Null-ABC, John Joseph McGuire and H. Beam Piper [best short books to read .txt] 📗

Frank Cardon, Illiterate brewer, drop from him, as though he were an actor returning from the stage to his dressing room.

The room into which he emerged was almost that. There was a long table, at which two white-smocked Literates drank coffee and went over some papers; a third Literate sprawled in a deep chair, resting; at a small table, four men in black shirts and leather breeches and field boots played poker, while a fifth, who had just entered and had not yet removed his leather helmet and jacket or his weapons belt, stood watching them.

Cardon went to a row of lockers along the wall, opened one, and took out a white smock, pulling it over his head and zipping it up to the throat. Then he buckled on a Sam Browne with its tablet holster and stylus gas projector. The Literate sprawling in the chair opened one eye.

"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 short hall, and spoke in greeting to the leather-jacketed storm trooper on guard 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 from behind his desk and advanced to greet him with a quick handshake, guiding him to a chair beside the desk. As he did, he sniffed and raised an eyebrow.

"Beer this early, Frank?" he asked.

"Morning, noon, and night, chief," Cardon replied. "When you said this job was going to be dangerous, I didn't know you meant that it would lead straight to an alcoholic's grave."

"Let me get you a cup of coffee, and a cigar, then." The white-haired Literate executive resumed his seat, passing a hand back and forth slowly across the face of the commo, the diamond on his finger twinkling, 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 and individually-sealed cigars.

"At least, you're not one of these plain-living-and-right-thinking fanatics, like Wilton Joyner and Harvey Graves," Cardon said. "On top of everything else, that I could not take."

Lancedale's thin face broke into a smile, little wrinkles putting his mouth in parentheses. Cardon sampled the coffee, and then used a Sixteenth Century Italian stiletto from Lancedale's desk to perforate the end of his cigar.

"Much as I hate it, I'll have to get out of here as soon as I can," he said. "I don't know how long O'Reilly can keep me covered, down at the tavern—"

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 was before the polls opened. Three months ago, the Independents were as solid as Gibraltar used to be. Today, they look like Gibraltar after that H-bomb hit it. The only difference is, they don't know what hit them, yet."

"Hamilton's campaign manager does," Lancedale said. "Did you hear his telecast, 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 rest of 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 took out 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're Pelton's campaign manager—Heaven pity him."

Cardon thought for a moment. "We'll play it for laughs," he decided. "Some of our semantics experts could make the joke of the year out of it by the time the polls open tomorrow. The Fraternities bribing their worst enemy to attack them, so that he can ruin their business; who's been listening to a tape of 'Alice in Wonderland' at Independent-Conservative headquarters?"

"That would work," Lancedale agreed. "And we can count on our friends Joyner and Graves to give you every possible assistance with their customary bull-in-a-china-shop tactics. I suppose you've seen these posters they've been plastering around: If you can read this, Chester Pelton is your sworn enemy! A vote for Pelton is a vote for your own enslavement!"

"Naturally. And have you seen the telecast we've been using—a view of it, with a semantically correct spoken paraphrase?"

Lancedale nodded. "And I've also noticed that those posters have been acquiring different obscene crayon-drawings, too. That's just typical of the short-range Joyner-Graves mentality. Why, they've made more votes for Pelton than he's made for himself. Is it any wonder we're convinced that people like that aren't to be trusted to formulate the future policy of the Fraternities?"

"Well ... they've proved themselves wrong. I wonder, though, if we can prove ourselves right, in the long run. There are times when this thing scares me, chief. If anything went wrong—"

"What, for instance?"

"Somebody could get to Pelton." Cardon made a stabbing gesture with the stiletto, which he still held. "Maybe you don't really know how hot this thing's gotten. What we had to cut out of Mongery's report, this morning—"

"Oh, I've been keeping in touch," Lancedale understated gently.

"Well then. If anything happened to Pelton, there wouldn't be a Literate left alive in this city twelve hours later. And I question whether or not Graves and Joyner know that."

"I think they do. If they don't, it's not because I've failed to point it out to them. Of course, there are the Independent-Conservative grafters; a lot of them are beginning to hear jail doors opening for them, and they're scared. But I think routine body-guarding ought to protect Pelton from them, or from any isolated fanatics."

"And there is also the matter of Pelton's daughter, and his son," Cardon said. "We know, and Graves and Joyner know, and I assume that Slade Gardner knows, that they can both read and write as well as any Literate in the Fraternities. Suppose that got out between now and the election?"

"And that could not only hurt Pelton, but it would expose the work we've been doing in the schools," Lancedale added. "And even inside the Fraternities, that would raise the devil. Joyner and Graves don't begin to realize how far we've gone with that. They could kick up a simply hideous row about it!"

"And if Pelton found out that his kids are Literates—Woooo!" Cardon grimaced. "Or what we've been doing to him. I hope I'm not around when that happens. I'm beginning to like the cantankerous old bugger."

"I was afraid of that," Lancedale said. "Well, don't let it interfere with what you have to do. Remember, Frank; the Plan has to come first, always."

He walked with O'Reilly to the street door, talking about tomorrow's election; after shaking hands with the saloon keeper, he crossed the sidewalk and stepped onto the beltway, moving across the strips until he came to the twenty m.p.h. strip. The tall office buildings of upper Yonkers Borough marched away as he stood on the strip, appreciatively puffing at Lancedale's cigar. The character of the street changed; the buildings grew lower, and the quiet and fashionable ground-floor shops and cafés gave place to bargain stores, their audio-advertisers whooping urgently about improbable prices and offerings, and garish, noisy, crowded bars and cafeterias blaring recorded popular music. There was quite a bit of political advertising in evidence—huge pictures of the two major senatorial candidates. He estimated that Chester Pelton's bald head and bulldog features appeared twice for every one of Grant Hamilton's white locks, old-fashioned spectacles and self-satisfied smirk.

Then he came to the building on which he had parked his 'copter, and left the beltway, entering and riding up to the landing stage on the helical escalator. There seemed to have been some trouble; about a dozen Independent-Conservative storm troopers, in their white robes and hoods, with the fiery-cross emblem on their breasts, were bunched together, most of them with their right hands inside their bosoms, while a similar group of Radical-Conservative storm troopers, with their black sombreros and little black masks, stood watching them and fingering the white-handled pistols they wore in pairs on their belts. Between the two groups were four city policemen, looking acutely unhappy.

The group in the Lone Ranger uniforms, he saw, were standing in front of a huge tri-dimensional animated portrait of Chester Pelton. As he watched, the pictured candidate raised a clenched fist, and Pelton's recorded and amplified voice thundered:

"Put the Literates in their place! Our servants, not our masters!"

He recognized the group leader of the Radical-Socialists—the masks were too small to be more than token disguises—and beckoned to him, at the same time walking toward his 'copter. The man in black with the white-handled pistols followed him, spurs jingling.

"Hello, Mr. Cardon," he said, joining him. "Nothing to it. We got a tip they were coming to sabotage Big Brother, over there. Take out our sound-recording, and put in one of their own, like they did over in Queens, last week. The town clowns got here in time to save everybody's face, so there wasn't any shooting. We're staying put till they go, though."

"Put the Literates in their place! Our servants, not our masters!" the huge tridianimate bellowed.

Over in Queens, the Independents had managed to get at a similar tridianimate, had taken out the record, and had put in one: I am a lying fraud! Vote for Grant Hamilton and liberty and sound government!

"Smart work, Goodkin," he approved. "Don't let any of your boys start the gunplay. The city cops are beginning to get wise to who's going to win the election, tomorrow, but don't antagonize them. But if any of those Ku Kluxers tries to pull a gun, don't waste time trying to wing him. Just hold on to that fiery something-or-other on his chest and let him have it, and let the coroner worry about him."

"Yeah. With pleasure," Goodkin replied. "You know, that nightshirt thing they wear is about the stupidest idea for a storm-troop uniform I ever saw. Natural target in a gunfight, and in a rough-and-tumble it gets them all tangled up. Ah, there go a couple of coppers to talk to them; that's what they've been waiting on. Now they can beat it without looking like they been run out by our gang."

Cardon nodded. "Tell your boys to stay around for a while; they may expect you to leave right after they do, and then they'll try to slip back. You did a good job; got here promptly. Be seeing you, Goodkin."

He climbed into his own 'copter and started the motor.

"Put the Literates in their place!" the tri-dimensional colossus roared triumphantly after the retreating Independents. "Our servants, not our masters!"

At eight thousand, he got the 'copter onto the lower Manhattan beam and relaxed. First of all, he'd have to do something about answering Slade Gardner's telecast propaganda. That stuff was dangerous. The answer ought to go on the air by noon, and should be stepped up through the afternoon. First as a straight news story; Elliot Mongery had fifteen minutes, beginning at 1215—no, that wouldn't do. Mongery's sponsor for that time was Atomflame Heaters, and Atomflame was a subsidiary of Canada Northwest Fissionables, and Canada Northwest was umbilicus-deep in that Kettle River lease graft that Pelton had sworn to get investigated as soon as he took office. Professional ethics wouldn't allow Mongery to say anything in Pelton's behalf on Atomflame's time. Well, there was Guthrie Parham, he came on at 1245, and his sponsor was all right. He'd call Parham and tell him what he wanted done.

The buzzer warned him that he was approaching the lower Manhattan beacon; he shifted to manual control, dropped down to the three-thousand-foot level, and set his selector beam for the signal from Pelton's Purchasers' Paradise. Down toward the tip of the island, in the section that had been rebuilt after that Stalin Mark XV guided missile had gotten through the counter-rocket defenses in 1987, he could see the quadrate cross of his goal, with public landing stages on each of the four arms, and the higher central block with its landing stage for freight and store personnel. Above the four public stages, helicopters swarmed like May flies—May flies which had mutated and invented ritual or military drill or choreography—coming in in four streams to the tips of the arms and rising vertically from the middle. There was about ten times the normal amount of traffic for this early in the morning. He wondered, briefly, then remembered, and cursed. That infernal sale!

Grudgingly, he respected Russell Latterman's smartness, and in consequence, the ability of Wilton Joyner and Harvey Graves in selecting a good agent to plant in Pelton's store. Latterman gave a plausible impersonation