sir. The controls is all different from on the summer model.Every time I try to raise it, it backs up; if I try to raise it muchmore, we won't have no wall left on the landing stage."
"Well, isn't there a book?"
"There ain't no pictures in it; nothing but print. It's a Literatebook," Olaf said in disgust, as though at something obscene. "An'there ain't nothin' on the instrument board but letters."
"That's right," Ray agreed. "I saw the book; no pictures in it atall."
"Well, of all the quarter-witted stupidity! The confounded imbecilesat that agency--"
Pelton started to his feet. Claire unlocked the table and slid it outof his way. Ray, on a run, started for the lift and vanished.
"I think some confounded Literate at the Rolls-Cadipac agency didthat," he fumed. "Thought it would be a joke to send me a Literateinstruction book along with a 'copter with a Literate instrumentboard. Ah, I get it! So I'd have to call in a Literate to show me howto start my own 'copter, and by noon they'd be laughing about it inevery bar from Pittsburgh to Plattsburg. Sneaky Literate trick!" Theywent to the lift, and found the door closed in their faces. "Oh,confound that boy!"
Claire pressed the button. Ray must have left the lift, for theoperating light went on, and in a moment the door opened. He crowdedinto the lift, along with his daughter and Olaf.
On the landing stage, Ray was already in the 'copter, poking atbuttons on the board.
"Look, Olaf!" he called. "They just shifted them around a little fromthe summer model. This one, where the prop-control used to be on theold model, is the one that backs it up on the ground. Here's the onethat erects and extends the prop,"--he pushed it, and the prop snappedobediently into place--"and here's the one that controls the lift."
An ugly suspicion stabbed at Chester Pelton, bringing with it afeeling of frightened horror.
"How do you know?" he demanded.
Ray's eyes remained on the instrument board. He pushed another button,and the propeller began swinging in a lazy circle; he pressed downwith his right foot, and the 'copter lifted a foot or so.
"What?" he asked. "Oh, Jimmy showed me how theirs works. Mr. Hartnettgot one like it a week ago." He motioned to Olaf, setting the 'copterdown again. "Come here; I'll show you."
The suspicion, and the horror passed in a wave of relief.
"You think you and Olaf, between you, can get that thing to school?"he asked.
"Sure! Easy!"
"All right. You show Olaf how to run it. Olaf, as soon as you'vedropped Ray at school, take that thing to the Rolls-Cadipac agency,and get a new one, with a proper instrument board, and a properpicture book of operating instructions. I'm going to call Sam Huschackup personally and give him royal hell about this. Sure you can handleit, now?"
He watched the 'copter rise to the two thousand foot local trafficlevel and turn in the direction of Mineola High School, fifty milesaway. He was still looking anxiously after it as it dwindled to a tinydot and vanished.
"They'll make it all right," Claire told him. "Olaf has a strong back,and Ray has a good head."
"It wasn't that that I was worried about." He turned and looked, halfashamed, at his daughter. "You know, for a minute, there, I thought ... Ithought Ray could read!"
"Father!" She was so shocked that she forgot the nickname they hadgiven him when he had announced his candidacy for Senate, in thespring. "You didn't!"
"I know; it's an awful thing to think, but--Well, the kids today dothe craziest things. There's that Hartnett boy he runs around with;Tom Hartnett bought Literate training for him. And that fellowPrestonby; I don't trust him--"
"Prestonby?" Claire asked, puzzled.
"Oh, you know. The principal at school. You've met him."
Claire wrinkled her brow--just like her mother, when she was trying toremember something.
"Oh, yes. I met him at that P.T.A. meeting. He didn't impress me asbeing much like a teacher, but I suppose they think anything's goodenough for us Illiterates."
* * * * *
Literate First Class Ralph N. Prestonby remained standing by thelectern, looking out over the crowded auditorium, still pleasantlysurprised to estimate the day's attendance at something likeninety-seven per cent of enrollment. That was really good; why, it wasonly three per cent short of perfect! Maybe it was the new rulerequiring a sound-recorded excuse for absence. Or it could have beenhis propaganda campaign about the benefits of education. Or, veryeasily, it could have been the result of sending Doug Yetsko and someof his boys around to talk to recalcitrant parents. It was good to seethat that was having some effect beside an increase in the number ofattempts on his life, or the flood of complaints to the Board ofEducation. Well, Lancedale had gotten Education merged with hisOffice of Communications, and Lancedale was back of him to the limit,so the complaints had died out on the empty air. And Doug Yetsko washis bodyguard, so most of the would-be assassins had died, also.
The "North American Anthem," which had replaced the "Star-SpangledBanner" after the United States-Canadian-Mexican merger, came to anend. The students and their white-smocked teachers, below, relaxedfrom attention; most of them sat down, while monitors and teachers inthe rear were getting the students into the aisles and marching themoff to study halls and classrooms and workshops. The orchestra struckup a lively march tune. He leaned his left elbow--Literates learnedearly, or did not live to learn, not to immobilize the right hand--onthe lectern and watched the interminable business of getting thestudents marched out, yearning, as he always did at this time, for theprivacy of his office, where he could smoke his pipe. Finally, theywere all gone, and the orchestra had gathered up its instruments andfiled out into the wings of the stage, and he looked up to the leftand said, softly:
"All right, Doug; show's over."
With a soft thud, the big man dropped down from the guard's cubicleoverhead, grinning cheerfully. He needed a shave--Yetsko always did,in the mornings--and in his leather Literates' guard uniform, helooked like some ogreish giant out of the mythology of the past.
]
"I was glad to have you up there with the Big Noise, this morning,"Prestonby said. "What a mob! I'm still trying to figure out why wehave such an attendance."
"Don't you get it, captain?" Yetsko was reaching up to lock the doorof his cubicle; he seemed surprised at Prestonby's obtuseness. "Daybefore election; the little darlings' moms and pops don't want themout running around. We can look for another big crowd tomorrow, too."
Prestonby gave a snort of disgust. "Of course; how imbecilic can Ireally get? I didn't notice any of them falling down, so I suppose youdidn't see anything out of line."
"Well, the hall monitors make them turn in their little playthings atthe doors," Yetsko said, "but hall monitors can be gotten at, and someof the stuff they make in Manual Training, when nobody's watchingthem--"
Prestonby nodded. Just a week before, a crude but perfectly operative17-mm shotgun had been discovered in the last stages of manufacture inthe machine shop, and five out of six of the worn-out files wouldvanish, to be ground down into dirks. He often thought of the storiesof his grandfather, who had been a major during the Occupation ofRussia, after the Fourth World War. Those old-timers didn't know howeasy they'd had it; they should have tried to run an Illiterate highschool.
Yetsko was still grumbling slanders on the legitimacy of the studentbody. "One of those little angels shoots me, it's just a cute littleprank, and we oughtn't to frown on the little darling when it's justtrying to express its dear little personality, or we might give itcomplexes, or something," he falsettoed incongruously. "And if thelittle darling's mistake doesn't kill me outright and I shoot back,people talk about King Herod!" He used language about the Board ofEducation and the tax-paying public that was probably subversivewithin the meaning of the Loyalty Oath. "I wish I had a pair of 40-mmauto-cannons up there, instead of that sono gun."
"Each class is a little worse than the one before; in about fiveyears, they'll be making H-bombs in the la
b," Prestonby said. In thelast week, a dozen pupils had been seriously cut or blackjacked inhall and locker-room fights. "Nice citizens of the future; nice futureto look forward to growing old in."
"We won't," Yetsko comforted him. "We can't be lucky all the time; inabout a year, they'll find both of us stuffed into a broom closet,when they start looking around to see what's making all the stink."
* * * * *
Prestonby
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