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 on the guards that she could barely
imagine. Sauer and Flock were laborers; some of the other rioting cons
were clerks, mechanics--even 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 sorts. The 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 ways--liking
setting fire to a bed. But what a mad pattern!
The more Sue-Ann saw of them, the less she understood.
It wasn't just that they _talked_ differently. She 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 words--as when that
trusty Mathias had ordered her in wipe shoptalk to mop out her cell.
But what was even worse was not understanding the thought behind the
words.
Sue-Ann Bradley had consecrated her young life to the belief that
all men were created free and equal--and alike. Or alike in all the
things that mattered, anyhow. Alike in hopes, alike in motives, alike
in virtues. She had turned her back on a decent Civil-Service family
and a promising Civil-Service career to join the banned and despised
Association for the Advancement of the Categoried Classes--
Screams from the corridor outside.
Sue-Ann leaped to the door of her cell to see Sauer clutching at one
of the guards. The guard's hands were tied, but his feet were free; he
broke loose from the clumsy clown with the serpent's eyes, almost fell,
ran toward Sue-Ann.
There was nowhere else to run. The guard, moaning and gasping, tripped,
slid, caught himself and stumbled into her cell. "Please!" he begged.
"That crazy Sauer--he's going to cut my ear off! For heaven's sake,
ma'am--stop him!"
* * * * *
Sue-Ann stared at him, between terror and tears. Stop Sauer! If only
she could. The big redhead was lurching stiffly toward them--raging,
but not so angry that the water-moccasin eyes showed heat.
"Come here, you figger scum!" he roared.
The epithet wasn't even close--the guard was Civil Service through and
through--but it was like a reviving whip-sting to Sue-Ann Bradley.
"Watch your language, Mr. Sauer!" she snapped incongruously.
Sauer stopped dead and blinked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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