“But they’re already on a damned river!” Underwood snarled. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not!”
“Gosh, really?” Mike glared at the other man, and for just a moment, they were once again union and management locked in mortal combat. But then both of them drew deep breaths, almost simultaneously, and shoved themselves back in their chairs.
“Look, Quentin,” Mike said in his most reasonable tone, “I know we’re looking at a major operation here. Hell, why do you think I’ve been pushing the rail link to Halle so hard?”
“Which,” Underwood pointed out, “we’d have been in a far better position to have finished by now if we hadn’t diverted all of those railroad rails to Simpson’s damned fleet.”
Mike glared at him, and this time several of his fellow cabinet members—including Frank Jackson and Ed Piazza—joined him.
“Quentin, don’t be a fuckhead,” Jackson said bluntly. The ex-mine manager turned an interesting shade of red, but Jackson went on before he could explode. “You know I was just as pissed off as you were when Simpson—well, Eddie and Simpson, if we’re going to be picky—skimmed off all those rails. Not for the same reasons, maybe. But I purely hated to see all that high-grade steel disappearing. But just you ask yourself where we’d be right now if Simpson hadn’t been sitting over there in Magdeburg building his little empire . . . and the boats that’re going to kick the Danes’ asses!”
“All right,” Underwood allowed after a moment. “I’ll grant that much—assuming he does get them finished and floated all the way out to sea! But,” he rejoined in a voice which was calmer but no less stubborn, “that still doesn’t change the fact that we don’t have a railroad link from here to Halle. And won’t, not for some time.” His lips curled a bit. “Not even these dinky wooden rails with an iron cap we’re calling a ‘rail line,’ with pathetic cargoes being pulled as often as not by ‘locomotives’ made up of a pickup truck—or even just a team of horses.”
Mike grit his teeth. One of the many things he didn’t like about Underwood was the man’s refusal to let anything drop. For better or worse—and in Mike’s opinion they’d had no choice—the decision to go with “light” railroads had been made months earlier. Quentin had been opposed, for the same reason the man always was whenever stretched resources required compromises. He wanted what he wanted, damnation, there’s an end to it—and he’d make sure to let you know how he felt about it forever afterward. “Spilt milk” and “what’s done is done” were not in Underwood’s list of stock phrases. “Beat a dead horse,” on the other hand, seemed to be right at the top. If he’d been present at the Creation, Mike thought sourly, he’d still be nattering at God for having made the waters out of sequence.
“But we do have a road link,” Mike pointed out, through tight jaws. “And we still have some of the coal trucks and the three semi tractors. We’ve been holding them for use in case of an emergency. Well, Quentin, just what do you call this?”
“Jesus, Mike,” Underwood said. “Do you realize what kind of hole that’s going to make in our reserve fuel stocks?”
” ‘Hole,’ my ass,” Mike said steadily. “It’s going to use up most of it. But the alternative is worse. You and your oil fields are just going to have to take up the slack, along with the methanol plant. And we’re getting a fair amount of oil now from the gas wells right here in Grantville, too, since we upgraded them. Don’t forget that either.” He held up a hand, forestalling another outburst. “Sure, sure, Quentin—call it a ‘trickle’ if you want to. For what we’re doing, a ‘trickle’ is enough. We are not, fer Chrissake, trying to restage the invasion of Normandy.”
“Even if we use the trucks,” James Nichols pointed out, “we’re not going to set any speed records. We’ve at least graded the roadbed most of the way to Halle, but it’s still going to be a long, slow drive.”
“I know,” Mike agreed. “But two of the boats Eddie’s asking for have their own trailers. If we winch George Watson’s boat up onto one of the converted semitrailers and use one of the coal trucks, we can move Eddie’s entire ‘flotilla’ in a single trip.”