10
Ed Wonder had been assigned an apartment in the New Woolworth Building while Helen Fontaine and Buzz De Kemp found accommodations in nearby hotels. In the morning, Ed Wonder got down to his office early, but evidently not early enough. His assistants, male and female, in the outer offices were in a flurry of activity. He wondered, vaguely, what they were doing. He hadn’t issued enough in the way of directions to have kept a fraction of them busy.
He stopped at one desk long enough to say, “What are you doing?”
The young man looked up. “Incantations,” he said. He had a pile of books, pamphlets and manuscripts before him and a mike connected to a dicto in his left hand.
“Incantations?” Ed said.
The other had gone back to his perusal, now he looked up again. He obviously didn’t recognize Ed as his chief. For that matter, Ed didn’t recognize him. He had never seen him before.
The other said, “Incantations. The chanting or uttering of words purporting to have magical powers. I’m accumulating basic data.”
“You mean we’ve got a full time man working on nothing but finding out about incantations?”
The young man looked at him pityingly. “I’m translating incantations in Serbo-Croat. They’ve got fifty-odd others on other languages. Now, if you’ll please excuse me.” He went back to his books.
Ed Wonder went into his own office.
There had been a few matters which had come up that Randy Everett informed him about. The extent of the offices allotted to Project Tubber had been upped considerably during the night, as well as the number of personnel. They were now working on a three shift basis. Ed hadn’t known about that.
Mr. De Kemp hadn’t come in yet but had called to let them know he was feeling indisposed.
At that point in Miss Everett’s report, Ed snarled, “Indisposed! Call that bum and tell him to get in here, hangover or no hangover. Tell him I’ll send a squad of marines, if he doesn’t.”
Randy said, “Yes, sir.”
Ed said, “Put Major Davis on.”
The face that faded into the phone screen had a major’s leaves on the shirt collar, but it wasn’t the face of Major Davis.
Ed Wonder said, “Where’s Lenny Davis?”
“Davis isn’t with us any more, sir. He had a breakdown of some sort or other. My name is Wells.”
“Oh, he did, huh? Well, look here Wells, no more breakdowns among you army types, understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If there are any breakdowns around here, I’ll have them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ed tried to remember why he had called Major Davis, and couldn’t. He flicked off the screen. It lit up again immediately to display the face of Colonel Fredric Williams.
The colonel said, “Dwight Hopkins wants to see you immediately, Wonder.”
“Okay,” Ed said. He got to his feet. He wished that Buzzo were here to back him. There were angles to this big executive bit.
At the entry to Project Tubber, Johnson and Stevens, the two security heavies, fell in behind him. Evidently, he was still under guard. It was just as well. He couldn’t have found his way to the Hopkins offices otherwise. He had the vague feeling that this whole commission, or whatever its official name was, had grown by half again during the night. The crush was greater in the corridors, still more equipment was being shoved up and down the halls, and more offices were being filled with desks, files, phones, intercoms and all the other paraphernalia of bureaucracy.
He was admitted immediately to Dwight Hopkins’ presence and found the president’s right hand man winding up a conference with fifteen or twenty assorted efficient-looking types, only several of whom were in uniform. Ed wasn’t introduced and the others filed out with the exception of Professor Braithgale, the one among them all that Ed Wonder had recognized.
Hopkins said, “Sit down, Mr. Wonder. How does Project Tubber go?”
Ed held up his hands, palms upward. “How could it go? We just got started yesterday afternoon. We’re investigating the nature of a curse. Or at least trying to. We’re trying also to get as complete rundown on Tubber as we can, on the off chance that we’ll find some clue as to how he got this power of his.”
Hopkins shifted slightly in his chair, as though what he was about to say didn’t appeal to him. He said, “Your hypothesis, the Tubber hypothesis, is strengthening in its appeal, Mr. Wonder. It occurs to me that one aspect of this crisis might be unknown to you. Did you know that radar was not effected?”
“I wondered about that,” Ed told him.
“But that isn’t what has our technicians rapidly going off their minds. Neither is radio as used in international commerce, shipping, that sort of thing. But above all, neither are educational motion pictures. I spent an hour last night, on the edge of insanity, watching the current cinema idol, Warren Waren, come through perfectly in a travelogue sort of documentary used to promote the teaching of geography in our high schools. He had donated his time. But when we attempted to project one of his regular films. The Queen and I, using what our research people assured me was identical type film and using the same projector, we got that fantastic holdover of the image on the screen.”
Dwight Hopkins’ gaze was steady, but there was somehow, behind his eyes, a frantic look.
Ed said, “TV, in the way we use it in telephones, isn’t effected either. The curse is selective, just as in books. Non-fiction isn’t effected, nor even the kind of fiction Tubber likes. What the devil, not even his favorite comic strip is changed. But none of this is news, why’d you bring it up?”
Professor Braithgale spoke up for the first time. “Mr. Wonder, it was one thing considering your hypothesis along with anything, absolutely anything, else. But we are rapidly arriving to the point where your theory is the only one that makes sense. The least sensible of all comes nearest to making sense.”
“What happened to sun spots?” Ed srud.
Hopkins said, “On the face of it, such activity might disrupt radio, but it would hardly be selective. At the remotest, it wouldn’t exercise censorship over our lighter fiction.”
“So you’re beginning to suspect that I’m not as kooky as you first thought.”
The bureaucrat ignored that. He said, “The reason we brought you in, Mr. Wonder, is that we wish to consult you on a new suggestion. It has been proposed that we use telephone lines to pipe TV programs into the homes. A crash program would be started immediately. Within a month or so every home in the United Welfare States of America would have its entertainment again.”
Ed Wonder stood up and leaned on Dwight Hopkins’ desk and looked down into the older man’s face. “You know the answer to that silly idea as well as I do. How would you like to upset the economy of this country by fouling up telephone and telegraph, to go along with TV and radio?”
Hopkins stared at him.
Ed Wonder stared back.
Braithgale coughed. “That’s what we were afraid of. Then you think…”
“Yes, I do. Tubber would lay a hex on your new wired TV as soon as it started up.”
It seemed a stronger Edward Wonder than they had spoken to only the day before. Dwight Hopkins looked at him calculatingly. He said, finally, “Professor, suppose you tell Mr. Wonder the latest developments pertaining to the crisis.”
Ed returned to his chair and sat down.
The tall gray professor’s voice took on its lecture tone. “Soap box orators,” he said.
“What in the devil is a soap box orator?” Ed demanded.