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Fools! O'Grady, Elizabeth, Bluemud was surrounded by them and they were all against
him! He called Muriel up to the house that afternoon and she too was sullen and rude
when he informed her that, under no circumstances whatever, was she to cut back further
on the men's food supply. 'And what about the women and children?' she said mournfully. 'You want them to be the first to die?' 'I don't care, woman!' Bluemud shouted. 'Last winter you had three times as much food as the men and you couldn't keep as many of your people alive as they managed to do down there. It's not my fault you're incompetent!' Muriel burst into tears. She ranted at Bluemud volubly but incomprehensibly for several minutes. As with O'Grady he was shocked at her assertiveness but the only thing he could make out from her ranting was that she thought he didn't know what was going on. But she was wrong about that! He did know and he was going to fix it! He threw Muriel out with almost as much violence as he had inflicted upon O'Grady. That evening Bluemud sat alone and cold in his house. There was nothing to eat. Elizabeth had left nothing in the freezer. The woman who came from the village to bring his evening meal had concocted the most revolting stew. As he watched her ladling it out, sucking her gums, he thought : these peasants are all the same, their food is garbage, their bodies are stinking garbage and their minds are garbage. Yes, he was a fool, too! To think that he would ever get anywhere with the material he had. To expect that they would thank him for what he had done for them. To think that any of them could be capable of looking into the future to see what their descendants might once more become. Not for the first time in his life, Bluemud was consumed fear: of being found out, of failure, of the ridiculousness of his position, of wasted effort in a hopeless cause. He sent for the Quartermaster and the Stationmaster. In the next few weeks he was going to visit other Collecting Centers in search of more recruits and equipment for his railroad in the hope of establishing a maintenance program for the track. That done he would have no more of Granite Gorge this winter. He would go to see Elizabeth then north to his apartment in the Capital. Let nature take its course. There was no point in waiting around in the cold to be caught red-handed. Bluemud went to a locked and bolted cellar in the basement of his house. As always before he left Granite Gorge he checked its contents and the locks and booby traps that protected it. Here were explosives and lightweight, efficient weaponry with which a man might almost hold off an army if he had to. They were Bluemud's ultimate assurance of his position. Then he left, walking down the dark road to where his train was waiting to take him on his journey to the east. |
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