H. Beam Piper

by H. Beam Piper

  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."

  Chapter 4

  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. I
t 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: