kintire wrote:Kat swiftly checks around to see if the man is alone and moves to pursue but pauses after a few steps.
She has not lasted this long in her profession without developing a keen sense of trouble. If he is simply a lecher she cares nothing for him. Anyone else, in this investigation or out of it, who might have cause to hire someone to follow her would know that she would spot such a one. She smells bait.
She eyes the alley thoughtfully, but resumes her journey to Flammarion's shop. Though she now expects a wasted trip and to learn he sent no note, she will not pursue her clumsy follower off the well travelled streets and down a secluded alley. Whoever is trolling for her will have to do better than that!
She keeps on.
After a while, she looks back and catches sight of the same man, back on her trail.
Speeding up, she takes a detour, whipping round a street corner.
Squeezing through a gap in the fence that separates a green lot from the open lane, KAT sneaks through a vegetable garden, then opens and passes a gate on the far side.
The few gardeners at work don't look up at her. She barely rustles the beanstalks.
She checks the streets ahead, behind, right, left...
No obvious tail.
Keeps walking, fast now, but not a jog.
She reaches Flammarion's shop without seeing any indication the man was able to follow.
The shop's open, but no customers are present this early.
She finds Flammarion working in the back room. The door stands ajar.
Fumes from the workshop make Kat's eyes water, and the acrid odor makes her nose run a little.
The old alchemist sniffs a small green fire in a brazier and the hustles out to meet KAT past the workshop door, in the showroom-front area.
"Oh, good, you got my note. Pull up a stool if you like."
He indicates a short row of stools tucked under the open shelves of goods on the left wall.
"I've learned some things about the Black Ash. Or at least, I've done enough observation, experimentation, and analysis that I've developed some notions about the stuff and its origins."
He fetches a stool for himself.
"You noticed the way it seems to sublimate at a touch, but lasts longer on pavement? Well...it isn't sublimating at all. It's vanishing utterly. No mass left. Nothing to trap in an alembic. It isn't turning to phlogiston or vaporous essences or anything of the sort, as I first guessed. No, the instability appears more than merely physical. Metaphysical! It's as if the stuff came from outside our world and goes back to where it came from after a time. Something about the heat or vital energy of living beings speeds up that process. But the rate of return is slowing. The ashfalls last longer every day, and some of the stains these falls leave do not vanish at all. My calculations suggest that in a few more days, the stuff will be stable in our environment. It will remain indefinitely. Canals will clog. The river will likely stay clear enough, because of the current, but wells, gardens, poorly sealed homes, our lungs..."
Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.
-from Moby Dick (Hermann Melville)