"I guess I'd better not," McCue said uncertainly. "You can't smell much up here but—I wonder where the water level is now."
"We'll know in the morning," Chesbro said. "Couple of hours. My God, who would have thought it yesterday?"
Sharon Froman said, "It's bad, Mr. Chesbro. It means a permanent loss of industry—unless we move fast."
"What permanent loss?" Chesbro snapped. "We shovel out the mud, we replace the machines, we get going again. The government'll help any sound business in a case like this."
"I am thinking," she said, "of the South."
"The South? What's the South got to do with this?"
"This is the godsend they've been waiting for! Think, Mr. Chesbro! They've spent millions on advertising and promotion to attract industry—to steal it, if you like. Tax exemptions. Rent-free plant. This flood is worth a billion dollars to them, Mr. Chesbro. If it's as big as it looks from here, it's worth all the sixteen-page ads they'll ever run in the Sunday Times. Believe me, I know. There are going to be task-forces from the Bureau of Industrial Development of every southern state calling on every manufacturer and distributor in this area. 'Frightful about your tragedy,' and 'Us Delta folks want to he'p you any way we can,' and 'Don't get us wrong, friend, we ain't out to steal industry from the No'th at a time like this, but—' And then it starts. They'll woo them with sites, with tax write-offs, with cheap labor rates. They'll strip the area of industry, clean as a whistle. Unless."
"My God!" said Chesbro, appalled.
He had never considered the angle but she was, God knew, dead-right.
Nor, he reflected self-pityingly, would he get any such offers. What did he have that would attract a Mississippi chamber of commerce? It was all intangibles that his fortune was going to come from—was almost coming from already, he assured himself panickily. He had come pretty close; it was only a question of time until the legislature authorized the trotting track, until the money borrowed from his wife's father and invested in that promising Geiger-positive tract north of Summit turned up real pay dirt, until—