It was not until Ann had crossed to the other side of the bed on her way to the bathroom that she finally saw Aunt Marion, lying sprawled on the rug near the bed. Her body was contorted in such an unnatural way that it was clear she was dead. Her well-worn Bible lay open and face down, inches away from one outstretched hand.

Ann clamped a hand to her mouth to keep from screaming. She closed her eyes tightly and turned away, as if to try to erase the image from her mind. She wished they hadn't had such a fight the night before. It seemed so silly and pointless now.

When she opened her eyes, she noticed for the first time the open window with its pale lace curtains blowing softly in the early morning breeze.

***

The area south of Chicago, and west of Cicero, Illinois, becomes one long, flat expanse, like Kansas. There, in an otherwise entirely rural section, was the new plant that Buher wanted Thorn Industries to buy. Its long glass walls seemed to stretch into infinity, a low-lying science-fiction presence in a nineteenth-century landscape.

The Thorn Industries helicopter fluttering down onto the open field seemed like science fiction, too, as did the electric buggy waiting for it—a sort of super golf cart with television and a CB radio system installed inside.

The cart was driven by David Pasarian, chief of Agricultural Research for Thorn Industries. He was the man that Buher had suggested as the best Thorn executive to run the place. A small, swarthy Indian, Pasarian knew from bitter personal experience in his youth what it meant to starve, so he was perhaps the most highly motivated member of the Thorn agricultural team. This team was constantly on the lookout for new methods to feed what, to Pasarian's enormous resentment, was called the Third World. Didn't they understand it was all one, and either everyone would eat or everyone would starve?

Pasarian remembered Bangladesh, where he had seen young children with sticklike arms and protruding bellies roaming the streets in packs like wild dogs, willing and even eager to kill for scraps. The separatism that the term 'Third World' implied infuriated him—as did the attitude of his immediate superior, Paul Buher. As far as Pasarian could figure out, Buher didn't see starving children. He only saw percentage points and profit-and-loss statements. He did not understand that statistics were composed of real people who were hungry and who sometimes did extremely dangerous things if they got hungry enough. All Buher understood was that if people got hungry, as they invariably did, and you controlled the food, which is what Buher wanted, then you stood to gain a handsome, steady income. Pasarian hated Buher's cold attitude, but he consoled himself with the thought that if the starving peoples of the world ended up being fed, that was all that really mattered.