Etta Calder began her morning rounds before most people stopped dreaming. The waterworks room breathed ahead of the enclave; its fans and pumps woke like an old, conscientious animal, stretching belts and making small, mechanical grunts. She liked that — the predictable mechanical complaints — more than she liked human ones. Metal spoke in clear languages: a hiss at 3.2 psi meant a hairline leak, a high whine told her a bearing was begging for grease, and a stubborn, flat thud in the feedline meant something had seized up and needed the kind of punishment only real torque could give.
She moved with the directness of a person who had spent years learning how steel surrendered to a hand that knew where to press. Her gloves smelled like spent coffee and pipe sludge; her hair was pinned back with a strip of canvas that had “HENRY 7” printed on it in smudged ink. She habitually talked to the fittings as she worked. “Come on, Gertrude,” she said, leaning a wrench against a flange that had been bullying the same bolt for three years. “I’ll pry you if I have to, but let’s do it like civilized people.” The flange didn’t answer, but the sound of the bolt yielding — a reluctant metallic sigh — felt like gratitude.
There was a small riot of domestic life past the heavy bulkhead door: sun-catchers stitched from bottle bottoms clinked in a light breeze, a neighbor hung braided jerky on a line to cure, and farther off, the boys were already on the communal roof laughing over a borrowed slingshot. It had nothing to do with her pumps and everything to do with why she kept them running. People argued, loved, and burned their stew now and then. The waterworks had no patience for that sort of drama; it only understood flow.
Etta wiped grit from a pressure gauge with the back of her wrist and read the face in the half-light. The dial sat a calm degree below normal. Not ideal, but not yet a fight. She adjusted a clamp, rotated a valve collar three careful clicks, and listened to the pipes recalibrate like a harp finding a plucked string. Nearby, a volunteer named Rafi shuffled a bale of filter cloth, his palms smudged and earnest. He watched her like someone waiting to see if a weather forecast would mercifully change. His waiting said what he couldn’t yet voice: he wanted to be useful. She always tested that; usefulness made a person less dangerous.