Earth Unaware

9

“Heaven!” Colonel Fredric Williams blurted from the background where he had been keeping his trap shut through all this. “You mean this necromancer is dead?”

Ed Wonder was shaking his head. “That’s not it. Elysium is some gobblydygook word they use in this new religion of Tubber’s. They talk about being pilgrims on the road to Elysium, that sort of thing. Elysium is, well, sort of like Utopia, except Tubber is against Utopia. He says the idea is reactionary. I forget why. Something about Utopia being perfect, and perfection means stagnation, or…”

“Wait a minute,” Braithgale said, “you’re giving me a headache.”

“Talking about Zeke Tubber and his religion would give anybody a headache,” Buzz said. He paused a moment for dramatic emphasis, then said, “I think I know where Tubber and his daughter have gone.”

Hopkins looked at Buzz, stunned momentarily.

Buzz said, “He’s at a cooperative colony near Bearsville, in the Catskills. I heard Tubber mention the place in one of his talks. He invited anybody in the audience who was ready for…” Buzz twisted his mouth “…the promised land, to come to Elysium and join up. It’s evidently in the tradition of Robert Owen’s New Harmony colony, Llano, down in Louisiana, and Josiah Warren’s Village of Equity.”

Major General Crew rumbled, “What are you talking about, Mister?”

Professor Braithgale was looking at Buzz with a new respect. He turned his head and said to the army man, “Cooperative colonies. Utopias. There was quite a movement in their favor back in the 19th Century. Most were based on religion, some not. The Latter Day Saints, the Mormons, turned out to be the most successful. They were intelligent enough to adapt when this teaching or that didn’t prove out. The others went under.”

Ed said, “We might have known they didn’t go very far. Tubber travels in a horse and wagon.”

“Horesonvagen?” the general rumbled. “What’s that, some new German model?”

“Horse and wagon, a horse and wagon,” Ed told him. “A wagon pulled by a horse.”

The army man stared at him in disbelief. “You mean like in Western movies?”

“Please, Scotty,” Dwight Hopkins said, without looking at him. The general shut up and Hopkins said to Ed Wonder thoughtfully, “You seem to be our best authority on Ezekiel Joshua Tubber.”

He was interrupted by the arrival of Miss Presley who bore an armload of books. Even the efficient Miss Presley was looking as though something a bit disconcerting had happened, such as Gabriel blowing his horn, or the Atlantic disappearing. She put the books on Hopkins’ desk and said, “Sir, I… I…”

“I know, Miss Presley. That will be all for now.”

Dwight Hopkins took the books up and examined them one by one, while the others looked at him. He put the last one down and rubbed his eyes with his forefingers in resignation. “It still looks like Italian to me.”

The general blurted, “All of them?”

“No. Not all of them. The nonfiction is still readable. In fact,” he picked up one hard cover volume. “This novel is still in English. Huckleberry Finn.”

“Huckleberry Finn?” Helen said. “Mark Twain?”

Ed Wonder closed his eyes in mute appeal to high powers. “Oh, great. This is a new one. This hex is selective. Anything Tubber doesn’t like, becomes jibberish. Anything he approves of, we can still read. Holy smokes, talk about censorship. I thought I noticed something about that page of comic strips.”

“What was that?” Buzz asked him.

“I could still read Pogo. Buzz Sawyer, Junior and Little Orphan Annie were jibberish, but I could still read Pogo.”

Professor Braithgale took up the newspaper. “You’re right,” he said. “At least our prophet has a sense of humor.”

“Oh, Mother,” Helen muttered. “All I can say is that we’d better develop one too.”

Hopkins said, slowly, “Mr. Wonder, when your group entered this office, I was admittedly prone to think you just one more set of the eccentrics we have been digging up since the crisis first arose. Now, however, this has developed to the point where no scientific explanation seems possible. I am ready to throw this commission’s full resources behind you.”

“Behind me?” Ed blurted. “Why me?”

The president’s right hand man was not fazed. “Because you are our nearest thing to an authority on Ezekiel Joshua Tubber. You were present at three of his, ummm, performances. Besides, as the director of your Far Out Hour, I am sure you are highly knowledgeable in the field of the, ah, far out. And certainly this is about as far out as it is possible to get.”

“But…” Ed wailed.

Dwight Hopkins held up a hand. “I do not mean to suggest that your hypothesis—that Ezekiel Tubber has caused our crisis by a series of curses—is the only one my commission will continue to investigate. Far from it. However, we will set up a new department with you at the head and with full resources.”

“No,” Ed said with finality.

Buzz looked at him strangely. He said around his stogie, “You haven’t said yet, what’s in it for me? Little Ed.”

Ed Wonder turned on him desperately, “I know what’s in it for me. Sure I was present at three of his performances, as Hopkins calls them. I’ve seen the old buzzard three times and each time the results were worse. What do you think will happen next time? He’s getting arrogant…”

“Getting arrogant?” Braithgale laughed bitterly.

“…He’s beginning to feel his oats.” Ed swung on Hopkins. “He started off innocent. Not knowing what he was doing. Evidently, one of his first curses was brought on by some teenager practicing hillbilly music on his guitar. Tubber broke the guitar strings…”

“What’s miraculous about that?” the general rumbled.

“…at a distance. Then there was something else that brought him to wrath, as his daughter calls it. A neon sign, or something. So he laid a curse on it. What happened, I don’t know. Maybe it stopped flickering.”

From the background Colonel Williams said, “I wish he’d lay a hex on the neon sign across from my house. The darn thing…”

General Crew looked at him and the colonel shut up.

Ed said desperately, “When he laid that Homespun Look hex on women, he didn’t know he had done it. Evidently when he gets really wrathed up, he forgets what he says. He was astonished when I told him he’d cursed radio. As surprised as anybody else that it’d worked. But look at this now. He’s cursed all light reading. All fiction—except what he likes. Listen, I’ll bet you he wasn’t even sore when he laid that one on.”

Dwight Hopkins frowned. “I’m becoming more convinced by the moment,” he said. “And Wonder, you’re our man.”

“I am not. I keep telling you. This kook is as nutty as almond cookies. Suppose he spots me and is reminded all over again of some of the arguments I’ve had with him, remembers that hardly anybody’ll listen to him. Suppose he gets wrathful again and lays down a hex on all unbelievers. You know what that’d mean? He doesn’t have more than a couple of hundred believers all together. I tell you, that twitch is more dangerous than the H-Bomb.”

General Crew said thoughtfully, “A sniper. The best marksman in the service. Posted on a hill, with a Winchester Noiseless and a Mark 8 telescopic sight. This Elysium, from what De Kemp has said, is in the hills. A small community, away from any city. A sniper…”

Buzz grinned at him. “And how about this possibility, General? Suppose something goes wrong and Zeke lays a spell on gunpowder? Better still, all explosives? What would happen to the Cold War thaw if all of a sudden no explosives would work?”

The general scowled at him. “The curses are universal. In that case, explosives wouldn’t work for the Commies, either.”

Buzz took his stogie from his mouth and examined the tip, which was burning unevenly. “They wouldn’t need explosives,” he said. “The Chinese alone could overrun us with butcher knives made in those backyard steel mills of theirs.”

Helen said, “Besides, assassination is out of the question. Actually, like Buzz was saying the other day, Tubber is a kindly old gent who just happens…”

“Kindly old gent,” Ed muttered bitterly.

“…to have some powers we simply don’t understand. He isn’t seem to understand them either. Very well. I think Little Ed should go and confront him. There’s nothing to suggest he has anything against Ed personally. Besides, he dotes on that daughter of his and she has a crush on Little Ed.”

Silence dropped. All eyes went to Ed Wonder.

Ed lowered his lids in utter suffering. “That’s a lie!” he wailed.

“Buzz?” Helen said.

Buzz De Kemp had been trying to get his stogie to burn straight. Now he nodded and said with a twang, “Yep, right as rain. Nice curvy little wench, blue eyeballs, cheeks shiny as red apples, set up real nice. Any sapsucker can see there’s nothing better she’d like to do than spoon with Little Ed Wonder.”

“Oh, great,” Ed moaned. “Funnies.”

Dwight Hopkins said, “Wonder, I’ll have an office and staff assigned to you.”

“No,” Ed said.

Dwight Hopkins looked at him deliberately. “I can pick up this phone, Mr. Wonder and in moments have a presidential order drafting you into the armed forces. In which case you will be under the orders of General Crew, here, and will do as you are told.”

Ed muttered, “The old army volunteer system. You, you, and you.”

The general beamed at him.

Ed surrendered. “All right,” he said. “How about another drink?”

For approximately thirty of his thirty-three years, Edward Wonder had wanted to be a big executive. He had wanted it so badly he could taste it distinctly. To the extent possible in a stratified, stagnant society he had worked to that end. He had been raised in the folklore of his people including that wheeze about any citizen of the welfare state being just as good as any other citizen of the United Welfare States and with an equal chance of working his way up to the presidency, or wherever. Unfortunately, he discovered that it’s hard working one’s way up, when there is precious little work to do, and the overwhelming majority displaced by automation. Those who did still maintain jobs, and hence had higher incomes than those on the unemployment lists, clung to them. Cherished them with a bitter jealousy, and to the extent possible passed them on to progeny, relatives, or at least friends.

No. As he had grown older, it had become increasingly obvious just how small a chance Ed Wonder had of ever becoming a big executive with underlings to do his bidding, telephones and intercoms in which to snap his profound orders. In fact, at the time of his first confronting of Ezekiel Joshua Tubber, he had about decided that his sole chance was going to be through marriage with Helen Fontaine.

But now he was a big executive.

And Helen Fontaine was one of his assistants.

So was Buzz De Kemp, and Ed was acquiring more assistants by the minute. In fact, he was swamped with them and couldn’t remember the names of a fraction.

Dwight Hopkins’ promise of resources couldn’t have been more highly fulfilled. Within a quarter hour, Ed Wonder had been assigned a suite of offices. Within the hour, his staff was moving in. Among others were Mr. Yardborough, whose first name turned out to be Cecil, and Bill Oppenheimer and Major Leonard Davis. Two of the leg men were Johnson and Stevens, and Ed’s liaison man with Dwight Hopkins was Colonel Fredric Williams. Hopkins had decided that Project Tubber should be on the ultra-hush side, in view of its nature, and assigned to it anyone who had already anything to do with Wonder’s investigation. Had the story broken in the newspapers, Hopkins suspected even his gilt-edge reputation wouldn’t have been done any good.

Ed stared gloomily at his desk screen.

He hadn’t the vaguest idea where to begin. In his files were nothing more than his own report on Tubber, Buzz’s report and that of Helen Fontaine. It was no use looking at them. He knew everything covered. Which was precious little.

He flicked the screen to life and cleared his throat. “Miss… ah—” He had forgotten his receptionist’s name.

“Randy, sir. Randy Everett.”

Ed looked at her and sighed. “Randy, on you the Homespun Look is unfortunate.”

“Well, yes sir. But to tell you the truth, if I wear cosmetics…”

“You itch.”

Her eyes widened. “How did you know?”

“I’m a crystal gazer,” Ed told her. “Look, send in Mr. De Kemp.” He flicked off the intercom. It was his first act as head of Project Tubber.

Buzz came shambling in, stogie at the tilt. He looked about the office appreciatively and whistled softly between his teeth. “So, at long last Little Ed Wonder is a big shot. Work hard, save your money, and vote straight Democratic Republican and you too can get to the top. Shucks, you didn’t even have to marry the boss’ daughter.”

“Shut up,” Ed told him, “or I’ll get General Crew to draft you into the service.” He grunted at the picture. “Buzzo De Kemp, the sloppiest yardbird in the army.”

“Jollies we get,” Buzz said, dropping into a chair.

“Listen, Buzzo,” Ed said. “What do I do first?”

Buzz looked at the tip of his stogie critically, then let his eyes go around the office in thought. “We might go about finding out what a curse is. The next time we—you, that is, I’m going to be A.W.O.L. at that point—the next time you go up against Tubber, it’d be better if you had some ammunition.”

“A curse? Everybody knows what a curse is.”

“So fine. What?”

Ed thought about it. He flicked his desk switch. “Major Davis, please.” Lenny Davis’ face appeared in the screen.

“Yes, sir.” The major wasn’t yet quite used to having as his chief the man he’d been interrogating and considering throwing out of the office but a day previously.

Ed said, “We want to find out just what a curse is. Send in some scientists who know what curses are.”

The major looked at him blankly. “What kind of scientists know what a curse is, sir?”

“How would I know?” Ed told him curtly. He flicked off the set.

Buzz De Kemp was impressed.

Ed said, “What do we do now?”

“Have lunch,” Buzz told him. “We ought to pick up Helen. What’s Helen doing?”

“She’s in charge of the Homespun Look department,” Ed said. “She’s going to find out everything possible about the Homespun Look.”

Buzz looked at the end of his stogie. “That’s a good idea. You got some scientists working with her?”

Ed Wonder pursed his lips. “No. You’re right. If we’ve got unlimited resources, we better use them. The devil only knows how much time we’ve got before Tubber goes into his act again.” He flicked on his desk switch. “Major Davis.”

The major’s face was even slightly more harassed than it had been the evening before, Ed decided. The major said, “Yes, sir.”

“Lenny,” Ed told him, “send up a few scientists to Miss Fontaine’s office. We want to know what it is that makes women itch.”

The major opened his mouth, shook his head, and closed it again. “Yes, sir.”

When the army man’s face had faded from the screen, Buzz looked at it thoughtfully. “You know,” he said, “I don’t think the major is going to last very long. He’s already getting sort of a greenish look around the gills.”

Ed Wonder stood up. “There’s more where he came from,” he said.

When they got back from lunch and crossed the outer offices of Ed Wonder’s suite, he could only notice that they’d moved in another score or so of staff, and a selection of I.B.M. machines complete with operators and files of punched cards. Ed wondered vaguely what they were going to use them for. Possibly nothing. Dwight Hopkins probably just wanted them to be handy and ready, just in case a use for them did come up.

Randy, his receptionist, said, “Professor McCord is waiting in your office, Mr. Wonder.”

“Who the devil is Professor McCord?”

“Major Davis sent him, sir.”

“Oh. He’s probably an expert on either hexes or itching, then.”

After Ed and Buzz had entered the inner office, Randy Everett looked after them for a long frustrated moment, somewhat as though she had put her last dime in a pay telephone and got the wrong number.

Professor McCord came to his feet at their entry. They went through the usual banalities, finally winding up seated.

Professor McCord said, “I was picked up by two security officers and rushed here to your office. I submit that although I am available for my country’s service, I haven’t the vaguest idea of…”

Ed said, “What are you a professor of?”

“Ethnology, specializing in the African Bantu tribes.”

Buzz said, selecting a fresh stogie from his jacket pocket. “The major is sharper than I thought he was. Professor, what is a curse?”

The other’s eyes came around to the newspaperman. “You mean is the sense that a witchman might curse someone?” When the two nodded, he went on. “It is the expression of a wish that evil befall another. A calling down of something wicked, harmful on some victim.”

“Well, that’s not exactly the word, possibly,” Ed Wonder said. “Possibly the word I want is spell, or hex.”

The professor obviously hadn’t the vaguest idea of what they wanted of him. He said, “A spell is usually a combination of words, or pretended words, supposed to accomplish something magical. The term, if I’m not mistaken, is derived from the Old English. A hex is much the same thing, an act of witchcraft. It is American idiom, originally derived from the Germanic.” The professor was frowning puzzlement.

So were both Ed Wonder and Buzz De Kemp.

Ed said, “I know, I know. But I didn’t want just definitions. Now, take one of your Bantu witchdoctors. He puts a spell on somebody, usually because somebody else paid him to do it, right? Okay. Just what does he do?”

Professor McCord looked at him blankly.

Buzz said, “How does he go about it? How is it accomplished?”

The professor said, “Well, in actuality, each witchman will have a different procedure. Usually an elaborate mumbo-jumbo involving unusual ingredients to stir together, and an incantation involving magical words.”

Ed leaned forward. “We know that. But, what we wanted to know was, just what is a curse? You know, what is it…?”

The professor blinked at him.

“What we’re trying to do is find out what a curse, a hex, a spell really is.”

“Why, I just told you.”

They looked at each other for a long unprofitable moment. Finally, he said. “Do you believe in the devil? You know, Lucifer?”

“No. What has that got to do…”

“Or black magic?”

“I don’t believe in any kind of magic.”

Ed had him. He pointed a finger. “Then how come a witchdoctor can cast a spell on somebody? Don’t tell me they can’t. Too much evidence exists.”

“Oh,” Professor McCord nodded. “I see what you’re driving at, at last. Do you know what a liban is? I took my doctorate in their study.”

“I thought on my kooky Far Out Hour I’d heard of everything in this line, but evidently not.”

The ethnologist’s face took on a pleased expression. “The libans are such a vital part of African witchcraft that I’m amazed they are known so little. A liban isn’t exactly a witch-man, since he’s born into the caste and can’t enter into it from outside. They’re just a handful of families, not numerous. He’s the Eminence grise in the tribe and they wouldn’t dare do anything without his advice. For instance, if the warriors are going out on a raid, he lets them know whether or not it’s going to be a success, gives them little bags of sacred dust, or some such, to tie to their daggers. What I wish to impart is that the liban is not a fake. His position is hereditary, comes down for a thousand years and more. Believe me, if a liban puts a curse on a tribesman, the curse works.”

“How?” Buzz said flatly.

The professor looked at him. “Because everybody involved knows it will work. The victim, the liban, and all the other members of the tribe.”

It was the same sort of answer Ed had got from Varley Dee. It accomplished nothing. The fact of the matter was, hardly anybody, of all the billions of persons involved, even knew that Ezekiel Joshua Tubber existed, not to speak of knowing he was laying hexes right and left.

Buzz said to Ed, “What’s all this about libans got to do with Tubber?”

“Tubber?” Professor McCord said. “Tubber who?”

“Ezekiel Joshua Tubber,” Ed said wearily. “You wouldn’t know about him.”

“You mean Josh Tubber?” McCord said. “Academecian Ezekiel Joshua Tubber?”

“Academecian?” Buzz said.

“Josh was taking his academecian degree in political economy while I was studying for my doctorate,” McCord said. “A surpassing scholar.”

Ed Wonder closed his eyes in mute appeal to the higher up.

But Buzz said quickly, “Then you knew him when he was younger. Look, at that time did he have any ideas about starting, say, a new religion? A religion with a lot of socio-economic angles?”

Ed said, “More important, did he ever say anything to you about an ability, a power to curse things? To put a spell on, well, ha ha, say TV?”

Professor McCord said, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Ed flicked his desk switch. “Bill Oppenheimer,” he said.

Oppenheimer’s face filled the screen. It was the first time Ed Wonder had seen the other since his interview of the day before. Oppenheimer said, “Yes, sir.”

Ed said, “You’re now in charge of backtracking on Tubber. As a beginning, we’ve got a line on his schooling. He took an academecian’s degree in economics at…” he put a hand up to hold Oppenheimer and looked at McCord. “What college?”

“Harvard.”

Ed Wonder looked at him in reproach. “It couldn’t have been some jerkwater college in the Bible belt. It has to be Harvard.” He looked back at Oppenheimer. “Harvard. Put a team on this. We want everything, anything, we can get on Tubber. What he studied. Every book he ever opened has to be analyzed, word for word. Run down his classmates, and find out every detail they can remember. Dig into his social life. Latch onto any women he ever dated, they’d be at least middle-aged by now. He’s got a daughter. Find out who he married. What happened to her. If she’s still alive… Well, I don’t have to tell you. We want a complete rundown on every phase of Tubber’s life. Clear this with General Crew, if necessary. If you need manpower, there’s the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the Secret Service.”

“Got it,” Oppenheimer said. “Yes, sir.” His face faded from the screen.

Buzz said, “That’s telling them. Little Ed, you’ve got the makings of a really big cheese.”

McCord said, somewhat intrigued, “If you’re interested in checking on Josh Tubber, you won’t get much at Harvard. He took only his academecian’s degree there. As I recall, he took his doctorate at the Sorbonne, and, if I’m not mistaken, studied earlier at either Leyden or Heidelberg. Classical Philosophy, I believe.”

“Philosophy?” Ed Wonder repeated.

“A predilection for Ethical Hedonism, as I recall,” McCord nodded.

Buzz finished his drink, as though desperate. “Hedonism,” he said. “Tubber? You mean like the eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die, bit?”

“Hedonism goes further into reality than that, you know,” McCord said stiffly. “Briefly, Epicurus taught that men not only in fact seek pleasure, but further that they ought to do so since pleasure alone is good. However, his definition of pleasure is the crucial…”

“All right,” Ed said. “So Tubber put in a hitch studying philosophy. Look, Professor, I’m going to turn you over to a brace of my assistants who’ll take down everything you can remember about Tubber, and also everything you can think of about libans, witchdoctors, spells and curses.”

When the professor was gone, Ed looked at Buzz who looked back at him.

Finally Ed flicked his screen and said, “Major Davis.” When Davis’ face faded in, Ed said, reproachfully, “Lenny, ethnologists might be scientists but they don’t know what curses are. Round us up some scientists who can tell us what a curse is. Snap into this, Lenny. We want results.”

Major Leonard Davis looked at him plaintively, opened his mouth in what was obviously going to be protest or at least complaint, but then dosed it again. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Scientists who know what a curse is.” His face faded.

Buzz said approvingly, “You’re catching onto this routine fast.”

They looked at each other some more.

Finally Ed flicked on his switch and said, “Get me James C. Westbrook. He lives just south of Kingsburg.”

Randy said, “Yes, sir,” and in moments, Jim Westbrook’s face faded in on the screen.

He said, “Hello, Little Ed. Sorry, I’m awfully busy. If you don’t mind…”

Ed Wonder ignored his words. “Listen, the other day when we were talking about miracles, you said you believed in them. That is, that you believe in things happening that we can’t explain by our present scientific knowledge.”

Jim Westbrook, in the phone screen, looked as though he were in a hurry, but he took the time to say, “I’m glad you qualified, friend, I don’t like the term miracle.”

Ed said, “Well, look, do you believe in hexes?” He waited for the other’s disclaimer.

“Sure,” Westbrook said. “I’ve looked into the subject a bit.”

“Now, I’m not talking about this voodoo sort of thing where the victim is convinced he’s going to fall sick if the voodoo priest puts a spell on him, and then, of course, does. I mean…”

Westbrook said, “Really, I’m in a hurry but… Look, friend, the witchman does not have to convince his victim he’s going to be a victim. The victim gets convinced because he does get sick. I’ve found that it most bodaciously is not something to play games with. It does not depend on faith or belief, on either the part of the victim or of the practitioner. In the same way that dowsing rods work for people who are completely positive they don’t work.”

“Go on,” Ed told him.

“Hexing happens the same way. I found out one Halloween party. If you want some, well, unusual, let’s say, emotional feelings, try figuring out how to go about taking off a hex you didn’t believe you could put on, because hexes don’t exist, only the poor victim is very well hexed and you don’t know anything about unhexing whatsoever. Friend, it’s about six degrees worse than the amateur hypnotist who’s gotten somebody into a trance, imposed a posthypnotic suggestion, and now can’t unsuggest the thing. At least, there are books on hypnotism in the libraries to tell what to do in that case. But try finding a book on unhexing somebody you’ve accidently and unbelievingly hexed. Friend, it’s a matter of I didn’t know the gun was loaded!”

Jim Westbrook began to say more, but then darted a glance down at his wrist. “Listen, Little Ed, I can’t spend any more time with you talking about hexes.”

“That’s what you think,” Ed grinned at him.

Westbrook scowled. “What does that supposed to mean, friend?”

Ed said, happily, “You’ve just been drafted into talking your head off about every aspect of hexes you know about, pal.”

The other said, “Little Ed, you better see a doctor. So long.” He cut the connection.

Ed Wonder said happily, “Stereotype, eh?” He flicked the intercom switch. “Major Davis,” he said.

The major’s face came on and he said, both warily and wearily, “Yes, sir.”

“There’s a James C. Westbrook, who lives on the outskirts of Kingsburg. Have him brought in immediately and take down everything he knows about hexes. And, Major, listen. He might not want to come. However, he’s, ah, crash priority. You’d better send four men.”

“Yes, sir, to speed things up, do we have anything else on him, sir. Where does he work? What does he do? He might not be at home.”

Ed Wonder said, “He’s a consulting engineer, specializes on rhabdomancy.”

“Rhabdomancy,” Major Davis said blankly.

“Yes, rhabdomancy, radiesthesia. He operates dowsing rods.”

Major Davis looked as though he had been cruelly hurt. “Yes, sir. Crash priority. Pick up this man who operates dowsing rods.” His face faded pathetically from the screen.

10

Ed Wonder had been assigned an apartment in the New Woolworth Building while Helen Fontaine and Buzz De Kemp found accommodations in nearby hotels. In the morning, Ed Wonder got down to his office early, but evidently not early enough. His assistants, male and female, in the outer offices were in a flurry of activity. He wondered, vaguely, what they were doing. He hadn’t issued enough in the way of directions to have kept a fraction of them busy.

He stopped at one desk long enough to say, “What are you doing?”

The young man looked up. “Incantations,” he said. He had a pile of books, pamphlets and manuscripts before him and a mike connected to a dicto in his left hand.

“Incantations?” Ed said.

The other had gone back to his perusal, now he looked up again. He obviously didn’t recognize Ed as his chief. For that matter, Ed didn’t recognize him. He had never seen him before.

The other said, “Incantations. The chanting or uttering of words purporting to have magical powers. I’m accumulating basic data.”

“You mean we’ve got a full time man working on nothing but finding out about incantations?”

The young man looked at him pityingly. “I’m translating incantations in Serbo-Croat. They’ve got fifty-odd others on other languages. Now, if you’ll please excuse me.” He went back to his books.

Ed Wonder went into his own office.

There had been a few matters which had come up that Randy Everett informed him about. The extent of the offices allotted to Project Tubber had been upped considerably during the night, as well as the number of personnel. They were now working on a three shift basis. Ed hadn’t known about that.

Mr. De Kemp hadn’t come in yet but had called to let them know he was feeling indisposed.

At that point in Miss Everett’s report, Ed snarled, “Indisposed! Call that bum and tell him to get in here, hangover or no hangover. Tell him I’ll send a squad of marines, if he doesn’t.”

Randy said, “Yes, sir.”

Ed said, “Put Major Davis on.”

The face that faded into the phone screen had a major’s leaves on the shirt collar, but it wasn’t the face of Major Davis.

Ed Wonder said, “Where’s Lenny Davis?”

“Davis isn’t with us any more, sir. He had a breakdown of some sort or other. My name is Wells.”

“Oh, he did, huh? Well, look here Wells, no more breakdowns among you army types, understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If there are any breakdowns around here, I’ll have them.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ed tried to remember why he had called Major Davis, and couldn’t. He flicked off the screen. It lit up again immediately to display the face of Colonel Fredric Williams.

The colonel said, “Dwight Hopkins wants to see you immediately, Wonder.”

“Okay,” Ed said. He got to his feet. He wished that Buzzo were here to back him. There were angles to this big executive bit.

At the entry to Project Tubber, Johnson and Stevens, the two security heavies, fell in behind him. Evidently, he was still under guard. It was just as well. He couldn’t have found his way to the Hopkins offices otherwise. He had the vague feeling that this whole commission, or whatever its official name was, had grown by half again during the night. The crush was greater in the corridors, still more equipment was being shoved up and down the halls, and more offices were being filled with desks, files, phones, intercoms and all the other paraphernalia of bureaucracy.

He was admitted immediately to Dwight Hopkins’ presence and found the president’s right hand man winding up a conference with fifteen or twenty assorted efficient-looking types, only several of whom were in uniform. Ed wasn’t introduced and the others filed out with the exception of Professor Braithgale, the one among them all that Ed Wonder had recognized.

Hopkins said, “Sit down, Mr. Wonder. How does Project Tubber go?”

Ed held up his hands, palms upward. “How could it go? We just got started yesterday afternoon. We’re investigating the nature of a curse. Or at least trying to. We’re trying also to get as complete rundown on Tubber as we can, on the off chance that we’ll find some clue as to how he got this power of his.”

Hopkins shifted slightly in his chair, as though what he was about to say didn’t appeal to him. He said, “Your hypothesis, the Tubber hypothesis, is strengthening in its appeal, Mr. Wonder. It occurs to me that one aspect of this crisis might be unknown to you. Did you know that radar was not effected?”

“I wondered about that,” Ed told him.

“But that isn’t what has our technicians rapidly going off their minds. Neither is radio as used in international commerce, shipping, that sort of thing. But above all, neither are educational motion pictures. I spent an hour last night, on the edge of insanity, watching the current cinema idol, Warren Waren, come through perfectly in a travelogue sort of documentary used to promote the teaching of geography in our high schools. He had donated his time. But when we attempted to project one of his regular films. The Queen and I, using what our research people assured me was identical type film and using the same projector, we got that fantastic holdover of the image on the screen.”

Dwight Hopkins’ gaze was steady, but there was somehow, behind his eyes, a frantic look.

Ed said, “TV, in the way we use it in telephones, isn’t effected either. The curse is selective, just as in books. Non-fiction isn’t effected, nor even the kind of fiction Tubber likes. What the devil, not even his favorite comic strip is changed. But none of this is news, why’d you bring it up?”

Professor Braithgale spoke up for the first time. “Mr. Wonder, it was one thing considering your hypothesis along with anything, absolutely anything, else. But we are rapidly arriving to the point where your theory is the only one that makes sense. The least sensible of all comes nearest to making sense.”

“What happened to sun spots?” Ed srud.

Hopkins said, “On the face of it, such activity might disrupt radio, but it would hardly be selective. At the remotest, it wouldn’t exercise censorship over our lighter fiction.”

“So you’re beginning to suspect that I’m not as kooky as you first thought.”

The bureaucrat ignored that. He said, “The reason we brought you in, Mr. Wonder, is that we wish to consult you on a new suggestion. It has been proposed that we use telephone lines to pipe TV programs into the homes. A crash program would be started immediately. Within a month or so every home in the United Welfare States of America would have its entertainment again.”

Ed Wonder stood up and leaned on Dwight Hopkins’ desk and looked down into the older man’s face. “You know the answer to that silly idea as well as I do. How would you like to upset the economy of this country by fouling up telephone and telegraph, to go along with TV and radio?”

Hopkins stared at him.

Ed Wonder stared back.

Braithgale coughed. “That’s what we were afraid of. Then you think…”

“Yes, I do. Tubber would lay a hex on your new wired TV as soon as it started up.”

It seemed a stronger Edward Wonder than they had spoken to only the day before. Dwight Hopkins looked at him calculatingly. He said, finally, “Professor, suppose you tell Mr. Wonder the latest developments pertaining to the crisis.”

Ed returned to his chair and sat down.

The tall gray professor’s voice took on its lecture tone. “Soap box orators,” he said.

“What in the devil is a soap box orator?” Ed demanded.

“Possibly a bit before your time. They were already on their way out when radio began nationwide hookups and the programs began to offer consistent entertainment to the masses. We still had a remnant of the soap box orators in the 1930s but short of a few exceptions such as Boston Common and Hyde Park in London, they disappeared by the middle of this century. They are open air speakers who talk to their audiences from improvised stands. In the old days, when large numbers of our people strolled the streets of a pleasant spring or summer evening, these speakers were able to attract and hold their audiences.”

“Well, what did they talk about?” Ed scowled.

“Anything and everything. Some were religious cranks. Some had things to sell such as patent medicine. Some were radicals, Socialists, Communists, I.W.W.S, that sort of thing. This was their opportunity to reach the people with whatever their message might be.”

Ed said, “Well, so what? Let them talk. It’ll give the people something to do, especially until you get the circuses, carnivals and vaudeville going again.”

Braithgale said, “Don’t lay too much store by live entertainment, Wonder. Only a limited number of persons can watch a live performance. Vaudeville becomes meaningless if you are too far from the stage, so does legitimate theatre or a circus. Perhaps it was that which bankrupted Rome. They had to build ever more arenas so that their whole population could crowd into them. They simply couldn’t keep that many shows going.”

“But what’s wrong with these soap box orators?”

Braithgale said, “Mr. Wonder, with the coming of cinema, radio, and finally, capping it all, television, the voice of dissent faded from the land. Minority parties and other malcontents could not afford the high costs of utilizing these media themselves. They were thrown back on distributing leaflets, pamphlets and little magazines or weekly newspapers. And, of course, we know how few people actually read anything necessitating concentrated thought. Even those of us who do read are presented daily with so much material that we are highly selective. In pure self-defense, we must look at the title or headline of the reading material offered us, and make a quick decision. Few in the minority groups have the skills or the resources to present their material in the attractive manner in which the more oppulent publishers do. It boils down to the fact that the beliefs of the dissenters against our affluent society have not been reaching the people.”

It was beginning to get through to Ed Wonder.

Hopkins finished the story. “But now, every night, there are tens of thousands of belligerent amateur orators standing on our street corners, harranging people with nothing else to do but listen, people desperate for something to do.”

“You mean these, ah, soap box orators are organized? They’ve got some kind of definite bug that…”

Hopkins held up a thin hand. “No. No, not yet. But that is just a matter of time. Sooner or later one of them will come up with an idea that appeals to the mob. He’ll attract followers, other street corner harrangers. The condition of the country being the way it is now, almost any really popular idea would sweep in like wildfire. A new religion. More likely a new political theory, however far right or left.”

“Oh,” Ed said. He could understand the workings of politician Dwight Hopkins’ mind now. The administration had definite irons in the fire. Tubber’s efforts might threaten the political climate. However, Ed still didn’t see where he came in.

They weren’t long in enlightening him.

Hopkins said, “Mr. Wonder, time is running out on us. We must have some action. It will be necessary to contact this Ezekiel Joshua Tubber.”

“I think it’s a good idea. Go ahead. Maybe you can appeal to his patriotism, or something. No, come to think of it, patriotism is out. He thinks the country is being run by a bunch of idiots. He’s against the welfare state.”

“Little Ed,” Hopkins said smoothly, “I am afraid that it is going to have to be you who sees Tubber. I can think of no one else to whom we can entrust the assignment.”

“Oh, no you don’t. Listen, why not send a few of the F.B.I. boys? Or maybe the C.I.A. They’re used to trouble. I hate it.”

Hopkins was at his most persuasive. “If Tubber is at the root of our troubles, sending police officers of any description could well prove disastrous. If he is not, then it could only make us look foolish. No, you are the one. He knows you, his daughter is evidently attracted to you.”

“But you need me to handle my department, Project Tubber,” Ed said desperately.

“Mr. De Kemp can handle matters until your return.”

“I’m expendable, huh?” Ed said bitterly.

“If you must put it in that manner, yes,” Hopkins told him.

“Well, you’re just going to have to get another patsy. I’m afraid to get within miles of that old kook,” Ed Wonder told them definitely.

They had given him a highly detailed map of the Catskill area in which was located Elysium. It wasn’t too far from the Ashokan reservoir, nor from the once artist colony of Woodstock.

Ed passed through that town, on to Bearsville and beyond to a hamlet called Shady. From there a dirt side road led off some miles to the community of Elysium. There were a couple of signs along the way. Ed Wonder had never had the little Volkshover over a dirt road before. However, beyond churning up quite a screen of dust left behind, there seemed no special effect.

He passed a small cottage, laid back from the road. Perhaps cabin would be the better term. There was an extensive garden of both flowers and vegetables around it. Ed Wonder drove on, passing another, somewhat similar abode, though not an exact duplicate. In the back of his mind he identified the places as summer houses; someone who wanted to get away from it all, get back to nature during the warm months. The idea didn’t exactly appeal to him, although, come to think of it, there were desirable aspects to this sort of…

Then it came to him as another cottage appeared to the left.

This was Elysium.

There were little side roads going off in this direction and that. Obviously, to other habitations.

His face twisted. People lived here all year around ? Stuck off here away from, well, from civilization?

It came to him that there were neither TV nor radio antennas. Nor, for that matter, telephone wires. It came to him, as a shock, that there couldn’t under the circumstances be any community distribution center. These people must actually cook their own food.

He let the Volkshover settle to the ground so that he could consider other aspects. Three of the cottages were in view now. And there wasn’t a hovercar in sight, aside from his own.

“You’d go batty,” he muttered.

There were some youngsters in a grove off a way, playing in the trees. They were scampering around the branches like a tribe of monkeys. Ed Wonder’s first response was to wonder why their parents were allowing them to risk their necks so obviously. Say what you wanted to against TV but at least it kept the kids off the streets and out of dangerous play. A kid could get himself in some risky situations if allowed to horse around as these were. Then something else came to him. Perhaps children should be exposed to a certain degree of danger in their play. Perhaps a broken arm or so, while going through the process of growing up, came under the head of education and had value in the way of experience.

He was going to go over to the youngsters to ask directions, but then, in the distance, saw someone he recognized. He dropped the lift lever and at slow speed proceeded in her direction. It was one of Tubber’s followers. One of the women who had acted as receptionist at the tent entrance there in Kingsburg, the first night Ed and Helen had come afoul of Ezekiel Joshua Tubber.

Ed pulled up aside her and said, “Ah… loved one…”

She stopped and frowned, evidently surprised to see a hovercar on the streets—if they could be called streets—of Elysium. She obviously didn’t recognize him. She said hesitantly, “Good afternoon, loved one. Could I be of assistance?”

Ed climbed out of the beetle and said, “You don’t remember me. I’ve attended a couple of the meetings of, ah, the Speaker of the Word.” He should have planned this out better. The fact of the matter was, he hadn’t a clue to what he was going to find here and was playing it by ear.

He said, “I thought I’d come and see Elysium.”

Her face lost stiffness. “You are a pilgrim?”

“Well, maybe not exactly. I’d just like to know more about it.” He fell in beside her, leaving the car where it was. Parking was no problem in Elysium. “I’m not keeping you from anything, am I?”

“Oh, no.” She continued to walk along. “I’m only delivering some of my things to the printer.”

“Printer?”

“That building there. It’s our print shop.”

Ed Wonder looked at that building there, which they were approaching. It looked little different from the cottages. “You mean you print…”

“Just about everything.” She didn’t look quite as grim as he’d remembered her at the tent meeting in Kingsburg. Come to think of it, Ed decided, he had expected her to look grim at the tent meeting. A dedicated Holy Roller, or something, all set to froth at the mouth against dancing, drink, card playing and similar sins.

He said, even as they approached the door. “You mean books?” Ed Wonder’s conception of the printing of books involved acres of Rube Goldberg printing presses, entirely automated, with huge rolls of paper unwinding at flashing speed at one end and finished volumes flowing out, to be wrapped and boxed, again automatically, at the other. All at the rate of thousands per hour, if not per minute. This whole building couldn’t have been more than thirty by forty feet, at most.

He followed her through the door.

“Books, pamphlets, even a little weekly newspaper we send out to pilgrims throughout the nation who are not yet quite ready to join us in Elysium.” She greeted one of the two men who occupied the print shop. “Kelly, I’ve finally got the last two verses.”

Kelly had been standing before what Ed vaguely recognized to be a primitive type of printing press. With his left leg he was stomping up and down on a treadle, somewhat similar to the powering of the early sewing machine. At the same time he was picking up sheets of paper with his right hand, inserting them deftly into the moving press, removing them just as deftly with his left hand, repeating the process over and over again.

Kelly said, “Hi, Martha. Good. Norm can set them up.”

Ed was watching in fascination. If the other got his hand caught between that type and…

Kelly grinned at him. “Never saw a platen press before?”

“Well, no,” Ed said.

Martha said, “Kelly, this is a new pilgrim. He’s been to some of Josh’s meetings.”

They exchanged banalities. For a time, Ed watched in complete astonishment. He realized he couldn’t have been more surprised if he had come into a room where women were carding wool and then utilizing spinning wheels to make thread. Had he known it, that was going to come later.

While Martha and Kelly got into some technical discussion about the book they were evidently in the process of producing, Ed wandered over to where the room’s other occupant was working.

This worthy looked up and grinned a welcome. “Name’s Haer, loved one,” he said. “Norm Haer.”

“Ed,” Ed told him. “Ed Wonder. What in the devil are you doing?”

Haer grinned again. “Setting body type. This is a California type box. Ten point, Goudy Old Style.”

“I thought you set type on a machine that looks something like a typewriter.”

Haer laughed. “That was the old fashioned way. Here in Elysium we set it by hand.” His hand darted, flicked out, flicked back again. The lines of type in his hand-held tray were slowly growing.

Ed said, a faint exasperation in his voice: “Look, what’s the point? Ben Franklin used to print like this but since then we’ve dreamed up a few improvements.”

The typesetter’s fingers never stopped their flying. He was evidently the sort who remained in almost perpetual good humor. At least, thus far, his face had never lost its smile.

“There’s several angles,” he told Ed. “One, there’s a lot of satisfaction in turning out a finished product with your own hands. Preferably a superior product. Something went out of the production of commodities when a shoemaker no longer makes footwear starting out with leather and winding up with a finished pair of shoes, but instead stands before a gigantic machine, which he doesn’t understand, watching a few gauges and periodically throwing a switch, or pushing a button, for four or five hours a day.”

Ed said, “Oh, great, but that first shoemaker of yours turned out maybe one pair of shoes a day, and the second one ten or twenty thousand.”

The printer grinned. “That’s right. But the second one has ulcers, hates his wife and is an incipient alcoholic.”

Ed Wonder said suddenly, “What did you use to do before you got this job setting type for Tubber? You don’t sound like some uneducated, small time…” He let the sentence dribble away. It didn’t sound very diplomatic.

Norm Haer was laughing. “I’m not setting type for Tubber, but for Elysium. I used to be managing director of World-Wide Printing Corporation. We had offices in Ultra-New York, Neuve Los Angeles, London, Paris and Peking.”

Ed had experienced the ruggedness of trying to climb the pyramid in the Welfare State. When only a third of the nation’s potential working force was needed in production, the competition could get fierce. He said, in compassion. “Got all the way to the top but then they bounced you, eh?”

“Not exactly,” Haer grinned. “I was too big a stockholder for that. I happened to read one of Josh Tubber’s pamphlets one day. So the next day I got hold of everything of his I could locate. And the next week I told World-Wide what they could do with their job and came here to Elysium to help set up this shop.”

The man was obviously halfway around the corner, good humor or not. Ed left that line of thought. “What are you working on now?” he said.

“A limited edition of Martha Kent’s latest verse.”

“Martha Kent?” Ed Wonder knew the name. Poetry wasn’t his forte but American Nobel Prize winners weren’t so common that you didn’t hear of them. “You mean she’s given you permission to bring out a book of hers!”

“That’s not the way I’d put it,” Haer grinned. “It’s more a matter of Martha bringing it out herself.”

“Martha!” Ed blurted. His eyes went accusingly over to where the woman with whom he had entered the shop was talking with Kelly as he ran his foot-operated platen press. “You mean that’s Martha Kent?”

“As ever was,” Haer chuckled.

Ed Wonder muttered some sort of goodbye and rejoined the other two. He said, in accusation, “You’re Martha Kent.”

“That’s right, loved one,” she smiled.

“Look,” Ed demanded. “I don’t want to appear dense, but why’re you bringing out a book of your latest poems through a little one horse outfit like this?”

“Never let Josh Tubber know I said this,” she said, and there was a quick elfin quality in her face, “but to make money.”

“Make money!” Ed said in disgust.

Kelly ran out of paper, stopped peddling, wiped his hands on his apron and walked to a nearby pile of books. He took one up and returned with it to the newcomer. He handed it to Ed without speaking.

Ed turned it over in his hands. It was bound in leather. Somehow it was different. He opened it and fingered through the pages. The paper was heavy and had sort of an antique finish. He had never heard of the author. He had a strange feeling that he was handling a work of art.

The other two watched him, a disconcerting amusement in their air.

To say something, Ed said, “I’ve never seen paper like this, where did you get it?”

“We made it,” Kelly said.

Ed closed his eyes for a moment. He opened them and said, “What do you need money for? You evidently make everything.” He pointed a finger accusingly at Martha Kent’s dress. “That’s homespun, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But obviously we can’t do completely without money, even in Elysium. For instance, we need postage to mail our publications. Sometimes we need medicines. We have to buy salt. Oh, you’d be surprised.”

“Look,” Ed said plaintively. “You, Martha Kent, write a book that’s potentially a bestseller. You bring it in here and put out a limited edition by setting it by hand, printing it yourself by footpower on paper you made yourself. So how many copies do you print. A thousand?”

“Two hundred,” Martha said.

“So you sell them for how much apiece? A hundred dollars?”

“Two dollars,” Martha said.

Ed closed his eyes again, this time in pure anguish. He said, “Two dollars for a book like this? I’m no biblomaniac, but a first edition, limited edition, hand produced Martha Kent would be all but priceless. But aside from that, if you simply put the manuscript in the hands of any major publisher, you’d realize a small fortune.”

Kelly said reasonably, “You don’t understand. We don’t need a small fortune. It’s just that right at the present Elysium could use about four hundred dollars, for medicine and…”

Martha interrupted hurriedly to say, “But don’t let Josh Tubber know our motivation. Josh isn’t always very practical. He’d be indignant if he knew we were so crass as to publish this work for the sake of raising money.”

Ed had given up. He said bitterly, “What would he do with them? Give them away?”

Martha and Kelly said in unison, and as though nothing were more reasonable, “Yes.”

Ed said, “I’m going outside to get some air.”

He walked back in the direction of the Volkshover, refusing to allow himself to start tearing his hair.

All right, darn it, give them every benefit of the doubt. This little community set in the hills and woods of the Catskills had its virtues. Good clean air. Tremendous scenery—there in the background was Overlook Mountain. Good place to raise children, possibly. Although, the devil knows where they’d get their schooling. He pulled himself up on that one. If Tubber held an academecian’s degree and Martha Kent was one of his followers, then Ed suspected there were others capable of teaching school, in some sort of little red schoolhouse tradition.

All right. So it had its qualities, although it might be another thing in the winter. His eyes went around to two or three of the cottages. They all had chimneys. Holy smokes, these people actually burned wood. Logs, evidently, that they cut themselves. Not even oil heat in the winter! How stoneage could you get?

Come to think of it, though, it was probably beautiful here in the winter. Especially when the snow was newly fallen. Ed Wonder had a custom, when there’d been a heavy new snowfall, of driving out from Kingsburg into the country, just to look at the snow in the early morning, on the tree limbs, on the fields—before man and sun destroyed it. Of course, he never left the main roads. This would be different. It occurred to him that a really heavy snowfall would snow them in here, so that they couldn’t get down to even Woodstock for supplies.

He drew himself up again. They didn’t have to get down to Woodstock, or anywhere else, for supplies. They grew their own supplies, evidently.

But how about medical care, in case one of them fell ill while they were snowed in? He didn’t know, possibly some of them had medical training. They seemed to have everything else.

All right, given all their qualities. They were still as kooky as a bunch of Alice in Wonderland hatters. Getting themselves off here, living like a bunch of pioneers. No TV, no radio. He wondered how often the kids had been allowed to go into town to the movies. And then decided probably never. Perhaps he didn’t know Ezekiel Joshua Tubber too well, but it was obvious that the prophet didn’t exactly hold with modern films, with their endless violence, crime and what Tubber probably thought were perverted values.

What in the devil did they do with themselves?

And that kooky conversation he’d just had with Martha Kent, Kelly the printer, and Haer the typesetter. There must have been months put into that book of hers. What was to be the product of all that work? Four hundred dollars. How did they arrive at that sum? They’d needed that exact amount for something of which the colony was in want. Oh, great. What was wrong with eight hundred dollars, giving them a reserve of half for future colony needs? Hadn’t that even occurred to anyone? Hadn’t Professor McCord told Ed that Tubber had a degree in economics? What did they teach in the Harvard School of Economics these days?

He restrained himself again on the tearing of hair bit.

At that point, he spotted somebody else he knew, disappearing into one of the cottages. It was Nefertiti Tubber.

He called to her, but evidently wasn’t heard.

Ed Wonder took a deep breath, straightened his spine, ran his index finger around the inside of his collar and performed one of the bravest acts of his life. He marched up to the cottage and knocked on the door.

Her voice called, “Come in, loved one.”

He opened the door and stood there a moment. From time to time, in his reading he had come upon the term quaking. Characters would quake. He had never got quite a clear picture of what quaking amounted to. Now he knew. Ed Wonder was quaking.

However, unless the Speaker of the Word was off in one of the two smaller rooms which the cottage seemed to boast, besides the larger one which opened off the road, Nefertiti was alone. There was nothing in Nefertiti Tubber to quake about. Ed stopped quaking.

She said, “Why, Edward. Loved one. You’ve come to me.”

It wasn’t exactly the way the followers of Tubber usually pronounced loved one.

Ed closed the door behind him and cleared his throat.

She came closer, her arms at her sides, and stood before him.

It was as simple as that. He didn’t have to think about it at all. If he had, maybe he wouldn’t have. Wouldn’t have done what came so naturally.

He took her very firmly and kissed her very truly, as old Hemingway used to put it, smack on the kisser. She had a kisser built to order for kissing. But evidently hadn’t put it to much practice.

Nefertiti Tubber seemed highly in favor of rectifying that shortcoming. She didn’t stir. Her face continued to be held up to his, her eyes, open, not closed, were dreaming.

He kissed her again.

After a time he remembered to say, nervously, “Ah… where’s your father, ah… honey?”

She stirred, as though impatient of talk. “He’s gone into Woodstock to meditate over a few glasses of beer.”

Ed closed his eyes in quick appeal to his guardian angels, if any. “Ezekiel Joshua Tubber on the town having a few brews?”

“Why not?” She took him by the hand and led him to the couch. It was, he noted, absently, obviously of hand construction, even the padding, the bolsters and pillows. Somebody had put a great deal of work into this piece of furniture. She seated herself comfortably beside him, not relinquishing his hand.

Ed said, “I don’t know. I just kind of thought your father would be against drinking. In fact, any day I expected my autobar to start making with buttermilk, or something, when I dialed a highball.”

It came to him that this was an opportunity he should be taking advantage of, instead of spending it necking. No matter how desperately Nefertiti Tubber might be in need of practice.

He said, “Look Nefertiti… by the way, did you know the original bearer of your name was the most beautiful woman in antiquity?”

“No,” she sighed. She snuggled his arm more tightly around her waist. “Tell me more.”

He said, “I suppose your father gave you the name because Nefertiti’s husband, Amenhotep, was the first pharaoh to teach that there was only one god.” Ed Wonder had picked up that bit of knowledge from Professor Varley Dee on the Far Out Hour one night. A religious twitch guest had been of the belief that the Hebrews had been the first to teach monotheism.

“Well, no,” she said. “Actually, it was a press agent. My real name is Sue.”

“Press agent!”

“Ummm,” she said distantly, as though impatient of talk. “Back when I was a stripper.”

“Back when you were WHAT?”

“Doing a strip tease act, on the Borsch Circuit.”

Ed Wonder sat belt upright. His eyes goggled her. “Listen,” he said desperately. “I’m hearing things wrong. I could have sworn you said you were a strip teaser on the Borsch Circuit.”

“Ummm, put your arm around me again, Edward. That was before my father rescued me and brought me to Elysium.”

Ed knew that the best possible thing he could do was change the subject. Change it to anything. But he couldn’t. Any more than he could have kept from wrigging a loose tooth with his tongue, no matter what the pain.

“You mean to tell me that your father allowed you to do a strip tease act, on the Borsch Circuit or anywhere else?”

“Oh, that was before he was my father.”

Ed Wonder closed his eyes, resigned to anything.

Nefertiti summed it up quickly. “I was an orphan and, well, sort of kid-crazy to get into show business. So I ran away from the orphanage and lied about my age. I was fifteen. And, well, finally I got a job with a troupe doing real live shows. I was booked as Nefertiti the Modest, the girl who blushes all over. But we didn’t do so well, because who wants to see real live shows any more when all the truly good acts are on TV? Anyway, to make it short…”

“The shorter the better,” Ed muttered.

“…father rescued me.” Her tone went apologetic. “It was the first time I heard him speak in wrath. Then he brought me here, and sort of adopted me.”

Ed didn’t ask what sort of adopted meant. He said, “The first time you heard him speak in wrath? What did he do?”

Nefertiti said uncomfortably, “Uhh, he kind of burned the nightclub building down. Sort of, uhh, like a bolt of lightning, kind of.”

He brought his twirling mind back to approximate place and present, with a great effort. He simply had to use this opportunity to advantage. He couldn’t sit here and blabber as these curves were thrown at him.

“Look,” he said firmly, disengaging his hand from hers and half-turning to stare at her levelly, seriously, “I didn’t come here just to see you.”

“You didn’t?” There was hurt in her face.

“Well, not entirely,” he said hurriedly. “I’ve been given a very responsible job by the government, Nefertiti. Very responsible. Part of my duty is to find out… well, to find out more about your father and this movement of his.”

“Oh, wonderful. Then you’ll have to spend a great deal of time here in Elysium.”

He kept himself from answering with an emphatic negative to that and said, “Now, to start at beginnings. I’m a little confused about this new religion your father is trying to spread.”

“But about what, Edward? It’s perfectly simple. Father says all great religions are quite simple, at least before they are corrupted.”

“Well, for instance, who is this All-Mother you’re always talking about?”

“Why, you are, Edward.”

11

After a long moment, Ed Wonder opened his eyes again. He said, slowly, “I keep getting the impression that every other sentence is being left out of this conversation. What in the name of Mountain Moving Mohammed are you talking about?”

“The All-Mother. You’re the All-Mother, I’m the All-Mother, that little bird singing out there, it’s the All-Mother. The All-Mother is everything. The All-Mother is life. That’s the way father explains it.”

“You mean, something like Mother Nature?” Ed said with a certain relief.

“Exactly like Mother Nature. The All-Mother is transcendent. We pilgrims on the path to Elysium aren’t so primitive as to believe in a, well, god. Not a personal, individual god. If we must use such terms, and evidently we do, in order to spread our message, then we must use All-Mother as a symbol of all life. Father says that woman was man’s earliest symbol when searching for spiritual values. The Triple Goddess, the White Goddess was all but universal in the first civilizations. Even down into modern times, Mary has almost been deified by Christians. Note that even atheists refer to Mother Nature, rather than Father Nature. Father says that those religions that have degraded women, such as the Moslems, are contemptible and invariably reactionary.”

“Oh,” Ed Wonder said. He knuckled his chin ruefully. “I suppose you people aren’t quite as kooky as I first had figured out.”

Nefertiti Tubber hadn’t heard that. Her face was twisted thoughtfully. “We could probably have that cottage, up next to the laboratory,” she said.

The import of that didn’t get through to him at first. “Laboratory?” he said.

“Ummm, where Doctor Wetzler is working on his cure.”

“Wetzler! You don’t mean…”

“Ummm, Felix Wetzler.”

“You mean Felix Wetzler is up here in this backwoods… that is, in this little community?”

“Of course. They had him working on some sort of pills to give women curly hair, or something. So he gave up in disgust and came here.”

“Felix Wetzler, working up here. Balls of fire, he’s the most famous… What kind of a cure is he working on?”

“For death. We could have the cottage right next to him. It will be finished in a day or two. And…”

Ed Wonder shot quickly to his feet. It had got through to him now. “Look,” he said hurriedly. “Like I told you, I’ve got this important government assignment. I have to see your father.”

She was unhappy, but she stood too. “When will you be back, Ed?”

“Well, I don’t know. You know how it is. The government. I’m working directly under Dwight Hopkins himself. Duty first. All that sort of kookery.” He began edging toward the door.

She followed him. At the door she held up her face again, for his kiss. “Edward, do you know when I fell in love with you?”

“Well, no,” he said hurriedly. “I wouldn’t know when that happened.”

“When I heard them calling you little Ed. You don’t like to be called Little Ed. But they all call you that. They don’t care that you hate it, they don’t even know you do.”

He looked into her. Suddenly everything was different He said, “You never called me that.”

“No.”

He bent down and kissed her again. She didn’t seem to need practice as much as he had thought earlier. He tried again, just to be sure. She hardly needed practice at all.

Ed said, “I’ll be back.”

“Of course.”

He found Ezekiel Joshua Tubber seated at a table in a corner of Dixon’s Bar.

The drive down from Elysium, through Shady and Bearsville, had been accomplished in a state of mental confusion.

But now that he considered it, he had never been in a state other than one of confusion every time he came up against Tubber and his movement. The man had started out seemingly a Bible belt itinerant revivalist, and wound up with an academecian’s degree in political economy from Harvard. His daughter had started off as a simple, slightly plumpish girl in gingham print dress who blushed, and had wound up an ex-strip teaser and only a sort-of-adopted member of the Tubber family. The new religion had started off just one more sect of cranks, and now was revealed to have among its followers Nobel Prize winner Martha Kent, and ultra-top research biochemist Felix Wetzler.

However, he was, beginning to lose his fear of Ezekiel Joshua Tubber. The Lincolnesque prophet—if that were the term—was beginning to take on aspects of reality.

Ed Wonder had brought himself up sharp at that point. Reality, his neck. There was no reality in a situation that embraced the laying on of worldwide hexes, just because an elderly twitch got himself into a tizzy against this or that aspect of modern society, from time to time.

He spotted the Tubber horse and wagon pulled up before a smallish autobar which read simply Dixon’s. Ed Wonder began fumbling in his pockets for a coin for the parking meter; there being an empty place right next to the wagon. However, at this point he saw a cop coming along the street toward him and scowling unbelievingly at each meter in its turn.

When he came abreast of Ed’s Volkshover, Ed said, “What seems to be the matter, Officer?”

The other looked at him unbelievingly. “These here parking meters. Something crazy’s happened.”

Ed Wonder could see it coming, but he couldn’t help saying, “What?”

“There’s no slot for the coin to go in. There’s gotta be a slot. There was a slot yesterday. There’s always been a slot for the coins to go in. This is crazy. You’d think they were hexed, or something.”

“Yeah,” Ed said, wearily. He climbed out of the hovercar and made his way toward Dixon’s.

There was a blast of juke box music emanating from the autobar. Ed Wonder set his shoulder against it, and pushed his way in. For some reason, since the elimination of radio and TV, everybody seemed to have tuned up their juke boxes to the cyclonic point.

Tubber was seated in a corner, a half-full glass of beer before him. In spite of the fact that the place was packed, his table was empty except for himself. He looked up at Ed’s approach and smiled gentle welcome.

“Ah, dear one. Will you share a glass of beer with me?” Ed steeled himself and took a chair. He said bravely, “Sure, I’ll have a glass of beer. What surprises me is that you’re having one. I thought all you reformers were on the blue-nosed side. How come the pilgrims on the path to Elysium aren’t morally opposed to the demon alcohol?”

Tubber chuckled again. At least the old boy seemed to be in a good humor. He raised his voice over the blast of the juke box. “I see you are beginning to pick up some of our symbolic terminology. But why should we be opposed to the blessing of alcohol? It is one of the All-Mother’s earliest gifts to mankind. So far back as we can trace, in history and prehistory, man was aware of alcoholic beverages and enjoyed them.” He held up his glass of beer. “We have written records of the brewing of beer going back some 5000 years B.C in Mesopotamia. By the way, were you aware of the fact that when the Bible mentions wine, in its earlier books, it is referring to barley wine, which is, of course, actually beer. Beer is a much older beverage than wine.”

“No, I didn’t know it,” Ed said. He dialed himself a Manhattan, feeling a need for some more substantial backing than beer would promote. “But most religions point out that alcohol can be a disaster. The Mohammedans don’t allow it at all.”

Tubber shrugged pleasantly, after darting a disapproving glance over at the juke box which was now rendering a Rock’n’Swing version of Silent Night. He all but yelled to get his voice above the alleged music. “Anything can be a disaster if overdone. You can drink enough water to kill yourself. What in the name of the All-Mother is that piece they’re playing? It seems, very vaguely, to be familiar.”

Ed told him.

Tubber looked disbelief. “That’s Stille Nacht ? Dear one, you are jesting.”

Ed figured they’d gone through enough preliminary pleasantries. He said, “Look here, Mr. Tubber…”

Tubber bent an eye on him.

“…Uh, that is, Ezekiel. I’ve been assigned to contact you and try to come to some understanding on these developments of the past couple of weeks. I don’t suppose there’s any need of telling you that the world is going to pot by the minute. There are riots going on in half of the larger cities of the world. People are going batty for lack of something to do. No TV, no radio, no movies. Not even comics or fiction, to read.”

“Surely you are mistaken. Why, the world’s classics haven’t been effected through my righteous actions.”

“The world’s classics! Who the devil reads classics? The people want something they can read without thinking! After a hard day, people can’t concentrate.”

“A hard day?” Tubber said mildly.

“Well, you know what I mean.”

The bearded religious leader said gently, “That is the difficulty, dear one. The All-Mother designed man to put in a hard day, as you call it. A full day. A productive day. Not necessarily a physically hard day, of course. Mental endeavor is just as important as physical.”

“Just as important,” Ed said. “More important. Anybody knows that.”

“No,” Tubber said mildly. “The hand is as important as the brain.”

“Yeah? Without the brain where would man be?”

“And where without the hand?”

“Some of the monkeys have hands and haven’t got very far.”

“Such animals as dolphins and whales have brains and haven’t gotten very far either. Both are needed, dear one. The one as badly as the other.”

Ed said, “We’re getting away from the point. The point is that the world’s on the point of collapse because of this, these… well, whatever it is you do.”

Tubber nodded and dialed himself another beer. He scowled at the juke box which was now roaring out a hill billy lament, complete with vocal twang. The hill billy twang, it came to Ed Wonder, intensified as each decade went by. He wondered if a hundred years ago there had actually been a twang in Ozark speech.

“Fine,” Tubber said.

“What?” Ed asked. The juke box had distracted him.

“You said the world is on the point of collapse.” The Speaker of the Word nodded satisfaction. “After the collapse, perhaps all will take up the path to Elysium.”

Ed finished his Manhattan and dialed another. “Now look,” he said aggressively, “I’ve been checking on some of your background. You’re a well-educated man. You’ve been around. In short, you’re not stupid.”

“Thank you, Edward,” Tubber said. He scowled again over at the juke box. They had to shout to make themselves heard.

“All right. Now suppose everything you say about the Welfare State is correct. Let’s concede that. All right. I’ve just been over to Elysium. I’ve seen how you live there. Okay. It’s fine for some people. Some people must love it. Nice and quiet. Good place to write poetry, or do handicrafts or scientific experiments, maybe. But, holy smokes, do you expect everybody to want to live like that? You’ve got this tiny community of a few dozen households. The whole world can’t join up. It’s a small basis thing. You keep talking about taking the road to Elysium. Suppose everybody did, how would you pack four or five billion people into that little Elysium of yours?”

Ezekiel Joshua Tubber had heard him out. Now he chuckled. Broke off his humor to scowl still once again at the source of music. The juke box never went silent. There was always someone to drop in another coin.

“You fail to understand the word, dear one. Our term Elysium has a double meaning. Obviously, we do not expect the whole world to join our little community. It is but an example for others to heed. We are but indicating that it is possible to lead full, meaningful lives without resort to the endless products of present mechanical society. Perhaps we go to the extreme, for the sake of emphasis. I utilize horse and wagon to illustrate that five hundred horsepower hovercars, gulping up petroleum products at a disastrous rate for the sake of obtaining a speed of two hundred miles an hour, are redundant. There are many examples to illustrate that too often we utilize complicated machinery simply for machinery’s sake.”

Ed shouted, “I don’t get that.”

Tubber said, “Take the abacus. For years we have been sneering at the Japanese, Chinese and Russians because they are so backward as to use the abacus in their businesses, their banks and so forth, instead of our electrical adding machines. However, the fact is that the abacus is more efficient and actually faster than the usual electric adding machine, and most certainly less apt to break down.” The old boy glowered in the direction of the juke box. “Verily, that device is an abomination.”

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.”

“Juke box curse!” somebody blurted.

Hopkins said evenly, “We’ve begun to receive reports of it. Go on, Mr. Wonder.”

“However, it won’t cover physical things Tubber’s done, like sealing up the slots in parking meters, and setting a nightclub on fire with lightning because the proprietor was throwing shows involving teen-age kids stripping. It wouldn’t even cover breaking a set of guitar strings at a distance.”

Jim Westbrook, seated off to one side, and noticed now by Ed Wonder for the first time, said, “Perhaps the fellow owning the guitar only thought the strings were broken, under Tubber’s hypnosis.” But the big consulting engineer didn’t sound as though he believed it himself.

Ed said, “We simply don’t know. Perhaps there’s something in nature that when there’s a need for a certain type of person the race produces him. Possibly nature figures there’s a need for a man with Tubber’s powers right now. There was a need for a Newton when he came along. Can we explain him? There was a rash of super-geniuses in such cities as Florence at the time of the Renaissance. Can anybody explain the fantastic abilities of Leonardo and Michelangelo? Devil knows, the times called for them. The race had to be pulled out of the Dark Ages.”

Dwight Hopkins sighed and ran a gaunt hand over his mouth and chin. “Very well,” he said. “However, Mr. Yardborough, see that Doctor Jeffers’ line of investigation is continued. Crash priority. We leave no possibilities unexplored. The national emergency is growing geometrically.

“And now,” Hopkins continued, “we come to another, very uncomfortable aspect. General Crew, please.”

The general lumbered to his feet, and even before opening his mouth his face dyed mahogany. He took up a newspaper from Hopkins’ desk and shook it.

“Who is the traitor who leaked this whole story to AP-Reuters!”

Ed Wonder snatched his own paper from his jacket pocket, ripped it open to the front page. It glared 72 point type:

He didn’t have to read it. He knew it would all be there.

“I thought nobody’d believe you,” he snapped at the reporter.

Buzz grinned at him, took his stogie from his mouth and pointed at Ed’s chest with it. “That’s where my stroke of genius came in. This was my story, from the beginning, and I just had to see it in print. You left me in charge, yesterday. So I sent a couple of the boys up to Kingsburg and had them haul Old Ulcers right out of the city room and down here. I showed him around. Showed him all the staff we’ve got working on Project Tubber. Finally it got through to him. Whether or not he believes it himself, the biggest story of the century cracked right in his own town. I had the piece already written up. He just took it with him.”

“And AP-Reuters picked it up from the Times-Tribune, you kook!” Ed snarled at him. “You know what you’ve done?”

“I know what he’s done,” Hopkins said, the evenness of his voice for once tried. “He’s made a laughing stock of the administration. I thought it was made clear that this phase of our investigation was to be kept under wraps until more definite data was available.”

Ed Wonder was on his feet, his face working. “He’s done more than that! He’s signed the death warrant of Tubber and his daughter!”

Buzz scowled at him, defensively. “Don’t be silly, chum. I didn’t mention where they were. They’re safely tucked away in the little Elysium hamlet of theirs. Sure, a lot of people might be sore at them. A good chance of teaching old Zeke a lesson. He’ll find out what a heel practically everybody in the world figures he is.”

Ed snarled, “He isn’t in Elysium. He’s in Oneonta, with that pint-sized revival tent of his, spreading the message. Come on, Buzz! You started this. Let’s go. They’ll lynch him.”

Buzz threw his stogie on the floor. “Good grief,” he muttered, heading for the door.

The general was standing too. “Wait a minute! Perhaps this is for the best.”

Ed Wonder flung a contemptuous glare at him. “Like that other brainstorm of yours. Getting a sniper to shoot him from a distance. Just consider two of the ramifications, soldier. One, suppose Tubber starts flinging hexes at a mob out to lynch him. Do you have any idea what they might consist of? Or, number two, suppose the crowd does get to him and finishes him off. Do you think his hexes end with his death? How do we know?”

Buzz was through the door and on his way to the outer offices. Ed started after him.

“One moment,” Dwight Hopkins called, his famed poise shot to hell. “I can phone the local police in Oneonta.”

“No good,” Ed called back over his shoulder. “Tubber and Nefertiti know me, but some heavy-handed cops might just intensify the fireworks.”

In the anteroom, Johnson and Stevens hustled to their feet.

Ed ripped out at them, “Phone down to the garage. Have the fastest police car available ready for us, by the time we get there. Hurry, you flatfooted clowns!”

He charged down the corridor in the direction of the elevators.

Buzz had summoned one by the time he arrived. They hurried into it, banged the descent button, and their legs all but folded under them at the plunge.

The car was waiting. Ed flashed his identity and they bustled into the front seat. “How do you work this thing?” Buzz demanded. “I’ve never had an automatic.”

Ed Wonder had used Helen’s General Ford Cyclones from time to time. He rapped, “Here,” and dialed the number to take them across the George Washington Bridge. Meanwhile he snatched up the road map and located the coordinates for Oneonta. The upstate New York town wasn’t a much greater distance than Kingsburg, but situated further west. They’d have to go to Binghamton, as the closest route.

They agonized along the way. It would be nearly noon before they arrived. They had no way of knowing where Tubber had set up his tent. They had no way of knowing how soon he would begin his lecture. If it were anything like Saugerties, it wouldn’t be just one meeting scheduled, but several throughout the day. He’d possibly start quite early.

Ed Wonder didn’t expect him to get through the first talk. Once the audience found out who he was, that would be it. He cursed silently, inwardly. Perhaps they had already found out. Possibly the Oneonta Star had already run a notice. The Star was undoubtedly a subscriber to AP-Reuters; if some bright reporter connected the two stories and revealed that the controversial prophet was in town, it would mean the end already.

They could have saved themselves the anxiety over the time that would be taken locating Tubber’s tent. From afar, the roar of the mob could be heard. Throwing on the manual operation, Ed Wonder hit the lower part of town without diminution of speed.

“Hey, take it easy, chum,” Buzz De Kemp blurted.

“A siren,” Ed spit out at him. “There must be some button or something. Find it! This car should have a siren.”

Buzz fumbled. The siren’s whine ululated, wave over wave. They shrilled through the small Catskill city, traffic pulling away, right and left, such traffic as there was. Ed Wonder suspected that the greater part of the town was in on the show.

They could spot the action now. There was fire. As they pulled closer, they could see that it was obviously the tent.

All over again, it was the lynch scene of the movie projectionist in Kingsburg. It was basically the same, though ten times over in size. Far beyond the point where it could have been controlled by the police.

The mob numbered thousands, roaring, shouting, shrilling, screaming. But here on the outskirts they were principally milling around, the crowd hampered by its very size, unable to see what was going on in the center. Ineffective in the developments.

From their height in the hovercar, Ed Wonder and Buzz De Kemp could make out the activity. In the dead center, Ezekiel Joshua Tubber and his daughter were being buffeted this way and that, framed in the light of the burning tent behind them. There was no sign of other followers of the rejected prophet. Even in the excitement of the moment, Ed had a quick thought go through his mind. The desertion of Jesus, even by Peter, at the time of the betrayal to the Romans. Where were the followers, no matter how small a handful? Where were the pilgrims on the path to Elysium?

He slugged the lift lever, bringing them up to ten feet, shot toward the center of the shouting, club brandishing, fist brandishing mob. The smell of hate was everywhere. The fearful smell of hate and death, found seldom other than in mobs and in combat. The yells had become one, one blast of roaring rage.

Buzz yelled, “It’s impossible. Let’s get out of here. It’s too late. They’ll get us too!” The reporter’s eyes were popping fear.

Ed banged toward the center of the melee.

He yelled at Buzz, “Take the wheel, it’s on manual. Bring it down right above them!”

He squirmed over the seat into the back. He’d spotted something there earlier. Even as Buzz De Kemp grabbed at the wheel, steadying them, Ed tore the submachinegun from its rack.

“Hey!” the reporter yelled at him, still goggle-eyed.

With the butt, Ed Wonder knocked the glass out of the right rear window. The siren continued its screaming. The mob’s leaders—a dozen of them, manhandling the bearded prophet, who seemed dazed, and Nefertiti, screaming and scratching to get to her father—stared up. The siren was getting through to them for the first time.

Ed stuck the gun through the window, pointed up. He had never handled a similar weapon before. He pulled the trigger and the roar blasted back through the heavy hovercar, deafening him as he bucked the kick.

For the nonce, at least, it was effective. Below him, men scattered. He emptied the clip into the air.

“Down!” he yelled at Buzz.

“Don’t be crazy! We can’t…”

Ed leaned over the seat and knocked the lift lever up. Even before the limousine had hit earth, he had torn open the car door. He used the riot gun as a club, dashing for the staggering old man.

The sheer audacity of the attack was its success. Still swinging the heavy gun by its blisteringly hot barrel, he pulled and tugged the repudiated reformer toward and into the car’s back seat. He spun and threatened the temporarily flabbergasted crowd with the submachinegun, as though it were still loaded, yelling, “Nefertiti!” He couldn’t see her.

Buzz screamed, “Let’s get out of here!”

“Shut up!” Ed roared.

She came crying and stumbling, her clothes half torn from her, through the ranks of the bewildered lynchers. Less than gently, Ed Wonder pushed her into the back seat, grabbed hold of the ascending vehicle. He felt a hand grab his foot. He kicked back and down. The hand let go and they were off and free.

“They’ll be after us!” Buzz yelled back at him. “A thousand cars will be after us.”

Everything went out of Ed Wonder. It was all he could do to keep from vomiting. He was trembling as with a paroxysm of ague. “No they won’t,” he said, his voice shaking. “They’ll be afraid of the gun. A mob is a mob. Brave enough to take on the killing of an old man and a girl. Not brave enough to face a submachinegun.”

Nefertiti, still blubbering in hysteria, was working over her father. Getting him straight on the seat, at the same time trying to rearrange her own torn clothing.

Tubber made the first sound since the rescue. “They hate me,” he said, dazed. “They hate me. They would have destroyed me.”

Buzz De Kemp had at last shaken off his panic of the height of the excitement. “What’d you expect?” he grumbled. “An egg for your beer?”

They had a little difficulty in getting the torn and battered Tubber pair into the New Woolworth Building, but Ed had recovered by now. He glared down the guards at the entry, grabbed the phone and snapped, “General Crew. This is crash priority. Wonder, speaking.”

Crew came on in seconds.

Ed snapped, “I’ve got Tubber. We’re coming up immediately. Have Dwight Hopkins ready in his office, and the top men on my staff. I want everybody who’s informed on Project Tubber.” He looked at the guards. “And, oh yeah, tell these kooks to let us pass.” He threw the phone to the armed guard, and started toward the elevator.

Buzz was supporting the elderly prophet at one side, Nefertiti from the other.

They went directly to the topmost floor.

Buzz said, “We ought to take them to your apartment. Miss Tubber is in bad enough shape, but the old boy is just short of being in shock.”

“That’s how we want him,” Ed Wonder muttered lowly. “Come on.”

Hopkins was at his desk, the others came hurrying in, one or two at a time.

Ed got the pathetic old man seated on a leather couch, Nefertiti next to him. The others stood, or took seats, staring at the cause of the crisis which was shaking the governments of very affluent nation on earth. At the moment, he didn’t look as though he could have shaken a meeting of a small town Board of Education.

Ed said, “All right. Let me introduce Ezekiel Joshua Tubber, the Speaker of the Word. It’s now up to you gentlemen to convince him that his curses should be lifted.” Ed sat his own self down, abruptly.

For a long moment there was silence.

Dwight Hopkins, his voice tense below the crisp efficiency, said, “Sir, as spokesman for President Everett MacFerson and the government of the United Welfare States of America, I can only plead with you to reverse whatever it is you have done—if, indeed, it was you—to bring the nation to the brink of chaos where it now stands.”

“Chaos,” Tubber muttered, brokenly.

Braithgale said, “Three quarters of the population are spending the greater part of their time wandering aimlessly up and down the streets. It will take only a spark, and sparks are already beginning to fly.”

Nefertiti said indignantly, glaring around at them, “My father is ill. We were almost killed. This is no time to badger him.”

Dwight Hopkins looked at Ed Wonder, questioningly. Ed shook his head, infinitesimally. Ezekiel Joshua Tubber was at bay, they would either come to terms with him now or anything might develop when he recovered strength and poise. It was brutal, perhaps, but the situation was brutal.

Ed said, explaining to the others. “Yesterday, Ezekiel Tubber explained part of his beliefs to me. His sect thinks the country is choking on its own fat and at the same time heading for destruction by using up its resources, both natural and human, at a headlong speed. He thinks we ought to plan a simpler, less frenetic society.”

The dazed reformer looked up at him, shook his head in exhaustion. “That’s not exactly the way I would put it… loved one.”

Jim Westbrook, slumped in a heavy chair, hands in pockets, said, dryly, “The trouble is, you’ve started at the wrong end. You’ve been trying to get to the people. Change their way of looking at things. The fact is, friend, the people are slobs, and always have been. There hasn’t been a period in history when, given the chance, the man in the street hasn’t made a slob of himself. Given the license and freedom from reprisal, they’ll wallow in sadism, debauchery, destruction. Look at the Romans and their games. Look at the Germans when they were given the go-ahead by the Nazis to eliminate the inferior races, the non-Aryans. Look at any combat soldiers, of any nationality.”

Tubber shook his shaggy head, bearlike, and the faintest brace of the old spark was there. “You err, loved one,” he protested, brokenly. “Human character is determined by environment rather than heredity. Human faults are imparted by bad training. The vices of the young spring not from nature, who is equally the kind and blameless mother of all her children; they derive from the defects of education.”

It was Westbrook’s turn to shake his head. “Sounds good, but it doesn’t work out that way. You can’t put more into a container than its capacity to hold. Average I.Q. is one hundred. Half the population is below that and you can subject most of them to education for life and it’s not going to take.”

The exhausted prophet was in there pitching. “No, your belief is a common fallacy. True, average I.Q. is one hundred, but actually few of us go more than ten points either above or below that figure. The moron is as seldom found amongst us as is the genius with his I.Q. of 140 or above. The less than one percent who are geniuses are precious gifts to the race and should be sought out and given every opportunity to develop their talents, and cherished. Those who fall below 90 in their I.Q. are our unfortunates and every effort should be made, in all charity, to see that they lead as full lives as possible.”

Dwight Hopkins said smoothly, “I thought your basic complaint was against our affluent society and the Welfare State. But here you develop the usual do-gooder philosophy. All men are equal, so we should sacrifice the products of the successful to those who have lost the race.”

Tubber brought himself up more erect. “Why are we so contemptuous of the so-called do-gooder? Is it so reprehensible to attempt to do good? Man would seem to be his own worst enemy. We all claim to desire peace, but at the same time sneer at the conscientious objector. We claim to desire a better world, and then sneer at those who suggest reform as do-gooders. But that is beside the question you ask. My objection to the welfare state and our present society is not that we have solved the problems of production, but that the machine has slipped beyond our control and runs amuck. I do not begrudge the productive person the product of his efforts. The right to products is exclusive, but the right to means should be common. This is so, not merely because raw materials are provided by the All Mother, by nature, but also because of the heritage of installations and techniques which is the real source of human wealth and because of the collaboration that makes each man’s contribution so much more effective than if he worked in solitude. But this question of rewarding the more intelligent while penalizing he whom the All-Mother saw fit to equip with a lower I.Q. is no longer pertinent. In an economy of scarcity, it is obvious that the greatest contributors to society should reap greater rewards, but in our affluent society why should we begrudge anyone an abundance? We have never begrudged either air nor water to our meanest criminal because there has always been an abundance of both. In the affluent society, the meanest citizen can have a decent home, the best of food, clothing and the other necessities and even luxury. I would be a fool indeed, if I railed against this.”

General Crew rumbled, “What is this, a sermon? Let’s get to the point. Does this man admit to—somehow or other—creating the disturbances that have hashed up what amounts to all our entertainment media? If so, there should be laws that…”

“Shut up,” Ed Wonder told him, without inflection.

The general looked at him unbelievingly, but obeyed orders.

Jim Westbrook said, “We got away from the original point. Our Ezekiel Tubber, here, believes that he can change the present admittedly chaotic society by changing the eternal slob who is the basic unit of society. He can’t. I would think he would have seen reality when the mob attacked him, as soon as they found it was he who robbed them of their idiot diversions.”

Tubber had recovered enough to glare at him. “Your common man, as you called him before, has been made a slob, it is not inherent. My efforts have been to attempt to remove some of the devices that have been utilized to gouge out his brains. Almost any one of these slobs, as you call them, could have been, could still be, I contend, a worthy pilgrim along the path to Elysium. Suppose you took the child of a highly educated, well-to-do family, and, in the hospital, through a nurse’s mistake, had it substituted for a slum child. Do you think for a moment that the slum child, in its new environment, wouldn’t average out as well as his fellows? Or that the good family’s offspring, through mistake now being raised in the poorest part of town, wouldn’t average out the same as his fellows?”

Nefertiti glared around at them. She said, “Father…” but then turned to Hopkins and then to Ed. “He’s tired. He ought to have a doctor. Those people, they kicked him, hit him.”

“The eternal slobs,” Westbrook murmured, dryly.

Ed Wonder said, “Just one more minute, honey.” He turned to Tubber. “All right, suppose we concede everything you’ve said, so far. Under the Welfare State the country is going to pot, and what we ought to do is change it the way you’d like to see it changed. But I want to remind you of something you said to me the first time we talked together. I think I can remember it, almost exactly. I called you sir, and you said: The term sir, a variation of sire, comes down to us from the feudalist era. It reflects the relationship between noble and serf. My efforts are directed against such relationships, against all authority of one man over another. For I feel that whoever puts his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and a tyrant; I declare him to be my enemy.”

“I fail to understand your point, loved one.”

Ed pointed a finger at him. “You object to others controlling you, your thoughts, your actions. But that is exactly what you, with your power—whatever it is—have been doing to all the rest of us. All of us. You, the supposed do-gooder, to use that term again, are in fact the biggest tyrant of all history. Genghis Khan was a piker, Caesar an upstart, Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin small timers. Compared with…”

“Stop!” Tubber cried.

“What comes next?” Ed demanded, making his voice contemptuous. “Are you going to rob us of speech, so that we can’t even complain against your decisions?”

Tubber looked at him, the Lincolnesque sadness there as never before, the hurt manifest.

“I… I didn’t know. I… thought…”

Dwight Hopkins moved in smoothly. “I suggest a compromise, sir, ah, that is, Ezekiel. You for all your efforts have failed to bring your message—whatever its merits or lack of them—to the people whom you love but who have thus far rejected you. Very well, my compromise is this. That for one hour each day you shall be on the air. On every TV and radio throughout the world. There shall be, for that hour, no other programs to compete with you. This one hour a day shall be yours, so long as you wish it.”

Both Nefertiti and her prophet father were staring at him.

“And… in return?” Tubber wavered.

“In return, all your, ah, hexes, shall be lifted.”

The shaken prophet hesitated. “Even though I were on the air each day, perhaps they would not listen.”

Buzz De Kemp chuckled around his stogie. “That’s no problem, Zeke, old chum. One more hex. Your very last one, you should promise. A hex urging everyone to listen. Not necessarily to believe in your program, but merely to listen.”

“I… I don’t even know if it is possible to reverse…”

“We can try,” Dwight Hopkins urged smoothly.

General Crew said, thoughtfully. “Come to think of it, I have three daughters. Since that curse against cosmetics and vanity, life has been more bearable. I can even get into the bathroom in the morning. Couldn’t we just retain that one?”

“The one against juke boxes,” Braithgale murmered. “I loathe juke boxes.”

“My own pet peeve,” Buzz said, rolling his stogie from one side of his mouth to the other, “is comic books. I’d say…”

Jim Westbrook laughed suddenly. “For my books, friend, you can keep the hex on radio and TV.”

Dwight Hopkins glared at them. “That will be all of this nonsense, gentlemen.”

The elderly prophet took a deep breath.

“Now verily do I say…”