Earth Unaware

by Mack Reynolds

  Then finally the switch over to radio and TV. He’d finally, through luck, a minimum of bribery, and the romancing of the fat wife of a studio executive, made his entry into the show business of the air.

  Stereotype, eh? Then how had he finally got to the point of having his own program, the Far Out Hour?

  He’d show them who was a stereotype.

  Stereotype!

  He’d shaved off his mustache, hadn’t he?

  In the morning, Ed Wonder went on back to his auto-kitchen and dialed breakfast. He should bave been feeling off from his disappointment of the night before, but he wasn’t. He didn’t know why he wasn’t but there you were. The fact of the matter was, he felt all set to go. Somewhere. He didn’t know exactly where.

  After he’d finished eating he threw the dishes into the disposal chute and went back into the living room.

  He dialed the Unemployment Bureau, listed himself as temporarily unemployed, listed himself as available for work as a program director for TV or radio, applied for temporary compensation to be deposited directly to his account.

  Then he dialed the Universal Credit Administration and applied for moritorium on all installment payments. Even as he did so, Ed Wonder reflected that whatever egghead economist had dreamed up the idea of moritorium had plugged one of the biggest potential holes in the workings of the affluent society. As never-never buying had pyramided, the powers that were had suffered increasingly sleepless nights over the possible consequences of even a fairly mild recession. Had foreclosures ever begun on a grand scale, the whole thing would have avalanched, and as used products flooded the markets, factories would have closed down all over the place, aggravating the recession still more. Yes, whoever had dreamed up credit moritorium had avoided that pitfall of classical capitalism. Of course, so long as you were on moritorium, you couldn’t run up any fresh installment credit, but you can’t have everything, even under the Welfare State.

  Business finished with, he leaned back and considered matters. He was out of work. If the automated machinery of the Welfare State’s employment bureau found a potential position for him, he would be notified. Meanwhile, there was nothing to do. No point in going about haunting studios, or stations. They’d think he was a twitch if he went traipsing around on his own.

  Well, you had to kill time some way. He reached out and flicked on the TV screen.

  For the moment, he had forgotten. The screen was a horror of the abstract. He hurriedly cut it off again. Evidently, the stations were still trying. They simply weren’t getting through.

  Just for the exercise, he went on down to the corner drugstore to pick up a paper. They were all gone. Happily, the manager had a copy of his own in a back room and let Ed take it.

  There were still crowds around the magazine and paperback stands.

  Ed said to the other, “Business in comic books still good, eh?”

  “Oh, no,” the manager shook his head, beaming. “We’re fresh out of comic books, already. There’s no more in town. The agents say the presses are turning night and day, putting out extra editions, but for the time, we’re out. Now they’re buying paperbacks and magazines. Even all the more popular magazines are gone. There’s not a detective paperback left, either, and no westerns.” The smile left his face. “Good business, this emergency, but it sure is a horror to go home to the missus at night. We got nothing to do but yell at each other, and the kids go batty with nothing to watch.”

  Ed Wonder took the paper back to his apartment before opening it.

  The newspapers were evidently staging a comeback, and enjoying every minute of it. With TV and radio news off the airwaves, it was back to reading again.

  The heads went:

  TV and Radio Scramble World-Wide President to Hold Special Press Conference

  Mayor Smythe to Ration Movie and Sports Tickets

  Bored Mother Kills Brood and Commits Suicide

  Soviet Complex Hints West Deliberately Sabotaging TV

  He began to read the details and was interrupted almost immediately by the phone.

  Buzz De Kemp’s face, stogie asmoke, filled the screen. “Hi, Little Ed. The great mystery has been solved.”

  For a moment Ed Wonder thought he meant… but no. He said, “What mystery?”

  “Where Zeke and Nefertiti disappeared to.”

  “Oh,” Ed leaned forward.

  Buzz drew it out. “I really gave it the works. Everything but the F.B.I. I checked…”

  “All right, all right,” Ed snapped. “Let’s have it.”

  “They moved up the river to the next town, Saugerties, and set up their tent again. Old Zeke is continuing his lecture tour.”

  Ed closed his eyes wearily. He’d had a mental picture of Ezekiel Joshua Tubber escaping by stowing away on a ship to Brazil, or possibly fleeing to the Soviet Complex Embassy and requesting political refuge, or possibly going to earth somewhere and hiding out.

  Instead, the offbeat evangelist was a few miles up the river, continuing as though nothing had happened.

  6

  Ed Wonder said, “Well, great. I’ll pick you up.”

  “Hold on, chum,” the reporter took the stogie from his mouth to use as a pointer. “Maybe that old coot might be a little sore at you, but he’s really down on me. I was the one that sounded off and laughed at him. It was mostly me, on the program, who got him speaking in wrath, or however his daughter puts it. I think it might be better if just you show your cheerful face, at first.”

  “Oh great. We’ll use me for baiting the tiger, eh?”

  “It was your idea to find him again. You said you were in it from the beginning. Brave man. Stout fella.”

  Ed growled, “You mentioned you were in it from the beginning too.”

  “I was, and I’m going to keep in it, but from a distance, chum, from a distance. Now look, I haven’t even dared bring this up with Old Ulcers, the city ed, but you get the story on this exclusive for me and the Times-Tribune and we’ll find some way of showing our appreciation. This is a story, Little Ed. The story of the century.”

  It only came home to Ed Wonder at that moment what a really big story it was. His mind flicked over into first. He could sell it to Look at Life, the picture magazine. He could sell it to…

  His mind shifted back into low. No, he couldn’t. If Buzzo couldn’t even approach his city editor in a one horse town like Kingsburg, who was going to listen to Ed Wonder in Ultra-New York?

  He suspected that of all those involved, the only ones who really knew that the Homespun Look and the disruption of both TV and radio were the results of curses by Tubber, were himself, Buzz and Helen. Except, of course, for Tubber himself, Nefertiti and some of the followers of the word, or whatever they called themselves.

  Buzz said impatiently, “Well?”

  Where he got the courage, Ed didn’t know, but he said, “Okay. I’ll go on up to Saugerties for whatever it’s worth. I’ll keep you posted. Remember, if this pays off, I’m in on the loot.”

  The reporter rolled his eyes upward as though making solemn promise. “De Kemp always keeps faith,” he intoned.

  “Yeah, sure,” Ed growled, reaching his hand out to switch off the phone.

  Ed took the elevator down to the cellar garage and got the Volkshover, keyed it to life, lifted it half a foot from the floor, drifted up the ramp to the street, and headed north. The streets were more crowded than ever. He had never realized just how many persons lived in this city. In the far past, he supposed, the majority had spent the day hours working, the evening watching TV, listening to the radio, or taking in a movie. Of recent years, as the number of jobs decreased, until finally the employment rolls included a far greater number of citizens than did employment lists, the average citizen led a more sedentary existence. He had seen somewhere estimates that Mr. Average Man spent eight hours a day being entertained by mass media.

  Well, a wheel had come off now.

  He headed north at an altitude of about ten feet, and notice
d that traffic was heavier than was to be expected at this time of day. It didn’t take long to figure out why. City dwellers on their way to the nearest water for a swim, or to the nearest woods for a picnic. Largely, their faces didn’t indicate that they were expecting any great treat. Probably because their portables weren’t working.

  It came to Ed Wonder that such entertainment of yesteryear as swimming and picnicking had fallen off since he’d been a kid. In his day, youngsters still got a kick out of self-entertainment, swimming, baseball, fishing, hiking, camping. Now such exercise had a tendency to be avoided because it interfered with listening in on this favorite program or that. Go out on a camping trip and you might miss Robert Hope the Third’s Hour, or I’m Squirrel For Mary, not to speak of The Sadistic Tale. Of course, you could always take a portable along, but then you spent your time sitting around a campfire watching the shows, instead of in the comfort of your own home, where the mosquitos were apt to be less.

  Fishing. He remembered going fishing with his father as a kid. And by himself, for that matter. He might wind up with nothing at all, or maybe a meager string of sunfish, but he’d thought it fun. Today, a kid got more of a boot out of watching somebody in the Gulf Stream or off the coast of Peru catching a half-ton marlin, or spearing a giant ray skin diving off the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. The vicarious thrill of playing a ten foot man-eating shark was evidently considerably more than tediously waiting for a four-inch sunfish to take your worm.

  Saugerties was one of those never-changing New England type towns. Largely wooden houses. One storey, two storey, seldom more than three, even downtown. The type of overgrown village that made you wonder how it existed, its raison d’etre, why its population didn’t emigrate to more lively climes.

  Ed Wonder let his little hovercar drift to a halt before the Thornton Memorial Theatre, which like the movie houses of his own town, had a long line before it. Near the curb stood three or four disgruntled citizens who had obviously decided that the line was so long it was hopeless to expect to gain entry.

  Ed called, “Hey, Buddy, could you tell me where, ah, the Reverend Tubber has his tent set up?”

  “Never heard of him,” Buddy said.

  “How about you, Mac?” Ed said.

  Mac screwed up his face. “You know, I did see something in the paper about some revival tent meeting or something. Hey, you know what? That’s something we could do. We could take in this here new revival.”

  “Geez,” Buddy said, as though in hope. “You know what? I think I’ll get on home and round up the old lady and the kids and get over there before all the seats is taken.”

  Ed said patiently, “Could you tell me where they’re set up?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Mac said, evidently caught up with Buddy’s idea, and ready to take off himself. “Down there about three blocks, then turn right and keep going until you wind up at the park. You can’t miss it.” He said that final ritual over his shoulder as he hurried off.

  Ed drove three down and then to the left and eventually came to the park. Buddy and Mac were going to be disappointed. There was already a long line standing before the Tubber tent. It was still early afternoon, but the line was there.

  “Standing room only,” Ed muttered, hitting the drop lever. He wondered if Tubber was having a matinee. He parked and strode over to the entrance.

  “Get in line, Jack. Take your turn,” somebody growled at him. Faces took him in antagonistically.

  Ed said, hurriedly, “I’m not here to listen to the, ah, sermon. I…”

  “Sure, sure, we know, sharpy. Just get in line, is all. I been standing here two hours. You try to sneak ahead of me and you get a bust in the puss, unnerstan?”

  Ed felt his usual stomach tighening at the threat of physical violence and took a double step backward. He looked disconcerted at the three or four of the Tubber followers who were doing their harried best to keep order.

  “The Speaker of the Word will be heard by all,” one was saying, over and over again. “He is shortening his talks to half an hour so that everyone may have a chance to listen, in relays. Please be patient. The Speaker of the Word will be heard by all.”

  One of those in line grumbled, “Half an hour. You mean I been standing here all this time just for half an hour’s show?”

  Ed Wonder said, “It’s not exactly a show, pal.” He walked away from the line. Trying to get in the front entrance would have taken hours. Besides, it was no manner in which to consult Tubber. He was going to have to confront the prophet, if that was what you’d call him, face to face. He was liking the prospect less by the minute.

  He walked around to the rear of the large tent and found that, as before, there was a smaller tent pitched behind it. Ed Wonder hesitated. He drifted around behind the canvas habitation. There was an old-fashioned farm wagon there and a horse quietly grazing.

  He took a breath consciously, and returned to the entrance. How do you knock on the door of a tent?

  He cleared his throat and called out, “Anybody home?”

  He could hear a stirring inside and then the flap separated and Nefertiti Tubber was there.

  She looked at him and flushed. “Good afternoon, dear one,” she said. Then, in a gush, “Oh, Ed, I’m sorry about the other night. I—I should have known better than to let father…”

  “Sorry,” he said bitterly. “So’s the whole world. Listen, do you know what’s happened?” She nodded dumbly. “I’ll tell you what’s happened,” he began.

  She looked quickly around them, then held back the tent flap. “Please come in, Ed.”

  He followed her. The rent was surprisingly large and laid out comfortably into three rooms, two of which had flapped entries of their own. The equivalent of bedrooms, Ed decided. The larger space was a combination kitchen, living and dining room, and even went to the extent of a rug being on the ground. A rag rug, homemade, of the type that Ed Wonder hadn’t seen since early childhood.

  There were folding chairs about the table and Nefertiti hesitantly gestured to one of them. Ed sat down and looked at her. The fact that Ezekiel Joshua Tubber himself wasn’t present gave him courage.

  He said accusingly, “Every TV and radio station in the world is on the blink.”

  She nodded. “I just found out an hour or so ago. I went into town for some supplies from a follower of the path who resides not in Elysium.”

  Ed let that part of her statement that sounded like straight kookery go by and stuck to the first sentence. “Did you see all those people in the streets?”

  She nodded dumbly.

  “How long’s this been going on?”

  She knew what he meant all right, all right.

  “You mean… the power? The power to breathe the word?”

  Ed Wonder closed his eyes in weary pain. “Let’s drop the twitchy language for the moment. What is it your father does?”

  She looked at him as’ though nothing could be more obvious. “He exercises the power and utters the word. But usually, of course, only when he is in wrath. You and your friend, Buzz De Kemp, brought him to wrath. Just as Helen Fontaine did, before.”

  “It’s as simple as that, eh?” Ed said sarcastically.

  “Don’t be angry, dear one.” She frowned, in puzzlement. “It has never been so sweeping, before.” Her face cleared. “Perhaps, he has never been so provoked in the past.”

  “But look, how can he do these things?”

  “But he’s the Speaker of the Word, the guru of the Path to Elysium, and the beloved of the All-Mother.”

  “Oh, great,” Ed muttered, in suffering. “Ask a silly question and get a silly answer.”

  Involuntarily, he put out a hand and rested it on her arm. “Now look, Nefertiti, this is important…”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly and her mouth seemed to go sweetly slack. He jerked his hand back.

  “Pardon me!”

  Her voice was throaty, “It was all right.”

  He cleared his own throat. He won
dered how old Nefertiti Tubber was. It came to him that the girl had possibly never had a man touch her before. Not a man of her own age group.

  “Look,” he said again. “I keep getting the impression every time I get talking with you people that I came into the conversation half a dozen sentences late. Now just what is it that your old man… that is, your father, wants to accomplish? What’s this stuff about the Communists being too mild for him. Not radical enough?”

  A voice behind him said, “Ah, we have a visitor.”

  Ed winced, expecting a thunderbolt between the shoulders. He turned.

  The man who stood there, his face in the ultimate of understanding and sadness, looked about as dangerous as a Michelangelo depiction of the Virgin nursing the Child.

  Ed Wonder, nevertheless, scrambled to his feet. “Ah, good afternoon, sir… Ooop, pardon me, not sir, ah, Ezekiel, ah, dear one.”

  “Good afternoon, Edward.” The grey-bearded prophet beamed at him. “You seek further enlightment on the path to Elysium?” The older man sank with a sigh into one of the folding chairs. Evidently he bore no grudges whatsoever about the hassle of the other night.

  Nefertiti had come to her feet too. Now she brought her father a glass of water which she had dipped out of a bucket. She walked, Ed Wonder noted, in spite of himself, as Malay women he’d seen on travelogue shows walked; head and shoulders proudly erect, the hips swaying gently.

  “Well, ah, yes,” Ed said hurriedly. “Fascinating subject. The way I get it, you’re heading for a sort of Utopia. A…”

  Ezekiel Joshua Tubber frowned. “Dear one, you have failed to understand the word. We seek not Utopia. Utopia is supposedly the perfect society and anything perfect has automatically ceased growing, hence the conception of Utopia is conservative if not reactionary. That is the mistake of many, including the so-called Communists. They think that once their promised land has been achieved, all progress will stop, that the millennium will have been reached. Nonsense! The All-Mother knows no stopping. The path to Elysium is forever!”