Newman had spent the past week and a half talking to agronomists and plant pathologists, and reading everything he could lay his hands on. During the flight east, he brooded about the grim picture he had built up.
The disease that killed Bormett’s corn was, as Newman had suspected, caused by a bacterium that the scientists were still working to identify. Much hinged on their findings. All cornfields throughout the Heartland were being burned, but the bacterium — depending on the strain — might be one that could survive for a fairly long time in the soil. Chemical controls would help, but they waited upon identification of the disease. It might be several years before the land was again healthy for corn.
In the meantime, the nation’s seedsmen would be working at top speed with university researchers to develop new, resistant hybrids. That, too, could take time.
States outside the Corn Belt grew corn, but only enough for their own needs; they would not be able to supply the large feedlots, where corn and silage constituted the main diet of beef cattle. Dairy cows, too, depended on stored feeds for ninety percent of their nutrition, and a large portion of that was corn. All would try to bring their cattle through the winter on hay, and next year ranchers could put some cattle to pasture — if they were lucky enough to live in an area that provided good pasturage. The value of beef cattle would, of course, be reduced by the inability to feed them the twenty to twenty-five pounds of grain a day they usually received during the last hundred days before slaughter.
There was no question that herds were going to have to be drastically reduced. Beef would be abundant briefly as both beef and dairy herds were decimated, but then it might all but disappear from the table.
Killing off the herds was also going to mean a serious decrease in such items as milk, butter, and cheese. Newman knew that the United States sat on mountains of dairy surplus, as did the European Common Market. But the mere anticipation of the loss of so many cows would cause prices to soar. And even the surpluses wouldn’t last for the several years it might take to purify the fields, develop new hybrids, and bring in a corn crop that would make it safe to begin to rebuild the herds.
Ninety to a hundred percent of the ration of hogs was made up of corn; that’s why the corn-producing states were the primary hog-producing states. Experiments with substitutes for corn in hog production had not, thus far, proved commercially feasible.
The feed given to chickens was 2/3 to 3/4 corn, because corn constitutes such a cheap, complete source of energy, protein, and fiber. There had been discussions of the need to work on soybean-type substitutes, but very little had been done in that area so far.
The American way of life was going to be very different for a long time to come.
The intercom chimed, and Newman, who had flown alone except for the crew, picked up the receiver. “Yes?”
“There’s quite a crowd by the terminal building, Mr. Newman, just as you suspected there might be. Would you like us to call a police escort?”
Newman looked out the window, but he could only see the edge of the crowd. “How many out there?”
“Maybe fifty or sixty. There are a lot of cameras and lights. Most of them look like television people.”
“Don’t call the police,” Newman said, resigning himself to the battering he was going to get. It had been the same at the airport in Duluth. “Can you see if Hansen is out there?” John Hansen was the company attorney.
“Yes, sir, he is. He called from inside after we touched down. He’s there with the car.”
“Fine,” Newman said. They had come to a halt, and he unbuckled his seatbelt and rose.
Jacob came from the galley and helped Newman with his coat, then went forward and popped the main hatch. A set of boarding steps had been pushed up.
Newman grabbed his briefcase. “Thanks, Jacob,” he said.
“I’ll have your bags sent over immediately, sir,” the steward said. “And, good luck, sir.”
Newman stepped off the plane.
A reporter at the foot of the stairs shouted up, “What are you going to tell the Senate subcommittee in the morning, Mr. Newman?”
Newman started down as John Hansen pushed through the crowd. He was an older man, with gray hair and wide, honest eyes. He wasn’t smiling.
“Mr. Newman, can you tell us where we’re going to buy corn to replace the crops that have already been lost?”
Newman looked at the man who held a microphone out. Behind him was his cameraman. “No, I can’t.”
“Will you tell the subcommittee?” another reporter asked.
Newman shook his head. “No,” he said.
“I have a car around the side,” Hansen said in his ear, but the reporter was persistent.
“Why not, Mr. Newman?”
Newman had been edging forward, away from the boarding steps, and he stopped, now and faced the newspeople. “Simply because there is no corn available worldwide to replace the corn we have lost.”
“How about our wheat, sir?” another reporter asked.
Newman turned to her. “What about our wheat?”
“It’s all right. Can’t it be used to replace corn?” “No,” Newman said. “We can make bread with it, but it cannot be used effectively to feed cattle or pigs.”
“You’re saying there will be a meat shortage?”
“Meat,” Newman said, “along with milk, cheese — all dairy products.”
Hansen took Newman’s arm and forcibly hauled him away from the journalists who were screaming out questions, and hurried him around the building to the attorney’s chauffeured limousine. The reporters were right on their heels, and only stopped shouting when the driver finally pulled away.
“Jesus,” Hansen said, breathing a sigh of relief.
Newman didn’t really care. He had felt a sense of unreality since last week in Iowa. None of this could or should be happening.
“We have less than twenty-four hours to get ready for the hearing. I hope you realize that, Kenneth,” Hansen was saying. “Between Sam Lucas and a few of the others from Abex and Duluth, I’ve managed to put together an organizational chart for your business interests that should hold them at bay. At least until we can figure out a way to back out of our subsidiary committments without causing any more waves.”
Newman was staring out the window, not really listening. It did not matter what he told the Senate subcommittee tomorrow, because nothing would alter the facts, among them that Lydia was dead.
He had found out about her death yesterday. The revolution was over. Argentina had a new government. The fighting had all but stopped, although the farm-fields on the pampas were still burning. The farmers had set them on fire.
Francisco Belgrano, Vance-Ehrhardt’s private secretary and now apparently the head of the conglomerate, had telexed Abex in New York, asking about grain supplies. And he had included in his telex that Lydia’s body had been found at police headquarters. She had evidently died in an elevator accident. Capitan Perés had died in the same accident.
“Are you listening to what I’m trying to tell you, Kenneth?” Hansen asked.
Newman turned to him, and shook his head. “Not a word, John, but it doesn’t matter any longer. I’ll answer any questions the Senate puts to me.”
Hansen looked at him for a long moment. Then he shook his head, too. “You do realize, of course, that if you do such a thing, you definitely will be leaving yourself open for criminal prosecution.”
“The administration knows most of it already,” Newman said. Lundgren had told him as much last week in Iowa. They had met at the Sheraton in Des Moines where they had watched, from Newman’s eighth-floor room, the burning of the fields to the west around Adel. It had seemed like the end of the world.