Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)

by Various

He reminded himself to check the viewer reaction that would be available fairly early next day, as he switched off the TV.

  * * * * *

  It was almost noon next day before Randolph reminded himself of the call he'd planned to make to BDD&O. He got Oswald on the wire almost immediately.

  "Randolph, here," he said. "I called you about that new commercial. It seems a little drastic. Are you planning to use it again tonight?"

  "Use it? We're taking full credit, in a witchery sort of way!" Oswald laughed. "Never saw anything like your luck, Randolph. I've got the entire staff tied up doing the follow-up for tonight. You needn't worry about libel, either. We've got the whole legal staff turned out, going over every detail."

  "It seemed pretty near the line to me," said Randolph, chewing his lip. He found himself a little puzzled over Oswald's tone, but not too much so. Any public relations man was overenthusiastic by nature, in Randolph's estimation. Maybe it took that to make a good p.r. man. "People might resent our making hay out of sickness, even if you are preaching that cleanliness will prevent it."

  "Sickness, you might have a point. I admit I'd argue it, but you might. But wellness, now, it's different. I do know that if the United Nations team reports there's no epidemic, and that the pest-sub is one of the cleanest, healthiest-crewed submarines in the business, it's safe for us to assume it's so, and to imply that Witch Products are used to keep it clean."

  "Mr. Oswald," Randolph's voice took on a note of imperious prissiness. "Would you mind explaining just exactly what you are talking about?"

  "Haven't you heard the news? There's no bacteriological war! I admit that puts Bill Howard way out on a limb, but there are a lot of very fine people with him. There's no epidemic in Cairo. There's not even a bad cold that the United Nations team could find. And they give that so-called pest-sub the most complete bill of health in the business.

  "Now, the deal we plan for tonight...."

  * * * * *

  At the same moment, a number of very important people were closeted with the President. Their reactions to the United Nations report were quite otherwise than those Oswald was experiencing.

  "It's the exact timing, and the detail of execution that scares me, Mr. President," the Undersecretary of State was saying. The Secretary himself was coming in by jet, and would join them immediately on arrival.

  "It implies a technology that we can't touch even in our wildest dreams. I've talked to the CIA chief himself, and the reports from our operatives are beyond question. The epidemic was not only real, it was widespread. The pest-sub was as real as this chair I'm sitting on, and its crew near death to the man, and no question about it.

  "If they can fight a bacterial war and produce an overnight cure at the same time ... we're at their mercy. There is no bomb ever developed--or that can be developed--to touch the power of what they've just demonstrated."

  The President ran his fingers through his hair. His face looked more drawn than any man had yet seen it. Yet he smiled.

  "We're not suing for peace terms yet," he said, and turned to the nation's foremost biologist, sitting quiet in a nearby chair.

  "What's your reaction?" he asked.

  "We've always known," the answer came despondently, "that bacteriological warfare is far deadlier than any bomb--if there were any protection from its effects for the victor. We had a strain of bacteria once, for which we had an immunization course, and we developed it far enough along the line to realize that, even though you immunized every man, woman and child in this country in advance of releasing it in another part of the world, mutant strains would eventually wipe out this nation as well as those we fought."

  "How about mutant strains of the Suez bacteria?" the President asked, then answered himself. "No, they've produced an antidote. An antidote, if our reports are correct, that works overnight." He shook his head slowly.

  "The ultimatum should come very soon now," the President said.

  * * * * *

  "It is the timing. I do not understand the timing." The big man in the Kremlin was allowing himself an appearance of indecision that he did not often indulge before underlings.

  Of course, there was but the one underling, and any audience that proved to have a later-embarrassing potential could be silenced with ease. Still, it was unusual, and the lieutenant who served as combination secretary and backstop for oratory quaked as he listened.

  "The timing is all wrong, but the fact is a fact. It must be a fact, or every operative we have should be Siberianized.

  "We must, of course, act. The action must be immediate. We are zeroed in...."

  "No!" Vlada heard himself speak, and his whole body was outraged at the action. He stood white, trembling. But he had spoken, and try as he would, the word could not be pulled back.

  "No? My little dove, and what would you suggest, then, if we are not to defend ourselves from this capitalistic aggression? That we shall sit with our hands folded and allow them to dictate the terms of our surrender? Speak!"

  "Send them a pest-sub, and see if they can handle the bacteria we have developed!" Vlada's throat was dry, and his voice was not his own. No power on earth could have made him open his mouth, but he had opened it, and he fully expected the lightning to strike him at that moment.

  "Send them ... ah, of course. They can cure their own, and they have taken a so-dramatic method of saying that they can cure their own. But can they cure the products of our laboratories? Now that, we shall see.

  "But we shall be as subtle--more subtle, even, than were our capitalistic friends. We shall not send our sub to them. We shall send it to a small island, and we shall see whether they wish to taste the death, the strangulation and crippling and suffering, the destruction of sanity that shall be the lot of those islanders...."

  * * * * *

  In Peiping the distress was no less acute--but the reaction was somewhat different.

  The scientist being grilled had no hope left. He could answer honestly, for there was nothing that could save him from that which was in store.

  "The strain was virulent. There is no known antidote--nothing could have saved that port, nor most of Africa and most of India--and there was no way for the world to know from whence came the death-dealing submarine except that it be the mighty America.

  "The bombs should have come in retaliation, spreading their death and adding to the impetus of the epidemic, so that enough of the world was wiped out to give the great People of the Dragon room into which to expand. We calculated that a third of our own would be wiped out in the holocaust, which would have relieved us of many problems. The tan peoples of India and the darker peoples of Africa should have sued us to lead them in a unity of the yellow peoples, against the insanities of the pale peoples of the west.

  "There is no antidote ... yet the epidemic is destroyed. I cannot yet believe what is told me. I would go to my ancestors happily if I could go to them with the answer to this riddle."

  * * * * *

  That night Bill Howard came on the screen his big homely face wreathed in smiles, his tweed suit and shaggy blond hair looking even more informal than usual.

  "It's a great day for the people of the world," he said.

  "There's undoubtedly tremendous political significance in what happened at Suez, and every statesman and every politician will have statements to make, and conclusions to draw.

  "Suez's obvious healthiness has been variously attributed to American technology, garnered from the experts we've sent them over the years; to Russian technology, garnered from their experts loaned to the nation involved; to Mohammed and to the God of the Christians.

  "The peoples of the world," he said softly, "are concerned with these things in the abstract, but mostly, we the people are willing to leave this to the theorists, while we rejoice."

  "For we the people, who thought we faced that most degrading, that most unanswerable, that most horrible fate of all, bacteriological war, find ourselves at bacteriological peace."

&n
bsp; At the break, the thirteen witches danced on, crying their chant, and behind them as a background was the bright, clean sub-and-shanty scene.

  "Witches of the world unite, to make it clean, clean, clean, Witch clean--NOW!" they chanted. "Pestilence or peril, disease or disaster, Stay clean, clean, clean, Witch clean!"

  "Ah," said the deep voice of the announcer as the jingle muted, "Which witch do you really wish? Witch is the modern method of cleanliness, using the best of modern technology, and the Witch witch is witching through the world...."

  Randolph watched the program skeptically. The best lawyers and the best p.r. agents to be had, he reminded himself. Still.... There was a nagging worry that this thing was going too far. It's O.K. to claim the moon, he thought, chewing his lip, but isn't it a little risky to claim peace on earth for the Witch products?

  He made a mental note to call BDD&O the next morning. The audience reaction would make itself felt by then, and he could decide....

  * * * * *

  It was almost noon next day before Randolph reminded himself of the call he'd planned to make to BDD&O. He got Oswald on the wire almost immediately.

  "Randolph, here," he said. "I called about that new commercial. It seems a little drastic to claim peace on earth for the Witch products. What are you planning for tonight?"

  "More of the same!" Oswald's voice was jubilant. "The switchboard has been swamped, and we're on almost every program on every channel! They're taking us apart, of course. 'Witchcraft raises its head,' and 'Salem is here with a new twist and a singing commercial,' and 'Anybody got a pestilence?'--that sort of thing. But they're crediting Witch products from dawn to dawn. I sure didn't make a mistake when I tied our contract to your sales! We ought to break the bank!"

  Randolph chewed the thought in silence. "Oswald," he said, "It's an old habit of the American people to make a joke out of what they can't understand. Sort of Paul Bunyan all over again. But don't overdo it. That Witches of the world unite, deal. Remember the IWW? Wasn't that sort of communistic?"

  "Every time anybody talks about getting the world peacefully together, about unity, somebody starts shouting 'commie.' Since when has communism and unity got anything to do with anything? You're an international corporation, aren't you? It's in your title, IWC, isn't it? You don't just sell Witch things in the United States--you've markets in Europe and Africa and India, and all over the place, or I read the sales charts wrong. What's worrying you about using it?

  "The overseas tapes are going like a cannonball express. Our ratings have skyrocketed everywhere," Oswald said in satisfaction. "What do you mean, don't overdo it? You get the world in a hatbasket, and then you want to throw it away?"

  [Illustration]

  "Incidentally," he added in a calmer tone, "I got one crank call that's got me thinking. The guy got all the way through to me before he'd talk, and that takes some getting, what with the salaries I pay people to keep the cranks off my neck.

  "He said that now we had the witches of the world united, why didn't we do some real cleanup work, like slums and insane asylums. Got me thinking, you know. A good cause never did a program any harm."

  Randolph chewed his lip a while in silence, and Oswald, knowing his client, waited patiently.

  "I like that a lot better than claiming peace on earth for the Witch products," Randolph said at last. "Why don't you pick a slum we can clean up for not too much, and let's see what you can work out. This cleanup theme isn't bad, it's just peace on earth that doesn't really belong to us you know.

  "I tell you what. We'll go to fifty thousand dollars or so on a cleanup job, and you use that. Leave the world to the politicians and the eggheads."

  After he hung up, Randolph stood by the telephone, still chewing his lip. Could you clean up something like a slum for say fifty thousand dollars? Oswald would double the figure in his own mind, of course, always did. But he'd get the sales out of it. His contract was tied to sales.

  Yes, he thought, it was best to call him off the track he was on now. Lawyers or no lawyers, that sort of thing was dangerous.

  It took a week, and it took every member of the staff that could be pulled off other programs, as well as the ones assigned to Witch.

  The "slum" had been located--three buildings in a short block just up from the Battery, surrounded by new buildings. It was a one-privy-to-a-floor, cold-water only setup, with a family living in every room. It existed on high-value land only because the land and buildings were tied up in an estate and couldn't be sold. But they could be remodeled and thrown into one, and contracts were signed, permissions granted, the paperwork alone filled nearly a complete file cabinet.

  It would take double the fifty thousand dollars, of course--maybe more. But Randolph had authorized it, hadn't he? He always named half the figure--or less--than he meant to be used. Anyhow, international ratings and sales would more than make up the purse, because this thing would hit socko. Worry about the cash was the last thing that was bothering Oswald. He had a bear by the tail, and his contract price 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 it livable...."

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

  "We can count on the biggest TV audience of the year tonight," Oswald had told him gleefully at noon. "The buildup's been a natural, and those 'Salem with a new twist and a singing commercial' plugs have been continued on this network--the cost of that was comparatively small--and I've even gotten them onto a few of the really big shows to boot."

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

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

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

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

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

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

  * * * * *

  Then Bill turned off the movie, and he brought that family to the mike, each of them dirty and in clothes that never had amounted to much, and had seen a long life since--even the baby. One kid's shoes had a sole flapping off, another had the toes cut out so he could wear them, 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. This is 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 choking a little, and Randolph thought, if he's putting that on, he's the best actor I've seen yet.

  Randolph found himself glad he was alone, and didn't have to speak himself. 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-maché model of the buildings, built so you could look in the curtainless windows and see the squalo
r, lighted with a single bulb on a string. There was a gray pall over the whole thing, and newspapers and trash blowing against the front of the building. The gray pall, Randolph had figured from the 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 products and crying their chant, their crimson-lined capes swirling out to glimpse the audience their long, slender legs.

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

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

  Then riding over the muted jingle the deep voice of the announcer saying "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 building itself, and the gray pall began to lighten, a bright, new-painted front shone forth. Inside, the single bulbs blacked out for an instant, and then a soft light showed through curtained windows, a bright new scene dimly apparent through the curtains.

  "This is not just an illusion," the deep voice of the announcer continued. "This is really happening, down near the Battery in New York City. It is happening to the Joneses and the Smiths who live there--"

  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, homely face came back on the screen.

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

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