Even in the office of the head of Agriculture, Jenn could hear the whir of pumps, the gurgle of fluids through pipes, the mechanical sounds of robots at work in a greenhouse just beyond the wall. But it was easy enough to block it out even as she and Alice were making small talk over coffee.
They had spent the bulk of their meeting going over figures — production and consumption, goods in stock, all the things that were essential for maintaining a settlement that was still more like a scientific research outpost crossed with a military base. At least things were looking a lot better than they had even a few days ago, when it was uncertain what would be happening with the damaged irrigation tubing in those planters. Yes, they’d lost some plants, which meant some production gone, but they were already replanting those trays, and it wouldn’t be long before the new plants were sprouting and growing.
As they talked, their conversation turned to more distant family still on Earth. It was a subject to be handled very delicately in this uncertain situation, but Jenn felt reasonably confident that it would not seem insensitive to mention a FaceTime call with one of Ken’s sisters. It had been something of a surprise, so there’d been no time to let Brenda know so she could bring the grandkids over, but the younger kids had loved seeing their aunt, even if only as a rather distorted image on the screen of a tablet.
Alice nodded, although her smile was a bit wan. “At least you know they’re safe, which has to be a comfort. Yesterday Bill got some more bad news from his brother Fred. Things are getting even worse down there. Apparently someone from one of the cities broke quarantine and decided to look for a place out in the country to hole up for the duration. Except they were already infected, and apparently they infected pretty much the whole town. The post office, the feed store, the grain elevator, the local FS distributor, you name it, it’s closed because everyone’s down sick. He’s starting to really wonder how they’ll keep things going.”
“That’s not good.”
“No, it’s not. Right now they’re dumping milk just to make sure the cows don’t go dry. But what happens if they get to the point they can’t keep the milking parlors going? Say they lose power, and they don’t have the backup power to run the milking machines. When Bill was a kid, their herd was small enough that they could hand-milk the cows in an emergency, even if they had to dump the milk because it wouldn’t meet FDA standards. But these days, they just don’t have enough people to get all the cows milked often enough to keep them from going dry. And once that happens, you’re stuck feeding dry cows until you can get them bred and the calves delivered.”
Jenn nodded in understanding. “I may be a city girl, but I’m also a member of La Leche League, so yes, I am acquainted with the physiology of lactation.”
Alice smiled. She might be just enough older to have had her kids when bottles were still the norm, but she was never the sort to be judgemental about other women’s choices on feeding their babies. “Now imagine that sort of situation playing out in farms all over the country as things start unraveling. They’ve got plenty of livestock, and crops are already in the fields, but what happens when they can’t bring the necessary resources to bear to get those livestock to slaughter and the crops harvested and binned? We could be looking at a situation like the old USSR used to have, where crops rotted in the fields for want of labor.”
“Which raises the question of how much longer it will be before even the US is looking at actual famine. Not just shortages of certain products, but literally not enough food to go around.”
“That’s what concerns me. So far, most of us have been lucky, and our families dirtside have been spared for the most part from the diablovirus. But have they been spared just to fall victim to starvation?”