Finally, by 1300, the new Literates had taken over, and the sale was
running smoothly again. Latterman was somewhere out in the store,
helping them; Claire had lunch for herself and Prestonby sent up from
the restaurant, and for a while they ate in silence, broken by
occasional spatters of small-talk. Then she returned to the question
she had raised and he had not yet answered.

"You say Frank Cardon's a Literate?" she asked. "Then what's he doing
managing the Senator's campaign? Fifth-columning?"

He shook his head. "You think the Fraternities are a solid,
monolithic, organization; everybody agreed on aims and means, and
working together in harmony? That's how it's supposed to look, from
the outside. On the inside, though, there's a bitter struggle going on
between two factions, over policy and for control. One faction wants
to maintain the _status quo_--a handful of Literates doing the reading
and writing for an Illiterate public, and holding a monopoly on
Literacy. They're headed by two men, Wilton Joyner and Harvey Graves.
Bayne was one of that faction."

He paused, thinking quickly. If Lancedale had gotten the upper hand,
there was likely to be a revision of the Joyner-Graves attitude toward
Pelton. In that case, the less he said to incriminate Russell
Latterman, the better. Let Bayne be the villain, for a while, he
decided.

"Bayne," he continued, "is one of a small minority of fanatics who
make a religion of Literacy. I believe he disposed of your father's
medicine, and then deliberately goaded him into a rage to bring on a
heart attack. That doesn't represent Joyner-Graves policy; it was just