"Thereby lessening absenteeism from sickness among your coolies."
"I will not stoop to answer your insinuations," I said. "I merely mentioned my gifts to show that my charities are on a worldwide scale and there is little room in them for the relief of individuals."
"Do you think I come to you for a personal sinecure? I don't ask if you have no concern outside selfish interest, for the answer is immediate and obvious; but isnt it to that same selfish interest to protect what remains of the world? If the other continents go as North America has gone, will you alone be divinely translated to some extraterrestrial sphere? And if so, will you take your wealth and power with you?"
"I am supporting three laboratories devoted exclusively to antigraminous research and anyway the rest of the world is amply protected by the oceans."
She removed the toothpick in order to laugh unpleasantly. "Once a salesman always a salesman, Weener. Lie to yourself, deny facts, brazen it out. The world was safe behind the saltband too, in the days when Josephine Francis was a quack and charlatan."
"Admitting your great attainments, Miss Francis, the fact remains that you are a woman and the adventure you propose is hardly one for a lady to undertake."
"Weener, you are ineffable. I'm not a lady—I'm a chemist."
The conversation deadlocked as I waited for her to go. Oddly enough, in spite of her sex and the illegality of her proposal, I was inclined to help her, if she had approached me in a reasonable manner and not with the uncouth bearing of a superior toward an inferior. If she could find a counteragent, I thought ... if she could find a weapon, then the possibility of utilizing the Grass as a raw material for food concentrates, a design still tantalizingly just beyond the reach of our researchworkers, might be realized. Labor costs would be cut to a minimum....
I could not let the woman be her own worst enemy; I was big enough to overlook her unfortunate attitudes and see through the cranky exterior to the worthy idealist and true woman beneath. I was interrupted in my thoughts by Miss Francis speaking again.
"North American landtitles have no value right now, but a man with money who knew ahead of time the Grass could be destroyed ..."