Ed muttered, “Thank the All-Mother for small favors.”
He stopped along the way for a sandwich and cup of coffee at a trucker’s stop.
Half a dozen customers were gathered around the establishment’s juke box, staring at it in bewilderment. The record player was grinding out, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where…”
One of the truckers said, “Jesus, no matter what I punch it comes out, Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”
One of the others looked at him in disgust. “What’d’ya talking about? That’s not Hark the Herald Angels Sing. That’s Little Town of Bethlehem.”
Somebody else chimed, “Both you guys are kooky. I remember that song from when I was a kid. It’s In the Sweet Bye and Bye.”
A Negro shook his head at them. “Mother, but you folks just ain’t up on spirituals. That there’s Go Down Moses. No matter what you punch on this here crazy machine, it comes out Go Down Moses.”
Ed Wonder decided to forget about the sandwich. So far as he was concerned, he was still hearing, and over and over again, all about the glory of the coming of the Lord, and glory, glory Hallelujah.
He left the place and got back into the Volkshover. He wondered how long it would be before everyone gave up and stopped sticking coins in juke boxes.
He set out again for Manhattan and the New Woolworth building. Okay, he’d warned them. All he could say was it was lucky old Tubber liked an occasional beer himself, otherwise probably every bottle of booze in the country would have been turned into vintage orange pop, just as soon as the Speaker of the Word got around to thinking about all the people who were spending their time in bars, rather than listen to the need for hiking down the path to Elysium like good pilgrims.
At the New Woolworth Building, his identification got him past the preliminary guards and up to the five—only it was now ten—floors devoted to Dwight Hopkins’ emergency commission.
He found Helen Fontaine and Buzz De Kemp in his own office, bent over a portable phonograph and eyeing it accusingly as though the device had malevolently betrayed them.
When Ed entered, Buzz pulled his stogie from his mouth and said, “You’ll never believe this, but…”
“I know, I know,” Ed Wonder growled. “What is it you hear?”
Helen said, “It’s fantastic. For me, it comes out I Come to the Garden Alone.”
“No, listen,” Buzz insisted, “listen to those words. If you follow Me. I will make you fishers of men, if you’ll follow me.’ Clear as a bell.”
It still sounded like “Glory, Glory Hallelujah” to Ed Wonder. He slumped down in the chair behind his desk.
Buzz took the record from the machine and put on another one. “But listen to this. The other was supposedly a Rock’n’-Swing piece, but this label reads the first movement of the Peer Gynt Suite.” He flicked the switch on. The first movement of the Peer Gynt Suite came out The Morning, as it was supposed to do.
Ed was interested. “It’s selective again.”
They looked at him.
Buzz said accusingly, “What’s selective again?”
“The hex.”
Buzz and Helen stared accusingly at Ed.
Ed said defensively, “We were talking in a bar and they had the juke box tuned up to full volume and, well, he had to shout to be heard.”
“Oh, fine,” Buzz said. “Why didn’t you get him out of there?”
Helen said wearily, “So he got wrathful about juke boxes. Heavens to Betsy, can’t anybody ever turn him off before he gets mad? He’s not only fouled up juke boxes but all popular records, and I imagine tapes.”
Ed said, “I never did like juke boxes anyway. He also evidently didn’t have a dime to stick in a parking meter. So…”
“Hey, now we’re getting somewhere,” Buzz said. “Don’t tell me he laid a hex on parking meters.”
“There’s no slot in them, any more,” Ed told him. “Listen, did anything important happen while I was gone?”
“No, master,” Buzz said. “Everything stops when Your Eminence is absent. We dragged in a bunch of professors, doctors and every sort of scientist from biologist to astonomer. They’re still going at it, but it’s all we can do to convince one out of a hundred that we’re serious when we ask what a curse is. We’ve put a few dozen of them to work—supposedly—to research the subject. But nobody knows where to start. You can’t get a hex into a laboratory. You can’t measure it, weigh it, analyze it. Of the whole bunch we’ve turned up exactly one who believes hexes can happen.”
“We have?” Ed said, surprised.
“A guy named Westbrook. All that worries me is, he’s probably a twitch.” Buzz threw his stogie into the wastebasket.
“Jim Westbrook? Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten I’d put out a call for him to be picked up. Jim Westbrook’s no twitch. He used to act as a panelist on my Far Out Hour. What has he come up with?”
“He’s suggested we draft the whole Parapsycology Department of Duke University, just as a beginning. Then he suggests we send to Common Europe, to the Vatican, in Rome, with a request for a team of their top exorcisers.”
“Who in the devil needs exercise at a time like this?”
“Exorcisers, exorcisers. The archives of the Church probably contain more information on exorcising of evil spirits and such like than any other library in the world. Westbrook figures that taking off a hex is a related subject. He also suggests that we butter up Number One, in the Kremlin, and see if we can get into whatever archives remain of the Russian Orthodox Church, and also approach the Limeys for any dope the Church of England might have back in some lower bookshelves. All of them have the exorcising of evil spirits in their dogma.”
Ed grunted wearily, “I suppose I ought to go and report to Hopkins, but if I know him and Braithgale, they’d keep me up half the night. Tubber gave me an earful of this program of his.”
“Father got hold of one of Tubber’s pamphlets. He says that the path to Elysium is super-communism.”
Buzz grunted, “Jensen Fontaine is about as competent of judging Zeke Tubber’s program as a eunuch is the Miss America competition.”
“Funnies we get,” Ed complained. “At any rate, I’m too tired to think. What do you say we go to the apartment they’ve assigned me and have a few quick ones, then call it a night?”
Buzz fumbled for a fresh stogie, looking slightly embarrassed. “Uh, Little Ed…”
“Listen,” Ed said. “I’m getting fed up with that handle. The next guy who calls me Little Ed, gets awarded a fat lip.”
Buzz De Kemp blinked at him. “Chum, you just don’t sound like the old Lit… that is Ed Wonder, atall. Atall.”
Helen said, “I’m afraid we’ll have to take a rain check, Ed. Buzz and I have a date for this evening.”
Ed looked from one of them to the other. “Oh?” He touched the end of his nose reflectively. “Well, good.”