Bill Brinsky was silent for a second or two. Then he said, ‘How much has Senator Jones’s Blight Crisis Appeal Fund raised so far?’
‘Three million, maybe a little more.’
‘Only three million? I heard nearer ten.’
‘Well, you know how people like to exaggerate.’
‘I heard something else, too. I heard Senator Walsh from California was thinking of raising a similar fund for vegetable growers in his state and that Representative Yorty was planning on a compensation programme for soybean farmers in Iowa. I also heard that Senator Jones reminded both of those gentlemen that they owed him a favour for the help he gave them during that big commodity scam on the San Francisco stock market. And the result of that reminder was that Walsh and Yorty both agreed to delay launching their funds until Senator Jones’s Blight Crisis Appeal reached pledges of twenty million dollars, with at least fifteen million dollars cleared through the bank.’
‘You hear fairy tales,’ said Peter, flatly.
‘I do? Well, maybe I do. But what if I were to print those fairy tales exactly like fairy tales? “Once upon a time, there was a magic kingdom which was stricken down by a terrible blight… all of its crops died away on the branch… but the wicked viziers who ruled that land decided to make a whole heap of gold out of the disaster… they pretended that only three poor farmers had been stricken by the blight… and they asked everybody in the land to donate gold to these poor farmers… with every intention of keeping the gold for themselves.’”
‘You print anything like that and we’ll sue you to death,’ said Peter, in a totally cold voice.
‘Are you going to try to stop me?’
‘Listen to me. Bill, you don’t have any substantive evidence and you know it, otherwise you wouldn’t be talking fairy tales. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you give me your word that you’ll hold back on all this innuendo you’ve heard – if you give me your word that you won’t print any of it – then I’ll guarantee you an exclusive copy of the federal laboratory report on the virus as soon as I get it. That’ll be Monday morning, at the latest.’
‘Virus?’ asked Bill Brinsky. ‘Did you say “virus”?’
Peter bit his tongue.
‘Nobody said anything about a virus to me,’ said Bill. ‘Has somebody told you something I don’t know?’
‘All right. Bill,’ said Peter. ‘The federal laboratory has run some preliminary tests, and conjectured – only conjectured – that the Kansas wheat blight is a virus. You can print that if you like.’
‘What about die other crop failures? Are they caused by a virus too?’
‘Bill, the other crop failures are nothing more than natural wastage. I keep telling you.’
‘All right,’ said Bill, less aggressively, pleased with the tidbit of information that Peter had accidentally let slip. ‘But don’t forget that lab report on Monday, okay? I’ll hold you to that’
‘You’ll have it,’ Peter told him. ‘You know how straight we play the game here.’
‘That’s what I’m worried about,’ said Bill.
By four o’clock that afternoon, the news media were beginning to smell a bigger story. Whatever reassurances the Department of Agriculture had been giving them over the past two days, it was inevitable that small-town reporters were going to visit the blighted farms all across Iowa and Nebraska and Kansas, and see the crops for themselves. From all over, they began to file human-interest stories about farmers who had been digging and tilling and ploughing for twenty years or more, only to lose everything they owned to the wildfire spread of the blight.
On the early evening news, there were pictures of blackened spinach crops, decaying com, rotting oranges, and wilting lettuce. Later editions of The New York Post were running a front page which proclaimed: BLIGHT KOs CROPS – A LEAN YEAR AHEAD?
At six, the president called Alan Hedges, the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, into the Oval Office. Alan Hedges was a slow-speaking, white-haired, dignified old man from Alabama; while the president was short, clipped, and energetic, a liberal Democrat from New Hampshire.
The sun was falling across the White House lawns outside the Oval Office windows as Alan Hedges settled himself fastidiously into the studded leather chair facing the president’s desk. The president stood with his hands clenched behind his back, staring out at the evening sky.
‘Alan,’ said the president at last, without turning around, ‘I feel that you’ve been less than direct with me.’
‘Oh?’ asked Alan Hedges. He lifted a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles out of the breast pocket of his dark-grey suit, and wound them around his large red ears.
‘The latest briefing that Shearson sent me about the wheat blight in Kansas suggested that the blight was restricted to the Mid-West, and that any outbreaks of blight in other areas were purely seasonal and usual. From what the newspapers and the television channels are now saying, it appears that you and Shearson have somewhat underestimated the extent of the blight Wouldn’t you say that was true?’
‘Well, Mr President…’ Alan Hedges began.
The president tinned around. His iron-grey hair was cropped very short, and his face was as rugged as a boxer’s. ‘From what the newspapers and television channels are now saying, it appears that you and Shearson have been deliberately playing this whole thing down. Wouldn’t you say that was true?’
Alan Hedges let a long sigh fall to the floor like a tired spaniel. ‘Mr President, sir,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t become any of us to over-react to the reality of a situation simply because the media see their chance to sell more newspapers or gain more viewers. Let me tell you something about agriculture. It’s an up-and-down business. These days, we’re used to having it up all the time. After the Second War, modem techniques improved farming beyond all imagination. Did you know that in nineteen forty-six this country couldn’t expect more than twenty-six bushels of corn per acre? These days with hardier strains of crop and better techniques, we’re getting ninety-seven bushels an acre, and more. And that’s with only six man-hours, instead of one-hundred and eight. Did you know that in nineteen forty-six, the average US farm worker fed only eleven people with his efforts, but that nowadays he can feed fifty-two?’
‘I know the agricultural capacity of my own country. Senator Hedges,’ said the president, frostily. ‘I just want to know how serious this blight situation actually is.’
‘I’m trying to explain, sir,’ said Hedges. ‘What I’m saying is that by nineteen eighty expectations, we’re going to suffer a loss of yield. But by nineteen seventy-two expectations, we’re still going to do phenomenally well.’
‘This isn’t nineteen seventy-two,’ snapped the president. ‘No, sir, it isn’t. But our food supply commitment isn’t so much greater today that we can’t cope with it. If you want, I have all the figures here. You can see for yourself that everything is under control. Unpleasant, yes, and very unfortunate for many farmers. But under control.’