ndreds of thousands
of pounds I had paid out without visible result.

"Ive really got it now, Weener," she assured me in a tone hardly
befitting a suppliant for funds. "In spite of the incompetents you kept
sending, in spite of mistakes and blind alleys, the work on Whitney is
done--and successfully. The rest is routine laboratory work--a matter of
quantities and methods of application."

"I don't know that I can spare you any more money, Miss Francis."

She laughed. "What the devil's the matter with you, Weener? Are your
millions melting away? Or do you think any of the spies you set on me
capable of carrying on--or are you just trying to crack the whip?"

"I set no spies and I have no whip. I merely feel it may not be
profitable to waste any more money on fruitless experiments."

She snorted. "Time has streamlined and inflated your platitudes. When I
am too old to work and ready for euthanasia I shall have you come and
talk me to death. To hear you one would almost think you had no interest
in finding a method to counter the Grass."

Her egomania and impertinence were really insufferable; her notion of
her own importance was ludicrous.

"Interested or not, I have no reason to believe you alone are capable of
scientific discovery. Anyway, the world seems pretty well off as it is."

She tugged at her hair as if it were false and would come off if she
jerked hard enough. "Of course it's well enough off from your
pointofview. It offers you more food than you could eat if you had a
million bellies, more clothes than you could wear out in a million
years, more houses than you could live in if the million contradictions
which go to make up any single human were suddenly made corporeal. Of
course youre satisfied; why shouldnt you be? If the Grass were to be
pushed back and the world once more enlarged, if hope and
dissatisfaction were again to replace despair and content, you might not
find yourself such a big toad in a small puddle--and you wouldnt like
that, would you?"

I had intended all along to give her a small pension to keep her from
want and allow her to putter around, but her irrational accusations and
insults only showed her to be the kind from whom no gratitude could be
expected.

"I'm afraid we can be of no further use to each other."

"Look here, Weener, you can't do this. The life of civilization depends
on countering the Grass. Don't tell me the world can go on only half
alive. Look around you and