Ed turned it over in his hands. It was bound in leather. Somehow it was different. He opened it and fingered through the pages. The paper was heavy and had sort of an antique finish. He had never heard of the author. He had a strange feeling that he was handling a work of art.
The other two watched him, a disconcerting amusement in their air.
To say something, Ed said, “I’ve never seen paper like this, where did you get it?”
“We made it,” Kelly said.
Ed closed his eyes for a moment. He opened them and said, “What do you need money for? You evidently make everything.” He pointed a finger accusingly at Martha Kent’s dress. “That’s homespun, isn’t it?”
“Yes. But obviously we can’t do completely without money, even in Elysium. For instance, we need postage to mail our publications. Sometimes we need medicines. We have to buy salt. Oh, you’d be surprised.”
“Look,” Ed said plaintively. “You, Martha Kent, write a book that’s potentially a bestseller. You bring it in here and put out a limited edition by setting it by hand, printing it yourself by footpower on paper you made yourself. So how many copies do you print. A thousand?”
“Two hundred,” Martha said.
“So you sell them for how much apiece? A hundred dollars?”
“Two dollars,” Martha said.
Ed closed his eyes again, this time in pure anguish. He said, “Two dollars for a book like this? I’m no biblomaniac, but a first edition, limited edition, hand produced Martha Kent would be all but priceless. But aside from that, if you simply put the manuscript in the hands of any major publisher, you’d realize a small fortune.”
Kelly said reasonably, “You don’t understand. We don’t need a small fortune. It’s just that right at the present Elysium could use about four hundred dollars, for medicine and…”
Martha interrupted hurriedly to say, “But don’t let Josh Tubber know our motivation. Josh isn’t always very practical. He’d be indignant if he knew we were so crass as to publish this work for the sake of raising money.”
Ed had given up. He said bitterly, “What would he do with them? Give them away?”
Martha and Kelly said in unison, and as though nothing were more reasonable, “Yes.”
Ed said, “I’m going outside to get some air.”
He walked back in the direction of the Volkshover, refusing to allow himself to start tearing his hair.
All right, darn it, give them every benefit of the doubt. This little community set in the hills and woods of the Catskills had its virtues. Good clean air. Tremendous scenery—there in the background was Overlook Mountain. Good place to raise children, possibly. Although, the devil knows where they’d get their schooling. He pulled himself up on that one. If Tubber held an academecian’s degree and Martha Kent was one of his followers, then Ed suspected there were others capable of teaching school, in some sort of little red schoolhouse tradition.
All right. So it had its qualities, although it might be another thing in the winter. His eyes went around to two or three of the cottages. They all had chimneys. Holy smokes, these people actually burned wood. Logs, evidently, that they cut themselves. Not even oil heat in the winter! How stoneage could you get?
Come to think of it, though, it was probably beautiful here in the winter. Especially when the snow was newly fallen. Ed Wonder had a custom, when there’d been a heavy new snowfall, of driving out from Kingsburg into the country, just to look at the snow in the early morning, on the tree limbs, on the fields—before man and sun destroyed it. Of course, he never left the main roads. This would be different. It occurred to him that a really heavy snowfall would snow them in here, so that they couldn’t get down to even Woodstock for supplies.
He drew himself up again. They didn’t have to get down to Woodstock, or anywhere else, for supplies. They grew their own supplies, evidently.
But how about medical care, in case one of them fell ill while they were snowed in? He didn’t know, possibly some of them had medical training. They seemed to have everything else.
All right, given all their qualities. They were still as kooky as a bunch of Alice in Wonderland hatters. Getting themselves off here, living like a bunch of pioneers. No TV, no radio. He wondered how often the kids had been allowed to go into town to the movies. And then decided probably never. Perhaps he didn’t know Ezekiel Joshua Tubber too well, but it was obvious that the prophet didn’t exactly hold with modern films, with their endless violence, crime and what Tubber probably thought were perverted values.
What in the devil did they do with themselves?
And that kooky conversation he’d just had with Martha Kent, Kelly the printer, and Haer the typesetter. There must have been months put into that book of hers. What was to be the product of all that work? Four hundred dollars. How did they arrive at that sum? They’d needed that exact amount for something of which the colony was in want. Oh, great. What was wrong with eight hundred dollars, giving them a reserve of half for future colony needs? Hadn’t that even occurred to anyone? Hadn’t Professor McCord told Ed that Tubber had a degree in economics? What did they teach in the Harvard School of Economics these days?
He restrained himself again on the tearing of hair bit.
At that point, he spotted somebody else he knew, disappearing into one of the cottages. It was Nefertiti Tubber.
He called to her, but evidently wasn’t heard.
Ed Wonder took a deep breath, straightened his spine, ran his index finger around the inside of his collar and performed one of the bravest acts of his life. He marched up to the cottage and knocked on the door.
Her voice called, “Come in, loved one.”
He opened the door and stood there a moment. From time to time, in his reading he had come upon the term quaking. Characters would quake. He had never got quite a clear picture of what quaking amounted to. Now he knew. Ed Wonder was quaking.
However, unless the Speaker of the Word was off in one of the two smaller rooms which the cottage seemed to boast, besides the larger one which opened off the road, Nefertiti was alone. There was nothing in Nefertiti Tubber to quake about. Ed stopped quaking.
She said, “Why, Edward. Loved one. You’ve come to me.”
It wasn’t exactly the way the followers of Tubber usually pronounced loved one.
Ed closed the door behind him and cleared his throat.
She came closer, her arms at her sides, and stood before him.
It was as simple as that. He didn’t have to think about it at all. If he had, maybe he wouldn’t have. Wouldn’t have done what came so naturally.
He took her very firmly and kissed her very truly, as old Hemingway used to put it, smack on the kisser. She had a kisser built to order for kissing. But evidently hadn’t put it to much practice.
Nefertiti Tubber seemed highly in favor of rectifying that shortcoming. She didn’t stir. Her face continued to be held up to his, her eyes, open, not closed, were dreaming.
He kissed her again.
After a time he remembered to say, nervously, “Ah… where’s your father, ah… honey?”
She stirred, as though impatient of talk. “He’s gone into Woodstock to meditate over a few glasses of beer.”
Ed closed his eyes in quick appeal to his guardian angels, if any. “Ezekiel Joshua Tubber on the town having a few brews?”
“Why not?” She took him by the hand and led him to the couch. It was, he noted, absently, obviously of hand construction, even the padding, the bolsters and pillows. Somebody had put a great deal of work into this piece of furniture. She seated herself comfortably beside him, not relinquishing his hand.
Ed said, “I don’t know. I just kind of thought your father would be against drinking. In fact, any day I expected my autobar to start making with buttermilk, or something, when I dialed a highball.”