Chapter 5: The Water Pump

I studied the list by stove light.

Forty-three names. Forty-three clocks. Every one between two and four minutes.

"Same hand," I said. "Somebody types these in."

Brand read it over my shoulder, close enough that I felt him breathing.

"So they can cull any of us," he said. "Whenever they want."

"Whenever one of you gets too strong to be useful."

Sable sat on the floor with her back to the stove. "What do we do with it?"

"Nothing yet," I said. "A list from a stolen rig is a rumor. I need it in front of people who can't look away."

Brand went out to sleep on the porch in the wind.

In the morning I asked Gran to call the town together.

She looked at me over her flatbread. "Why?"

"Because I have something to tell them."

"Tell me first."

"I can build a shield over this town."

Gran chewed slowly. Then she banged a spoon on a pot lid until the whole row came out of their containers.

They met at the dead water pump in the square.

It was a big rusted pre-collapse unit on a concrete pad.

A hand pump was bolted on beside it, because nobody could fix the real one.

Brand leaned on a wall at the back with his arms folded.

I stood on an oil drum.

"Haven's shield is cracked," I said. "It's going to fail."

Silence.

Then somebody laughed, and the whole square laughed with him.

"The Haven girl says the sky's falling!"

"Has been for a hundred years, sweetheart!"

I waited until it ran out.

"When it fails, the hollows will go through Haven in an hour. Then they'll come down the highway."

"Your walls won't stop them."

That stopped some of the laughing.

The oldest man on the salvage crew spat on the pad. "And you're going to stop them with what? A filter rack?"

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