Ezekiel Joshua Tubber had heard him out. Now he chuckled. Broke off his humor to scowl still once again at the source of music. The juke box never went silent. There was always someone to drop in another coin.
“You fail to understand the word, dear one. Our term Elysium has a double meaning. Obviously, we do not expect the whole world to join our little community. It is but an example for others to heed. We are but indicating that it is possible to lead full, meaningful lives without resort to the endless products of present mechanical society. Perhaps we go to the extreme, for the sake of emphasis. I utilize horse and wagon to illustrate that five hundred horsepower hovercars, gulping up petroleum products at a disastrous rate for the sake of obtaining a speed of two hundred miles an hour, are redundant. There are many examples to illustrate that too often we utilize complicated machinery simply for machinery’s sake.”
Ed shouted, “I don’t get that.”
Tubber said, “Take the abacus. For years we have been sneering at the Japanese, Chinese and Russians because they are so backward as to use the abacus in their businesses, their banks and so forth, instead of our electrical adding machines. However, the fact is that the abacus is more efficient and actually faster than the usual electric adding machine, and most certainly less apt to break down.” The old boy glowered in the direction of the juke box. “Verily, that device is an abomination.”
Ed said, in exasperation, “But we can’t scrap all the mechanical devices we’ve invented over the past couple of hundred years.”
“Nor would I wish to, loved one. It is quite true that you can’t un-invent an invention any more than you can unscramble scrambled eggs. However, the world has gone far beyond the point of intelligent usage of these discoveries.”
The old man thought a moment. “Let me give you a hypothetical case. Suppose a high pressure entrepreneur conceives of something that to this point no one had dreamed of wanting. Let us take some thing out of the dear sky. Let us say an electric martini stirrer.”
“It’s been done,” Ed said.
Tubber stared at him. “Surely you jest.”
“No, I read about it. Back in the early 1960s. About the same time they came out with electric toothbrushes.”
“It’s still as good an example as any,” Tubber sighed. “Very well, our idea man hires some highly trained engineers, some of our best technicians, to design the electric martini stirrer. They succeed. He then turns to industry and orders a large number of the devices. Industry tools up, using a great many competent, highly trained men, and a good deal of valuable materials. Finally, the martini stirrers are finished. Our entrepreneur must now market them. He turns to Madison Avenue and invests in advertising and public relations. To this point, nobody in the United Welfare States of America had the vaguest desire for such a device, but they are soon educated. Advertising through every medium; campaigns conceived of by some of the most clever brains our country can produce. Side by side go the public relations men. It is mentioned in some columnist’s blather that Mary Malone, the TV star, is so pleased with her martini stirrer that she has begun having cocktails before lunch as well as before dinner. It is understood the Queen’s bartender invariably uses one. It is dropped that Think Watson the Fourth of I.B.M.-Remington wouldn’t dream of drinking a martini mixed otherwise.”
“I get your drift,” Ed said. “So everybody buys one. But what harm’s done? It keeps the country going.”
“That it keeps the modern economy going is quite true. But at what a cost! Our best brains are utilized contriving such nonsense and then selling it. On top of that, we are using up our resources to the point that already we are a have-not nation. We must import our raw materials. Our mountains of iron, our seas of oil, our once seemingly endless natural resources have been flushed down the sewers of this throwaway economy. On top of it all, what do you suppose this sort of thing is doing, ultimately, to the intellects of our people? How can a people maintain their collective dignity, integrity and sense of fitness if they can be so easily coerced into desires for nonsense things, status symbols, nothing things, largely because the next door neighbor has one, or some third rate cinema performer does?”
Ed dialed another drink, desperately. “All right, so maybe electric martini stirrers are on the redundant side. But it’s what people want.”
“That’s what people are taught to want. We must reverse ourselves. We have solved the problems of production of abundance, now man should settle down and take stock of himself, work out his path to his destiny, his Elysium. The overwhelming majority of our scientists are working either on methods of destruction, or the creation of new products which our people do not actually need nor want. Instead, they should be working upon the curing of man’s ills, delving into the secrets of the All-Mother, plumbing the ocean’s depths, reaching out to the stars.”
“All right, but you’ve seen that people simply aren’t interested in your ideas. They want their TV, their radio, their movies back. They aren’t interested in your path to Elysium. You admit that, you’ve even given up your lectures.”
“In a weak moment,” Tubber nodded. “This very day I plan to resume my efforts. Nefertiti and I will depart for the city of Oneonta where my tent will again…” He broke off, to glower once more at the thundering juke box which was blasting out a Rock’n’Swing revival of She’ll Be Comin’ ’Round the Mountain. “In the name of the All-Mother, how can anyone wish to listen to that?”
Ed shouted reasonably. “It’s your own fault. You’ve taken away TV, radio and movies. People aren’t used to silence. They want music.”
“Dost thou call that music!” The infinitely sad face of the aged Speaker of the Word was beginning to change in a manner that came back to Ed Wonder in a growing dismay.
“Now look,” Ed said hurriedly. “It’s a natural reaction. People are packing into restaurants, bars, dancehalls. Any place where they can get a little entertainment. The juke box manufacturers are running on a three shift basis. Records are being turned out wholesale, as fast as they can press them…” He cut himself off sharply. It wasn’t the right thing to say.
Ezekiel Joshua Tubber, Speaker of the Word, was swelling visibly.
Ed Wonder stared at him numbly. It came to him that Moses must have looked something like this when he came down from the mountain with his Ten Commandments and found the Hebrews worshiping the Golden Calf.
“Ah, they do! Then verily do I curse this abomination! This destroyer of the peace so that man cannot hear himself think! Verily do I say, that they who wish music shalt have music!”
The volume of the multi-colored music machine fell off sharply, and the six white horses that were coming ’round the mountain sudden dissolved into, “…we’ll sing as we go marching on…”
Ed Wonder lurched to his feet. He felt a sudden, dominating urge to get out of there. He muttered something to Ezekiel Joshua Tubber in the way of farewell, and hustled toward the door.
As he escaped, the last he saw of the hex-wielding prophet Tubber was still glaring at the juke box.
Somebody standing at the bar growled, “Who in blazes played that one?”
The record player swung into the chorus, “Glory, Glory Hallelujah. Glory, Glory Hallelujah…”
Ed Wonder tooled the little Volkshover.down the freeway toward Ultra-New York.
So great. He’d warned Hopkins. He seemed to act as a catalyst around Tubber. He couldn’t get within talking distance of the Speaker of the Word without a new hex resulting. Not that the old boy wasn’t up to getting wrathed up about something on his own. Ed wondered if the hex on the parking meters applied only to those in Woodstock, or if the phenomenon were worldwide. Evidently, Tubber’s mysterious power didn’t have to be universal in scope. When he’d broken the guitar strings, it hadn’t been all of the guitar strings in the world, evidently, but only the ones on the individual guitar. And from what Nefertiti had suggested, when he had burned down the roadhouse where she had been performing, the lightning had hit only the one place, not every roadhouse on earth.