Грэм Мастертон: Famine

‘You’ve taken samples, I suppose?’ said Ed.

Jack nodded. ‘I took about twenty or thirty while Willard was going down to the farm to get you. I’ll try to analyse some of them myself, but the rest of them can go to Dr Benson, down at the State Agricultural Laboratory.’

‘You think Benson’s capable of finding out what it is?’

‘He’s as capable as anyone. I mean, sure, he’s a little eccentric, but there’s nothing wrong with his technique. He isolated that seed fungus way before the Federal people came up with anything.’

‘All right,’ said Ed. ‘But I don’t want to have to wait for a week while he fiddles around with crackpot theories, the way we had to with that boosted fertiliser.’

‘I’ll tell him to play it straight.’

‘And sober, I hope.’

‘Sure.’

They had reached the crest of a gentle rise in the ground, and now, by the light of the moon, they were looking down on the five-mile slope that took the northern wheatfields of South Burlington as far as the Mystic River, a tributary of the South River, itself a tributary of the South Ninnescah. Ed felt the skin on the back of his neck tingle at what he saw. Across the silvery wheat, a dark corroded stain had already spread for a mile in each direction, and westwards it reached as far as he could see.

He touched Willard’s arm and whispered, ‘Stop.’ Then, when the Jeep was halted, he climbed down into the wheat and stood there silent, unmoving, like the witness to an accident which he was helpless to prevent.

Willard and Jack watched him as he knelt down and studied the ears of wheat all around him. Some were blighted, some were still clear. But even as he watched them, the clear wheat gradually began to darken, and within minutes it was as rotten as the rest. He stayed where he was for a while, and then he stood up and came back to the Jeep.

‘What do you think if we burn a circle around it?’ he asked Willard. ‘Isolate it, like a fire with a firebreak?’

‘We could try,’ said Willard. ‘Do you want to go back to the farm and round up the men?’

Jack said: ‘If the blight is airborne, which I think it is, then clearing a firebreak really isn’t going to do much good. The wind’s erratic tonight, west to north-west. It’s going to spread the fungus all over the farm before you can do anything worthwhile about it.’

Ed looked at him. ‘Have you got a better idea?’ he asked. He tried to control the sharpness in his voice, but it was difficult. His father had always taught him that it was better to do something than nothing, and he knew just what Jack would have suggested. Sitting on their backsides waiting for the laboratory report, while the whole eighty-five thousand acres turned black all around them.

‘We could try spraying,’ said Jack. ‘Maybe a dose of Twenty-four D would do it.’

‘Oh yes, and who’s going to fly a crop-duster at night? And what are we going to say to the health authorities, when they find that the fungicide levels in our grain are ten per cent higher than anybody else’s? We might just as well set fire to the whole damned farm, or let it go rot.’

‘Ed – there’s no need to lose your cool,’ said Willard, gently. ‘I’ll try anything you say. But even if we wait until morning, we’re only going to lose a fraction of the total crop. I think the best answer is to leave it alone until we have some reasonable idea of what it is.’

‘And supposing nobody can find out? Even you, Jack, or your eccentric Dr Benson?’

Willard tugged at his moustache. ‘They’re just darn well going to have to find out. That’s all. I’ve put too much of my life into South Burlington Farm to see a whole year’s wheat harvest go bad, and Jack knows that. Don’t you. Jack?’

‘We’ll isolate this blight, don’t you worry,’ said Jack. ‘I know it’s serious, but I’m going to take it back to the farm right now and spend some time on it and Kerry can run some samples over to Wichita first thing in the morning.’ Ed stared out at the acres and acres of drooping black wheat. ‘You really don’t believe that a firebreak would hold it back?’ he asked, almost as if he was speaking to himself.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Jack. ‘I just think you’d be using up energy and manpower and money for no good reason.’ Ed rubbed his eyes. ‘Okay, then,’ he said, ‘Let’s get back. I’d like to put a call in to Charlie Warburg and see if we can claim some compensation for any profits we lose. Henry Pollock ought to be told, too.’

They climbed back into the Jeep and made their way back across the fields to the track. The moon was higher now, and the light that fell across South Burlington Farm was alien and cold. Ed smoked his cigar half-way down, then stubbed it out in the ashtray. Nobody who worked on a wheat farm ever tossed a glowing butt out of the window.

As they approached the farm buildings, they could see the pattern of lighted windows in the farmhouse and the outbuildings which meant that all twenty of South Burlington’s John Deere tractors were in for refuelling and maintenance, that all the Jeeps and all the trailers were parked away for the night, and that Season Hardesty was waiting at home for her husband to come back and eat.

Willard halted the Wagoneer on the red-asphalt yard. ‘I’ll call you later,’ he told Ed. ‘Maybe ten or eleven o’clock. I’d like to know what Charlie has to say.’

‘Okay,’ said Ed, and then he turned around to Jack. ‘I want you to call, too, just as soon as you’ve made up your mind what that blight could be. Or even if you can’t decide what it is at all.’

‘I sure will,’ said Jack.

‘Whatever happens,’ said Jack, ‘I want us all here by six o’clock sharp tomorrow morning, with Dyson Kane if he can make it, and I want us to make a complete chopper tour of the whole spread.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Willard.

Ed climbed down from the Jeep and closed the door. He looked at Jack for a moment and then he said, ‘Good luck.’ Willard released the Jeep’s handbrake and drove out of the yard and Ed stood with his hands on his hips watching its red tail-lights disappear along the eastbound track. Then he walked slowly across to the house and climbed the verandah steps to the front door.

Season was sitting with her feet up in the living-room, reading a copy of Vogue. The television was tuned to a special programme about Mid-Eastern oil, but the volume was turned down to a mutter. She didn’t even look up as Ed came into the room, unzipped his tan leather jacket, and sat down in the big library chair that had once been his father’s. Season always called this chair ‘the witness stand’, and she had wanted to throw it out when they first moved in; but to Ed, sitting in his father’s once-sacrosanct seat was one of those small but important parts of taking over South Burlington. It was no fun being an emperor if you didn’t have the throne that went with the job.

The living-room was decorated in soft blues – stylish, tasteful, with antique French furniture upholstered in ultramarine velvet. There were tall vases of flowers all around and a marble bust of Ralph Waldo Emerson on a slender mahogany torchère. The room was a perfect reflection of Season’s personality – cool, ordered, stylish, and discreetly expensive.

‘You’re late,’ said Season, turning over a page.

Ed unlaced his boots. ‘Didn’t Ben tell you I was going to be held up?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But the fact that I was told doesn’t alter the fact that you’re late. It was a fish souffle, and I’ve had to throw it away.’

‘You threw away my supper?’

She turned another page. ‘You don’t really care for flat fish soufflé, do you? I wish you’d told me. I would have kept it for you.’