Грэм Мастертон - Famine

The television people hadn’t pulled the plug on him, as Ed had expected them to. The director had recognised good hard news material when it was handed to him on a plate, and Shearson Jones had wrathfully decided it was better not to intervene. If he had ordered the transmission to be killed, he would only have given Ed’s comments more public credibility. But he had sat on his throne and glared in fury at Ed with a face like a malevolent blancmange.

Ed had been chilled but sweating as he faced the dark, polished, noncommittal lens of the television camera. He had been aware of Shearson Jones, smouldering in his chair; and of Della, who had returned from the verandah to listen to him. In some ways, though, the most disconcerting face of all had been that of the elegant young black prompter, who had continued to hold up his idiot cards regardless of what he was actually saying. There had been moments when he had almost slipped into his pre-written speech, simply because he was groping for words, and there they were, up in front of him.

‘I was supposed to stand here today and tell you how much we Kansas wheat farmers need your help,’ he had said.

‘The trouble is, I can’t do that. My conscience won’t let me. Because the truth is that every one of you is going to need help just as badly as we do. This blight that you’ve been hearing about – these isolated crop diseases – well, they’re neither as slight nor as isolated as you’ve been led to believe.

‘What’s happening is that every major fruit, vegetable and cereal crop in the entire continental United States is being quickly destroyed by a virus. They’re not totally destroyed yet, by any means, but unless an antidote can be sprayed on the worst of them within a matter of days, this country is going to be facing shortages like you’ve never seen before, and that’s quite apart from the prospect of complete economic collapse.

‘I want you to know that an antidote to the virus was recommended to the federal agricultural research laboratories two days ago by the Pentagon’s chemical warfare experts. They’ve looked at the blight, and they believe it’s quite close to something called Vorar D – which was artificially engineered for defoliating the jungle in Vietnam. They think it’s curable, and they’ve already told that to Senator Shearson Jones.

‘Senator Shearson Jones, however, has kept that information to himself, just like he’s kept every fact about this crop blight to himself – even when it started to become clear that it could possibly herald a major disaster. And why? Because he wanted businesses and private individuals and Congress itself to contribute lavishly to his crisis fund. He didn’t want us all to be worried about our own problems, or the prospect of nation-wide catastrophe, because we wouldn’t dig so readily into our pockets if we were.

‘I believe you ought to know that Senator Shearson Jones and some of the senior members of his staff have made provision to keep themselves supplied with food during the coming lean months; and I believe you also ought to know that the President himself has ordered the administration in Washington to be provided for. That’s how real the danger has already become.

‘This is the truth as far as I know it. There may be worse things happening which I don’t know about. The prospects for the fall and the winter may be better than I’ve been led to understand. I don’t know. All I can say right now is that this nation is faced with the prospect of a famine, and that every man, woman, and child has the right to know.’

When Ed had finished speaking, the lofty triangular room had fallen totally silent. Then the elegant young black prompter had let one of his cards fall, and it had skated across the floor.

Shearson Jones had lifted himself out of his chair, and waddled to the centre of the hall. His bulk had been dark, imposing, and immovable.

‘Hardesty,’ he had said, harshly, ‘you have just brought down the temple. The art of politics, quite apart from feathering one’s own nest, is to preserve the public’s sacred ignorance. The public, far from having a right to know, have a right to be kept in the dark. It is for their own good, their own safety, and their own survival. You don’t shout “fire!” in a crowded auditorium, even if there is a fire. You tell the audience that there has been an infestation of fleas, or that the leading actor has fallen sick, and then you usher them quietly out.

‘I admit quite freely, that I might have exploited some aspects of this blight to my own personal ends, although you will never get me to say so in front of a judge, or a Senatorial committee.

‘But you have seriously misjudged my capabilities as a politician in keeping this crisis low-key. I have been trying to save this country’s neck. And now, with your one foolish broadcast, you have guaranteed its strangulation.’

Ed had stayed where he was.

‘I shouldn’t let it worry you. Senator,’ he had said, loudly. ‘You’ll be okay, won’t you? You have plenty of food, and plenty of wine, and enough money to last you through the next few months. Why should you be upset?’

‘Because the United States of America is my country,’ growled Shearson. ‘And because you have effectively undone with two hundred ill-advised words the work of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and hundreds of Americans a hundred times abler and more dedicated to this country than you are.

‘Graft is one thing, Hardesty. Suicide is another.’

It was the sound of breaking glass that woke Nicolas up. Not downstairs, in his own delicatessen, but all over the city. Glass breaking, in street after street, with a terrible wintry jangle like sleighbells.

Nicolas sat up, and listened. He was Greek, round-shouldered, with fuzzy grey hair all over his chest and back, although his head was bald and blue. Next to him, his wife Dolores was still sleeping, her heavy eyebrows drawn together with all the intensity of mating caterpillars. Nicolas laid a cautious hand on her shoulder, as if silently advising her to remain asleep.

Outside, the noise grew louder. The cracking and smashing of huge plateglass storefronts. Then, suddenly, a series of malicious, slushy crashes, as glass display cases and cold-beer cabinets were attacked with hammers and bricks and bars. Sombody screamed – really screamed, as if their fingers were being torn off. There was a whole lot of garbled yelling, and then the distant scribbling sound of ambulance sirens.

‘Dolly,’ whispered Nicolas, but now she was awake. The danger in the night air was as strong as a smouldering mattress – too strong for anyone to stay asleep. She stared up at him, the back of her hand pressed to her forehead, and said ‘Nick? What is it? What’s the matter?’

‘Listen,’ he told her, as if he was going to tell her something interesting. But he meant: listen to the noise outside.

They sat in their dark wallpapered bedroom in that rundown section of Milwaukee where the elevated highways leave you blotted in shadow in the summer, and blessed with nothing but dirty second-hand slush in the winter; and the two of them, both fifty-five years old, heard the chiming of glass that heralded the end of their life’s labours, and their small ambitions, and the mutual love which they had nursed through two delicatessen stores, one bankruptcy, five children, two deaths, and more freezing Christmases on the shores of Lake Michigan than they could remember.

The smashing noises were coming closer. They were in the next street now. And they could hear something else: the pattering of running feet. Nicolas thought: they sound like rats , hurrying through the night. He had heard rats running across the floor of a flour warehouse once, and that was just what they sounded like.