The lorries are brought forward to the nineteenth

Previously: Ainhoa Cortabarria found in the 1974 printer's originals that chapter four was typed on a different machine. Nobody signed those twenty-two sheets.

There were 160 titles left to verify when the Programme's white van parked on the loading ramp. Ainhoa Cortabarria, book restorer at the Provincial Library of Huesca, knew it before she saw anyone's face: Fabián Oyarzun, floor manager and the man in charge of the cull, had gone down to meet her with the hardback folder, the one he only takes out when somebody comes from Madrid.

"Nekane Ferrer, inspector for the National Deduplication Programme," the woman said, and shook Ainhoa's hand before Fabián's. "Are you the one doing the verifying?"

"Two hundred and fourteen titles. I've done fifty-four."

"Fifty-four in eleven days."

"Fifty-four opened one by one. Verifying isn't counting."

Nekane took a tablet out of her bag, rested it on the returns desk and turned the screen so both of them could see. It was a route calendar with four provinces and a column of times in which Huesca appeared twice.

"The Sabiñánigo plant goes into maintenance on the 22nd," she said. "Three weeks shut. If your batch leaves on the 30th it stays here until September, and in September there is no transport budget. I'm telling you with the order in my hand: the lorries come on the 19th."

Fabián did the sum before Ainhoa did.

"That's eleven days less."

"Eleven," said Nekane. "And I'm not the one taking them. They're taken by a machine that has been shut down since March."

Ainhoa opened the hardback folder and pulled out the old schedule: 214 titles, 30 June, two extra staff promised who never arrived.

"With eleven days less that's twenty titles a day," she said. "And verifying a title means opening it, looking for marks, checking whether another copy survives anywhere, and signing my own name to say it can be pulped. What I sign, nobody else signs."

"How many have you found with marks?"

"One."

Nekane looked up from the tablet for the first time.

"One out of fifty-four?"

"One out of fifty-four. And that one is recorded as destroyed on 14 March, in Sabiñánigo, at the plant you say goes into maintenance on the 22nd."

Fabián cleared his throat and looked towards the ramp, where the van driver was smoking with his back to them.

"It's a paperwork error," he said. "Remei Balaguer, the plant operator, signs by weight. We've been over this."

"We've been over this," Ainhoa repeated, "and the book is still on table nine."

She walked over and came back with it open at page eleven. She laid it on the counter, in front of the tablet.

"Oficios de invierno, Huesca, 1974, Tramullas press," she said. "Look at the margin."

Nekane Ferrer did not look. She put her hand over it without quite touching it, the way you hold down a sheet of paper that is about to blow away.

"I don't read the books. I read the batches."

"It's five words in pencil. It will take you four seconds."

"If I read it, I have to record that I read it, and then this title goes into a procedure that lasts four months and you keep it here, in a sealed box, until November. Is that what you want?"

Ainhoa took the book back and closed it with both hands, slowly, without marking the page.

"I want eight days nobody has given me."

"Eight days is what there is."

Otilia Bergua, cataloguer of the old collection, thirty-one years in the post, had come up from the basement with two boxes and set them down on the floor without anyone asking her to. She stayed standing beside them, hands in the pockets of her coat.

"I've got four thousand two hundred titles down there," she said. "They let me keep four hundred. Take eleven days off me and I don't choose better: I choose sooner."

"Nobody is taking anything from you, madam. It's being brought forward."

"You bring it forward. I get it taken."

Nekane Ferrer did not argue. She asked for a pen and Fabián gave her the library's, the one tied to the desk with a length of string ever since they started disappearing. She signed the order there and then, standing up, and wrote the date by hand under her signature: 19 June 2038, six in the morning, two lorries, rear dock. Then she tore off the yellow copy and left it inside Fabián's folder, not quite letting go until he had hold of it.

"Eight days," she said. "And one more thing, for what it's worth: I don't decide what gets saved. I decide when the lorry arrives."

She left down the ramp at the same pace she had come in. The driver put out his cigarette against his sole and opened the door for her.

Ainhoa held on to the yellow copy until the van pulled out onto the road. Then she went back to table nine, pushed the trolley aside and counted out loud what she had left, the way people who work alone count: 160 titles, 8 days, 20 a day. On the table, open at page eleven, lay the one of the fifty-four she had not been able to sign.