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

by Various

  Bill Howard's voice was excited, and he ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it back as he leaned across the desk, the map of Florida behind him.

  "To the statesmen, this is a question of who is first and who is second, and perhaps who will control the spaceways," he said after describing the countdown in process.

  "But to the peoples of the world, this is mankind, reaching for the stars.

  "It is not known," he said solemnly, "whether the failure of many of our shots has been human error or sabotage. Human error is a frailty of the race. Sabotage is a frailty of statesmanship, that the world is still divided as it reaches for the stars. Yet each is possible.

  "Is there a mechanical error built in by human frailty in tonight's shot? Is there a saboteur at work?

  "Or, as the countdown reaches zero, one hour from now, will the dome tear through the atmosphere of Earth in man's first real step to the stars successfully? Is our bird perfect this time?" he asked, as the break came.

  The witches danced on crying their chant ... "Witches of the world, unite to make it clean, clean, clean, Witch clean,--NOW!"

  * * * * *

  Randolph was chewing his lip still as he went to bed that night. The man from the Narcotics Squad had left peaceably. There were answers to all the questions, and it wasn't his worry anyway. He'd be glad when the little girl had her operation. Grafting bones and muscles might be miraculous, but they were explicable and everybody understood them. Talk of the FCC investigation had died aborning, but talk like that was enough to upset anybody. Everything had been upsetting recently, even though the up-curve on Witch products was holding steady.

  * * * * *

  The American dome landed on the moon the morning of the day that the crippled child was scheduled to come on the Witch program.

  For the American people it was a day of celebration comparable to the Fourth of July. In the White House gloom hung like a palpable shroud.

  "They'll have to move fast now," the Secretary of War was reporting to his chief. "They can't afford to let us get our man up there. Even if we could shoot him off successfully."

  "We can't shoot a man up there until we've proved in at least two more successful shots that we can get him there," Security declared forcefully. "The threat from our enemies is as nothing to the threat from the vote-wielding public if we tried and failed when a human life is at stake."

  "Formosa is leaking," admitted the CIA chief. "We can't hold it more than three days now at the outside."

  The President rested a hand on his desk. "Two more shots mean at least six months before a man is up there, armed. Three days means Formosa is in the news this week. When the news breaks, credit our doctors and bacteriologists with being on the way to a cure. Fix it so that if they clean up their epidemic, the way they did Suez, we get the credit.

  "That's the best we can do right now. Besides looking for a miracle. But miracles are popular these days," he added ruefully.

  * * * * *

  It was Bill Howard who stood outside when Randolph answered his doorbell next morning. He let the big, homely, almost shambling figure in without a word.

  "I came to ask you a question I don't think you can answer," Howard said morosely, not moving farther than the foyer.

  "I came to ask you what it is about the witches?"

  Randolph chewed his lip, standing there beside his much-larger guest, conscious of his own prim--almost prissy--neatness as it contrasted to the other's shaggy look. Shaggy dog, thought Randolph. Big, unkempt, shaggy St. Bernard.

  "What about the witches?" he asked finally.

  "Well ... there have been some funny things. That slum, of course. I was there, of course. I saw it. And I talked to the small-fry. It was a tenement the day before, I'd stake a lot on it."

  There was a silence before Randolph answered.

  "Well?"

  "Well, then a few little things. A narcotics man came to see me. Just personal. Just curious. They've been pulling in the higher-ups in the dope traffic, by the way--on info from the guys caught in that raid.

  "Then that Canaveral deal? Were you listening that night?"

  "I always tune you in. It seems to me that today is one of celebration. The dome landed."

  "Yeah Yeah, celebration. I'm a newsman, and I get stories that don't go out. There's one that just an hour before zero--a man suddenly died of a heart attack. The technician who took his place--you don't stop a countdown like that for a heart attack--checked his work and found an error that would have misfired the thing. There was also one circuit that had been changed, but they left that because it was changed to be more accurate. They figured the dead guy had done it."

  "So?"

  "So ... well, nothing. I just wanted to ask you. The witches don't touch anything real these days, of course, so even if ... they were ... well, magic somehow, they couldn't have been involved."

  There wasn't even a pause for lip-chewing this time.

  "Are you trying to insinuate that Witch products--"

  The question was left hanging, but Bill Howard stood there looking his sponsor in the eye.

  "Mr. Randolph, I'm not trying to insinuate one damn thing. I'm not even saying anything to anybody, and if I did say anything I'd be laughed off the air, not by you, but by whoever I said it to.

  "I'm just telling you what twos and twos have been setting themselves in front of my everlasting consciousness, and asking if you know anything to add to them?"

  The lip-chewing started again, and the two stood there. Then Randolph said quietly, "Mr. Howard, I have been manufacturing Witch products for twenty-five years. They have been improved steadily since I first started with a very good formula. They are the best cleaning products available in the world today, I most sincerely believe. They are that exactly, and nothing more than that exactly. So you will have to find another explanation for your twos and twos, which I admit are a rather spectacular run of coincidence, though not beyond the bounds of credibility.

  "Myself, I suspect BDD&O with perpetrating some sort of hoax in the first instance. If any more hoaxes are perpetrated, I plan to switch agencies, switch programs, and call for an FCC investigation of BDD&O to clear the Witch name, which never has and never would condone any hoax of any sort, much less one of the magnitude of whatever occurred, which I profess I do not understand, but which I expect the FCC can trace to its source.

  "Good day to you, sir," Randolph ended the unprecedentedly long speech, turned on his heel and left Bill Howard to find his own way out.

  * * * * *

  That night, as Bill Howard ended his newscast, the camera did not switch to the witches. Instead it switched to the announcer.

  "Tonight, Witch Products would like you to meet a little girl," the announcer said in a soft voice that contrasted well with Howard's just ended powerful one.

  As he spoke the camera backed away to broaden its scope and include in its picture, beside the announcer, a small blond child in a wheel chair. Her hair was shoulder-length and carefully combed. Her eyes were downcast shyly. Her hands gripped the arms of the wheel chair as though for security. Her legs were covered with a shawl.

  "This is Mary," said the announcer, then leaned toward her. "Will you speak to the audience, Mary?"

  [Illustration]

  She lifted deep blue eyes briefly to the camera, then dropped them quickly. "Hello," she said in a voice barely audible.

  "Mary is not used to many people, or to audiences," the announcer said. "Mary has been sitting in this wheel chair for almost three years, since a crippling disease twisted her limbs.

  "We hope that Mary can be made to walk. The finest surgeons in the country have been consulted, and they believe an operation can give her back her legs, that were twisted when the disease struck. International Witch Corporation has arranged for that operation.

  "Tomorrow Mary will go to the hospital. She will have the operation soon. In a few weeks, perhaps Mary will walk.

  "Will you like that, Mary? Wi
ll you like walking?" he asked, leaning toward the child.

  Again the eyes lifted for the briefest instant. Again they dropped shyly.

  "Yes," Mary said in that barely audible voice.

  "Then you shall have it, if it can be done," the announcer said, and the camera moved even farther back to include a stage onto which the witches danced.

  The witches came onto the stage, not toward Mary, but stage center, chanting--their cry.

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

  At the corner of the screen, the child-body in the wheel chair shuddered suddenly. Mary took a deep breath, went white and then red. With a forceful gesture she threw off the shawl and looked at her legs. Her hand reached down to touch them.

  On the stage itself, one witch stopped dancing to watch. The others noticed, stopped. The jingle died, half through....

  And Mary stood up, looking at her legs. She took a step towards the camera, and another. Her blue eyes lifted to the camera, widening.

  In the absolute quiet, as everyone on stage stood frozen, Mary walked towards the camera, her eyes like saucers looking into it. Her voice, barely above a whisper, spoke.

  "I'm ... I'm walking," said Mary.

  * * * * *

  The papers called it the cruelest hoax of all.

  They carried the story side by side with the withdrawal of the Witch program from the network, both by network and by International Witch Corporation order.

  The carried the statement of FCC officials that an investigation would be made.

  They carried the statement by Randolph that he would sue BDD&O.

  They carried the statement by Oswald that he would sue Witch Products.

  But mostly they carried the story of a little girl, who had been whisked from sight and couldn't be located. Who had probably been given an operation to make it possible for her to walk, but had been forced to pay for the operation by taking part in a cruel hoax of unbelievable magnitude.

  * * * * *

  Bill Howard stayed with the network, on the same time, sponsorless. He'd been cleared of any implication in the hoax by all parties concerned, and his reputation had always been good. He was asked to stay in town and be available to appear as a witness, but the network gambled that he was clear, and kept him on. He was one of the biggest draws in newscasting, his personality that made the news seem to belong to the people, to be a continuing story of their lives, was unique. The network decided the gamble of keeping him on was warranted.

  By the next night the Formosa crisis had broken into the news, and it was the news.

  The details were horrible, and they were uncovered aplenty. Finally ungagged, those who had been holding off gave the story the works.

  The effects of the pest plane, of the pest bombs, were the most vicious that could be developed in the laboratories of bacterial war--and they put to shame the naturally-occurring epidemics that have scourged mankind throughout his history.

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

  The entire area was quarantined, and daily the quarantine was extended. No plane could land and take off again. No ship could enter and leave. An airlift of supplies dropped by parachute was being organized.

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

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

  Randolph had a number of what he referred to--and reported--as "crank calls," asking Witch to try its might. He arranged for every call that reached 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 reported the details of Formosa each night. The details giantized in gruesomeness 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 he ferreted further, seeking out the realities behind the censorship that lay heavy now even over the wires. By phone, by gossip, by hearsay and by know-how he got the stories behind the story--the real horrors that he couldn't broadcast.

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

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

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

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

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

  That probability ratio is zero.

  Witches are for burning, he told himself.

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

  * * * * *

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

  That night, the map of the world behind his desk, Bill Howard leaned toward 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 international suicide, 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 all the torture that the laboratories of the world could dream and put together. A family that watched each other go insane, knowing what was happening. A family that watched each other die, writhing and unknowing in insanity.

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

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

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

  "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-off switch.

  * * * * *

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

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

  The papers editorialized on the question of who cleaned up Formosa--who had the answers?--and left the subject of what the possession of such a clean-up force could mean to the world, to the statesmen. They turned as quickly as possible to other matters, for nobody 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 had a 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, from the eggheads and their politicians, from the military and the industrial and the just generally foolhardy.

  We, the people of the world, have a little time now that we didn't have yesterday.

  How much? He didn't know.

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

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

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

  Bill Howard got out his typewriter.

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

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

  Now, he thought, you've got to end the story. If you leave it just "to be continued," it'll be continued, all right. Somebody will push a button 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 held together long enough for unity to set in. It'd take a miracle to bring about the necessary self-restraint, which was the only possible substitute for the imposed restraint of war.

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

  We'll never know who does the job, he told himself. It's better that way. Like table-tipping. You can say "I didn't do it." You can even be sure you didn't do it, if you want to. But the table tips if you get enough people around the table. Ouiji writes, if at least two people have 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, the brains and the brain trusts and the world-weary--they're for burning, but not the witches. Which witch is a witch? Doesn't matter.

  * * * * *

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