Null-ABC | Page 9

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 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. 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.
Lancedale consigned the brewery to perdition. "That's just your cover;
any money it makes is purely irrelevant. How about the election?"
"Pelton's in," Cardon said. "As nearly in as any candidate ever was
before the