Nefertiti, still blubbering in hysteria, was working over her father. Getting him straight on the seat, at the same time trying to rearrange her own torn clothing.
Tubber made the first sound since the rescue. “They hate me,” he said, dazed. “They hate me. They would have destroyed me.”
Buzz De Kemp had at last shaken off his panic of the height of the excitement. “What’d you expect?” he grumbled. “An egg for your beer?”
They had a little difficulty in getting the torn and battered Tubber pair into the New Woolworth Building, but Ed had recovered by now. He glared down the guards at the entry, grabbed the phone and snapped, “General Crew. This is crash priority. Wonder, speaking.”
Crew came on in seconds.
Ed snapped, “I’ve got Tubber. We’re coming up immediately. Have Dwight Hopkins ready in his office, and the top men on my staff. I want everybody who’s informed on Project Tubber.” He looked at the guards. “And, oh yeah, tell these kooks to let us pass.” He threw the phone to the armed guard, and started toward the elevator.
Buzz was supporting the elderly prophet at one side, Nefertiti from the other.
They went directly to the topmost floor.
Buzz said, “We ought to take them to your apartment. Miss Tubber is in bad enough shape, but the old boy is just short of being in shock.”
“That’s how we want him,” Ed Wonder muttered lowly. “Come on.”
Hopkins was at his desk, the others came hurrying in, one or two at a time.
Ed got the pathetic old man seated on a leather couch, Nefertiti next to him. The others stood, or took seats, staring at the cause of the crisis which was shaking the governments of very affluent nation on earth. At the moment, he didn’t look as though he could have shaken a meeting of a small town Board of Education.
Ed said, “All right. Let me introduce Ezekiel Joshua Tubber, the Speaker of the Word. It’s now up to you gentlemen to convince him that his curses should be lifted.” Ed sat his own self down, abruptly.
For a long moment there was silence.
Dwight Hopkins, his voice tense below the crisp efficiency, said, “Sir, as spokesman for President Everett MacFerson and the government of the United Welfare States of America, I can only plead with you to reverse whatever it is you have done—if, indeed, it was you—to bring the nation to the brink of chaos where it now stands.”
“Chaos,” Tubber muttered, brokenly.
Braithgale said, “Three quarters of the population are spending the greater part of their time wandering aimlessly up and down the streets. It will take only a spark, and sparks are already beginning to fly.”
Nefertiti said indignantly, glaring around at them, “My father is ill. We were almost killed. This is no time to badger him.”
Dwight Hopkins looked at Ed Wonder, questioningly. Ed shook his head, infinitesimally. Ezekiel Joshua Tubber was at bay, they would either come to terms with him now or anything might develop when he recovered strength and poise. It was brutal, perhaps, but the situation was brutal.
Ed said, explaining to the others. “Yesterday, Ezekiel Tubber explained part of his beliefs to me. His sect thinks the country is choking on its own fat and at the same time heading for destruction by using up its resources, both natural and human, at a headlong speed. He thinks we ought to plan a simpler, less frenetic society.”
The dazed reformer looked up at him, shook his head in exhaustion. “That’s not exactly the way I would put it… loved one.”
Jim Westbrook, slumped in a heavy chair, hands in pockets, said, dryly, “The trouble is, you’ve started at the wrong end. You’ve been trying to get to the people. Change their way of looking at things. The fact is, friend, the people are slobs, and always have been. There hasn’t been a period in history when, given the chance, the man in the street hasn’t made a slob of himself. Given the license and freedom from reprisal, they’ll wallow in sadism, debauchery, destruction. Look at the Romans and their games. Look at the Germans when they were given the go-ahead by the Nazis to eliminate the inferior races, the non-Aryans. Look at any combat soldiers, of any nationality.”
Tubber shook his shaggy head, bearlike, and the faintest brace of the old spark was there. “You err, loved one,” he protested, brokenly. “Human character is determined by environment rather than heredity. Human faults are imparted by bad training. The vices of the young spring not from nature, who is equally the kind and blameless mother of all her children; they derive from the defects of education.”
It was Westbrook’s turn to shake his head. “Sounds good, but it doesn’t work out that way. You can’t put more into a container than its capacity to hold. Average I.Q. is one hundred. Half the population is below that and you can subject most of them to education for life and it’s not going to take.”
The exhausted prophet was in there pitching. “No, your belief is a common fallacy. True, average I.Q. is one hundred, but actually few of us go more than ten points either above or below that figure. The moron is as seldom found amongst us as is the genius with his I.Q. of 140 or above. The less than one percent who are geniuses are precious gifts to the race and should be sought out and given every opportunity to develop their talents, and cherished. Those who fall below 90 in their I.Q. are our unfortunates and every effort should be made, in all charity, to see that they lead as full lives as possible.”
Dwight Hopkins said smoothly, “I thought your basic complaint was against our affluent society and the Welfare State. But here you develop the usual do-gooder philosophy. All men are equal, so we should sacrifice the products of the successful to those who have lost the race.”
Tubber brought himself up more erect. “Why are we so contemptuous of the so-called do-gooder? Is it so reprehensible to attempt to do good? Man would seem to be his own worst enemy. We all claim to desire peace, but at the same time sneer at the conscientious objector. We claim to desire a better world, and then sneer at those who suggest reform as do-gooders. But that is beside the question you ask. My objection to the welfare state and our present society is not that we have solved the problems of production, but that the machine has slipped beyond our control and runs amuck. I do not begrudge the productive person the product of his efforts. The right to products is exclusive, but the right to means should be common. This is so, not merely because raw materials are provided by the All Mother, by nature, but also because of the heritage of installations and techniques which is the real source of human wealth and because of the collaboration that makes each man’s contribution so much more effective than if he worked in solitude. But this question of rewarding the more intelligent while penalizing he whom the All-Mother saw fit to equip with a lower I.Q. is no longer pertinent. In an economy of scarcity, it is obvious that the greatest contributors to society should reap greater rewards, but in our affluent society why should we begrudge anyone an abundance? We have never begrudged either air nor water to our meanest criminal because there has always been an abundance of both. In the affluent society, the meanest citizen can have a decent home, the best of food, clothing and the other necessities and even luxury. I would be a fool indeed, if I railed against this.”
General Crew rumbled, “What is this, a sermon? Let’s get to the point. Does this man admit to—somehow or other—creating the disturbances that have hashed up what amounts to all our entertainment media? If so, there should be laws that…”