"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?

She's enthusiastic about being examined!

"Starting from a raw soul, most of the time is spent waiting for the ambient planar alignment to convert the soul's material into aligned essence. You can do some mental training during this time, that's all. A living soul has bits of alignment stuck to it, at least where I'm from, and bits of the matching alignment make the process go a little faster if you measure closely, but this is only practically relevant for very strong souls holding lots of alignment bits.

An outsider who is already fully aligned, not matching the plane's alignment, won't change at all just by sitting around, and if you throw a bunch of aligned energy at them you'll kill them. Instead, you have to have them focus closely on pulling the old alignment away from a piece of tissue while you slip the new alignment in, continuously feeding both parts of their body with the right alignment.

For example, I used to be a type of angel that is sustained by their wings. When I became a cantor marrenai, first one wing was converted into my abdominal actuator. Then, each part of body other than my wings was surgically isolated from my Lawful Good bloodstream, converted, and connected to my Lawful Evil bloodstream. Eventually all my Lawful Good was concentrated into the remaining wing, which was removed and shipped to Heaven, probably, no sense wasting it. At that point I was anatomically a mess and needed two more years of surgery to take my current form.

Switching alignment needed all my concentration to not die, since Good and Evil are corrosive to each other, but during the ordinary surgery I could do mental training. I practiced thinking about priorities and remembering to do things until I developed specialized parts of my brain, which were then untangled from the rest and trained separately to become my Queue and Reminderbank, the two smaller lumps you felt earlier.

That's an awesome optical device!"

Her blood is slightly more viscous than human blood and homogeneous.

"I've never tried human medicine since becoming an outsider... medicine that kills a disease directly would probably work, but other stuff probably not. Capillary action? Oh, I see what you mean, I don't know if I even have 'cells'! Want to take a flesh sample and find out? 2 pence for a scratch, 2 shillings 8 pence for a coin-sized chunk.

I can get infections. Some material diseases don't spread to me at all, and most of the ones that do can be killed with electricity. A disease of opposing alignment will die immediately inside my body unless it's magically empowered. A disease of neutral alignment could be a problem, but we don't visit the Neutral Evil plane or True Neutral plane, and the Lawful Neutral plane is very careful with their public health. A Lawful Evil disease, if I were back in my world, would be trivial to cure if I noticed it at all, and might even make me stronger, but could be a problem here if I got sick and disoriented enough to be unable to assimilate flecks of Lawful Evil...I would probably have to get infected at exactly the same time as I was seriously injured.

I've never actually seen a sick marrenai, but I saw an angel's leg swell up and turn pink once?"

The chemist will pay for samples to look at under the scope and expose to various things!! And write all this down! And comments that it's rather hard to believe all the rest of the stuff without seeing it for himself but she's definitely an alien of some sort and that's very exciting. Most humans can't really survive extensive surgery, so it's medically indefensible to try, really. And he's not a surgeon. He's a chemist. If she needs a chemist for her shelter and the I.E.C. evacuation doesn't scoop him up she's probably got one, provided there's signs it's going to be led sanely and doesn't look like a death trap and so on and so forth. A police officer told him she wanted to learn to treat injuries- Well, there's a new fad the I.E.C. picked up called a 'first aid cabinet'. A box full of standard kit, meant to be carried around in case of injury in a remote area where no doctor is available. Illustrated aid manual, gauze, adhesive plaster and splints, bandages, anti-infection sulfa drugs, pain-killers, sutures, hand soap, basic tools like tweezers and scissors, medical alcohol for sterilizing. Three shillings. You have to sterilize yourself and your tools before working near wounds, infections are serious business.

"I'll keep you in mind.

I would like to buy a 'first aid cabinet'. How big is it? I might want additional items that I can fit in my bag, specifically for treating injuries from my claws.

I also want to buy chemicals for engineering. I don't know what I'm looking for here, but probably some acid, lime, borax, charcoal? Do you have gas fuel for a torch? A crucible?"

It's a two feet by one foot by eight inches- A sizable box. A few more bandages? Alright. You know, that description really was some terrifying fantastical surgery and he's not really sure he believes it. He does also sell things that aren't directly medicine, yes! Ostensibly for household cleaning, a lot of them, bleach lime borax charcoal ammonia acid, and he has propane and butane both, though some torches need specialized gases because of the different ways they burn. Butane is basically lamp fuel, propane is bunsen burner fuel, a nice even flame for chemistry work. Welding and cutting torches need acetylene, which burns hotter, or more exotic supplies.

She doesn't have any proof of her story and doesn't care to argue about it.

"I'll take the extra bandages with the first aid cabinet, some of all those cleaning chemicals, and a tank of propane.

What are you looking for in a shelter? What are you expecting the IEC to offer you that I can't?

I intend to rule my shelter firmly and Lawfully. I would like to train my subjects to be awesome, if they swear full obedience to me, but I'm willing to accept useful people who obey fewer laws. I will not take on more followers than I can protect." 

"The industry of all Great Britain behind it? A better chance of making it through everything without falling apart. Leaders who understand us, who we can more or less trust. You've mentioned some seriously concerning things to me and to others! That kind of total authority makes me nervous- P'raps with a veto mechanism, though of course, the unofficial one is armed revolt."

He'll start ringing up her purchases. First aid cabinet, 3 shillings. The propane is expensive; Four shillings, but he charges just a single shilling for refills and mentions that a few other places also fill propane, they're not used on every street corner, but enough. The tanks are hard to make, apparently. Bandages, five pence. Small glass bottle of bleach, four. Box of powdered lime, three. Box of borax, four. Charcoal bag, two. Bottle of ammonia, six. Small bottle of acid with a fancy stopper and danger warnings, eight. 

Total, 8s12d.

"How are you expecting to gain from the industry of all Great Britain? I'm hoping my shelter will be mostly self-sufficient...

I'll be a leader who understands everyone, thanks to my mind-reading ability! And I am completely reliable to keep my word, if that's what you mean by trust. If you mean that you want a leader who likes you and owes you care according to some vague social debt, I won't do that.

Technically, I don't need or want full obedience, I just need to be absolutely sure of obedience in a narrower scope, with the authority to punish transgressions and prevent escape. I don't know if that fits neatly in English law, though; I think it will be easier to ask permission to have slaves than to ask for my entire legal system to be combined with yours. My laws impose significant duties on me toward my subordinates, and if I were to break my word, which I won't, but if I were hypothetically to break my word, those I betrayed would be entitled to freedom and redress."

Good thing she made so much money at the tavern! Here's 8s12d.

"IEC's got nearly everyone working on it. From the bloody Navy down to old Hoosier's charcoal mill down in Wales. Who do you have? Also, see, now you're saying ominous things again! I don't actually object to prisons but you're describing them in an upsetting way! Anyway, thank you for your purchase. I might want to hire you if I think of worthwhile tests later."

"So you want to live in a shelter that's well-built, not whatever I have that was made by a single engineer with a spark of genius and bunch of untrained laborers... I'm hoping to make a lot of money somehow, once the most valuable legal uses of my mind-reading are identified, and then buy support from the IEC - I'll let you know how that works out."

Ooh! "I'd be happy to do more experiments."

She takes her new possessions back to the inn and organizes them, then waits outside for Waltana, or anyone else who has business with her.

The innkeeper makes a sullen comment about this being an inn, not a warehouse, but doesn't confront her about it.

A middle aged man from yesterday at the pub finds her not long after. He holds his hand out for a handshake. "Good show, good to see you again. I've got a bit of a job, though I want to keep quiet about it." He waggles his hand.

"Okay. Do you want me to keep quiet about it indefinitely or for a limited time? By 'keep quiet' do you mean as much secrecy as possible, which takes effort for me, or just that I don't take initiative to tell anyone, or something in between? I'm not going to break the law, my duties, or any other promises I may have made."

She'll follow him to someplace more private, keeping a Haste readied if she's attacked.

"The latter, and I was hinting that you should read me, but ah well. It's not some sort of master spy I'm trying to keep hidden from, just greedy relatives. You're already known to be wandering about and buying odd things- I want to hire you as a discreet shopper."

"I see, I thought you might have had a tremor and didn't want to risk guessing wrong. Going forward, you can use the signal of folding over your index finger and flexing your middle finger twice." Which is a part of the Marra's Inquisition somatic component, as cast by clerics, which she has seen many times. "I'll buy any legal goods for you. You pay expenses. For today, I'll charge 5 shillings per hour for my time, as if I had combined your errands with my own as best I could. I might charge a different amount in the future. If there are risks involved, I will value my life at ten thousand pounds."

Marra's Inquisition.

"I'm not sure you have much ability to collect if you die, or would you charge danger pay based on risk?"

He's thinking that this will be funny, a refuge in audacity. 5 shillings an hour is somewhat steep, closer to skilled professional rates than busybody rates, so she'd better do a good job. He doesn't expect it to be dangerous. He wants a nice house rented for him, and a maid or butler who's quiet and competent and won't blab hired. He wants a discreetly acquired weapon or two. He's the nephew of a bloody Baron, for all that's worth, his inheritance money should at least get him a nice place to wait for the end of the world instead of that miserably harpy Claire getting her mitts on it. Actually surviving past all this is a distant prospect, and he's waffling between wanting comfort in his last days and trying to actually survive. He wants fresh tea and coffee, and fancy furniture, and to lay in supplies for when things get bad. He might want to bribe someone for materials while the Pound Sterling is still worth something- He's heard Kireh wants to build a shelter, but doesn't really think that's going to actually happen, so he's considering who in the I.E.C. might be willing to accept whatever a few thousand pounds can buy (scrap steel, scrap wood, desperately needed machines?) for a priority spot.

"-But the house and maid are a priority, the sooner I can leave my current residence the better off I'll be." The whole family's rotten and just waiting for him to keel over and die except perhaps for little Benjamin, who's at the tender age of five. It couldn't be any more obvious, and he hates them.

"Danger pay based on risk."

She checks for eavesdroppers. "What's the budget for the house? May I stay in the house, or may I tell the person currently paying for my lodging that I don't actually have access to the house I bought? Do I need be listed as the owner of the house going forward, or do you just want me to negotiate for you? What are your requirements for a maid or butler?"

This seems pretty straightforward! When she read him at the pub she thought 'using money to get what he wants' meant political intrigue or something.

If he's paying for the place and Kireh's going to get some use out of it, she'll have to pay him rent in turn, but he's not going to be a Charles Boycott about it. Maybe her rent can just be the work of arranging groceries and upkeep and coming in and out so as to make the place obviously hers, she can have a basement and a guest room and a smallish stipend for that. He's not expecting a lot of visitors. He's not sure about the Bristol housing market but something in the range of about fifteen, twenty pounds a month. On the upper end of what an high officer, factory manager, or successful lawyer's salary would permit. She can say she's renting on behalf of someone if that makes things easier, but he doesn't want his name circulating (this is why he hasn't told her it). His requirements for a maid or butler, either way, are mostly quietness and diligence, with ability to cook a bonus, and letting Kireh read them and determine that they probably will take the job seriously, he'll pay them a pound a week, Sundays off, which is a really quite good for servant work. Even better if the one she hires has clerical or bureaucratic experience or connections of some kind. He'll be making inquiries with the IEC and City Hall. Again, it's not like money is really going to matter in a month or two. He does not, he makes sure to deliberate on, as some rich men paying this well do, expect the maid to have sex with him. Though saying so flat out will spook people- She could call him a widower, or a recluse, or a chaste and reserved man, as a euphemism, if it comes up at all, which it might not. It has not escaped him that she talks like an alien.

Charles Boycott is a... tyrannical landlord of farmers? 'Not tyranny' is kind of vague but she's not actually expecting problems. He doesn't need groceries of his own? Is he an undead or something? ...no he just wants to relax and not have to make shopping decisions.

Too bad none of the people she read at the tavern were looking for jobs as maids or butlers. "If the IEC doesn't work for you, I'm hoping to build my own shelter. Everyone in it has to follow my rules for safety, order, and survival, but you don't have to otherwise belong to me if you're providing funding or useful labor."

...It's remarkable that he can think about the idea of telling her his name without actually thinking his name. He might not be an undead - the undead she's familiar with would be completely impossible to read - but something is up with him. "How did you train your mind so well?" Is there some other kind of mind-reading already in this world that he's prepared to resist? Is there someone else teaching mental discipline, for whatever reason, who she could work with?