John Christopher - The Death of Grass

“Even if you look at it from the worst point of view,” John said, “we probably could live on fish and vegetables. It wouldn’t be the end of the world.”

“Could we?” Roger asked. “All of us? Not on our present amount of food intake.”

“One picks up some useful information from having a farmer in the family,” John said. “An acre of land yields between one and two hundredweight of meat, or thirty hundredweight of bread. But it will yield ten tons of potatoes.”

“You encourage me,” Roger commented. “I am now prepared to believe that Phase 5 will not wipe out the human race. That leaves me only my own immediate circle to worry about I can disengage my attention from the major issues.”

“Damn it!” John said. “This isn’t China.”

“No,” Roger said. “This is a country of fifty million people that imports nearly half its food requirements.”

“We may have to tighten our belts {42} 42 tighten our belts: eat less, ration ourselves .”

“A tight belt,” said Roger, “looks silly on a skeleton.”

“I’ve told you,” John said, “—if you plant potatoes instead of grain crops you get a bulk yield that’s more than six times heavier.”

“Now go and tell the government. On second thoughts, don’t. Whatever the prospects, I’m not prepared to throw my job in. And there, unless I’m a long way off the mark, you have the essential clue. Even if I thought you were the only man who had that information, and thought that information might save us all from starvation, I should think twice before I advised you to advertise my own security failings.”

“Twice, possibly,” John said, “but not three times. It would be your future as well.”

“Ah,” said Roger, “but someone else might have the information, there might be another means of saving us, the virus might die out of its own accord, the world might even plunge into the sun first—and I should have lost my job to no purpose. Translate that into political terms and governmental levels. Obviously, if we don’t find a way of stopping the virus, the only sensible thing to do is plant potatoes in every spot of ground that will take them. But at what stage does one decide that the virus can’t be stopped? And if we stud England’s green and pleasant land with potato patches, and then someone kills the virus after all—what do you imagine the electorate is going to say when it is offered potatoes instead of bread next year?”

“I don’t know what it would say. I know what it should say, though—thank God for not being reduced to cannibalism as the Chinese were.”

“Gratitude,” Roger said, “is not the most conspicuous aspect of national life—not, at any rate, seen from the politician’s eye view.”

John let his gaze travel again beyond the open door of the inn. On the green on the other side of the road, a group of village boys were playing cricket. Their voices seemed to carry to the listener on shafts of sunlight.

“We’re probably both being a bit alarmist,” he said. “It’s a long cry from the news that Phase 5 is out and about to a prospect either of a potato diet or famine and cannibalism. From the time the scientists really got to work on it, it only took three months to develop 717.”

“Yes,” Roger said, “that’s something that worries me, too. Every government in the world is going to be comforting itself with the same reassuring thought The scientists have never failed us yet. We shall never really believe they will until they do.”

“When a thing has never failed before, it’s not a bad presumption that it won’t fail now.”

“No,” Roger said, “I suppose not.” He lifted his nearly empty glass. “Look thy last on all things lovely every hour. A world without beer? Unimaginable. Drink up and let’s have another.”

The news of Phase 5 of the Chung-Li virus leaked out during the summer, and was followed by widespread rioting in those parts of the Far East that were nearest to the focus of infection. The Western world looked on with benevolent concern. Grain was shipped to the troubled areas, where armoured divisions were needed to protect it. Meanwhile, the efforts to destroy the virus continued in laboratories and field research stations all over the world.

Farmers were instructed to keep the closest possible watch for signs of the virus, with the carefully calculated prospects of heavy fines for failure to report, and good compensation for the destruction of virus-stricken crops. It had been established that Phase 5, like the original virus, travelled both by root contact and through the air. By a policy of destroying infected crops and clearing the ground for some distance around them, it was hoped to keep the spread of the virus in check until a means could be found of eradicating it entirely.

The policy was moderately successful. Phase 5, like its predecessors, reached across the world, but something like three-quarters of a normal harvest was gathered in the West. In the East, things went less well. By August, it was clear that India was faced with an overwhelming failure of crops, and a consequent famine. Burma and Japan were very little better off.

In the West, the question of relief for the stricken areas began to show a different aspect. World reserve stocks had already been drastically reduced in the attempt, in the spring, to succour China. Now, with the prospect of a poor harvest even in the least affected areas, what had been instinctive became a matter for argument.

At the beginning of September, the United States House of Representatives {43} 43 House of Representatives: the lower House of the Congress of the United States passed an amendment to a Presidential bill of food aid, calling for a Plimsoll line {44} 44 Plimsoll line: load line on outside of merchant ship showing the limit to which it may sink in the water when loaded (after Samuel Plimsoll, English MP) for food stocks for home use. A certain minimum tonnage of all foods was to be kept in reserve, to be used inside the United States only.

Ann could not keep her indignation at this to herself.

“Millions facing famine,” she said, “and those fat old men refuse them food.”

They were all having tea on the Buckleys’ lawn. The children had retired, with a supply of cakes, into the shrubbery, from which shrieks and giggles issued at intervals.

“As one who hopes to live to be a fat old man,” Roger said, “I’m not sure I ought not to resent that.”

“You must admit it has a callous ring to it,” John said.

“Any act of self-defence has. The trouble as far as the Americans are concerned is that their cards are always on the table. The other grain-producing countries will just sit on their stocks without saying anything.”

Ann said: “I can’t believe that.”

“Can’t you? Let me know when the Russians send their next grain ship east. I’ve got a couple of old hats that might as well be eaten. {45} 45 hats … that might be eaten: from the proverbial expression ‘to eat one’s hat’, meaning to retract all that one has said in the event of being proved wrong ”

“Even so—there’s Canada, Australia, New Zealand.”

“Not if they pay any attention to the British Government.”

“Why should our government tell them not to send relief?”

“Because we may want it ourselves. We are earnestly—I might say, desperately—hoping that blood is thicker than the water which separates us. If the virus isn’t licked {46} 46 licked: defeated (slang) by next summer…”

“But these people are starving now!”

“They have our deepest sympathy.”