“I think he does. A lot of these dumbos’ll hear that and believe it. I’ll talk to Frank. He’ll know what to do.”
Frank again. She frowned.
“Look, Senator; you think Frank Cardon’s your friend, but I don’t trust him. I never could,” she said. “I think he’s utterly and entirely unscrupulous. Amoral, I believe, is the word. Like a savage, or a pirate, or one of the old-time Nazis or Communists.”
“Oh, Claire!” her father protested. “Frank’s in a tough business—you have no idea the lengths competition goes to in the beer business—and he’s been in politics, and dealing with racketeers and labor unions, all his life. But he’s a good sound Illiterate—family Illiterate for four generations, like ours—and I’d trust him with anything. You heard this fellow Mongery—I always have to pause to keep from calling him Mongrel—saying that I deserved the credit for pulling the Radicals out of the mud and getting the party back on the tracks. Well, I couldn’t have begun to do it without Frank Cardon.”
Frank Cardon stood on the sidewalk, looking approvingly into the window of O’Reilly’s Tavern, in which his display crew had already set up the spread for the current week. On either side was a giant six-foot replica, in black glass, of the Cardon bottle, in the conventional shape accepted by an Illiterate public as containing beer, bearing the red Cardon label with its pictured bottle in a central white disk. Because of the heroic size of the bottles, the pictured bottle on the label bore a bottle bearing a label bearing a bottle bearing a bottle on a label. … He counted eight pictured bottles, down to the tiniest dot of black. There were four-foot bottles next to the six-foot bottles, and three-foot bottles next to them, and, in the middle background, a life-size tri-dimensional picture of an almost nude and incredibly pulchritudinous young lady smiling in invitation at the passing throng and extending a foaming bottle of Cardon’s in her hand. Aside from the printed trademark-registry statements on the labels, there was not a printed word visible in the window.
He pushed through the swinging doors and looked down the long room, with the chairs still roosting sleepily on the tables, and made a quick count of the early drinkers, two thirds of them in white smocks and Sam Browne belts, obviously from Literates’ Hall, across the street. Late drinkers, he corrected himself mentally; they’d be the night shift, having their drinks before going home.
“Good morning, Mr. Cardon,” the bartender greeted him. “Still drinking your own?”
“Hasn’t poisoned me yet,” Cardon told him. “Or anybody else.” He folded a C-bill accordion-wise and set it on edge on the bar. “Give everybody what they want.”
“Drink up, gentlemen, and have one on Mr. Cardon,” the bartender announced, then lowered his voice. “O’Reilly wants to see you. About—” He gave a barely perceptible nod in the direction of the building across the street.
“Yes; I want to see him, too.” Cardon poured from the bottle in front of him, accepted the thanks of the house, and, when the bartender brought the fifteen-dollars-odd change from the dozen drinks, he pushed it back.
He drank slowly, looking around the room, then set down his empty glass and went back, past two doors which bore pictured half-doors revealing, respectively, masculine-trousered and feminine-stockinged ankles, and opened the unmarked office door beyond. The bartender, he knew, had pushed the signal button; the door was unlocked, and, inside, O’Reilly—baptismal name Luigi Orelli—was waiting.
“Chief wants to see you, right away,” the saloon keeper said.
The brewer nodded. “All right. Keep me covered; don’t know how long I’ll be.” He crossed the room and opened a corner-cupboard, stepping inside.
The corner cupboard, which was an elevator, took him to a tunnel below the street. Across the street, he entered another elevator, set the indicator for the tenth floor, and ascended. As the car rose, he could feel the personality of Frank Cardon, Illiterate brewer, drop from him, as though he were an actor returning from the stage to his dressing room.
The room into which he emerged was almost that. There was a long table, at which two white-smocked Literates drank coffee and went over some papers; a third Literate sprawled in a deep chair, resting; at a small table, four men in black shirts and leather breeches and field boots played poker, while a fifth, who had just entered and had not yet removed his leather helmet and jacket or his weapons belt, stood watching them.
Cardon went to a row of lockers along the wall, opened one, and took out a white smock, pulling it over his head and zipping it up to the throat. Then he buckled on a Sam Browne with its tablet holster and stylus gas projector. The Literate sprawling in the chair opened one eye.
“Hi, Frank. Feels good to have them on again, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. Clean,” Cardon replied. “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. William R. Lancedale rose from behind his desk and advanced to greet him with a quick handshake, guiding him to a chair beside the desk. As he did, he sniffed and raised an eyebrow.
“Beer this early, Frank?” he asked.
“Morning, noon, and night, chief,” Cardon replied. “When you said this job was going to be dangerous, I didn’t know you meant that it would lead straight to an alcoholic’s grave.”
“Let me get you a cup of coffee, and a cigar, then.” The white-haired Literate executive resumed his seat, passing a hand back and forth slowly across the face of the commo, the diamond on his finger twinkling, and gave brief instructions. “And just relax, for a minute. You have a tough job, this time, Frank.”
They were
