At once, Harvey Graves was on his feet.
“Literate President,” he began, as soon as the chair had recognized him, “this is scarcely new business, since it concerns a problem, a most serious problem, which I and some of my colleagues have brought to the attention of this Council many times in the past—the problem of Black Literacy!” He spat out the two words as though they were a mouthful of poison. “Literate President and fellow Literates, if anything could destroy our Fraternities, to which we have given our lives’ devotion, it would be the widespread tendency to by-pass the Fraternities, the practice of Literacy by non-Fraternities people—”
“We’ve heard all that before, Wilton!” somebody from the Lancedale side called out. “What do you want to talk about that you haven’t gotten on every record of every meeting for the last thirty years?”
“Why, this Pelton business,” Graves snapped back at him. “You know what I mean. Your own associates are responsible for it!” He turned back to face the chair, and, with a surprising minimum of invective, described the scene in which Claire Pelton had demonstrated her Literacy. “And that’s not all, brother Literates,” he continued. “Since then, I’ve been receiving reports from the Pelton store. Claire Pelton has been openly doing the work of a Literate; going over the store’s written records, checking inventories, checking the credit guide, handling the price lists—”
“What’s that got to do with Black Literacy?” Gerald Toppington demanded. “Black Literacy is a term which labels the professional practice of Literacy, for hire, by a non-Fraternity Literate, or Literate service furnished for criminal or politically subversive purposes, or the betrayal of a client by a Fraternity Literate. There’s nothing of the sort involved here. This girl, who does appear to be Literate, is simply looking after the interests of her family’s business.”
“She was taught by a Literate, a Fraternities-member, under, to say the very least, irregular circumstances, and without payment of any fee. Any fee, that is, that the Fraternities can collect any percentage on. And the Literate who taught her also taught her younger brother, Ray Pelton, and this Literate, who is known to be her lover—”
“Suppose he is her lover, so what?” one of Lancedale’s partisans demanded. “You say, yourself, that she’s a Literate. That ought to remove any objection. Why, if she were to come forward and admit and demonstrate her Literacy, there’d be no possible objection from the Fraternities’ viewpoint to her marrying young Prestonby.”
“And as for Prestonby’s action in teaching Literacy to her and to her brother,” Cardon spoke up, “I think he deserves the thanks and commendation of the Fraternities. He’s put a period to four generations of bigoted Illiterates.”
Wilton Joyner was on his feet. “Will Literate Graves yield for a motion?” he asked. “Thank you, Harvey. Literate President, and brother Literates: I yield to no man in my abhorrence of Black Literacy, or in my detestation for the political principles of which Chester Pelton has made himself the spokesman, but I deny that we should allow the acts and opinions of the Illiterate parent to sway us in our consideration of the Literate children. It has come to my notice, as it has to Literate Graves’, that this young woman, Claire Pelton, is Literate to a degree that would be a credit to any Literate First Class, and her brother can match his Literacy creditably against that of any novice in our Fraternities. To show that we respect Literate ability, wherever we find it; to show that we are not the monopolistic closed-corporation our enemies accuse us of being; to show that we are not animated by a vindictive hatred of anything bearing the name of Pelton—I move, and ask that my motion be presented for seconding, that Claire Pelton, and her brother, Raymond Pelton, be duly elected, respectively, to the positions of Literate Third Class and Literate Novice, as members of the Associated Fraternities of Literates!”
From the Joyner-Graves side, there were dutiful cries of, “Yes! Yes! Admit the young Peltons!” and also gasps of horrified surprise from the rank-and-filers who hadn’t been briefed on what was coming up.
Lancedale was on his feet in an instant. “Literate President!” he cried. “In view of the delicate political situation, and in view of Chester Pelton’s violent denunciation of our Fraternities—”
“Literate Lancedale,” the President objected. “The motion is not to be debated until it has been properly seconded.”
“What does the Literate President think I’m doing?” Lancedale retorted. “I second the motion!”
Joyner looked at Lancedale in angry surprise, which gradually became fearful suspicion. His stooge, who had already risen with a prepared speech of seconding, simply gaped.
“Furthermore,” Lancedale continued, “I move an amendment to Literate Joyner’s motion. I move that the ceremony of the administration of the Literates’ Oath, and the investiture in the smock and insignia, be carried out as soon as possible, and that an audio-visual recording be made, and telecast this evening, before twenty-one hundred.”
Brigade commander Chernov, prodded by Cardon, jumped to his feet.
“Excellent!” he cried. “I second the motion to amend the motion of Literate Joyner.”
If there were such a thing as a bomb which would explode stunned silence, Lancedale and Chernov had dropped such a bomb. Cardon could guess how Joyner and Graves felt; they were now beginning to be afraid of their own proposition. As for the Lancedale Literates, he knew how many of them felt. He’d felt the same way, himself, when Lancedale had proposed the idea. He got to his feet.
“Literate President, brother Literates,” he raised his voice. “I call for an immediate vote on this amended motion, which I, personally, endorse most heartily, and which I hope to see carried unanimously.”
“Now, wait a minute!” Joyner objected. “This motion ought to be 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 door. 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 f
rom 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—”
* * * *
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.
The H. Beam Piper Megapack Page 58
