ld 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
audio-visual 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 lower-case-literacy like that, in
back-woods 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