Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. My Lady Greensleeves by Frederik Pohl (top 10 most read books in the world txt) 📖
- Author: Frederik Pohl
Book online «My Lady Greensleeves by Frederik Pohl (top 10 most read books in the world txt) 📖». Author Frederik Pohl
"Senator Bradley?" echoed the warden.
"Senator Sebastian Bradley. One of our foremost civil servants," the governor said firmly. "It so happens that his daughter is in Block O as an inmate."
The warden closed his eyes. He tried to swallow, but the throat muscles were paralyzed.
"There is no question," the governor went on briskly, "about the propriety of her being there. She was duly convicted of a felonious act, namely conspiracy and incitement to riot. But you see the position."
The warden saw all too well.
"Therefore," said the governor. "I intend to go in to Block O myself. Sebastian Bradley is an old and personal friend—as well," he emphasized, "as being a senior member of the Reclassification Board. I understand a medic is going to Block O. I shall go with him."
The warden managed to sit up straight. "He's gone. I mean they already left, Governor. But I assure you Miss Brad—Inmate Bradley—that is, the young lady is in no danger. I have already taken precautions," he said, gaining confidence as he listened to himself talk. "I—uh—I was deciding on a course of action as you came in. See, Governor, the guards on the walls are all armed. All they have to do is fire a couple of rounds into the yard and then the 'copters could start dropping tear gas and light fragmentation bombs and—"
The governor was already at the door. "You will not," he said; and: "Now which way did they go?"
O'Leary was in the yard and he was smelling trouble, loud and strong. The first he knew that the rest of the prison had caught the riot fever was when the lights flared on in Cell Block A.
"That Sodaro!" he snarled, but there wasn't time to worry about that Sodaro. He grabbed the rest of his guard detail and double-timed it toward the New Building, leaving the medic and a couple of guards walking sedately toward the Old. Block A, on the New Building's lowest tier, was already coming to life; a dozen yards, and Blocks B and C lighted up.
And a dozen yards more and they could hear the yelling; and it wasn't more than a minute before the building doors opened.
The cons had taken over three more blocks. How? O'Leary didn't take time even to guess. The inmates were piling out into the yard. He took one look at the rushing mob. Crazy! It was Wilmer Lafon leading the rioters, with a guard's gun and a voice screaming threats! But O'Leary didn't take time to worry about an honor prisoner gone bad, either.
"Let's get out of here!" he bellowed to the detachment, and they ran.
Just plain ran. Cut and ran, scattering as they went.
"Wait!" screamed O'Leary, but they weren't waiting. Cursing himself for letting them get out of hand, O'Leary salvaged two guards and headed on the run for the Old Building, huge and dark, all but the topmost lights of Block O.
They saw the medic and his escort disappearing into the bulk of the Old Building and they saw something else. There were inmates between them and the Old Building! The Shops Building lay between—with a dozen more cell blocks over the workshops that gave it its name—and there was a milling rush of activity around its entrance, next to the laundry shed—
The laundry shed.
O'Leary stood stock still. Lafon leading the breakout from Block A. The little greaser who was a trusty in the Shops Building sabotaging the yard's tangler circuit. Sauer and Flock taking over the Greensleeves with a manufactured knife and a lot of guts.
Did it fit together? Was it all part of a plan?
That was something to find out—but not just then. "Come on," O'Leary cried to the two guards, and they raced for the temporary safety of the main gates.
The whole prison was up and yelling now.
O'Leary could hear scattered shots from the beat guards on the wall—Over their heads, over their heads! he prayed silently. And there were other shots that seemed to come from inside the walls—guards shooting, or convicts with guards' guns, he couldn't tell which. The yard was full of convicts now, in bunches and clumps; but none near the gate. And they seemed to have lost some of their drive. They were milling around, lit by the searchlights from the wall, yelling and making a lot of noise ... but going nowhere in particular. Waiting for a leader, O'Leary thought, and wondered briefly what had become of Lafon.
"You Captain O'Leary?" somebody demanded.
He turned and blinked. Good Lord, the governor! He was coming through the gate, waving aside the gate guards, alone. "You him?" the governor repeated. "All right, glad I found you. I'm going into Block O with you."
O'Leary swallowed and waved inarticulately at the teeming cons. True, there were none immediately near by—but there were plenty in the yard! Riots meant breaking things up; already the inmates had started to break up the machines in the laundry shed and the athletic equipment in the yard lockers. When they found a couple of choice breakables like O'Leary and the governor, they'd have a ball!
"But, Governor—"
"But my foot! Can you get me in there or can't you?"
O'Leary gauged their chances. It wasn't more than fifty feet to the main entrance to the Old Building—not at the moment guarded, since all the guards were in hiding or on the walls, and not as yet being invaded by the inmates at large.
He said: "You're the boss. Hold on a minute—" The searchlights were on the bare yard cobblestones in front of them; in a moment, the searchlights danced away.
"Come on!" cried O'Leary, and jumped for the entrance. The governor was with him and a pair of the guards came stumbling after.
They made it to the Old Building.
Inside the entrance, they could hear the noise from outside and the yelling of the inmates who were still in their cells. But around them was nothing but gray steel walls and the stairs going all the way up to Block O.
"Up!" panted O'Leary, and they clattered up the steel steps.
They would have made it—if it hadn't been for the honor inmate, Wilmer Lafon, who knew what he was after and had headed for the Greensleeves through the back way. In fact, they did make it—but not the way they planned. "Get out of the way!" yelled O'Leary at Lafon and the half-dozen inmates with him; and "Go to hell!" screamed Lafon, charging; and it was a rough-and-tumble fight, and O'Leary's party lost it, fair and square.
So when they got to Block O, it was with the governor marching before a convict-held gun, and with O'Leary cold unconscious, a lump from a gun-butt on the side of his head.
As they came up the stairs, Sauer was howling at the medic: "You got to fix up my boy! He's dying and all you do is sit there!"
The medic said patiently: "My son, I've dressed his wound. He is under sedation and I must rest. There will be other casualties."
Sauer raged, but that was as far as it went. Even Sauer wouldn't attack a medic. He would as soon strike an Attorney, or even a Director of Funerals. It wasn't merely that they were Professionals. Even among the Professional class, they were special; not superior, exactly, but apart. They certainly were not for the likes of Sauer to fool with and Sauer knew it.
"Somebody's coming!" bawled one of the other freed inmates.
Sauer jumped to the head of the steps, saw that Lafon was leading the group, stepped back, saw whom Lafon's helpers were carrying and leaped forward again.
"Cap'n O'Leary!" he roared. "Gimme!"
"Shut up," said Wilmer Lafon, and pushed the big redhead out of the way. Sauer's jaw dropped and the snake eyes opened wide.
"Wilmer," he protested feebly. But that was all the protest he made, because the snake's eyes had seen that Lafon held a gun. He stood back, the big hands half outstretched toward the unconscious guard captain, O'Leary, and the cold eyes became thoughtful.
And then he saw who else was with the party. "Wilmer! You got the governor there!"
Lafon nodded. "Throw them in a cell," he ordered, and sat down on a guard's stool, breathing hard. It had been a fine fight on the steps, before he and his boys had subdued the governor and the guards, but Wilmer Lafon wasn't used to fighting. Even six years in the Jug hadn't turned an architect into a laborer; physical exertion simply was not his metier.
Sauer said coaxingly: "Wilmer, won't you leave me have O'Leary for a while? If it wasn't for me and Flock, you'd still be in A Block and—"
"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.
With all of the inmates, you looked at them and you wondered what twisted devil had got into their heads to land them in the Jug. Oh, perhaps you could understand it—a little bit, at least—in the case of the figgers in Blocks B and C, the greasers in the Shop Building—that sort. It was easy enough for some of the Categoried Classes to commit a crime and thereby land in jail.
Who could blame a wipe for trying to "pass" if he thought he could get away with it? But when he didn't get away with it, he wound up in the Jug and that was logical enough. And greasers liked Civil-Service women—everyone knew that.
There was almost a sort of logic to it, even if it was a sort of inevitable logic that made decent Civil-Service people see red. You had to enforce the laws against rape if, for instance, a greaser should ask an innocent young female postal clerk for a date. But you could understand what drove him to it. The Jug was full of criminals of that sort. And the Jug was the place for them.
But what about Honor Block A?
Why would a Wilmer Lafon—a certified public architect, a Professional by category—do his own car repairs
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