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 n.o.body was sure what to think, and n.o.body 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 and try a solution.

The next one might be different. There might be a satellite up there waiting, with a b.u.t.ton to be pushed. There were an awful lot of b.u.t.tons waiting to be pushed, he told himself, b.u.t.tons 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 b.u.t.tons 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 b.u.t.ton 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 subst.i.tute 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.

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

THE END