Gosling was a good man, but the strain was already showing on his face. He was nominally in charge of a refugee agency that had not even existed forty-eight hours earlier. Though doing his best, he was clearly overwhelmed by the scope of the task before him.
“They keep filtering in,” he told her in his sorrowful, laconic manner. “Some of the other towns are worse.”
“So I’ve been told.” Walking past the families was hard. Broodlings gaped up at her out of impossibly wide, confused eyes: they had been forced to surrender the familiar, sometimes at spear or gunpoint, often in the middle of the night. Most families had brought some food with them. That would soon begin to run out, she knew. Then it would be the responsibility of the Commonwealth, as the administering authority, to feed them. She had already made arrangements for individual teams to set aside their regular duties in favor of hunting-and-gathering expeditions. That would help. Whether or not it, in combination with the usual warehoused supplies available in each community, would be enough remained to be seen.
The Sakuntala could help—except that the Sakuntala were the cause of the crisis. The trouble was that many of those who did not agree with the methods being employed by the radicals, and there were many, had been intimidated into refusing assistance. Others gave tacit approval to the end the radicals were striving toward even if they did not agree with the means that were being used. A dangerous majority were indifferent. The result was a carefully crafted conundrum knotty enough to test the skills of a senior diplomat.