Helen said, as though in defense, “I figure even though I can’t be a clotheshorse myself, anymore, possibly I can teach this bum to look more of a credit to his profession.”
“You’ve got your work cut out for you, sister,” Buzz leered at her. “I’m the type who can buy a two hundred dollar suit, and before I get out of the tailor shop I already look like I’ve slept in it.”
“Funnies,” Ed groaned. “Good night.”
12
He was about to sit down to breakfast and the morning paper when Colonel Fredric Williams came bustling in. Ed Wonder looked up at him.
“Special meeting in Mr. Hopkins’ office, Wonder,” he rapped.
“I haven’t finished my breakfast.”
“No time. Several important developments.”
Ed rolled up the paper and stuck it into his jacket pocket, took a quick scalding sip of his coffee and came to his feet. “All right, let’s go.”
He followed the colonel from the suite. His two bodyguards, Johnson and Stevens, fell in behind them in the hall. There was the bureaucratic mind for you, Ed decided. Yesterday they had sent him up to Elysium, right into the camp of the supposed enemy, without a peashooter in the way of protection. But now, in this ultra-commission on the top of the New Woolworth Building, supposedly it wasn’t safe for him to walk down the corridor unguarded.
Hopkins was not alone. In fact, his office was crowded. This time Ed Wonder recognized almost all of them. Braithgale, General Crew, Buzz and Helen, Colonel Williams, and the more important members of Ed’s Project Tubber team. Evidently, of all the different branches of investigation of the disasters, his project was rapidly gaining the ascendency.
When they were seated, Hopkins turned a baleful eye on them, stressing Ed and Buzz De Kemp. He said, “Before we get to Mr, Wonder’s report on his visit to Elysium, there are a couple of other developments. Mr. Oppenheimer?”
Bill Oppenheimer, he who with Major Davis had originally upped Ed and Buzz to crash priority, came to his feet, jittering characteristically. He said, “To make it brief, very young children, all idiots and most morons, aren’t effected.”
“Aren’t effected by what?” General Crew rumbled.
Oppenheimer looked at him. “By any of the hexes. They can even hear radio, see television.” Bill Oppenheimer sat down.
Hopkins said, “Mr. Yardborough.”
Cecil Yardborough came to his feet. “This is very preliminary. We’ve hardly started on this line, however, we should speed things up now that we’ve taken over the Parapsychology Department of Duke.” He looked at Ed Wonder, as though expecting opposition to what he was about to say. “One of our researchers who’s had considerable experience in ESP has suggested a scientific explanation for Tubber’s power.”
He couldn’t have gotten more attention had he suddenly levitated.
Yardborough went on. “Our Doctor Jeffers suggests that Ezekiel Joshua Tubber has, probably unknowingly, developed telepathy beyond the point ever known before. Most telepathists can contact but one other person at a time, some can communicate with two or three, a very small number have been known to pass a thought on to a large number of persons within a limited distance.” Yardborough’s eyes swept around them. “Doctor Jeffers believes Tubber to be the first human being who can telepathically contact the whole species simultaneously, regardless of language.”
Braithgale unfolded his long legs, recrossed them the other way. He said mildly, “What has that got to do with the hexes?”
Yardborough said, “That is but one half of the Jeffers hypothesis. He also is of the opinion that Tubber is able to hypnotize through telepathy. That is, he doesn’t have to be before the person hypnotized. He can be any distance away.”
A sigh, as though of relief, drifted through the room.
“It doesn’t hold up,” Ed Wonder said flatly.
They turned to him, and there seemed to be glare in the expression of all, even Helen and Buzz.
He gestured with his hands, palms upward, “Okay. I know. Everybody wants it to hold up. People are built that way. They go batty if something comes along they can’t label. They’ve simply got to have an explanation for everyhing. However, this Doctor Jeffers doesn’t explain Tubber’s power. Sure, maybe I’d buy it for the TV-radio curse, and even the movie curse. It might even cover the juke box curse.”
“Juke box curse!” somebody blurted.
Hopkins said evenly, “We’ve begun to receive reports of it. Go on, Mr. Wonder.”
“However, it won’t cover physical things Tubber’s done, like sealing up the slots in parking meters, and setting a nightclub on fire with lightning because the proprietor was throwing shows involving teen-age kids stripping. It wouldn’t even cover breaking a set of guitar strings at a distance.”
Jim Westbrook, seated off to one side, and noticed now by Ed Wonder for the first time, said, “Perhaps the fellow owning the guitar only thought the strings were broken, under Tubber’s hypnosis.” But the big consulting engineer didn’t sound as though he believed it himself.
Ed said, “We simply don’t know. Perhaps there’s something in nature that when there’s a need for a certain type of person the race produces him. Possibly nature figures there’s a need for a man with Tubber’s powers right now. There was a need for a Newton when he came along. Can we explain him? There was a rash of super-geniuses in such cities as Florence at the time of the Renaissance. Can anybody explain the fantastic abilities of Leonardo and Michelangelo? Devil knows, the times called for them. The race had to be pulled out of the Dark Ages.”
Dwight Hopkins sighed and ran a gaunt hand over his mouth and chin. “Very well,” he said. “However, Mr. Yardborough, see that Doctor Jeffers’ line of investigation is continued. Crash priority. We leave no possibilities unexplored. The national emergency is growing geometrically.
“And now,” Hopkins continued, “we come to another, very uncomfortable aspect. General Crew, please.”
The general lumbered to his feet, and even before opening his mouth his face dyed mahogany. He took up a newspaper from Hopkins’ desk and shook it.
“Who is the traitor who leaked this whole story to AP-Reuters!”
Ed Wonder snatched his own paper from his jacket pocket, ripped it open to the front page. It glared 72 point type:
TV-MOVIE-RADIO COLLAPSE LAID TO RELIGIOUS LEADER
He didn’t have to read it. He knew it would all be there.
“I thought nobody’d believe you,” he snapped at the reporter.
Buzz grinned at him, took his stogie from his mouth and pointed at Ed’s chest with it. “That’s where my stroke of genius came in. This was my story, from the beginning, and I just had to see it in print. You left me in charge, yesterday. So I sent a couple of the boys up to Kingsburg and had them haul Old Ulcers right out of the city room and down here. I showed him around. Showed him all the staff we’ve got working on Project Tubber. Finally it got through to him. Whether or not he believes it himself, the biggest story of the century cracked right in his own town. I had the piece already written up. He just took it with him.”
“And AP-Reuters picked it up from the Times-Tribune, you kook!” Ed snarled at him. “You know what you’ve done?”
“I know what he’s done,” Hopkins said, the evenness of his voice for once tried. “He’s made a laughing stock of the administration. I thought it was made clear that this phase of our investigation was to be kept under wraps until more definite data was available.”