READING ARCH

The lock on the back door gave three short notes when Valdo pressed his face to the reader. Nael was already outside, under the eaves, with the half of the corn dough kept in his shirt pocket. The yard remained behind them, with the screen around the seedling sagging too low in one corner and the saúvas coming in through the gap as if they had been invited. Ilva stayed by the sink, looking at Antônio's glass, uncovered on the table. Twenty millilitres were enough to wet someone's mouth and for nothing more. She did not ask them to come back early. The request would have entered the household log with the weight of an order. The panel by the threshold had been tracking Valdo since the declaration at the broken stake. The provisional authorisation appeared in yellow over his chest. Accompaniment relocation valid until the team arrives. Individual route. Deviation from route subject to mobilisation charge. Nael stopped in the shade of the door. You're going alone, he said. Valdo ran his thumb along the edge of the membrane on his index finger, without touching the wound. Alone, the stake stays within reach. They ask what comes after it. The door remained open behind them. It was a narrow opening, made for the coming and going of crates and people, now watched by a tracking camera fixed to the frame. The panel searched for Nael's face and returned an old restriction. Civilian transit unavailable. Valdo read another line that had just come up. The rental company had recalibrated the value of the heavy-mineral routes. Each validated stretch would now yield more credit, provided it included cargo access and a thirty-day stay for technical review. The price of the upper curve grew on the screen. So did the debt it could pay down. Far away, machines had begun to make magnets from earth taken out of the country itself. In Buritaçu, the news arrived like this, a larger sum around a man's throat. Valdo tilted his face to the panel. With this I pay off two charges, he said. Maybe three. Nael pulled the dough out of his pocket and tore off a corner with his teeth. He chewed slowly. The corn was dry at the edges, still moist in the middle. Nael put the rest back in his pocket. The house is already in debt. The sentence hung between the sink and the yard. Ilva lifted the lid of the shallow pan, checked that the cold mirror was still covered, and closed it again. Then she brought Antônio's portion to the table, moving it closer to the glass. The door reader warned that Valdo's authorisation would lose priority in four minutes. He had to cross the street, reach the blue strip of the licensed polygon and hand his body over to the crossing point. The licensed polygon, the mining operation's digital fence, lit blue lines on the ground at night and recognised who was allowed to cross it. During the day, what remained in the air was a vibration that dogs avoided. Nael looked at the seedling. When I played ball back here, Antônio used to hide the refrigerator under the table, he said. We ran until it got dark. Then we'd listen to the motor trying to start. Valdo knew that story by halves. Now he saw Nael search with his eyes for the place where the ground dipped a little before the screen. The buried house began far beyond that drop, but the old man's body still measured it without needing to go in. You want to know where it is, asked Valdo. I want you to get to the stake. Ilva opened the door all the way. The camera raised its focus to the clear passage, then offered an option that had not appeared before. Inclusion of a living source in the in-person collection. The living source was whoever crossed to point out a route with their own body. In exchange, every step, every pause and every word came to belong to the company's technical volume. Nael read the offer without moving closer. If you go in like that, said Ilva, they can use your walking. They can use my walking from outside too. Nael touched the wood of the door frame. The door kept a raised chip of paint at shoulder height, left by an ice box many years before. Nael went past it and out into the street. Valdo followed. The distance to the licensed polygon fit in fewer than three hundred steps. Neither of them counted. The sun was sinking over the datacenter ducts, which released steam upwards while the houses held their doors and windows open, waiting for any draught of air that did not come. On the verge, two geckos hid under the thin shade of a pipe. The earth around them looked sifted. The blue strip appeared beside the broken stake. The team had not arrived yet. There was only a reading arch fixed between two poles, tall enough for a truck and narrow enough to make a person hesitate. Valdo presented his face first. The arch brightened. Provisional access confirmed. Accompaniment authorised as far as the stake. He took a step and the light held Nael back outside. Living source available, the panel reported. Valdo turned. His face had dust on the forehead and a deep shadow under the eyes. Stay, he said. The short curve stays with me. You'll get it wrong on purpose. I get it wrong when I have to. Nael smiled with only one side of his mouth. That was how he used to play with the men who needed to come back to the bar the next day. He gave one cloud as an answer, hid another on the horizon, lost a portion to make the conversation last. The panel cut the offer down to two minutes. The company added the recalibrated value of the whole route. The sum pulsed between them, clean, enough to buy the silence of many people and the water of no one. Nael raised his face to the reader. Include it, he said. The camera searched for his iris. When the reading was over, the blue strip opened a narrow corridor. Valdo went in first. Nael went through after, with the corn dough still in his pocket, and the arch closed behind them.