A cook and an engineer work out how much of a shrinking water reserve must be spent to keep repairs and medical care going.
The cistern held enough clean water for eleven days if nothing went wrong. Our engineer wrote nine on the shelter notice to allow for delays and additional arrivals. She kept both estimates beneath it, with the assumptions listed where anyone drawing water could read them.
Then the crossings became unreliable. A supply cart arrived without its driver. Another party found a road absent from every chart we held. We recognized fittings like those used in the Mirror Belt and the Tide Courts, but that did not tell us where to send a crew after the missing cart driver or when another load would reach us.
The shelter's keeper selected the eleven-day figure and restricted withdrawals to preserve it. Washing water was reduced. The clinic could no longer clean enough linen. The garden channels were closed, and a repair crew waiting outside the shelter was refused supplies for its journey.
By the fifth day, the cistern held more water than expected. Dirty dressings had accumulated in the clinic, the root bank below the garden had begun to fail, and the repair crew had still not reached the blocked supply channel. We were using less water because essential work had stopped.
The cook brought her empty buckets to the cistern steps. She asked the engineer to stay while she called over the clinic workers and the repair crew. Together they listed the work that had to be done before the next day ended, then measured what each task required.
Cleaning the linen needed an allocation of its own. The repair crew needed drinking water before leaving, not after returning. The weakened roots needed enough water to hold until the blocked channel could be opened. We also kept a reserve for people who might arrive injured or without supplies.
The total frightened me. I had grown used to looking at a high level in the tank and feeling that we were safe. The engineer showed me how quickly the remaining work would become harder if we delayed it again. She reduced other allocations, checked the sums, and gave the repair crew its share.
The channel was cleared before the temporary supply to the roots ran out. Its inflow reached the lower beds, allowing us to stop using clean reserve water there. The clinic caught up with its washing. Our next estimate was shorter than eleven days, but it included work that was actually being done.
Before leaving, we removed the automatic latch from the cistern. The measuring float stayed, and every draw was still recorded. The engineer's estimates were replaced as the conditions changed. At our last meal, the cook handed the departing repair crew a bundle of clean wrapping cloths and asked them to bring the whole bundle back, not just the empty water containers.
