“You’re a bit jumpy, Rodge. I noticed it yesterday. Something bothering you?”
They sat in the bar parlour. The door was open, and they could look out on to a gravelled patch on this side of the road, and a wide stretch of green beyond it The air was warm and mild.
“This is the weather the cuckoo likes,” Roger quoted. “When they sit outside the ‘Traveller’s Rest,’ and maids come forth sprig-muslin drest, and citizens dream of the South and West. And so do I. Jumpy? Perhaps I am.”
“Anything I can lend a hand with?”
Roger studied him for a moment. “The first duty of a Public Relations Officer,” he said, “is loyalty, the second is discretion, and having a loud mouth with a ready tongue runs a poor third. My trouble is that I always keep my fingers crossed when I pledge loyalty and discretion to anyone who isn’t a personal friend.”
“What’s up?”
“If you were me,” Roger said, “you wouldn’t tell, honesty being one of your stumbling-blocks. So I can tell you to keep it under your hat. Not even Ann yet. I haven’t said anything to Olivia.”
“If it’s that important,” John said, “perhaps you’d better not say anything to me.”
“Frankly, I think they would have been wiser not to keep it dark, but that’s not the point either. All I’m concerned with is that nothing that gets out can be traced back to me. It will get out—that’s certain.”
“Now I’m curious,” John said.
Roger emptied his glass, waited for John to do the same, and took them both over to the bar for refilling. When he had brought them back, he drank lengthily before saying anything further.
He said: “Remember Isotope 717?”
“The stuff they sprayed the rice with?”
“Yes. There were two schools of thought about tackling that virus. One wanted to find something that would kill the virus; the other thought the best line was breeding a virus-resistant rice strain. The second obviously required more time, and so got less attention. Then the people on the first tack{37} came up with 717, found it overwhelmingly effective against the virus, and rushed it into action.”
“It did kill the virus,” John said. “I’ve seen the pictures of it.”
“From what I’ve heard, viruses are funny brutes. Now, if they’d found a virus-resistant rice, that would have solved the problem properly. You can almost certainly find a resistant strain of anything, if you look hard enough or work on a large enough scale.”
John looked at him. “Go on.”
“Apparently, it was a complex virus. They’ve identified at least five phases by now. When they came up with 717 they had found four phases, and 717 killed them all. They discovered number five when they found they hadn’t wiped the virus out after all.”
“But in that case…”
“Chung-Li,” said Roger, “is well ahead on points.”
John said: “You mean, there’s still a trace of the virus active in the fields? It can’t be more than a trace, considering how effective 717 was.”
“Only a trace,” Roger said. “Of course, we might have been lucky. Phase 5 might have been slow where the other four were fast movers. From what I hear, though, it spreads quite as fast as the original.”
John said slowly: “So we’re back where we started. Or not quite where we started. After all, if they found something to cope with the first four phases they should be able to lick{38} the fifth.”
“That’s what I tell myself,” Roger said. “There’s just the other thing that’s unsettling.”
“Well?”
“Phase 5 was masked by the others before 717 got to work. I don’t know how this business applies, but the stronger virus strains somehow kept it inactive. When 717 removed them, it was able to go ahead and show its teeth. It differs from its big brothers in one important respect.”
John waited; Roger took a draught of beer.
Roger went on: “The appetite of the Chung-Li virus was for the tribe of Oryzae, of the family of Gramineae. Phase 5 is rather less discriminating. It thrives on all the Gramineae.”
“Gramineae!”
Roger smiled, not very happily. “I’ve only picked up the jargon recently myself. Gramineae means grasses—all the grasses.”
John thought of David. ‘We’ve been lucky.’ “Grasses,” he said,”—that includes wheat.”
“Wheat, oats, barley, rye—that’s a starter. Then meat, dairy foods, poultry. In a couple of years’ time we’ll be living on fish and chips—if we can get the fat to fry them in.”
They’ll find an answer to it.”
“Yes,” Roger said, “of course they will. They found an answer to the original virus, didn’t they? I wonder in what directions Phase 6 will extend its range—to potatoes, maybe?”
John had a thought: “If they’re keeping it quiet—I take it this is on an international level—might it not be because they’re reasonably sure an answer is already in the bag?”
That’s one way of looking at it. My own feeling was that they might be waiting until they have got the machine-guns into position.”
“Machine-guns?”
They’ve got to be ready,” Roger said, “for the second two hundred million.”
“It can’t come to that. Not with all the world’s resources working on it right from the beginning. After all, if the Chinese had had the sense to call in help…”
“We’re a brilliant race,” Roger observed. “We found out how to use coal and oil, and when they showed the first signs of running out we got ready to hop on the nuclear energy wagon{39}. The mind boggles at man’s progress in the last hundred years. If I were a Martian{40}, I wouldn’t take odds even of a thousand to one on intellect of that kind being defeated by a little thing like a virus. Don’t think I’m not an optimist, but I like to hedge my bets{41} even when the odds look good.”
“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}.”
“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.”