He sat beaming into space, waiting for the jolt to take effect.
"Well, then," he said at last. "You just remember what I've told you tonight, O'Leary, and we'll get along fine. 'Specialization is the—' Oh, curse the thing."
His phone was ringing. The warden picked it up irritably.
That was the trouble with those pale blue tablets, thought O'Leary; they gave you a lift, but they put you on edge.
"Hello," barked the warden, not even glancing at the viewscreen. "What the devil do you want? Don't you know I'm—What? You did what? You're going to WHAT?"
He looked at the viewscreen at last with a look of pure horror. Whatever he saw on it, it did not reassure him. His eyes opened like clamshells in a steamer.
"O'Leary," he said faintly, "my mistake."
And he hung up—more or less by accident; the handset dropped from his fingers.
The person on the other end of the phone was calling from Cell Block O.
Five minutes before, he hadn't been anywhere near the phone and it didn't look as if his chances of ever getting near it were very good. Because five minutes before, he was in his cell, with the rest of the hard-timers of the Greensleeves.