He didn't, however, listen very carefully.
"Code One," said the voice, relapsing into a sing-song drone, "Section A, 1, (a): Internal, closed circuit broadcast of instruction and entertainment. Broadcast is continuous, daily from 0500 through 2300. Music and entertainment material, 1800 through 2300. Custodial wards are urged to listen to instructional material provided by the State for their benefit. Failure to listen to a minimum of seventy-two hours of said material weekly shall result in penalty, four credits for each hour of short-fall. Code One, section A, 1, (b): Care of home-room facilities...."
The voice droned on. The hell with that noise. The man got up and pushed irritably at the button under the speaker. It faded out in a faint, protesting whine. A lawyer. The damned voice had said a lawyer would come on Sunday afternoon. And this was Sunday. This afternoon then. He should be out by dinner time. He ... he was thirsty again. He got his cup from the foot of the bunk and drained the cool water with luxurious satisfaction. Plenty more where that ... never mind that. He closed a door of his mind with determination. Then he used the toilet hurriedly and flushed it three times. The lawyer, his lawyer would come. He lay back down on the bunk. Nothing to do but wait.
"Say! Say there, boy. Up, up! Nothing to do but sleep? Eh? Up, up. My time is valuable." The voice was harsh, rasping, but with an unsubtle touch of educated superiority in it.
The man in the cell sat up at the second "say," and was at the front of the cell clinging to the bars before the voice paused.
"What?" he asked, "What, what, what?"
What? It was still daylight. Still jail, too, no doubt about that. This must be the lawyer then. He blinked and stared through the bars; it was hard for a moment to focus in the grey light. The figure outside the cell looked something like ... what? A wheel chair? A man in a wheel chair? A ... now what in hell kind of a so-called lawyer was this? There was no man in the more or less wheel chair out there; only hardware, piled and assembled in a very roughly human shape. At the top were two lenses, eye-like except for being in a vertical line, mounted in a rounded, metallic container with a speaker and, presumably, sound receivers. Under that was a big, square, torso-sized, faintly humming black box. This rested on a—uh—conveyance, not unlike a wheel chair. Under the box was an electric motor and a reel of black wire. Attached to one side of the main box section was a single metal arm, a sort of skeletal framework of steel rods, jointed and with an arrangement of tiny wheels, pulleys and belts.
"Now what, for God's sake...?"
"Whup! Excuse me a moment, my boy," rasped the speaker. "Almost forgot my cord. Mustn't run down my battery here, and with two more clients after you." The motor under the black box whined. The wheels turned and the rig backed away from the cell. It rolled some ten paces back up the corridor; stopped; the metal arm reached, caught a plug at the end of the wire on the reel and plugged it into a socket in the far wall of the building. Then the thing rolled back to the cell, the wire unrolling from the reel to trail behind it.