John J. McGuire

“ Mongery, in the screen, continued, "this verdict of the almost infallible Trotter Poll needs some explaining. For the most part, it is the result of the untiring efforts of one man, the dynamic new leader of the Radical-Socialists and their present candidate for the Consolidated States of North America Senate, Chester Pelton, who has transformed that once-moribund party into the vital force it is today. And this achievement has been due, very largely, to a single slogan which he had hammered into your ears: Put the Literates in their place; our servants, not our masters!" ”

“ Claire said. "He knows what he's doing."
"Claire, you have some way of keeping a running count of the number of customers in and out of the store, haven't you?" Prestonby asked.
"Why, yes; here." She pointed to an indicator on Chester Pelton's desk, where constantly changing numbers danced.
"And don't you have a continuous check on sales, too? How do they jibe?"
"They don't; look. Sales are away below any expectation from the number of customers, even allowing for shopping habits of a bargain-day crowd. But what's that got to do—"
Prestonby was back at the TV, shifting from pickup to pickup. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Too many men between twenty and thirty, all dressed alike, looking alike, talking and acting alike. It looked like a goon-gang infiltration, and he was beginning to see why Harvey Graves had wanted the Literates pulled out, and why Joyner, bound by ethics to do nothing against the commercial interests of Pelton's, had known nothing about it. He started toward a counter, to speak to a clerk, but one of the stocky, quietly-dressed young men stepped in front of him. ”

“ Things would move faster, now, but he would still die before the Plan was completed, and Frank Cardon, whom he had marked as his successor, would be an old man, and somebody like young Ray Pelton would be ready to replace him, but the Plan would go on, until everybody would be literate, not Literate, and illiteracy, not Illiteracy, would be a mark of social stigma, and most people would live their whole lives without personal acquaintance with an illiterate. ”

“ Lancedale shrugged. "What are you going to do?" he countered. "You're Pelton's campaign manager—Heaven pity him."
Cardon thought for a moment. "We'll play it for laughs," he decided. "Some of our semantics experts could make the joke of the year out of it by the time the polls open tomorrow. The Fraternities bribing their worst enemy to attack them, so that he can ruin their business; who's been listening to a tape of 'Alice in Wonderland' at Independent-Conservative headquarters?" ”

“ Cardon had a burp gun, this time; he emptied the fifty-shot magazine into the hooded hoodlums who were coming down. Prestonby, beside him, had a heavy sono gun; he kept it trained on the head of the escalator and held the trigger back until it was empty, then slapped in a fresh clip of the small blank cartridges which produced the sound waves that were amplified and altered to stunning vibrations. Still, many of the attackers got through. More were dropping down the lift-platform shaft. Cardon's submachine-gun ceased firing, the action open on an empty clip. ”

“ Lancedale added. "And even inside the Fraternities, that would raise the devil. Joyner and Graves don't begin to realize how far we've gone with that. They could kick up a simply hideous row about it!"
"And if Pelton found out that his kids are Literates—Woooo!" Cardon grimaced. "Or what we've been doing to him. I hope I'm not around when that happens. I'm beginning to like the cantankerous old bugger."
"I was afraid of that," Lancedale said. "Well, don't let it interfere with what you have to do. Remember, Frank; the Plan has to come first, always." ”

“ And more and more illiterates had been shoved out of the schools, into a world where radio and television and moving pictures were supplanting books and newspapers, and more and more children of illiterates had gone to school without any desire or incentive to learn to read. And finally, the illiterates had become Illiterates, and literacy had become Literacy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They lost some time, thereafter, but they learned that the section of conduit between the two ports was empty and that the main telephone line to the store had been cut. Whoever had cut it had gone, either forward or back away from the store. A little farther on, the sound of shots ahead became audible over the clanking and rattling of the conveyor belts.
"Well, I guess this is where we start crawling," Yetsko said. "Your father's people seem to be holding the store basement against a gang in the conveyor tunnel." ”

“ Election shenanigans, like college pranks, are fair play as long as they don't cause an outright holocaust. And that, I think, is as it should be," Mongery went on, more seriously. "Most of the horrors of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries were the result of taking politics too seriously."
Pelton snorted again. That was the Literate line, all right; treat politics as a joke and an election as a sporting event, let the Independent-Conservative grafters stay in power, and let the Literates run the country through them. ”

“ Pelton's going to need money, badly, if he's going to try for the presidency in '44." He looked around him. "You know, I've always wanted to run a fire sale; this'll be even better—a battle sale!"
Cardon watched Chester Pelton apprehensively as the bald-headed merchant and senatorial candidate sipped from the tall glass in his hand and then set it on the table beside him. His face was pale, and he had the look of a man who has just been hit with a blackjack.
"That's an awful load of bricks to dump on a man, all at once, Frank," he said reproachfully. ”

“ Pelton gloomed. "My own kids, Literates!" He seemed to have reached a point at which he was actually getting a masochistic pleasure out of turning the dagger in his wounds. "Who'd trust me, after this?"
"No, Chet; it isn't enough to beat you—if you just throw away that crying towel and start fighting. They made one mistake that's going to wreck them."
"What's that, Frank?" Pelton brightened, by about one angstrom unit.
"The timing, of course!" Cardon told him, impatiently. "I thought you'd see that, at once. This telecast comes on at twenty-one hundred. ”

“ Claire said. "He may have heard of it, the way you've heard about an election in Pakistan or Abyssinia, or he just may not know there is such a thing as politics. I think he does know there's a world outside the store, but he doesn't care much what goes on in it." She pushed her plate aside, poured a cup of coffee, and levered a cigarette from the Readilit, puffing at it with the relish of the morning's first smoke. "All he knows is that we're holding our sale three days ahead of Macy & Gimbel's."
"Russ is a good businessman," Pelton said seriously. ”

“ The medic and the guards moved into Chester Pelton's private rest room with the stretcher. Claire went to the desk and began picking up odds and ends, including the pistol Cardon had given her, and putting them in her handbag.
"We've got to keep her away from her father, for a few days, Ralph," he told Prestonby softly. "It's all over town that she can read and write. We've got to give him a chance to cool off before he sees her again. Take her to Lancedale. I have everything fixed up; she'll be admitted to the Fraternities this afternoon, and given Literate protection." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Prestonby said. "Let's see what we can do about it."
They went into Pelton's office. The store owner was still lying motionless on his stretcher. Claire was fiddling with a telecast receiving set; she had just tuned out a lecture on Home Beautifications and had gotten the mid-section of a serial in which three couples were somewhat confused over just who was married to whom.
"Nobody seems to realize what's happening to us!" she said, turning the knob again. Then she froze, as Elliot C. Mongery—this time sponsored by Parc, the Miracle Cleanser—appeared on the screen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He wore a white smock, halfway to his knees, and, over it, an old-fashioned Sam Browne belt which supported a bulky leather-covered tablet and a large stylus. On the strap which crossed his breast five or six little metal badges twinkled.
"... Why no other beer can compare with delicious, tangy, Cardon's Black Bottle. Won't you try it?" he pleaded. "Then you will see for yourself why millions of happy drinkers always Call For Cardon's. And now, that other favorite of millions, Literate First Class Elliot C. Mongery." ”

“ They were both silent as a novice Literate bustled in with coffee and individually-sealed cigars.
"At least, you're not one of these plain-living-and-right-thinking fanatics, like Wilton Joyner and Harvey Graves," Cardon said. "On top of everything else, that I could not take."
Lancedale's thin face broke into a smile, little wrinkles putting his mouth in parentheses. Cardon sampled the coffee, and then used a Sixteenth Century Italian stiletto from Lancedale's desk to perforate the end of his cigar. ”

“ Coccozello could hear the noise that was still coming out of the darkened screen. As he stepped forward, Claire got another pickup, some distance from the one that had been knocked out. A mob of women customers were surging away from the Chinaware Department, into Glassware; they were running into the shopping crowd there, with considerable disturbance. A couple of store police were trying to get through the packed mass of humanity, and making slow going of it. Coccozello swore and started calling on his reserves on one of the handphones. ”

“ These Illiterate fanatics made up their minds, to speak rather loosely, that the whole Pelton family were Literates, including Chet himself. They decided that it was better to kill off their candidate and use him for a martyr two years from now than to elect him and have him sell them out. They got about a hundred or so of their goons dressed in Independent-Conservative KKK costumes, bought air support from Patsy Callazo's mob, up in Vermont, and made that attack on the top landing stage, after starting a fake riot in North Jersey, to draw off the regular Radical-Socialist storm troops. ”

“ Then his eye caught the screen. Ed Morgan must have found a place where he could run his camera up on an extension rod from behind something; they were looking down, from almost ceiling height, at the barricade, and at the Literates' guards who were firing from cover at it. A sudden blast of automatic-weapons burst from the barricade; more men in white hoods came boiling up the escalator, and they all rushed forward. The few Literates' guards skirmishers were overwhelmed. ”