Null-ABC Part 10

"Now, wait a minute!" Joyner objected. "This motion ought to be debated--"

"What do you want to debate about it?" Chernov demanded. "You presented it, didn't you?"

"Well, I wanted to give the Council an opportunity to discuss it, as typical of our problems in dealing with Black ... I mean, non-Fraternities ... Literacy--"

"You mean, you didn't know it was loaded!" Cardon told him. "Well, that's your hard luck; we're going to squeeze the trigger!"

"I withdraw the motion!" Joyner shouted.

"Literate President," Lancedale said gently, his thin face lighting with an almost saintly smile, "Literate Joyner simply cannot withdraw his motion, now. It has been properly seconded and placed before the house, and so has my own humble contribution to it. I demand that the motion be acted upon."

"Vote! Vote! Vote!" the Lancedale Literates began yelling.

"I call on all my adherents to vote against this motion!" Joyner shouted.

"Now look here, Wilton!" Harvey Graves shouted, reddening with anger.

"You're just making a fool out of me. This was your idea, in the first place! Do you want to smash everything we've ever done in the Fraternities?"

"Harvey, we can't go on with it," Joyner replied. He crossed quickly to Graves' seat and whispered something.

"For the record," Lancedale said sweetly, "our colleague, Literate Joyner, has just whispered to Literate Graves that since I have seconded his motion, he's now afraid of it. I think Literate Graves is trying to a.s.sure him that my support is merely a bluff. For the information of this body, I want to state categorically that it is not, and that I will be deeply disappointed if this motion does not pa.s.s."

An elderly Literate on the Joyner-Graves side, an undersized man with a bald head and a narrow mouth, was on his feet. He looked like an aged rat brought to bay by a terrier.

"I was against this fool idea from the start!" he yelled. "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 jacka.s.s!" one of Joyner's people shouted at him.

"Shut up, yourself, Ginter," a hatchet-faced woman Literate from the Finance Section squawked.

Literate President Morehead, an amiable and ineffective maiden aunt in trousers, pounded frantically with his gavel. "Order!" he fairly screamed. "This is disgraceful!"

"You can say that again!" Brigade commander Chernov boomed. "What do you people over on the right think this is; an Illiterates'

Organization Political Action meeting?"

"Vote! Vote!" Cardon bellowed.

Literate President Morehead banged his gavel and, in a last effort, started the call bell clanging.

"The motion has been presented and seconded; the amendment has been presented and seconded. It will now be put to a vote!"

"Roll call!" Cardon demanded. Four or five other voices, from both sides of the chamber, supported him.

"The vote will be by roll call," Literate President Morehead agreed.

"Addison, Walter G."

"Aye!" He was a subordinate of Harvey Graves.

"Agostino, Pedro V."

"Aye!" He was a Lancedale man.

So it went on. Graves voted for the motion. Joyner voted against it.

All the Lancedale faction, now convinced that their leader had the opposition on the run, voted loudly for it.

"The vote has been one hundred and eighty-three for, seventy-two against," Literate President Morehead finally announced. "The motion is herewith declared carried. Literate Lancedale, I appoint you to organize a committee to implement the said motion, at once."

Pres...o...b.. flung open the door of the rest room where Sergeant Coccozello and his subordinate were guarding the unconscious Pelton.

"Sergeant! Who's in charge of store police, now?"

Coccozello looked blank for an instant. "I guess I am," he said.

"Lieutenant Dunbar's off on his vacation, in Mexico, and Captain Freizer's in the hospital; he was taken sick suddenly last evening."

Probably poisoned, Pres...o...b.. thought, making a mental note to find out which hospital and get in touch with one of the Literate medics there.

"Well, come out here, sergeant, and have a look around the store on the TV. We have troubles."

Coccozello could hear the noise that was still coming out of the darkened screen. As he stepped forward, Claire got another pickup, some distance from the one that had been knocked out. A mob of women customers were surging away from the Chinaware Department, into Gla.s.sware; they were running into the shopping crowd there, with considerable disturbance. A couple of store police were trying to get through the packed ma.s.s of humanity, and making slow going of it.

Coccozello swore and started calling on his reserves on one of the handphones.

"Wait a moment, sergeant," Pres...o...b.. stopped him. "Don't commit any of your reserves down there. We're going to need them to hold the executive country, up here. This is only the start of a general riot."

"Who are you and what do you know about it?" Coccozello challenged.

"Listen to him, Guido," Claire said. "He knows what he's doing."

"Claire, you have some way of keeping a running count of the number of customers in and out of the store, haven't you?" Pres...o...b.. asked.

"Why, yes; here." She pointed to an indicator on Chester Pelton's desk, where constantly changing numbers danced.

"And don't you have a continuous check on sales, too? How do they jibe?"

"They don't; look. Sales are away below any expectation from the number of customers, even allowing for shopping habits of a bargain-day crowd. But what's that got to do--"

Pres...o...b.. was back at the TV, s.h.i.+fting from pickup to pickup.

"Look, sergeant, Claire. That isn't a normal bargain-day crowd, is it?

Look at those groups of men, three or four to a group, s.h.i.+fting around, waiting for something to happen. This store's been infiltrated by a big goon gang. That business in Chinaware's just the start, to draw our reserves down to the third door. Look at that, now."

He had a pickup on the twelfth floor, the floor just under the public landing stages, and at the foot of the escalators leading to the central executive block.

"See how they're concentrating, there?" he pointed out. "In that ladies' wear department, there are three men for every woman, and the men are all drifting from counter to counter over in the direction of our escalators."

Coccozello swore again, feelingly. "Literate, you know your stuff!" he said. "That fuss in China is just a feint; this is where they're really going to hit. What do you think it is? Macy & Gimbel's trying to bust up our sale, or politics?"