H. Beam Piper

by H. Beam Piper

  "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.

  Chapter 8

  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 t
hat 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.