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.