Ed turned towards Dyson. ‘How much of the crop do you think we’ve lost up to now?’ he asked him. ‘Sixty, seventy per cent?’

‘Hard to tell exactly,’ said Dyson. ‘But I’d say near on eighty. There won’t be anything worth saving by the weekend.’

‘Did you have any luck with Senator Jones?’ asked Willard.

‘I had a bad connection. He’s supposed to be calling me back. To tell you the truth, I feel pretty embarrassed about using that wheat-dumping scandal against him.’

‘I shouldn’t,’ said Willard. ‘He’d use it against you, if you were in his place, and he were in yours. The way I see it, this farm is pretty damned important to you, and if you want to keep it going, then you’re going to have to play the same dirty tricks as everybody else.’

Dyson Kane hunkered down, and picked one of the rotten ears of wheat. The smell in the wind was sour and unpleasant, but by now they’d grown almost used to it.

‘You know something?’ Dyson said. ‘These crops don’t rustle any more. It doesn’t even sound like summer. In summer, that’s all you ever hear, usually, out in the fields. That rustling sound, of ripe wheat.’

‘Dr Benson thinks it’s a Soviet conspiracy,’ said Ed. ‘He reckons the Communists found a way to poison our wheat when we weren’t looking.’

Willard shook his head. ‘I don’t think poor old Dr Benson has ever been quite the same since he dried out. He used to see giant ladybugs, when he had the DTs. Now, he thinks everybody’s plotting to overthrow Kansas.’

‘There’s no way that anybody could have spoiled this kind of acreage without spraying,’ said Dyson. ‘And if you’re going to spray poison, or something of that kind, you have to do it real low. Nobody could have flown over this farm without my knowing about it. Not that low.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Ed. ‘I think Dr Benson’s probably right when he says it’s some kind of a virus, but it looks natural to me. I just hope he finds some way of curing it.’

‘You’re going to burn these fields?’ asked Willard.

‘What do you think?’

‘I think you’re going to have to. It looks like a pretty smoky finish to the summer. I’m sorry.’

Ed nodded. ‘I’ll talk to the senator one more time, just to make sure that nobody wants to look the crop over before they start paying out compensation. Then I guess we’ll set it all alight.’

The radio-telephone in the helicopter bleeped. Dyson walked over to it and picked it up.

‘Yes. Yes, he’s here. Ed, it’s for you. Somebody from Senator Jones’s office.’