For a while there, Ed Wonder had thought he was following the old boy, but toward the end it had degenerated into gibberish.
However, Ed Wonder had dealt with twitches before. The fact that this one had the most far out abilities that the radio man had ever run into was beside the point. Twitch he was. Ed said placatingly, “Yeah, well, the way you put it makes a lot of sense. Utopia is reactionary.”
Tubber looked at him questioningly.
“I see, dear one, that possibly your motive for visiting us might be other than interest in the path.” He smiled benignly and looked at Nefertiti, who hadn’t taken her eyes from Ed Wonder during all this. She flushed. The girl, Ed decided, seemed to be in almost perpetual blush. She couldn’t be as shy as all that.
Tubber said gently, “Could it be that you have come to spark my daughter?”
Gently it might have been said, but Ed Wonder barely managed to keep his seat. All instincts told him to be up. Up and away!
“Oh, no…” he protested. “Oh…”
“Father!” Nefertiti said.
Ed didn’t look at her. He suspected that Nefertiti Tubber was the color of new bricks, if she could go pink just looking at a man. He stuttered, “Oh, no. No. I just came about the television, the radio.”
Ezekiel Joshua Tubber was frowning, though such was his face that it came over more kindly than might have another man’s smile. He said sadly, “How unfortunate. Truly, the All-Mother’s path to Elysium is brightened by the romancing of our young. And I fear that such is the life I lead my Nefertiti that she loses the opportunity to meet pilgrims of her own age.” He sighed and said, “But what is this about television and radio? As you know, Edward, I have little sympathy with the direction our mass media have taken of recent years.”
Ed was finding courage in the other’s quiet manner. Tubber seemed to carry no grudge at all due to the fiasco at the station the other night. Ed said, “Well, you didn’t have to take it to such extreme. This lack of sympathy.”
Tubber was puzzled. “I don’t believe I understand, dear one.”
Ed said impatiently, “The curse. The curse you put on television and radio. Holy smokes, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten you did it!”
Tubber’s eyes, bewildered, went from Ed to Nefertiti. She sat there, her wrapt concentration on Ed waning slightly as apprehension began to grow.
She said, “Father, you have probably forgotten, but you became distraught the other night on Ed’s radio program. You… called upon the power to curse it.”
Ed blurted, “And now there’s not a TV or radio station in the world still operating.”
Tubber looked at the two of them, blankly. “You mean that I called down wrath upon these admittedly perverted institutions and… it worked ?”
“It worked, all right,” Ed said glumly. “And now I’m out of a job. Several million people in the industry, in one part of the world or another are out of jobs.”
“All the world?” Tubber said, amazed.
“Oh, father,” Nefertiti protested. “You know you have the power. Remember the young man who continually practiced his hillbilly music on his guitar?”
Tubber was staring fascinatedly at Ed Wonder. He said to his daughter, “Yes, but breaking five guitar strings at a distance of a few hundred feet is certainly nothing…”
Nefertiti said, “Or the neon sign that you complained made your eyes feel as though they were about to pop out.”
Ed said, “You mean you didn’t know it worked? That you cursed radio and now there’s not a station, radio or TV, that isn’t on the blink?”
Tubber said, in awe, “The powers the All-Mother can delegate are indeed wondrous.”
“They’re wondrous all right,” Ed said bitterly. “But the thing is, can you reverse them? People are getting desperate. Why, in a little town like this, thousands are roaming the streets with nothing to do. Why even a little tent meeting like yours is packed to the limit and…”
He let the sentence dribble away. The face of Ezekiel Joshua Tubber had suddenly gone empty, tragically empty.
Tubber said, “You mean… dear one… that the large crowds I have suddenly been attracting—the capacity audiences so that I must hold a dozen talks a day. They appear…”
Ed said bitterly, “They appear because they haven’t any place else to go and be entertained.”
Nefertiti said in soft compassion, “Father, I was going to tell you. Multitudes of people are roaming up and down the streets. They are desperate for amusement.”
Tubber’s homely face, broken for a moment, was now slowly regaining strength. “Amusement!”
Ed said, “Ezekiel, don’t you see? People have to do something with their time. They want to be entertained. They want to have a little fun. That’s reasonable, isn’t it? They like radio, they like TV. You can’t stop them. So, okay, they don’t know what to do with themselves. They’ve got to have some way to kill time.”
“Kill time! Kill time!” Tubber rumbled. “Killing time is not murder, dear one. It is suicide! We are committing racial suicide with our meaningless, empty lives. Man must resume the path to Elysium, not seek methods of wasting life away!”
Ed said, “Yeah, but don’t you see, ah, dear one? People don’t want to listen to your message. They’re well, conditioned. They want to be entertained. And you can’t stop them. Okay, take away their TV and radio and…”
Even as he spoke, caught up in the argument, Ed Wonder knew he had already said too much. Ezekiel Joshua Tubber was swelling in anger.
“Yes?” he thundered. “Take away their TV and radio and what will they do?”
Ed tried to cut it off, but the old man’s strength gripped him almost as though physically. Gripped him and demanded. He said, “And they’ll turn to things like movies.”
“Oh, they will!”
Ed Wonder closed his eyes in pain.
A new voice broke in. “There is a fresh audience, dear one. We have ushered the last group from the tent, and a new one awaits you to hear the expounding of the word.”
Ed looked up. It was one of the faithful, whom he had noticed earlier at the entrance to the main tent.
Tubber stood erect, some seven feel tall, Ed Wonder estimated. At least seven feet tall, and pushing three hundred pounds.
“Ah, they do, do they? Well, verily, hear the word they shall!”
Ed Wonder, stricken dumb, looked at Nefertiti. She sat there, elbows tight against her side, as though in feminine protest at the masculine psychic power emanating from her father.
The prophet stormed from the tent.
Ed looked back at the girl again. All he could think of to say was, “I’m glad I didn’t mention carnivals and circuses.”
Nefertiti shook her head. “Father loves circuses,” she said.
They sat there for a time, waiting. Neither knew for how long. In their silence, they could hear sounds from the larger tent, and finally the swelling thunder of Tubber’s voice.
Nefertiti began to say something, but Ed interrupted her. “I know,” he said. “He’s speaking in wrath.”
She nodded silently.
The voice reached a pitch.
Ed said, “The power.” He added, dismally, “I was looking forward to seeing that production, Ben Hur Rides Again.”
He had guessed right. Oh, he had guessed right, all right.
The proof came as he tooled the little Volkshover back into Kingsburg. For the first time in his life, Ed Wonder came upon a lynch mob. A shouting, screaming, hate-smelling crowd milling about in the ever confusion of the mob. Screaming for someone to get a rope. Screaming to go to the park to find the limb of a tree. Counterscreaming that a lamppost would do. Somewhere in the center, a mewling, fear-overcome victim was struggling in the grasps of a wild-faced, glaring-of-eye trio who seemed the leaders of the riot, if a lynch mob can be said to have leaders.
Ed could have lifted above the demonstration and gone on. All his instincts, all his fear of physical violence to
ld him to get away from the vicinity immediately, to get away but fast, to personal safety. But the sheer fantasy of the action held him in fascination. He dropped to the street level and stared.
There must have been fully five hundred of them, and their rage was a frenzy, The yelling and shouting, the shrilling from the women members of the mob—all of it made no sense.
Ed shouted to a passing participant of the demonstration, “What the devil’s going on! Where’s the police!”
“We run the police off,” the raging pedestrian screamed back at him, and was gone.
Ed Wonder continued to stare.
Somebody said, “The natives are restless tonight, eh? Come on, Little Ed, let’s get in there. They’ll kill that poor idiot.”
Ed swiveled his head. It was Buzz De Kemp. He looked back at the screaming crowd again. “You think I’m completely around the bend?” His stomach had tightened in terror at the very idea of getting nearer to the raging.
“Somebody’s got to help him,” Buzz growled. He pulled the stogie from his mouth and threw it into the gutter. “Here goes nothing.” He started for the mob.
Ed Wonder vaulted over the side of the hovercar and took a few steps after him. “Buzzo! Use your head!” The other didn’t look back. He disappeared into the swirling crowd.
Ed grabbed a bystander who seemed a fellow observer of the scene, rather than a participant.
“What’s happened!” Ed demanded.
From the distance came the ululations of fire sirens.
The other looked at Ed, brushed his hand away. “Movie projectionist,” he shouted, above the roar. “Folks standing in line for hours, then he fouls up the projector and claims he can’t fix it.”
Ed Wonder stared at him. “You mean they’re hanging that man because his projector broke down? Nobody’s that kooky!”
The other growled, defensively, “You don’t know, buddy. Everybody’s like on edge. These folks were standing for hours to see this here new show. And that lamebrain louses up the movie machine.”
Something he was going to find difficult to explain for the rest of his life happened to Ed Wonder. Something snapped. His mind, suddenly empty of the fear of the crowd, urged him into an action he wouldn’t have dreamed of two minutes earlier. He began pushing through the mob after Buzz De Kemp, trying to get to the center.
He could hear himself yelling at the top of his voice: “It’s not his fault! It’s not his fault! It’s like the TV and radio. It’s all over the world. Every movie projector in the world is on the blink. It’s not his fault! All movies don’t work! All movies don’t work!”
Somehow, impossibly, he struggled his way to the screaming crowd’s middle where the three burly mob leaders were dragging their victim in the direction of the nearest lamppost. By this time, a rope had been found.
He could feel his voice cracking as he tried to make himself heard above the mob’s roar. “It’s not his fault! All movies don’t work!”
One of the mob leaders backarmed him into a sprawl. He wondered vaguely where Buzz De Kemp was, even as he pushed himself back to his feet and grabbed at the fear-paralyzed movie projectionist. “It’s not his fault! All movies don’t work!”
It was then that the pressurized water hit them.
7
Helen Fontaine and Buzz De Kemp bailed him out toward noon of the next day.
Buzz came back to the cell first, one of the new Poloroid-Leicas in his hands and wearing a grin behind his stogie. There was an adhesive plaster patch above his right eye which only managed to make the sloppy newsman look rakish.
“Buzzo!” Ed Wonder blurted. “Get me out of here!”
“Just a minute,” Buzz told him. He adjusted the lens aperture, brought the camera to his eyes, flicked the shutter three or four times. He said happily, “With any luck I’ll get you on the front page. How does this sound? Local radioman leads lynch mob.”
“Oh, bounce it, Buzz,” Helen Fontaine said, coming up from behind him. She looked in at Ed Wonder and shook her head critically. “Whatever happened to the haberdasher’s best friend?” she said. “I never expected to see the day when Little Ed Wonder’s tie wasn’t straight.”
“Okay, okay, funnies I get,” Ed rasped. “Follow me, says Buzz De Kemp and we’ll rescue the movie projectionist like the cavalry coming over the hill at the last minute. So great. He sort of disappears and I wind up getting drenched by the fire department and then arrested by the police.”
Buzz looked at him strangely. “I heard you yelling, Little Ed. About all movie projectors being on the blink. How did you know? It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes earlier that it happened. The news wasn’t even on the teletype yet.”
“Get me out of here,” Ed snarled. “How do you think I knew? Don’t be a kook.”
A uniformed jail attendant came up and unlocked the cell door. “Come on,” he said. “You been sprung.”
The three of them followed him out.
Buzz said, “So you were there when he laid on the new curse, eh?”
“New curse?” Helen said.
Buzz said to her, “What else? Ezekiel Joshua Tubber. First he gives all women an allergy if they wear cosmetics or do themselves up in glad rags. Then he slaps his hex on radio and TV. Now all of a sudden there is a strange persistence of film being projected on a screen; it takes an eighth of a second or so for the picture to fade, so the next picture can be different. It doesn’t interfere with still-life shots, but action is impossible.”
They had reached the sergeant’s desk and Ed collected his belongings. His situation was explained. Theoretically, he was out on bail. In actuality, Buzz was going to go to bat for him through the paper and get the charge squashed. If, by any chance, that didn’t work, Helen said she’d put pressure on her father to pull some wires. Ed was of the private belief that the only circumstance under which Jensen Fontaine would pull wires for Ed Wonder was if they were wrapped around his neck.
On the street, Buzz said, “Let’s go somewhere and talk.”
“Somewhere is good,” Ed said. “You can’t get in anyplace for love or loot. Standing room only and they limit the time you can stay, so that others will have their chance.”
Helen said, “We can go to the club. I’ll take you in as guests.”
Her General Ford Cyclone was at the curb. They got into it and Helen dialed their destination. The car rose and slipped into the traffic.
Buzz De Kemp stared out at the horde of wandering pedestrians. “Yesterday was bad enough,” he said. “But today there’s no school. The kids don’t know what to do with themselves.”
“Neither do their parents,” Helen said. “Doesn’t anybody work in this city? I’d think…”
“Do you?” Ed said, for some reason irritated.
“Well, that’s another thing, sharpy,” she said huffily. “I have my charity work with the junior league and…”
Buzz said, “I looked it up. Two thirds of the population of working age in Kingsburg are on unemployment lists. Of those remaining, most put in a twenty-five hour week, some of those with more progressive—I like that term—unions, put in twenty hours.” He tossed his stogie, half-smoked, onto the street. “It makes for a lot of leisure time.”
The country club was a couple of miles outside the city limits. If Helen Fontaine had expected it to be comparatively empty, she was mistaken. She was far from the only one to bring guests to the club. However, they managed to slip into chairs about a table which was just being vacated as they arrived. Helen brought her credit card from her purse and laid it on the table’s screen. “Gents, the eats are on me. What’ll it be?”
They named their druthers, she dialed them, and when the food arrived and the first taste had been taken, said, “Okay, let’s bring the meeting to order. I’m not up on this movie thing.”
Ed Wonder gave them a complete rundown on the happenings in Saugerties. By the time he wound it up, they were both staring at him.
“Oh, Mother
,” Helen said. “You mean, until you told him, he didn’t even know he’d done it. Radio and TV, I mean.”
Buzz said, “Remember on the program? He had forgotten he put the hex on women’s vanity.” He looked at Helen Fontaine calculatingly. “You know, on you the Homespun Look comes off.”
“Thank you, kind sir. If I could think of something about your own appearance that I could say something nice about, I would. Why don’t you get a haircut?”
“Compliment the girl, and what do I get?” Buzz complained. “A jolly. I can’t afford a haircut. I’m the most improvident man in the world. I’ve been known to go into a cold shower and come out three dollars poorer.”
Ed said gloomily, “I admit I let the cat out of the bag. Now he knows.” They scowled at him and he explained. “Tubber. Now he knows he’s got the power, as Nefertiti calls it. What’s worse, it seems to be growing.”
“What seems to be growing?” Buzz growled at him.
“The power to make with hexes. Evidently, he’s always had it, but only just recently has he been using it on the grand scale.”
“You mean…” Helen said, ramifications dawning.
“I mean his first two major hexes he pulled off in a rage and without knowing what he was doing. This last one he did on purpose. Now he knows he can do them on purpose.”
Ed said, “Have you two considered the fact that we’re the only ones in the world, except for Tubber’s little group, who know what’s going on?”
Buzz pulled out a fresh stogie and rammed it into his mouth. “How could I forget it? A newspaperman sitting on the biggest story since the Resurrection and he can’t even write it. If I mention Tubber and his curses to Old Ulcers once more, he’s promised to fire me.”
“At least you’ve still got a job,” Ed told him sourly. “Look at me. I spend a couple of years working up the Far Out Hour, a program devoted to spiritualism, ESP, flying saucers, reincarnation, levitation, and what not, and for all that time I have an endless series of cranks, crackpots and crooks as guests. So finally, a real phenomenon comes along. And what happens? I’m out of a career.”
Earth Unaware Page 10
