million," Claire said. "Let her have it; besure to get her thumbprint, though, and send it up here forcomparison."
"Oh, Claire; do you know how we're going to handle this new Literatecrew, when they get here?"
"Yes, here's the TO for Literate service." She tossed a big chartacross the desk to him. "I made a few notes on it; you can give it towhoever is in charge."
* * * * *
It went on, like that, for the next hour. When the new Literate crewarrived, Prestonby was delighted to find a friend, and afellow-follower of Lancedale, in charge. Considering that RetailMerchandising was Wilton Joyner's section, that was a good omen.Lancedale must have succeeded to an extraordinary degree in imposinghis will on the Grand Council. Prestonby found, however, that hewould need some time to brief the new chief Literate on theoperational details at the store. He was unwilling to bring Claire tooprominently into the conference, although he realized that it would bea matter of half an hour, at the outside, before every one of the newLiterate crew would have heard about her Literate ability. If she'donly played dumb, after opening that safe--
Finally, by 1300, the new Literates had taken over, and the sale wasrunning smoothly again. Latterman was somewhere out in the store,helping them; Claire had lunch for herself and Prestonby sent up fromthe restaurant, and for a while they ate in silence, broken byoccasional spatters of small-talk. Then she returned to the questionshe had raised and he had not yet answered.
"You say Frank Cardon's a Literate?" she asked. "Then what's he doingmanaging 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, andworking together in harmony? That's how it's supposed to look, fromthe outside. On the inside, though, there's a bitter struggle going onbetween two factions, over policy and for control. One faction wantsto maintain the _status quo_--a handful of Literates doing the readingand writing for an Illiterate public, and holding a monopoly onLiteracy. 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 towardPelton. In that case, the less he said to incriminate RussellLatterman, the better. Let Bayne be the villain, for a while, hedecided.
"Bayne," he continued, "is one of a small minority of fanatics whomake a religion of Literacy. I believe he disposed of your father'smedicine, and then deliberately goaded him into a rage to bring on aheart attack. That doesn't represent Joyner-Graves policy; it was justsomething he did on his own. He's probably been disciplined for it, bynow. But the Joyner-Graves faction are working for your father'sdefeat 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. Wewant to see your father elected, because the socialization of Literacywould eventually put the Literates in complete control of thegovernment. We also want to see Literacy become widespread, eventuallyuniversal, 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 supposeit did? Lancedale says, if we're so incompetent that we have to keepthe rest of the world in ignorance to earn a living, the world'sbetter off without us. He says that every oligarchy carries in it theseeds of its own destruction; that if we can't evolve with the rest ofthe world, we're doomed in any case. That's why we want to elect yourfather. If he can get his socialized Literacy program adopted, we'llbe in a position to load the public with so many controls andrestrictions and formalities that even the most bigoted Illiteratewill want to learn to read. Lancedale says, a private monopoly likeours is bad, but a government monopoly is intolerable, and the onlyway 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 ownchildren are Literates, and his program against Literacy is beingtwisted against itself!"
"But you agree that we're right and he's wrong?" Prestonby asked. "Youmust, 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 anythingyou're against, I'm against."
He caught her hand, across the table, forgetful of the others in theoffice.
"Claire, now that everybody knows--" he began.
* * * * *
"_Top emergency! Top emergency!_" a voice brayed out of the alarm boxon the wall. "_Serious disorder in Department Thirty-two! Seriousdisorder in Department Thirty-two!_"
The voice broke off as suddenly as it had begun, but the box was notsilent. From it came a medley of shouts, curses, feminine screams andsplintering crashes. Prestonby and Claire were on their feet.
"You have wall screens?" he asked. "How do they work? Like the ones atschool?"
Claire twisted a knob until the number 32 appeared on a dial, andpressed a button. On the screen, the Chinaware Department on the thirdfloor came to life in full sound and color. The pickup must have beenacross an aisle from the box from whence the alarm had come; theycould see one of Pelton's Illiterate clerks lying unconscious underit, and the handphone dangling at the end of its cord. The aisles werefull of jostling, screaming women, trampling one another and fightingfrantically to get out, and, among them, groups of three or four menwere gathered back to back. One such group had caught a storepoliceman; three were holding him while a fourth smashed vases overhis head, grabbing them from a nearby counter. A pink dinner platecame 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 broughtdarkness, though the bedlam of sound continued.
]
]
Cardon looked at his watch as he entered the Council Chamber atLiterates' Hall, smoothing his smock hastily under his Sam Browne.He'd made it with very little time to spare, before the doors would besealed and the meeting would begin. He'd been all over town, trackingdown that report of Sforza's; he'd even made a quick visit toChinatown, on the off chance that "China" had been used in an attemptat the double concealment of the obvious, but, as he'd expected, he'dfound nothing. The people there hardly knew there was to be anelection. 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-recordingdevice was permitted, except the big audio-visual camera in front,which made the single permanent record. Going around the roomcounterclockwise to the seats of his faction, he encountered two otherLancedale men: Gerald K. Toppington, of the Technological Section,thin-faced, sandy-haired, balding; and Franklin R. Chernov, commanderof the local Literates' guards brigade, with his ragged gray mustache,his horribly scarred face, and his outsize tablet-holster almost asbig as a mail-order catalogue.
"What's Joyner-Graves trying to do to us, Frank?" Chernov rumbledgutturally.
"It's what we're going to do to them," Cardon replied. "Didn't thechief tell you?"
Chernov shook his head. "No time. I only got here fifteen minutes ago.Chasing all over town about that tip from Sforza. Nothing, of course.Nothing from Sforza, either. The thing must have been planned weeksago, whatever it is, and everybody briefed personally, and nothing ondisk or tape about it. But what's going to happen here? Lancedalegoing to pull a rabbit out of his hat?"
Cardon explained. Chernov whistled. "Man, that's no rabbit; that's afull-grown Bengal tiger! I hope it doesn't eat us, by mistake."
Cardon looked around, saw Lancedale in animated argument with a groupof his associates. Some of the others seemed to be sharing Chernov'sfears.
"I
have every confidence in the chief," Toppington said. "If histigers make a meal off anybody, it'll be--" He nodded in the directionof the other side of the chamber, where Wilton Joyner, short, bald,pompous, and Harvey Graves, tall and cadaverous, stood in aRosencrantz-Guildenstern attitude, surrounded by half a dozen of theirtop associates.
The Council President, Morehead, came out a little door onto therostrum and took his seat, pressing a button. The call bell beganclanging slowly. Lancedale, glancing around, saw Cardon and nodded. Onboth sides of the chamber, the Literates began