The last twelve tons were counted before anyone began the meeting.
Iven stood beside the storekeeper while the replacement consignment’s final cages came off the freight line. The grain had arrived dry. Its source marks matched the purchase. The receiving weight matched the load within the ordinary allowance they recorded rather than concealed. When the last sack went onto its pallet, the emergency food account reached two thousand three hundred tons physically present.
The twelve tons lost in the flood remained on a separate line, paid for and replaced. Good sacks had not been imagined into the place of wet ones.
The storekeeper locked the bay.
“Now,” she said, “you can say the first figure.”
Iven smiled. “I will.”
It was the two hundred and thirty-first day. The final shelter crews had worked through the clear interval after the storm. Every communal unit in the approved plan now stood under its anchored roof, or under an inspected equivalent substituted from the reserve stock. The torn outer covers had been repaired and tested before being counted. The last ten water points were connected. Their filling places had been tried with actual containers and their runoff led clear of the paths.
Neri walked the final row with Fara while Iven and Elian checked the received lists against the ground.
