O’Leary heard a gun explode beside his head.
Amazing, he thought, I’m breathing again! The choking hands were gone from his throat.
It took him a moment to realize that it was Sauer who had taken the bullet, not him. Sauer who now lay dead, not O’Leary. But he realized it when he rolled over, and looked up, and saw the girl with the gun still in her hand, staring at him and weeping.
He sat up. The two guards still able to walk were backing Sue-Ann Bradley up. The governor was looking proud as an eagle, pleased as a mother hen.
The Greensleeves was back in the hands of law and order.
The medic came toward O’Leary, hands folded. “My son,” he said, “if your throat needs—”
O’Leary interrupted him. “I don’t need a thing, Doc! I’ve got everything I want right now.”
VIII
Inmate Sue-Ann Bradley cried: “They’re coming! O’Leary, they’re coming!”
The guards who had once been hostages clattered down the steps to meet the party. The cons from the Greensleeves were back in their cells. The medic, after finishing his chores on O’Leary himself, paced meditatively out into the wake of the riot, where there was plenty to keep him busy. A faintly guilty expression tinctured his carven face. Contrary to his oath to care for all humanity in anguish, he had not liked Lafon or Sauer.
The party of fresh guards appeared and efficiently began re-locking the cells of the Greensleeves.
“Excuse me, Cap’n,” said one, taking Sue-Ann Bradley by the arm. “I’ll just put this one back—”
“I’ll take care of her,” said Liam O’Leary. He looked at her sideways as he rubbed the bruises on his face.
The governor tapped him on the shoulder. “Come along,” he said, looking so proud of himself, so pleased. “Let’s go out in the yard for a breath of fresh air.” He smiled contentedly at Sue-Ann Bradley. “You, too.”
O’Leary protested instinctively: “But she’s an inmate!”
“And I’m a governor. Come along.”
They walked out into the yard. The air was fresh, all right. A handful of cons, double-guarded by sleepy and irritable men from the day shift, were hosing down the rubble on the cobblestones. The yard was a mess, but it was quiet now. The helicopters were still riding their picket line, glowing softly in the early light that promised sunrise.
“My car,” the governor said quietly to a state policeman who appeared from nowhere. The trooper snapped a salute and trotted away.
“I killed a man,” said Sue-Ann Bradley, looking a little ill.
“You saved a man,” corrected the governor. “Don’t weep for that Lafon. He was willing to kill a thousand men if he had to, to break out of here.”
“But he never did break out,” said Sue-Ann.
The governor stretched contentedly. “He never had a chance. Laborers and clerks join together in a breakout? It would never happen. They don’t even speak the same language—as you have discovered, my dear.”
Sue-Ann blazed: “I still believe in the equality of Man!”
“Oh, please do,” the governor said, straight-faced. “There’s nothing wrong with that. Your father and I are perfectly willing to admit that men are equal—but we can’t admit that all men are the same. Use your eyes! What you believe in is your business, but,” he added, “when your beliefs extend to setting fire to segregated public lavatories as a protest move, which is what got you arrested, you apparently need to be taught a lesson. Well, perhaps you’ve learned it. You were a help here tonight and that counts for a lot.”
Captain O’Leary said, face furrowed: “What about the warden, Governor? They say the category system is what makes the world go round; it fits the right man to the right job and keeps him there. But look at Warden Schluckebier! He fell completely apart at the seams. He—”
“Turn that statement around, O’Leary.”
“Turn—?”
The governor nodded. “You’ve got it reversed. Not the right man for the job—the right job for the man! We’ve got Schluckebier on our hands, see? He’s been born; it’s too late to do anything about that. He will go to pieces in an emergency. So where do we put him?”
O’Leary stubbornly clamped his jaw, frowning.
“We put him,” the governor went on gently, “where the best thing to do in a crisis is to go to pieces! Why, O’Leary, you get some hotheaded man of action in here, and every time an inmate sneezes, you’ll have bloodshed! And there’s no harm in a prison riot. Let the poor devils work off steam. I wouldn’t have bothered to get out of bed for it—except I was worried about the hostages. So I came down to make sure they were protected in the best possible way.”
O’Leary’s jaw dropped. “But you were—”
The governor nodded. “I was a hostage myself. That’s one way to protect them, isn’t it? By giving the cons a hostage that’s worth more to them.”
He yawned and looked around for his car. “So the world keeps going around,” he said. “Everybody is somebody else’s outgroup and maybe it’s a bad thing, but did you ever stop to realize that we don’t have wars anymore? The categories stick tightly together. Who is to say that that’s a bad thing?”
He grinned. “Reminds me of a story, if you two will pay attention to me long enough to listen. There was a meeting—this is an old, old story—a neighborhood meeting of the leaders of the two biggest women’s groups on the block. There were eighteen Irish ladies from the Church Auxiliary and three Jewish ladies from B’nai B’rith. The first thing they did was have an election for a temporary chairwoman. Twenty-one votes were cast. Mrs. Grossinger from B’nai B’rith got three and Mrs. O’Flaherty from the Auxiliary got eighteen. So when Mrs. Murphy came up to congratulate Mrs. O’Flaherty after the election, she whispered: ‘Good for you! But isn’t it terrible, the way these Jews stick together?’ ”
He stood up and waved
