Astounding British Edition, Vol. 9, No. 7 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

DPR ale ath tee ee od we Whee ioe Pty rr ee Ne Ue Was Bt Ny - « i . heen pleasantly surprised to estimate the day’s attendance at something like ninety-seven per cent of enrollment. That was really good; why, it was only three per cent short of perfect! Maybe it was the new rule requiring a sound-recorder excuse for absence. Or it could have been his propa- ganda campaign about the benefits of education, Or, very easily, it could have been the result of sending Doug Yetsko and some of his boys around to talk to recalcitrant parents. It was good to see that that was having some effect beside an increase in the number of attempts on his life, or the flood of complaints to the Board of Education. Well, Lancedale had gotten Education merged with his Office of Communications, and Lance- dale was back of him to the limit, so the complaints had died out on the empty air. And Doug Yetsko was his bodyguard, so most of the would-be assassins had died, also. The “North American Anthem,” which had replaced the “Star-Spangled Banner” after the United States-Canadian-Mexican merger, came to an end. The students and their white-smocked teachers, below, re- laxed 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’ uniform, he looked like some ogreish giant out of the mythology of the past. = ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION - Out over the crowded auditorium, still | “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 atten- dance.” “Don’t you get it, captain?” Yetsko was reaching up to lock the door of his cubicle; he seemed surprised at Preston- by’s obtuseness. “Day before election; the little darlings’ moms and pops don’t want them out running around. We can look for another big crowd tomorrow, too.” Prestonby gave a snort of disgust. “Of course; how imbecilic can I really get? I didn’t notice any of them falling down, so I suppose you didn’t see anything out of line.” “Well, the hall monitors make them turn in their little playthings at the doors,” Yetsko said, “but hall monitors can be gotten at, and some of the stuff they make in Manual Training, when nobody’s watching them— Prestonby nodded. Just a week before, a crude but perfectly operative 17-mm shotgun had been discovered in the last stages of manufacture in the machine shop, and five out of six of the worn-out files would vanish, to be ground down into dirks. He often thought of the stories of his grandfather, who had been a major during the Occupation of Russia, after the Fourth World War. Those old-timers didn’t know how easy they’d had it; they should have tried to run an Illiterate high school. Yetsko was still grumbling slanders on the legitimacy of the student body. “One of those little angels shoots me, it’s just a cute little prank, and we oughtn’t to frown on the little darling when it’s just trying to express its dear little personality, or we might give it complexes, or some- thing,” he falsettoed incongruously. “And if the little darling’s mistake doesn’t kill me outright and I shoot back, people talk about King Herod!” He used langu- | age about the Board of Education and the tax-paying public that was probably sub- versive within the meaning of the Loyalty Oath. “I wish I had a pair of 40-mm auto- cannons up there instead of that sono un.” Z “Rach class is a little worse than the GComichbooks EC