The offers were waiting for him before the first unit was.
He filled the intake by bucket at first light and opened Chat.
After Reeve had told him to drink his water, Adam had filtered on his own name.
This morning there were forty lines under Kessler and more coming.
He read down it sorting rather than reading.
Most were asking.
Some had a number in them.
A man two sectors over offered four wood for a unit; a woman in Sector 14 offered a rope and said it was all she had; somebody offered a fish, one, and apologised for it.
Three said they had no bottle.
One line, from a handle he did not keep, said only water please, no full stop, no offer, and he read it and moved on because there was nothing in it he could act on.
[Barter: 0/5 today.
Limits: 10 kg per trade, 3 item types per side.]
Five.
The purifier would make six Water units today.
Two full 1 L bottles held clean water; two clean bottles were empty, and the green bottle still held guano.
When he sent Water in one of his bottles, he checked Return Container so that same bottle came back empty.
A buyer’s offered empty bottle was a separate item.
This morning he had forty offers to choose from.
He took the four-wood offer first.
The man offered an empty 1 L bottle with the wood.
Adam put one full bottle of Water on his side and checked Return Container.
The other side showed Wood ×3 and the man’s Empty Bottle ×1.
Three.
Not four.
The man wrote: sorry, 3, I counted wrong, the fourth’s my paddle.
Adam confirmed.
His own bottle came back empty under Return Container, and the man’s empty bottle arrived with the three planks.
Adam now had one more clean bottle than he had started with: his returned one and the one the man had offered.
The second went the same way: Adam checked Return Container, sent one full 1 L bottle, and got his empty bottle back alongside the man’s empty bottle and three wood.
The third was the woman with the rope.
She offered the rope and an empty 1 L bottle; Adam checked Return Container and put one full bottle of Water up.
Then the window put a third line under her offer: Cloth Scrap ×1, and tried to add a fourth before the panel greyed it out.
[Item types: 3/3.]
She wrote in global, under his name: wanted to add a fish, it won’t let me, take the cloth.
A rope was a unit on its own by yesterday’s prices; the cloth was her paying over to be sure of him.
He confirmed.
Rope, 3.
Cloth Scrap, 1.
Wood, 17.
Three trades, three Water in three separate 1 L bottles.
His bottles came back empty, and the three buyers’ empty bottles were theirs to send; Adam filled the bottles he had room to fill as the purifier made Water.
He had used three of his five trades, with two left.
He sat down and looked at what a day’s water turned into now.
Eighteen wood, if he sold all six.
Or six rope.
Or twelve fish, which would rot.
He had a list on the back of a receipt that said scrap, and nobody in forty lines had said scrap.
The fourth offer had run over the limit and been cut and carried on underneath, and he nearly filtered past it because it did not have a number in.
[OwenF] Kessler, now then.
I’m in 14, north of you I think, I’m not good with the map.
I’ve been sat looking at my gift box for ten days and I’ll be honest with you son I can’t eat seeds.
Radish, lettuce
[OwenF] broad bean, onion sets and six seed potatoes, more than I ever put in the allotment in a year.
I’ve read you’ve a purifier.
I’d not ask if I weren’t at 28.
I’m not begging.
I’m offering.
[OwenF] What would you give for them?
I don’t know what they’re worth here.
Nobody’s asked.
At twenty-eight per cent Thirst, Owen would soon struggle to think clearly.
Adam remembered how hard it had been to make decisions when his own level was low.
Owen had managed to explain what he had and ask for a trade.
Somebody wrote trading a hobby for a drink, mate, and drew a run of replies Adam ignored.
He filtered on seeds.
Forty lines, all sellers.
He did not know how long a radish took.
He opened the Crafting tab and read down it and there was nothing about seeds and nothing about soil and no recipe that took either.
There was a Storage Crate that held forty of anything and did not grow it.
Soil was a thing Pilgrim had put his hands in, on an island, a week ago, and had not been heard from since.
He had no soil or planter.
The purifier would replace four units of water by tomorrow; the chance to buy these seeds might not come again.
He wrote back in global, under Owen’s name, and kept it short because the old man could not afford a long reply.
[Kessler] OwenF.
Radish, lettuce, bean.
How many of each?
[OwenF] Radish 40, lettuce 40, bean 20, onion 20, potatoes 6.
I’d not sell the lot to one man, son, that’s not sense.
Say 10 radish, 5 lettuce, 5 bean.
What’s that worth in water?
Four units would be replaced within a day.
They would also take a man at twenty-eight out of immediate danger.
[Kessler] 4 units.
2 now, 2 tomorrow.
I’ve only got bottles.
Have you a bottle?
[OwenF] I’ve a tin the seeds came in and a shoe.
No bottle.
I’ll send yours back the minute they’re empty, I don’t want you thinking I’d keep them.
[Kessler] Send them back when you’ve drunk it.
Not before.
Slowly.
Don’t gulp.
[OwenF] I’ve read that.
Kind of you to say it.
Opening the window now, bear with me, I’ve not done this before.
The window opened.
His side of it filled one line at a time, with a pause between each, as if he were putting the things down carefully on a bench: Radish Seeds ×10.
Lettuce Seeds ×5.
Broad Bean Seeds ×5.
Then a fourth line began and greyed before the name was on it, and stopped.
[Item types: 3/3 (OwenF).
Weight: 2.1 kg / 10 kg.]
Adam put the two bottles on his side.
The old man’s confirm came, and he gave his, and the bottles were gone and three small paper packets lay on the tile in front of him, the kind from a rack by the door of a garden centre, faded, one soft at the corner where it had been wet once and dried.
The panel had already read them.
[Radish Seeds ×10.
Sow in soil or planter.
Matures in ~25 days.]
[Lettuce Seeds ×5.
Sow in soil or planter.
~30 days.]
[Broad Bean Seeds ×5.
Sow in soil or planter.
~60 days to pods.
Seed can be saved.]
Twenty-five.
He turned the radish packet over and there was a picture on the front of a bunch of them, red and white, on a wooden board, and it was the most food he had seen in eleven days.
Or planter, the panel said.
He read the three lines again.
There was no planter on his list.
There was a word, though, and the panel did not use words it did not mean; it had said Poor on a rope.
If the panel said planter, there was a planter, and someone had a blueprint for it, or someone would lay the right things out one day and find it stitching.
He put the word on the receipt under scrap, and underlined it, and put the three packets in the crate with the eggs and the guano and the feathers, where they would stay dry.
[OwenF] Got them.
Thank you, son.
I’ve had a third of a bottle and I’m going to sit here with the rest and not be greedy.
My Thirst says 36.
I’d forgotten what a number going the right way looked like.
[DELL] Water man in 14 just committed four litres for packets of dust.
Somebody tell him there’s no soil.
There’s no SOIL, mate.
Look at your map.
Adam did not reply.
He put the seed packets away.
The next message did not come from the column.
It came straight to him, marked as sent to him and no one else, from a handle he had not seen.
[Tessa_M] Nurse.
A&E, Manchester.
Sector 14, south of you.
Field kit: antiseptic, bandages, sutures, painkillers.
I’m not selling the kit.
I’ll sell out of it.
1 antiseptic for 2 water, standing, any day, as long as we both last.
[Tessa_M] Not today.
I’ve water today.
I want the arrangement, not the trade.
When you cut yourself, and you will, you message me before it goes red.
Don’t waste it on scratches.
He read it and thought about his hand a week ago, hot and red at the edges from a gull rock, and the unit of clean water he had poured over it because it was all he had.
[Kessler] Agreed.
1 antiseptic, 2 water, standing.
I’ll message before it goes red.
[Tessa_M] Good.
That’s the whole conversation.
Go and sell your water.
While he waited for Owen’s bottles, Adam ate two fish from the crate raw.
The third smelled sour, so he threw it away.
Four hours later, Owen sent the two bottles back empty in a return window with nothing on Adam’s side.
He wrote that after his first third-bottle message he had taken the rest in slow sips, then finished the second bottle the same way.
His Thirst had reached 74, and he was going to lie down.
Adam now had all seven clean 1 L bottles back: three held the day’s remaining 3 Water, and four were empty.
He asked Adam to tell him if the radishes grew.
Nobody had told him anything about their plants in ten days, and he missed it.
[Barter: 4/5 today.
Resets at 00:00.]