floor came to life in full sound and color. The pickup must have been
across an aisle from the box from whence the alarm had come; they
could see one of Pelton's Illiterate clerks lying unconscious under
it, and the handphone dangling at the end of its cord. The aisles were
full of jostling, screaming women, trampling one another and fighting
frantically to get out, and, among them, groups of three or four men
were gathered back to back. One such group had caught a store
policeman; three were holding him while a fourth smashed vases over
his head, grabbing them from a nearby counter. A pink dinner plate
came skimming up from the crowd, narrowly missing the wired TV pickup.
A moment later, a blue-and-white sugar bowl, thrown with better aim,
came curving at them in the screen. It scored a hit, and brought
darkness, though the bedlam of sound continued.

[Illustration:]

[Illustration:]

Cardon looked at his watch as he entered the Council Chamber at
Literates' Hall, smoothing his smock hastily under his Sam Browne.
He'd made it with very little time to spare, before the doors would be
sealed and the meeting would begin. He'd been all over town, tracking
down that report of Sforza's; he'd even made a quick visit to
Chinatown, on the off chance that "China" had been used in an attempt
at the double concealment of the obvious, but, as he'd expected, he'd
found nothing. The people there hardly knew there was to be an
election. Accustomed for millennia to ideographs read only by experts,
they viewed the current uproar about Literacy with unconcern.

At the door, he deposited his pocket recorder--no sound-recording