Blackcollar: The Judas Solution by Timothy Zahn Page B

provided the hidden watchers with a view of the bathroom area and the door itself. The second, in the top of the shower enclosure, covered the bunk beds and the rest of that half of the room. There was also a smaller and much more subtly hidden camera in the room's far upper corner, probably a fish-eye lens that by itself could monitor nearly the entire room. Apparently, the plan was for him to congratulate himself on spotting the first two cameras and miss the third. There was also a single audio pickup. His parallel search for something he could use to break out of his prison was somewhat less rewarding. The bunk bed frame was bolted to the wall with the kind of nonreversible screws that required a special tool to remove. The mattress itself was soft and floppy, filled with some kind of foam chips, with no internal springs or anything else he could adapt as a weapon. The table was fastened to the floor, while the comfort chair was far too large and heavy to be of any use as a weapon—he could throw it once and probably flatten whomever it landed on, but he would never get a second shot with it before the rest of the guards piled on top of him. The bunk's two blankets, while thick enough to be effective at their task, were composed of a flimsy cloth that would tear with very little effort, making them useless as bonds or choke cords. The large bathroom towel was made of a similar material.
    The room's single door ran all the way to the ceiling, preventing him from suspending himself out of sight above it in the classic jungle-cat-drop position so beloved by action melodramas. There was likewise no room to hide beneath the lower bunk, and the shower enclosure was completely transparent. There was a click of the lock, and he turned as one of his guards opened the door, a thick sheaf of paper in his hands. "Here," he said, watching Caine warily as he crouched down and set the stack on the floor just inside the door. "Prefect Galway's compliments."
    "What is it?" Caine asked, frowning at the papers.
    "You asked for a book," the guard said. "There it is." His eyes still on Caine, he grabbed the edge of the door and pulled it closed again.
    Caine crossed to the papers and picked them up, mentally chalking up one more to Galway's credit. An electronic book would have required an electronic reader, whose inner workings Caine might have been able to jury-rig into a weapon against the surveillance cameras. A standard bound book, on the other hand, could have been used as a throwing weapon. Instead, Galway had given him five hundred individual pages that couldn't be used for anything except reading material. Or so he apparently thought.
    Setting the rest of the sheaf of papers on the floor beside the comfort chair, he took the first page and tore off the upper two corners. Going to the shower enclosure, he moistened them with drops of liquid soap from the dispenser, then took them to the two obvious cameras and carefully pasted one over each of the lenses.
    That left the third camera still intact, of course. But he was willing to play the game for now and pretend he hadn't spotted that one. If and when he was ready to make his move, its presence shouldn't matter. He took the rest of the page and meticulously folded and refolded it until he had a narrow, stiff, ruler-shaped probe. Then, lugging the comfort chair over to the door, he sat down and began prodding carefully at the crack between the door and the frame. It was late and he was tired, but it would look odd if he didn't put at least a little effort into freeing himself.
    There was no way such a flimsy probe could actually spring the lock, of course, and he could imagine the secret watchers having a good laugh at the would-be blackcollar's pathetic would-be escape attempt. They were welcome to their amusement. Playing with the lock this way gave him a perfect excuse to press his ear against the metal wall and to listen to the noises conducted through it. The first step, Lathe