Read Online Arslan by M. J. Engh - Free Book Online

to seed from. There were sheep in the county, beef cattle, clean milk cows, good hogs, good poultry, some beehives. Deer and small game hunting was pretty good, fishing just passable but with a few good spots. Plenty of vegetables, plenty of fruit and nuts. Wood to burn, and stoves that could burn it. It would be primitive, all right, but Kraft County wasn't going to suffer as much of a shock as a lot of places might. And there were worse things than old-fashioned smoked ham and hot cornbread with sweet cream butter and sorghum molasses on it.
    Nizam's English turned out to be nearly as adequate as Lieutenant Z's, when he chose to exercise it, except that his accent was a lot nastier. The lieutenant was dispensed with after our first few meetings. I was sorry to see him go. For one thing, it nearly broke his heart, to judge from his woeful look; and for another, it meant I had to deal with Nizam directly, without a shock-absorber.
    I took care of the real work of planning in my own bedroom. When I needed information from the Turkistani side, I went to Nizam. At first that meant a wait of anywhere from one hour to six on Frieda Althrop's front porch, in full view of Pearl Street and the hardroad—and if Nizam didn't have enough business on hand to keep me waiting that long, he would find some. As soon as that became clear, I quit waiting. If he wasn't ready to see me when I got there, or within a few minutes, I went away and came back exactly two hours later. The longest streak of such visits we ever worked up to was a day and a half, with time out for a night's sleep. After that, I never had to come back more than once, and those few occasions I was perfectly willing to put down to genuine business.
    I never tried to analyze Nizam's motives, any more than I'd analyze a snake's; but I learned to tell which way he was likely to wriggle. And by a combination of growling and playing possum, I managed to get some fine cooperation out of him. But it was a hassle and a haggle, day after day, and no Sundays off. It gave me a feeling like listening to a record played at the wrong speed.
    The relief operation alone took an almighty lot of dickering. Colonel Nizam's ideas of what constituted adequate sustenance were based on Turkistani standards, maybe, or else on a desire to starve us gradually. It was possible to reason with him, but not pleasant. Every little thing had to be argued out, with figures and documents.
    The food Nizam delivered—and he did deliver it, and delivered on schedule, or pretty nearly so—was U.S. government surplus, the same as had been doled out to us as part of the old school lunch program. The question that came to mind was, how many districts could be nursed through the winter this way? Presumably there was food—Arslan's mere existence didn't alter the world's food supply—but, to put it in his own terms, it was a problem of distribution. He'd cut the normal distribution channels very effectively in Kraft County, and it took my best efforts and Colonel Nizam's organization to replace them. Nobody could tell me that that was being duplicated in a minimum of three thousand two hundred and eighty other districts.
    Unfortunately, Arslan's troops didn't limit themselves to confiscating movable goods. They had taken over for their own use an area that incuded most of our best corn land, the two biggest beef herds in the county, and the only commercial dairy herd. The farmers inside the confiscated area weren't evacuated, they were simply reduced to their houses and yards.
    That made things harder. The Government surplus wouldn't last forever; and I not only had to get us through this winter, I had to figure on getting us through the next one. There was more to it than raising the crops and the livestock, too. We did have a feed mill; and according to Morris Schott, the manager, it might just as well turn out cornmeal and crude wheat flour. But that looked unlikelier after the twenty-first of December.
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