Five nuclear experts were brought to the White House just after lunch as special advisers, but as Tuesday afternoon wore on, they were unable to agree amongst themselves how dangerous the radioactivity in the grain and the flour was actually going to be. Certainly, the levels were way above those which the FDA would normally consider acceptable, but these weren’t normal times. Almost all of this year’s crops were dying of blight, and now it looked as if the stockpiles from last year were going to be contaminated beyond use.
Dr K. E. Salkeld of Minneapolis stood before the President – a tall, ascetic man with a reputation for facing up to the bitterest scientific facts – and took off his spectacles in a gesture of defeat. ‘Mr President,’ he said, ‘this radioactivity is of sufficient strength to have the same effect as a nuclear bomb, without an explosion. Our children will eat it in their diets, our adults will drink it in their beer, and it will work its evil way into the very bones of our population. Many millions will almost certainly die in terrible agony. Those who are left will face pain, loneliness, and the horror of living in a society where a very high percentage of the population is outrageously deformed.’
What worried the President more than anything else, however, was the immediate prospect of another night like Sunday, with more rioting and burning. It was quite possible that millions of Americans might be affected by radioactive poisoning if he were to keep the crisis quiet for a few more days, until he had worked out some kind of contingency plan. But the effects of the cobalt-60, although threatening, were still largely hypothetical, whereas it was almost inevitable that thousands of people would die tonight if he were to announce at once that there was a total ban on bread, cereal, cake, cookies, beer, spirits, and pastries – and if Dr Salkeld was right, meat as well, since so many American animals were fed on grain. The Cabinet had already left most of their turkey sandwiches untouched, and at six o’clock the President had turned down the offer of a steak.
At nine, a report was brought into the Oval Office from the State Department. At an emergency meeting of the European Economic Community in Brussels, all the member countries had guaranteed to supply to the United States, as much surplus meat, cereal, dairy produce, and vegetables as they could muster, They realised that whatever they could supply would fall ‘far below the day-to-day needs of a country of 250 million inhabitants’, but they appreciated the President’s co-operation in halting emigration from the United States to Europe, and they believed that ‘one-thousandth of a loaf is better than no bread.’
With the help of hundreds of officials from state capitals and county seats all over the United States, who had industriously filed reports on how much canned and frozen food was being held in commercial warehouses and supermarket storerooms, the calculation was that America could ‘just about survive the winter, at subsistence level.’
The President read out the report to his Cabinet as twilight fell across the White House lawns outside. ‘In the space of a few days,’ he said, ‘this nation of plenty has been reduced to the economic level of a country as poor as Cambodia; and all those pitiful scenes which we have witnessed in Cambodia are going to be witnessed here.
‘There is no question that the blight which has so swiftly destroyed our crops, and the radioactive material which has so effectively contaminated our stores of essential foodstuffs – there is no question at all that these have been deliberately introduced, with the single intention of destroying our country.
‘We do not yet have adequate evidence to pin the blame for these criminal actions on any known adversary. Our first suspect, of course, must be the Soviet Union, but the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation tells me that it would have been possible for as few as a hundred agents to have blighted our crops and to have planted those isotopes. Our unknown adversary could have been Iran, or Palestine, or even an unknown political pressure-group from an ostensibly friendly power.’
Just before dark, the President left the Oval Office, and went for a walk in the White House gardens by himself. He smoked two cigarettes, although nobody apart from his wife and his closest friends knew that he was a smoker. After his walk, he closeted himself in his small side office and placed a telephone call to Alan Hedges, the chairman of the Agricultural Committee.
‘Alan,’ he said, ‘I want you to give me an update on the emergency supplies you’ve been shipping in for the administration.’
Alan Hedges said, ‘Pardon me one moment, Mr President… the figures are right here. That’s it… we’ve completed all the shipments of canned goods and stored them in three separate warehouses around the city, as well as five truckloads of special emergency rations out at Anacostia Naval Annex. The rest of the refrigerated goods are arriving by rail just after nine o’clock tonight.’
The President ran his hand tiredly through his thatch of grey hair. ‘That’s okay, Alan, you did well. But I’m afraid we may have an extra problem. You’re going to have to check through those rations and make sure that none of them were produced within the last three weeks.’
There was a short silence, and then Alan Hedges said, ‘Is this on the level?’
‘I’m afraid so. I can’t give you all the details yet, but it appears any food containing any kind of cereal ingredient which was prepared and canned within the last three weeks may have to be considered a hazard to human health.’
‘You can’t tell me anything more than that?’
‘I’m afraid not. But I can assure you that when the time comes to make a public statement, you’ll be the first to know.’
‘Well,’ said Alan Hedges unhappily, ‘I appreciate your confidence in me.’
‘Thank you, Alan. Now will you check out those supplies for me?’
‘Yes, Mr President. Whatever you say.’
Neither the President nor Alan Hedges heard the extra click on their telephone line as Alan Hedges’ secretary Wanda Kaminski put her receiver down, too. And neither of them knew that directly afterwards she dialled the Washington bureau of The New York Times and asked to speak to Bill Brinsky.
The news on early evening television on Tuesday was grim, but less hysterical than before. The networks had all been personally requested by the President to ‘Keep the tone down.’ The crop blight was still spreading, although ‘great and urgent efforts’ were being made in Washington to prepare an antidote. The research had been seriously hampered by last week’s violent killing of Professor Protter, who had carried most of the information he had gleaned from his analysis of Vorar D in his head. Nonetheless, the Department of Agriculture hoped to be able to issue fanners with their first supplies of some kind of antidote ‘within two or three weeks.’
Most major cities in the United States were still under the watchful eyes of the National Guard, the Army, and the Marine Corps. So far, over five thousand men and women had been arrested for looting or for breaking curfews, and twenty eight had been shot dead. Food was being sold only from certain major supermarkets, and each customer was being rationed to twenty-five dollars worth of food at the checkout, although there were no strict checks on how many supermarkets any one customer went around to visit, or even how many times he went through the same supermarket’s checkout in one day.
The front-page photograph of the New York Daily News had shown a two-mile line of shoppers waiting outside the A&P on Third Avenue at 51st Street, some of them with camp-stools and even sleeping-bags. The headline read FOOD LINE BLUES.
At seven o’clock, the President appeared on television again to ‘thank the American people for their calm, their dignity, and their brave acceptance of one of the greatest natural disasters of our time.’ He explained that America’s allies were airlifting food which would be stored all around the country, and sold to the population on ration ‘when the time for such extreme measures eventually comes.’ He was giving out no hints yet that the crop blight had been started on purpose – despite what Ed Hardesty had said on Sunday night – and he deflected questions from the press that the approaching famine might have been caused by Soviet sabotage.