Prologue to an Analogue Read online

and couldn't be sold. But theycould be remodeled and thrown into one, and contracts were signed,permissions granted, the paperwork alone filled nearly a complete filecabinet.

  It would take double the fifty thousand dollars, of course--maybemore. But Randolph had authorized it, hadn't he? He always named halfthe figure--or less--than he meant to be used. Anyhow, internationalratings and sales would more than make up the purse, because thisthing would hit socko. Worry about the cash was the last thing thatwas bothering Oswald. He had a bear by the tail, and his contractprice was tied to the gross....

  The show was ballyhooed the whole week while the work went on.

  "Clean, clean, Witch clean--what's the witches next big cleanup?Witches of the world, unite--let's cleanup this old world and make itlivable...."

  The night the new cleanup job was to show, Randolph tuned in his TV asignorant of the details as the next viewer. It worried him a littlethat Oswald insisted on keeping him in the dark on everything exceptthe fact that it would be a slum cleanup, but he had the best p.r. menand the best lawyers in the country working on it, he told himself;and certainly the sales charts for the past two weeks had beenspectacular.

  "We can count on the biggest TV audience of the year tonight," Oswaldhad told him gleefully at noon. "The buildup's been a natural, andthose 'Salem with a new twist and a singing commercial' plugs havebeen continued on this network--the cost of that was comparativelysmall--and I've even gotten them onto a few of the really big shows toboot."

  Bill Howard came on the screen, his big homely face leaning across thedesk toward the TV audience.

  "The biggest news in the country right now," Bill said in a solemntone, "is the biggest single cleanup job in the country today.

  "There's a slum," Bill said, "right here in New York that the Witchesof the world will unite to cleanup--tonight."

  Then he put on the full power of the personality that made him themost listened-to newscaster on the air, TV and radio. The manner thatmade the news sound human, like it really happened to real people. Heput it on full power, and went to work.

  First he showed a big map of New York, and talked about how peoplethought of it as a big, impersonal place, but it wasn't. He made iteverybody's home town.

  Then he traced the map right down to the exact spot where thebuildings were. Then he turned on a movie, and he showed theback-door, garbage strewn, and a room where a family slept, seven ofthem, and the privy they shared with five other families.

  * * * * *

  Then Bill turned off the movie, and he brought that family to themike, each of them dirty and in clothes that never had amounted tomuch, and had seen a long life since--even the baby. One kid's shoeshad a sole flapping off, another had the toes cut out so he could wearthem, though he'd long outgrown them.

  "We haven't added to what we found," Bill said. "This is the way the ...I've introduced them as the Jones family, let's leave it at that. Thisis how the Joneses have had to dress. This is how they've had to live.This is a very real part of America," he said, and his voice was chokinga little, and Randolph thought, if he's putting that on, he's the bestactor I've seen yet.

  Randolph found himself glad he was alone, and didn't have to speakhimself. His own throat felt choked.

  "And now," said Bill to his audience, "It's time for the witches...."

  The camera shifted, and there was a papier-mache model of thebuildings, built so you could look in the curtainless windows and seethe squalor, lighted with a single bulb on a string. There was a graypall over the whole thing, and newspapers and trash blowing againstthe front of the building. The gray pall, Randolph had figured fromthe sub-scene two weeks ago, was an effect of lights on a net curtain,but the effect was really good.

  The thirteen witches, slender witches, danced in waving their productsand crying their chant, their crimson-lined capes swirling out toglimpse the audience their long, slender legs.

  They cried their chant as they pranced toward the dilapidatedbuilding. "Witches of the world, unite to make it clean, clean, clean,Witch clean--NOW!" And each threw a spray of her product toward thebuilding.

  "Witch soap or detergent, Witch cleanser upsurgent, which Witch do youneed? You should have them all...."

  Then riding over the muted jingle the deep voice of the announcersaying "Tonight the Witches of the world clean a slum of the world ...a particular slum, this slum.

  "Witches, unite! And clean, clean, clean, Witch clean...."

  The dancing witches now threw each her ingredient on the buildingitself, and the gray pall began to lighten, a bright, new-paintedfront shone forth. Inside, the single bulbs blacked out for aninstant, and then a soft light showed through curtained windows, abright new scene dimly apparent through the curtains.

  "This is not just an illusion," the deep voice of the announcercontinued. "This is really happening, down near the Battery in NewYork City. It is happening to the Joneses and the Smiths who livethere--"

  The chorus rose to cover the announcer's voice, "Clean, clean, clean,Witch clean!"

  The commercial and the witches faded, and Bill Howard's big, homelyface came back on the screen.

  "Let me introduce you again to the Jones family," Bill said. "I'llintroduce you to the Joneses, but they're just one of the families whowill now have a decent place to live--and the same miracle hashappened to each of these families."

  Now the Joneses came again on camera--clean, in new clothes, hairbrushed, a miracle indeed of the costume-changers speedy art. Randolphassumed that teams of BDD&O members had been at work during thecommercial, creating the miracle. From the baby up and down theyshone, and their faces shone with an inner light--

  When Randolph shut off the TV that night, he was chewing his lipviolently. Must have been more than double that fifty thousanddollars, he thought. He reminded himself to phone BDD&O first thing inthe morning.

  It was still an hour before noon when Randolph's phone rang.

  "Randolph, here," he said in the formality he'd adopted on an Englishvisit and carefully kept.

  "Good morning," Oswald's voice was formal. "Good morning." There was asilence, while Randolph waited for the other to continue.

  Finally, Randolph said, "Good show, that. Must have cost a lot morethan my price," he added. "It was good, though," he said again,thoughtfully.

  "Randolph," Oswald's voice sounded wild, "I don't know what the thingcost. I don't know--"

  "Now, sir, just what do you mean, you don't know the cost? I told youto spend fifty thousand dollars, and from what I saw last night it'llcost four times that. I'll go as high as one hundred twenty-fivethousand dollars, but not one cent over. And you'd better make itworth the money, for that's a pretty penny," he said.

  "Look, Randolph, the cleanup job down there was supposed to start thismorning. Contracts let, big crews ready to do the job fast so peoplecould go look at the finished product. Every family was signed up toact as guides, like in Williamsburg. We moved 'em all to the countryyesterday, so they'd look healthy when they came back, and the jobcould start at the crack of dawn today."

  "Well?"

  "Well, the job's already done."

  "That's pretty fast. You said you started it this morning."

  "Yeah. And when my man phoned me from down there I told him to getblack coffee and sober up. But I went down myself--and the job's done.Exactly the job we specified, too. Done by our plans. Furnished,painted, paint dry, curtains hung, the works, new bathrooms andkitchen and plumbing and electricity. The works. It's finished.

  "My best man was down there moving the families out yesterday. Heswears the building hadn't been touched then. The contractor says he'sgoing to sue, because he arrived with his crews to start the job, andsomebody else had done it. You come on. You've got to meet me here andtell me the answers.

  "Just what do you put in that soap of yours, anyhow?"

  * * * * *

  By afternoon it was banners in every paper, wire-serviced
across thenation and the world.

  Most of the stories were written tongue-in-cheek about the miraclepart. It was assumed that Witch Products had done the inside job inadvance, and thrown in the outside cleanup during the night.

  The tenants were interviewed--Oswald had the sense to move them rightback into their new apartments--and not one of them could be made tobreak down and admit that those buildings hadn't been slums yesterday.Well, you couldn't blame them for sticking by Witch, look what Witchhad done for them was the word that went around Bleek's.

  Of course the thing was a curiosity natural, and the police had somany men assigned there