Harlan’s raft bumped against Adam’s before dawn.
It was a small knock, followed by Chloe telling him to stop pushing it with his foot.
“I’m trying to get my oar out,” Harlan said.
“Your oar is on my side.”
Adam got up and loosened the ropes between the rafts.
The water had settled overnight.
When Harlan pulled away, his raft took the small net and the covered fish box with it.
Chloe drifted a few metres in the other direction.
She had an armful of kelp caught on a line, collected while the others were asleep.
“That came past at first light,” she said.
“If I leave it in a heap it’ll stink.
Can I use the dry bit of your raft?”
Adam moved his spare bottle out of her way.
The corner he had repaired held while she stepped across, but he asked her to use the centre from then on.
She laid the kelp beside the shade, away from the planter.
Harlan set his net where the three rafts had been tied and began fishing.
They could work near one another without pulling on the same ropes all day.
The purifiers gave Adam their first two units by midmorning.
He filled the jerrycan, drank from a bottle, and set out another empty.
Chloe was already stripping long fibres from the kelp.
She had a pile of clean strands at one end of the raft and the wet remains at the other.
“How much do you need?” she asked.
“Rope.
I used the last spare one yesterday.”
“I can make some once this dries.”
She worked the next strip free with a quick pull.
Adam had broken most of his when he tried to do the same thing.
Chloe held the slippery stalk down with her knee and got another strand out whole.
“Vet nursing is mostly restraining things that don’t want to be held,” she said.
“Kelp’s easier than a frightened cat.”
Harlan called that the cat would bite less.
Chloe threw a handful of wet scraps at him.
Most fell into the sea.
Adam had eight fish from the exchange last night.
Six were raw and had to be cooked or eaten today.
The two cooked ones went to breakfast.
He put four more on the stand, kept the remaining two covered, and checked Barter while they cooked.
Someone in Sector 14 wanted clean water but offered only one plank per unit.
A week ago Adam would have taken three.
He offered to buy dry cloth instead, and the person stopped answering.
He had other work.
The storm had taken his storage crate and everything in it.
Wood and bottles now occupied the clear part of the raft.
He still had nine Wood and one loose Rope.
A new crate would use six of the Wood and that Rope, leaving no spare for the next weak corner.
The fish would spoil faster if he could not keep them covered, and Chloe’s kelp needed floor space too.
He laid the materials out and confirmed the recipe.
The crate formed beside the shade after half an hour, dry and square.
He moved the fish into it, with a cloth over the top that Harlan had brought for his box.
Harlan wanted the cloth back when the fish were gone.
Adam said he would return it tonight.
[Storage Crate complete.]
Three Wood remained.
Adam wrote that on the supermarket receipt, beneath the ten units of water he had counted last night.
The biro still worked if he pressed hard.
He could fit perhaps three more lines on the back.
Chloe watched him cross out the Rope.
“Is that your entire accounting system?”
“It was a shopping list.”
“It looks like one.”
She returned to the kelp.
Harlan came alongside around noon and passed them two fish from the net, smaller than the ones from yesterday.
He had eaten his own catch at dawn.
His knee seemed better while he sat, but he kept it straight when he moved from one side of the raft to the other.
Chloe brought her seed tin over after the midday water was ready.
She set it down near the planter and opened it carefully.
Her three radish seedlings were in the cut bottle beside it, their roots held in old kelp.
Their stems were long and pale, and the first leaves had turned yellow at the edges.
“They get enough water,” she said.
“I keep them out of the worst sun.”
Adam checked the bottle.
The kelp had settled into a wet dark plug.
It was the same sort of material in his planter, before he had added the guano from the bird stack.
The System still called his medium Poor, but Chloe’s bottle had no extra nutrient at all.
“Could they go in your planter?”
“It’s full.
Four radishes, and there’s no sign of them yet.”
Chloe pinched one pale leaf between her fingers, then let it go.
“Then I’ll keep these wet.”
Chloe closed her tin.
“I’ve more seeds than I can grow.
Two Water for the packets I can’t plant?”
Adam glanced at her three seedlings.
“All the unplanted ones?”
“Those stay with me.
The packets can go.”
He passed her two full 1 L bottles, one litre in each.
Chloe poured the Water into her own bottles and handed his back empty.
Then she folded twenty-seven unplanted seeds into three paper packets and gave them to him.
Harlan, fishing close enough to hear, said he wanted no part in vegetable prices until there were vegetables.
By late afternoon the kelp fibres had dried enough for Chloe to start twisting them.
Her first short length was uneven.
The next stayed together when she pulled it.
She left both lengths on her raft to finish tomorrow; the System had not called either one a Rope yet.
Adam bought three Wood for one unit of Water, sent in a full 1 L bottle.
The same bottle came back empty in a second exchange.
The price in the other offer was lower, but this seller could return the container.
Cloud had limited the purifiers to five units.
After his three, Chloe’s two and the trade, he had nine stored.
Harlan had taken one of the cooked fish rather than water.
Regional Chat cut through the talk on the rafts.
[Marnie_S] Frey’s people took my tarp.
Said it was for the group.
I am not in their group.
[Reeve] How many of them?
[Marnie_S] Eight rafts.
North of us, maybe four kilometres.
They called it a contribution.
[ChloeB] Did they hurt you?
[Marnie_S] No.
They had more people.
I gave it up.
Adam put the barter window away.
Four kilometres was not visible from their low rafts in the haze.
Harlan had stopped pulling at the net.
“That’s not a group,” he said.
“That’s a landlord.”
He asked Marnie where she was drifting and told her to stay south of the large patch of red plastic he had passed earlier.
That was all he could tell her from here.
Adam did not post the number of purifiers he owned or the fact that three rafts now met at night.
He moved the water bottles under the shade before the others came back alongside.
At dusk they tied the three rafts together again.
Harlan’s net came out of the water with four more small fish.
They cooked three for supper and ate them; the fourth stayed covered for morning.
Chloe set her bottle of seedlings on the safest part of her raft, beyond the reach of the ropes between them.
Adam put the seed papers inside the crate.
Eight fish remained with him: five raw and three cooked.
Frey’s eight rafts stayed out of sight to the north.