Afraid-of-rejection knows his brother's wife and kids will suffer without him helping out, but... Will think about that. It's not like there's a contract or anything, and he's not married... But family is family. Quitting the drinking would be good, anyway.

There's some arguing back and forth about press gangs, but they're pretty sure it was a right specifically afforded to the Royal Navy. It's not used quite so much anymore, anyway, modern sailing is a more skilled job than it ever was before. And there haven't been as many wars lately. They seem to enjoy the chance to argue about things.

Why, being famous! Having people look up to her, having big parties, getting all the coolest toys... Oh, and saving people, yes, that too. Eh... Well, she probably does have to talk about this doesn't she? Fine, fine. Debra's expression darkens. Back in flight school she was blackmailed for a little while, then at one point kidnapped held hostage for a bit by a bastard of a man who mostly got away with it. If Kireh really needs the gory details, some other time?

Daniel would like someone - compatible. Calm and kind and who he can get along with, which isn't easy to judge from a distance. Pretty would be nice, of course, but a 'good family' would be more trouble than it's worth. The big problem is that he's - a bit of an idiot. He knows this and struggles with it. He doesn't recognize faces or voices, he doesn't recognize a lot of social cues without deliberate effort. Not quite to the point where a doctor would call him a mental cripple, and he thinks he's clever enough aside from that. He's a telegraph operator, you have to be a bit clever for that. But he doesn't know how to go about courting the acceptable English way, he'd be terrible at it, and courting someone and messing it up rather kills your future chances, doesn't it?

(Her total take in tips, when she counts it all up, is 14 shillings, 7 pence, and 3/8 pence (with the smallest coin in use being a 1/8 pence). Debra the test pilot casually dropped three of those shillings, and also bought a round for the bar a while back.)

Okay, she'll want to talk with Debra and Daniel more later, but that's enough for now, for her to start thinking.

That's more money than she was expecting!

She goes back to the inn.

She prays to everyone on her list except the Lords of Hell - this is a totally different universe that Asmodeus might not know about yet. She asks Lissala for guidance on the sin magic here, but, as expected, doesn't get a response. Lissala is, unlike Marra, able to give visions, but She's even weaker than Marra.

Kireh thinks about separating people who can be awesome from the boring pointless masses... studying petitioners to find each urge towards Good and Evil, Law and Chaos, Awesomeness and Boringness, Diversity and Uniformity... choosing paths for petitioners (Gofiere, Cantor, Sietaziz, part of a Regulator or Rector)... guiding mortals... punishing new petitioners for their failings in life... Saint Peter, I'm from a different universe with a different judge. I would like to trade with You. The judge of my universe prefers souls to have clear alignments. If You like that too, or if You prefer complicated cases, tell me how to make my followers more clearly Evil by Your standards, or more interestingly ambiguous. I want to know more about Hell and how to arrange a suitable fate for my followers, in Hell or elsewhere. There might be other things You can do to pay me that I don't know of.

She prays briefly to "God" and Jesus Christ, just in case the restrictions on prayers stretching across alignments is different here (and either of Them is still alive). Prays to the god of sparkiness as best she can aim, asking to cooperate on using Waltana.

She reviews the rest of her queued items without much progress. Discards the ones about her petitioners in Stonepeak.

There's not enough time for a long rest, but she spends the rest of her curfew lying on the bed, stretching her body and working her mind, enjoying being such an awesome creature as a Cantor.

And now to see the chemist! If they're not open yet at 6am, she wanders around looking for criminals, people from the tavern who want to talk more, or anyone else interesting. Is the shipyard close enough to stroll through in case the workers want to talk to her about their union?

The chemist opens at eight! This early, most people are dull and groggy. All the people who wanted to keep talking to her from the tavern last night ended up giving addresses to call at.

It's not hard to find the shipyard, and the place is- Impressive.

It's a somewhat sprawling complexus of docks, warehouses, cranes, and factories along the bay. Much of the city is focused on it, with vast streams of workers heading that way. There's a fence or gatehouse with men checking papers before most of the actual industrial areas, but the roads leading around the area are open. While the passing workers do shout a few questions at her, everyone seems focused on getting to work and being productive. There's a real sense of urgency in this district of the city, compared to further out.

There is steel everywhere. Vast quantities of the metal, being used for everything. Bridges. Cranes. Gatehouses. The ships themselves. Carts. Tools and machinery. Signs.

She can see tugboats belching smoke from their short funnels as they move around, pushing barges full of materials or larger ships. There's a long line of slipways, with over two dozen vessels built to the same pattern under construction- The earliest one a bare steel skeleton, the latest looking essentially complete. Dozens of men swarm around each slipway, with engineers and overseers crowding around as they work. Gargantuan automata, masses of metal stomping around on four slow legs, look almost spindly from this angle despite their obvious strength and power. They tower thirty, forty feet in the air, walking with great thumps, hauling heavy loads, lifting large pieces of metal for the ships, with slow, ungainly movements and frequent pauses as if they're stopping to think. At the far end of the dock, past more stringent security and what looks like actual fortification, guarded by very soldierly-looking types in blue uniforms, are several ships that seem rather different in character.

One of the pairs of I.E.C. guards, wearing I.E.C. uniforms with a prominent patch, will approach her if she lingers much.

Cool!

Probably not much for her to do here, though. She looks around long enough to attract the guards' attention and gives them a nod as they approach.

"We don't need suspicious characters hanging about, much less so-called mind-reading ones. State your business here, or leave if you have none!" The one in front brusquely demands.

"With what authority are you speaking? I'm just looking around peacefully, on public property. I won't mind-read anyone without their consent."

"The I.E.C. The Imperial Exploration Company is in charge of major industrial areas for the duration of the emergency. I'm sure they appreciate that."

"In other words, this is not public property? I didn't see any indication of that. How might I avoid trespassing in the future?"

"You're not trespassing, you're loitering. We'll put up signs if we must."

"Ey, boss, isn't this a bit..." The other one trails off, hesitantly.

"She's disrupting work, look, they're gawking instead of riveting over there! This isn't a park, here, it's serious and heavy work. Not safe for just anyone to be about! If you'd like to contribute to the survival of everyone around you, main office is right off College Green, they will sort you out."

"I'm looking at the shipyard because I'm interested in engineering, which is neither 'no apparent purpose' nor an illegal intent per the Vagrancy Act of 1824. And other people's responses to my presence is not my problem.

Anyway, I'm leaving now - which way is College Green?"

The guards will furnish her with directions. It's hard to miss, big square just downriver on the right of the fork in the center of Bristol.

"Hello. I was directed here by some of your guards, about how you might have use of my services?" She can explain who and what she is, if needed. "I'm also interested in buying plans for a shelter."

The IEC office is hectic.

However. They had instructions for this. They'll show her to a private office where a bespectacled man will meet her and say, "There's currently a lot of confusion in the IEC about a lot of things. Exceptions to the expected course of things as large as you are, were not expected. I am at liberty to furnish you designs for some pieces of survival equipment, by order of Her Majesty such that all may prepare. However, I'm unclear on what services you might offer that an ordinary laborer cannot, and what intentions you might have in offering them."

"Indeed, you should not employ me as, say, a blacksmith, and probably not on some common labor that I can do slightly more efficiently by foregoing safety equipment for cold or electricity. My best assets are my mind-reading and my skill at using it. I could screen people for critical technical or leadership positions. If legal, I could search for the disloyal more generally.

I can help people improve their skills and motivation. I'm about to start such a project with an engineer in my employ, and don't yet know its success... Are you aware that there exist both trained and intuitive engineers? My impression is that intuitive engineers can be overlooked. If a lot of people claim to be intuitive engineers and it's too expensive to offer them all work-trials, I can identify the genuine ones.

Once the cold sets in, I can travel between shelters as a courier, or to provide a service to every shelter which would not be valuable enough if I could only do it at a single one. Checking for rebellion and lawbreaking among the shelters' leaders would be the obvious task.

I want to build my own shelter so that I can rule it absolutely, as much as is permitted by law. To that end, I offer my services for money, or to barter for information, materials, equipment, or legal permission.

Regarding the designs that you're not willing to divulge, I have some comments - I am not attempting to extract hints from your reactions; I'm keeping my eyes and ears pointed away from you. If the machinery is dangerous" like a Wish spell "I could swear to use it only for limited purposes and keep it secret. If you want to deprive your enemies of the knowledge I could swear neutrality in conflicts and keep your secrets. If using your secret technology depletes a common resource, I can compensate you. If it has psychological effects that are against Her Majesty's interests for her subjects, I could try to correct them?"

"I think positions of high influence and trust are off the table," he says with finality. "I'm also not actually aware of the reason for redacting individual designs- I was, however, told that the primary reason is complexity, likely inability for individuals to do anything useful with them in time, and secondarily, yes, powerful technologies proving dangerous to our interests in factional hands. By intuitive engineering, do you mean the so-called spark of genius? One of which disrupted operations just yesterday..." Suspicious staring!

"The one intuitive engineer I've talked to used the term 'spark of genius', yes. I'm guessing that my engineering consultant is the person you're referring to, who I am confident is genuinely an intuitive engineer. I hope to inspire her to more Lawfulness in the future.

I believe that plans which are too intricate for a trained engineer might still be useful for a 'spark of genius'.

Have you considered a treaty against combat uses of your secret technology? I would be willing to sign such a treaty and use violence to enforce it. My mind-reading and emotional control could be devastating in a lawful war against an enemy without the countermeasures used in my world."

"That's above my pay grade. We explore and build shelters, not fight wars. Now. Copies of the plans are a shilling or two each, per design, for the paper and clerical time." 

He hands over a printed list.

Survival Lamp. Standard Prosthetic Limb. Survey Beacon. Radiotelegraphy Set. Steam Lorry.

Mining drills. Drainage pumps. Ventilation pumps. Hunting equipment based on northern explorer feedback. 

"Whose business is it, and how can I contact them?

I'll buy the plans for the drainage pump now and return after talking to my engineer."

"Room 204 is the place to do that. I'll show you on your way out. That would be the Captain, to even discuss the possibility with any confidence. Or Her Majesty's Government in London. We certainly can't agree to anything like that in a position of ignorance and on our own recognizance."

"Can I make an appointment with the Captain? I expect to be available any day between 7am and 8am, evenings 8 to 11, or mornings sporadically."

"Captain Blemwick is a very busy man. Perhaps a meeting with one of his assistants could be arranged in a day or two."

"Okay, I will return to discuss that appointment further."

When she leaves with the copied plan, is the chemist open yet?

The chemist is open! It contains a sleepy teenage boy, who fetches his boss from the back room, a rotund but excitable man who immediately bombards Kireh with questions about her physiology! Is her fur the same structure as human hair, or as fox fur, or something else? Did she have baby teeth? How many teeth does she have for that matter? What bone is her tail connected to? How does the musculature in her neck work-

"I don't know the anatomy of each individual hair, but I have two layers of fur, 1cm long and 3cm long. They continuously grow and fall out. I have 36 teeth, no baby teeth - we don't reproduce like that, we're made out of raw souls, which takes centuries to millennia, with frequent manual adjustments; or made from other kinds of outsiders, which takes a few years of intensive surgery and spiritual training. If I lost a tooth a new one would form from my jaw and then spilt off and emerge.

My tail is continuous with my spine... you may examine me." She's not going to charge for that, as she's very pleased to be the object of such fascination!

Her neck has ribs in it, with her neck muscles all attached to her spine. Her tail has twenty vertebrae.

Her limbs are humanoid, weak knees and all. Her hands are wide and heavy, with muscles on her fingers and no floating bones in her wrists. Her feet are very similar to her hands, just a little larger and thicker.

Her fangs each have an elongated hole on the inside edge. "That's for my venom, which is stored in my head." Speaking of which, her skull has some flexibility and blobby tangles can be felt inside.

She doesn't have a heartbeat, but a regular pulsing is palpable in her chest, surrounding three hard lumps. "My heart is a coiled tube that pumps like an intestine, and that's my brain in the middle." She doesn't have intestines, or most other human internal organs, just a vestigial digestive tract that goes straight through and a single lung. Most of her abdomen is a firm mass of flat layers.

"You can have some of my blood, but I'll charge for that: 2 pence per ounce."

This is all Extremely Fascinating, particularly her heart and chest-brain arrangement. He takes her back to an exam room for this, and wants to know more about the physical process of changing. The chemist keeps up a fast-paced ramble about how this Changes Everything We Thought We Knew, or, well, not really, but WOW. They can't do that much with various samples, the body is hideously complex and very mysterious, but he'll buy a blood sample to check under his microscope to see if it has all the parts of human blood. And also brag; It has 150x magnification! Does she know if she responds as humans do to medicines and chemicals? Does capillary action, inflammatory response, and so on still affect her? Can she get infections?