debated--"
"What do you want to debate about it?" Chernov demanded. "You
presented it, didn't you?"
"Well, I wanted to give the Council an opportunity to discuss it, as
typical of our problems in dealing with Black ... I mean,
non-Fraternities ... Literacy--"
"You mean, you didn't know it was loaded!" Cardon told him. "Well,
that's your hard luck; we're going to squeeze the trigger!"
"I withdraw the motion!" Joyner shouted.
"Literate President," Lancedale said gently, his thin face lighting
with an almost saintly smile, "Literate Joyner simply cannot withdraw
his motion, now. It has been properly seconded and placed before the
house, and so has my own humble contribution to it. I demand that the
motion be acted upon."
"Vote! Vote! Vote!" the Lancedale Literates began yelling.
"I call on all my adherents to vote against this motion!" Joyner
shouted.
"Now look here, Wilton!" Harvey Graves shouted, reddening with anger.
"You're just making a fool out of me. This was your idea, in the first
place! Do you want to smash everything we've ever done in the
Fraternities?"
"Harvey, we can't go on with it," Joyner replied. He crossed quickly
to Graves' seat and whispered something.
"For the record," Lancedale said sweetly, "our colleague, Literate
Joyner, has just whispered to Literate Graves that since I have
seconded his motion, he's now afraid of it. I think Literate Graves is
trying to assure him that my support is merely a bluff. For the
information of this body, I want to state categorically that it is
not, and that I will be deeply disappointed if this motion does not
pass."
An elderly Literate on the Joyner-Graves side, an undersized man with
a bald head and a narrow mouth, was on his feet. He looked like an
aged rat brought to bay by a terrier.
"I was against this fool idea from the start!" he yelled. "We've got
to keep the Illiterates down; how are we ever going to do that if we
go making Literates out of them? But you two thought you were being
smart--"
"Shut up and sit down, you old jackass!" one of Joyner's people
shouted at him.
"Shut up, yourself, Ginter," a hatchet-faced woman Literate from the
Finance Section squawked.
Literate President Morehead, an amiable and ineffective maiden aunt in
trousers, pounded frantically with his gavel. "Order!" he fairly
screamed. "This is disgraceful!"
"You can say that again!" Brigade commander Chernov boomed. "What do
you people over on the right think this is; an Illiterates'
Organization Political Action meeting?"
"Vote! Vote!" Cardon bellowed.
Literate President Morehead banged his gavel and, in a last effort,
started the call bell clanging.
"The motion has been presented and seconded; the amendment has been
presented and seconded. It will now be put to a vote!"
"Roll call!" Cardon demanded. Four or five other voices, from both
sides of the chamber, supported him.
"The vote will be by roll call," Literate President Morehead agreed.
"Addison, Walter G."
"Aye!" He was a subordinate of Harvey Graves.
"Agostino, Pedro V."
"Aye!" He was a Lancedale man.
So it went on. Graves voted for the motion. Joyner voted against it.
All the Lancedale faction, now convinced that their leader had the
opposition on the run, voted loudly for it.
"The vote has been one hundred and eighty-three for, seventy-two
against," Literate President Morehead finally announced. "The motion
is herewith declared carried. Literate Lancedale, I appoint you to
organize a committee to implement the said motion, at once."
* * * * *
Prestonby flung open the door of the rest room where Sergeant
Coccozello and his subordinate were guarding the unconscious Pelton.
"Sergeant! Who's in charge of store police, now?"
Coccozello looked blank for an instant. "I guess I am," he said.
"Lieutenant Dunbar's off on his vacation, in Mexico, and Captain
Freizer's in the hospital; he was taken sick suddenly last evening."
Probably poisoned, Prestonby thought, making a mental note to find out
which hospital and get in touch with one of the Literate medics there.
"Well, come out here, sergeant, and have a look around the store on
the TV. We have troubles."
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.
"Wait a moment, sergeant," Prestonby stopped him. "Don't commit any of
your reserves down there. We're going to need them to hold the
executive country, up here. This is only the start of a general riot."
"Who are you and what do you know about it?" Coccozello challenged.
"Listen to him, Guido," 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.
"Look, sergeant, Claire. That isn't a normal bargain-day crowd, is it?
Look at those groups of men, three or four to a group, shifting
around, waiting for something to happen. This store's been
infiltrated by a big goon gang. That business in Chinaware's just the
start, to draw our reserves down to the third floor. Look at that,
now."
He had a pickup on the twelfth floor, the floor just under the public
landing stages, and at the foot of the escalators leading to the
central executive block.
"See how they're concentrating, there?" he pointed out. "In that
ladies' wear department, there are three men for every woman, and the
men are all drifting from counter to counter over in the direction of
our escalators."
Coccozello swore again, feelingly. "Literate, you know your stuff!" he
said. "That fuss in China is just a feint; this is where they're
really going to hit. What do you think it is? Macy & Gimbel's trying
to bust up our sale, or politics?"
Prestonby shrugged. "Take your choice. A competitor would concentrate
where your biggest volume of sale was going on, though; political
enemies would try to get up here, and that's what this gang's trying
to do."
"He's absolutely right, Guido," Claire told the sergeant. "Do whatever
he tells you."
Sergeant Coccozello looked at him, awaiting orders.
"We can't commit our reserves in that Chinaware Department fight; we
need them up here. Where are they, now, and how many?"
"Thirteen, counting myself and the man in there." He nodded toward the
room where Chester Pelton lay in drugged sleep. "In the squad room, on
the floor below."
"And for the mob below to get up here?"
"Two escalators, sir, northeast and southwest corners of office
country. And we got some new counters that Mr. Latterman had built,
that didn't get put out in time for the sale. We can use them to build
barricades, if we have to."
"How about a 'copter attack on the roof?"
Coccozello grinned. "I'd like to see that, now, Literate. We got
plenty of A-A equipment up there--four 7-mm machine guns, two 12-mm's,
and one 20-mm auto-cannon. We could hold off the State Guard with
that."
"That isn't saying much, but they're not even that good. So it'll be
the escalators. Think, now, sergeant. Fires, burglary, holdups--"
The sergeant's grin widened. "High-pressure fire hose, one at the head
of each escalator, and a couple more that can be dragged over from
other outlets. Say we put two men on each hose, lying down at the head
of the escalators. And we got plenty of firearms; we can arm some of
these clerks, up here--"
"All right; do that. And put out an emergency call, by
inter-department telephone, not by public address, to floorwalkers
from the fifth floor down, to gather up all male clerks and other
store personnel in their departments, arm them with anything they can
find, and rush them to Chinaware. Tell them to shout 'Pelton!' when
they hit the mob, to avoid breaking each others' heads in the
confusion, and tell them they're expected to hold the Chinaware and
Glassware departments themselves, without any help from the store
police."
"Why not?" Claire wanted to know.
"That's how battles come to happen at the wrong time and place,"
Prestonby told her. "Two small detachments collide, and each sends
back for re-enforcements, and the next thing anybody knows, there's a
full-size battle going on where nobody wants to fight one. We're going
to fight our main battle at the head of the escalators from the
twelfth floor."
"You've done this sort of work before, Literate," Coccozello grinned.
"You talk like a storm-troop captain. What else?"
"Well, so far, we've just been talking defense. We need to take the
offensive, ourselves." He glanced around. "Is there a freight elevator
from this block to the basement?"
"Yeah. Wait till I see." Coccozello went to the TV-screen and dialed.
"Yeah, and the elevator's up here, too," he said.
"Well, you take what men you can spare--a couple of your cops, and a
couple of the office crew--arm them with pistols, carbines, clubs,
whatever you please, and take them down to the basement. Gather up
all the warehouse gang, down there, and arm them. And as soon as you
get to the basement, send the elevator back up here. That's our life
line; we can't risk having it captured. You'll organize flying squads
to go up into the store from the basement. Bust up any trouble that
seems to be getting started, if you can, but your main mission will be
to rescue store police, Literates, Literates' guards, and store help,
and get them back to the basement. They'll be picked up from there and
brought up here on the elevator." He picked up a pad from a desk and
wrote a few lines on it. "Show this to any Literate you meet; get
Literate Hopkinson to countersign it for you, when you find him. Tell
him we want his whole gang up here as soon as possible."
"How about getting help from outside?" Claire asked. "The city police,
or--"
"City police won't lift a finger," Prestonby told her. "They never
help anybody who has a private police force; they have too much to do
protecting John Q. Citizen. Hutschnecker; suppose you call
Radical-Socialist campaign headquarters; tell them to rush some of
their Lone Rangers around here--"
* * * * *
[Illustration:]
Russell M. Latterman was lunching in the store restaurant, at a table
next the thick glass partition, where he could look out across
Confectionery and Pastries toward the Tobacco Shoppe and the Liquor
Department. There were two ways of looking at it, of course. He was
occupying a table that might have been used by a customer, but, on the
other hand, he was known by sight to many of the customers, and the
fact that he was eating here had some advertising value, and he could
keep his eye on the business going on around him. Off in the distance,
he caught the white flash of a Literate smock at one of the counters;
one of the new crew sent in to replace the ones Bayne had pulled out.
He was glad and at the same time disturbed. He had had his doubts
about staging a Literates' strike, and he was almost positive that
Wilton Joyner had known nothing about it. The whole thing had been
Harvey Graves' idea. There was a serious question of Literate ethics
involved, to say nothing of the effect on the public. The trick of
forcing Claire Pelton to reveal her secret Literacy was all right,
although he wished that it had been Frank Cardon who had opened that
safe. Or did he? Cardon would have brazened it out, claimed to have
memorized the combination after having learned it by observation, and
would probably have gotten away with it. But that silly girl had lost
her head afterward, and had gone on to brand herself, irrevocably, as
a Literate.
One of the waitresses was hurrying toward him, almost falling over
herself in excitement. She began talking when she was ten feet from
the table.
"Mr. Latterman! Mr. Latterman!" she was calling to him. "A terrible
fight, down in Chinaware--!"
"Well, what do we have store police for?" he demanded. "They can take
care of it. Now be quiet, Madge; don't get the customers excited!"
He returned to his lunch, watching, with satisfaction, the crowd that
was packing into the Liquor Department, next to the restaurant. That
special loss-leader, Old Atom-Bomb Rye, had been a good idea. In the
first place, the stuff was fit for nothing but cleaning drains and
removing varnish; if he were Pelton, he would have fired that fool
buyer who got them overstocked on it. But the audio-advertiser,
outside, was reiterating: "_Choice whiskies, two hundred dollars a
sixth and up!_" and pulling in the customers, who, when they
discovered that the two-hundred-dollar bargain was Old Atom-Bomb, were
shelling out five hundred to a grand a sixth for good liquor.
He finished his coffee and got to his feet. Be a good idea to look in
on Liquor, and see how things were going. The department was getting
more and more crowded every minute; three customers were entering for
every one who left.
On the way, he passed two women, and caught a snatch of conversation:
"Don't go down on the third floor, for Heaven's sake ... terrible
fight ... smashing everything up--"
Worried, he continued into Liquor, and the looks of the crowd there
increased his worries. 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.
"Gimme a bottle of Atom-Bomb," he said. "Don't bother wrapping it."
"Yes, sir." The clerk seemed worried, too. He got the bottle and set
it on the counter. "That'll be two C, sir."
"I see you're wearing a Radical-Socialist button," the customer
commented. "Because you want to, or because Chet Pelton makes you?"
"Mr. Pelton never interferes with his employees' political
convictions," the clerk replied loyally.
Saying nothing, the customer took the bottle, swung it by the neck,
and smashed it over the clerk's head, knocking him senseless.
"That's all that rotgut's good for," the customer said, jumping over
the counter. "All right, boys; help yourselves!"
* * * * *
For a surprisingly long time, the riot was localized in China, where
it had begun. Using, alternately, three TV-pickups around the scene of
the disturbance, Prestonby watched its progress, and watched
successive details of store personnel, armed with clubs and a few
knives and sono pistols, hit the riot, shouting their battle cry, and
vanish. They were, of course, lambs of sacrifice, however unlamblike
their conduct. They were buying time, and they were drawing groups of
goons into the action in China and Glassware who might have been
making trouble elsewhere.
There was an outbreak on the sixth floor, in Liquor; Claire, touring
the store on the other TV-screen, spotted it and called his attention
to it. Back of the shattered glass partition, a mob of men were
snatching bottles from the shelves and tossing them out to the crowd.
One of the clerks, in his gray uniform jacket, was lying unconscious
outside. While Prestonby watched, another, and another, came flying
out the doorway. A fourth victim, in ordinary business clothes,
tattered and disheveled, came flying out after them, to land in a
heap, stunned for an instant, and then pick himself up. Prestonby
laughed heartily when he recognized Literate--undercover--First Class
Russell M. Latterman.
"I ought to have anticipated that," he said. "Any time there's a riot,
the liquor stores are the first things looted. The liquor stores, and
the--Claire! See what's going on in Sporting Goods!"
Sporting Goods, between Tools & Hardware and Toys, on the fifth floor,
was swamped. One of the clerks was lying on the floor in a puddle of
blood, past any help; none of the others were in sight. The gun racks
and pistol cases were being cleaned out systematically. This had been
organized in advance. There were four or five men working
industriously wiping grease out of bores and actions before handing
out firearms, and a couple more making sure that the right cartridges
went with each weapon. Somebody had brought a small grinding wheel
over from Tools and plugged it in, and was grinding points on the
foils and epees. Others were collecting baseball bats, golf clubs, and
football helmets and catchers' masks. The Tool Department was being
stripped of everything that could be used as a weapon, too.
The whole store, by this time, was an approximation of Mutiny in a
Madhouse. Dressgoods was being looted by a howling mob of women, who
were pulling bolts of material from shelves and fighting among
themselves over them. Somebody had turned on the electric fans, and
long streams of flimsy fabric were blowing about like a surrealist
maypole dance. Somebody in Household Furnishings had turned on a
couple of fans, too, and a mob of hoodlums were opening cans of paint
and throwing them into the fan blades.
The little Antiques Department, in a corner of the fourth floor back
of the Gift Shoppe, was an island of peace in the general chaos. There
was only one way into it, and one of the clerks, who had gotten
himself into a suit of Fifteenth Century battle armor, was standing in
the entrance, leaning on a two-hand sword. There was blood on the long
blade, and more blood splashed on the floor in front of him. He was
being left entirely alone.
* * * * *
Hutschnecker, called to the telephone, spoke briefly, listened for a
while, spoke again in hearty thanks, and hung up.
"Macy & Gimbel's," he told Prestonby. "They heard about our
trouble--probably one of their price-spotters phoned in about it--and
they're offering to send twenty of their store-cops to help us out.
They'll be landing on our stage in eight minutes, rifles and steel
helmets."
Prestonby nodded. It would have been quite conceivable that Pelton's
chief competitor had started the riot; since they hadn't, their offer
of armed aid was just as characteristic of the bitter but
mutually-respectful rivalries of the commercial world. A few minutes
later, another call came in, this time on the visiphone. Prestonby
took it when he saw a Literates' Guards officer in the screen and
recognized him.
"That you, Prestonby?" the officer, Major Slater, asked in some
surprise. "Didn't know you were at Pelton's. What's going on, there?"
Prestonby told him, briefly.
"Yes; we had some of our people at the store, in plain clothes,"
Slater said. "Just in case of trouble. On Mr. L.'s orders. They
reported a riot starting, but naturally, their reports were
incomplete. Can you get one of your landing stages cleared for us? We
have two hundred men, in twenty 'copters." Then he must have noticed
some of the store Illiterates back of Prestonby, and realized that
this offer of help to Literacy's worst enemy would arouse suspicion.
"Not that we care what happens to Chester Pelton, but we have to
protect our own people at the store."
"Yes, of course," Prestonby agreed. "Come in on our north stage.
You'll probably find a fight going on on our twelfth floor, just
inside. Anybody who's trying to get up the escalators to the office
block will be an enemy."
"Right. We're halfway there now." The Literates' Guards officer broke
the connection.
"You heard that?" he asked, turning to the others in the office. "If
we can hold out till they get here, we're all right. Did you contact
Radical-Socialist headquarters, yet, Hutschnecker?"
"Yes. I talked to a fellow named Yingling. He said that all the party
storm troops had been lured out to some kind of a disturbance in North
Jersey Borough; he'd try to get them recalled."
Prestonby swore bitterly. "By the time his own party-goons get here,
the Literates' Guards and Macy & Gimbel's will have pulled Pelton's
bacon off the fire for him. Nice friends he has!"
An alarm buzzer went off suddenly, and an urgent voice came out of the
box on the wall:
"Here come the goons! South escalator!"
Prestonby grabbed a burp gun and a canvas musette bag full of clips.
By the time he had gotten down to what, in deference to the
superstitions of the Illiterate store force, was known as the
fourteenth floor, an attack on the north escalator had developed as
well. In both cases, the attackers seemed to expect no organized
resistance. They simply jumped onto the escalators, adding their own
running speed, and came rushing up, firing pistols ahead of them at
random.
The defenders, however, had been ready: the fire hoses caught those in
the lead and hurled them back. Some of them vaulted the barrier
between the ascending and descending spirals and let themselves be
carried down again. Less than five minutes after the buzzer had
sounded the warning, the attack stopped. The noise on the twelfth
floor increased, however, and, leaning over into the escalator-way,
Prestonby could see the rioters firing in the direction of the
entrance from the north landing stage. Within a matter of thirty
seconds, they began to flee, and a wave of Literates' Guards, in their
futuristic "space cadet" uniforms, came pouring in after them.
* * * * *
Douglass MacArthur Yetsko put the burp gun back together again, tried
the action, and laid it aside with a sigh. He had cleaned every weapon
in his and Prestonby's private arsenal, since lunch, and now he had to
admit the unpalatable fact that there was nothing left to do but turn
on the TV. Ray had been no company at all; the boy hadn't spoken a
word since he'd started rummaging among the captain's books. Gloomily,
he snapped on the screen to sample the soap shows.
Della Pallas was in jail again, this time accused of murdering the
lawyer who had gotten her acquitted on a previous murder rap.
Considering the fact that she had languished in jail for almost a year
during the other trial, Yetsko felt that she had a sound motive.
Rudolf Barstow, in "Broadway Wife," was, like Bruce's spider,
spinning his five hundredth web to ensnare the glamorous Marie
Knobble. And there was a show about a schoolteacher and her class of
angelic little tots that almost brought Yetsko's lunch up.
He shifted the dial again; a young Literate announcer was speaking
quickly, excitedly:
"... Scene of the riot, already the worst this year, and growing
steadily worse. We take you now to downtown Manhattan, where our
portable units and commentators have just arrived, and switch you to
Ed Morgan."
The screen went black, and Yetsko swore angrily. Ray lifted his head
quickly from his book and reached for the sono pistol Yetsko had given
him.
"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and just a moment, until we can
give you the picture. We're having what is usually labeled as 'slight
technical difficulties,' in this case the difficulty of avoiding
having a hole shot in our camera or in your commentator's head. Yes,
that's shooting you hear; there, somebody's using an auto rifle! How
are you coming, Steve?"
A voice muttered something which, two centuries ago, would have caused
an earth-shaking scandal in the whole radio-TV industry.
"Well, till Steve gets things fixed up, a brief review, to date, of
what's sure to go down in history as the Battle of Pelton's
Purchasers' Paradise--"
"Huh?" Ray fairly shouted, the book forgotten.
"... Started in the Chinaware Department, as a relatively innocent
brawl, and spread to the Liquor Department, and then, all of a sudden,
everybody started playing rough. At first, it was suspected that Macy
& Gimbel's had sent a goon gang around to break up Pelton's fall sale,
but when the former concern rallied to the assistance of their
competitor with a force of twenty riflemen, that began to look less
likely, and we're beginning to think that it might be the work of some
of Pelton's political enemies. About ten minutes ago, Major James F.
Slater, of the Literates' Guards, arrived with two hundred of his men,
to protect the Literates on duty at the store. They captured the
entire twelfth floor, where we are, now, with the exception of the
Ladies' Lingerie and Hosiery departments around one of the escalators
to the lower floors; here the gang who started the riot, and who are
now donning white hoods to distinguish themselves from the various
other factions involved, have thrown up barricades of counters and
display tables and are fighting bitterly to keep control of the
escalator head. Ah, here we are!"
The screen lit suddenly, and they were looking, Ray over Yetsko's
shoulder, across the devastated expanse of what had been the Ladies'
Frocks department, toward Lingerie and Hosiery, which seemed to have
been thoroughly looted, then stripped of everything that could be used
to build a barricade.
"... Seems to have been quite a number of heavy 'copters just landed
on the east stage, filled with more goons, probably to re-enforce the
gang back of that barricade. The firing's gotten noticeably heavier--"
* * * * *
Yetsko had turned from the screen, and was pawing in the arms locker.
For a job like this, he'd need firepower. He took the ten-shot clip
from the butt of his pistol and inserted one with a curling
hundred-shot drum at the bottom, and shoved two more like it into the
pockets of his jacket. And now, something to clear the way with. He
took out a three-foot length of weighted fire hose.
Then he saw Ray. That kid was pinning him down, here, while the
captain was probably fighting for his life! But the captain'd told him
to stay with Ray--He dropped the weighted hose.
"What's the matter, Doug?" the boy asked. "Pick it up and let's get
going."
He shook his head. "Can't. The captain told me I had to take care of
you."
The boy opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, and thought for a
moment. Then he asked:
"Doug, didn't Captain Prestonby tell you to stay with me?"
"Yes--"
"All right. You do just that, because I'm going to help Claire and the
senator. That's who that goon gang's after."
Yetsko considered the proposition for a moment, horrified. Why, this
was the captain's girl's kid brother; if anything happened to him--His
mind refused to contemplate what the captain would do to him.
"No. You gotta stay here, Ray," he said. "The captain--"
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. He
saw one of them, a man he knew, Sam Igoe, from Company 5, go down
wounded; he saw one of the white-hooded goons pause to brain him with
a carbine butt before charging on.
"Why, you dirty rotten Illiterate--!" he roared, retrieving his
weighted hose. "Come on, Ray; let's go!"
Ray hesitated, as though in thought. "Ken Dorchin; Harry Cobb; Dick
Hirschfield; Jerry McCarty; Ramon Nogales; Pete Shawne; Tom
Hutchinson--"
"Who--?" Yetsko began. "What've they gotta do with--?"
"We need a gang; the two of us'd last about as long as a pint of beer
at a Dutch picnic." Ray went to the desk, grabbed a pen, and made a
list of names, in a fair imitation of Ralph Prestonby's neat
block-printing. "Give this to the girl outside, and tell her to have
them called for and sent in here," the boy directed. "And see if you
can find us some transport. I think there ought to be a couple of big
'copters finished down at the shops. And if you can find a couple more
Literates' guards you can talk into going with us--"
Yetsko nodded and took the paper without question. He was not, and he
would be the first to admit it, of the thinking type. He was a good
sergeant, but he had to have an officer to tell him what to do. Ray
Pelton might be only fifteen years old, but his sister was the
captain's girl, and that put him in the officer class. A very young
and recently-commissioned second lieutenant, say, but definitely an
officer. Yetsko took the list and looked at it. Like most Literates'
guards, he could read, after a fashion. He recognized the names; the
boys were all members of the top floor secret society. He went out and
gave the list to Martha Collins.
He'd expected some argument with her, but she seemed to accept Ray
Pelton's printing as Prestonby's; she began checking room charts and
class lists, and calling for the boys to be sent at once to the
office. He went out, and down to the 'copter repair shop, where he
found that a big four-ton air truck that the senior class had been
working on for several weeks was finished.
"That thing been tested, yet?" he asked the instructor.
"Yes; I had it up, myself, this morning. Flew it over to the Bronx and
back with a load of supplies."
"O. K. Have somebody you can trust--one of your guards,
preferably--bring it around behind the Administration Wing. Captain
Prestonby wants it. I'm to take some boys from Fourth Year Civics on a
tour. Something about election campaign methods."
The instructor called a Literates' guard and gave him instructions.
Yetsko went to the guards' squad room on the second floor, where he
found half a dozen of the reserves loafing.
"All right; you guys start earning your pay," he said. "We're going to
a party."
The men got to their feet and began gathering their weapons.
"Mason," he continued, "you have your big 'copter here; the gang of
you can all get in it. I'm taking off in a four-ton truck, with some
of these kids. I want you boys to follow us. We're going to Pelton's
store. There's a fight going on there, and the captain's in the middle
of it. We gotta get him out."
They all looked at him in puzzled surprise, but nobody gave him any
argument. Funny, now that he thought of it; it had been quite a long
time since anybody had ever given him any argument about anything. A
couple of guys out in Pittsburgh had tried it, but somehow they'd lost
interest in arguing, after a little--
When he returned to the office and opened the door, a blast of shots
greeted him through the open door of Prestonby's private office. He
had his pistol out before he realized that the shooting was going on
at Pelton's Purchasers' Paradise, ten miles away. Literate Martha
Collins, in the inner room, was fairly screaming: "Shut that infernal
thing off and listen to me!"
The dozen-odd boys whom Ray had recruited for the improvised
relief-expedition were pulling weapons out of the gun locker, pawing
through the boxes on the ammunition shelf, trying to explain to one
another the working of machine carbines and burp guns. Yetsko
shouldered through them and turned down the sound volume of the TV.
"This is absolutely outrageous!" Literate Martha Collins stormed at
him. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, taking these children to a
murderous battle like that--"
"Well, maybe it ain't right, using savages in a civilized riot,"
Yetsko admitted, "but I don't care. The captain's in a jam, and I'd
use live devils, if I could catch a few." He took a burp gun from one
of the boys, who had opened the action and couldn't get it closed
again. "Here; you kids don't want this kinda stuff," he reproved.
"Sono guns, and sleep-gas guns, that's all right. But these things are
killing tools!"
"It's what we'll have to use, Doug," Ray told him. "Things have been
happening, since you went out. Look at the screen."
Yetsko looked, and swore blisteringly. Then he gave the burp gun back
to the boy.
"Look; you gotta press this little gismo, here, to let the action shut
when there's no clip in, or when the clip's empty. When you got a
loaded clip in, you just pull back on this and let go--"
* * * * *
Frank Cardon looked at his watch, and saw that it was 1345, as it had
been ten seconds before, when he had last looked. He started to drum
nervously on his chair arm with his fingers, then caught himself as he
saw Lancedale, who must have been every bit as anxious as himself,
standing outwardly calm and unruffled.
"Well, that's the situation which now confronts us, brother
Literates," the slender, white-haired man was finishing. "You must
see, by now, that the policy of unyielding opposition which some of
you have advocated and pursued is futile. You know the policy I favor,
which now remains the only policy we can follow; it is summed up in
that law of political strategy: If you can't lick 'em, join 'em, and,
after joining, take control.
"In spite of the Radical-Socialist victory in this state at tomorrow's
election, it will not be possible, in the next Congress, to enact
Pelton's socialized Literacy program into law. The Radicals will not be
able to capture enough seats in the lower house, and there are too many
uncontested seats in the Senate now held by Independent-Conservatives.
But, and this is inevitable, barring some unforeseen accident of the
order of a political cataclysm, they will control both houses of
Congress after the election of 2144, two years hence, and we can also be
sure that two years hence Chester Pelton will be nominated and
overwhelmingly elected president of the Consolidated States of North
America. Six months thereafter, the socialized Literacy program will be
the law of the land.
"So, we have until mid-2145 to make our preparations. I would estimate
that, if we do not destroy ourselves by our own folly in the meantime,
we should, two years thereafter, be in complete if secret control of
the whole Consolidated States Government. If any of you question that
last statement, you can merely ask yourselves one question: How, in
the name of all that is rational, can Illiterates control and operate
a system of socialized Literacy? Who but Literates can keep such a
program from disintegrating into complete and indescribable confusion?
"I don't ask for any decision at this time. I do not ask for any
debate at this time. Let each of us consider the situation in his or
her own mind, and let us meet again a week from today to consider our
future course of action, each of us realizing that any decision we
take then will determine forever the fate of our Fraternities." He
looked around the room. "Thank you, brother Literates," he said.
Instantly, Cardon was on his feet with a motion to recess the meeting
until 1300 the following Monday, and Brigade commander Chernov
seconded the motion immediately. As soon as Literate President
Morehead's gavel banged, Cardon, still on his feet, was running for
the double doors at the rear; the two Literates' guards on duty there
got them unsealed and opened by the time he had reached them.
There was another guard in the hall, waiting for him with a little
record-disk.
"From Major Slater; call came in about ten minutes ago," he said.
Cardon snapped the disk into his recorder-reproducer and put in the
ear plug.
"Frank," Slater's voice came out of the small machine. "You'd better
get busy, or you won't have any candidate when the polls open tomorrow.
Just got a call from Pelton's store--place infiltrated by goons,
estimated strength two hundred, presumed Independent-Conservatives.
Serious rioting already going on; I'm taking my reserve company there.
And if you haven't found out, yet, where China is, it's on the third
floor, next to Glassware."
Cardon pulled out the ear plug, stuffed the recorder into his trouser
pocket, and began unbuckling his Sam Browne as he ran for the nearest
wall visiphone. He was dialing the guard room on that floor with one
hand as he took off the belt.
"Get a big ambulance on the roof, with a Literate medic and
orderly-driver," he ordered, unbuttoning his smock. "And four guards,
plain clothes if possible, but don't waste time changing clothes if
you don't have anybody out of uniform. Heavy-duty sono guns, sleep-gas
projectors, gas masks and pistols. Hurry." He threw the smock and belt
at the guard. "Here, Pancho; put these away for me. Thanks." He tossed
the last word back over his shoulder as he ran for the escalator.
[Illustration:]
It was three eternal minutes after he had reached the landing stage
above before the ambulance arrived, medic and orderly on the front
seat and the four guards, all in conservatively cut civilian clothes,
inside. He crowded in beside the medic, told him, "Pelton's store,"
and snapped the door shut as the big white 'copter began to rise.
They climbed to five thousand feet, and then the driver nosed his
vehicle up, cut his propeller and retracted it, and fired his rocket,
aiming toward downtown Manhattan. Four minutes later, after the rocket
stopped firing and they were on the down-curve of their trajectory,
the propeller was erected and they began letting down toward the
central landing stage of Pelton's Purchasers' Paradise. Cardon cut in
the TV and began calling the control tower.
"Ambulance, to evacuate Mr. Pelton," he called. "What's the score,
down there?"
One of Pelton's traffic-control men appeared on Cardon's screen.
"You're safe to land on the central stage, but you'd better come in at
a long angle from the north," he said. "We control the north public
stage, but the east and south stages are in the hands of the goons;
they'd fire on you. Land beside that big pile of boxes under
tarpaulins up here, but be careful; it's fireworks we didn't have time
to get into storage."
The ambulance came slanting in from uptown, and Cardon looked around
anxiously. The May-fly dance of customers' 'copters had stopped; there
was a Sabbath stillness about the big store, at least visually. A few
small figures in Literates' guards black leather moved about on the
north landing stage, and several Pelton employees were on the central
stop stage. The howling of the 'copter propeller overhead effectively
blocked out any sounds that might be coming from the building, at
least until the ambulance landed. Then a spatter of firing from below
was audible.
Cardon, the medic and the guards piled out, the latter with the
stretcher. The orderly-driver got out his tablet pistol and checked
the chamber, then settled into a posture of watchful relaxation. Major
Slater was waiting for them by one of the vertical lift platforms.
"I tried to get hold of you, but that blasted meeting was going on,
and they had the doors sealed, and--" he began.
Cardon hushed him quickly. "Around here, I'm an Illiterate," he
warned. "Where's Pelton? We've got to get him and his daughter out of
here, at once."
"He's still flat on his back, out cold," Slater said. "The medic you
sent around here gave him a shot of hypnotaine: he'll be out for a
couple of hours, yet. Prestonby's still here. He's commanding the
defense; doing a good job, too."
That was good. Ralph would help get Claire to Literates' Hall, after
they'd gotten her father to safety.
"There must be about five hundred Independent-Conservative storm
troopers in the store," Slater was saying. "Most of them got here
after we did. The city cops have all the street approaches roped off;
they're letting nobody but Grant Hamilton's thugs in."
"They were fairly friendly this morning," Cardon said. "Mayor Jameson
must have passed the word." They all got off the lift two floors down,
where they found Claire Pelton and Ralph Prestonby waiting. "Hello,
Ralph. Claire. What's the situation?"
"We have all the twelfth floor," Prestonby said. "We have about half
the eleventh, including the north and west public stages. We have the
basement and the storerooms and the warehouse--Sergeant Coccozello's
down there, with as many of the store police and Literates and
Literates' guards and store-help as he could salvage, and the
warehouse gang. They've taken most of the ground floor, the main
mezzanine, and parts of the second floor. We moved two of the 7-mm
machine guns down from the top, and we control the front street
entrance with them and a couple of sono guns. The store's isolated
from the outside by the city police, who are allowing re-enforcements
to come through for the raiders, but we're managing to stop them at
the doors."
"Have you called Radical-Socialist headquarters for help?"
"Yes, half a dozen times. There's some fellow named Yingling there,
who says that all their storm troops are over in North Jersey, on some
kind of a false-alarm riot-call, and can't be contacted."
"So?" Cardon commented gently. "That's too bad, now." Too bad for
Horace Yingling and Joe West; this time tomorrow, they'll be a pair of
dead traitors, he thought. "Well, we'll have to make do with what we
have. Where's Russ Latterman, by the way?"
Prestonby gave a sidewise glance toward Claire and shook his head, his
lips pressed tightly together. _She doesn't know, yet_, Cardon
interpreted.
"Down in the basement, with Coccozello," Prestonby said, aloud. "We're
in telephone communication with Coccozello, and have a freight
elevator running between here and the basement. Coccozello says
Latterman is using a rifle against the raiders, killing every one he
can get a shot at."
Cardon nodded. Probably vindictive about being involved in action
injurious to Pelton's commercial interests; just another odd quirk of
Literate ethics.
"We'd better get him up here," he said. "You and I have got to leave,
at once; we have to get Pelton and Claire to safety. He can help Major
Slater till we can get back with re-enforcements. I am going to kill a
man named Horace Yingling, and then I'm going to round up the storm
troops he diverted on a wild-goose chase to North Jersey." He nodded
to the medic and the four plain-clothes guards. "Get Pelton on the
stretcher. Better use the canvas flaps and the straps. He's under
hypnotaine, but it's likely to be a rough trip. Claire, get anything
you want to take with you. Ralph will take you where you'll be safe
for a while."
"But the store--" Claire began.
"Your father has riot-insurance, doesn't he? I know he does; they
doubled the premium on him when he came out for Senate. Let the
insurance company worry about the store."
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."
Prestonby grabbed his hand impulsively. "Frank! I'll never be able to
repay you for this, not if I live to be a thousand--" he began.
There was a sudden blast of sound from overhead--the banging of
machine guns, the bark of the store's 20-mm auto-cannon, the howling
of airplane jets, and the crash of explosions. Everybody in the room
jerked up and stood frozen, then Prestonby jumped for the TV-screen
and pawed at the dials. A moment later, after the screen flashed and
went black twice, they were looking across the topside landing stage
from a pickup at one corner.
A slim fighter-bomber, with square-tipped, backswept, wings, was
jetting up in almost perpendicular flight; another was coming in
toward the landing stage, and, as they watched, a flight of rockets
leaped forward from under its wings. Cardon saw the orderly-driver of
the ambulance jump down and start to run for the open lift-shaft. He
got five steps away from his vehicle. Then the rockets came in, and
one of them struck the tarpaulin-covered pile of boxes beside the
ambulance. There was a flash of multicolored flame, in which the man
and the vehicle he had left both vanished. Immediately, the screen
went black.
The fireworks had mostly exploded at the first blast; however, when
Cardon and Major Slater and one or two others reached the top landing
stage, there were still explosions. A thing the size and shape of a
two-gallon kettle, covered with red paper, came rolling toward them,
and suddenly let go with a blue-green flash, throwing a column of
smoke, in miniature imitation of an A-bomb, into the air. Something
about three feet long came whizzing at them on the end of a tail of
fire, causing them to fling themselves flat; involuntarily, Cardon's
head jerked about and his eyes followed it until it blew up with a
flash and a bang three blocks uptown. Here and there, colored fire
flared, small rockets flew about, and firecrackers popped.
The ambulance was gone, blown clear off the roof. The other 'copters
on the landing stage were a tangled mass of wreckage. The 20-mm was
toppled over; the gunner was dead, and one of the crew, half-dazed,
was trying to drag a third man from under the overturned gun. The
control tower, with the two 12-mm machine guns, was wrecked. The two
7-mm's that had been left on the top had vanished, along with the
machine gunners, in a hole that had been blown in the landing stage.
Cardon, Slater, and the others dashed forward and pulled the
auto-cannon off the injured man, hauling him and his companion over to
the lift. The two rakish-winged fighter-bombers were returning,
spraying the roof with machine-gun bullets, and behind them came a
procession of fifteen big 'copters. They dropped the lift hastily;
Slater jumped off when it was still six feet above the floor, and
began shouting orders.
"Falk: take ten men and get to the head of this lift-shaft! Burdick,
Levine: get as many men as you can in thirty seconds, and get up to
the head of the escalator! Diaz: go down and tell Sternberg to bring
all his gang up here!"
Cardon caught up a rifle and rummaged for a bandolier of ammunition,
losing about a minute in the search. The delay was fortunate; when he
got to the escalators, he was met by a rush of men hurrying down the
ascending spiral or jumping over onto the descending one.
"Sono guns!" one of them was shouting. "They have the escalator head
covered; you'll get knocked out before you get off the spiral!"
He turned and looked toward the freight lift. It was coming down again,
with Falk and his men unconscious on it, knocked senseless by bludgeons
of inaudible sound, and a half a dozen of the 'copter-borne raiders, all
wearing the white robes and hoods of the Independent-Conservative storm
troops. He swung his rifle up and began squeezing the trigger,
remembering to first make sure that the fire-control lever was set
forward for semiauto, and remembering his advice to Goodkin, that
morning. By the time the platform had stopped, all the men in white
robes were either dead or wounded, and none of the unconscious
Literates' guards along with them had been injured. The medic who had
come with Cardon, assisted by a couple of the office force, got the
casualties sorted out. There was nothing that could be done about the
men who had been sono-stunned; in half an hour or so, they would recover
consciousness with no ill effects that a couple of headache tablets
wouldn't set right.
The situation, while bad, was not immediately desperate. If the
white-clad raiders controlled the top landing stage, they were pinned
down by the firearms and sono guns of the defenders, below, who were
in a position to stop anything that came down the escalators or the
lift shaft. The fate of the first party was proof of that. And the
very magnitude of the riot guaranteed that somebody on the outside,
city police, State guards, or even Consolidated States regulars, would
be taking a hand shortly. The air attack and 'copter-landing on the
roof had been excellent tactics, but it had been a serious
policy-blunder. As long as the disturbance had been confined to the
interior of the store, the city police could shrug it off as another
minor riot on property supposed to be protected by private police, and
do nothing about it. The rocket-attack on the top landing stage and
the spectacular explosion of the fireworks temporarily stored there,
however, was something that simply couldn't be concealed or dismissed.
The cloud of varicolored smoke alone must have been visible all over
the five original boroughs of the older New York, and there were
probably rumors of atom-bombing going around.
"What gets me," Slater, who must have been thinking about the same
thing, said to Cardon, "is where they got hold of those two
fighter-bombers. That kind of stuff isn't supposed to be in private
hands."
"A couple of hundred years ago, they had something they called the
Sullivan Law," Cardon told him. "Private citizens weren't even allowed
to own pistols. But the gangsters and hoodlums seemed to be able to
get hold of all the pistols they wanted, and burp guns, too. I know of
four or five racket gangs in this area that have aircraft like that,
based up in the Adirondacks, at secret fields. Anybody who has
connections with one of those gangs can order an air attack like this
on an hour's notice, if he's able to pay for it. What I can't
understand is the Independent-Conservatives doing anything like this.
The facts about this business will be all over the state before the
polls open tomorrow--" He snapped his fingers suddenly. "Come on;
let's have a look at those fellows who came down on the lift!"
There were two dead men in white Independent-Conservative robes and
hoods, lying where they had been dragged from the lift platform.
Cardon pulled off the hoods and zipped open the white robes. One of
the men was a complete stranger; the other, however, was a man he had
seen, earlier in the day, at the Manhattan headquarters of the
Radical-Socialist Party. One of the Consolidated Illiterates'
Organization people; a follower of West and Yingling.
"So that's how it was!" he said, straightening. "Now I get it! Let's
go see if any of those wounded goons are in condition to be
questioned."
* * * * *
Ray Pelton and Doug Yetsko had their heads out an open window on the
right side of the cab of the 'copter truck; Ray was pointing down.
"That roof, over there, looks like a good place to land," he said. "We
can get down the fire escape, and the hatch to the conveyor belt is
only half a block away."
Yetsko nodded. There'd be a watchman, or a private cop, in the
building on which Ray intended landing. A couple of hundred dollars
would take care of him, and they could leave two of Mason's boys with
the vehicles to see that he stayed bribed.
"Sure we can get in on the freight conveyor?" he asked. "Maybe it'll
be guarded."
"Then we'll have to crawl in through the cable conduit," Ray said.
"I've done that, lots of times; so have most of the other guys." He
nodded toward the body of the truck, behind, where his dozen-odd
'teen-age recruits were riding. "I've played all over the store, ever
since I've been big enough to walk; I must know more about it than
anybody but the guy who built it. That's why I said we'd have to bring
bullet guns; down where we're going, we'd gas ourselves with gas guns,
and if we used sono guns, we'd knock ourselves out with the echo."
"You know, Ray, you'll make a real storm trooper," Yetsko said. "If
you manage to stay alive for another ten years, you'll be almost as
good a storm troop captain as Captain Prestonby."
That, Ray knew, was about as high praise as Doug Yetsko could give
anybody. He'd have liked to ask Doug more about Captain
Prestonby--Doug could never seem to get used to the idea of his
officer being a schoolteacher--but there was no time. The 'copter
truck was already settling onto the roof.
The watchman proved amenable to reason. He took one look at Yetsko,
with three feet of weighted fire hose in his hand, and gulped, then
accepted the two C-notes Yetsko gave him. They left a couple of
Literates' guards with the vehicles, and Ray led the way to the fire
escape, and down into the alley. A few hundred feet away, there was an
iron grating which they pulled up. Ray drew the pistol he had gotten
out of Captain Prestonby's arms locker and checked the magazine,
chamber, and safety, knowing that Yetsko and the other guards were
watching him critically, and then started climbing down the ladder.
The conduit was halfway down. Yetsko, climbing behind him, examined it
with his flashlight, probably wondering how he was going to fit
himself into a hole like that. They climbed down onto the concrete
walkway beside the conveyor belts, and in the dim light of the
overhead lamps Ray could see that the two broad belts, to and from the
store, were empty for as far as he could see in either direction.
Normally, there should be things moving constantly in both
directions--big wire baskets full of parcels for delivery, and trash
containers, going out, and bales and crates and cases of merchandise,
and empty delivery baskets and trash containers coming in. He pointed
this out to Yetsko.
"Sure," the big Literates' guards sergeant nodded. "They got control
of the opening from the terminal, and they probably got a gang up at
the other end, too," he shouted, over the noise of the conveyor belts.
"I hope they haven't got into the basement of the store."
"If they have, I know a way to get in," Ray told him. "You'd better
stay here for about five minutes, and let me scout ahead. We don't
want to run into a big gang of them ahead."
Yetsko shook his head. "No, Ray; the captain told me I was to stick
with you. I'll go along with you. And we better take another of these
kids, for a runner, in case we have to send word back."
"Ramon, you come with us," Ray said. "The rest of you, stay here for
five minutes, and then, if you don't hear from us, follow us."
"Mason, you take over," Yetsko told the guards corporal. "And keep an
eye out behind you. We're in a sandwich, here; they're behind us, and
in front of us. If anything comes at you from behind, send the kids
forward to the next conduit port."
Ray and Yetsko and Ramon Nogales started forward. Halfway to the next
conduit port, there was a smear of lubricating oil on the concrete,
and in it, and away from it in the direction of the store, they found
footprints. It was Ramon Nogales who noticed the oil on the ladder to
the next conduit port.
"You stick here," Yetsko told him, "and when Mason and the others come
up, hold them here. Tell Mason to send one of the guards forward, and
use the rest of the gang to grab anybody who comes out. Come on, Ray."
At the port beyond, they halted, waiting for Mason's man to come up.
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."
One of the boys scouted ahead, and returned to report that they could
reach the next conduit port, but that the section of both conveyor
belts ahead of him was stopped, apparently wedged.
Yetsko stood for a moment, grimacing in an effort to reach a decision.
"I'd like to just go forward and hit them from behind," he said. "But
I don't know how many of them there are, and we'd have to be careful,
shooting into them, that we didn't shoot up your father's gang, beyond
them. I wish--"
"Well, let's go through the conduit, then," Ray said. "We can slide
down a branch conduit that runs a power line into the basement. I'll
go ahead; everybody at the store knows me, and they don't know you.
They might shoot you before they found out you were a friend."
Before Yetsko could object, he started up the ladder, Yetsko behind
him and the others following. At the next conduit port, they could
hear shooting very plainly, seeming to be in front of them. At the
next one, the shooting seemed to be going on directly under them, in
the tunnel. With the flashlight Yetsko had passed forward to him, Ray
could see that the dust on the concrete floor of the three-foot by
three-foot passage between and under the power and telephone cables
was undisturbed.
A little farther on, there was an opening on the left, and a power
cable branched off downward, at a sharp angle, overhead. Ray was able
to turn about and get his feet in front of him; Yetsko had to crawl on
until he had passed it, and then back into it after Ray had entered.
Bracing one foot on either side, Ray inched his way down the
forty-degree slope, hoping that the two hundred pound weight of Doug
Yetsko wouldn't start sliding upon him.
Ahead, he could hear voices. He drew his hands and feet away from the
sides of the branch conduit and let himself slip, landing in a heap in
the electricians' shop, above the furnace rooms. Two men, who had been
working at a bench, trying to assemble a mass of equipment into a
radio, whirled, snatching weapons. Ray knew both of them--Sam
Jacobowitz and George Nyman, who serviced the store's communications
equipment. They both stared at him, swearing in amazement.
"All right, Doug!" Ray called out. "We're in! Bring the gang down!"
* * * * *
Frank Cardon and Ralph Prestonby were waiting at the freight-elevator
door when it opened and Russell Latterman emerged, a rifle slung over
one shoulder. Cardon stepped forward and took the rifle from him.
"Come on over here, Russ," he said. "And don't do anything reckless."
They led him to one side. Latterman looked from one to the other
apprehensively, licking his lips.
"It's all right; we're not going to hurt you, Russ," Cardon assured
him. "We just want a few facts. Beside rigging that business with
Bayne, and almost killing Chet Pelton, and forcing Claire to blow her
cover, how much did you have to do with this business?"
"And who put you up to it?" Prestonby wanted to know. "My guess is
Joyner and Graves. Am I right?"
"Graves," Latterman said. "Joyner didn't have anything to do with it;
didn't know anything about it. He's in charge of the Retail
Merchandising section, and any action like this would be unethical,
since Pelton's is a client of the Retail Merchandising section. All
Graves told me to do was fix up a situation, using my own judgment,
that would provoke a Literate strike and force either Claire or Frank
here to betray Literacy. But I had no idea that it would involve a
riot like this. If I had, I'd have stood on Literates' ethics and
refused to have any part in it."
"That's about how I thought it would be," Cardon nodded. "Graves
probably was informed by Literates with the Independent-Conservatives
that this riot was planned; he wanted to get our people out of the
store. Unfortunately for him, he wasn't present at the extemporary
meeting that reversed Bayne's action in calling the strike." He handed
the rifle back to Latterman. "I just took this in case you might get
excited, before I could explain. And you can forget about the
Graves-Joyner opposition to Pelton. We had a meeting, right after
noon. Lancedale gained the upper hand; Joyner and Graves are
co-operating, now; the plan is to support Pelton and get on the inside
of the socialized Literacy program, when it's enacted."
"I still think that's a suicidal policy," Latterman said. "But not as
suicidal as splitting the Fraternities and trying to follow two
policies simultaneously. I wonder if I could put a call through to
Literates' Hall without some of these picture-readers overhearing me."
"You've been out of touch, down in the cellar, Russ." Prestonby told
him. "Our telephone line's cut, and the radio is smashed." He told
Latterman about the rocket attack on the control tower, which also
housed the store's telecast station. "So we're sandwiched, here; one
gang has us blocked at the twelfth floor, and another gang's up on the
roof, trying to get down at us from above, and we've no way to
communicate with the outside. We can pick up the regular telecasts,
but nobody outside seems to be paying much attention to us."
"There's a lot of equipment down in the electricians' shop," Latterman
said. "Maybe we could rig up a sending set that could contact one of
the telecast stations outside."
"That's an idea," 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.
"... And it seems that the attack on Chester Pelton has picked up new
complications; somebody seems determined to wipe out the whole Pelton
family, because, only ten minutes ago, some twenty armed men invaded
the Mineola High School, where Pelton's fifteen-year-old son, Raymond,
is a student, and forced their way to the office of Literate First
Class Ralph N. Prestonby, in an attempt to kidnap young Pelton.
Neither Literate Prestonby, the principal, nor the Pelton boy, who was
supposed to be in his office, could be found. The raiders were put to
flight by the presence of mind of Literate Martha B. Collins, who
pressed the button which turned in the fire alarm, filling the halls
with a mob of students. The interlopers fled in panic after being set
upon and almost mobbed--"
Prestonby looked worried. "I left Ray in my office, with Doug Yetsko,"
he said. "I can't understand--"
[Illustration:]
"Maybe Yetsko got a tip that they were coming and got Ray out of the
school," Cardon suggested. "I hope he took him home." He caught
himself just in time to avoid mentioning the platoon of Literates'
guards at the Pelton home, which he was not supposed to know about.
"Don't worry, Claire; if anything'd happened to Ray, Mongery'd have
been screaming about it to high heaven. That's what he's paid to do."
"Well, I'll stake my life on it; if anybody tried to do anything to
Ray while Yetsko was with him, you'd have heard about it," Prestonby
said. "It'd have been a bigger battle than this one."
"... Can't seem to find out anything about what's going on at
Pelton's store," Mongery continued. "Telephone and radio communication
seems to be broken, and, although there is continuous firing going on
inside the building, the city police, who have a cordon completely
around it, say that the situation in the store is well in hand.
Considering Chester Pelton's attacks on the city administration and
particularly the police department, I leave to your imagination what
they mean by that. We do know that a large body of unidentified
plug-uglies whom Police Inspector Cassidy claims are 'special
officers' are holding the conveyor line into the store at the downtown
Manhattan terminal, and nobody seems to know what's going on at the
other end--"
"They have the sections of both belts at the store entrance end
wedged," Latterman said, coming up at the moment. "Coccozello has a
barricade thrown up across the store end of the tunnel, and they have
a barricade about fifty yards down the tunnel. That's where I was
fighting when you called me up."
"Anything being done about gold-berging up a radio sending-set?"
Prestonby asked.
"Yes. I just called Coccozello," Latterman said. "Fortunately, the
inter-department telephone is still working. He's put a couple of men
to work, and thinks he may have a set in operation in about half an
hour."
"... And if, as I much fear, Chester Pelton has been murdered, then I
advise all listening to me to go to the polls tomorrow and vote the
straight Anarchist ticket. If we've got to have anarchy in this
country, let's have anarchy for all, and not just for Grant Hamilton
and his political adherents!" Mongery was saying.
* * * * *
There was a series of heavy explosions on the floor above. Everybody
grabbed weapons and hurried outside, crowding onto the escalators. The
floor above was a shambles, with bodies lying about, and the
descending escalator was packed with white-robed attackers, who had
apparently prepared for their charge by tossing down a number of
heavy fragmentation bombs. 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. He
dropped it and yanked the heavy pistol from his shoulder holster.
Then, from the direction of the freight elevator, reinforcements
arrived, headed by a huge man in the black leather of the Literates'
guard, who swung a three-foot length of fire hose with his right hand
and fired a pistol with his left, and a boy in a black-and-red jacket
who was letting off a burp gun in deliberate, parsimonious, bursts. It
was a second or two before Cardon recognized them as Prestonby's
bodyguard, Doug Yetsko, and Claire Pelton's brother Ray. There were
four Literates' guards and about a dozen boys with them, all firing
with a variety of weapons.
At the same time, others were arriving on the escalators from the
floors below, firing as they came off--Slater's Literates' guards, the
Literates and their black-jacketed troopers of Hopkinson's store
service crew, the fifteen survivors of the twenty riflemen from Macy &
Gimbel's. The attackers turned and crowded onto the ascending
escalator. Most of them got away, the casualties being carried up by
the escalator. Doug Yetsko bounded forward and brought his fire hose
down on the back of one invader's neck. Then, after a last spatter of
upward-aimed shots from the defenders, there was silence.
Cardon stepped forward and yanked the hood from the man whom Yetsko
had knocked down, hoping that he had a stunned prisoner who could be
interrogated. The man was dead, however, with a broken neck. For a
moment, Cardon looked down at the heavy, brutal features of Joe West,
the Illiterates' Organization man. If Chester Pelton got out of this
mess alive and won the election tomorrow, there was going to have to
be a purge in the Radical-Socialist party, and something was going to
have to be done about the Consolidated Organization of Illiterates. He
turned to Yetsko.
"You and your gang got here just in the nick of time," he said. "How
did you get into the store?"
"Through the freight conveyor, into the basement."
"But I thought those goons had both ends of that plugged."
"They did," Yetsko grinned. "But Ray Pelton took us in at the middle,
and we crawled through a cable conduit to get around the gang at this
end."
Cardon looked around quickly, in search of Ray. The boy, having come
out of the excitement of battle, was looking around at the litter of
dead and wounded on the blood-splashed floor. His eyes widened, and he
gulped. Then, carefully setting the safety of his burp gun and
slinging it, he went over and leaned against the wall, and was sick.
Prestonby, with Claire Pelton beside him, started toward the
white-faced, retching boy. Yetsko put out a hamlike hand to stop them.
"If the kid wants to be sick, let him be sick," he said. "He's got a
right to. I was sicker'n that, after my first fight. But he won't do
that the next time."
"There isn't going to be any next time!" Claire declared, with
maternal protectiveness.
"That's what you think, Miss Claire," Yetsko told her. "That boy's
gonna make a great storm trooper," he declared. "Every bit as great as
Captain Prestonby, here."
Claire looked up at Prestonby almost worshipfully. "And I never knew
anything about your being a fighting-man, till today," she said.
"Ralph, there's so much about you that I don't know."
"There'll be plenty of time to find out, now, honey," he told her.
Cardon stepped over the body of Joe West and went up to them.
"Sorry to intrude on you two," he said, "but we've got to figure on
how to get out of here. Could we get out the same way you got in?" he
asked Yetsko. "And take Mr. Pelton with us?"
Yetsko frowned. "Part of the way, we gotta crawl through this conduit;
it's only about a yard square. And we'd have to go up a ladder, and
out a manhole, to get out of the conveyor tunnel. What sorta shape's
Mr. Pelton in?"
"He's under hypnotaine, completely unconscious," Prestonby said.
"Then we'd have to drag him," Yetsko said. "Strap him up in a tarp, or
load him into a sleeping bag, if we can get hold of one."
"There are plenty, down in the warehouse," Latterman interrupted,
joining them. "And the warehouse is in our hands."
"All right," Cardon decided. "We'll take him out, now, and take him
home. I have some men there who'll take care of him. We'll have to get
you and Ray out, too," he told Claire. "I think we'll take both of you
to Literates' Hall; you'll be absolutely safe there."
"But the store," Claire started to object. "And all these people who
came here to help us--"
"As soon as I have your father home, I'm going to start rounding up a
gang to raise the siege," Cardon said. "Radical-Socialist storm
troops, and--" He grinned suddenly. "The insurance company; the one
that has the store insured against riot! Why didn't I think of them
before? They're losing money every second this thing goes on. It'll be
worth their while to start doing something to stop it!"
* * * * *
The trip out through the conduit was not so difficult, even with the
encumbrance of the unconscious Chester Pelton, but Prestonby was
convinced that, except for the giant strength of Doug Yetsko, it would
have been nearly impossible. Ray Pelton, recovered from his
after-battle nausea and steeled by responsibility, went first. Cardon
crawled after him, followed by a couple of the boys. Then came Yetsko,
dragging the sleeping bag in which Chester Pelton was packed like a
mummy. Prestonby himself followed, pushing on his future
father-in-law's feet, and Claire crawled behind, with the rest of
Ray's schoolmates for a rearguard.
They got past the battle which was still going on at the entrance to
the store basement, letting Pelton down with a rope and carrying him
onto the outward-bound belt. They left it in time to assemble under
the ladder leading to the alley through which Ray said they had
entered, and hauled Pelton up after them. Then, when they were all out
in the open again, Ray ran up the alley and mounted a fire escape,
and, in a few minutes, a big 'copter truck which had been parked on
the roof let down to them. Into this, Cardon ordered the unconscious
senatorial candidate loaded, and the boys who had come with Ray.
"I'll take him home, and then run the boys to the school," he told
Prestonby. "You and Ray and Claire get in this other 'copter and go
straight to Literates' Hall." He pointed up to the passenger vehicle
which was hovering above, waiting for the truck to leave. "Go in the
church way, and go straight to Lancedale's office. And here." He
scribbled an address and a phone number and a couple of names. "These
men have my 'copter at this address. Call them as soon as you get to
Literates' Hall and have them take it at once to Pelton's home, on
Long Island."
Prestonby nodded and watched Cardon climb into the truck. The
Literates' guard who was driving lifted it up and began windmilling
away toward the east. The passenger 'copter, driven by another guard
from the school, settled down. Putting Ray and Claire into it, he
climbed in after them.
"Ray," he said, "how would you like to be a real white-smock
Literate?"