‘Supposing he was right and you’re wrong?’ asked Ed. Dr Benson smiled. ‘I don’t think there’s any chance of that, Mr Hardesty. I may have my problems and I may have my reputation, but I’m the best damned agricultural scientist in the Middle West’

Ed rubbed his eyes. There was nicotine on his fingers, and it stung. ‘What are we going to do now?’ he asked. ‘What am I going to do?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ said Dr Benson, ‘but the first priority is to hand over all this information to the Department of Agriculture in Washington. Then – if we’re lucky, and they don’t shilly-shally too long – we might see some concerted action to find a preventive.’

‘More bureaucracy?’ asked Ed.

There’s nothing else that we can do, is there? I don’t have the facilities here to deal with a nationwide virus. And if you project the effect of this blight to its ultimate conclusion – well, it’s terrifying. We could survive the loss of one year’s wheat. We could survive the loss of one year’s corn. But everything? Fruit and vegetables and grain? We’d end up with a nation-wide famine.’

Ed reached into the pocket of his shirt. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘It so happens that my father was a close buddy of Senator Shearson Jones. In fact, I was talking to Jones on the telephone last night, trying to work out if I could get some extra compensation for the damage at South Burlington. I have some clout there – not much, but maybe enough to have him pull out some of the bureaucratic stops.’

‘Shearson Jones, huh?’ asked Dr Benson, with a grimace. ‘Not exactly my favourite representative of the people.’

‘Nor mine. But I think we’re going to have to pull whatever strings we have to hand, don’t you?’

‘I had a hell of an argument with Shearson Jones once,’ said Dr Benson, reflectively. ‘Have you ever been to his house out at Fall River? It’s an incredible place. Overlooks the lake. A friend of mine in the agricultural department told me it cost him one and a half million dollars.’

Dr Benson slowly shook his head at the memory. ‘There was a party out there for everybody in the state agricultural department who had helped him push through his special wheat prices programme. I was invited, too, because I did some background research. Well, I was drinking pretty heavily in those days, and when I saw Shearson Jones I just had to tell him what I thought of people who ran the farming economy from behind a desk, and got fat on the proceeds. I nearly lost my job. I certainly lost any chance of promotion. You don’t breathe whisky fumes over Senator Shearson Jones and tell him he’s an office-bound profiteer and get away with it. No, sir.’