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One faction wants to maintain the status quo a handful of Literates doing the reading and writing for an Illiterate public, and holding a monopoly on Literacy. They're headed by two men, Wilton Joyner and Harvey Graves. Bayne was one of that faction." He paused, thinking quickly. If Lancedale had gotten the upper hand, there was likely to be a revision of the Joyner-Graves attitude toward Pelton.
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.
You did a good job; got here promptly. Be seeing you, Goodkin." He climbed into his own 'copter and started the motor. "Put the Literates in their place!" the tri-dimensional colossus roared triumphantly after the retreating Independents. "Our servants, not our masters!" At eight thousand, he got the 'copter onto the lower Manhattan beam and relaxed.
The tablet on his belt, Pelton knew, was really a camouflaged holster for a small automatic, and the gold stylus was a gas-projector. The black-leather-jacketed bodyguards, of course, were discreetly out of range of the camera. Members of the Associated Fraternities of Literates weren't exactly loved by the non-reading public they claimed to serve.
Every month, the pharmaceutical companies announced a new wonder drug and if it wasn't sulfa, it was penicillin, and if it wasn't penicillin it would be aureomycin. Why, most of the scientific research was being carried on by a few Literates in the basements of a few libraries, re-discovering the science of two centuries ago.
All Graves told me to do was fix up a situation, using my own judgment, that would provoke a Literate strike and force either Claire or Frank here to betray Literacy. But I had no idea that it would involve a riot like this. If I had, I'd have stood on Literates' ethics and refused to have any part in it." "That's about how I thought it would be," Cardon nodded.
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.
"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.
"Give this to the girl outside, and tell her to have them called for and sent in here," the boy directed. "And see if you can find us some transport. I think there ought to be a couple of big 'copters finished down at the shops. And if you can find a couple more Literates' guards you can talk into going with us " Yetsko nodded and took the paper without question.
If you pick up the shrunken pages of your Times or Tatler, do you wonder at the reason for their shrinkage or do you realize there are fewer literates in the world than there were ten years ago? "The Americas were upstart continents, werent they? I am not speaking sarcastically, my point is not a chauvinistic one, not even hemispherically prideful. And the Old World the womb of culture?
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