Earth Unaware

going.”

Ed Wonder said gloomily, “Jensen Fontaine thinks Tubber is a pseudonym.”

Buzz shook his head. “Not a name like that. Nobody but fond parents from the Bible belt would ever hang a moniker like that on a kid. Nobody’d do it to himself.”

“He said he wasn’t a Christian.”

“Maybe not, but his folks were. Probably evangelists. When he gets all wrathed up, he inadvertently starts talking like a Holy Roller, or whatever. He must’ve picked that up as a kid. Listen, Little Ed, how badly to you want to find him, and why? What happened to your mustache?”

Ed scratched where his tufts of mustache had been that morning. He muttered in self-deprecation, “Maybe now that I’m no longer a bright young career man, it’s not as important to look like one.”

Buzz De Kemp cocked his head at him and lit the stogie he’d been only fiddling with thus far. “That doesn’t sound like Little Ed Wonder,” he said.

“What does Little Ed Wonder sound like?” Ed said, snappishly.

Buzz grinned at him. “Usually like a heel on the make.”

“I don’t see how you manage to put up with me,” Ed snarled.

“I’ve wondered myself,” Buzz grinned. “Maybe it’s because I’m used to you. Ever notice how you put up with people you’re used to? For some reason, you hate to give up anybody you’ve really got to know.”

“So by the time you got to really know what a heel I was you were used to me and couldn’t bear to avoid me, eh?”

“Something like that. Tone down. Look, how bad do you want to locate old man Tubber?”

Ed never had been able to get really sore at Buzz De Kemp’s gibes, but even if he had, he wouldn’t have felt like it now. “I don’t know,” he grumbled. “I’m probably stupid. If he laid eyes on me, he’d probably lay down a hex that’d last like hemophilia. But I’ve been in on this since the beginning, it’s too late to try to duck out now.”

Buzz De Kemp eyed him. “What’s in it for you?” He blew smoke around the stogie without removing it from his mouth. “Beyond the death wish, I mean.”

“Oh, great. Funnies I get,” Ed muttered. “Nothing’s in it for me. What in the devil could there be in it?”

The newspaperman shook his head. “Sure doesn’t sound like Little Ed Wonder. Okay, so fine. I’ll get on it. Maybe there’ll be a birth record of Nefertiti, or a marriage record of the old boy, giving some idea of where they live. Maybe AP-Reuters will have something on him. Get out of here and check back with me later. I feel something like you do. In it from the beginning.”

Ed Wonder went down to the corner autobar with the idea of dialing himself a stiff one. His mind on Tubber and hexes, he wasn’t aware of the crowd until he was within a hundred feet of the bar’s entrance. His first impression was that there had been an accident, or, more likely still, in view of the magnitude of the mob, some act of violence. A shooting, or something.

It wasn’t that.

There was a policeman outside, lining up the crowd into a manageable queue. Inside, a juke box was at full blast.

“All right, everybody, all right. Stay in line,” the cop was singing out, and over and over again. “Stay in line or nobody’ll get in.”

Little Ed said, “What’s happened, Officer?”

The cop said, busily, “Get in line, buddy, get in line if you want a drink. Everybody’s gotta get in line.”

“Get in line for what ?” Ed stared at him.

“A drink, a drink. You’re allowed in for two drinks, or for half an hour, whatever comes off first. So get in line.”

“What the devil,” Ed blurted. “I don’t need a drink that bad.”

Somebody in the line took umbrage at that. “Oh, yeah,” he said savagely. “What’re ya gonna do, walk up and down the streets all day? The TV’s been on the blink since…”

Somebody else chimed in their disgust, and before he could get his complaint across, a heavier voice had drowned him out.

Ed went off, flabbergasted. It had only happened the night before. Less than twenty-four hours.

As he walked back to where he had parked the Volkshover, he noticed that it wasn’t only the autobars. Restaurants, ice cream parlors, drug stores, were all packed and overpacked, usually with lines out in front. All that had juke boxes had them tuned high. Proprietors were doing a land-office business, but Ed wondered where the money was coming from. Even under the welfare state, the average person didn’t have the wherewithal continually to patronize restaurants and bars.

He got into his hovercar and considered it for a while. Finally he brought the vehicle to life and headed for a destination. He had the address firmly enough in mind, but had never been there. The house located, he stood before the identity screen and fanned the alert.

A voice said, “Little Ed! Come on in, I’ll be right up.”

Ed opened the door, stepped in and navigated a few yards down an entry way to what was obviously a living room cum library. He was astonished by the layout. The room could have been a movie set depicting a home of yesteryear. There were some prints that Ed vaguely recognized from way back, but they certainly had no faintest resemblance to the current Surrealistic-Revival School that was currently in. You’d think that the owner had hung the things for… well, possibly because he liked them. You could get a reputation as a twitch awfully quick doing that sort of thing. And the chairs, tables, furniture. Right from an antique shop, several decades out of style.

A voice said, “Hi, friend. Come to see about Manny Levy for that swami show?”

Ed Wonder looked at his host, bringing his mind from his surprise at the bizarre room the other affected. “Swami?” he said blankly.

“The fire walker. You called a couple of days ago about a fire walker. What’s the matter with you, Little Ed? Remember me… Jim Westbrook? Sometimes panelist on the Far Out Hour, at a going rate of fifty dollars per appearance, cash in advance.”

Ed Wonder shook his head. “Listen,” he said. “Where’ve you been the last twenty-four hours?”

“Right here.”

“In this house?”

“Of course. I’ve been doing some concentrated work.”

“Haven’t you turned your TV set on?”

“I haven’t got a TV set.”

Ed Wonder stared at him as though the offbeat engineer had gone mad. “You haven’t got a TV set? Everybody’s got a TV set. How do you tune in on…”

Jim Westbrook said patiently, “I suppose if something came up I wanted to follow, I could wander over to some neighbor’s or friend’s. But, offhand, I can’t think of any such programs coming up for the past several years.”

Ed Wonder closed his eyes in pain. He opened them and said, “I don’t have time to go into it now, but, well, what do you do with your free time, listen to radio, go to the movies?”

“I don’t have any free time,” the other told him reasonably. “I get my rhabdomancy jobs once or twice a week. Then down in the cellar I’ve got my darkroom, electronics shop, woodworking shop, and I’m working up a small machine shop operation. Besides—”

“All right,” Ed said. “That’s enough. Already you sound like triplets.”

“Sit down and relax,” Jim said easily.

Ed looked around the room. He grimaced before sinking into one of the prehistoric-looking overstuffed chairs. Surprisingly, it was comfortable, no matter how kooky so far as style was concerned. It must have gone back to at least the 1950s.

“Listen, Jim, the swami who walks on coals is out—at least temporarily. You’ll find out why, later. Just now, I don’t have time to go into the detail I suspect you’d demand. What I came over to ask you is this. Are miracles possible?”

Jim Westbrook dropped into the chair opposite his guest, his face alert. “What kind of miracles?”