Ed Wonder was on his feet, his face working. “He’s done more than that! He’s signed the death warrant of Tubber and his daughter!”
Buzz scowled at him, defensively. “Don’t be silly, chum. I didn’t mention where they were. They’re safely tucked away in the little Elysium hamlet of theirs. Sure, a lot of people might be sore at them. A good chance of teaching old Zeke a lesson. He’ll find out what a heel practically everybody in the world figures he is.”
Ed snarled, “He isn’t in Elysium. He’s in Oneonta, with that pint-sized revival tent of his, spreading the message. Come on, Buzz! You started this. Let’s go. They’ll lynch him.”
Buzz threw his stogie on the floor. “Good grief,” he muttered, heading for the door.
The general was standing too. “Wait a minute! Perhaps this is for the best.”
Ed Wonder flung a contemptuous glare at him. “Like that other brainstorm of yours. Getting a sniper to shoot him from a distance. Just consider two of the ramifications, soldier. One, suppose Tubber starts flinging hexes at a mob out to lynch him. Do you have any idea what they might consist of? Or, number two, suppose the crowd does get to him and finishes him off. Do you think his hexes end with his death? How do we know?”
Buzz was through the door and on his way to the outer offices. Ed started after him.
“One moment,” Dwight Hopkins called, his famed poise shot to hell. “I can phone the local police in Oneonta.”
“No good,” Ed called back over his shoulder. “Tubber and Nefertiti know me, but some heavy-handed cops might just intensify the fireworks.”
In the anteroom, Johnson and Stevens hustled to their feet.
Ed ripped out at them, “Phone down to the garage. Have the fastest police car available ready for us, by the time we get there. Hurry, you flatfooted clowns!”
He charged down the corridor in the direction of the elevators.
Buzz had summoned one by the time he arrived. They hurried into it, banged the descent button, and their legs all but folded under them at the plunge.
The car was waiting. Ed flashed his identity and they bustled into the front seat. “How do you work this thing?” Buzz demanded. “I’ve never had an automatic.”
Ed Wonder had used Helen’s General Ford Cyclones from time to time. He rapped, “Here,” and dialed the number to take them across the George Washington Bridge. Meanwhile he snatched up the road map and located the coordinates for Oneonta. The upstate New York town wasn’t a much greater distance than Kingsburg, but situated further west. They’d have to go to Binghamton, as the closest route.
They agonized along the way. It would be nearly noon before they arrived. They had no way of knowing where Tubber had set up his tent. They had no way of knowing how soon he would begin his lecture. If it were anything like Saugerties, it wouldn’t be just one meeting scheduled, but several throughout the day. He’d possibly start quite early.
Ed Wonder didn’t expect him to get through the first talk. Once the audience found out who he was, that would be it. He cursed silently, inwardly. Perhaps they had already found out. Possibly the Oneonta Star had already run a notice. The Star was undoubtedly a subscriber to AP-Reuters; if some bright reporter connected the two stories and revealed that the controversial prophet was in town, it would mean the end already.
They could have saved themselves the anxiety over the time that would be taken locating Tubber’s tent. From afar, the roar of the mob could be heard. Throwing on the manual operation, Ed Wonder hit the lower part of town without diminution of speed.
“Hey, take it easy, chum,” Buzz De Kemp blurted.
“A siren,” Ed spit out at him. “There must be some button or something. Find it! This car should have a siren.”
Buzz fumbled. The siren’s whine ululated, wave over wave. They shrilled through the small Catskill city, traffic pulling away, right and left, such traffic as there was. Ed Wonder suspected that the greater part of the town was in on the show.
They could spot the action now. There was fire. As they pulled closer, they could see that it was obviously the tent.
All over again, it was the lynch scene of the movie projectionist in Kingsburg. It was basically the same, though ten times over in size. Far beyond the point where it could have been controlled by the police.
The mob numbered thousands, roaring, shouting, shrilling, screaming. But here on the outskirts they were principally milling around, the crowd hampered by its very size, unable to see what was going on in the center. Ineffective in the developments.
From their height in the hovercar, Ed Wonder and Buzz De Kemp could make out the activity. In the dead center, Ezekiel Joshua Tubber and his daughter were being buffeted this way and that, framed in the light of the burning tent behind them. There was no sign of other followers of the rejected prophet. Even in the excitement of the moment, Ed had a quick thought go through his mind. The desertion of Jesus, even by Peter, at the time of the betrayal to the Romans. Where were the followers, no matter how small a handful? Where were the pilgrims on the path to Elysium?
He slugged the lift lever, bringing them up to ten feet, shot toward the center of the shouting, club brandishing, fist brandishing mob. The smell of hate was everywhere. The fearful smell of hate and death, found seldom other than in mobs and in combat. The yells had become one, one blast of roaring rage.
Buzz yelled, “It’s impossible. Let’s get out of here. It’s too late. They’ll get us too!” The reporter’s eyes were popping fear.
Ed banged toward the center of the melee.
He yelled at Buzz, “Take the wheel, it’s on manual. Bring it down right above them!”
He squirmed over the seat into the back. He’d spotted something there earlier. Even as Buzz De Kemp grabbed at the wheel, steadying them, Ed tore the submachinegun from its rack.
“Hey!” the reporter yelled at him, still goggle-eyed.
With the butt, Ed Wonder knocked the glass out of the right rear window. The siren continued its screaming. The mob’s leaders—a dozen of them, manhandling the bearded prophet, who seemed dazed, and Nefertiti, screaming and scratching to get to her father—stared up. The siren was getting through to them for the first time.
Ed stuck the gun through the window, pointed up. He had never handled a similar weapon before. He pulled the trigger and the roar blasted back through the heavy hovercar, deafening him as he bucked the kick.
For the nonce, at least, it was effective. Below him, men scattered. He emptied the clip into the air.
“Down!” he yelled at Buzz.
“Don’t be crazy! We can’t…”
Ed leaned over the seat and knocked the lift lever up. Even before the limousine had hit earth, he had torn open the car door. He used the riot gun as a club, dashing for the staggering old man.
The sheer audacity of the attack was its success. Still swinging the heavy gun by its blisteringly hot barrel, he pulled and tugged the repudiated reformer toward and into the car’s back seat. He spun and threatened the temporarily flabbergasted crowd with the submachinegun, as though it were still loaded, yelling, “Nefertiti!” He couldn’t see her.
Buzz screamed, “Let’s get out of here!”
“Shut up!” Ed roared.
She came crying and stumbling, her clothes half torn from her, through the ranks of the bewildered lynchers. Less than gently, Ed Wonder pushed her into the back seat, grabbed hold of the ascending vehicle. He felt a hand grab his foot. He kicked back and down. The hand let go and they were off and free.
“They’ll be after us!” Buzz yelled back at him. “A thousand cars will be after us.”
Everything went out of Ed Wonder. It was all he could do to keep from vomiting. He was trembling as with a paroxysm of ague. “No they won’t,” he said, his voice shaking. “They’ll be afraid of the gun. A mob is a mob. Brave enough to take on the killing of an old man and a girl. Not brave enough to face a submachinegun.”