‘You’re trying to tell me what my livelihood depends on? If I gave up farming, I could quite easily go back to being an actuary.’

‘An actuary? Are you serious?’

‘Never more so. You used to be a newspaper reporter, didn’t you?’

‘I was until two days ago.’

‘Peter Kaiser said that Senator Jones had won you over to the cause of helping us Kansas farmers by the sheer emotion of his appeal. Is that right?’

Della shrugged. ‘You could call it sheer emotion.’

Ed brought the wagon to a halt at a red light. ‘What else could you call it?’ he asked her.

‘Influence,’ she said. ‘Senator Jones is a very influential man.’

‘Is he really serious about helping us? I mean – is this Blight Crisis Appeal genuine?’

‘Oh, yes. It’s genuine, all right.’

They headed out on Route 54 westwards, into Kingman County. The highway was almost deserted except for occasional trucks.

Ed said, ‘You come from Kansas?’

‘Oklahoma originally. I’m a one hundred per cent natural Okie.’

‘How come you got yourself mixed up with a man like Shearson Jones?’

She smiled. ‘Nobody gets themselves mixed up with Shearson Jones. If Shearson Jones wants to have you around, then he’ll have you around. If he doesn’t, you could no more get to see him than the Pope. Even the president doesn’t get to talk to Shearson Jones whenever he wants to.’

‘Sounds like a biggie.’

‘Oh, yes,’ grinned Della. ‘He’s a biggie, all right.’

*

The telephone rang in Peter Kaiser’s office. Without taking his eyes off the reports he was reading, Peter picked it up and said, ‘Yes?’

Karen’s voice told him, ‘It’s Professor Protter for you, from the Federal Laboratories.’

‘About time too,’ said Peter. ‘Put him through, will you?’

‘Yes, Mr Kaiser,’ said Karen, in a tone that only slightly reproved him for what had happened last night. She didn’t want to make him feel too bad after all. But his clumsy attempt at seduction couldn’t go completely without comment. He could easily have driven her back to her apartment, and tried to make a play for her there, instead of trying to scramble on top of her in the car. She had stopped petting in pull-offs when she was sixteen, and she had told him so.

She listened in to the telephone as Professor Protter said, ‘Peter? I’ve got some preliminary results for you.’

That’s excellent,’ said Peter. ‘What kept you?’

‘Nothing kept us,’ Professor Protter retorted, testily. ‘We’ve had a staff of ten people working on the samples all night. I don’t think you quite understand what’s involved in these tests.’

‘I understand that Senator Jones asked for the results urgently.’

‘Well, that’s all very fine. But Senator Jones doesn’t know one end of an electron microscope from the other.’