start a fight like you never saw and we'll be right in the middle of it!" He was partly right. He would be right in the middle of it--for every man, woman and child in the city-state would be right in the middle of it. There was no place anywhere that would be spared. _No mixing._ That was the prescription that kept the city-state alive. There's no harm in a family fight--and aren't all mechanics a family, aren't all laborers a clan, aren't all clerks and office workers related by closer ties than blood or skin? But the declassed cons of the Jug were the dregs of every class; and once they spread, the neat compartmentation of society was pierced. The breakout would mean riot on a bigger scale than any prison had ever known. But he was also partly wrong. Because the breakout wasn't seeming to come. * * * * * The Jug itself was coming to a boil. Honor Block A, relaxed and easy at the end of another day, found itself shaken alert by strange goings-on. First there was the whir and roar of the Air Force overhead. _Trouble._ Then there was the sudden arrival of extra guards, doubling the normal complement--day-shift guards, summoned away from their comfortable civil-service homes at some urgent call. _Trouble for sure._ Honor Block A wasn't used to trouble. A Block was as far from the Greensleeves of O Block as you could get and still be in the Jug. Honor Block A belonged to the prison's halfbreeds--the honor prisoners, the trusties who did guards' work because there weren't enough guards to go around. They weren't Apaches or Piutes; they were camp-following Injuns who had sold out for the white man's firewater. The price of their service was privilege--many privileges. Item: TV sets in every cell. Item: Hobby tools, to make gadgets for the visitor trade--the only way an inmate could earn an honest dollar. Item: In consequence, an exact knowledge of everything the outside world knew and put on its TV screens (including the grim, alarming reports of "trouble at Estates-General"), and the capacity to convert their "hobby tools" to--other uses. An honor prisoner named Wilmer Lafon was watching the TV screen with an expression of rage and despair.