"Shut up," Lafon said again, gently enough, but he waved the gun muzzle. He drew a deep breath, glanced around him and grinned. "If it wasn't for you and Flock," he mimicked. "If it wasn't for you and Flock! Sauer, you wipe clown, do you think it took _brains_ to file down a shiv and start things rolling? If it wasn't for _me_, you and Flock would have beaten up a few guards, and had your kicks for half an hour, and then the whole prison would fall in on you! It was me, Wilmer Lafon, who set things up and you know it!" He was yelling and suddenly he realized he was yelling. And what was the use, he demanded of himself contemptuously, of trying to argue with a bunch of lousy wipes and greasers? They'd never understand the long, soul-killing hours of planning and sweat. They wouldn't realize the importance of the careful timing--of arranging that the laundry cons would start a disturbance in the yard right after the Greensleeves hard-timers kicked off the riot, of getting the little greaser Hiroko to short-circuit the yard field so the laundry cons could start their disturbances. It took a _Professional_ to organize and plan--yes, and to make sure that he himself was out of it until everything was ripe, so that if anything went wrong, _he_ was all right. It took somebody like Wilmer Lafon--a _Professional_, who had spent six years too long in the Jug-- And who would shortly be getting out. VII Any prison is a ticking bomb. Estates-General was in process of going off. From the Greensleeves, where the trouble had started, clear out to the trusty farms that ringed the walls, every inmate was up and jumping. Some were still in their cells--the scared ones, the decrepit oldsters, the short-termers who didn't dare risk their early discharge. But for every man in his cell, a dozen were out and yelling. A torch, licking as high as the hanging helicopters, blazing up from the yard--that was the laundry shed. Why burn the laundry? The cons couldn't have said. It was burnable and it was there--burn it! The yard lay open to the wrath of the helicopters, but the helicopters made no move. The cobblestones were solidly covered with milling men. The guards were on the walls, sighting down their guns; the helicopter bombardiers had their fingers on the bomb trips. There had been a few rounds fired over the heads of the rioters, at first. Nothing since. In the milling mob, the figures clustered in groups. The inmates from Honor Block A huddled under the guards' guns at the angle of the wall. They had clubs--all the inmates had clubs--but they weren't using them. Honor Block A: On the outside, Civil Service and Professionals. On the inside, the trusties, the "good" cons. They weren't the type for clubs.