Mack Reynolds - Earth Unaware

The lot where the tents had been was empty.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So nobody believed you, eh?”

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

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

They looked at each other for a time again.

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

“And…?”

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

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

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

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

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

He leaned back in his chair and shook his head. “Simple announcements of his meetings, extending back over several years. The location of his tent, what time the sermon begins. The title of his first sermon, Is the Nation Producing Itself Poor ? No information on where he came from or where he might be going.”

Ed Wonder said gloomily, “Jensen Fontaine thinks Tubber is a pseudonym.”

Buzz shook his head. “Not a name like that. Nobody but fond parents from the Bible belt would ever hang a moniker like that on a kid. Nobody’d do it to himself.”

“He said he wasn’t a Christian.”

“Maybe not, but his folks were. Probably evangelists. When he gets all wrathed up, he inadvertently starts talking like a Holy Roller, or whatever. He must’ve picked that up as a kid. Listen, Little Ed, how badly to you want to find him, and why? What happened to your mustache?”

Ed scratched where his tufts of mustache had been that morning. He muttered in self-deprecation, “Maybe now that I’m no longer a bright young career man, it’s not as important to look like one.”

Buzz De Kemp cocked his head at him and lit the stogie he’d been only fiddling with thus far. “That doesn’t sound like Little Ed Wonder,” he said.

“What does Little Ed Wonder sound like?” Ed said, snappishly.

Buzz grinned at him. “Usually like a heel on the make.”

“I don’t see how you manage to put up with me,” Ed snarled.

“I’ve wondered myself,” Buzz grinned. “Maybe it’s because I’m used to you. Ever notice how you put up with people you’re used to? For some reason, you hate to give up anybody you’ve really got to know.”

“So by the time you got to really know what a heel I was you were used to me and couldn’t bear to avoid me, eh?”

“Something like that. Tone down. Look, how bad do you want to locate old man Tubber?”

Ed never had been able to get really sore at Buzz De Kemp’s gibes, but even if he had, he wouldn’t have felt like it now. “I don’t know,” he grumbled. “I’m probably stupid. If he laid eyes on me, he’d probably lay down a hex that’d last like hemophilia. But I’ve been in on this since the beginning, it’s too late to try to duck out now.”

Buzz De Kemp eyed him. “What’s in it for you?” He blew smoke around the stogie without removing it from his mouth. “Beyond the death wish, I mean.”

“Oh, great. Funnies I get,” Ed muttered. “Nothing’s in it for me. What in the devil could there be in it?”

The newspaperman shook his head. “Sure doesn’t sound like Little Ed Wonder. Okay, so fine. I’ll get on it. Maybe there’ll be a birth record of Nefertiti, or a marriage record of the old boy, giving some idea of where they live. Maybe AP-Reuters will have something on him. Get out of here and check back with me later. I feel something like you do. In it from the beginning.”

Ed Wonder went down to the corner autobar with the idea of dialing himself a stiff one. His mind on Tubber and hexes, he wasn’t aware of the crowd until he was within a hundred feet of the bar’s entrance. His first impression was that there had been an accident, or, more likely still, in view of the magnitude of the mob, some act of violence. A shooting, or something.

It wasn’t that.

There was a policeman outside, lining up the crowd into a manageable queue. Inside, a juke box was at full blast.

“All right, everybody, all right. Stay in line,” the cop was singing out, and over and over again. “Stay in line or nobody’ll get in.”

Little Ed said, “What’s happened, Officer?”

The cop said, busily, “Get in line, buddy, get in line if you want a drink. Everybody’s gotta get in line.”

“Get in line for what ?” Ed stared at him.

“A drink, a drink. You’re allowed in for two drinks, or for half an hour, whatever comes off first. So get in line.”

“What the devil,” Ed blurted. “I don’t need a drink that bad.”

Somebody in the line took umbrage at that. “Oh, yeah,” he said savagely. “What’re ya gonna do, walk up and down the streets all day? The TV’s been on the blink since…”

Somebody else chimed in their disgust, and before he could get his complaint across, a heavier voice had drowned him out.

Ed went off, flabbergasted. It had only happened the night before. Less than twenty-four hours.

As he walked back to where he had parked the Volkshover, he noticed that it wasn’t only the autobars. Restaurants, ice cream parlors, drug stores, were all packed and overpacked, usually with lines out in front. All that had juke boxes had them tuned high. Proprietors were doing a land-office business, but Ed wondered where the money was coming from. Even under the welfare state, the average person didn’t have the wherewithal continually to patronize restaurants and bars.

He got into his hovercar and considered it for a while. Finally he brought the vehicle to life and headed for a destination. He had the address firmly enough in mind, but had never been there. The house located, he stood before the identity screen and fanned the alert.

A voice said, “Little Ed! Come on in, I’ll be right up.”