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The Council President, Morehead, came out a little door onto the rostrum and took his seat, pressing a button. The call bell began clanging slowly. Lancedale, glancing around, saw Cardon and nodded. On both sides of the chamber, the Literates began taking seats, and finally the call bell stopped, and Literate President Morehead rapped with his gavel. The opening formalities were hustled through.
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.
"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.
The guards officer repeated back his instructions, and Lancedale broke the connection. "Now, Frank," he said, "I told you that this revelation of Claire Pelton's Literacy can be turned to our advantage. There's to be a full Council meeting at thirteen hundred. Here's what I estimate Joyner and Graves will try to do, and here's what I'm going to do to counter 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?"
"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.
It was good to see that that was having some effect beside an increase in the number of attempts on his life, or the flood of complaints to the Board of Education. Well, Lancedale had gotten Education merged with his Office of Communications, and Lancedale was back of him to the limit, so the complaints had died out on the empty air.
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?
Even Lancedale couldn't have survived such an explosion, and the body of Literate First Class Ralph N. Prestonby would have been found in a vacant lot the next morning. Even many of Lancedale's supporters would have turned on him in anger at this sudden blow to the Fraternities' monopoly of the printed Word.
Lancedale says, a private monopoly like ours is bad, but a government monopoly is intolerable, and the only way the public can get rid of it would be by becoming Literates, themselves." She glanced toward the door of Pelton's private rest room. "Poor Senator!" she said softly.
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