Prologue to an Analogue Part 6

"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? Will 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 s.h.i.+p 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 censors.h.i.+p 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 p.a.w.ns in a game of international suicide, real people, not just statistics.