“Just like that. You know what really happened, yesterday afternoon, at the store, don’t you?”
“Well, in general, yes. I wish you’d fill me in on some of the details, though, Frank.”
“Details he wants. Well.” Cardon blew on his coffee and sipped it. “The way we played it for propaganda purposes, of course, there was only one big riot, and it was all the work of the wicked Literates and their Independent-Conservative hirelings. Actually, there were two riots. First, there was one the Independents had planned for about a week in advance; that was the one Sforza tipped us on, the one that started in China. Graves knew about it, enough to advise Latterman to get all the Literates out of the store before noon, which Latterman did, with trimmings.
“Then, there was another riot, masterminded by a couple of Illiterates’ Organization Action Committee people named Joe West and Horace Yingling, both deceased. That was the result of Latterman’s bright idea to trap Claire and/or me into betraying Literacy. These Illiterate fanatics made up their minds, to speak rather loosely, that the whole Pelton family were Literates, including Chet himself. They decided that it was better to kill off their candidate and use him for a martyr two years from now than to elect him and have him sell them out. They got about a hundred or so of their goons dressed in Independent-Conservative K.K.K. costumes, bought air support from Patsy Callazo’s mob, up in Vermont, and made that attack on the top landing stage, after starting a fake riot in North Jersey, to draw off the regular Radical-Socialist storm troops. Incidentally, when I found out it was Callazo’s gang that furnished those fighter bombers, I hired another mob to go up and drop a blockbuster on Callazo’s field, to teach him to keep his schnozzle out of politics.”
Lancedale nodded briskly. “That I approve of. How about West and Yingling?”
“Prestonby’s muscle man, Yetsko, killed West. I took care of Comrade Yingling, myself, after I’d gotten reinforcements to the store—first a couple of freelance storm troops that the insurance company hired, and then as many of the Radical Rangers as I could gather up.”
“And Pelton knows about all this?”
“He certainly does! After this caper, the Illiterates’ Organization’s through, as far as any consideration or patronage from the Radicals is concerned.”
“Well, that’s pretty nearly the best thing I’ve heard out of the whole business,” Lancedale said. “In about eight or ten years, we may want to pull the Independent-Conservative party together again, to cash in on public dissatisfaction with Pelton’s socialized Literacy program, which ought to be coming apart at the seams by then. And if we have the Illiterates split into two hostile factions—”
Cardon finished his coffee. “Well, chief, I’ve got to be getting along. O’Reilly can only cover me for a short while, and I have to be getting to this victory party of Pelton’s—”
Lancedale rose and shook hands with him. “I can’t tell you, too many times, what a fine job you did, Frank,” he said. “I hope … no, knowing you, I’m positive … that you’ll be able to engineer a reconciliation between Pelton and his son and daughter and young Prestonby. And then, have yourself a good vacation.”
“I mean to. I’m going deer hunting, to a place up in the mountains, along the old Pennsylvania-New York state line. A little community of about a thousand people, where everybody, men, women and children, can read.”
Lancedale was interested. “A community of Literates?”
Cardon shook his head. “Not Literates-with-a-big-L; just people who can read and write,” he replied. “It’s a kind of back-eddy sort of place, and I imagine, a couple of hundred years ago, the community was too poor to support one of these ‘progressive’ school systems that made Illiterates out of the people in the cities. Probably couldn’t raise enough money in school taxes to buy all the expensive audiovisual equipment, so they had to use old-fashioned textbooks, and teach the children to read from them. They have radios, and TV, of course, but they also have a little daily paper, and they have a community library.”
Lancedale was thoughtful, for a moment. “You know, Frank, there must be quite a few little enclaves of lowercase-literacy like that, in backwoods and mountain communities, especially in the west and the south. I’m going to make a project of finding such communities, helping them, and getting recruits from them. They’ll fit into the Plan. Well, I’ll be seeing you some time tomorrow, I suppose?”
He watched Cardon go out, and then poured a glass of port for himself and sipped slowly, holding the glass to the light and watching the ruby glow it cast on the desk top. It had been over thirty years ago, when he had been old Jules de Chambord’s assistant, that the Plan had been first conceived. De Chambord was dead these twenty years, and he had taken the old man’s place, and they had only made the first step. Things would move faster, now, but he would still die before the Plan was completed, and Frank Cardon, whom he had marked as his successor, would be an old man, and somebody like young Ray Pelton would be ready to replace him, but the Plan would go on, until everybody would be literate, not Literate, and illiteracy, not Illiteracy, would be a mark of social stigma, and most people would live their whole lives without personal acquaintance with an illiterate.
There were a few years, yet, to prepare for the next step. The white smocks would have to go; Literates would have to sacrifice their paltry titles and distinctions. There would have to be a reconstitution of the Fraternities. Wilton Joyner and Harvey Graves and the other Conservative Literates would have to be convinced, emotionally as well as intellectually, of the need for change. There were a few of the older brothers who could never adjust their thinking; they would have to be promoted to
