Banner" after the United States-Canadian-Mexican merger, came to an
end. The students and their white-smocked teachers, below, relaxed
from attention; most of them sat down, while monitors and teachers in
the rear were getting the students into the aisles and marching them
off to study halls and classrooms and workshops. The orchestra struck
up a lively march tune. He leaned his left elbow--Literates learned
early, or did not live to learn, not to immobilize the right hand--on
the lectern and watched the interminable business of getting the
students marched out, yearning, as he always did at this time, for the
privacy of his office, where he could smoke his pipe. Finally, they
were all gone, and the orchestra had gathered up its instruments and
filed out into the wings of the stage, and he looked up to the left
and said, softly:

"All right, Doug; show's over."

With a soft thud, the big man dropped down from the guard's cubicle
overhead, grinning cheerfully. He needed a shave--Yetsko always did,
in the mornings--and in his leather Literates' guard uniform, he
looked like some ogreish giant out of the mythology of the past.

[Illustration:]

"I was glad to have you up there with the Big Noise, this morning,"
Prestonby said. "What a mob! I'm still trying to figure out why we
have such an attendance."

"Don't you get it, captain?" Yetsko was reaching up to lock the door
of his cubicle; he seemed surprised at Prestonby's obtuseness. "Day
before election; the little darlings' moms and pops don't want them