THE CRUST ON THE RING

The spanner slipped once on the hex nut and split the skin of Edna's finger. Blood appeared under the mineral dust, a short line, soon darkened by the heat of the access box. She pressed the cloth against her hand, fitted the tool again and turned left until the metal gave with a low crack. The box sat by the upper street, buried halfway under the bank the old rain had opened. Above it, the mining company's ducts ran fastened to the adobe façade of the old pump house, with thick cables climbing the wall and entering the cooled cabinet. The earth around it kept the marks of deep tyres, but no moisture. Nael would have said that grass grew knee-high there when he guided the first machines. Now the grass roots came up dry, thin, mixed with the pale dust. Sales stood two steps away, watching on the body panel as the eleven-day charge slowly diminished. They had not given her back the visor, nor the roster. They had given her a field task that required no technical command and demanded back, knees, hands. The reducing valve was locked by a yellow crust. The water of the lower village arrived there before dividing into the branch lines, and the crust closed the passage like a hardened tongue. Edna slid the curved blade into the gap of the ring, scraped the first circle and collected the pieces in a containment tray. She could not leave residue on the ground. Any fragment carried by the wind would enter the health risk register and hand the blame back to the resident who opened the next tap. Mariana came along the street with the thermal container hanging from her arm. The fifth compensation shift still kept her near the pumps. She stopped without greeting anyone, knelt beside the box and held the maintenance lamp over the fitting. The light revealed a crack in the inner ring. If you take it out all at once, said Mariana, the pressure eats the edge. Edna knew the threat. Taking out too little preserved the part, but kept the water trapped. Taking out too much could open the line and pour into the bank what was missing in the houses. She ran the blade flat, almost without force, as she had years before in the provisional conduits of the mine workings, when she still believed that a well-solved calculation was enough to give the water a destination. Across the street, Antônio was unloading ice at the association's bar. The cubes arrived in a cooler box linked to his balance. He took one out with tongs, wrapped it in a cloth and offered it to Edna. She looked at Sales. Medical compensation doesn't cover it, he said. Antônio went back inside with the ice. The bar kept that cold for whoever could pay for it. They say that out there they're going to give rights to datacenters, he said from the doorway. The right to draw power first, the right to choose the water before the town. Sales raised his eyes from the panel. It's a rumour, he said. Antônio shrugged. Rumours change prices too. The blade found a cavity. Edna pulled out a block of crust larger than the palm of her hand. The pressure blew from below, hot, laden with fine sand. Mariana closed her fingers over the outer rim to stop it from springing off. The jet struck Edna's wrist, washed away the blood and opened the already injured skin again. The artificial intelligence that reviewed the thermal contracts had just sent Sales a notification. He read it without moving his face. The datacenter's cooling allotment would receive energy priority that afternoon. The household pump would lose power to sustain the temperature of the machines. Mariana saw the change of colour on his panel. Is it going to drop, she asked. Sales took a second longer than he needed. The curve will be adjusted. Edna dropped the blade into the tray. There was still crust on the ring, a narrow band, enough to stop the flow from rising too far when the pump was compressed. Mariana understood before she heard. The repair could end clean, and the village would receive for a few minutes water that would soon be withdrawn by the new priority. It could also stay incomplete, leaving the material reduction inscribed in the part, outside the sentence Sales would carry away. She brought the spanner closer. Finish it, said Sales. Edna took the ice Antônio had left on the box's ledge, already turning to water inside the cloth. She pressed it to the open finger. Then she fitted the blade to the remaining crust and scraped only half. The valve answered with a deep noise. In the branch lines of the lower village, the taps gave a thread less weak. Mariana closed the lid of the box and tightened the four screws until her hand trembled. Sales recorded partial service and deducted a morning from Edna's charge. The review of her commands remained scheduled for after two shifts. Later, the parallel ledger received the measurement of the opening, the collected crust and the reduction that had remained inside the ring. It also received the rumour of the distant rights, already turned into thermal priority before it arrived whole in the valley.