Pohl, Frederik - SS - My Lady Green Sleeves.pdf

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My Lady Green Sleeves
FrederikPohl
His NAME WAS LIAM O' LEARY and there was something
stinking in his nostrils. It was the smell of trouble. He
hadn't found what the trouble was yet, but he would. That
was his business. He was a captain of guards in Estates-
General Correctional Institution better known to its in-
mates as the Jugand if he hadn't been able to detect
the scent of trouble brewing a cellblock away he would
never have survived to reach his captaincy.
And her name, he saw, was Sue-Ann Bradley, Detainee
No. WFA-656R.
He frowned at the rap sheet, trying to figure out what
got a girl like her into a place like this. And, what was
more important, why she couldn't adjust herself to it, now
that she was in.
He demanded, "Why wouldn't you mop out your cell?"
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The girl lifted her head angrily and took a step forward.
The block guard, Sodaro, growled wamingly , "Watch it,
auntie!"
O'Leary shook his head. "Let her talk, Sodaro." It said
in the Civil Service Guide to Prison Administration: "De-
taineeswill be permitted to speak in their own behalf in
disciplinary proceedings." And O'Leary was a man who
lived by the book.
She burst out, "I never got a chance! That old witch
Mathias never told me I was supposed to mop up. She
banged on the door and said, 'Slush up, sister!' And then
ten minutes later she called the guards and told them I
refused to mop."
The block guard guffawed. "Wipe talk! That's what she
was telling you to do. Cap'n, you know what's funny about
this? This Bradley is"
"Shut up, Sodaro." Captain O'Leary put down his
pencil and looked at the girl. She was attractive and young
not beyond hope, surely. Maybe she had got off to a
wrong start, but the question was, would putting her in
the disciplinary block help straighten her out? He nibbed
his ear and looked past her at the line of prisoners on the
rap detail, waiting for him to judge their cases. He said
patiently, "Bradley, the rules are you have to mop out
your cell. If you didn't understand what Mathias was
talking about you should have asked her. Now, I'm warn-
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ingyou, the next time"
"Hey, Cap'n, wait!" Sodaro was looking alarmed. "This
isn't a first offense . Look at the rap sheet yesterday she
pulled the same thing in the mess hall." He shook his
head reprovingly at the prisoner. "The block guard had
to breakup a fight between her and another wench, and
she claimed the same business said she didn't under-
stand when the other one asked her to move along." He
said virtuously, "The guard warned her then that next
time she'd get the Green Sleeves for sure."
Inmate Bradley seemed to be on the verge of tears. She
said tautly, "I don't care. I don't care!"
O'Leary stopped her. "That's enough! Three days in
Block 0," he snapped, and waved her away. It was the
only thing to do for her own sake as much as for his. He
had managed, by strength of will, not to hear that she had
omitted to say "sir" every time she spoke to him; but he
couldn't keep it up forever, and he certainly couldn't over-
look hysteria. And hysteria was clearly the next step for
her.
All the same, he stared after her as she left. He handed
the rap sheet to Sodaro and said absently, "Too bad a kid
like her has to be here. What's she m for?"
"You didn't know, Cap'n?" Sodaro leered. "She's in for
conspiracy to violate the Categoried Class laws. Don't
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waste your time with her, Cap'n she's a figger -lover!"
Captain O'Leary took a long drink of water from the
fountain marked "Civil Service." But it didn't wash the
taste out of his mouth.
What got into a girl to get her mixed up with that kind
of dirty business? He checked out of the cell blocks and
walked across the yard, wondering about her. She'd had
every advantage decent Civil Service parents, a good
education, everything a girl could wish for. If anything,
she had had a better environment than O'Leary himself,
and look what she had made of it.
"Evening, Cap'n." A bleary old inmate orderly stood
up straight and touched his cap as O'Leary passed by.
"Evening." O'Leary noted, with the part of his mind
that always noted those things, that the orderly had been
leaning on his broom until he'd noticed the captain coming
by. Of course, there wasn't much to sweep the spray
machines and sweeper dozers had been over the cobble-
stones of the yard twice already that day. But it was an
inmate's job to keep busy. And it was a guard captain's
job to notice when they didn't.
There wasn't anything wrong with that job, he told
himself. It was a perfectly good civil-service position
better than post-office clerk, not as good as Congressman,
but a job you could be proud to hold. He was proud of
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it. It was right that he should be proud of it. He was civil-
service born and bred, and naturally he was proud and
content to do a good, clean civil-service job. If he had
happened to be born a figa clerk, he told himself; if he
had happened to be born a clerk, why, he would have
been proud of that too. There wasn't anything wrong with
being a clerk or a mechanic or a soldier, or even a
laborer for that matter. Good laborers were the salt of
the earth! They weren't smart, maybe, but they had a
well, a sort of natural, relaxed joy of living. O'Leary was
a broadminded man, and many times he had thought al-
most with a touch of envy how comfortable it must be to
be a wipe a laborer, he corrected himself. No responsi-
bilities. No worries. Just an easy, slow routine of work
and loaf, work and loaf.
Of course, he wouldn't really want that kind of life,
because he was Civil Service, and not the kind to try to
cross over class barriers that weren't meant to be
"Evening, Cap'n."
He nodded to the mechanic inmate who was, theoreti-
cally, in charge of maintaining the prison's car pool, just
inside the gate. "Evening, Conan," he said. Conan, now
he was a big buck greaser, and he would be there for the
next hour, languidly poking a piece of fluff out of the air
filter on the prison jeep. Lazy, sure. Undependable, cer-
tamly. Bat he kept the cars going and, O'Leary thought
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