Axis

"But nothing's burning?"

"She said not."

"It could be volcanic ash," Lise said, and Turk had to admire how she was handling all this. She was tense but not visibly afraid, not too scared to venture a theory. "It would have to have been some kind of tectonic event way out over the horizon, something at sea…"

"Like a sea volcano," Tyrell said, nodding.

"But we would have felt something before the ash got to us if it was anywhere close—an earthquake, a tsunami."

"Been no report of any such thing," Turk said, "far as I know."

"Ash," Tyrell added. "Like, gray and powdery."

Turk asked Tyrell if there was any coffee back in the kitchen and Tyrell said yeah, not a bad idea, and went to check. There were still a few diners in the restaurant, people with nowhere better to go, though nobody was eating or celebrating. They sat at the i

The coffee came and it was good and dense, and Turk added cream to his cup just as if the sky weren't falling. Lise's phone buzzed repeatedly, and she fended off a couple of friendly calls before shunting everything to her voice mail. Turk didn't get any calls, though his phone was in his shirt pocket.

Now the ash began to fall on Harley's patio, and Turk and Lise moved closer to the window to watch.

Gray and powdery. Tyrell's description was on the money. Turk had never seen volcanic ash, but he imagined this was what it might look like. It sifted down over the wooden slats and boards of the patio and drifted against the window glass. It was like snow the color of an old wool suit, but here and there were flecks of something shiny, something still luminous, which dimmed as he watched.

Lise pressed up against his shoulder, wide-eyed. He thought again of their weekend up in the Mohindar Range, marooned by weather on that nameless lake. She had been just as self-possessed back then, just as balanced, braced for whatever the situation might throw at her. "At least," he said, "nothing's burning."

"No. But you can smell it."

He could, now that she mentioned it—a mineral smell, slightly acrid, a little sulfuric.

Tyrell said, "You think it's dangerous?"

"Nothing we can do about it if it is."

"Except stay indoors," Lise said. But Turk doubted that was practical. Even now, through the glittering ashfall, he could make out traffic on Rue Madagascar, pedestrians scurrying down the sidewalks covering their heads with jackets or handkerchiefs or newspapers. "Unless—"

"Unless what?"

"Unless," she said, "this goes on too long. There's not a roof in Port Magellan built to bear much weight."

"And it isn't just dust," Tyrell said.

"What?"

"Well, look.'" He gestured at the window.

Absurdly, impossibly, something the shape of a starfish drifted past the glass. It was gray but speckled with light. It must have weighed nearly nothing because it floated in the weak breeze like a balloon, and when it reached the deck of the patio it crumbled into powder and a few larger fragments.

Turk gave Lise a glance. She shrugged, incredulous.

"Get me a tablecloth," Turk said.

Tyrell said, "What do you want with a tablecloth?"

"And one of those linen napkins."

"You don't want to mess with the linen," Tyrell said. "Management's very strict about that."

"Go get the manager, then."

"Mr. Darnell's off tonight. I guess that makes me the manager."

"Then get a tablecloth, Tyrell. I want to check this out."

"Don't mess up my place."

"I'll be careful."

Tyrell went to undress a table. Lise said, "You're going out there?"

"Just long enough to retrieve a little of whatever's coming down."

"What if it's toxic?"

"Then I guess we're all fucked." She flinched, and he added, "But we'd probably know by now if it was."

"Can't be good for your lungs, whatever it is."

"So help me tie that napkin over my face."

The remaining diners and waiters watched curiously but made no effort to help. Turk took the tablecloth to the nearest exit to the patio and gestured to Tyrell to slide open the glass door. The smell immediately intensified—it was something like wet, singed animal hair—and Turk hurriedly spread the tablecloth on the patio floor and backed inside.

"Now what?" Tyrell said.

"Now we let it sit a few minutes."

He rejoined Lise, and, bereft of conversation, they watched the dust come down for a quarter of an hour more. Lise asked him how he pla

"I'm only a couple of blocks from here," she said. "The new building on Rue Abbas by the Territorial Authority compound? It ought to be fairly sturdy."

It was the first time she had invited him home. He nodded.

But he was still curious. He waved down Tyrell, who had been serving coffee to everyone still present, and Tyrell slid open the patio door one more time. Turk gripped the open tablecloth, now burdened with a layer of ash, and pulled it gently, trying not to disturb whatever fragile structures it might have captured. Tyrell closed the door promptly. "Phew! Stinks."

Turk brushed off the few flakes of gray ash that clung to his shirt and hair. Lise joined him as he squatted to examine the debris-covered tablecloth. A couple of curious diners pulled their chairs a little closer, though they wrinkled their noses at the smell.

Turk said, "You have a pen or a pencil on you?"

Lise rummaged in her purse and came up with a pen. Turk took it from her and used it to probe the layer of dust that had collected on the tablecloth.

"What's that?" Lise asked over his shoulder. "To your left. Looks like, I don't know, an acorn …"

Turk hadn't seen an acorn in years. Oaks didn't grow in Equatoria. The object in the ashfall was about the size of his thumb. It was saucer-shaped at one end and tapered to a blunt point at the other—an acorn, or maybe a tiny egg wearing a minuscule sombrero. It appeared to be made of the same stuff as the fallen ash, and when he touched it with the tip of the pen it dissolved as if it possessed no particular substance at all.

"And over there," Lise said, pointing. Another shaped object, this one resembling a gear out of an old mechanical clock. It, too, crumbled when he touched it.

Tyrell went to the staff room and came back with a flashlight. When he played the beam over the tablecloth at a raking angle it showed up a number of these objects, if you could call them "objects"—the faintly structured remains of things that appeared to have been manufactured. There was a tube about a centimeter long, perfectly smooth; another about the same size, but knobbed like a length of spine from some small animal, a mouse, say. There was a six-pronged thorn; there was a disk with miniature, crumbling spokes, like a bicycle wheel; there was a beveled ring. Some of these things glinted with a faint remnant light.

"All burned," Lise observed.

Burned or otherwise decomposed. But how could something so completely cremated remain even partially intact after falling from the sky? What had these things been made of?

Also present in the ashfall were a few luminous specks. Turk hovered his hand over one of them.

"Careful," Lise said.

"It's not hot. It's not even warm."

"Could be, I don't know, radioactive."

"Could be." If so, it was another doomsday scenario. Everyone outside was inhaling this stuff. Everyone inside soon would be. None of these buildings was airtight, none of them filtered its air.

"You learning anything from this?" Tyrell asked. Turk stood up and brushed his hands.

"Yeah. I'm learning that I know even less than I thought I did."