Part 7 (2/2)

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 pus.h.i.+ng.

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

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