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?"

Ray's eyes opened. "You think I'm good enough?"

"Good enough to be a novice, to start with. And I don't think you'll stay a novice long."

Claire looked at him inquiringly, saying nothing.

"You, too, honey," he said. "Frank fixed it all up. You and Ray will be admitted to the Fraternities, this afternoon. And that will remove any objection to our being married."

"But ... how about the Senator?" she asked.

Prestonby shrugged. "It's all over the state now that you can read; there's nothing that you can do about it. And Frank has a lot of influence with him; he'll talk him around to where he'll be willing to make the best of it, in a week or so."

* * * * *

Russell Latterman noticed that Major Slater was looking at him in a respectfully inquiring manner. He said nothing, and, at length, the Literates' guards officer broke the silence.

"You didn't go out with the others."

Latterman shook his head. "No, major; I'm an executive of Pelton's Purchasers' Paradise, however unlike its name it may look at the moment. My job's here. I'm afraid I'll have to lean pretty heavily on you, until Mr. Cardon can get help to us. I'm not particularly used to combat."

"You've been doing all right with that rifle," Slater told him.

"I can hit what I aim at, yes. But I'm not used to commanding men in combat, and I'm not much of a tactician."

Slater thrust out his hand impulsively. "I took a sort of poor view of you, at first. I'm sorry," he said. "Want me to take command?"

"If you please, major."

"What are you going to do, after this thing's over?" Slater asked.

"Stay on with Pelton's, provided Mr. P. doesn't find out that I organized that trick with his medicine and the safe," Latterman said. "Since Lancedale seems to have gotten on top at the Hall, I am, as of now, a Lancedale partisan. That's partly opportunism, and it's partly because, since a single policy has been adopted, I feel obliged to go along with it. I'll have to get the store back in operation, as soon as possible. Pelton's going to need money, badly, if he's going to try for the presidency in '44." He looked around him. "You know, I've always wanted to run a fire sale; this'll be even better—a battle sale!"

* * * * *

Cardon watched Chester Pelton apprehensively as the bald-headed merchant and senatorial candidate sipped from the tall glass in his hand and then set it on the table beside him. His face was pale, and he had the look of a man who has just been hit with a blackjack.

"That's an awful load of bricks to dump on a man, all at once, Frank," he said reproachfully.

"You'd rather I told you, now, than turn on the TV and hear some commentator talking about it, wouldn't you?" Cardon asked.

Pelton swore vilely, in a lifeless monotone, cursing Literacy, and all Literates back to the invention of the alphabet. Then he stopped short.

"No, Frank, I don't mean that, either. My own son and daughter are Literates; I can't say that about them. But how long—?"

"Oh, for about a year, I'd say. I understand, now, that they were admitted to the Fraternities six months ago," he invented.

"And they were working against me, all that time?" Pelton demanded.

Cardon shook his head. "No, Chet; they were for you, all the way. Your daughter exposed her Literacy to save your life. Your son and his teacher came to your store and fought for you. But there are Literates who want to see you defeated, and they're the ones who made that audio-visual, secretly, of the ceremony in which your son and daughter took the Literates' Oath and received the white smock, and they're going to telecast it this evening at twenty-one hundred. Coming on top of the stories that have been going around all afternoon, and Slade Gardner's speech, this morning, they think that'll be enough to defeat you."

"Well, don't you?" Pelton gloomed. "My own kids, Literates!" He seemed to have reached a point at which he was actually getting a masochistic pleasure out of turning the dagger in his wounds. "Who'd trust me, after this?"

"No, Chet; it isn't enough to beat you—if you just throw away that crying towel and start fighting. They made one mistake that's going to wreck them."

"What's that, Frank?" Pelton brightened, by about one angstrom unit.

"The timing, of course!" Cardon told him, impatiently. "I thought you'd see that, at once. This telecast comes on at twenty-one hundred. Your final speech comes on at twenty-one thirty. As soon as they've shown this business of Claire and Ray taking the Literate Oath, you'll be on the air, yourself, and if you put on any kind of a show worth the name, it won't be safe for anybody in this state to be caught wearing a white smock. Now, if they'd only had the wit to wait till after you'd delivered that speech you've been practicing on for the last two weeks, and then spring this on you, that would have been different. They'd have had you over a barrel. But this way, you have them!"

Pelton took another gulp from the tall glass at his elbow, emptying it. "Fix me up another of these, Frank," he said. "I feel like a new man, already." Then his face clouded again. "But we have no time to prepare a speech, now, and I just can't ad lib one."

Cardon drew a little half-inch record-disk from his pocket case.

"Play this off," he said. "I had it fixed up, as soon as I got wise to what was going to happen. The voice is one of the girls in my office, over at the brewery. Pronunciation, grammar, elocution and everything correct."

Pelton snapped the disk onto his recorder and put in the ear plug. Then, before he pressed the stud, he looked at Cardon curiously.

"How'd you get onto this, anyhow, Frank?" he wanted to know.

"Well ... I hope you don't ask me for an accounting of all the money I've been spending in this campaign, because some of the items would look funny as hell, but—"

"No accounting, Frank. After all, you spent as much of your own money as you did of mine," Pelton interrupted.

"... But I bought myself a pipe line into Literates' Hall big enough to chase an elephant through," Cardon went on, ignoring the interruption. "This fellow Mongery, for instance." Elliot Mongery was one of Literate Frank Cardon's best friends; he comforted his conscience with the knowledge that Mongery would slander him just as unscrupulously, if the interests of the Lancedale Plan were at stake. "I have Mongery just like this." He made a clutching and lifting gesture, as though he were picking up some small animal by the scruff of the neck. "So, as soon as I got word of it, I started getting this thing together. It isn't the kind of a job a Literate semanticist would do, but it's all honest Illiterate thinking, in Illiterate language. Turn it on, and tell me what you think of it."

While Pelton listened to the record, Cardon mixed him another of the highballs, adding a little of the heart-stimulant the medic had given him. Pelton was grinning savagely when he turned off the little machine and took out the ear plug.

"Great stuff, Frank! And I won't have to ham it much; it's just about the way I feel." He thought for a moment. "You have me talking about my ruined store, there. Just how bad is it, anyhow?"

"Pretty bad, Chet. Latterman says it's going to take some time to get it fixed up, but he expects to be open for business by Thursday or Friday. He's going to put on a big Battle Sale; he says it's going to make retail-merchandising history. And the insurance covers most of the damage."

"Well, tell me about it. How did you get the riot stopped, after you got me out? And how did you—?"

Cardon shook his head. "You play that record over again; get yourself in the mood. When you go on, we'll have you in a chair, wrapped in a blanket ... you're supposed to have crawled back out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death to make this speech ... and we'll have the wire run down inside the blanket, so that you can listen to the speech while you're giving it. Chet, this is going to be one of the great political speeches of all time—"

* * * * *

Literate William R. Lancedale looked up from his desk and greeted his visitor with a smile.

"Well, Frank! Sit down and accept congratulations! I suppose you got the returns?"

Cardon nodded, dropping into a chair beside the desk. "Just came from campaign headquarters. This automatic tally system they use on the voting machines is really something. Complete returns tabulated and reported for the whole state within forty minutes after the polls closed. I won't be silly enough to ask you if you got the returns."

"I deserved that, of course," Lancedale chuckled. "Can I offer you refreshment? A nice big stein of Cardon's Black Bottle, for instance?"

Cardon shuddered and grimaced horribly. "I've been drinking that slop by the bucketful, all day. And Pelton's throwing a victory party, tonight, and I'll have to choke down another half gallon of it. Give me a cup of coffee, and one of those good cigars of yours."

Lancedale grinned at him. "Ah, yes, the jolly brewer. His own best advertisement. How's Pelton reacting to his triumph? And what's his attitude toward his children? I've been worrying about that; vestigial traces of a conscience, I suppose."

"Well, I had to keep him steamed up, till after he went off the air," Cardon said. "Chet isn't a very good actor. But after that, I talked to him like a Dutch uncle. Told him what a swell pair of kids and a fine son-in-law he had. He got sore at me. Tried to throw me out of the house, a couple of times. I was afraid he was going to have another of those attacks. But by the time Ralph and Claire get back from their honeymoon and Ray finishes that cram-course for Literate prep school, he'll be ready to confer the paternal blessing all around. I'm going to stay in town and make sure of it, and then I'm taking about a month's vacation."

"You've earned it, all right." Lancedale poured Cardon's coffee and passed him the cigar humidor. "How's Pelton's attitude toward the Consolidated Illiterates' Organization, now?"

Cardon, having picked up the Italian stiletto to puncture his cigar, looked at it carefully to make sure that it really had no edge, and then drew it quickly across his throat.

"Just like that. You know what really happened, yesterday afternoon, at the store, don't you?"

"Well, in general, yes. I wish you'd fill me in on some of the details, though, Frank."

"Details he wants. Well." Cardon blew on his coffee and sipped it. "The way we played it for propaganda purposes, of course, there was only one big riot, and it was all the work of the wicked Literates and their Independent-Conservative hirelings. Actually, there were two riots. First, there was one the Independents had planned for about a week in advance; that was the one Sforza tipped us on, the one that started in China. Graves knew about it, enough to advise Latterman to get all the Literates out of the store before noon, which Latterman did, with trimmings.

"Then, there was another riot, masterminded by a couple of Illiterates' Organization Action Committee people named Joe West and Horace Yingling, both deceased. That was the result of Latterman's bright idea to trap Claire and/or me into betraying Literacy. These Illiterate fanatics made up their minds, to speak rather loosely, that the whole Pelton family were Literates, including Chet himself. They decided that it was better to kill off their candidate and use him for a martyr two years from now than to elect him and have him sell them out. They got about a hundred or so of their goons dressed in Independent-Conservative KKK costumes, bought air support from Patsy Callazo's mob, up in Vermont, and made that attack on the top landing stage, after starting a fake riot in North Jersey, to draw off the regular Radical-Socialist storm troops. Incidentally, when I found out it was Callazo's gang that furnished those fighter bombers, I hired another mob to go up and drop a block-buster on Callazo's field, to teach him to keep his schnozzle out of politics."

Lancedale nodded briskly. "That I approve of. How about West and Yingling?"

"Prestonby's muscle man, Yetsko, killed West. I took care of Comrade Yingling, myself, after I'd gotten reinforcements to the store—first a couple of free-lance storm troops that the insurance company hired, and then as many of the Radical Rangers as I could gather up."

"And Pelton knows about all this?"

"He certainly does! After this caper, the Illiterates' Organization's through, as far as any consideration or patronage from the Radicals is concerned."

"Well, that's pretty nearly the best thing I've heard out of the whole business," Lancedale said. "In about eight or ten years, we may want to pull the Independent-Conservative party together again, to cash in on public dissatisfaction with Pelton's socialized Literacy program, which ought to be coming apart at the seams by then. And if we have the Illiterates split into two hostile factions—"

Cardon finished his coffee. "Well, chief, I've got to be getting along. O'Reilly can only cover me for a short while, and I have to be getting to this victory party of Pelton's—"

Lancedale rose and shook hands with him. "I can't tell you, too many times, what a fine job you did, Frank," he said. "I hope ... no, knowing you, I'm positive ... that you'll be able to engineer a reconciliation between Pelton and his son and daughter and young Prestonby. And then, have yourself a good vacation."

"I mean to. I'm going deer hunting, to a place up in the mountains, along the old Pennsylvania-New York state line. A little community of about a thousand people, where everybody, men, women and children, can read."

Lancedale was interested. "A community of Literates?"

Cardon shook his head. "Not Literates-with-a-big-L; just people who can read and write," he replied. "It's a kind of back-eddy sort of place, and I imagine, a couple of hundred years ago, the community was too poor to support one of these 'progressive' school systems that made Illiterates out of the people in the cities. Probably couldn't raise enough money in school taxes to buy all the expensive audio-visual equipment, so they had to use old-fashioned textbooks, and teach the children to read from them. They have radios, and TV, of course, but they also have a little daily paper, and they have a community library."

Lancedale was thoughtful, for a moment. "You know, Frank, there must be quite a few little enclaves of lower-case-literacy like that, in back-woods and mountain communities, especially in the west and the south. I'm going to make a project of finding such communities, helping them, and getting recruits from them. They'll fit into the Plan. Well, I'll be seeing you some time tomorrow, I suppose?"

He watched Cardon go out, and then poured a glass of port for himself and sipped slowly, holding the glass to the light and watching the ruby glow it cast on the desk top. It had been over thirty years ago, when he had been old Jules de Chambord's assistant, that the Plan had been first conceived. De Chambord was dead these twenty years, and he had taken the old man's place, and they had only made the first step. Things would move faster, now, but he would still die before the Plan was completed, and Frank Cardon, whom he had marked as his successor, would be an old man, and somebody like young Ray Pelton would be ready to replace him, but the Plan would go on, until everybody would be literate, not Literate, and illiteracy, not Illiteracy, would be a mark of social stigma, and most people would live their whole lives without personal acquaintance with an illiterate.

There were a few years, yet, to prepare for the next step. The white smocks would have to go; Literates would have to sacrifice their paltry titles and distinctions. There would have to be a re-constitution of the Fraternities. Wilton Joyner and Harvey Graves and the other Conservative Literates would have to be convinced, emotionally as well as intellectually, of the need for change. There were a few of the older brothers who could never adjust their thinking; they would have to be promoted to positions with higher salaries and more impressive titles and no authority whatever.

But that was all a matter of tactics; the younger men, like Frank Cardon and Elliot Mongery and Ralph Prestonby, could take care of that. Certain changes would occur: A stable and peaceful order of society, for one thing. A rule of law, and the liquidation of these goon gangs and storm troops and private armies. If a beginning at that were made tomorrow, using the battle at Pelton's store to mobilize public opinion, it would still take two decades to get anything really significant done. And a renaissance of technological and scientific progress—Today, the manufacturers changed the 'copter models twice a year—and, except for altering the shape of a few chromium-plated excrescences or changing the contours slightly, they were the same 'copters that had been buzzing over the country at the time of the Third World War. Every month, the pharmaceutical companies announced a new wonder drug—and if it wasn't sulfa, it was penicillin, and if it wasn't penicillin it would be aureomycin. Why, most of the scientific research was being carried on by a few Literates in the basements of a few libraries, re-discovering the science of two centuries ago.

He sighed, and finished his port, and, as he did probably once every six months, he re-filled the glass. He'd be seventy-two next birthday. Maybe he'd live long enough to see—

THE END