“Shut up,” Ed Wonder told him, without inflection.
The general looked at him unbelievingly, but obeyed orders.
Jim Westbrook said, “We got away from the original point. Our Ezekiel Tubber, here, believes that he can change the present admittedly chaotic society by changing the eternal slob who is the basic unit of society. He can’t. I would think he would have seen reality when the mob attacked him, as soon as they found it was he who robbed them of their idiot diversions.”
Tubber had recovered enough to glare at him. “Your common man, as you called him before, has been made a slob, it is not inherent. My efforts have been to attempt to remove some of the devices that have been utilized to gouge out his brains. Almost any one of these slobs, as you call them, could have been, could still be, I contend, a worthy pilgrim along the path to Elysium. Suppose you took the child of a highly educated, well-to-do family, and, in the hospital, through a nurse’s mistake, had it substituted for a slum child. Do you think for a moment that the slum child, in its new environment, wouldn’t average out as well as his fellows? Or that the good family’s offspring, through mistake now being raised in the poorest part of town, wouldn’t average out the same as his fellows?”
Nefertiti glared around at them. She said, “Father…” but then turned to Hopkins and then to Ed. “He’s tired. He ought to have a doctor. Those people, they kicked him, hit him.”
“The eternal slobs,” Westbrook murmured, dryly.
Ed Wonder said, “Just one more minute, honey.” He turned to Tubber. “All right, suppose we concede everything you’ve said, so far. Under the Welfare State the country is going to pot, and what we ought to do is change it the way you’d like to see it changed. But I want to remind you of something you said to me the first time we talked together. I think I can remember it, almost exactly. I called you sir, and you said: The term sir, a variation of sire, comes down to us from the feudalist era. It reflects the relationship between noble and serf. My efforts are directed against such relationships, against all authority of one man over another. For I feel that whoever puts his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and a tyrant; I declare him to be my enemy.”
“I fail to understand your point, loved one.”
Ed pointed a finger at him. “You object to others controlling you, your thoughts, your actions. But that is exactly what you, with your power—whatever it is—have been doing to all the rest of us. All of us. You, the supposed do-gooder, to use that term again, are in fact the biggest tyrant of all history. Genghis Khan was a piker, Caesar an upstart, Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin small timers. Compared with…”
“Stop!” Tubber cried.
“What comes next?” Ed demanded, making his voice contemptuous. “Are you going to rob us of speech, so that we can’t even complain against your decisions?”
Tubber looked at him, the Lincolnesque sadness there as never before, the hurt manifest.
“I… I didn’t know. I… thought…”
Dwight Hopkins moved in smoothly. “I suggest a compromise, sir, ah, that is, Ezekiel. You for all your efforts have failed to bring your message—whatever its merits or lack of them—to the people whom you love but who have thus far rejected you. Very well, my compromise is this. That for one hour each day you shall be on the air. On every TV and radio throughout the world. There shall be, for that hour, no other programs to compete with you. This one hour a day shall be yours, so long as you wish it.”
Both Nefertiti and her prophet father were staring at him.
“And… in return?” Tubber wavered.
“In return, all your, ah, hexes, shall be lifted.”
The shaken prophet hesitated. “Even though I were on the air each day, perhaps they would not listen.”
Buzz De Kemp chuckled around his stogie. “That’s no problem, Zeke, old chum. One more hex. Your very last one, you should promise. A hex urging everyone to listen. Not necessarily to believe in your program, but merely to listen.”
“I… I don’t even know if it is possible to reverse…”
“We can try,” Dwight Hopkins urged smoothly.
General Crew said, thoughtfully. “Come to think of it, I have three daughters. Since that curse against cosmetics and vanity, life has been more bearable. I can even get into the bathroom in the morning. Couldn’t we just retain that one?”
“The one against juke boxes,” Braithgale murmered. “I loathe juke boxes.”
“My own pet peeve,” Buzz said, rolling his stogie from one side of his mouth to the other, “is comic books. I’d say…”
Jim Westbrook laughed suddenly. “For my books, friend, you can keep the hex on radio and TV.”
Dwight Hopkins glared at them. “That will be all of this nonsense, gentlemen.”
The elderly prophet took a deep breath.
“Now verily do I say…”
Aftermath
Ed Wonder, assistant producer of WAN-TV, came bustling into the general offices of the station. He tipped a wink to Dolly. “Nice hairdo you’ve got there.”
“Thanks, Lit… uh, that is Mr. Wonder.”
Ed grinned at her. “That reminds me. You might take a cold cloth back to Jerry in the control room of Studio Three. He’s got a bloody nose. That boy’ll never learn my name.”
Dolly began to come to her feet. “Mrs. Wonder is in your office,” she said.
“Fine,” Ed told her. He headed for his private office.
Nefertiti was standing at the window when he came in. She turned around.
Ed took her hands and held back from her, pretending to consider the new dress critically. “Shopping again, eh? Darling, you were meant to be a clotheshorse.”
“Isn’t it wonderful! Oh, Ed, I almost forgot. There’s a cable from Buzz and Helen. They’re in Bermuda.”
“The honeymooners, eh?”
The intercom on the desk lit and Dolly said, “Mr. Fontaine is in Mr. Mulligan’s office, Mr. Wonder. He wants to see you.”
Ed kissed his bride. “Hold on, honey. I’ll be back shortly and take you to lunch. I want to show you off.”
He headed for Mulligan’s office, wondering what Fontaine wanted now. Every time the station owner entered the place, WAN-TV lost money. He’d be better off if he stayed home and let the pros run the business.
Jensen Fontaine glared up at him from the desk. Fatso Mulligan wasn’t present.
“What’s the crisis, sir?” Ed said, sitting down and reaching for a cigarette.
“It’s that blasted Communist, Tubber!”
“My father-in-law isn’t a Communist, Mr. Fontaine. Get Buzzo to fill you in on that some time. Among the other proof is the fact that it took a lot of arm-twisting on the part of the Reunited Nations to get the Soviet Complex to agree to allow him time on their stations.”
“I say he’s subversive! Why I ever let you talk me into using our station as the origin of his worldwide broadcasts, I’ll never know!”
Ed said easily, lighting his smoke and flicking the match to the ashtray on the desk, “Gives us a lot of prestige, for one thing. And the time immediately before and after Josh’s hour is worth its weight in emeralds. Business is booming. Everybody’s happy.”
Fontaine’s baleful glare hadn’t let up an iota.
“But he’s spreading that confounded blasted subversive message of his to every man, woman and child who can get to a TV or radio set.”
“That was the deal,” Ed said reasonably. “Dwight Hopkins had his work cut out getting everyone to agree. But it was the only way to call off the crisis.”
Jensen Fontaine pounded a scrawny hand on the desk. “You still don’t understand,” he cried. He pointed dramatically to a pile of mailbags stacked in one corner. “Letters. Letters from every country on earth. It’s bad enough that this ultra-radical spews out his underground…”