Mack Reynolds - Earth Unaware

Just for the exercise, he went on down to the corner drugstore to pick up a paper. They were all gone. Happily, the manager had a copy of his own in a back room and let Ed take it.

There were still crowds around the magazine and paperback stands.

Ed said to the other, “Business in comic books still good, eh?”

“Oh, no,” the manager shook his head, beaming. “We’re fresh out of comic books, already. There’s no more in town. The agents say the presses are turning night and day, putting out extra editions, but for the time, we’re out. Now they’re buying paperbacks and magazines. Even all the more popular magazines are gone. There’s not a detective paperback left, either, and no westerns.” The smile left his face. “Good business, this emergency, but it sure is a horror to go home to the missus at night. We got nothing to do but yell at each other, and the kids go batty with nothing to watch.”

Ed Wonder took the paper back to his apartment before opening it.

The newspapers were evidently staging a comeback, and enjoying every minute of it. With TV and radio news off the airwaves, it was back to reading again.

The heads went:

TV and Radio Scramble World-Wide President to Hold Special Press Conference

Mayor Smythe to Ration Movie and Sports Tickets

Bored Mother Kills Brood and Commits Suicide

Soviet Complex Hints West Deliberately Sabotaging TV

He began to read the details and was interrupted almost immediately by the phone.

Buzz De Kemp’s face, stogie asmoke, filled the screen. “Hi, Little Ed. The great mystery has been solved.”

For a moment Ed Wonder thought he meant… but no. He said, “What mystery?”

“Where Zeke and Nefertiti disappeared to.”

“Oh,” Ed leaned forward.

Buzz drew it out. “I really gave it the works. Everything but the F.B.I. I checked…”

“All right, all right,” Ed snapped. “Let’s have it.”

“They moved up the river to the next town, Saugerties, and set up their tent again. Old Zeke is continuing his lecture tour.”

Ed closed his eyes wearily. He’d had a mental picture of Ezekiel Joshua Tubber escaping by stowing away on a ship to Brazil, or possibly fleeing to the Soviet Complex Embassy and requesting political refuge, or possibly going to earth somewhere and hiding out.

Instead, the offbeat evangelist was a few miles up the river, continuing as though nothing had happened.

Ed Wonder said, “Well, great. I’ll pick you up.”

“Hold on, chum,” the reporter took the stogie from his mouth to use as a pointer. “Maybe that old coot might be a little sore at you, but he’s really down on me. I was the one that sounded off and laughed at him. It was mostly me, on the program, who got him speaking in wrath, or however his daughter puts it. I think it might be better if just you show your cheerful face, at first.”

“Oh great. We’ll use me for baiting the tiger, eh?”

“It was your idea to find him again. You said you were in it from the beginning. Brave man. Stout fella.”

Ed growled, “You mentioned you were in it from the beginning too.”

“I was, and I’m going to keep in it, but from a distance, chum, from a distance. Now look, I haven’t even dared bring this up with Old Ulcers, the city ed, but you get the story on this exclusive for me and the Times-Tribune and we’ll find some way of showing our appreciation. This is a story, Little Ed. The story of the century.”

It only came home to Ed Wonder at that moment what a really big story it was. His mind flicked over into first. He could sell it to Look at Life , the picture magazine. He could sell it to…

His mind shifted back into low. No, he couldn’t. If Buzzo couldn’t even approach his city editor in a one horse town like Kingsburg, who was going to listen to Ed Wonder in Ultra-New York?

He suspected that of all those involved, the only ones who really knew that the Homespun Look and the disruption of both TV and radio were the results of curses by Tubber, were himself, Buzz and Helen. Except, of course, for Tubber himself, Nefertiti and some of the followers of the word, or whatever they called themselves.

Buzz said impatiently, “Well?”

Where he got the courage, Ed didn’t know, but he said, “Okay. I’ll go on up to Saugerties for whatever it’s worth. I’ll keep you posted. Remember, if this pays off, I’m in on the loot.”

The reporter rolled his eyes upward as though making solemn promise. “De Kemp always keeps faith,” he intoned.

“Yeah, sure,” Ed growled, reaching his hand out to switch off the phone.

Ed took the elevator down to the cellar garage and got the Volkshover, keyed it to life, lifted it half a foot from the floor, drifted up the ramp to the street, and headed north. The streets were more crowded than ever. He had never realized just how many persons lived in this city. In the far past, he supposed, the majority had spent the day hours working, the evening watching TV, listening to the radio, or taking in a movie. Of recent years, as the number of jobs decreased, until finally the employment rolls included a far greater number of citizens than did employment lists, the average citizen led a more sedentary existence. He had seen somewhere estimates that Mr. Average Man spent eight hours a day being entertained by mass media.

Well, a wheel had come off now.

He headed north at an altitude of about ten feet, and noticed that traffic was heavier than was to be expected at this time of day. It didn’t take long to figure out why. City dwellers on their way to the nearest water for a swim, or to the nearest woods for a picnic. Largely, their faces didn’t indicate that they were expecting any great treat. Probably because their portables weren’t working.

It came to Ed Wonder that such entertainment of yesteryear as swimming and picnicking had fallen off since he’d been a kid. In his day, youngsters still got a kick out of self-entertainment, swimming, baseball, fishing, hiking, camping. Now such exercise had a tendency to be avoided because it interfered with listening in on this favorite program or that. Go out on a camping trip and you might miss Robert Hope the Third’s Hour , or I’m Squirrel For Mary , not to speak of The Sadistic Tale . Of course, you could always take a portable along, but then you spent your time sitting around a campfire watching the shows, instead of in the comfort of your own home, where the mosquitos were apt to be less.

Fishing. He remembered going fishing with his father as a kid. And by himself, for that matter. He might wind up with nothing at all, or maybe a meager string of sunfish, but he’d thought it fun. Today, a kid got more of a boot out of watching somebody in the Gulf Stream or off the coast of Peru catching a half-ton marlin, or spearing a giant ray skin diving off the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. The vicarious thrill of playing a ten foot man-eating shark was evidently considerably more than tediously waiting for a four-inch sunfish to take your worm.

Saugerties was one of those never-changing New England type towns. Largely wooden houses. One storey, two storey, seldom more than three, even downtown. The type of overgrown village that made you wonder how it existed, its raison d’etre , why its population didn’t emigrate to more lively climes.

Ed Wonder let his little hovercar drift to a halt before the Thornton Memorial Theatre, which like the movie houses of his own town, had a long line before it. Near the curb stood three or four disgruntled citizens who had obviously decided that the line was so long it was hopeless to expect to gain entry.