Arslan

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.

By now I was well used to Nizam’s standard procedure. He accepted a sheaf of papers from me, shuffled it to the bottom of a stack and cleared his throat a little in preparation for English. He very seldom looked at me, except to deliver one of his venomous stares, and he didn’t look at me now. “You will extinguish the power plant before midnight twenty-four December,” he said.

“You mean close it down?”

He watched the top paper of his stack, as if it had made a suspicious move. “Yes,” he decided.

“Colonel, if it has to be closed at all, which I fail to see, is there any strong reason for that particular date? Two or three days later could save you some opposition.”

He nodded—at least I thought it was a nod—and shuffled the suspicious paper to the bottom of the stack. “Midnight twenty-four December,” he repeated. “You are dismissed.”

That night, I put the question to Arslan. “We can do without electric lights and electric stoves,” I said. “But that power plant pumps our water, and it’s the only practical hope I see for grinding our grain.”

He looked at me without expression. “I have assigned your task,” he said. “Do you forget?”

I could feel myself getting hotter. “Self-sufficiency was the word you used. What’s wrong with producing our own electricity?”

“Nothing, if you can also produce your own fuel and your own spare parts. Remember that henceforth your district imports nothing. Nothing.”

That wasn’t even true; but if I reminded him that we were already starting to import food, he might just decide to cut off the supply. “I see your point,” I said. “But the plant’s there, General. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to let us down a little bit easy?”

He laughed. “With all deliberate speed, as your country integrated its schools? No, sir, I have no time for this.”

“Then why not put us back to stone axes right now and get it over with?”

“Again, I have no time for this. I am directing you to follow the path of greatest operational simplicity.”

“All right, then. But why Christmas Eve? I assume that’s not coincidental.”

“My soldiers are Moslems, sir.”

“Your soldiers. What about you?”

“Yes, sir, I am a Moslem—as you are a Christian.”

“Most of your troops are Russians. They’re not Moslems, are they?”

He grinned sardonically. “Even worse, they are Communist. On the other hand, they have vestiges of Christian tradition. Those who desire to celebrate this Christmas will be permitted to do so. But they will do it without benefit of electricity. Why should your citizens enjoy privileges that my troops lack?”

“General,” I said, “tyrants have been trying to stamp out Christianity for a couple of thousand years, and it hasn’t worked yet.”

“Ah, no, sir!” he cried exuberantly. “I do not plan to stamp out any religion. On the contrary, sir! Perhaps I shall crucify one of your citizens, to help the others understand what is involved in Christianity.”

“Do you understand?” I asked as coolly as I could.

He looked good-humoredly up at me from under his eyelids. “Ah, perhaps not, sir. No, in candor, I do not understand Christianity. Can you explain it to me?”

“I don’t know. But I’d like very much to try.”

“Good. But not at present.”

“Of course not. You have no time for this.” That made him grin, and I took the opportunity to go on. “If you don’t have time for me to tell you anything, how about you telling me something?” He lifted his eyebrows inquiringly. “You say the Government abdicated to you.”

“Various governments.”

“The only reason I even consider believing that, is that it’s too unbelievable to be a lie. What pressure could the Premier of Turkistan bring to bear on the President of the United States?”

He put on one of his sweet and gay looks. “Why do you assume that there was pressure? Perhaps it was entirely voluntary.” I didn’t say anything. He discarded that look and added smoothly, “Or perhaps the Premier of Turkistan was more powerful than you knew. Or had more powerful allies.”

“China? Or Russia? China and Russia, wasn’t it? That was a summit meeting in Moscow, not an arbitration.”

He shrugged, shutting off the conversation right there. “You have your instructions, sir. I think that you understand them now.”

“China, Russia, and Turkistan. Who’s running the show, General?”

The look that flared from his eyes was like an axe-stroke. “I run it,” he said quietly.

Black Christmas. That was what we called it. There were gifts given, and maybe a few people had the heart to sing a few carols in their own homes, in spite of the billeted soldiers. God knows there were prayers said.

But electricity wasn’t really basic. What was basic was fuel.

On any ordinary-scale map, we were located in the coal belt of southern Illinois, but in fact there wasn’t a single coal mine in the district. I gave some thought to the possibility of starting one ourselves, and gave it up; no matter how you figured it, the thing just wasn’t feasible. Coal was one of the oldest industries in the state. This whole area had been surveyed and explored and evaluated time after time, and Nizam had reluctantly pulled the local records out of the sealed Court House for me. There was certainly coal in Kraft County, but it was too low- grade and too hard to get at; and while we would have gladly settled for a lot less than commercial quality, we didn’t have the equipment or the know-how to mine anything that didn’t just about jump out of the ground at us.

That left wood, wind, and muscle. A windmill and a good rationing system might be all we needed for our water supply. But the wind wasn’t reliable enough for anything that needed steady power. I set all the local talent I could scrape up onto putting together a wood-burning steam engine for Morris Schott’s feed mill. I was proud to see that Kraftsville people could work together, even if it took a catastrophe or the end of the world to get them started. It wasn’t all smooth, either.

I ran into Leland Kitchener on foot one day, which was unusual. He was a shabby little old fellow to look at (probably not as old as he looked, for that matter), but there was more to Leland than showed on the outside.

“Morning, Mr. Bond. How’s your house guest?”

“Making himself very comfortable, Leland. What’s new?”

He walked with his hands in his pockets and his head and shoulders hunched forward, so when he looked you in the eye he had to peer through his eyebrows. He grinned up at me. “Well, to hear people talk, I guess about the newest is you buying Perry Carpenter’s house.”

“What do they say about it?”

“Well, there’s some says it don’t look just right.”