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be found, such a
statement would be libelous--provided Pelton had nerve enough to sue
me."
"Why, you dirty misbegotten illegitimate--!" Pelton was on his feet. His
hand went to his hip, and then, realizing that he was unarmed and, in
any case, confronted only by an electronic image, he sat down again.
"Pelton's been yapping for socialized Literacy," the man on the screen
continued. "I'm not going back to the old argument that any kind of
socialization is only the thin edge of the wedge which will pry open the
pit of horrors from which the world has climbed since the Fourth World
War. If you don't realize that now, it's no use for me to repeat it again.
But I will ask you, do you realize, for a moment, what a program of
socialized Literacy would mean, apart from the implications of any
kind of socialization? It would mean that inside of five years, the
Literates would control the whole government. They control the courts,
now--only a Literate can become a lawyer, and only a lawyer can
become a judge. They control the armed forces--only a Literate can
enter West Point or Fort MacKenzie or Chapultepec or White Sands or
Annapolis. And, if Chester Pelton's socialization scheme goes into
effect, there will be no branch of the government which will not be
completely under the control of the Associated Fraternities of
Literates!"
The screen went suddenly dark. Her father turned, to catch her with her
hand still on the switch.
"Put it back on; I want to hear what that lying pimp of a Slade

Gardner's saying about me!"
"Phooy; you'd have shot it out, yourself, if you'd had your gun on. I saw
you reaching for it. Now be quiet, and take it easy," she ordered.
He reached toward the Readilit for a cigarette, then his hand stopped.
His face was contorted with pain; he gave a gasp of suffocation.
Claire cried in dismay: "You're not going to have another of those
attacks? Where are the nitrocaine bulbs?"
"Don't ... have any ... here. Some at the office, but--"
"I told you to get more," she accused.
"Oh, I don't need them, really." His voice was steadier, now; the spasm
of pain had passed. He filled his coffee cup and sipped from it. "Turn
on the video again, Claire. I want to hear what that Gardner's saying."
"I will not! Don't you have people at party headquarters monitoring this
stuff? Well, then. Somebody'll prepare an answer, if he needs
answering."
"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