He was awake before the light and had been for some time, lying on his side with his face a hand’s width from the wooden wall of the box, listening to it do nothing.
The sky went grey behind the purifier.
He watched the clear sheet on top of it come out of the dark, a slope of nothing with the grey in it, and then, when the first edge of the sun was on the horizon and the light came flat across the water and hit the sheet from the side, he saw the underside of it fog.
Not much.
A breath on a window.
He got up on one elbow and put his face close.
The fog thickened as the sun climbed, and thickened, and then somewhere near the top edge a drop formed, hung, and ran down the inside of the slope to the front lip and was gone into the trough.
He watched a second drop do the same thing.
Then a third.
Then he made himself lie back down, because a man watching a drip would not make the drip faster, and because the headache had come with him into the day and was worse when he held his head up.
He gave it until the sun was a hand above the horizon before he looked in the trough.
A finger’s depth of water lay along the bottom of it.
He did not touch it.
He filled the two bottles over the side, poured them into the intake at the back, filled them again, poured them, and lay down.
By what he judged was half past eight the trough was full to the lip, and the panel, when he opened it, had put a number beside the purifier’s name where the word Ready had been.
Output: 1.
He held the clear bottle under the spout and tipped the box very slightly, and the water ran out of the trough into the bottle in a thin clear stream, and when the trough was empty the bottle was full to the shoulder, and the panel said Bottle: Water (1 L).
Water, it said.
Not seawater.He drank a third, stopped, then drank another third.
The water was warm and flat.
His stomach cramped briefly after days without a proper drink.
He waited until it settled before finishing the bottle.
The headache eased over the next half hour, though it did not disappear.
His mouth felt less dry.
The next time he urinated over the edge, it was paler.
[Thirst 55%]One litre had raised Thirst by 24 points.
The purifier had made that litre in about two hours of weak morning sun.
He needed more water today, and the sun would stay on the raft for hours.
He filled the intake five bottles at a time.
Even with the headache easing, carrying seawater in a bottle took too long.
He wrote “bucket” on the receipt.
The second unit came at half past ten, near enough.
He decanted it into the green bottle and screwed the cap on and stood it in the shade of the box, and looked at it, one litre of clean water that he was not drinking, and the look lasted longer than he meant it to.
Then the chat, because he had the time and had not had it before.
[Pilgrim] Island.
Not joking.
Trees, a beach, actual soil, I put my hands in it.
North of me, Sector 11 I think.
Drifting toward it.
Will report.
[DELL] Pilgrim mate there are no islands.
The map has nothing on it.
You’ve been in the sun.
[Pilgrim] The map doesn’t show islands.
It doesn’t show you either.
I’m looking at it.
[Saltking] Day 4 briefing.
1) Thirst is the killer; hunger is weeks away.
2) Full sun costs ~10 points a day extra, cover up.
3) Rain always comes.
Be ready to catch it.
[Saltking] 4) Wood, scrap, cloth will be the currencies.
5) When trade opens, route intelligence from this handle.
Follow the name.
Saltking was right about thirst and sun.
His claim that rain always came was a guess.
Adam closed the briefing.
Pilgrim’s island was harder to dismiss.
If there was soil, something might grow there.
[Kessler] Pilgrim, did the island show up on your Map when you got close?
Is there anywhere you can land without losing your raft?
His message vanished into the moving column.
He filtered for Pilgrim and waited through another refill of the purifier.
No answer appeared.
He could not tell whether Pilgrim was still heading for the island or had reached it.
Then, because he had told himself he would, he filtered on Marnie.
Nothing.
He widened the search to Sector 14 and thirst.
There were fewer messages than yesterday, none from Marnie.
He closed Chat and filled the intake.
When the third unit came, he drank it.
Once his thirst eased, he noticed how hungry he was.
The panel showed Hunger 50%.
A fishing line needed one rope and one scrap, but he had no rope and no bait.
He added it to the list on his receipt.
That afternoon, he lost half a unit to overflow.
He had lain down after the twelfth bottle trip, with the jacket shell over his face, for what he told himself was ten minutes.
It was more.
When he sat up the sun had moved and the front of the purifier was wet down its whole face, a dark stain on the wood from the lip of the trough to the planks, and the planks were wet, and the water was running off the edge of the raft in a thin line, into the sea, where it had come from.
The trough held a unit.
It did not hold a unit and a half.
He had left it, and it had filled, and the machine had gone on making water at the same rate with nowhere to put it, and the overflow had gone over the lip, and down, and away.
The clear bottle caught what remained.
Half a unit had run onto the deck while he slept.
The green bottle was already full.
He tried to catch the next drip in the hood of his jacket.
Water ran through the seam and down his wrist.
He took off a boot, tipped the seawater out and held its opening under the spout.
The boot held the water for a moment.
Then a dark spot spread across the leather near his heel.
A drop formed on the outside and fell between the planks.
He put the boot back on before the sun heated the deck too much to stand on.
He added bottles to the receipt and stayed beside the purifier while the trough filled again.
The fifth unit was in the trough at half past four.
He was still thirsty, but a full bottle would give him water if tomorrow was cloudy.
He poured half into the clear bottle, on top of the half already in it, and it took it to the shoulder, and he drank the rest, and capped the bottle, and stood the two of them side by side in the shade of the box.
The sun went down before the sixth unit was ready.
He drank the mouthful left in the trough and checked his cuts.
They had scabbed; one was pink at the edges but did not feel hot.
He lay beside the purifier with two full bottles in its shade.