Prologue to an Analogue Read online

been holding off gave the story the works.

  The effects of the pest plane, of the pest bombs, were the mostvicious that could be developed in the laboratories of bacterialwar--and they put to shame the naturally-occurring epidemics that havescourged mankind throughout his history.

  And the effects were spreading with the speed of a prairie fire beforea high wind.

  The entire area was quarantined, and daily the quarantine wasextended. No plane could land and take off again. No ship could enterand leave. An airlift of supplies dropped by parachute was beingorganized.

  Bacteriologists and doctors jetted to the area were dying with therest, caught in disease for which there was no answer.

  The propaganda attempts to make it seem as though cures were near wereflatly not believed. Suez was remembered, but was remembered as ahoax--and the country had had its complete fill of hoaxes.

  Randolph had a number of what he referred to--and reported--as "crankcalls," asking Witch to try its might. He arranged for every call thatreached him to be traced immediately. He remained in seclusion.

  Oswald had a few of the "crank calls" and reported them as such.

  Bill Howard had a number of calls, and didn't report them.

  Bill Howard worried, and added two and two, and sweated, and reportedthe details of Formosa each night. The details giantized ingruesomeness until their very content was too much for the airways,and he had to censor them as he gave them out.

  Bill Howard sweated in the cold January weather, and each day heferreted further, seeking out the realities behind the censorship thatlay heavy now even over the wires. By phone, by gossip, by hearsay andby know-how he got the stories behind the story--the real horrors thathe couldn't broadcast.

  Sometimes he rebelled at the censors and himself as one of them, buthe knew better than to rebel. It's facing us all, he thought. We eachhave the right to know.

  This is the way the world ends, he thought. With a whimper that comesafter the agony, when agony is too great.

  And he kept remembering a little girl walking towards a camera withbig eyes.

  If I were a physicist, he told himself, if I were a physicist insteadof a newshawk, I could get a computer to tell me the probability ratioof whether I hold an answer.

  That probability ratio is probable ten billion to one, he toldhimself.

  That probability ratio is zero.

  Witches are for burning, he told himself.

  He told himself a lot of things, and he sweated through the coldJanuary weather.

  * * * * *

  It had been two weeks since the world heard the first details ofFormosa, and the details were so grim now that you couldn't use themat all. Just a blanket story.

  That night, the map of the world behind his desk, Bill Howard leanedtoward his audience.

  He told them the human side of the story of Formosa.

  He spoke of the people there, the pawns in a game of internationalsuicide, real people, not just statistics.

  He described a family, and he made them the family next door. Mother,father, children, watching one another die, not prettily but with allthe torture that the laboratories of the world could dream and puttogether. A family that watched each other go insane, knowing what washappening. A family that watched each other die, writhing andunknowing in insanity.

  He took his pointer and he showed the growing perimeter of thequarantine. He traced the location of the center of the disaster.

  Then he leaned again toward his audience. "Listen, now," he said, "forthe world cannot sustain this torture."

  He took a deep breath and he put the full force of his being into hiswords.

  "Witches of the world, unite," he said, "to make it clean, clean,clean, Witch clean--NOW!"

  The final word was out before the network censor reached the cut-offswitch.

  * * * * *

  The President and his cabinet put the country on a double alert.Russia had cleaned up Formosa, they knew, and would hit the UnitedStates with disease and ultimatums next.

  The people of the world took the story with an unexpected calm. LikeHiroshima, it was too unexpected, too big, too unimaginable. There wasa hooker somewhere, and they went about their business annoyed, angry,worried, but quiet.

  The papers editorialized on the question of who cleaned upFormosa--who had the answers?--and left the subject of what thepossession of such a clean-up force could mean to the world, to thestatesmen. They turned as quickly as possible to other matters, fornobody was sure what to think, and nobody told them what to think.

  Bill Howard was off the air, of course. It didn't bother him. He hada real problem now.

  We've bought a little time, he thought. A little time to grow in.

  We've bought a little time from the fanatics and their statesmen, fromthe eggheads and their politicians, from the military and theindustrial and the just generally foolhardy.

  We, the people of the world, have a little time now that we didn'thave yesterday.

  How much? He didn't know.

  On this one, there'd been time to get together. On this one, there'dbeen weeks, while the crisis built and the world faced a horribledeath. This crisis had been a lengthy one. There'd been time for a manto make up his mind and try a solution.

  The next one might be different. There might be a satellite up therewaiting, with a button to be pushed. There were an awful lot ofbuttons waiting to be pushed, he told himself, buttons all over theworld, controlling missiles already zeroed in on--well, on the peopleof the world.

  The next one might occur in hours, or even minutes. The next one, thebombs might be in the air before the people even knew the buttons werefor pushing.

  Bill Howard got out his typewriter.

  You've got a problem, you talk to a typewriter, if that's the onlything that will listen.

  What's the problem? he asked himself, and he wrote it down. He startedat the beginning and he told the story on the typewriter. He told itthe way it had been happening.

  Now, he thought, you've got to end the story. If you leave it just "tobe continued," it'll be continued, all right. Somebody will push abutton one day, and that will write 30 at the end for you. Conclusion.

  The problem was, in essence, quite simply stated in terms of miracles.

  The way things were stewing, it'd be a miracle if the world heldtogether long enough for unity to set in. It'd take a miracle to bringabout the necessary self-restraint, which was the only possiblesubstitute for the imposed restraint of war.

  The witch power was, quite clearly, a power of the people--of thepeople who needed that protection, needed those miracles. And it wasthe power that had worked miracles.

  We'll never know who does the job, he told himself. It's better thatway. Like table-tipping. You can say "I didn't do it." You can even besure you didn't do it, if you want to. But the table tips if you getenough people around the table. Ouiji writes, if at least two peoplehave their fingers on it, so that they each can say "I didn't do it."

  Who are the witches? Why, they're the people, and they're not for burning.The fanatics and their statesmen, the eggheads and their politicians, thebrains and the brain trusts and the world-weary--they're for burning, butnot the witches. Which witch is a witch? Doesn't matter.

  * * * * *

  An hour later, Bill Howard sat down to the typewriter again. He'dstated the general problem--but now he had a specific problem, and,for a man in his line of business, it was a fairly straightforwardproblem.

  He need only plot out the necessary moves so that he could call onthat witch power just one more time. Just once. Just long enough toclean out the violent, rooted resistance to the idea that people hadpowers--and could work miracles!

  THE END

  * * * * *

 

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