Harry Bettis did not look at Maxine when he answered. He looked at Johnny and said, "I'll be frank, kiddo. You have the talent, but you don't have the salesmanship to promote it. Do you want a mediocre job while the weather boys exploit you for the rest of your life or--do you want greatness, riches, and Jo-Anne?" "Jo-Anne," Johnny said. Harry Bettis nodded. "My price is twenty-five percent." "Of Jo-Anne?" Maxine asked suspiciously. "Of everything Johnny makes as the world's first _real_ Weather Man. Not a forecaster--a commander. Because when my client forecasts the weather, it happens. Brothers and sisters, it happens." He turned abruptly to Johnny, said, "You have any money saved up?" "A few hundred dollars, but--" "An ad in the papers. Alongside the article telling how it snowed on July twenty-fifth. Saying that your services are for hire. We're a shoo-in, kid!" "Well, if you say so," Johnny said doubtfully. "So don't call D.C.," Bettis told Chief Botts. "But Sloman's an employee of this Bureau." "Was, you mean." "What did you say?" "Was an employee. He ain't an employee now. He's quitting--with his manager," said Harry Bettis, and walked out of the office, steering a dazed Johnny Sloman with him. "Wait until I call Jo-Anne," Maxine said. During the next six months, Johnny Sloman--known to the world as The Weather Man--made fifty million dollars. Since it had taken a whole lifetime for him to develop his remarkable talent, his lawyers were trying to have capital gains declared on the earnings rather than straight income tax. The odds seemed to be in their favor. How had Johnny made his fifty million dollars? By predicting the weather. He predicted: A flood in the Texas panhandle--in time to save the dry lands from going entirely arid. An end of the snowstorms in northern Canada--which had trapped the five hundred residents of a small uranium-mining town without food or adequate drinking water. The break-up of Hurricane Anita--which had threatened to be the most destructive ever to strike the Carolina Coast. No frost for Florida that winter--a prediction still to be ascertained, but a foregone conclusion. Every prediction had come true. In time, the world began to realize that his predictions were not predictions at all: they were sure things. That is, they predicted nothing--they _made_ things happen. Johnny was in demand everywhere and naturally could not fill all engagements. Harry Bettis hired a whole squad of corresponding secretaries, whose job it was to turn down, with regret, some ninety percent of the jobs requested. Johnny, in fact, was in such demand, that his engagement to Jo-Anne--which, of course, had been reinstated at her insistence--remained only an engagement. The nuptials were put off, and put off again.