Famine

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Thank you,’ Season told him. She wasn’t used to compliments, and she knew that he had made her blush. Out in Kansas, the nearest she had ever received to a compliment was that she was ‘sassy’. She glanced towards Vee for some moral support, but Vee was simply grinning her toothy California grin and taking Granger’s suavity for granted.

  ‘Are you a priest, or something?’ Season asked Granger. ‘You seem to have all the necessary accoutrements.’

  ‘I’m a priest of sorts,’ said Granger, with a cryptic smile. Vee said, ‘He’s more than a priest. Season. He’s a spiritual leader. Carl and I met him through Dr Schauman – that’s our analyst. We went to a wine-and-cheese party at Bobby Wanderelli’s – you know Bobby Wanderelli who plays the cousin in The Fortune Saga on television? I mean, it’s a terrible show but he’s a wonderful person. You’d have to be wonderful to play that part for three series and stay sane! Anyway, Granger was there and Dr Schauman introduced us. He said he felt that both of our lives could do with some of Granger’s religious solidity. Granger’s very literal in his interpretation of the scriptures, you know. He believes that all the miracles that Christ performed actually happened – you know, like raising Lazarus and walking on water – and he thinks we can all achieve the same kind of miracles if we give ourselves to Christ.’

  Season was watching Granger the whole time that Vee was talking. He had a slight smile on his face, but his eyes were giving away nothing. When Vee had finished. Season nodded as if to say, well, Mr Hughes, very impressive.

  ‘I call my group “The Church of the Practical Miracle”,’ said Granger.

  ‘And you really believe you can work miracles, the way Christ did?’

  ‘You sound cynical,’ said Granger. ‘You don’t believe in what the Bible tells us about Jesus?’

  ‘Maybe I’m just tired,’ said Season. ‘You’ll have to forgive me, but I’ve just flown here from Kansas, with a three-hour stopover in New Mexico. I don’t think anybody would feel like performing miracles after that, or even witnessing one. You’ll excuse me.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Granger, and the sharp way in which he said it made Season pause. ‘Wait,’ he said again, in a gentler voice.

  Season looked at him. ‘Mr Hughes – Granger – I really want to go take a shower.’

  He stepped closer. His eyes stared into hers unfalteringly. She could smell the cologne he was wearing. It was dry, like Kansas grass. Vetiver, probably, or Monsieur Worth. Somehow it seemed rather odd for a self-styled spiritual leader to be wearing Monsieur Worth.

  ‘You’re feeling tense, aren’t you?’ he asked her. ‘Your mind feels wound up like a clockspring, and you’re exhausted.’

  She looked at Vee again, but Vee was enjoying every minute.

  Granger raised his hands. They were long-fingered, with professionally-manicured nails. He wore no rings at all, nor bracelets.

  ‘Allow me to touch your forehead,’ he said. ‘I promise you that you will feel better.’

  Season hesitated, but Vee said, ‘Go on. Season, he’s marvellous. You’ll feel so much better.’

  Season suddenly realised that she was reacting like an uptight Wichita farmer’s wife. Don’t you go tampering with them things you don’t understand the nature of, young man. She smiled, and relaxed, and said, ‘All right I’m willing to try anything once. Provided it’s moral, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Granger, warmly. He extended his fingers, and with the cool tips of them, touched Season’s forehead just above her eyebrows. ‘Do you want to close your eyes?’ he asked her. ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘Close them,’ prompted Vee. ‘You’ll be amazed what you see. You know, like the visions you get in back of your eyelids.’

  ‘Now,’ said Granger, ‘I want you to feel the power that is flowing through my hands in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the power of healing, the power of forgiveness, the power of purity. All those feelings which were troubling you, all those uncertainties, they will all resolve themselves. Jesus hears your troubles, and knows of your indecision and he understands. He will help you.’

  Strangely, Season began to feel soothed. She could imagine some kind of gentle warmth radiating from Granger’s fingertips, and smoothing out the knots and crumples that the day had made in her mind. She wasn’t sure about Jesus, but the reassurance that someone understood how uncertain she felt, and how anxious about her marriage – that reassurance in itself was enough to calm her.

  Granger murmured, ‘You’re a very lovely, magnetic person, Season. You have an aura about you which makes you both attractive and sympathetic. I don’t think in my whole time in the service of Our Lord that I’ve ever come across anyone with whom I felt so close so quickly.’

  Season opened her eyes. Granger was staring at her through the cage of his upraised fingers. The pupils in those washed-out irises of his were contracted almost to pinpoints.

  ‘How do you feel?’ he asked her, lowering his hands.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Better, I think.’

  ‘Isn’t he marvellous?’ enthused Vee.

  ‘Well, I certainly feel less harassed,’ agreed Season, brushing back her blonde hair with her hand. ‘Are you staying to dinner. Granger?’

  Granger shook his head. ‘I regret not. I have a meeting tonight. Even a church has to be run like a business these days. I have to fill out Form One-o-two-three for the IRS with my accountants.’

  ‘Didn’t Jesus throw the money-changers out of the temple?’ asked Season.

  ‘He certainly did,’ agreed Granger. ‘And one day, I hope I can do the same. That’ll be a miracle worth praying for.’

  They saw Granger to the door. Carl had already taken Sally upstairs to her bedroom in the extension, and they could hear her giggling and screaming as Carl chased her across the landing with a Cookie Monster glove-puppet Granger stepped out on to the elevated wooden porch, and looked out over the warm twinkling Los Angeles night.

  ‘Thank you for your hospitality, Vee,’ he said. ‘And thank you for introducing me to Season. You take good care of her while she’s here. She’s a very special person.’

  ‘It was good to meet you,’ said Season. Granger took her hand, and gave it a quick, affectionate squeeze.

  They both stood by the railing as Granger walked around to the car port at the side of the house. A few moments later, he reappeared in a glossy black Eldorado, booped the horn a couple of times, and drove off down to the road. They watched his tail-lights disappear through the leaves.

  ‘Well,’ said Vee. ‘What do you think of our spiritual leader? Quite miraculous, isn’t he?’

  ‘He’s good-looking. Maybe a little theatrical.’

  ‘Theatrical? Well, he may be theatrical by Kansas standards, but by Hollywood standards he’s positively normal. You ought to see the guru that Marjorie Newman goes to see. Hairy, and yukky, and not too particular about the condition of his loincloth, either. I think Granger’s a doll. If I wasn’t so much in love with Carl, I think I might be tempted to test his spirituality for weak spots.’

  They went inside, and the screen door banged behind them. ‘You must come and see the extension,’ said Vee. ‘First we had fires, then we had a mudslide, but somehow we managed to survive long enough to finish it off. Thank God we don’t have any more disasters on the slate.’

  ‘I ought to call Ed and tell him we’ve arrived safely,’ said Season. ‘Is there a phone in my room?’

  ‘Oh, sure. Listen – let’s go upstairs and I’ll show you around. Then you can come down and have something to eat. Mind you – the way prices have been shooting up around here, we’re lucky to have half a tomato to nibble on.’

  ‘There’s been some kind of trouble with the vegetable crop here, hasn’t there?’ asked Season. ‘Some tomato grower was talking to me on the plane. And trying to make a pass, I might add. At least until Sally came walking along the aisle, calling me “mommy”.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it’s anything a
s bad as that wheat blight you’ve had in Kansas,’ said Vee, leading Season up a curving wooden staircase to an oak-panelled passageway. ‘But you have to do your marketing pretty early in the day if you want fresh lettuce and celery. By mid-morning, most of the stuff’s gone. Still – they say it’s just a “temporary shortfall”.’

  ‘You should have seen the farm,’ Season said. ‘The wheat was all black and drooping for miles. Poor Ed was absolutely heartbroken.’

  ‘I expect Ursula was, too.’

  Season raised her eyes to heaven. ‘Don’t talk to me about Ursula. She’s like one of those terrible women in an Edgar Allen Poe story. She’d have me beheaded if she thought it would help South Burlington Farm.’

  ‘This is your room,’ Vee told her opening the door of a wide, airy, studio with a sloping dormer roof and a polished wooden floor. ‘You wait till you wake up in the morning. There’s a beautiful view of the canyon. Your shower’s through there, and your telephone’s right over on the desk.’

  ‘Vee, it’s beautiful,’ said Season. ‘I just know that we’re going to feel right at home here.’

  Vee held her arm. ‘You’re okay, aren’t you? I mean, Ed didn’t take it too bad?’

  Season lowered her eyes. ‘He didn’t want me to go, if that’s what you mean. He was more upset than he was saying. But he knows I have to get away from Kansas, even if it’s only for a week.’

  ‘What about your marriage?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. I’ll have to see how I feel. Ed doesn’t want to give up the farm and I don’t want him to give it up, either. If I took South Burlington away from him, just for my own selfish reasons, it would be like castrating him. He’s a farmer, Vee, and when I married him I never even realised. But whether I can face up to going back to Kansas or not…’

  Vee ran her hand through her sister’s blonde hair. ‘It’s that bad, huh?’

  Season nodded. ‘It’s wheat and it’s sky and that’s all.’ Vee kissed her. ‘You wash up, get yourself ready. Carl will take care of Sally. And listen. Season, whatever happens, just remember we love you.’

  Season’s eyes filled up with tears. She held her hand over her mouth and the tears slid down her cheeks and clung on her fingers like diamonds. ‘I’m sorry, Vee,’ she said. ‘I’m tired, that’s all.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Vee, hugging her. ‘I’ll see you in a while.’

  Ten

  Della McIntosh walked through the terminal at Wichita Mid-Continental Airport at two thirty the following afternoon, dressed in a white cotton skirt and a midnight-blue T-shirt that had more than one of the good old Kansas boys on the baggage-collection carousels taking long and considered looks.

  Her red hair was fresh-washed and shining, her sunglasses were propped up in her hair, and if this had been any place in the world except the depths of the American Mid-West, she would have been taken for a very high-quality whore.

  Ed was waiting for her outside, standing by his Caprice stationwagon, smoking a small cigar. When she came through the doors and hesitated, looking this way and that for somebody to help her, he stepped forward, tipped his hat, and said in an exaggerated drawl, ‘Mrs McIntosh? Mrs McIntosh from Washington?’

  She blinked at him, grinned, and then offered her hand. ‘You must be Mr Hardesty. Well, how do you do? You’re a lot smarter than I thought you were going to be. I expected somebody with chaff in their hair.’

  ‘Oh, no, ma’am,’ said Ed, taking her suitcase. ‘Having chaff in your hair is illegal in Kansas these days. You can serve three-to-five for actually looking like a hick.’

  ‘Senator Jones was right,’ said Della. ‘He said you’d make a good figurehead for our Blight Crisis Appeal, and I believe you will. Mind you, I haven’t really heard you speak yet.’

  ‘As long as I don’t have to come out with all that sincere young farmer bit that Peter Kaiser was trying to lay on me, I don’t mind what I do,’ said Ed. He ushered Della around the car and opened the passenger door for her. She said, ‘Thank you,’ as she sat down, and he couldn’t help noticing the way her skirt rode up over her long legs, and the full curves of her breasts. He closed the door, walked around the front of the car, and climbed in next to her.

  ‘I told Dr Benson you were coming,’ said Ed, as he pulled out into the airport traffic. ‘He was out at Garden City last night, at the state experimental farm. Apparently they’ve been making some interesting progress on breaking down the blight.’

  ‘Really?’ said Della. ‘You told him I wanted to meet up with him as soon as possible?’

  ‘He says tomorrow evening. He has to go to Hays, too. That’s where the agricultural experimental station is located. He doubts if he’s going to be able to get back to Wichita until seven or eight.’

  ‘He won’t talk to the press before then?’ asked Della. She pulled down the sun-visor in front of her, and inspected her face in the mirror.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Ed. ‘Is it important?’

  ‘Senator Jones thinks it’s important,’ Della told him, fussing with her hair. ‘He doesn’t want anybody to panic about this blight’

  ‘Oh, no?’

  Della glanced at him. The blight’s serious, but it’s not that serious. Senator Jones believes the most important priority is for Kansas farmers to get their compensation. If there’s a panic, it won’t help to bring in the contributions. That’s all.’

  ‘I see,’ said Ed.

  ‘I hope you do,’ Della told him. ‘Particularly since your whole livelihood depends on it.’

  ‘You’re trying to tell me what my livelihood depends on? If I gave up farming, I could quite easily go back to being an actuary.’

  ‘An actuary? Are you serious?’

  ‘Never more so. You used to be a newspaper reporter, didn’t you?’

  ‘I was until two days ago.’

  ‘Peter Kaiser said that Senator Jones had won you over to the cause of helping us Kansas farmers by the sheer emotion of his appeal. Is that right?’

  Della shrugged. ‘You could call it sheer emotion.’

  Ed brought the wagon to a halt at a red light. ‘What else could you call it?’ he asked her.

  ‘Influence,’ she said. ‘Senator Jones is a very influential man.’

  ‘Is he really serious about helping us? I mean – is this Blight Crisis Appeal genuine?’

  ‘Oh, yes. It’s genuine, all right.’

  They headed out on Route 54 westwards, into Kingman County. The highway was almost deserted except for occasional trucks.

  Ed said, ‘You come from Kansas?’

  ‘Oklahoma originally. I’m a one hundred per cent natural Okie.’

  ‘How come you got yourself mixed up with a man like Shearson Jones?’

  She smiled. ‘Nobody gets themselves mixed up with Shearson Jones. If Shearson Jones wants to have you around, then he’ll have you around. If he doesn’t, you could no more get to see him than the Pope. Even the president doesn’t get to talk to Shearson Jones whenever he wants to.’

  ‘Sounds like a biggie.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ grinned Della. ‘He’s a biggie, all right.’

  *

  The telephone rang in Peter Kaiser’s office. Without taking his eyes off the reports he was reading, Peter picked it up and said, ‘Yes?’

  Karen’s voice told him, ‘It’s Professor Protter for you, from the Federal Laboratories.’

  ‘About time too,’ said Peter. ‘Put him through, will you?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Kaiser,’ said Karen, in a tone that only slightly reproved him for what had happened last night. She didn’t want to make him feel too bad after all. But his clumsy attempt at seduction couldn’t go completely without comment. He could easily have driven her back to her apartment, and tried to make a play for her there, instead of trying to scramble on top of her in the car. She had stopped petting in pull-offs when she was sixteen, and she had told him so.

  She listened in to the telephone as Professor Protter said, ‘Peter? I’ve got
some preliminary results for you.’

  That’s excellent,’ said Peter. ‘What kept you?’

  ‘Nothing kept us,’ Professor Protter retorted, testily. ‘We’ve had a staff of ten people working on the samples all night. I don’t think you quite understand what’s involved in these tests.’

  ‘I understand that Senator Jones asked for the results urgently.’

  ‘Well, that’s all very fine. But Senator Jones doesn’t know one end of an electron microscope from the other.’

  ‘He does know who pays your salary. Professor. He also knows who used to pay your daughter’s salary. Now, what about these results?’

  ‘They’re not definite, by any means. Only conjecture, based on the broad outlines of what we’ve been able to discover so far.’

  ‘In other words, you’re not prepared to stand by what you say?’

  ‘In other words, Peter, they’re the best that scrupulous and conscientious scientists can do when they’re put under pressure by a politician whose motives are mainly financial.’

  Peter Kaiser sighed. ‘All right, Professor. You can spare me the puritanical rhetoric. What have you managed to conjecture so far?’

  ‘The samples we were sent by Dr Benson in Kansas have almost certainly been affected by a species of crop virus. The virus has been isolated under the electron microscope, and although we’re not sure exactly what it is, or where it comes from, there isn’t any doubt that it’s extremely active and extremely dangerous to cereal crops. It can spread as quickly as the most virulent of human diseases, and we’re surprised that it didn’t sweep through the wheatfields in Kansas more quickly.’

  ‘You don’t know how it originated? Whether it was natural or not?’ asked Peter.

  Professor Protter hummed for a moment in uncertainty. ‘I’d hate to commit myself,’ he said, ‘but several of the wheat samples from Kansas had traces of some thin gelatinous substance on them – partly decomposed. Professor Gulaski has been running several tests on it, and he thinks it could be some kind of base material in which the virus was carried, and sprayed on to the crops. He’s only guessing, of course, but one of his experiments indicates that the substance slowly breaks down under the influence of ultra-violet light.’