bout that tip from Sforza. Nothing, of course.
Nothing from Sforza, either. The thing must have been planned weeks
ago, whatever it is, and everybody briefed personally, and nothing on
disk or tape about it. But what's going to happen here? Lancedale
going to pull a rabbit out of his hat?"

Cardon explained. Chernov whistled. "Man, that's no rabbit; that's a
full-grown Bengal tiger! I hope it doesn't eat us, by mistake."

Cardon looked around, saw Lancedale in animated argument with a group
of his associates. Some of the others seemed to be sharing Chernov's
fears.

"I have every confidence in the chief," Toppington said. "If his
tigers make a meal off anybody, it'll be--" He nodded in the direction
of the other side of the chamber, where Wilton Joyner, short, bald,
pompous, and Harvey Graves, tall and cadaverous, stood in a
Rosencrantz-Guildenstern attitude, surrounded by half a dozen of their
top associates.

The Council President, Morehead, came out a little door onto the
rostrum and took his seat, pressing a button. The call bell began
clanging slowly. Lancedale, glancing around, saw Cardon and nodded. On
both sides of the chamber, the Literates began taking seats, and
finally the call bell stopped, and Literate President Morehead rapped
with his gavel. The opening formalities were hustled through. The
routine held-over business was rubber-stamped with hasty votes of
approval, even including the decisions of the extemporary meeting of
that morning on the affair at Pelton's. Finally, the presiding officer
rapped again and announced that the meeting was now open for new
business.

At once, Harvey Graves was on his feet.

"Literate President," he began, as soon as the chair had recognized
him, "this is scarcely _new_ business, since it concerns a problem, a
most serious problem, which I and some of my colleagues have brought
to the attention of this Council many times in the past--the problem
of Black Literacy!" He spat out the two words as though they were a
mouthful of poison. "Literate President and fellow Literates, if
anything could destroy our Fraternities, to which we have given our
lives' devotion, it would be the widespread tendency to by-pass the
Fraternities, the practice of Literacy by non-Fraternities people--"

"We've heard all that before, Wilton!" somebody from the Lancedale
side called out. "What do you want to talk about that you haven't
gotten on every record of every meeting for the last th