Earth Unaware

by Mack Reynolds

  Ed said, in exasperation, “But we can’t scrap all the mechanical devices we’ve invented over the past couple of hundred years.”

  “Nor would I wish to, loved one. It is quite true that you can’t un-invent an invention any more than you can unscramble scrambled eggs. However, the world has gone far beyond the point of intelligent usage of these discoveries.”

  The old man thought a moment. “Let me give you a hypothetical case. Suppose a high pressure entrepreneur conceives of something that to this point no one had dreamed of wanting. Let us take some thing out of the dear sky. Let us say an electric martini stirrer.”

  “It’s been done,” Ed said.

  Tubber stared at him. “Surely you jest.”

  “No, I read about it. Back in the early 1960s. About the same time they came out with electric toothbrushes.”

  “It’s still as good an example as any,” Tubber sighed. “Very well, our idea man hires some highly trained engineers, some of our best technicians, to design the electric martini stirrer. They succeed. He then turns to industry and orders a large number of the devices. Industry tools up, using a great many competent, highly trained men, and a good deal of valuable materials. Finally, the martini stirrers are finished. Our entrepreneur must now market them. He turns to Madison Avenue and invests in advertising and public relations. To this point, nobody in the United Welfare States of America had the vaguest desire for such a device, but they are soon educated. Advertising through every medium; campaigns conceived of by some of the most clever brains our country can produce. Side by side go the public relations men. It is mentioned in some columnist’s blather that Mary Malone, the TV star, is so pleased with her martini stirrer that she has begun having cocktails before lunch as well as before dinner. It is understood the Queen’s bartender invariably uses one. It is dropped that Think Watson the Fourth of I.B.M.-Remington wouldn’t dream of drinking a martini mixed otherwise.”

  “I get your drift,” Ed said. “So everybody buys one. But what harm’s done? It keeps the country going.”

  “That it keeps the modern economy going is quite true. But at what a cost! Our best brains are utilized contriving such nonsense and then selling it. On top of that, we are using up our resources to the point that already we are a have-not nation. We must import our raw materials. Our mountains of iron, our seas of oil, our once seemingly endless natural resources have been flushed down the sewers of this throwaway economy. On top of it all, what do you suppose this sort of thing is doing, ultimately, to the intellects of our people? How can a people maintain their collective dignity, integrity and sense of fitness if they can be so easily coerced into desires for nonsense things, status symbols, nothing things, largely because the next door neighbor has one, or some third rate cinema performer does?”

  Ed dialed another drink, desperately. “All right, so maybe electric martini stirrers are on the redundant side. But it’s what people want.”

  “That’s what people are taught to want. We must reverse ourselves. We have solved the problems of production of abundance, now man should settle down and take stock of himself, work out his path to his destiny, his Elysium. The overwhelming majority of our scientists are working either on methods of destruction, or the creation of new products which our people do not actually need nor want. Instead, they should be working upon the curing of man’s ills, delving into the secrets of the All-Mother, plumbing the ocean’s depths, reaching out to the stars.”

  “All right, but you’ve seen that people simply aren’t interested in your ideas. They want their TV, their radio, their movies back. They aren’t interested in your path to Elysium. You admit that, you’ve even given up your lectures.”

  “In a weak moment,” Tubber nodded. “This very day I plan to resume my efforts. Nefertiti and I will depart for the city of Oneonta where my tent will again…” He broke off, to glower once more at the thundering juke box which was blasting out a Rock’n’Swing revival of She’ll Be Comin’ ’Round the Mountain. “In the name of the All-Mother, how can anyone wish to listen to that?”

  Ed shouted reasonably. “It’s your own fault. You’ve taken away TV, radio and movies. People aren’t used to silence. They want music.”

  “Dost thou call that music!” The infinitely sad face of the aged Speaker of the Word was beginning to change in a manner that came back to Ed Wonder in a growing dismay.

  “Now look,” Ed said hurriedly. “It’s a natural reaction. People are packing into restaurants, bars, dancehalls. Any place where they can get a little entertainment. The juke box manufacturers are running on a three shift basis. Records are being turned out wholesale, as fast as they can press them…” He cut himself off sharply. It wasn’t the right thing to say.

  Ezekiel Joshua Tubber, Speaker of the Word, was swelling visibly.

  Ed Wonder stared at him numbly. It came to him that Moses must have looked something like this when he came down from the mountain with his Ten Commandments and found the Hebrews worshiping the Golden Calf.

  “Ah, they do! Then verily do I curse this abomination! This destroyer of the peace so that man cannot hear himself think! Verily do I say, that they who wish music shalt have music!”

  The volume of the multi-colored music machine fell off sharply, and the six white horses that were coming ’round the mountain sudden dissolved into, “…we’ll sing as we go marching on…”

  Ed Wonder lurched to his feet. He felt a sudden, dominating urge to get out of there. He muttered something to Ezekiel Joshua Tubber in the way of farewell, and hustled toward the door.

  As he escaped, the last he saw of the hex-wielding prophet Tubber was still glaring at the juke box.

  Somebody standing at the bar growled, “Who in blazes played that one?”

  The record player swung into the chorus, “Glory, Glory Hallelujah. Glory, Glory Hallelujah…”

  Ed Wonder tooled the little Volkshover.down the freeway toward Ultra-New York.

  So great. He’d warned Hopkins. He seemed to act as a catalyst around Tubber. He couldn’t get within talking distance of the Speaker of the Word without a new hex resulting. Not that the old boy wasn’t up to getting wrathed up about something on his own. Ed wondered if the hex on the parking meters applied only to those in Woodstock, or if the phenomenon were worldwide. Evidently, Tubber’s mysterious power didn’t have to be universal in scope. When he’d broken the guitar strings, it hadn’t been all of the guitar strings in the world, evidently, but only the ones on the individual guitar. And from what Nefertiti had suggested, when he had burned down the roadhouse where she had been performing, the lightning had hit only the one place, not every roadhouse on earth.

  Ed muttered, “Thank the All-Mother for small favors.”

  He stopped along the way for a sandwich and cup of coffee at a trucker’s stop.

  Half a dozen customers were gathered around the establishment’s juke box, staring at it in bewilderment. The record player was grinding out, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where…”

  One of the truckers said, “Jesus, no matter what I punch it comes out, Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”

  One of the others looked at him in disgust. “What’d’ya talking about? That’s not Hark the Herald Angels Sing. That’s Little Town of Bethlehem.”

  Somebody else chimed, “Both you guys are kooky. I remember that song from when I was a kid. It’s In the Sweet Bye and Bye.”

  A Negro shook his head at them. “Mother, but you folks just ain’t up on spirituals. That there’s Go Down Moses. No matter what you punch on this here crazy machine, it comes out Go Down Moses.”

  Ed Wonder decided to forget about the sandwich. So far as he was concerned, he was still hearing, and over and over again, all about the glory of the coming of the Lord, and glory, glory Hallelujah.

  He left the place and got back into the Volkshover. He wondered how long it would be before everyone gave up and stopped sticking coins in juke
boxes.

  He set out again for Manhattan and the New Woolworth building. Okay, he’d warned them. All he could say was it was lucky old Tubber liked an occasional beer himself, otherwise probably every bottle of booze in the country would have been turned into vintage orange pop, just as soon as the Speaker of the Word got around to thinking about all the people who were spending their time in bars, rather than listen to the need for hiking down the path to Elysium like good pilgrims.

  At the New Woolworth Building, his identification got him past the preliminary guards and up to the five—only it was now ten—floors devoted to Dwight Hopkins’ emergency commission.

  He found Helen Fontaine and Buzz De Kemp in his own office, bent over a portable phonograph and eyeing it accusingly as though the device had malevolently betrayed them.

  When Ed entered, Buzz pulled his stogie from his mouth and said, “You’ll never believe this, but…”

  “I know, I know,” Ed Wonder growled. “What is it you hear?”

  Helen said, “It’s fantastic. For me, it comes out I Come to the Garden Alone.”

  “No, listen,” Buzz insisted, “listen to those words. If you follow Me. I will make you fishers of men, if you’ll follow me.’ Clear as a bell.”

  It still sounded like “Glory, Glory Hallelujah” to Ed Wonder. He slumped down in the chair behind his desk.

  Buzz took the record from the machine and put on another one. “But listen to this. The other was supposedly a Rock’n’-Swing piece, but this label reads the first movement of the Peer Gynt Suite.” He flicked the switch on. The first movement of the Peer Gynt Suite came out The Morning, as it was supposed to do.

  Ed was interested. “It’s selective again.”

  They looked at him.

  Buzz said accusingly, “What’s selective again?”

  “The hex.”

  Buzz and Helen stared accusingly at Ed.

  Ed said defensively, “We were talking in a bar and they had the juke box tuned up to full volume and, well, he had to shout to be heard.”

  “Oh, fine,” Buzz said. “Why didn’t you get him out of there?”

  Helen said wearily, “So he got wrathful about juke boxes. Heavens to Betsy, can’t anybody ever turn him off before he gets mad? He’s not only fouled up juke boxes but all popular records, and I imagine tapes.”

  Ed said, “I never did like juke boxes anyway. He also evidently didn’t have a dime to stick in a parking meter. So…”

  “Hey, now we’re getting somewhere,” Buzz said. “Don’t tell me he laid a hex on parking meters.”

  “There’s no slot in them, any more,” Ed told him. “Listen, did anything important happen while I was gone?”

  “No, master,” Buzz said. “Everything stops when Your Eminence is absent. We dragged in a bunch of professors, doctors and every sort of scientist from biologist to astonomer. They’re still going at it, but it’s all we can do to convince one out of a hundred that we’re serious when we ask what a curse is. We’ve put a few dozen of them to work—supposedly—to research the subject. But nobody knows where to start. You can’t get a hex into a laboratory. You can’t measure it, weigh it, analyze it. Of the whole bunch we’ve turned up exactly one who believes hexes can happen.”

  “We have?” Ed said, surprised.

  “A guy named Westbrook. All that worries me is, he’s probably a twitch.” Buzz threw his stogie into the wastebasket.

  “Jim Westbrook? Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten I’d put out a call for him to be picked up. Jim Westbrook’s no twitch. He used to act as a panelist on my Far Out Hour. What has he come up with?”

  “He’s suggested we draft the whole Parapsycology Department of Duke University, just as a beginning. Then he suggests we send to Common Europe, to the Vatican, in Rome, with a request for a team of their top exorcisers.”

  “Who in the devil needs exercise at a time like this?”

  “Exorcisers, exorcisers. The archives of the Church probably contain more information on exorcising of evil spirits and such like than any other library in the world. Westbrook figures that taking off a hex is a related subject. He also suggests that we butter up Number One, in the Kremlin, and see if we can get into whatever archives remain of the Russian Orthodox Church, and also approach the Limeys for any dope the Church of England might have back in some lower bookshelves. All of them have the exorcising of evil spirits in their dogma.”

  Ed grunted wearily, “I suppose I ought to go and report to Hopkins, but if I know him and Braithgale, they’d keep me up half the night. Tubber gave me an earful of this program of his.”

  “Father got hold of one of Tubber’s pamphlets. He says that the path to Elysium is super-communism.”

  Buzz grunted, “Jensen Fontaine is about as competent of judging Zeke Tubber’s program as a eunuch is the Miss America competition.”

  “Funnies we get,” Ed complained. “At any rate, I’m too tired to think. What do you say we go to the apartment they’ve assigned me and have a few quick ones, then call it a night?”

  Buzz fumbled for a fresh stogie, looking slightly embarrassed. “Uh, Little Ed…”

  “Listen,” Ed said. “I’m getting fed up with that handle. The next guy who calls me Little Ed, gets awarded a fat lip.”

  Buzz De Kemp blinked at him. “Chum, you just don’t sound like the old Lit… that is Ed Wonder, atall. Atall.”

  Helen said, “I’m afraid we’ll have to take a rain check, Ed. Buzz and I have a date for this evening.”

  Ed looked from one of them to the other. “Oh?” He touched the end of his nose reflectively. “Well, good.”

  Helen said, as though in defense, “I figure even though I can’t be a clotheshorse myself, anymore, possibly I can teach this bum to look more of a credit to his profession.”

  “You’ve got your work cut out for you, sister,” Buzz leered at her. “I’m the type who can buy a two hundred dollar suit, and before I get out of the tailor shop I already look like I’ve slept in it.”

  “Funnies,” Ed groaned. “Good night.”

  12

  He was about to sit down to breakfast and the morning paper when Colonel Fredric Williams came bustling in. Ed Wonder looked up at him.

  “Special meeting in Mr. Hopkins’ office, Wonder,” he rapped.

  “I haven’t finished my breakfast.”

  “No time. Several important developments.”

  Ed rolled up the paper and stuck it into his jacket pocket, took a quick scalding sip of his coffee and came to his feet. “All right, let’s go.”

  He followed the colonel from the suite. His two bodyguards, Johnson and Stevens, fell in behind them in the hall. There was the bureaucratic mind for you, Ed decided. Yesterday they had sent him up to Elysium, right into the camp of the supposed enemy, without a peashooter in the way of protection. But now, in this ultra-commission on the top of the New Woolworth Building, supposedly it wasn’t safe for him to walk down the corridor unguarded.

  Hopkins was not alone. In fact, his office was crowded. This time Ed Wonder recognized almost all of them. Braithgale, General Crew, Buzz and Helen, Colonel Williams, and the more important members of Ed’s Project Tubber team. Evidently, of all the different branches of investigation of the disasters, his project was rapidly gaining the ascendency.

  When they were seated, Hopkins turned a baleful eye on them, stressing Ed and Buzz De Kemp. He said, “Before we get to Mr, Wonder’s report on his visit to Elysium, there are a couple of other developments. Mr. Oppenheimer?”

  Bill Oppenheimer, he who with Major Davis had originally upped Ed and Buzz to crash priority, came to his feet, jittering characteristically. He said, “To make it brief, very young children, all idiots and most morons, aren’t effected.”

  “Aren’t effected by what?” General Crew rumbled.

  Oppenheimer looked at him. “By any of the hexes. They can even hear radio, see television.” Bill Oppenheimer sat down.

  Hopkins said, “Mr. Yardborough.”


  Cecil Yardborough came to his feet. “This is very preliminary. We’ve hardly started on this line, however, we should speed things up now that we’ve taken over the Parapsychology Department of Duke.” He looked at Ed Wonder, as though expecting opposition to what he was about to say. “One of our researchers who’s had considerable experience in ESP has suggested a scientific explanation for Tubber’s power.”

  He couldn’t have gotten more attention had he suddenly levitated.

  Yardborough went on. “Our Doctor Jeffers suggests that Ezekiel Joshua Tubber has, probably unknowingly, developed telepathy beyond the point ever known before. Most telepathists can contact but one other person at a time, some can communicate with two or three, a very small number have been known to pass a thought on to a large number of persons within a limited distance.” Yardborough’s eyes swept around them. “Doctor Jeffers believes Tubber to be the first human being who can telepathically contact the whole species simultaneously, regardless of language.”

  Braithgale unfolded his long legs, recrossed them the other way. He said mildly, “What has that got to do with the hexes?”

  Yardborough said, “That is but one half of the Jeffers hypothesis. He also is of the opinion that Tubber is able to hypnotize through telepathy. That is, he doesn’t have to be before the person hypnotized. He can be any distance away.”

  A sigh, as though of relief, drifted through the room.

  “It doesn’t hold up,” Ed Wonder said flatly.

  They turned to him, and there seemed to be glare in the expression of all, even Helen and Buzz.

  He gestured with his hands, palms upward, “Okay. I know. Everybody wants it to hold up. People are built that way. They go batty if something comes along they can’t label. They’ve simply got to have an explanation for everyhing. However, this Doctor Jeffers doesn’t explain Tubber’s power. Sure, maybe I’d buy it for the TV-radio curse, and even the movie curse. It might even cover the juke box curse.”