Kutsov was a nice and intelligent old man, but there was something that was either unexplainable or irrational about the way he treated me. He expected me to stay in his house, though he should have known that I wouldn’t and couldn’t stay. When I ran off, he was unhappy, but then it was pathetic how little assurance it took before things were all right again. I think he was telling himself lies. He must have been telling himself lies. He was already preparing to make another wagon trip. His old-fashioned nature wouldn’t allow him to take me along, so quite happily he made plans for me to stay alone in the house until he got back. He told me where things were and what to do if I ran out of butter and eggs. I nodded and he was pleased.
When he went off to arrange his wagon load one afternoon, I went off to town again. To reach the jail, I had to walk across most of the town. Although it was the Territorial Capital, it was still a town and not a city, not as I understood the word. It was a raw, unpleasant day, the sort that makes me hate planets, and rain was threatening when I reached the jail. It was a solid, three-story building of great stone blocks, shaped like a fortress and protected by an iron spike fence. All the windows, from the cellar to the top floor, were double-barred. I walked around the building as I had before and looked it over again. It seemed impregnable. Between the fence and the building was a run in which patrolled two large, hairy, and vicious-looking dogs. One of them followed me all the way around the building.
As I was about to start around again, the rain started. It gave me the impetus I needed, and I ran for the front door and dodged into the entrance.
I was standing there, shaking the rain off, when a man in a green uniform came stalking out of one of the offices that lined the first-floor hallway. My heart stopped for a moment, but he barely glanced at me and went right on by and up the stairs to the second floor. That gave me some confidence and so I started poking around.
I looked at the bulletin boards and the offices on one side of the hall when another man in green came into the hall and made straight for me, much like Mrs. Keithley. I didn’t wait, but walked toward him, too.
I said, as wide-eyed and innocently as I could, “Can you help me, sir?”
“Well, that depends. What sort of help do you need?”
He was a big, rather slow man with one angled cloth bar on his shirt front over one pocket, and a plate that said “Robards” pinned over the pocket on the other side. He seemed good-natured and un-Keithley-like.
“Well, Jerry had to write about the capitol, and Jimmy had to interview the town manager, and I got you.”
“Hold on there. First, what be your name?”
“Billy Davidow,” I said. I picked the last name out of a newspaper story. “And I don’t know what to write, sir, so I thought I’d ask one of you to show me around and tell me things. That be, if you would.”
“Any relation to Hobar Davidow?” he asked.
“No, sir,” I said.
“That be good. Do you know who Hobar Davidow be?”
I shook my head.
“No, I guess you wouldn’t. That would be a little before you. We executed him six, no, seven years ago. Mixed in the wrong politics.” Then he said, “Well, I be sorry, son. We be pretty caught up today. Could you come back some afternoon later in the week, or maybe some evening?”
I said slowly, “I have to hand the paper in this week.” Then I waited.
After a minute he said, “All right. I’ll take you around. But I can’t spare you much time. It will have to be a quick tour.”
The offices were on the first floor, with a few more on the third. The arsenal and target range were in the basement. Most of the cells were on the second, and the very rough people were celled on the third.
“If the judge says maximum security, they go on the third, everybody else on the second unless we have an overflow. We have one boy up there now.”
My heart sank.
“A real bad actor. He has already killed one man.”
My heart came back to normal. That, for certain, wasn’t