Earth Unaware Page 5

  The meeting of the local chapter of the Stephen Decatur Society took place in one of the conference rooms of Coy Parfums, Incorporated. Ed Wonder hadn’t known that Wannamaker Doolittle, president of Coy, was a member of the society. Here was a contact, right off the bat. Coy perfumes were one of the big sponsors in Kingsburg.

  His luck again. There wasn’t going to be a spell, before the meeting got under way, during which he could meet the big shots present. The meeting was already underway. In fact, he and Mulligan attracted the scowls of several present, including Jensen Fontaine, who was prominently seated at the far end of the table around which some thirty chapter members were gathered.

  They slunk into two unoccupied seats, not adjoining each other.

  It was Wannamaker Doolittle himself who held the floor. He was waving a newspaper and viewing something with alarm, as best Ed could make out.

  “Listen to this,” the Coy head demanded. “Listen to this undermining of American institutions.” He read, accusation in his high voice:

  “Planned obsolescence through style fluctuation can present one of the most unbelievable elements of our unbelievable economy. As good an example as any are the twice a year changes in Detroit’s autohovers. Last year, General Ford autohovers managed to get about in the night with but four lights, two forward, two behind. This year they carry fourteen outside lights, fore, aft and to the sides. Evidently, the autohover stylists couldn’t get together on just what all these banks of lights were for. On some, a few of the taillights were dummies, not hooked up to the wiring system. A similar example is to be found in the latest kitchen stoves. In the attempt to put over to the housewife consumer that her present stove is antiquated, latest models are so gimmicked up with control panels that they look like the conning tower of an atomic submarine. They carry as many as thirty-five buttons and dials. On dismantling one of these the Consumer’s Alliance found that many of the dials had no connections beneath the cover. They were dummies.”

  Wannamaker Doolittle looked up in accusation. He banged the newspaper he held in his left hand with the back of his right. “Commie subversion,” he bleated. “Insidious underground attempt to undermine our institutions.”

  “Hear, hear,” someone applauded, thumping on the table. There were general murmurs of indignation.

  “Who is this Buzz De Kemp?” Doolittle demanded. “Do our newspapers hire any subversive who comes along claiming to be an honest journalist? Is there no screening? No check on his security rating?” He slapped the paper again. “What editor passes such open attacks upon two of the most important elements in our economy, autohovers and kitchen appliances? Last week the president exhorted the people to buy, buy, buy, in order to continue our prosperity. How can we expect full consumption of our products if women slave away over antiquated stoves, and if families drive rattling, unstylish autohovers, fully a year old?”

  Ed Wonder’s ears had pricked up at the mention of Buzz De Kemp’s name. Buzzo must be slipping his gears to write things like that. Did he want to get a reputation as a kook?

  Jensen Fountaine, evidently the chairman, banged the table with his gavel “A motion is in order to recommend to the publisher of the Times-Tribune that this malcontent reporter, uh, whatever his name is…”

  “Buzz De Kemp,” Ed said, without thinking.

  Eyes went to Ed Wonder, whose tie suddenly became overly tight.

  “You know this obvious Communist?” Jensen Fontaine rapped.

  “Well, yes sir. I’ve run into him several times. He’s not a Commie. According to him he just sort of makes a hobby of offbeat politico-economic theories. You know…” His sentence dribbled away as he saw his words weren’t exactly making a big hit.

  Someone said darkly, “You can’t play with tar without getting your hands dirty.”

  Fontaine banged the table again. “Do I hear a motion?”

  Mulligan got out quickly, “Make a motion that a committee composed of members who advertise in the Times-Tribune draw up a letter to the publisher complaining of the reddish tinged articles of this De Kemp guy.”

  Somebody said, “Second.”

  There was a long-winded report then by some sort of library committee. Evidently they were having trouble with the children’s section in the town’s library. Something about refusing to ban Robin Hood from the shelves.

  Ed Wonder looked suddenly alert. Jensen Fontaine had just used his name.

  Helen’s father was saying, “During my absence I understand we had several letters concerning the subversive elements in the so-called sermons of a certain…” he looked down at the paper before him and snorted disbelief “…Ezekiel Joshua Tubber. Member Helen Fontaine, my daughter, and a staff member of WAN-TV attended a Tubber revival and as a result Helen was confined for a time to her bed. Mr. Edward Wonder will now report fully.”

  Ed stood up. Already he wasn’t liking this and had an unhappy suspicion that he wasn’t going to win kudos.

  Ed said, “The fact is, I’m no authority on underground subversion. I know it’s important work. Keeping the country from being overthrown by the Commies and all. But, well, I’ve got my nose to the grindstone at WAN-TV. Possibly some of you folks have tuned in to the Far Out Hour on Friday nights…”

  Mulligan said ominously, “The report on Tubber, Little Ed, the report on Tubber. No commercials.”

  Ed cleared his throat. “Yes, sir. Well, frankly, from what I heard, Tubber is anti-Communist, rather than a Commie. At least that’s what he says. He complained about people being too materialistic, concentrating on the things they own or consume, instead of spiritual things… I suppose.”

  Somebody said, “My minister gives the same sermon every Sunday. On Monday we forget it.”

  Somebody else said, “Oh, he does, does he? This is something I’ve been wanting to bring up. What’s wrong with our consumer society? What would happen to our economy if we listened to these supposed religious leaders?”

  Fontaine banged his gavel. “Go on,” he said to Ed Wonder.

  He didn’t sound too happy about the way the report was coming, so far. Which, in turn, didn’t make Ed any too happy either.

  “Well, all I can say is that he didn’t sound like a Commie. In fact, Helen, Miss Fontaine, asked him a direct question about it and he made it clear that he wasn’t.”

  The woman who had reported on the library said, mystified, “But what’s all this got to do with Helen being under a doctor’s care? What did he do to her?”

  Ed looked in anguish at Jensen Fontaine who at first began to say something but then closed his mouth to a line so thin Ed Wonder decided you’d have your work cut out getting a knife blade between the lips. Oh great.

  Ed said, “Well, Miss Fontaine was, ah, kind of heckling him. And he got sore and, well, cursed her.”

  There was a silence. They’d made the same assumption Fontaine had earlier.

  Ed cleared it up. “That is, he laid a hex on her.”

  Wannamaker Doolittle said, “Hex?”

  “Kind of a spell,” Ed said.

  “What’s this got to do with her being in bed?”

  Ed said, unhappily, “She says she itches.”

  Jensen Fontaine banged his gavel. “Let’s cut short all this jabber. Exactly what did this crackpot say?”

  In his barren actor’s years, Ed Wonder had spent considerable time in perfecting his memory. In remembering dialogue. Now he sent his mind back. He said, “It went something like this: Verily I curse the vainglory of women. Verily … when Tubber gets excited he slips into this fruity thee and thou language… Verily, never more wilt thou find pleasure in vanity. Truthfully, never again wilt thou find pleasure in styles or in cosmetics.”

  Ed wound it up, hopefully. “That’s not exactly it, but almost. So you see, he wasn’t exactly just putting a hex on Helen. The way he worded it, actually what it amounts to is a curse on all women…”

  He broke off in mid-sentence, because an icicle had just touched the base of h
is spine and was slowly working its way upward.

  4

  By the next morning, there was little doubt left in Ed Wonder’s mind. He scanned the teleprinter’s bulletins. It wasn’t a nationwide fad, it was a worldwide fad. Common Europe, the Soviet Complex, and the aborigines of the Galapagos Islands, for that matter, were all effected.

  Fads there had been before. Every type of fad. People went for fads these days. The hula hoops and the Davy Crockett craze of an earlier decade were as nothing to today’s fads. As watching TV replaced working as the daily occupation of the average citizen, the slight tendency to rebel against complete ossification seated in one’s living room was taken up by the new tri-di cinema, which at least made you walk as far as the neighborhood theatre, and by fads, fads, fads.

  Fads in food, fads in dress, fads in slang, fads in everything. It was one method by which the obsolescence by style manipulators kept their goods rolling. If convertibles were in, then sedans were out, and only a twitch, a kook, would be seen dead in one. If tweeds were in, gabardines were out, and you might as well throw yesterday’s suit into the disposal chute. If Chinese food came in, Italian, Turkish, Russian, Scottish, or whatever had been the fad last month, went out. And a restaurant which had optimistically stocked its shelves and freezers with products for yesterday’s fad, might as well dump them in the garbage.

  Yes, fads there had been before, but never like this.

  Ultimately, almost any fad originating in the West would spread to even the Soviet Complex. Did Battle Fatigue cocktails become the thing in Greater Washington, three months later they were being used to toast the health of Number One in the Kremlin. Did Bermuda shorts in Madras cloth become the rage for formal dress in Ultra-New York, they were adorning the thin limbs of the Chinaman in the streets of Peking within a matter of weeks.

  But at least it took weeks.

  So far as Ed Wonder could figure out, this current Homespun Look fad had hit the world simultaneously. The data he could uncover bore that out to his satisfaction. Possibly no one else realized it, but Ed Wonder did.

  It had hit Saturday night at eight thirty-five local time. From all he could piece together, from confused news reports, it had hit an hour earlier, one time zone west, and had come into effect four hours later, by the clock, in England, six hours in Common Europe. And so on. In short, it didn’t go by man-made rules of time. It had hit simultaneously.

  Some of the commentators had tried to suggest otherwise, undoubtedly in good faith. No one, as yet, had actually stumbled upon the truth as Ed Wonder suspected it.

  He had listened to one jovial newsman who made efforts to trace the Homespun Look back several months, claiming that it had long been aborning and had suddenly blossomed forth. The same analyst pontificated on the fad. It wouldn’t last. Couldn’t last. It was against woman’s basic human nature. It was one style that simply wouldn’t have long range appeal to the fair sex. He had chuckled and revealed that the Homespun Look had already been a boon to Madison Avenue. The Textile Association had quickly raised an initial hundred million to be devoted to nipping it in the bud with a gigantic TV, radio and Skyjector campaign. Cosmetic manufactures were also supposedly in closed session to meet the emergency.

  What the commentators didn’t know, what nobody knew except Ed Wonder and Tubber himself, and the handful of Tubber’s faithful, was that there had been no time limit set on the curse. It was slated for eternity. Always assuming that Tubber’s curses, however it was that he managed them, continued their initial effectiveness.

  He considered telling Mulligan about his suspicions, and decided not to. If he started sounding off about hexes laid on by itinerant religious quacks, he’d wind up convincing people he’d been on this Far Out Hour program too long.

  He wandered over to Dolly’s desk. As the day before, she was in full style. By the looks of her, it must have been a dress she’d had as a teenage kid. Something in which to go out into the country, on a picnic. No lipstick, no eyebrow pencil, no powder. No earrings. No nothing.

  Ed said to her, “How do you like this new Homespun Look fashion, Dolly?”

  Most of the masculine elements of the staff had been working the girls over in regard to their new getup. Dolly had evidently expected Ed Wonder to head the list of tormentors, but there wasn’t that in his voice.

  She said, “Well, gosh, Little Ed, it’s just like any other style. It comes in, pretty soon it’ll go out. I don’t especially either like it or dislike it.”

  He said, his voice low, “Listen, have you tried putting on makeup at all these last couple of days?”

  She frowned, puzzlement there. “Well… yes, a couple of times.”

  “And?”

  She hesitated, her pert nose wrinkled. “Well, darn it, I felt itchy. You know, something like when you’ve had a bad sunburn and the skin starts peeling off.”

  Ed Wonder shook his head. He said, “Listen, Dolly, get me Buzz De Kemp, over on the Times-Tribune, will you? That is, if he’s still at the Times-Tribune. I’ve got to talk to somebody.”

  She bent on him the strange look he deserved and went about the chore. Ed Wonder went back to his own desk and took the call.

  He said, “Hello, Buzzo. I didn’t know if you’d still be working there or not.”

  The other’s voice said cheerily, “Not only here but basking in the warmth of a raise, Little Ed, old chum. It seems that some twitchy right wing outfit put in a beef to the editor about some of my articles. Wanted me fired. So Old Ulcers says the kind of pieces that’ll start enough controversy to have beefs coming in just might possibly pry a few dimwits off their TV sets long enough to read the paper. So I got a raise.”

  Ed closed his eyes in sorrow at the workings of the world. “All right,” he said. “I’ve got to see you. How about the Old Coffee House in fifteen minutes? The coffee’s on me.”

  “You talked me into it,” De Kemp said, his voice beaming. “It’s a date. And I think you’re beautiful, even with that queer mustache.”

  Ed hung up and headed for the elevator.

  He had hurried his way over, but by the time he arrived the newspaperman was already there. The Coffee Shop was practically empty. Ed suggested to Buzz that they retire to a booth.

  They took places across from each other in a booth as far from the TV set and juke box as it was possible to get, and Ed looked gloomily at the reporter. He said finally, “I saw that article you did on gimmicked up style changes.”

  Buzz De Kemp brought an eight inch long stogie from his jacket pocket and lit it. “Great stuff, eh? Actually…”

  “No,” Ed said, completely ignored.

  “…the practice goes back to the early sixties, when hovers were in their infancy. You know where I got that dope? From the old boy we were talking about the other night. He’s got more statistics on how our present affluent welfare state economic system is lousing up the nation…”

  “Tubber!” Ed said.

  “Sure, sure. Some of his data is dated a bit. Got a lot of it together back a decade ago. But it’s even more valid now than then. The last time I heard him talk he was on the country wasting its resources with disposables. Steaks and other meats that came in disposable frying pans. Muffins and biscuits in disposable baking tins. A throw away aluminium mousetrap; you don’t have to fool around with the mouse, you never even see it. You just throw away the whole unit. And plastic razors with the blade built in; use it once and throw it away.” Buzz laughed and drew on his stogie.

  “Listen, all this aside. I heard him sounding off the same way the night Helen and I attended his meeting. But what I want to know is, did you ever hear him lay on a spell?”

  The reporter scowled at him. “Do what?”

  “Make with a curse. A hex. Put a spell on somebody.”

  “Hey, the old boy’s not crazy. He’s just an old duck who’s viewing with alarm. Warning about the deluge to come. He wouldn’t really believe in curses, and even if he did, he certainly wouldn’t curse anyb
ody.”

  Ed finished his coffee. “Curse anybody ? The fact is he’s evidently cursed everybody. At least half of everybody. All women.”

  Buzz De Kemp took his stogie from his mouth and pointed it at Ed Wonder. “Little Ed, you’re potted. Stoned. Swacked. Besides that, you don’t make sense. No sense.”

  Ed Wonder had made up his mind to tell him. He had to tell somebody and he couldn’t think of anybody better. “All right,” he said. “Listen for a minute.”

  It took more than a minute. During the process, Buzz De Kemp had ordered more coffee, but otherwise didn’t interrupt.

  When Ed Wonder finally went silent, the newspaperman’s stogie had gone out. He lit it again. He thought about it, while Ed worked away at his coffee.

  Buzz said finally, “It makes one beautiful story. We’ll exploit it together.”

  “What?”

  Buzz leaned over the table, pointing happily with the stogie. “It’s the Father Divine story all over again. Remember me telling you about Father Divine the other night?”

  “What the devil has this got…”

  “No, listen. Back in the early thirties, Father Divine was just one more evangelist picking up a scrubby living in Harlem. He only had maybe a hundred or so followers. So one day there was a knifing or something in his heaven and he was arrested and the judge gave him a mild sentence. However, a couple of reporters heard several of Father Divine’s followers say that the judge was flying into the face of disaster. That Father Divine would strike him dead. A day or so later the judge died of a heart attack. The reporters, seeing a story, went to interview the evangelist in his cell He played it straight, saying simply, ‘I hated to do it.’ Chum, believe me, when Father Divine came out of that jail, all Harlem was there on the street waiting for him.”

  Ed demanded impatiently, “What in the devil…” Then he stopped short.

  “Sure,” Buzz said urgently. “Don’t you get it? Old Tubber curses the vanity of women. Puts a hex on cosmetics and fancy styles in clothes. That sort of thing. And what happens the next day? The Homespun Look fad hits. Coincidence, of course, but what a coincidence.”