Karen brushed back her hair. ‘I don’t know who else to tell, except you. I thought of calling the newspapers anonymously, or CBS News or somebody. But who’s going to believe me, when the Department of Agriculture in Washington is quite freely admitting they’ve got crop problems. Sure, we’ve got crop problems, but they’re all under control. The way things are at the moment, it’s all a question of interpretation, you know? And the Department of Agriculture has been interpreting every single outbreak of blight optimistically. They haven’t been denying anything to the media. They’ve just been adjusting the truth to make it all look happy. They even shot a special public-relations film out in Nebraska yesterday, showing a smiling farmer in the middle of a whole lot of unblighted wheat.’

Ed said, ‘Surely someone’s going to start playing Deep Throat before long. Look how fast the damn thing’s spreading. It’s wiped out the whole of my farm – well, eighty per cent of it – in something like four days.’

‘I think you’re underestimating Senator Jones,’ said Karen. ‘When it comes to agriculture, he’s a very heavy number. He has the Department of Agriculture’s press office right under his thumb. It’s his personal mouthpiece. And there are plenty of newspapers and television stations – particularly out here in the Mid-West – that rely a whole lot on Shearson Jones’s sponsorship, or the sponsorship of his companies, at least.’

‘Agreed. But he can’t suppress this thing for ever.’

‘He doesn’t have to. He doesn’t even want to.’

‘Then why is he letting this happen? Why is he trying to make out that it’s only us poor unfortunate Kansas wheat farmers who are seriously hit?’

Karen said, ‘It’s this Blight Crisis Appeal, that’s all. Shearson Jones wants to scoop in as much money as he possibly can before anybody realises how catastrophic this blight is really going to be. I don’t know how much you’ve been told, but he’s already cleared nine million dollars through the appeal, and he’s trying to spin things out for just two or three more days so that he can make sure of a two-million dollar offer from Michigan Tractors.’

‘And the media are actually going along with it?’

‘Of course they are. They’ve got what they think is a story. Didn’t you see Time magazine, with all that cliffhanging stuff about the last-minute race to develop an antidote? They quoted a couple of state agricultural specialists who stepped out of line and said that Doomsday was on the way. But what’s that, compared with somebody like Shearson Jones saying that the blight is a supreme test of American agricultural technology, and that it’s going to revive the fighting spirit of the dustbowl days?’