‘Don’t tell anybody. I’ll call you later.’
Peter banged the phone down. Karen, biting her lip, replaced her own receiver. She could scarcely believe that any of what she had heard was real. Surely, in a country like the United States, with all those newspapers and television stations, somebody would have realised what was happening and warned the public? Surely one man like Senator Jones couldn’t suppress the news so easily? Yet it seemed as if nobody really cared – as if reporters and politicians and government experts were all quite happy to take whatever they were told as the gospel truth, provided it was couched in reasonable-sounding language. Even the president had accepted Shearson Jones’s waffle about ‘cracking the problem wide open’, and ‘not anticipating a serious shortfall.’
Karen’s telephone light flashed again. She picked up the receiver and said, ‘Yes?’
‘Karen – can you try to get me Mr Ed Hardesty, at South Burlington Farm, near Wichita?’
‘Yes, Mr Kaiser. I won’t be a moment. I have one other call to make first.’
‘Okay, Karen. But don’t make it too long.’
‘No, Mr Kaiser.’
Karen pushed a button to get herself an outside line, and listened to the dialling tone for a moment. Then she punched out a number with a 218 code. The phone was answered almost immediately.
‘Mom?’ she said. ‘It’s Karen. Yes, it really is. I know. But, please. Mom, I’ve got something terribly important to tell you.’
Eight
As the sun set over South Burlington Farm, Ed and Willard and Dyson Kane stood waist-high amongst the blackened wheat, smoking in silence and watching the smoke drift diagonally across the decaying reaches of the south-eastern fields. Usually, smoking was totally forbidden in the crops, but now it didn’t matter any more, and they had lit up in the same way that Hitler’s staffhad all lit up, once the Führer was dead and the Third Reich was over for ever.
The Hughes helicopter rested a few yards away on a slight slope, white and clean and shining amidst all the oily and stinking devastation in the fields around it. A flock of birds wheeled and turned overhead.
Ed was tired and unshaven, dressed in jeans and a red plaid cowboy shirt. Beside him, Willard stood with his arms folded, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, but his whole posture betraying how defeated he felt.
‘I just never saw anything like it,’ he said, after a while. ‘We didn’t even get the chance to try to fight back.’
Ed turned towards Dyson. ‘How much of the crop do you think we’ve lost up to now?’ he asked him. ‘Sixty, seventy per cent?’
‘Hard to tell exactly,’ said Dyson. ‘But I’d say near on eighty. There won’t be anything worth saving by the weekend.’
‘Did you have any luck with Senator Jones?’ asked Willard.
‘I had a bad connection. He’s supposed to be calling me back. To tell you the truth, I feel pretty embarrassed about using that wheat-dumping scandal against him.’
‘I shouldn’t,’ said Willard. ‘He’d use it against you, if you were in his place, and he were in yours. The way I see it, this farm is pretty damned important to you, and if you want to keep it going, then you’re going to have to play the same dirty tricks as everybody else.’
Dyson Kane hunkered down, and picked one of the rotten ears of wheat. The smell in the wind was sour and unpleasant, but by now they’d grown almost used to it.
‘You know something?’ Dyson said. ‘These crops don’t rustle any more. It doesn’t even sound like summer. In summer, that’s all you ever hear, usually, out in the fields. That rustling sound, of ripe wheat.’
‘Dr Benson thinks it’s a Soviet conspiracy,’ said Ed. ‘He reckons the Communists found a way to poison our wheat when we weren’t looking.’
Willard shook his head. ‘I don’t think poor old Dr Benson has ever been quite the same since he dried out. He used to see giant ladybugs, when he had the DTs. Now, he thinks everybody’s plotting to overthrow Kansas.’
‘There’s no way that anybody could have spoiled this kind of acreage without spraying,’ said Dyson. ‘And if you’re going to spray poison, or something of that kind, you have to do it real low. Nobody could have flown over this farm without my knowing about it. Not that low.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Ed. ‘I think Dr Benson’s probably right when he says it’s some kind of a virus, but it looks natural to me. I just hope he finds some way of curing it.’
‘You’re going to burn these fields?’ asked Willard.
‘What do you think?’
‘I think you’re going to have to. It looks like a pretty smoky finish to the summer. I’m sorry.’
Ed nodded. ‘I’ll talk to the senator one more time, just to make sure that nobody wants to look the crop over before they start paying out compensation. Then I guess we’ll set it all alight.’
The radio-telephone in the helicopter bleeped. Dyson walked over to it and picked it up.
‘Yes. Yes, he’s here. Ed, it’s for you. Somebody from Senator Jones’s office.’
Ed took the receiver, covered one ear with his hand to cut out the sound of the breeze, and said, ‘Ed Hardesty speaking.’
‘Mr Hardesty? Hi, my name’s Peter Kaiser. May I call you Ed? It seems from what the senator’s been telling me that we could all be working together quite soon.’
‘Did you get my message about the virus?’ asked Ed. ‘Sure. We told Senator Jones straight away. The only trouble is, Ed, that we’ve been doing some pretty thorough tests on the wheat right here in Washington, at the Department of Agriculture’s own laboratories, and we’re not at all sure the cause is a virus at all.’
‘Are you close to finding out what it is?’
‘Oh, yes. Right on the brink. But we don’t want to give out any public releases on the blight until we have a more definitive idea. If we said it was a virus, you see, it could cause unnecessary panic; and we might find that farmers were destroying their crops without any real justification. It’s one of those situations we have to handle with kid gloves, if you know what I mean.’
‘Dr Benson is convinced it’s a virus,’ said Ed. ‘What’s more, he thinks all these other blights are caused by different versions of the same basic infection.’
‘We-e-ell,’ said Peter Kaiser, ‘without being unfair. Dr Benson has pretty limited facilities over at Wichita, compared with what we have here, and he isn’t exactly renowned for his personal stability. Don’t get me wrong. He’s a talented man. But the last thing we need in a serious situation like this is for anybody to jump to conclusions.’ Ed said, ‘Okay. I get your point. Did Senator Jones get very far with his ideas for federal compensation?’
‘Haven’t you been watching the television news today?’
‘Only once. I’ve been tied up here at the farm for most of the afternoon.’
‘In that case,’ said Peter, ‘I’m happy to be the first to tell you that we’ve already set up a Kansas Wheat Farmers’ Blight Crisis Appeal, legal and official and ready to roll in the money. We have full backing from some really heavyweight people in the Senate, including the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, and the whole structure’s been arranged by one of Washington’s top lawyers.’
Ed looked towards Willard and pulled an impressed face. ‘I didn’t know Shearson Jones could work so fast,’ he told Peter.
Peter gave a synthetic chuckle. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘outward appearances can be deceptive. He’s overweight, sure. But I can tell you one thing. When any single person in Kansas of any political persuasion is threatened by fire, or drought, or crime, or you name it, Shearson Jones can be pretty damned nimble on his feet. He’s a caring man, Mr Hardesty, whatever people say about him. WTiy, here at the office, behind his back, they call him the Fat Samaritan.’ Ed frowned. ‘Is he going to be able to persuade Congress to vote the fund any money?’