Washington, D.C. · June 21, 2230
At six-seventeen the ration counter decided that morning had not happened.
It printed a white strip, rang its bell, and asked the line to return yesterday.
Trey read this twice. He had been awake since four, and yesterday was not accepting visitors.
“Put your jug back,” the clerk told him.
“It’s full.”
“The machine says it isn’t.”
Trey tipped a little water over the counter. The clerk rescued his sleeve.
“We have procedures for discrepancies.”
“Have you got a towel for this one?”
Behind them, a woman shifted a sleeping child to her other shoulder. The line now reached the end of the awning. Della had come to check a pressure rattle. She found eight full containers, eight rejected slips, and the clerk trying to put yesterday back into a brass box with a pencil.
She laid her wrench across its glass eye.
“Dead five.”
The clerk pointed to the queue.
“They can wait somewhere shaded,” she said. “It can wait here.”
They listened. The rattle came from the wall, not the pipe. When the five minutes were up, Della examined the hatch. It had one ordinary screw somebody had decorated with a warning not to touch it. Della touched it.
The local clock kept going. The paper feed remained at six-sixteen. Between them was a little socket with a new wire in it. She followed the wire behind the wall to a receiver she had not installed.
“Who put this in?”
“Service man.”
“Name?”
“He had a case.”
“So do diseases.”
Trey offered to fetch Lil. The clerk said the deliveries were her problem anyway, which gave Trey a pleasingly official reason to leave.
Lil arrived with Abegale and an empty cart. She looked at the full containers first.
“Water’s here. Give them their receipts.”
“The account won’t clear,” said the clerk.
“Then write them.”
“On what authority?”
Lil reached for her invoice book. Abegale held it shut.
“If your number goes on those, you’re accepting the charge.”
“What charge?” Della asked.
Abegale turned the counter’s side tray toward them. Eight small bills lay inside. Each was headed CONTINUITY RESTORATION.
Trey took his. “It’s charging me for the time it lost?”
“Plus handling,” said Abegale.
Lil read the fine print. Della disconnected the receiver. The counter caught up with the yard clock, found its own lever log, and abruptly remembered all eight containers. It printed their receipts.
The bills remained.
The clerk began collecting them. Abegale put one finger on the stack.
“Those too.”
“They’ve been canceled.”
“Then they’ll be particularly easy to give back.”
Tamsin came down from the roof with a tester still clipped to her pocket. Della showed her the receiver.
“No transmitter,” Tamsin said. “It only listens.”
“To what?” Lil asked.
“Give me room.”
They gave her approximately six inches. She made them improve it.
The receiver’s last stored instruction was a clock correction. Not a command to charge anyone. A perfectly ordinary correction, repeated on a frequency used by several kinds of salvaged counter. She copied it onto a card and left the original in the box.
“Bad time signal?” Trey asked.
“Possibly.”
“Good scam?” Lil asked.
“Possibly both. I’ve checked one machine.”
Three people from the queue stayed to verify the count. Eight containers. Eight receipts. Eight charges canceled. The woman with the sleeping child tied the third witness knot and asked whether she could finally go home.
“Yes,” Della said.
They put the receiver in a tin. The clerk opened the tap by hand. Somebody hung the chipped cup handle-out while he found more paper. For a while the morning became what it had looked like before: people filling containers, somebody complaining about a wheel.
Abegale did not leave.
She was holding the bills against the light. On their backs, beneath a transparent coating, tiny numbers marked when each charge had been prepared.
“What?” Lil asked.
“Five-forty-two.”
“The clock was wrong.”
“This isn’t the counter’s clock. These were printed elsewhere.”
Trey looked from the bills to the tin. “Somebody booked our inconvenience?”
Tamsin went back to the receiver and counted the empty sockets on its bracket.
There were three.
The relay is still listening.