generations, like ours--and I'd trust him with anything. Youheard this fellow Mongery--I always have to pause to keep fromcalling him Mongrel--saying that I deserved the credit for pulling theRadicals out of the mud and getting the party back on the tracks.Well, I couldn't have begun to do it without Frank Cardon."
* * * * *
Frank Cardon stood on the sidewalk, looking approvingly into the windowof O'Reilly's Tavern, in which his display crew had already set up thespread for the current week. On either side was a giant six-footreplica, in black glass, of the Cardon bottle, in the conventional shapeaccepted by an Illiterate public as containing beer, bearing the redCardon label with its pictured bottle in a central white disk. Becauseof the heroic size of the bottles, the pictured bottle on the label borea bottle bearing a label bearing a bottle bearing a bottle on alabel.... He counted eight pictured bottles, down to the tiniest dot ofblack. There were four-foot bottles next to the six-foot bottles, andthree-foot bottles next to them, and, in the middle background, alife-size tri-dimensional picture of an almost nude and incrediblypulchritudinous young lady smiling in invitation at the passing throngand extending a foaming bottle of Cardon's in her hand. Aside from theprinted trademark-registry statements on the labels, there was not aprinted word visible in the window.
He pushed through the swinging doors and looked down the long room,with the chairs still roosting sleepily on the tables, and made aquick count of the early drinkers, two thirds of them in white smocksand Sam Browne belts, obviously from Literates' Hall, across thestreet. Late drinkers, he corrected himself mentally; they'd be thenight shift, having their drinks before going home.
"Good morning, Mr. Cardon," the bartender greeted him. "Still drinkingyour own?"
"Hasn't poisoned me yet," Cardon told him. "Or anybody else." Hefolded a C-bill accordion-wise and set it on edge on the bar. "Giveeverybody what they want."
"Drink up, gentlemen, and have one on Mr. Cardon," the bartenderannounced, then lowered his voice. "O'Reilly wants to see you.About--" He gave a barely perceptible nod in the direction of thebuilding across the street.
"Yes; I want to see him, too." Cardon poured from the bottle in frontof him, accepted the thanks of the house, and, when the bartenderbrought the fifteen-dollars-odd change from the dozen drinks, hepushed it back.
He drank slowly, looking around the room, then set down his emptyglass and went back, past two doors which bore pictured half-doorsrevealing, respectively, masculine-trousered and feminine-stockingedankles, and opened the unmarked office door beyond. The bartender, heknew, had pushed the signal button; the door was unlocked, and,inside, O'Reilly--baptismal name Luigi Orelli--was waiting.
"Chief wants to see you, right away," the saloon keeper said.
The brewer nodded. "All right. Keep me covered; don't know how longI'll be." He crossed the room and opened a corner-cupboard, steppinginside.
The corner cupboard, which was an elevator, took him to a tunnel belowthe street. Across the street, he entered another elevator, set theindicator for the tenth floor, and ascended. As the car rose, he couldfeel the personality of Frank Cardon, Illiterate brewer, drop fromhim, as though he were an actor returning from the stage to hisdressing room.
The room into which he emerged was almost that. There was a longtable, at which two white-smocked Literates drank coffee and went oversome papers; a third Literate sprawled in a deep chair, resting; at asmall table, four men in black shirts and leather breeches and fieldboots played poker, while a fifth, who had just entered and had notyet removed his leather helmet and jacket or his weapons belt, stoodwatching them.
Cardon went to a row of lockers along the wall, opened one, and tookout a white smock, pulling it over his head and zipping it up to thethroat. Then he buckled on a Sam Browne with its tablet holster andstylus gas projector. The Literate sprawling in the chair opened oneeye.
"Hi, Frank. Feels good to have them on again, doesn't it?"
"Yes. Clean," Cardon replied. "It'll be just for half an hour, but--"
He passed through the door across from the elevator, went down a shorthall, and spoke in greeting to the leather-jacketed storm trooper onguard outside the door at the other end.
"Mr. Cardon," the guard nodded. "Mr. Lancedale's expecting you."
"So I understand, Bert."
He opened the door and went through. William R. Lancedale rose frombehind his desk and advanced to greet him with a quick handshake,guiding him to a chair beside the desk. As he did, he sniffed andraised an eyebrow.
"Beer this early, Frank?" he asked.
"Morning, noon, and night, chief," Cardon replied. "When you said thisjob was going to be dangerous, I didn't know you meant that it wouldlead straight to an alcoholic's grave."
"Let me get you a cup of coffee, and a cigar, then." The white-hairedLiterate executive resumed his seat, passing a hand back and forthslowly across the face of the commo, the diamond on his fingertwinkling, and gave brief instructions. "And just relax, for a minute.You have a tough job, this time, Frank."
They were both silent as a novice Literate bustled in with coffee andindividually-sealed cigars.
"At least, you're not one of these plain-living-and-right-thinkingfanatics, like Wilton Joyner and Harvey Graves," Cardon said. "On topof everything else, that I could not take."
Lancedale's thin face broke into a smile, little wrinkles putting hismouth in parentheses. Cardon sampled the coffee, and then used aSixteenth Century Italian stiletto from Lancedale's desk to perforatethe end of his cigar.
"Much as I hate it, I'll have to get out of here as soon as I can," hesaid. "I don't know how long O'Reilly can keep me covered, down at thetavern--"
Lancedale nodded. "Well, how are things going, then?"
"First of all, the brewery," Cardon began.
Lancedale consigned the brewery to perdition. "That's just your cover;any money it makes is purely irrelevant. How about the election?"
"Pelton's in," Cardon said. "As nearly in as any candidate ever wasbefore the polls opened. Three months ago, the Independents were assolid as Gibraltar used to be. Today, they look like Gibraltar afterthat H-bomb hit it. The only difference is, they don't know what hitthem, yet."
"Hamilton's campaign manager does," Lancedale said. "Did you hear histelecast, this morning?"
Cardon shook his head. Lancedale handed over a little half-inch,thirty-minute, record disk.
"All you need is the first three or four minutes," he said. "The restof it is repetition."
Cardon put the disk in his pocket recorder and set it for play-back,putting the plug in his ear. After a while, he shut it off and tookout the ear plug.
"That's bad! What are we going to do about it?"
Lancedale shrugged. "What are you going to do?" he countered. "You'rePelton's campaign manager--Heaven pity him."
Cardon thought for a moment. "We'll play it for laughs," he decided. "Someof our semantics experts could make the joke of the year out of it by thetime the polls open tomorrow. The Fraternities bribing their worst enemy toattack them, so that he can ruin their business; who's been listening to atape of 'Alice in Wonderland' at Independent-Conservative headquarters?"
"That would work," Lancedale agreed. "And we can count on our friendsJoyner and Graves to give you every possible assistance with theircustomary bull-in-a-china-shop tactics. I suppose you've seen theseposters they've been plastering around: _If you can read this,Chester Pelton is your sworn enemy! A vote for Pelton is a vote foryour own enslavement!_"
"Naturally. And have you seen the telecast we've been using--a view ofit, with a semantically correct spoken paraphrase?"
Lancedale nodded. "And I've also noticed that those posters have beenacquiring different obscene crayon-drawings, too. That's just typicalof the short-range Joyner-Graves mentality. Why, they've made morevotes for Pelton than he's made for himself. Is it any wonder we'reconvinced that people like that aren't to be trusted to formulate thefuture policy of the Fraternities?"
"Well ... they've proved themselves wrong. I wonder, though, if we canprove ourselves right, in the long run. There are times when thisthing scares me, chief. If anything went wrong--"
"What, for instance?"
"Somebody could get to Pelton." Cardon made a stabbing gesture withthe stiletto, which he still held. "Maybe you don't really know howhot this thing's gotten. What we had to cut out of Mongery's report,this morning--"
"Oh, I've been keeping in touch,"
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