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Finally, leaving his guards with the 'copter at a public landing stage, he made his way, by devious routes, to William R. Lancedale's office, and found Lancedale at his desk, seeming not to have moved since he had showed his agent out earlier in the day. "Well, we're in a nice puddle of something-or-other," Cardon greeted him. "On top of that Gardner telecast, this morning "
"It'll be just for half an hour, but " He passed through the door across from the elevator, went down a short hall, and spoke in greeting to the leather-jacketed storm trooper on guard outside the door at the other end. "Mr. Cardon," the guard nodded. "Mr. Lancedale's expecting you." "So I understand, Bert." He opened the door and went through.
"Obviously, we should know, by about thirteen hundred, what's being planned." "Right, sir." Lancedale's spy at Independent-Conservative headquarters nodded and vanished from the screen. "What does it sound like to you, Frank?" Lancedale asked. "China is obviously a code-designation for some place in downtown Manhattan, where the Conservative goon gangs are being concentrated.
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.
The buzzer on Lancedale's desk interrupted, and a voice came out of the commo box: "Message, urgent and private, sir. Source named as Sforza." Cardon recognized the name. Maybe the Independent-Conservatives have troubles, too, he thought hopefully. Then Lancedale's video screen became the frame for an almost unbelievably commonplace set of features. "Sforza, sir," the man in the screen said.
He shot a quick glance at Latterman, catching the sales manager before he could erase a look of triumph from his face. Things began to add up. Latterman, of course, was the undercover man for Wilton Joyner and Harvey Graves and the rest of the Conservative faction at Literates' Hall, just as he, himself, was Lancedale's agent.
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.
Cardon sampled the coffee, and then used a Sixteenth Century Italian stiletto from Lancedale's desk to perforate the end of his cigar. "Much as I hate it, I'll have to get out of here as soon as I can," he said. "I don't know how long O'Reilly can keep me covered, down at the tavern " Lancedale nodded. "Well, how are things going, then?" "First of all, the brewery," Cardon began.
"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.
They were both silent as a novice Literate bustled in with coffee and individually-sealed cigars. "At least, you're not one of these plain-living-and-right-thinking fanatics, like Wilton Joyner and Harvey Graves," Cardon said. "On top of everything else, that I could not take." Lancedale's thin face broke into a smile, little wrinkles putting his mouth in parentheses.
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