‘The second question I can’t answer,’ said the safety inspector. ‘As for the first question – well, I believe it’s some kind of radioactive isotope.’
‘Isotope?’ queried Herman, looking at Errol Marx.
Errol said, ‘Search me.’
During the evening, Donald Abbott and the bodies of his family were flown from the sanitarium at Cannon AFB to an isolation hospital on the outskirts of Phoenix, near Scottsdale. Donald Abbott was scarcely alive, and the medics at Cannon had given him only a one per cent chance of survival. ‘I never saw anyone so close to death without actually being dead,’ one of the doctors said later.
The first diagnosis was food poisoning, and when it was discovered that the Abbotts had spent the past two days with Mrs Abbott’s mother in Santa Fé, police and health officials were urgently sent to her home to check on the food that the family might have eaten – and on the safety of Mrs Abbott’s mother herself.
For two or three hours – until it was given a full medical clearance – the chief suspect was a tub of chocolate maple ice-cream, which only the Abbott family had eaten. Then the coroner’s report came in on the contents of Mrs Abbott’s stomach, and it was clear that she had consumed a frankfurter sausage and a quantity of bread sometime during Saturday evening. The coroner’s comment was bald and devastating. ‘The frankfurter sausage was analysed, and found to contain sufficient botulin to poison a horse.’
The New Mexico Highway Patrol located Mary’s Diner within twenty-three minutes of being called from Phoenix. Mary, bewildered and shocked, confirmed that the Abbott family had eaten hotdogs there on Saturday evening. Eight airmen and a truck driver had also eaten there, but they had all chosen hamburgers, cheeseburgers, or reubenburgers. The Highway Patrol officers took away all the fresh meat from Mary’s Diner, sealed it in plastic, and sent it to Phoenix for tests.
On Monday morning, at 10.30 a.m., Donald Abbott died of botulism.
The death of Donald Abbott and his family had yet to make news, however. What was news, as Sunday became Monday, was that a Kansas wheat farmer had stood in front of the cameras on live coast-to-coast television and announced that Americans were facing a whole lot more than ‘a noticeable percentage of inconvenience’ from the crop blights which had struck all over the country. They were facing nothing less than the total destruction of their agricultural economy, and possible starvation.
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.