Earth Unaware

by Mack Reynolds

  “An individual, dear one, does not start a religion. A religion swells up from the hearts of a people to fit a need. Had the Christ been born two thousand years earlier, there would have been none to listen to his words, his time was not yet. Were the Prophet Mohammed to be born today, rather than in the 6th Century, he would meet with closed ears rather than the open acceptance of his own times. It is simply that I have been one of the first to sense this need for a new creed. I have felt it and the duty is upon me to spread the word.”

  Ed Wonder wasn’t feeling any too happy about this. Mulligan had warned him repeatedly that he was to stay away from politics and anyone who attacked accepted religion. Mulligan didn’t want any subversives or atheists on WAN.

  Ed said hurriedly, “Well, folks, this is all very interesting. Our guest of honor seems to think the world is due for a new religion. It reminds me of that chap we had on a few months ago who told us he had flown up to Jupiter and been given a New Bible which he was going to have published.”

  Tubber’s face was growing dark again, and Nefertiti made ineffective motions to Ed Wonder which were obviously meant to turn off his present trend of chatter.

  “But lets get back to this curse thing, sir. Now…”

  Buzz De Kemp said, “Just a minute, Little Ed. This new religion. From what you’ve said, and from your lectures I’ve attended, I get the impression that there are socio-economic connotations to it. Now could you tell us, briefly, just what this new religion stands for?”

  “Yes, of course.” Tubber seemed slightly placated. “We seek the path to a better life. To Elysium, where a new society will replace that of today.”

  “Just a minute,” De Kemp broke in. “You mean this new religion of yours plans on upsetting the present social order?”

  “Exactly,” Tubber said.

  “Overthrowing the government?”

  “Of course,” Tubber said, as though nothing could be more obvious.

  “You plan to establish some sort of communism…?”

  “Certainly not. The Communists are not radical enough for me, dear one.”

  Ed Wonder closed his eyes in anguish. He could picture Fontaine, Mulligan and the whole Stephen Decatur Society, for that matter, all tuned in.

  He said, hurriedly, “Now this curse thing.”

  “What curse thing?” Tubber said testily. It was obvious that the whole show was not going anyway similar to what he’d had in mind. “You keep talking about hexes and curses. Is this a serious program or not?”

  Nefertiti put a hand on his arm and whispered, “Father…”

  He shook off her gentle restraint and glared at Ed Wonder.

  Buzz De Kemp was chuckling silently.

  Ed looked at the would-be religious leader blankly. “The curse,” he said. “The curse you put on Miss Fontaine here, and all womankind.”

  It was Tubber’s turn to go blank. “Are you insane?” he demanded.

  Ed Wonder put his hand over his eyes and leaned for a brief moment on the table.

  Helen at long last said something. She leaned forward and said urgently, “Little Ed has asked me to publicly apologize to you and ask that the curse be lifted.”

  Ezekiel Joshua Tubber was beginning to swell. His grey streaked beard had a bristling quality.

  “What curse?” he bellowed.

  “Last Saturday,” Helen said worriedly. “You were talking about the waste of national resources or something and that women changing styles all the time were helping to deplete our nation, however you put it. And I argued with you.”

  Nefertiti said placatingly, “Father forgets what he says when he speaks in wrath.”

  Ezekiel Joshua Tubber rumbled ominously, “I begin to suspect that thou hast brought me here to ridicule the Path to Elysium.”

  Ed Wonder could see his super-show melting away by the moment. “Now look here, Mr. Tubber…”

  “I have told thee that I forbid being addressed as Mister…” The cult leader was beginning to breathe deeply, and for the second time Ed Wonder and Helen Fontaine witnessed his seeming growth in size.

  “All right, all right,” Ed said, peevish himself. “All I can say is you don’t seem very grateful for this opportunity to reach all these good folk tuned in for a bit of entertainment.”

  “Entertainment!” Tubber thundered. “Yes, entertainment! Thou hast brought me before the snickering multitudes to be presented as a freak, as a crank. I knew not the nature of your program, Edward Wonder.” He began coming to his feet.

  Nefertiti moaned, “Oh, no,” so softly that none heard.

  Buzz De Kemp had brought a stogie from his coat pocket and placed it in his mouth. He was grinning around it happily. He said now, “Face facts, Zeke, old boy. The only chance you’ve got of spreading your word around, is by the use of radio and TV. People just aren’t interested in treking out to sit on wooden chairs in tents. They want their entertainment piped into their homes. And, believe me, if you want to put your story over, you’re going to have to spice it up. Get a few jollies into it.” He laughed.

  To his horror, Ed Wonder could see, through the heavy glass of the studio wall, Jensen Fontaine, immediately followed by a blowing Matthew Mulligan, come storming in the direction of Jerry’s control booth. Ed closed his eyes in suffering.

  He opened them to find Ezekiel Joshua Tubber seemingly reared a full six and a half feet, one clinched fist on high.

  “Radio!” he trumpeted. “Now verily do I curse radio, this invention of evil which in truth hast robbed our people of all individuality. Which hast verily made of them unthinking clods awaiting foolish entertainment.”

  “Oh, brother,” Buzz said happily.

  “…the power…” Nefertiti moaned.

  Ezekiel Joshua Tubber spun on his heel and began storming the studio door, Nefertiti chasing after him.

  Ed Wonder sank back into his chair with a groan. In the control room he could see Mulligan and Fontaine. The soundproofing prevented his hearing what were obvious shouts of command on the part of the red-faced tycoon. However, Jerry didn’t seem overly concerned at their words. The radio engineer was scowling down at his controls, fiddling with dials and switches.

  PART TWO

  5

  “To rescue what could be rescued from the debacle”, Ed Wonder said hurriedly into his mike, “Well, folks, I’m afraid things have come a cropper tonight. Of course, that can happen on the best of shows when everything’s off the cuff and you’re dealing with guests who are non-pros. So we’ll have a bit of music now and possible later I’ll fill you in with a little background on what we expected to present to you tonight. Jerry, let the music go round!”

  The red light flicked off indicating that Studio Three was no longer hot, and Mulligan’s voice over the intercom from the control booth blatted, “Wonder! We’ll see you in my office soonest!”

  Ed Wonder closed his eyes in suffering.

  He opened them wearily, warily. Ezekiel Joshua Tubber and his daughter Nefertiti were gone. Helen Fontaine and Buzz De Kemp alone still sat at the studio table. Buzz was chuckling inanely. He brought out a kitchen match and flicked it into flame with a thumbnail and lit the stogie he’d been chewing on.

  “Now that’s what I’d slug a show,” he proclaimed. “If I could get programs with jollies like this, I might listen to radio.”

  Helen said, “I’m sorry, Little Ed. Oh, Mother, what a mess.”

  Ed looked at the engineer’s control booth. Jensen Fontaine and Mulligan had already left it, evidently having adjourned to the latter’s office to rig up a guillotine.

  Ed went to the studio’s soundproof door, opened it, crossed to the control booth door and went inside. Jerry was still fiddling with his controls, scowling.

  Ed said, “What’s the matter?”

  Jerry looked up at him, taking his pipe from his mouth the better to talk. “We’re getting an one eighth of a second echo that’s just as strong as the original.”

  “What’s that?”r />
  Jerry told him, adding, “If you want to get driven nuts rapidly, try listening to something with a one half to one tenth of a second echo.” He put his pipe back in his mouth and went back to his fiddling. “I’ll clear it up in a minute.”

  “Like the devil…” Ed muttered. He turned and left the booth. Helen and Buzz were just leaving Studio Three.

  Helen said, “We’re going to see Daddy with you. It wasn’t your fault.”

  Buzz said, around his stogie, “Maybe the paper needs a radio-TV editor and you can get a job with us.”

  Ed glared at him. “This is a great time to make with funnies, you sloppy bum. The whole thing was your idea.”

  Buzz chuckled. “Sorry. I didn’t know the old boy was that cracked. Did you dig that expression when he was laying his hex on radio? Wow, what a story it’d be if it really worked. If he could lay a hex on radio. What a story.”

  Ed started down the hall. He growled, “Then you’d better start writing it.”

  They entered the general office, Helen and Buzz bringing up the rear. Buzz said in puzzlement, “What’da you mean, chum?”

  Ed stopped briefly at Dolly’s desk. Dolly was frantically answering calls.

  “Yes, yes we know. Reception is scrambled. The engineers are working on it. It will be all right very shortly. Thank you for calling.” And then, all over again. “Yes… yes, we know the program isn’t coming over. The engineers…”

  Ed, Helen and Buzz continued on, the newspaperman staring back over his shoulder at the office girl. He said to Ed Wonder, “What’s going on?”

  “The hex is going on,” Ed said. He held the door open for Helen and they entered Mulligan’s office.

  Jensen Fontaine stood in the center of the room, evidently counting down before blastoff. When Ed entered he roared, “Wonder, you’re fired!”

  “I know, I know,” Ed told him. He walked over to the built-in TV screen that occupied a sizeable portion of one wall and flicked it on. Fontaine, Mulligan, and Helen and Buzz for that matter, were staring at him. It wasn’t the reaction any of them, knowing Ed Wonder, had expected.

  He waited for the screen to clear. It never quite did. Finally he turned the set off again. He said absently, “TV is a form of radio, too. I wonder if even radar is effected.”

  He turned back to Jensen Fontaine and Mulligan.

  Fontaine evidently assumed that the other hadn’t understood him. He bellowed again, “Giving that atheistic subversive the opportunity to speak his piece on my radio station, you idiot! I tell you, Wonder, you’re fired!”

  “I know it,” Ed grunted. “So is everybody else on radio and TV. Goodnight, everybody.”

  Ed Wonder was awakened by the alarm’s voice saying, “You are wanted on the phone.”

  He grumbled himself awake. He’d been dreaming of Ezekiel Joshua Tubber who was about to lay a curse on eating food. Ed Wonder and Nefertiti, who for some unknown reason had been attired in a bikini, had been frantically trying to dissuade the old man. Ed scratched his wisp of a mustache.

  His elaborate TV-stereo-radio-phono-tape recorder-alarm said again, more loudly this time. “You are wanted on the telephone.”

  He yawned. “Oh, yeah,” and switched it on. Mulligan’s face faded in.

  Mulligan’s voice blatted, “Little Ed! Where’ve you been?”

  He yawned again. “I haven’t been anywhere. Remember? I’m fired.”

  “Well, now look, maybe we can do something about that. See here, Little Ed…”

  Even as the other was talking, Ed Wonder switched on the TV screen. He winced when it lit up. He turned to another channel, and then another. The one-eighth of a second echo was still plaguing the radio waves. He killed it.

  Mulligan was saying, “Mr. Fontaine was possibly a little hasty.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Ed told him.

  “Well, at any rate, it looks like he’s been talking to his daughter and Miss Fontaine seems to have taken your part. They want to see you over at their place. See here, you know what’s been going on?”

  “Yes,” Ed said.

  Mulligan ignored him. “It’s sun spots, or something. There’s not a station on the air that’s giving any sort of reception at all.”

  “Yeah,” Ed said. It occurred to him that neither Mulligan nor Fontaine had heard Tubber making with his curse. They’d been too busy yelling at Jerry in the control room to switch off the program.

  “Well, look, Little Ed. Are you going over to see Mr. Fontaine?”

  “No,” Ed said. He switched off the phone, then stared down at it. He just realized that he had performed a long-time ambition that he hadn’t realized he’d had. He’d hung up on Fatso.

  He grunted. What neither Mulligan or Fontaine realized was that there was no point in worrying about regaining his job—not so long as there was no TV or radio.

  When he’d finished shaving, showering and dressing, he decided that breakfast in his own auto-kitchen didn’t appeal’ to him and that he’d go down to the corner drugstore and dial himself some sausage and egg. He had some thinking to do, but he was in no hurry to start. He gave a last look at himself in the bathroom mirror. Thirty-three years. Ten years spent trying to break into the thinning ranks of show business. Nearly five working himself patiently up in TV and radio. Now at thirty-three, jobless. Oh, great. But somehow he didn’t feel as badly as he thought he ought to be feeling.

  He turned to go and then looked back again and eyed his tiny mustache. A little wisp of mustache was to be seen on the faces of practically every aggressive young executive in the thirty to forty year age bracket. It was currently the thing.

  Ed Wonder took up his jar of NoSbav and rubbed a smear of it across the sprig of hair. He took up a towel, and wiped the hair away. He looked back into the mirror and nodded satisfaction.

  There was quite a crowd in the drug store, but Ed Wonder managed to find a seat at the fountain. Most of them were gathered around the magazine rack.

  He knew the manager of the place and saw him standing nearby. “What’s going on?” Ed said.

  The other said, “Never had such a turnover of comic books since I’ve been in the business. Practically sold out already, and it’s not even noon. Having more rushed in.”

  “Comic books?”

  “Uh huh. Something’s wrong with TV and even radio. One of the papers says it’s Soviet Complex sabotage. Some kind of scientific thing they got over in Siberia. Anyway, until they get it fixed nobody can watch TV. It’ll probably drive my wife and kids kooky, but while it still lasts I’m sure selling comic books.”

  Ed said emptily, “They’re not going to get fixed. It’s going to stay this way.”

  The manager looked at him. “Don’t be a twitch, Little Ed. You got to have TV.”

  Ed didn’t want to argue. He gave one more look at the empty-faced adults packed around the comic book stands, then turned and dialed his meal and coffee. He kept his mind as clear as he could of the subject that was wriggling to get through. When he started thinking about it, he was afraid it was going to hurt.

  However, when he had finished, he went back to the garages beneath his apartment building and got the Volkshover. He was probably looking for trouble, sheer trouble. But he drove over to Houston Street and the lot where Tubber and his daughter had had their tents pitched. The girl had said that the old man didn’t remember what he said in wrath, and evidently it was when he was in wrath that his curses came off. The thing to do was to deal with him in such manner as not to let him get stirred up. Maybe there was some way to reverse this whole thing. If he could pull it off, then would be the time to see about getting his job back.

  The lot where the tents had been was empty.

  Ed looked at it blankly. He might have remembered. They had been packing up to leave when he and Buzzo had braced Tubber about appearing on the program.

  He thought about it for a minute. Finally he brought the Volkshover back into the air and headed for the Times-Tribune bui
lding. It was a bit past noon, but Buzzo’s hours were on the erratic side to say the least. There was as much chance to find him in during the lunch hour as any other time.

  There seemed to be an unusual number of persons in the streets, most of them aimlessly milling around. There were long lines before the movie theatres.

  By luck, Buzz De Kemp was at his desk in the city room. He looked up at Ed’s approach. Ed found a chair, reversed it, so that the back pressed against his jacket front when he straddled it. They looked at each other.

  Ed said finally, “Did you run the story?”

  Buzz shrugged and fished a stogie from a box out of a desk drawer. “I wrote it up. It’s on the eighth page of the morning edition. Somebody on rewrite thought it’d make a cute little gag piece, so he did a revision.” His voice turned wry. “Improved it considerably. More jollies.”

  “So nobody believed you, eh?”

  “Of course not. I gave up. Look at it the city editor’s way. Would you believe it?”

  “No,” Ed said. “No, I wouldn’t believe it.”

  They looked at each other for a time again.

  Finally Ed cleared his throat and said, “I was just over at the lot where Tubber was holding his talks.”

  “And…?”

  “He’s gone. No sign of them left. I thought I might talk it over with him and his daughter. She seems to be lucid enough.”

  Buzz thought about that. “Let’s go into the morgue,” he said finally, getting to his feet.

  Ed Wonder followed him from the city room, down a corridor into another room presided over by an ancient who was unhurriedly clipping what was evidently a pile of yesterday’s edition of the Times-Tribune with an enormous pair of shears. He grunted something at Buzz who grunted something in return and hence they ignored each other.

  Buzz De Kemp muttered, “Tubber,” and drew forth a deep file of folders. He fingered through them. “Tubber, Tubber, Ezekiel Joshua. Here it is.”

  He brought forth a manila folder and led the way to a heavy table, sat down and opened it. There were three very short clippings, their dates penciled in on the top of each. Buzz scanned them quickly, handed each in turn to Ed Wonder.