Take The Reason Prisoner Part 6

Dalton was then shoved around the first of the hastily-erected screens and ordered into a chair. A doctor beside the chair was ready with an injection so smoothly and quickly that Dalton was under mild sedation almost before he was aware of the needle's sting.

Across from Dalton, seated at a small table behind a spin-dizzy wheel of flickering lights and ever-centering spiral, one of Thornberry's psych-staff waited for a nod from the doctor. Then he started the wheel spinning and Bennington could see his lips move.

After a moment, the psychologist turned his head to the doctor and Bennington lip-read the word, "hypno." The doctor slowly put down one of the biggest hypodermic needles Bennington had ever seen.

Less roughly, the guard led Dalton around the second screen.

At the end of the corridor Judkins was ready. He adjusted the big hood over Dalton's head.

And Bennington turned away.

He had seen too much of the conditioning process, beginning in its early days when the Army had realized its value in reducing the manpower needed to watch the refuse of the cold war.

The POWS from the battle of the little undeclared wars; the refugee camps, with their possible and probable subversives; the Army disciplinary stations....

He waited farther down the corridor where he could look into Room Two.

In a few minutes Dalton entered. His face was subtly changed. A guard gestured toward the piles of cots and blankets.

Dalton took one of the cots and two of the blankets, moved to Square Number Ten on this side of the building and began making up his bed.

When the job was completed he sat down.

His back was toward the general and Bennington found himself wishing he could see the prisoner's face. In the other room, Dalton had been carefully, thoughtfully staring around.

His posture now spoke of a total lack of interest in his present surroundings.

Bennington glanced at his watch and estimated the time needed on Dalton. Hm-m-m, little better than five minutes. Of course, if a prisoner was given that second shot.... Well, the average would still be about five minutes.

Might as well go back to the office and work out how much each state owed the prison.

Thornberry's call came at 1915. "We've finished, general, and we're ready to feed them. Of course, we still have some things to put away over here--"

"Skip it," Bennington said. "We can have that done tomorrow morning."

"Judkins has asked permission to go to Harrisburg tonight. He wants to see his sister about an apartment there. Several of the permanent personnel do that. It's easy to get back and forth, and there's more to do--"

"Tell him to take off. And let's see, we'll need him in the morning, but maybe we can give him the afternoon off in return for his overtime work tonight."

"I like that, general, and I'll do it. Now, I'm going to see that the prisoners are fed, then I'd like to see you in your office."

"I want to see you, too, Dr. Thornberry. Tell Ferguson to arrange supper for two over here--I haven't eaten either."

"I'll be with you in about fifteen minutes."

Because the office was sound-conditioned, Bennington did not know that the riot had started until the door slammed open and three men jammed the doorway, all three trying to get in at once.

Acting by reflex, Bennington shot the man in the center. The other two, entangled with the dead man, also tumbled to the floor.

The general promptly shot twice more.

Then he paused to think.

One glance told him his instinctive action had been correct. The man in the center had been Pietro Musto, carrying a carving knife. The other two ... yes, they had been in the group that had arrived this afternoon.

But what was wrong? He had watched these men being conditioned....

A burst from a submachine gun echoed through the open door.

First thought: _They've got the armory!_

Second thought: _This is no place for me!_

He picked up his desk chair and smashed the picture window looking out over the moat on the west side. Then he smashed with the chair again to remove the fragments that stuck up like jagged knives.

A quick leap over the sill into the darkness, a twenty-foot sprint, and he was able to throw himself down on the steep slope that five feet farther on became the moat.

Just in time, he discovered. When he peered through the spa.r.s.e gra.s.s, he could see two men in his office. One had a shotgun, the other a rifle. The man with the rifle lifted it to his shoulder and fired into the ceiling.

Most of the staff, all but six of the guards up there, Bennington thought.

Resting his right hand against his left arm, he took careful aim and fired. The man with the rifle staggered and fell. The one with the shotgun dropped completely out of sight.

Bennington heard someone shouting hoa.r.s.ely about the lights.

The first floor blacked out.

He took a deep breath, held it, slowly released it. Then he was able to think.

How this had started was for the moment unimportant. First came the problem of regaining control.

To regain control, he needed help. To get help he had to reach the nearest visiphone.

Gla.s.s tinkled to his right. Almost too late Bennington remembered how his white hair could reflect the lights from the second-story windows.

He rolled rapidly to his left and a little more down the slope.

The dew-wet gra.s.s chilled his face and hands. His long legs felt the water of the moat creep up past his knees.

A semiautomatic rifle with carefully timed shots searched the area where he had been. "Good man," he noted professionally and replied with a pistol shot. He rolled again back to where he had been, but still further down the slope.

The rifle spoke copper-coated syllables once more, with a sequence of shots that started where he had fired from. But this time the sequence hunted further to both right and left.

This could go on all night.

He _had_ to get to a visiphone. Yet he couldn't leave here. The moment he did, the convicts has a wide-open road to freedom.