Until never, now. Not if this frighteningly plausible young woman was right. And she sounded right.
He said slowly, "You're a very smart young woman, Miss Froman. Have you had any experience in this field?"
She smiled candidly. "Only enough to get the feel of it, Mr. Chesbro. I'm a writer. You might say I've made a study of everything." (And besides, I typed Hesch's thesis for him, didn't I? The War Between The States, Round Two: A Study in Industrial Dynamics.)
He nodded. "You said 'unless.' Unless what?"
She said composedly, "Unless we get there first. Unless we form an organization immediately—on a regional basis—to hammer home our side. Skilled labor that's been through the birth-pangs of organizational strikes. They're the roughest kind, and they still lie ahead for the South. Access to the markets. A good life for the management and supervisory workers. Bracing climate. Sound Republican territory."
She had him. She could feel it, and she was never wrong. Let him nibble at the bait a while; let him taste it and want it, and bite down into it all by himself—bite down on that buried "we" that would hook him, deep and clean and gasping.
It had looked like a mighty dull autumn, but things were looking better, thought Sharon Froman contentedly. True, if she was going to help this interesting Mr. Chesbro with the curious wife it would mean deferring work on her novel again. Too bad. But she didn't mind the sacrifice. She had made it often enough before.
Regional organization. Hammer hard. Grants from the government? Sure. Tax breaks from the northern states, panicky attempts to match whatever the South might offer? Sure, thought Artie Chesbro; he could arrange that easily. And then?
No more waiting for the legislature to approve or for the assayers to report or for any of the other soul-killing delays that had been the sum of his life; he would be in, he would be at the top of something big. Where he had always wanted to be. Where he deserved to be.