THREE TANGERINE SEGMENTS

The luminous band of the cabin measured eight centimetres across. Edna stopped with the tip of her boot a finger away from it, while the panel closed the analysis of the sequence without receiving the origin. The pump worked behind the door, three close pulses, a pause, the interval that sustained the household line. The suspension arrived through the visor against her body. First it erased the curve she could edit. Then it removed her name from the hydraulic roster. Finally, it converted the engineer who had signed off the drain into an accompanied presence. Ilva held the field terminal in front of the threshold. The provisional authorisation to circulate as far as the junction still had four hours left, but did not include granting entry to the technical lead. Edna brought her iris close to the reader. A light ran over the creased skin above her eye and refused access. Origin not declared, said the cabin. The door remained closed. Inside, Mariana was adjusting the diversion for the next shift. They could see her through the darkened glass, her fingers running along the suspended curve and her head tilted to listen to the pump. She touched the cabin's intercom. If the pressure drops, I need her in here. Edna pressed the visor to the luminous band. The interface offered two passages. The first required declaring the company from which she had brought the routine. The routine would be isolated, the household water would lose the interval and the buyer would open an incident against the earlier contract. The second allowed a verifier to take custody of the entry. Whoever authorised it would become answerable for any alteration made during the stay. Ilva read the conditions to the end. The audited channel vibrated in her ear. There was a reply from the man from the other town, received eleven minutes earlier and not yet played. The indicator showed twenty-seven seconds of voice. Edna saw the glow by her ear. You can listen, she said. The pump changed pitch behind the door. Mariana knocked twice on the glass. Ilva opened the message. The male voice asked whether she remembered the smell of the earth when it started to rain, before the panel announced the first drop. Then he laughed at his own question. The recording ended with six seconds of breathing, kept by the network because even hesitation had training value. She asked to reply. She recorded, You appear when I sleep. She listened to her own sentence. It seemed too exact. She deleted it and tried again. Here the earth smells before the water arrives. She deleted that too. On the third recording, the pump muffled half the words. She sent it like that. The pressure fell two points. Mariana opened the intercom again. Now. Ilva offered her face to the reader. The panel recognised her provisional authorisation, compared the strip on her leg with the clinical image and asked for confirmation of custody. She placed her fingerprint on the terminal. The light on the threshold went from blue to yellow. Edna crossed. On the other side, her visor lost its commands. The curves remained in front of her, but each adjustment field acquired the inscription assisted reading. She tried to enlarge the household line with two fingers. The image moved away from her hand. That line arrives late, she said. How much, asked Ilva. Mariana opened the acoustic panel. The noise of the pump came into the cabin cleaner. Edna went closer without touching the curve. She counted four cycles, closed her eyes on the fifth and pointed out a drop before the sensor registered it. Lower the crushing plant by half a point. I can't with you suspended. Then do it because you heard it. Mariana smiled on one side of her mouth. I always wanted to give orders to an engineer. She lowered the crushing plant. The household line rose just enough to recover the copied interval. Edna corrected the position of a clip in her hair and said that, as girls, the two of them had wasted afternoons competing over who could best imitate the call of a seriema. Mariana produced a hoarse sound, drawn out too long. Edna laughed. Ilva tried to imitate it and produced the noise of an unoiled belt. The three of them laughed until the pump covered everything. On the workbench, someone had left three tangerine segments in a washed process container. Mariana ate two. The third was left drying under the light of the indicators. The panel asked for the provenance again. Edna kept her mouth shut. The yellow band on the threshold began to shrink, one segment per minute. When it reached the end, she would be removed from the cabin and Mariana would lose the guidance that did not appear in the operating manual. Ilva opened the custody field and linked the entry to the seven-litre discrepancy. The incident accepted the relation, but added her name to the investigation of the sequence. On the screen, the authorship now had two empty lines. Edna looked at her. The strip on your leg is lit. The door recognised the voice as an attempted declaration and requested repetition. Neither of them repeated it. At night, the parallel ledger received Edna's suspension, the passage authorised by Ilva and the four cycles heard before the sensor. The origin remained blank. In the operation's record, however, two people now owed an answer where before there had been only one.