THE MEMBRANE ON THE FINGER

Keep still, said Nael, pulling Valdo's chair over to the window. The blister on his index finger had opened again. The edge of the film was black with flour, and a dark trickle ran down to the palm. Valdo had hidden his hand during the grinding, pressing the base of the stone with his other fingers. Now he kept his arm bent against his chest, as if he could still reach the north access without Nael noticing. Thirty-two minutes remained until the recognition. Ilva left the cold mirror rolled up on the porch and brought a shallow basin, the medical membrane that was left and the bottle of decontaminant. The band on her leg ended two fingers below the recommended mark. She walked distributing her weight with care, an economy her body had learned after the utility company withdrew her field role. Nael rested Valdo's hand on the table. The burn covered almost the whole side of the finger, reddened at the edges and yellow in the centre. The driver tried to close his hand. If you close it, it sticks on the inside, said Ilva. She measured forty millilitres of the water reserved for Antônio and set half aside in the basin. The other half stayed in the glass, covered with a small plate. She dampened a clean cloth, pressed around the wound three times and waited for the flour to soften. On the first pass, corn came out. On the second, black dust. On the third, blood. Valdo was watching the kitchen panel. Twenty-four minutes. Come with me, said Nael. My access ended at the road. Go as far as they let you. Ilva poured four drops of decontaminant onto the cloth. When she touched it to him, Valdo jerked his arm back and knocked some of the water onto the floor. Six millilitres, absorbed by the rubble before she could gather them up. The household panel detected moisture and offered to log a sanitary cleaning. Nobody answered. The camera above the door adjusted its focus to the open hand. Nael placed himself between the lens and the table. Ilva counted to twenty, removed the cloth and examined the skin. The broken part needed to be covered without trapping the discharge. Nine centimetres of membrane remained, enough for Valdo's wound or for two changes of the band on her leg. She cut six. Three centimetres went back into the wrapper. Valdo saw what was left over. I can use cloth. You drive with that hand, she said. Drove. The word stayed near the covered glass. Since the company had taken back the reservoir, he had been receiving calls with no load, routes with no priority and charges tied to a service he could no longer provide. Even so, every morning he washed the inside of the cab with a nearly dry cloth. That morning, he had left the passenger seat free and the door unlocked until the heat came in. Ilva laid the membrane from base to tip, pressing out two pockets of air with her thumb. She covered the opening, left the bend of the finger free and passed a narrow strip around the palm. Nael held Valdo's wrist still. The recognition was eleven minutes away and required nine minutes of walking to the north access. Go, said Valdo. Nael did not let go of the hand. The notification reached the panel when seven minutes were left. The rental company informed him that in-person attendance could be replaced by assisted recognition. An artificial intelligence model would reconstruct the route from Nael's earlier statements, the routes he had sold to the drilling surveys and the images bought by the mining operation. It would remain for the former miner to confirm the sequence with his iris. The upper curve already appeared, suggested in blue. Valdo got up from the chair. The freshly applied membrane paled under the pressure of the blood. He saw the line bend after the broken stake, continue across the ground where the waterwheel had stood and end over the buried house. On the screen, three traces of different thicknesses closed into a single passage. If you run, you'll still make it, said Valdo. Nael pressed the edge of the covering again, which was starting to lift. Ilva counted ten more seconds and added a one-centimetre strip. Two remained of the membrane. The panel closed the in-person entry. The company logged an absence and kept open only the automatic reconstruction, valid until first light. The blue line pulsed on the whitewashed wall, crossing the faces of all three. Ilva gathered the dirty cloth and emptied the fourteen millilitres left in the basin into the soil of a pot. Valdo opened and closed his finger once. The covering held. Nael took the plate that protected Antônio's glass, laid it over the projection and walked to the door. Before leaving, he pulled from the porch the buriti wedge that steadied the mill and shoved it into his pocket.