"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 planned to get home. He shrugged. He lived in what was essentially a trailer a few miles downcoast from the airfield. There was already a good half inch of ash on the ground and traffic was crawling.

"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.