Mack Reynolds - Earth Unaware

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

Ed said, “What’s the matter?”

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

“What’s that?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He turned back to Jensen Fontaine and Mulligan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes,” Ed said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Comic books?”

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

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

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

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

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