Mack Reynolds: Earth Unaware

“…Thank you, Professor Dee. And especially thank you, Mr. Reinhold Miller, who joined us tonight to explain his reincarnation three times over. This is station WAN, the Voice of the Hudson Valley, coming to you from Kingsburg, New York. You have been listening to Edward Wonder’s Far Out Hour.” He cued the engineer by saying, “Let the music go round and round, Jerry.”

The red light flickered off, indicating the studio was no longer hot. Ed Wonder leaned back in his chair and shifted his shoulders in an elaborate stretch. He tensed up, on mike, particularly on these long programs in which he had to carry most of the dialogue.

Reinhold Miller said, “You mentioned back there the possibility of my appearing again on the program. I’d be glad…”

“I’ll bet you would.” Ed Wonder yawned deliberately.

The other looked at him. “I beg your pardon?”

Ed Wonder’s small briefcase was on the padded table before him. They padded studio tables so that nonpro guests couldn’t make unwanted noises to go out over the air by drumming fingernails or pencil points. He brought forth some papers and a checkbook. “Let’s see,” he said. “Your take was to be fifty bucks and expenses, right?”

“That was the agreement. Look here…”

Ed Wonder had brought forth his pen. “No, you look here, Miller. We get a lot of kooky people on this program. Folks who tell about seeing little green men coming out of flying saucers, folks who claim they’re clairvoyants, mediums, fortunetellers, necromancers, witches. We even had a guy thought he was a werewolf once.” He was writing rapidly, even as he spoke. “But you know something? Most of them are sincere. For all I know, some of them might even be right. We’ve got open minds on this program.”

“I… I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Wonder.”

“I think you do. I thought when I offered to pay your expenses and fifty dollars for your time, you were a man—mistaken or not—who really believed he had lived in earlier incarnations.” Ed Wonder grunted deprecation. “Anybody can read up a bit on historical characters like Alexander, Hannibal and Ney.”

The other’s lips were pale and thin. “You can’t talk to me that way. I came here in good faith.”

“And to pick up a quick fifty bucks. The proof of the pudding, Miller. You weren’t able to answer Professor Dee’s questions. As a historian he had read more on Alexander and his men than you had.”

“See here, Mr. Wonder, I admit I’ve read a great deal about the men whose bodies I formerly occupied. I admit also that some details of my earlier incarnations I have forgotten. That could happen to anyone. Surely there are details in your own life that you have forgotten. That doesn’t…”

The radio man was yawning, even as he waved the check in the air to dry it. “Here’s your travel expenses. And now I’ll write you a separate check for your loot.”

Reinhold Miller flushed angrily. “I’ll take the expense money, because I need it. But if you think I’m a fake, Mr. Miller, you can keep the fifty.”

“That’s up to you. Please sign this receipt for total compensation.”

Rheinhold Miller grabbed the pen, signed, took up the small check, turned sharply on his heel and left through the sound padded door to the hall. Ed Wonder looked after him calculatingly for a moment, then stuffed his things back into the briefcase.

Jerry was motioning to him from the control room, and he arose and sauntered in, lighting a cigarette.

Ed Wonder said, “Jerry, where in the devil do you get your clothes, from the Salvation Army? You make the program look crumby. And what do you smoke in that prehistoric pipe, soft coal?”

The engineer grunted around the stem of the pipe in question, then said, “This isn’t TV. Even if it were, I wouldn’t be on camera. Did you do him out of his money, Little Ed?”

“What?”

“Alexander the Great, in there.”

“He was a fake.”

“You know, he might be missing a few marbles but he believed in it. He thought he was telling the truth.”

“That’s not the way I received it. This program’s on a limited budget, Jerry.”

“Yeah. And if there’s anything left over at the end of the month, it goes into your pocket. You get a flat sum for the package.”

“What’s it to you?”

“Not a thing. I love to watch you operate. They can automate nine people out of ten out of work, but the eternal chisler we will always have with us.”

Ed Wonder flushed. “I suggest you keep your nose out of my business if you want to stay out of trouble.”

Jerry took his pipe from his mouth and grunted humor.

“Trouble! From you , Little Ed? What kind of trouble could you cause anybody?” He examined the knuckles of his right hand, reflectively.”—that a smash in that cute little mustache wouldn’t cure.”

The other took a quick half step back. He gathered himself and said nastily, “Is all this what you called me in here for?”

“Fatso came in while you were on mike. He wants to see you.”

“Mulligan? What’s he doing here this time of night?”

Ed Wonder turned and left before waiting for an answer. There was a small hall immediately outside the soundproofed door which opened into the control room. There were two other similar doors, one of which opened into Studio Three which Ed Wonder had utilized for his late hour program and the other into the corridor beyond.

Ed walked down the corridor to the offices, coming up to Dolly’s desk before going on to his own to leave his briefcase. He pretended to flinch.

“Holy smokes, what’ve you done to your hair?”

She touched it. “Oh, do you like it, Little Ed? It’s the latest—latest from Italy. The Fantasy-mode.”

He shook his head, eyes closed in sorrow. “Do you think women’s hair will ever come back?” He dropped the bantering tone.

He went over to his own desk, put the briefcase in a drawer and locked it. He started toward Matthew Mulligan’s office, adjusting his bow tie. He paused before the door a moment, then knocked two careful raps.

The station head was seated behind his desk, listening to the Rock’n’Swing music which followed Ed Wonder’s show and looking as though it wasn’t helping his digestion.

“You wanted to see me, Mr. Mulligan?”

The older man looked him directly in the eye and blatted, “My country, may she always be right…” And then left it there.

Ed Wonder blinked. The other was evidently waiting for him to finish the quotation. His mind hurried it up. He said, “Ah… but my country, right or left.”

“…but my country, right or wrong .” Mulligan said accusingly, “I can see you’re not a member of the society.”

It came to Ed Wonder. The Stephen Decatur Society, an organization that considered the Birchers too far left. He had heard that Matthew Mulligan was a member.

“Well, no sir,” Ed said earnestly. “I was thinking of looking further into it, possibly joining up, but I’ve been awfully busy with the program. Have you thought any further of putting it on television, Mr. Mulligan?”

“No, I haven’t,” Mulligan growled. “Sit down. You make me nervous jittering around. I didn’t call you in to talk about your program, Little Ed, but while we’re on it I don’t mind admitting it’s not quite what I pictured when you sold me the idea. Sure, sure, you get some character who says he flew to the moon in a flying saucer, but how come you’ve never got anybody to show us a chunk of it he brought back, or something? And these fortunetellers. What we need on your program is somebody who predicts Number One, over in Moscow, will get knocked off next Tuesday, and, bingo, it happens. Something like that’d have a dozen sponsors bidding for your show.”