Null-ABC Part 11

Pres...o...b.. shrugged. "Take your choice. A compet.i.tor would concentrate where your biggest volume of sale was going on, though; political enemies would try to get up here, and that's what this gang's trying to do."

"He's absolutely right, Guido," Claire told the sergeant. "Do whatever he tells you."

Sergeant Coccozello looked at him, awaiting orders.

"We can't commit our reserves in that Chinaware Department fight; we need them up here. Where are they, now, and how many?"

"Thirteen, counting myself and the man in there." He nodded toward the room where Chester Pelton lay in drugged sleep. "In the squad room, on the floor below."

"And for the mob below to get up here?"

"Two escalators, sir, northeast and southwest corners of office country. And we got some new counters that Mr. Latterman had built, that didn't get put out in time for the sale. We can use them to build barricades, if we have to."

"How about a 'copter attack on the roof?"

Coccozello grinned. "I'd like to see that, now, Literate. We got plenty of A-A equipment up there--four 7-mm machine guns, two 12-mm's, and one 20-mm auto-cannon. We could hold off the State Guard with that."

"That isn't saying much, but they're not even that good. So it'll be the escalators. Think, now, sergeant. Fires, burglary, holdups--"

The sergeant's grin widened. "High-pressure fire hose, one at the head of each escalator, and a couple more that can be dragged over from other outlets. Say we put two men on each hose, lying down at the head of the escalators. And we got plenty of firearms; we can arm some of these clerks, up here--"

"All right; do that. And put out an emergency call, by inter-department telephone, not by public address, to floorwalkers from the fifth floor down, to gather up all male clerks and other store personnel in their departments, arm them with anything they can find, and rush them to Chinaware. Tell them to shout 'Pelton!' when they hit the mob, to avoid breaking each others' heads in the confusion, and tell them they're expected to hold the Chinaware and Gla.s.sware departments themselves, without any help from the store police."

"Why not?" Claire wanted to know.

"That's how battles come to happen at the wrong time and place,"

Pres...o...b.. told her. "Two small detachments collide, and each sends back for re-enforcements, and the next thing anybody knows, there's a full-size battle going on where n.o.body wants to fight one. We're going to fight our main battle at the head of the escalators from the twelfth floor."

"You've done this sort of work before, Literate," Coccozello grinned.

"You talk like a storm-troop captain. What else?"

"Well, so far, we've just been talking defense. We need to take the offensive, ourselves." He glanced around. "Is there a freight elevator from this block to the bas.e.m.e.nt?"

"Yeah. Wait till I see." Coccozello went to the TV-screen and dialed.

"Yeah, and the elevator's up here, too," he said.

"Well, you take what men you can spare--a couple of your cops, and a couple of the office crew--arm them with pistols, carbines, clubs, whatever you please, and take them down to the bas.e.m.e.nt. Gather up all the warehouse gang, down there, and arm them. And as soon as you get to the bas.e.m.e.nt, send the elevator back up here. That's our life line; we can't risk having it captured. You'll organize flying squads to go up into the store from the bas.e.m.e.nt. Bust up any trouble that seems to be getting started, if you can, but your main mission will be to rescue store police, Literates, Literates' guards, and store help, and get them back to the bas.e.m.e.nt. They'll be picked up from there and brought up here on the elevator." He picked up a pad from a desk and wrote a few lines on it. "Show this to any Literate you meet; get Literate Hopkinson to countersign it for you, when you find him. Tell him we want his whole gang up here as soon as possible."

"How about getting help from outside?" Claire asked. "The city police, or--"

"City police won't lift a finger," Pres...o...b.. told her. "They never help anybody who has a private police force; they have too much to do protecting John Q. Citizen. Hutschnecker; suppose you call Radical-Socialist campaign headquarters; tell them to rush some of their Lone Rangers around here--"

[Ill.u.s.tration:]

Russell M. Latterman was lunching in the store restaurant, at a table next the thick gla.s.s part.i.tion, where he could look out across Confectionery and Pastries toward the Tobacco Shoppe and the Liquor Department. There were two ways of looking at it, of course. He was occupying a table that might have been used by a customer, but, on the other hand, he was known by sight to many of the customers, and the fact that he was eating here had some advertising value, and he could keep his eye on the business going on around him. Off in the distance, he caught the white flash of a Literate smock at one of the counters; one of the new crew sent in to replace the ones Bayne had pulled out.

He was glad and at the same time disturbed. He had had his doubts about staging a Literates' strike, and he was almost positive that Wilton Joyner had known nothing about it. The whole thing had been Harvey Graves' idea. There was a serious question of Literate ethics involved, to say nothing of the effect on the public. The trick of forcing Claire Pelton to reveal her secret Literacy was all right, although he wished that it had been Frank Cardon who had opened that safe. Or did he? Cardon would have brazened it out, claimed to have memorized the combination after having learned it by observation, and would probably have gotten away with it. But that silly girl had lost her head afterward, and had gone on to brand herself, irrevocably, as a Literate.

One of the waitresses was hurrying toward him, almost falling over herself in excitement. She began talking when she was ten feet from the table.

"Mr. Latterman! Mr. Latterman!" she was calling to him. "A terrible fight, down in Chinaware--!"

"Well, what do we have store police for?" he demanded. "They can take care of it. Now be quiet, Madge; don't get the customers excited!"

He returned to his lunch, watching, with satisfaction, the crowd that was packing into the Liquor Department, next to the restaurant. That special loss-leader, Old Atom-Bomb Rye, had been a good idea. In the first place, the stuff was fit for nothing but cleaning drains and removing varnish; if he were Pelton, he would have fired that fool buyer who got them overstocked on it. But the audio-advertiser, outside, was reiterating: "_Choice whiskies, two hundred dollars a sixth and up!_" and pulling in the customers, who, when they discovered that the two-hundred-dollar bargain was Old Atom-Bomb, were sh.e.l.ling out five hundred to a grand a sixth for good liquor.

He finished his coffee and got to his feet. Be a good idea to look in on Liquor, and see how things were going. The department was getting more and more crowded every minute; three customers were entering for every one who left.

On the way, he pa.s.sed two women, and caught a s.n.a.t.c.h of conversation:

"Don't go down on the third floor, for Heaven's sake ... terrible fight ... smashing everything up--"

Worried, he continued into Liquor, and the looks of the crowd there increased his worries. Too many men between twenty and thirty, all dressed alike, looking alike, talking and acting alike. It looked like a goon-gang infiltration, and he was beginning to see why Harvey Graves had wanted the Literates pulled out, and why Joyner, bound by ethics to do nothing against the commercial interests of Pelton's, had known nothing about it. He started toward a counter, to speak to a clerk, but one of the stocky, quietly-dressed young men stepped in front of him.

"Gimme a bottle of Atom-Bomb," he said. "Don't bother wrapping it."

"Yes, sir." The clerk seemed worried, too. He got the bottle and set it on the counter. "That'll be two C, sir."

"I see you're wearing a Radical-Socialist b.u.t.ton," the customer commented. "Because you want to, or because Chet Pelton makes you?"

"Mr. Pelton never interferes with his employees' political convictions," the clerk replied loyally.

Saying nothing, the customer took the bottle, swung it by the neck, and smashed it over the clerk's head, knocking him senseless.

"That's all that rotgut's good for," the customer said, jumping over the counter. "All right, boys; help yourselves!"

For a surprisingly long time, the riot was localized in China, where it had begun. Using, alternately, three TV-pickups around the scene of the disturbance, Pres...o...b.. watched its progress, and watched successive details of store personnel, armed with clubs and a few knives and sono pistols, hit the riot, shouting their battle cry, and vanish. They were, of course, lambs of sacrifice, however unlamblike their conduct. They were buying time, and they were drawing groups of goons into the action in China and Gla.s.sware who might have been making trouble elsewhere.

There was an outbreak on the sixth floor, in Liquor; Claire, touring the store on the other TV-screen, spotted it and called his attention to it. Back of the shattered gla.s.s part.i.tion, a mob of men were s.n.a.t.c.hing bottles from the shelves and tossing them out to the crowd.

One of the clerks, in his gray uniform jacket, was lying unconscious outside. While Pres...o...b.. watched, another, and another, came flying out the doorway. A fourth victim, in ordinary business clothes, tattered and disheveled, came flying out after them, to land in a heap, stunned for an instant, and then pick himself up. Pres...o...b.. laughed heartily when he recognized Literate--undercover--First Cla.s.s Russell M. Latterman.

"I ought to have antic.i.p.ated that," he said. "Any time there's a riot, the liquor stores are the first things looted. The liquor stores, and the--Claire! See what's going on in Sporting Goods!"

Sporting Goods, between Tools & Hardware and Toys, on the fifth floor, was swamped. One of the clerks was lying on the floor in a puddle of blood, past any help; none of the others were in sight. The gun racks and pistol cases were being cleaned out systematically. This had been organized in advance. There were four or five men working industriously wiping grease out of bores and actions before handing out firearms, and a couple more making sure that the right cartridges went with each weapon. Somebody had brought a small grinding wheel over from Tools and plugged it in, and was grinding points on the foils and epees. Others were collecting baseball bats, golf clubs, and football helmets and catchers' masks. The Tool Department was being stripped of everything that could be used as a weapon, too.

The whole store, by this time, was an approximation of Mutiny in a Madhouse. Dressgoods was being looted by a howling mob of women, who were pulling bolts of material from shelves and fighting among themselves over them. Somebody had turned on the electric fans, and long streams of flimsy fabric were blowing about like a surrealist maypole dance. Somebody in Household Furnishings had turned on a couple of fans, too, and a mob of hoodlums were opening cans of paint and throwing them into the fan blades.

The little Antiques Department, in a corner of the fourth floor back of the Gift Shoppe, was an island of peace in the general chaos. There was only one way into it, and one of the clerks, who had gotten himself into a suit of Fifteenth Century battle armor, was standing in the entrance, leaning on a two-hand sword. There was blood on the long blade, and more blood splashed on the floor in front of him. He was being left entirely alone.

Hutschnecker, called to the telephone, spoke briefly, listened for a while, spoke again in hearty thanks, and hung up.

"Macy & Gimbel's," he told Pres...o...b... "They heard about our trouble--probably one of their price-spotters phoned in about it--and they're offering to send twenty of their store-cops to help us out.

They'll be landing on our stage in eight minutes, rifles and steel helmets."