Mack Reynolds - Earth Unaware

Ed could have lifted above the demonstration and gone on. All his instincts, all his fear of physical violence told him to get away from the vicinity immediately, to get away but fast, to personal safety. But the sheer fantasy of the action held him in fascination. He dropped to the street level and stared.

There must have been fully five hundred of them, and their rage was a frenzy, The yelling and shouting, the shrilling from the women members of the mob—all of it made no sense.

Ed shouted to a passing participant of the demonstration, “What the devil’s going on! Where’s the police!”

“We run the police off,” the raging pedestrian screamed back at him, and was gone.

Ed Wonder continued to stare.

Somebody said, “The natives are restless tonight, eh? Come on, Little Ed, let’s get in there. They’ll kill that poor idiot.”

Ed swiveled his head. It was Buzz De Kemp. He looked back at the screaming crowd again. “You think I’m completely around the bend?” His stomach had tightened in terror at the very idea of getting nearer to the raging.

“Somebody’s got to help him,” Buzz growled. He pulled the stogie from his mouth and threw it into the gutter. “Here goes nothing.” He started for the mob.

Ed Wonder vaulted over the side of the hovercar and took a few steps after him. “Buzzo! Use your head!” The other didn’t look back. He disappeared into the swirling crowd.

Ed grabbed a bystander who seemed a fellow observer of the scene, rather than a participant.

“What’s happened!” Ed demanded.

From the distance came the ululations of fire sirens.

The other looked at Ed, brushed his hand away. “Movie projectionist,” he shouted, above the roar. “Folks standing in line for hours, then he fouls up the projector and claims he can’t fix it.”

Ed Wonder stared at him. “You mean they’re hanging that man because his projector broke down? Nobody’s that kooky!”

The other growled, defensively, “You don’t know, buddy. Everybody’s like on edge. These folks were standing for hours to see this here new show. And that lamebrain louses up the movie machine.”

Something he was going to find difficult to explain for the rest of his life happened to Ed Wonder. Something snapped. His mind, suddenly empty of the fear of the crowd, urged him into an action he wouldn’t have dreamed of two minutes earlier. He began pushing through the mob after Buzz De Kemp, trying to get to the center.

He could hear himself yelling at the top of his voice: “It’s not his fault! It’s not his fault! It’s like the TV and radio. It’s all over the world. Every movie projector in the world is on the blink. It’s not his fault! All movies don’t work! All movies don’t work!”

Somehow, impossibly, he struggled his way to the screaming crowd’s middle where the three burly mob leaders were dragging their victim in the direction of the nearest lamppost. By this time, a rope had been found.

He could feel his voice cracking as he tried to make himself heard above the mob’s roar. “It’s not his fault! All movies don’t work!”

One of the mob leaders backarmed him into a sprawl. He wondered vaguely where Buzz De Kemp was, even as he pushed himself back to his feet and grabbed at the fear-paralyzed movie projectionist. “It’s not his fault! All movies don’t work!”

It was then that the pressurized water hit them.

Helen Fontaine and Buzz De Kemp bailed him out toward noon of the next day.

Buzz came back to the cell first, one of the new Poloroid-Leicas in his hands and wearing a grin behind his stogie. There was an adhesive plaster patch above his right eye which only managed to make the sloppy newsman look rakish.

“Buzzo!” Ed Wonder blurted. “Get me out of here!”

“Just a minute,” Buzz told him. He adjusted the lens aperture, brought the camera to his eyes, flicked the shutter three or four times. He said happily, “With any luck I’ll get you on the front page. How does this sound? Local radioman leads lynch mob.”

“Oh, bounce it, Buzz,” Helen Fontaine said, coming up from behind him. She looked in at Ed Wonder and shook her head critically. “Whatever happened to the haberdasher’s best friend?” she said. “I never expected to see the day when Little Ed Wonder’s tie wasn’t straight.”

“Okay, okay, funnies I get,” Ed rasped. “Follow me, says Buzz De Kemp and we’ll rescue the movie projectionist like the cavalry coming over the hill at the last minute. So great. He sort of disappears and I wind up getting drenched by the fire department and then arrested by the police.”

Buzz looked at him strangely. “I heard you yelling, Little Ed. About all movie projectors being on the blink. How did you know? It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes earlier that it happened. The news wasn’t even on the teletype yet.”

“Get me out of here,” Ed snarled. “How do you think I knew? Don’t be a kook.”

A uniformed jail attendant came up and unlocked the cell door. “Come on,” he said. “You been sprung.”

The three of them followed him out.

Buzz said, “So you were there when he laid on the new curse, eh?”

“New curse?” Helen said.

Buzz said to her, “What else? Ezekiel Joshua Tubber. First he gives all women an allergy if they wear cosmetics or do themselves up in glad rags. Then he slaps his hex on radio and TV. Now all of a sudden there is a strange persistence of film being projected on a screen; it takes an eighth of a second or so for the picture to fade, so the next picture can be different. It doesn’t interfere with still-life shots, but action is impossible.”

They had reached the sergeant’s desk and Ed collected his belongings. His situation was explained. Theoretically, he was out on bail. In actuality, Buzz was going to go to bat for him through the paper and get the charge squashed. If, by any chance, that didn’t work, Helen said she’d put pressure on her father to pull some wires. Ed was of the private belief that the only circumstance under which Jensen Fontaine would pull wires for Ed Wonder was if they were wrapped around his neck.

On the street, Buzz said, “Let’s go somewhere and talk.”

“Somewhere is good,” Ed said. “You can’t get in anyplace for love or loot. Standing room only and they limit the time you can stay, so that others will have their chance.”

Helen said, “We can go to the club. I’ll take you in as guests.”

Her General Ford Cyclone was at the curb. They got into it and Helen dialed their destination. The car rose and slipped into the traffic.

Buzz De Kemp stared out at the horde of wandering pedestrians. “Yesterday was bad enough,” he said. “But today there’s no school. The kids don’t know what to do with themselves.”

“Neither do their parents,” Helen said. “Doesn’t anybody work in this city? I’d think…”

“Do you?” Ed said, for some reason irritated.

“Well, that’s another thing, sharpy,” she said huffily. “I have my charity work with the junior league and…”

Buzz said, “I looked it up. Two thirds of the population of working age in Kingsburg are on unemployment lists. Of those remaining, most put in a twenty-five hour week, some of those with more progressive—I like that term—unions, put in twenty hours.” He tossed his stogie, half-smoked, onto the street. “It makes for a lot of leisure time.”

The country club was a couple of miles outside the city limits. If Helen Fontaine had expected it to be comparatively empty, she was mistaken. She was far from the only one to bring guests to the club. However, they managed to slip into chairs about a table which was just being vacated as they arrived. Helen brought her credit card from her purse and laid it on the table’s screen. “Gents, the eats are on me. What’ll it be?”