Chapter II: Part 2

He broke off, peering down at the five-hundred-foot-square landing stage above the central block, then brought his 'copter swooping down rapidly. The white-clad figures he had seen swarming up the helical escalator were not wearing the Ku Klux robes of the Independent-Conservative storm troops, as he had first feared--they were in Literate smocks, and among them were the black leather jackets and futuristic helmets of their guards. They were led, he saw, by Stephen S. Bayne, the store's Chief Literate; with him were his assistant, Literate Third Class Roger B. Feinberg, and the novices carrying books and briefcases and cased typewriters, and the guards, and every Literate employed in the store. Four or five men in ordinarily vivid-colored business suits were obviously expostulating about something. As he landed and threw back the transparent canopy, he could hear a babel of voices, above which Feinberg was crying: "Unfair! Unfair! Unfair to Organized Literacy!"

He jumped out and hurried over.

* * * * *

"But you simply can't!" a white-haired man in blue-and-orange business clothes was protesting. "If you do, the Associated Fraternities'll be liable for losses we incur; you know that!"

Bayne, his thin face livid with anger--and also, Cardon noticed, with what looked like a couple of fresh bruises--ignored him. Feinberg broke off his chant of "Unfair! Unfair!" long enough to answer:

"A Literate First Class has been brutally assaulted by the Illiterate owner of this store. Literate service for this store is, accordingly, being discontinued, pending a decision by the Grand Council of the local Fraternity."

Cardon grabbed the blue-and-orange clad man and dragged him to one side.

"What happened, Hutschnecker?" he demanded.

"They're walking out on us," Hutschnecker told him, unnecessarily. "The boss had a fight with Bayne; knocked him down a couple of times. Bayne tried to pull his tablet gun, and I grabbed it away from him, and somebody else grabbed Pelton before he could pull his, and a couple of store cops got all the other Literates in the office covered. Then Bayne put on the general-address system and began calling out the Literates--"

"Yes, but why did Pelton beat Bayne up?"

"Bayne made a pass at Miss Claire. I wasn't there when it happened; she came into the office--"

Cardon felt his face tighten into a frown of perplexity. That wasn't like Literate First Class Stephen S. Bayne. He made quite a hobby of pinching salesgirls behind the counter which was one thing; the boss' daughter was quite another.

"Where's Latterman?" he asked, looking around.

"Down in the office, with the others, trying to help Mr. Pelton. He's had another of those heart attacks--"

Cardon swore and ran for the descending escalator, running down the rotating spiral to the executive floor and jumping off into the gawking mob of Illiterate clerks crowded in the open doors of Pelton's office. He hit and shoved and elbowed and cursed them out of the way, and burst into the big room beyond, and then, for a moment, he was almost sorry he had come.

Pelton was slumped in his big relaxer chair, his face pale and twisted in pain, his breath coming in feeble gasps. His daughter was beside him, her blond head bent over him; Russell Latterman was standing to one side, watching intently. For an instant, Cardon was reminded of a tomcat watching a promising mouse hole.

"Claire!" Cardon exploded, "give him a nitrocaine bulb. Why are you all just standing around?"

Claire turned. "There are none," she said, looking at him with desperate eyes. "The box is empty; he must have used them all."

He shot a quick glance at Latterman, catching the sales manager before he could erase a look of triumph from his face. Things began to add up. Latterman, of course, was the undercover man for Wilton Joyner and Harvey Graves and the rest of the Conservative faction at Literates' Hall, just as he, himself, was Lancedale's agent. Obsessed with immediate advantages and disadvantages, the Joyner-Graves faction wanted to secure the re-election of Grant Hamilton, and the way things had been going in the past two months, only Chester Pelton's death could accomplish that. Latterman had probably thrown out Pelton's nitrocaine capsules and then put Bayne up to insulting Pelton's daughter, knowing that a fit of rage would bring on another heart attack, which could be fatal without the medicine.

"Well, send for more!"

"The prescription's in the safe," she said faintly.

The office safe was locked, and only a Literate could open it. The double combination was neatly stenciled on the door, the numbers spelled out as words and the letters spelled in phonetic equivalents. All three of them--himself, Claire, and Russell Latterman--could read them. None of them dared admit it. Latterman was fairly licking his chops in anticipation. If Cardon opened the safe, Pelton's campaign manager stood convicted as a Literate. If Claire opened it, the gaggle of Illiterate clerks in the doorway would see, and speedily spread the news, that the daughter of the arch-foe of Literacy was herself able to read. Maybe Latterman hadn't really intended his employer to die. Maybe this was the situation he had really intended to contrive.

Chester Pelton couldn't be allowed to die. If Grant Hamilton were returned to the Senate, the long-range planning of William Lancedale would suffer a crushing setback, and the public reaction would be catastrophic. _The Plan comes first_, Lancedale had told him. He made his decision, and then saw that he hadn't needed to make it. Claire had straightened, left her father, crossed quickly to the safe, and was kneeling in front of it, her back stiff with determination, her fingers busy at the dials, her eyes going from them to the printed combination and back again. She swung open the door, skimmed through the papers inside, unerringly selected the prescription, and rose.

"Here, Russ; go get it filled at once," she ordered. "And hurry!"

Oh, no, you don't, Cardon thought. One chance is enough for you, Russ. He snatched the prescription from her and turned to Latterman.

"I'll get it," he told the sales manager. "You're needed for the sale; stay on the job here."

"But with the Literates walked out, we can't--"

Cardon blazed: "Do I have to teach you your business? Have a sample of each item set aside at the counter, and pile sales slips under it. And for unique items, just detach the tag and put it with the sales slip. Now get out of here, and get cracking with it!" He picked up the pistol that had been taken from Pelton when he had tried to draw it on Bayne, checking the chamber and setting the safety. "Know how to use this?" he asked Claire. "Then hang onto it, and stay close to your father. This wasn't any accident, it was a deliberate attempt on his life. I'll have a couple of store cops sent in here; see that they stay with you."

He gave her no chance to argue. Pushing Latterman ahead of him, he drove through the mob of clerks outside the door.

"... Course she can; didn't you see her open the safe?" he heard. "... Nobody but a Literate--" "Then she's a Literate, herself!"

A couple of centuries ago, they would have talked like that if it had been discovered that the girl were pregnant; a couple of centuries before that, they would have been equally horrified if she had been discovered to have been a Protestant, or a Catholic, or whatever the locally unpopular religion happened to be. By noon, this would be all over Penn-Jersey-York; coming on top of Slade Gardner's accusations--

* * * * *

He ran up the spiral escalator, stumbling and regaining his footing as he left it. Bayne and his striking Literates were all gone; he saw a sergeant of Pelton's store police and went toward him, taking his spare identity-badge from his pocket.

"Here," he said, handing it to the sergeant. "Get another officer, and go down to Pelton's office. Show it to Miss Pelton, and tell her I sent you. There's been an attempt on Chester Pelton's life; you're to stay with him. Use your own judgment, but don't let anybody, and that definitely includes Russell Latterman, get at him. If you see anything suspicious, shoot first and ask questions afterwards. What's your name, sergeant?"

"Coccozello, sir. Guido Coccozello."

"All right. There'll be a medic or a pharmacist--a Literate, anyhow--with medicine for Mr. Pelton. He'll ask for you, by name, and mention me. And there'll be another Literate, maybe; he'll know your name, and use mine. Hurry, now, sergeant."

He jumped into his 'copter, pulled forward the plexiglass canopy, and took off vertically to ten thousand feet, then, orienting himself, swooped downward toward a landing stage on the other side of the East River, cutting across traffic levels with an utter contempt for regulations.

The building on which he landed was one of the principal pharmacies; he spiraled down on the escalator to the main floor and went directly to the Literate in charge, noticing that he wore on his Sam Browne not only the badges of retail-merchandising, pharmacist and graduate chemist but also that of medic-in-training. Snatching a pad and pencil from a counter, he wrote hastily: _Your private office, at once; urgent and important._

Looking at it, the Literate nodded in recognition of Cardon's Literacy.

"Over this way, sir," he said, guiding Cardon to his small cubicle office.

"Here." Cardon gave him the prescription. "Nitrocaine bulbs. They're for Chester Pelton; he's had a serious heart attack. He needs these with all speed. I don't suppose I need tell you how many kinds of hell will break loose if he dies now and the Fraternities are accused, as the Illiterates' Organization will be sure to, of having had him poisoned."

"Who are you?" the Literate asked, taking the prescription and glancing at it. "That,"--he gestured toward Cardon's silver-laced black Mexican jacket--"isn't exactly a white smock."

Cardon had his pocket recorder in his hand. He held it out, pressing a concealed stud; the stylus-and-tablet insignia glowed redly on it for a moment, then vanished. The uniformed Literate nodded.

"Fill this exactly; better do it yourself, to make sure, and take it over to Pelton's yourself. I see you have a medic-trainee's badge. Ask for Sergeant Coccozello, and tell him Frank Cardon sent you." The Literate, who had not recognized him before, opened his eyes at the name and whistled softly. "And fix up a sedative to keep him quiet for not less than four nor more than six hours. Let me use your visiphone for a while, if you please."

The man in the Literate smock nodded and hurried out. Cardon dialed William R. Lancedale's private number. When Lancedale's thin, intense face appeared on the screen, he reported swiftly.

"The way I estimate it," he finished, "Latterman put Bayne up to making a pass at the girl, after having thrown out Pelton's nitrocaine bulbs. Probably told the silly jerk that Claire was pining away with secret passion for him, or something. Maybe he wanted to kill Pelton; maybe he just wanted this to happen."

"I assume there's no chance of stopping a leak?"

Cardon laughed with mirthless harshness. "That, I take it, was rhetorical."

"Yes, of course." Lancedale's face assumed the blank expression that went with a pause for semantic re-integration. "Can you cover yourself for about an hour?"

"Certainly. 'Copter trouble. Visits to campaign headquarters. An appeal on Pelton's behalf for a new crew of Literates for the store--"

"Good enough. Come over. I think I can see a way to turn this to advantage. I'm going to call for an emergency session of the Grand Council this afternoon, and I'll want you sitting in on it; I want to talk to you about plans now." He considered for a moment. "There's too much of a crowd at O'Reilly's, now; come the church way."

Breaking the connection, Cardon dialed again. A girl's face, over a Literate Third Class smock, appeared in the screen; a lovely golden voice chimed at him:

"Mineola High School; good morning, sir."

"Good morning. Frank Cardon here. Let me talk, at once, to your principal, Literate First Class Prestonby."

* * * * *

Ralph Prestonby cleared his throat, slipped a master disk into the recording machine beside his desk, and pressed the start button.

"Dear Parent or Guardian," he began. "Your daughter, now a third-year student at this school, has reached the age of eligibility for the Domestic Science course entitled, 'How To Win and Hold a Husband.' Statistics show that girls who have completed this valuable course are sooner, longer, and happier married than those who have not enjoyed its advantages. We recommend it most highly.

"However, because of the delicate nature of some of the visual material used, your consent is required. You can attach such consent to this disk by running it for at least ten seconds after the sign-off and then switching from 'Play' to 'Transcribe.' Kindly include your full name, as well as your daughter's, and place your thumbprint on the opposite side of the disk. Very sincerely yours, Literate First Class Ralph C. Prestonby, Principal."

He put the master disk in an envelope, checked over a list of names and addresses of parents and girl students, and put that in also. He looked over the winter sports schedule, and signed and thumbprinted it. Then he loaded the recorder with his morning's mail, switched to "Play," and started it. As he listened, he blew smoke rings across the room and toyed with a dagger, made from a file, which had been thrown down the central light-well at him a few days before. The invention of the pocket recorder, which put a half-hour's conversation on a half-inch disk, had done more to slow down business and promote inane correspondence than anything since the earlier inventions of shorthand, typewriters and pretty stenographers. Finally, he cleared the machine, dumping the whole mess into a basket and carrying it out to his secretary.

"Miss Collins, take this infernal rubbish and have a couple of the girls divide it between them, play it off, and make a digest of it," he said. "And here. The sports schedule, and this parental-consent thing on the husband-trapping course. Have them taken care of."

"This stuff," Martha Collins said, poking at the pile of letter disks. "I suppose about half of it is threats, abuse and obscenities, and the other half is from long-winded bores with idiotic suggestions and ill-natured gripes. I'll use that old tag line, again--'hoping you appreciate our brevity as much as we enjoyed yours--'"

"Yes. That'll be all right." He looked at his watch. "I'm going to make a personal building-tour, instead of using the TV. The animals are sort of restless, today. The election; the infantile compulsion to take sides. If you need me for anything urgent, don't use oral call. Just flash my signal, red-blue-red-blue, on the hall and classroom screens. Oh, Doug!"

Yetsko, his length of rubber hose under his arm, ambled out of Prestonby's private office, stopping to stub out his cigarette. The action reminded Prestonby that he still had his pipe in his mouth; he knocked it out and pocketed it. Together, they went into the hall outside.

"Where to, first, captain?" Yetsko wanted to know.

"Cloak-and-Dagger Department, on the top floor. Then we'll drop down to the shops, and then up through Domestic Science and Business and General Arts."

"And back here. We hope," Yetsko finished.

* * * * *

They took a service elevator to the top floor, emerging into a stockroom piled with boxes and crates and cases of sound records and cans of film and stacks of picture cards, and all the other impedimenta of Illiterate education. Passing through it to the other end, Prestonby unlocked a door, and they went down a short hall, to where ten or fifteen boys and girls had just gotten off a helical escalator and were queued up at a door at the other end. There were two Literate guards in black leather, and a student-monitor, with his white belt and rubber truncheon, outside the door.

Prestonby swore under his breath. He'd hoped they'd miss this, but since they hadn't, there was nothing for it but to fall in at the tail of the queue. One by one, the boys and girls went up, spoke briefly to the guards and the student-monitor, and were passed through the door, Each time, one of the guards had to open it with a key. Finally, it was Prestonby's turn.

"B, D, F, H, J, L, N, P, R, T, V, X, Y," he recited to the guardians of the door.

"A, C, E, G, I, K, M, O, Q, S, U, W, Y," the monitor replied solemnly. "The inkwell is dry, and the book is dusty."

"But tomorrow, there will be writing and reading for all," Prestonby answered.

The guard with the key unlocked the door, and he and Yetsko went through, into an utterly silent sound-proofed room, and from it into an inner, noisy, room, where a recorded voice was chanting:

"Hat--_huh-ah-tuh._ H-a-t. Box--_buh-oh-ksss_. B-o-x. Gun--_guh-uh-nnn_. G-u-n. Girl--_guh-ih-rrr-lll_," while pictures were flashed on a screen at the front, and words appeared under them.

There were about twenty boys and girls, of the freshman-year age-bracket at desk-seats, facing the screen. They'd started learning the alphabet when school had opened in September; now they had gotten as far as combining letters into simple words. In another month, they'd be as far as diphthongs and would be initiated into the mysteries of silent letters. Maybe sooner than that; he was finding that children who had not been taught to read until their twelfth year learned much more rapidly than the primary grade children in the Literate schools.

What he was doing here wasn't exactly illegal. It wasn't even against the strict letter of Fraternity regulations. But it had to be done clandestinely. What he'd have liked to have done would have been to have given every boy and girl in English I the same instruction this selected group was getting, but that would have been out of the question. The public would never have stood for it; the police would have had to intervene to prevent a riotous mob of Illiterates from tearing the school down brick by brick, and even if that didn't happen, the ensuing uproar inside the Fraternity would have blown the roof off Literates' Hall. Even Lancedale couldn't have survived such an explosion, and the body of Literate First Class Ralph N. Prestonby would have been found in a vacant lot the next morning. Even many of Lancedale's supporters would have turned on him in anger at this sudden blow to the Fraternities' monopoly of the printed Word.

So it had to be kept secret, and since adolescents in possession of a secret are under constant temptation to hint mysteriously in the presence of outsiders, this hocus-pocus of ritual and password and countersign had to be resorted to. He'd been in conspiratorial work of other kinds, and knew that there was a sound psychological basis for most of what seemed, at first glance, to be mere melodramatic claptrap.

He and Yetsko passed on through a door across the room, into another sound-proofed room. The work of soundproofing and partitioning the old stockroom had been done in the last semester of his first year at Mineola High, by members of the graduating class of building-trades students, who had then gone their several ways convinced that they had been working on a set of music-class practice rooms. The Board of Education had never even found out about it. In this second room, a Literate teacher, one of the Lancedale faction, had a reading class of twenty-five or thirty. A girl was on her feet, with a book in her hand, reading from it:

"We are not sure of sorrow;
And joy was never sure;
Today will die tomorrow;
Time stoops to no man's lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure."

Then she handed the book--it was the only copy--to the boy sitting in front of her, and he rose to read the next verse. Prestonby, catching the teacher's eye, nodded and smiled. This was a third-year class, of course, but from h-a-t spells hat to Swinburne in three years was good work.

There were three other classes, a total of little over a hundred students. There was no trouble; they were there for one purpose only--to learn. He spoke with one of the teachers, whose class was busy with a written exercise; he talked for a while to another whose only duty at the moment was to answer questions and furnish help to a small class who were reading silently from a variety of smuggled-in volumes.

"Only a hundred and twenty, out of five thousand," Yetsko said to him, as they were dropping down in the elevator by which they had come. "Think you'll ever really get anything done with them?"

"I won't. Maybe they won't," he replied. "But the ones they'll teach will. They're just a cadre; it'll take fifty years before the effects are really felt. But some day--"

The shops--a good half of the school was trades-training--were noisy and busy. Here Prestonby kept his hand on his gas-projector, and Yetsko had his rubber hose ready, either to strike or to discard in favor of his pistol. The instructors were similarly on the alert and ready for trouble--he had seen penitentiaries where the guards took it easier. Carpentry and building trades. Machine shop. Welding. 'Copter and TV repair shops--he made a minor and relatively honest graft there, from the sale of rebuilt equipment. Even an atomic-equipment shop, though there was nothing in the place that would excite a Geiger more than the instructor's luminous-dial watch.

Domestic Science--Home Decorating, Home Handicrafts, Use of Home Appliances, Beautician School, Charm School. He and Yetsko sampled the products of the Cooking School, intended for the cafeteria, and found them edible if uninspired.

Business--classes in recording letters, using Illiterate business-machines, preparing Illiterate cards for same, filing recordings--always with the counsel, "When in doubt, consult a Literate."

General Arts--Spanish and French, from elaborate record players, the progeny of the old Twentieth Century Linguaphone. English, with recorded-speech composition, enunciation training, semantics, and what Prestonby called English Illiterature. The class he visited was drowsing through one of the less colorful sections of "Gone With The Wind." World History, with half the students frankly asleep through an audio-visual on the Feudal System, with planted hints on how nice a revival of same would be, and identifying the clergy of the Middle Ages with the Fraternities of Literates. American History, with the class wide awake, since Custer's Massacre was obviously only moments away.

"Wantta bet one of those little cherubs doesn't try to scalp another before the day's out?" Yetsko whispered.

Prestonby shook his head. "No bet. Remember that film on the Spanish Inquisition, that we had to discontinue?"

It was then that the light on the classroom screen, which had been flickering green and white, suddenly began flashing Prestonby's wanted-at-office signal.

* * * * *

Prestonby found Frank Cardon looking out of the screen in his private office. The round, ordinarily cheerful, face was serious, but the innocent blue eyes were as unreadable as ever. He was wearing one of the new Mexican _charro_-style jackets, black laced with silver.

"I can't see all your office, Ralph," he said as Prestonby approached. "Are you alone?"

"Doug Yetsko's all," Prestonby said, and, as Cardon hesitated, added: "Don't be silly, Frank; he's my bodyguard. What could I be in that he wouldn't know all about?"

Cardon nodded. "Well, we're in a jam up to here." A handwave conveyed the impression that the sea of troubles had risen to his chin. He spoke at some length, describing the fight between Chester Pelton and Stephen S. Bayne, the Literate strike at Pelton's Purchasers' Paradise, Pelton's heart attack, and the circumstances of Claire's opening the safe. "So you see," he finished. "Maybe Latterman tried to kill Pelton, maybe he just tried to do what he did. I can't take chances either way."

Prestonby thought furiously. "You say Claire's alone at the store with her father?"

"And a couple of store cops, sterling characters with the hearts of lions and the brains of goldfish," Cardon replied. "And Russ Latterman, and maybe four or five Conservative goons he's managed to infiltrate into the store."

Prestonby was still thinking, aloud, now. "Maybe they did mean to kill Pelton; in that case, they'll try again. Or maybe they only wanted to expose Claire's literacy. It's hard to say what else they'd try--maybe kidnap her, to truth-drug her and use her as a guest-artist on a Conservative telecast. I'm going over to the store, now."

"That's a good idea, Ralph. If you hadn't thought of it, I was going to suggest it. Land on the central stage, ask for Sergeant Coccozello of the store police, and give my name. Even aside from everything else, it'd be a good idea to have somebody there who can read and dares admit it, till a new crew of Literates can get there. You were speaking about the possibility of kidnaping; how about the boy? Ray?"

Prestonby nodded. "I'll have him come here to my office, and stay there till I get back; I'll have Yetsko stay with him." He turned to where the big man in black leather stood guard at the door. "Doug, go get Ray Pelton and bring him here. Check with Miss Collins for where he'd be, now." He turned back to the screen. "Anything else, Frank?"

"Isn't that enough?" the brewer-Literate demanded. "I'll call you at the store, after a while. 'Bye."

The screen darkened as Cardon broke the connection. Prestonby got to his feet, went to his desk, and picked up a pipe, digging out the ashes from the bowl with an ice pick that one of the teachers had taken from a sixteen-year-old would-be murderer. He checked his tablet gun, made sure that there was an extra loaded clip in the holster, and got two more spare clips from the arms locker. Then, to make sure, he called Pelton's store, talking for a while to the police sergeant Cardon had mentioned. By the time he was finished, the door opened and Yetsko ushered Ray Pelton in.

"What's happened?" the boy asked. "Doug told me that the Senator ... my father ... had another heart attack."

"Yes, Ray. I don't believe he's in any great danger. He's at the store, resting in his office." He went on to tell the boy what had happened, exactly and in full detail. He was only fifteen, but already he had completed the four-year reading course and he could think a great deal more logically than seventy per cent of the people who were legally entitled to vote. Ray listened seriously, and proved Prestonby's confidence justified by nodding.

"Frame-up," he said succinctly. "Stinks like a glue factory of a put-up job. Something's going to happen to Russ Latterman, one of these days."

"I think you'd better let Frank Cardon take care of him, Ray," Prestonby advised. "I think there are more angles to this than he told me. Now, I'm going over to the store. Somebody's got to stay with Claire. I want you to stay here, in this room. If anybody sends you any message supposed to be from me, just ignore it. It'll be a trap. If I want to get in touch with you, I'll call you, with vision-image."

"Mean somebody might try to kidnap me, or Claire, to force the Senator to withdraw, or something?" Ray asked, his eyes widening.

"You catch on quickly, Ray," Prestonby commended him. "Doug, you stay with Ray till I get back. Don't let him out of your sight for an instant. At noon, have Miss Collins get lunches for both of you sent up; if I'm not back by fifteen-hundred, take him to his home, and stay with him there."

* * * * *

For half an hour, Frank Cardon made a flying tour of Radical-Socialist borough headquarters. Even at the Manhattan headquarters, which he visited immediately after his talk with Prestonby, the news had already gotten out. The atmosphere of optimistic triumph which had undoubtedly followed Mongery's telecast and his report on the Trotter Poll, had evaporated. The Literate clerical help was gathered in a tight knot, obviously a little worried, and just as obviously enjoying the reaction. In smaller and constantly changing groups, the volunteers, the paid helpers, the dirt-squirters, the goon gangs, gathered, talking in worried or frightened or angry voices. When Cardon entered and was recognized, there was a concerted movement toward him. His two regular bodyguards, both on leave from the Literate storm troops, moved quickly to range themselves on either side of him. With a gesture, he halted the others.

"Hold it!" he called. "I know what you're worried about. I was there when it happened, and saw everything."

He paused, to let them assimilate that, and continued: "Now get this, all of you! Our boss, and--_if he lives_--our next senator, was the victim of a deliberate murder attempt, by Literate First Class Bayne, who threw out his supply of nitrocaine bulbs and then goaded him into a heart attack which, except for his daughter, would have been fatal. Claire Pelton deserves the deepest gratitude of every Radical-Socialist in the state. She's a smart girl, and she saved the life of her father and our leader.

"But--she is _not_ a Literate!" he cried loudly. "All she did was something any of you could have done--something I've done, myself, so that I won't be locked out of my own safe and have to wait for a Literate to come and open, it for me. She simply kept her eye on the Literates who were opening the safe, and learned the combination from the positions to which they turned the dial. And you believe, on the strength of that, that she's a Literate? The next thing, you'll be believing that professional liar of a Slade Gardner. And you call yourselves politicians!" He fairly gargled obscenities.

Looking around, he caught sight of a pair who seemed something less than impressed with his account of it. Joe West, thick-armed, hairy-chested, blue-jowled; Horace Yingling, thin and gangling. They weren't Radical-Socialist party people; they were from the Political Action Committee of the Consolidated Illiterates Organization, and their slogan was simpler and more to the point than Chester Pelton's--the only good Literate is a dead Literate. He tensed himself and challenged them directly.

"Joe; Horace. How about you? Satisfied the Pelton girl isn't a Literate, now?"

Yingling looked at West, and West looked back at him questioningly. Evidently the _suavitor in modo_ was Yingling's province, and the _fortior in re_ was West's.

"Yeh, sure, Mr. Cardon," Yingling said dubiously. "Now that you explain it, we see how it was."

* * * * *

It was worse than that in some of the other boroughs. One fanatic, imagining that Cardon himself was a crypto-Literate, drew a gun. Cardon's guards disarmed him and beat him senseless. At another headquarters, some character was circulating about declaring that not only Claire Pelton but her younger brother, Ray, as well, were Literates. Cardon's two men hustled him out of the building, and, after about twenty minutes, returned alone. Cardon hoped that the body would not be found until after the polls closed, the next day.

Finally, leaving his guards with the 'copter at a public landing stage, he made his way, by devious routes, to William R. Lancedale's office, and found Lancedale at his desk, seeming not to have moved since he had showed his agent out earlier in the day.

"Well, we're in a nice puddle of something-or-other," Cardon greeted him. "On top of that Gardner telecast, this morning--"

"Guthrie Parham's taking care of that, and everything's going to be done to ridicule Gardner," Lancedale told him. "And even this business at the store can be turned to some advantage. Before we're through, we may gain more votes than we lose for Pelton. And we had an informal meeting--Joyner for Retail Merchandising, Starke for Grievance Settlements, and four or five others including myself, to make up a quorum. We had Bayne in, and heard his story of it, and we got a report from one of our stoolies in the store. Bayne thought he was due for a commendation; instead, he got an eat-out. Of course, it was a fact that Pelton'd hit him, and we can't have Literates punched around, regardless of provocation. So we voted to fine Pelton ten million for beating Bayne up, and to award him ten million for losses resulting from unauthorized withdrawal of Literate services. We ordered a new crew of Literates to the store, and we exiled Bayne to Brooklyn, to something called Stillman's Used Copter and Junk Bazaar. For the next few months, the only thing he'll find that's round and pinchable will be second-hand tires. But don't be too hard on him; I think he did us a favor."

"You mean, starting a rift between Pelton and the Consolidated Illiterates' Organization, which we can widen after the election?"

"No. I hadn't thought of it that way, Frank," Lancedale smiled. "It's an idea worth keeping in mind, and we'll exploit it, later. What I was thinking about was the more immediate problem of the election--"

The buzzer on Lancedale's desk interrupted, and a voice came out of the commo box:

"Message, urgent and private, sir. Source named as Sforza."

Cardon recognized the name. Maybe the Independent-Conservatives have troubles, too, he thought hopefully. Then Lancedale's video screen became the frame for an almost unbelievably commonplace set of features.

"Sforza, sir," the man in the screen said. "Sorry I'm late, but I was able to get out of the building only a few minutes ago, and I had to make sure I wasn't wearing a tail. I have two new facts. First, the Conservatives have been bringing storm troops in from outside, from Philadelphia, and from Wilkes-Scranton, and from Buffalo. They are being concentrated in lower Manhattan, in plain clothes, with only concealed weapons, and carrying their hoods folded up under their coats. Second, I overheard a few snatches of conversation between two of the Conservative storm troop leaders, as follows: '... Start it in China ... thirteen-thirty,' and '... Important to make it appear either spontaneous or planned for business motives.'"

"Try to get us more information, as quickly as possible," Lancedale directed. "Obviously, we should know, by about thirteen hundred, what's being planned."

"Right, sir." Lancedale's spy at Independent-Conservative headquarters nodded and vanished from the screen.

"What does it sound like to you, Frank?" Lancedale asked.

"China is obviously a code-designation for some place in downtown Manhattan, where the Conservative goon gangs are being concentrated. The only thing I can say is that it probably is not Chinatown. They'd either say 'Chinatown' and not 'China,' or they would use some code-designation that wasn't so close to the actual name," Cardon considered. "What they're going to start, at thirteen-thirty, which is only two hours and a half from now, is probably some kind of a riot."

"A riot which could arise from business motives," Lancedale added. "That sounds like the docks, or the wholesale district, or the garment district, or something like that." He passed his hand rapidly over the photoelectric eye of the commo box. "Get me Major Slater," he said; and, a little later, "Major, get a platoon out to Long Island, to Chester Pelton's home; have the place searched for possible booby traps, and maintain guard there till further notice. You'll have no trouble with the servants, they're all in our pay. That platoon must not, repeat not, wear uniform or appear to have any connection with the Fraternities. Put another platoon in Pelton's store. Concealed weapons, and plain clothes. They should carry their leather helmets in shopping bags, and roam about in the store, ostensibly shopping. And a full company, uniformed and armed with heavy weapons, alerted and ready for immediate 'copter movement." He went on to explain about the intelligence report and the conclusions drawn from it. The guards officer repeated back his instructions, and Lancedale broke the connection.

"Now, Frank," he said, "I told you that this revelation of Claire Pelton's Literacy can be turned to our advantage. There's to be a full Council meeting at thirteen hundred. Here's what I estimate Joyner and Graves will try to do, and here's what I'm going to do to counter it--"

* * * * *

A couple of men in the maroon uniform of Pelton's store police were waiting as Prestonby's 'copter landed on the top stage; one of them touched his cap-visor with his gas-billy in salute and said: "Literate Prestonby? Miss Pelton is expecting you; she's in her father's office. This way, if you please, sir."

He had hoped to find her alone, but when he entered the office, he saw five or six of the store personnel with her. Since opening her father's safe, she had evidently dropped all pretense of Illiteracy; there was a mass of papers spread on the big desk, and she was referring from one to another of them with the deft skill of a regular Fraternities Literate, while the others watched in fascinated horror.

"Wait a moment, Mr. Hutschnecker," she told the white-haired man in the blue and orange business suit with whom she had been talking, and laid the printed price-schedule down, advancing to meet him.

"Ralph!" she greeted him. "Frank Cardon told me you were coming. I--"

For a moment, he thought of the afternoon, over two years ago, when she had entered his office at the school, and he had recognized her as the older sister of young Ray Pelton.

"Professor Prestonby," she had begun, accusingly, "you have been teaching my brother, Raymond Pelton, to read!"

He had been prepared for that; had known that sooner or later there would be some minor leak in the security screen around the classrooms on the top floor.

"My dear Miss Pelton," he had protested pleasantly. "I think you've become overwrought over nothing. This pretense to Literacy is a phase most boys of Ray's age pass through; they do it just as they play air-pirates or hi-jackers a few years earlier. The usual trick is to memorize something heard from a record disk, and then pretend to read it from print."

"Don't try to kid me, professor. I know that Ray can read. I can prove it."

"And supposing he has learned a few words," he had parried. "Can you be sure I taught him? And if so, what had you thought of doing about it? Are you going to expose me as a corrupter of youth?"

"Not unless I have to," she had replied coolly. "I'm going to blackmail you, professor. I want you to teach me to read, too."

Now, with this gang of her father's Illiterate store officials present, a quick handclasp and a glance were all they could exchange.

"How is he, Claire?" he asked.

"Out of danger, for the present. There was a medic here, who left just before you arrived. He brought nitrocaine bulbs, and gave father something to make him sleep. He's lying down, back in his rest room." She led him to a door at the rear of the office and motioned him to enter, following him. "He's going to sleep for a couple of hours, yet."

The room was a sort of bedroom and dressing room, with a miniscule toilet and shower beyond. Pelton was lying on his back, sleeping; his face was pale, but he was breathing easily and regularly. Two of the store policemen, a sergeant and a patrolman, were playing cards on the little table, and the patrolman had a burp gun within reach.

"All right, sergeant," Claire said. "You and Gorman go out to the office. Call me if anything comes up that needs my attention, in the next few minutes."

The sergeant started to protest. Claire cut him off.

"There's no danger here. This Literate can be trusted; he's a friend of Mr. Cardon's. Works at the brewery. It's all right."

The two rose and went out, leaving the door barely ajar. Prestonby and Claire, like a pair of marionettes on the same set of strings, cast a quick glance at the door and then were in each other's arms. Chester Pelton slept placidly as they kissed and whispered endearments.

It was Claire who terminated the embrace, looking apprehensively at her slumbering father.

"Ralph, what's it all about?" she asked. "I didn't even know that you and Frank Cardon knew each other, let alone that he had any idea about us."

Prestonby thought furiously, trying to find a safe path through the tangle of Claire Pelton's conflicting loyalties, trying to find a path between his own loyalties and his love for her, wondering how much it would be safe to tell her.

"And Cardon's gone completely cloak-and-dagger-happy," she continued. "He's talking about plots against my father's life, and against me, and--"

"A lot of things are going on under cloaks, around here," he told her. "And under Literate smocks, and under other kinds of costume. And a lot of daggers are out, too. You didn't know Frank Cardon was a Literate, did you?"

Her eyes widened. "I thought I was Literate enough to spot Literacy in anybody else," she said. "No, I never even suspected--"

Somebody rapped on the door. "Miss Pelton," the sergeant's voice called. "Visiphone call from Literates' Hall."

Prestonby smiled. "I'll take it, if you don't mind," he said. "I'm acting-chief-Literate here, now, I suppose."

She followed him as he went out into Pelton's office. When he snapped on the screen, a young man in a white smock, with the Fraternities Executive Section badge, looked out of it. He gave a slight start when he saw Prestonby.

"Literate First Class Ralph N. Prestonby, acting voluntarily for Pelton's Purchasers' Paradise during emergency," he said.

"Literate First Class Armandez, Executive Section," the man in the screen replied. "This call is in connection with the recent attack of Chester Pelton upon Literate First Class Bayne."

"Continue, understanding that we admit nothing," Prestonby told him.

"An extemporary session of the Council has found Pelton guilty of assaulting Literate Bayne, and has fined him ten million dollars," Armandez announced.

"We enter protest," Prestonby replied automatically.

"Wait a moment, Literate. The Council has also awarded Pelton's Purchasers' Paradise damages to the extent of ten million dollars, for losses incurred by suspension of Literate service, and voted censure against Literate Bayne for ordering said suspension without consent of the Council. Furthermore, a new crew of Literates, with their novices, guards, et cetera, is being sent at once to your store. Obviously, neither the Fraternities, nor Pelton's, nor the public, would be benefitted by returning Literate Bayne or any of his crew; he has been given another assignment."

"Thank you. And when can we expect this new crew of Literates?" Prestonby asked.

The man in the screen consulted his watch. "Probably inside of an hour. We've had to do some re-shuffling; you know how these things are handled. And if you'll pardon me, Literate; just what are you doing at Pelton's? I understood that you were principal of Mineola High School."

"That's a good question." Prestonby hastily assessed the circumstances and their implications. "I'd suggest that you ask it of my superior, Literate Lancedale, however."

The Literate in the screen blinked; that was the equivalent, for him, of anybody else's jaw dropping to his midriff.

"Well! A pleasure, Literate. Good day."

* * * * *

"Miss Pelton!" The man in the blue-and-orange suit was still trying to catch her attention. "Where are we going to put that stuff? Russ Latterman's out in the store, somewhere, and I can't get in touch with him."

"What did you say it was?" she replied.

"Fireworks, for the Peace Day trade. We want to get it on sale about the middle of the month."

"This was a fine time to deliver them. Peace Day isn't till the Tenth of December. Put them down in the fireproof vault."

"That place is full of photographic film, and sporting ammunition, and other merchandise; stuff we'll have to draw out to replace stock on the shelves during the sale," the Illiterate objected.

"The weather forecast for the next couple of days is fair," Prestonby reminded her. "Why not just pile the stuff on the top stage, beyond the control tower, and put up warning signs?"

The man--Hutschnecker, Prestonby remembered hearing Claire call him--nodded.

"That might be all right. We could cover the cases with tarpaulins."

A buzzer drew one of the Illiterates to a handphone. He listened for a moment, and turned.

"Hey, there's a Mrs. H. Armytage Zydanowycz down in Furs; she wants to buy one of those mutated-mink coats, and she's only got half a million bucks with her. How's her credit?"

Claire handed Prestonby a black-bound book. "Confidential credit-rating guide; look her up for us," she said.

Another buzzer rasped, before Prestonby could find the entry on Zydanowycz, H. Armytage; the Illiterate office worker, laying down one phone, grabbed up another.

"They're all outta small money in Notions; every son and his brother's been in there in the last hour to buy a pair of dollar shoestrings with a grand-note."

"I'll take care of that," Hutschnecker said. "Wait till I call control tower, and tell them about the fireworks."

"How much does Mrs. H. Armytage Zydanowycz want credit for?" Prestonby asked. "The book says her husband's good for up to fifteen million, or fifty million in thirty days."

"Those coats are only five million," Claire said. "Let her have it; be sure to get her thumbprint, though, and send it up here for comparison."

"Oh, Claire; do you know how we're going to handle this new Literate crew, when they get here?"

"Yes, here's the TO for Literate service." She tossed a big chart across the desk to him. "I made a few notes on it; you can give it to whoever is in charge."

* * * * *

It went on, like that, for the next hour. When the new Literate crew arrived, Prestonby was delighted to find a friend, and a fellow-follower of Lancedale, in charge. Considering that Retail Merchandising was Wilton Joyner's section, that was a good omen. Lancedale must have succeeded to an extraordinary degree in imposing his will on the Grand Council. Prestonby found, however, that he would need some time to brief the new chief Literate on the operational details at the store. He was unwilling to bring Claire too prominently into the conference, although he realized that it would be a matter of half an hour, at the outside, before every one of the new Literate crew would have heard about her Literate ability. If she'd only played dumb, after opening that safe--

Finally, by 1300, the new Literates had taken over, and the sale was running smoothly again. Latterman was somewhere out in the store, helping them; Claire had lunch for herself and Prestonby sent up from the restaurant, and for a while they ate in silence, broken by occasional spatters of small-talk. Then she returned to the question she had raised and he had not yet answered.

"You say Frank Cardon's a Literate?" she asked. "Then what's he doing managing the Senator's campaign? Fifth-columning?"

He shook his head. "You think the Fraternities are a solid, monolithic, organization; everybody agreed on aims and means, and working together in harmony? That's how it's supposed to look, from the outside. On the inside, though, there's a bitter struggle going on between two factions, over policy and for control. One faction wants to maintain the _status quo_--a handful of Literates doing the reading and writing for an Illiterate public, and holding a monopoly on Literacy. They're headed by two men, Wilton Joyner and Harvey Graves. Bayne was one of that faction."

He paused, thinking quickly. If Lancedale had gotten the upper hand, there was likely to be a revision of the Joyner-Graves attitude toward Pelton. In that case, the less he said to incriminate Russell Latterman, the better. Let Bayne be the villain, for a while, he decided.

"Bayne," he continued, "is one of a small minority of fanatics who make a religion of Literacy. I believe he disposed of your father's medicine, and then deliberately goaded him into a rage to bring on a heart attack. That doesn't represent Joyner-Graves policy; it was just something he did on his own. He's probably been disciplined for it, by now. But the Joyner-Graves faction are working for your father's defeat and the re-election of Grant Hamilton.

"The other faction is headed by a man you've probably never heard of, William R. Lancedale. I'm of his faction, and so is Frank Cardon. We want to see your father elected, because the socialization of Literacy would eventually put the Literates in complete control of the government. We also want to see Literacy become widespread, eventually universal, just as it was before World War IV."

"But Wouldn't that mean the end of the Fraternities?" Claire asked.

"That's what Joyner and Graves say. We don't believe so. And suppose it did? Lancedale says, if we're so incompetent that we have to keep the rest of the world in ignorance to earn a living, the world's better off without us. He says that every oligarchy carries in it the seeds of its own destruction; that if we can't evolve with the rest of the world, we're doomed in any case. That's why we want to elect your father. If he can get his socialized Literacy program adopted, we'll be in a position to load the public with so many controls and restrictions and formalities that even the most bigoted Illiterate will want to learn to read. Lancedale says, a private monopoly like ours is bad, but a government monopoly is intolerable, and the only way the public can get rid of it would be by becoming Literates, themselves."

She glanced toward the door of Pelton's private rest room.

"Poor Senator!" she said softly. "He hates Literacy so, and his own children are Literates, and his program against Literacy is being twisted against itself!"

"But you agree that we're right and he's wrong?" Prestonby asked. "You must, or you'd never have come to me to learn to read."

"He's such a good father. I'd hate to see him hurt," she said. "But, Ralph, you're my man. Anything you're for, I'm for, and anything you're against, I'm against."

He caught her hand, across the table, forgetful of the others in the office.

"Claire, now that everybody knows--" he began.

* * * * *

"_Top emergency! Top emergency!_" a voice brayed out of the alarm box on the wall. "_Serious disorder in Department Thirty-two! Serious disorder in Department Thirty-two!_"

The voice broke off as suddenly as it had begun, but the box was not silent. From it came a medley of shouts, curses, feminine screams and splintering crashes. Prestonby and Claire were on their feet.

"You have wall screens?" he asked. "How do they work? Like the ones at school?"

Claire twisted a knob until the number 32 appeared on a dial, and pressed a button. On the screen, the Chinaware Department on the third floor came to life in full sound and color. The pickup must have been across an aisle from the box from whence the alarm had come; they could see one of Pelton's Illiterate clerks lying unconscious under it, and the handphone dangling at the end of its cord. The aisles were full of jostling, screaming women, trampling one another and fighting frantically to get out, and, among them, groups of three or four men were gathered back to back. One such group had caught a store policeman; three were holding him while a fourth smashed vases over his head, grabbing them from a nearby counter. A pink dinner plate came skimming up from the crowd, narrowly missing the wired TV pickup. A moment later, a blue-and-white sugar bowl, thrown with better aim, came curving at them in the screen. It scored a hit, and brought darkness, though the bedlam of sound continued.

Cardon looked at his watch as he entered the Council Chamber at Literates' Hall, smoothing his smock hastily under his Sam Browne. He'd made it with very little time to spare, before the doors would be sealed and the meeting would begin. He'd been all over town, tracking down that report of Sforza's; he'd even made a quick visit to Chinatown, on the off chance that "China" had been used in an attempt at the double concealment of the obvious, but, as he'd expected, he'd found nothing. The people there hardly knew there was to be an election. Accustomed for millennia to ideographs read only by experts, they viewed the current uproar about Literacy with unconcern.

At the door, he deposited his pocket recorder--no sound-recording device was permitted, except the big audio-visual camera in front, which made the single permanent record. Going around the room counterclockwise to the seats of his faction, he encountered two other Lancedale men: Gerald K. Toppington, of the Technological Section, thin-faced, sandy-haired, balding; and Franklin R. Chernov, commander of the local Literates' guards brigade, with his ragged gray mustache, his horribly scarred face, and his outsize tablet-holster almost as big as a mail-order catalogue.