SEVEN LITRES IN THE CURVE

Stay with the reading for twenty minutes, said Edna, bracing her knee against the service cabinet to see the lower pipe. Ilva did not answer. Tiago's slot would begin in seventeen. The intake pump occupied a narrow room by the Lajes, with new ducts bolted over the old adobe and cabling running across the cracks. The cooled air escaped from the units' cabinet and died two steps away, where the two women were working. At the intake grille, buriti fronds had dried around a deformed bottle. The level was four fingers below the previous week's mark. Edna dipped the flow lens. The scar by her eyebrow tightened when the reading stabilised. You need to go now, she said. I need to finish. You need to take the boy. The screen suspended over the pipework interrupted the pump's curve with a message from the buyer far away. Two foreign magnet manufacturers were fighting in court over a production technique. One accused the other of having taken the process through a former employee. Because of the complaint, routines installed in the mining operation would be subjected to origin verification. Until the end of the analysis, any professional who had altered parameters was to declare where they had learned each sequence. Edna read until the panel returned to the flow. In the lower box, the water lost pressure. First the pipe vibrated. Then the household line dropped below the minimum band. Finally, the cleaning tap by the grille stopped spitting the brown thread they used to remove sediment. What little went on through the conduit headed towards the crushing plant. You were the one who set this sequence, said Ilva. The engineer took out the lens and wiped the tip on her own sleeve. The curve came with me. From where. Edna stared at the tracking camera above the door. The lens turned one degree to follow Neusa, the processing chemist, who passed carrying two acid samples in a holder strapped to her chest. The skin of her fingers was whitened by the washings and she walked quickly to keep the mineral separation from losing temperature. When they were alone, Edna brought her mouth close to the noise of the pump. I brought it from another contract. I adjusted it here. The sentence remained between the pipe and the wall. Outside, it would be a confession of technical theft. Inside the valley, it kept the household water going for nine minutes each cycle, when the operation allowed it. The routine disputed abroad had arrived late in Buritaçu. It came already turned into a question for an engineer's body. Ilva checked the time. Thirteen minutes. The clinic would not accept Tiago unaccompanied. The temporary visit had preserved the house and taken from him the qualified person who could escort another patient. Now the same classification left his burn waiting in a queue that recognised no debt, food or fear. Edna held out the lens. Go. You can't validate my reading. I can measure. You can't validate. I can leave it unvalidated. The pump changed pitch. Mariana would have noticed before either of them, but she was serving the third shift on the external line, barred from crossing the residential sector. Ilva touched two fingers to the pipe. The vibration came irregular, three close pulses and a pause. Edna knew that curve because she had copied it. The village received water because someone, in some earlier contract, had discovered how to steal six seconds from the crushing plant without dropping the pressure in the tanks. The panel asked for the declaration of the routine's provenance. Edna reduced the brightness with her palm. The question remained visible, projected onto the water standing at the bottom of the gutter. If I answer, they suspend the sequence, she said. And if you don't answer. Suspension from duty. Ilva took the field terminal from the holder at her waist and put it in her hands. The inspection had been closed since the sampling, but the device still showed the local measurements during the provisional circulation period. Edna held the terminal with excessive care, as someone does who knows the price of each permission. Take the reading to the end, said Ilva. Without harmonising. The engineer raised her eyes. You're going to keep the origin. I'm going to take Tiago. It was not a clean exchange. Edna was left with an instrument that did not belong to her and with a curve whose provenance could expel her from the operation. Ilva was leaving, her own work in the hands of the woman who had signed off the drain. Between the two of them, the obligation acquired duration without needing a deadline. One would protect the interval stolen by the other. The other would keep open the measurement Ilva was leaving behind. Eight minutes were left. She ran along the side band of the crushing plant. The heat came in through her clothes and tightened the strip on her leg. By the pump housing, the panel repeated the foreign dispute in silence, reduced now to three technical words, property, origin, containment. Tiago was waiting under the clinic's awning, his protected hand against his chest. When he saw her, he stood up too quickly and dropped the empty water container he had been holding between his feet. You came, he said. Ilva offered her iris to the clinical access with forty seconds left. The portal recognised her bond as the person responsible for the treatment, without altering his residential status. The door opened only for the two of them. At the intake, Edna completed the reading and found a difference of seven litres from the declared curve. She could have corrected it. She kept the number. At night, the parallel ledger would receive the flow, the time of the treatment and the name of who was left owing silence to whom.