‘Sit down,’ said Dr Benson, lifting a heap of Scientific Americans off his desk, hesitating a moment, and then dropping them on to the floor. The floor was already littered with stacks of alphabetical files, graph paper, magazines, books, and empty Kentucky Chicken boxes. On the walls there were federal information posters on the comparative effects of various fertilising agents.
‘You mind if I smoke?’ asked Ed, taking out one of his small cigars.
‘Why should I? Everybody’s entitled to kill themselves whichever way they want. I’ve got some early results for you, incidentally. We did some chemical and ultra-violet tests on those samples your fellow brought in, and it looks like we might be having some success.’
‘You know what it is?’
‘Well, not exactly. But we know what it isn’t.’
‘I see,’ said Ed. ‘And what isn’t it?’
‘Sit down,’ repeated Dr Benson. ‘Make yourself comfortable, at least.’
Ed, awkwardly, sat on the edge of a small bentwood chair that was already piled with newspaper cuttings and tom-open letters. Dr Benson picked up pieces of paper and flung them systematically into the air as if he were performing some arcane manufacturing process.
‘It isn’t powdery mildew,’ he said. ‘Nor any from of powdery mildew of any kind whatsoever. Erysithe graminis, that’s the technical name for it. And it’s not that. Which is quite a pity.’
‘Why is it a pity?’ asked Ed. ‘I thought you would have been relieved.’
‘Oh, no, I’m not relieved at all. If it had been powdery mildew, even in its worst form, we might have been able to spray for it. I’m not saying we could have done very much good, but it would have been better than nothing at all. As you know, federal regulations only give us the option of using sulphur, but I’m sure a little bit of political finagling could have given us an emergency exemption to use Vigil or something like that.’
Ed nodded. ‘My crops manager mentioned Vigil. Do you think it’s still worth trying to get a clearance to use it?’
Dr Benson stopped flinging paper, stared at Ed for a moment, and then shook his head. ‘Not worth it. Wouldn’t do any good at all. The tests we’ve done so far indicate some runaway kind of virus infection – not at all simple and not at all ordinary. In fact, if I didn’t think that it was completely impossible, I would hazard the opinion that it was a cultured virus, specially developed for the purpose of destroying cereal crops.’
Ed frowned as he lit his cigar. ‘What do you mean – “specially developed”?’
‘Genetically engineered,’ said Dr Benson. ‘Created by human intention in a virus laboratory, for the specific task of destroying our crops.’
‘That can’t make sense,’ said Ed. ‘How the hell would anybody be able to spread a virus all over Kansas and North Dakota without being noticed?’
Dr Benson took off his eyeglasses, and attempted to wipe them on a crumpled piece of notepaper. ‘My thoughts exactly. Kansas covers something like ninety-two thousand square miles. Nobody could go around to every wheat farm in the state with enough virus-carrying compound to cause this kind of damage within the space of a week or so, not by car. And if they tried to overfly all those farms in an airplane – well, they’d have to fly very low, and somebody would have noticed them.’
Ed moved the letters off his seat, laid them on the floor, and then sat back. ‘You’re presupposing that anybody would have a motive for destroying our crops.’
Dr Benson pulled a face. ‘Of course. But don’t you think the Soviet Union would be likely? “You held your wheat back from us, now we’re going to make sure that you can’t have it either.” Maybe I’m talking baloney. I don’t know. I’m not what people call a political animal.’
There was a difficult silence. Ed respected Dr Benson’s scientific talents, but he wasn’t at all sure about some of his wilder theories of political conspiracy. Last year, when Ed had asked him to evaluate a new boosted wheat fertiliser for him, Dr Benson had suggested that the compound was deliberately designed to weaken the growing crops in such a way that yet another of the same company’s strengthening agents would be needed. He saw a dark and elaborate plot behind everything.
Ed said, ‘All right – let’s leave aside any idea that this virus might have been spread deliberately – and let’s think about how serious it is.’
Dr Benson opened one of his desk drawers, and then slammed it shut again. Perhaps, a long time ago, that drawer had contained a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s very serious indeed. It’s a highly sophisticated, highly selective, highly virulent aerobic virus. It could have developed naturally, the same way that Chinese influenza develops naturally, or it could have been sprayed on your crops in some technically calculated way which released it when the weather conditions developed into what they are at the moment.’
‘Dr Benson—’ said Ed. ‘I’m not really interested in how the virus arrived on my farm. What I’m really interested in is how to get rid of it.’
‘That’s the whole point,’ said Dr Benson. ‘Although I may be proved wrong – and I hope to God that I am – there is no way of combating this virus until we find out whether it’s natural or manufactured – and who manufactured it. I find this terribly difficult to explain to anyone without a basic understanding of DNA and genetic structure – but these days it’s quite possible to develop viruses that are so complex and malignant that almost nothing can be done to destroy them.’
Ed ran his hand through his hair in exasperation. ‘And you think it’s the Russians?’ he asked, incredulously. ‘What did they do – drop it by satellite?’
Dr Benson shook his head violently. ‘No, no, they couldn’t have done that. If they released a virus from a satellite in orbit, the whole global atmosphere would wind up polluted, and every crop on Earth would die. And if they tried to send the virus to Earth in directional capsules, they would be spotted at once. I do read my news magazines, you know.’
‘So what did they do? Hang around at Lubeck’s Seed-Dressing Factory, and squirt a bit in every bag?’
Dr Benson held up his hands. ‘They might have done. Who knows? I’m only trying to make an educated guess.’
‘Well – let’s put it this way,’ said Ed, ‘if anybody ever tried to overfly South Burlington Farm and dump anything on my crops, I’d sure as hell get to know about it. I know there are miles of wheatland in Kansas where somebody could do it unnoticed. But right now we’re talking about farms that are well-kept and supervised. They’re just as badly hit as any place else.’
Dr Benson nodded. ‘You’re right, of course, and if this virus has been spread on purpose, then I just don’t know how. But I think you ought to know that in my opinion, based on the broad tests that I’ve been able to make so far, the virus is unstoppable. At least for this year’s harvest.’ Ed looked at him carefully. ‘You’re trying to tell me that I can’t do anything about it? That it’s going to wipe out my whole crop?’
‘I’m afraid it is.’
‘But you’ve sent samples to the federal agricultural research laboratory – surely they’ve got people there who can isolate it?’
Dr Benson smiled. ‘I wish they did. I only sent the samples there out of scientific protocol. They don’t have anyone there who knows as much about wheat as I do. If you want expertise, you should never go to the federal people. You should come here, or to the State Experimental Farm at Garden City. They’re doing some more tests for me, I might add – longer term stuff. Give them ten years, and they might discover what it is.’